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They have been pruning, hacking, and / or trimming the shrubs and small trees that grow along the path between our backyards. Some of those piles of brush have been sitting there since January. I called the city about it on Tuesday. Then I asked one of the parks workers about it yesterday when I happened to see them while walking the dog. Lo and behold all that brush has been removed. Finally! Now if they would do something about all the litter that collected in the brush over the last couple of months I would be ecstatic.
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He was enjoying himself so why not take a video. He just had a hair cut about a week ago.
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“Discontinue use of towelettes on personal safety equipment if rash or skin irritation develops.”
Personal safety equipment has skin? This skin can be sensitive?
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I took a few pictures in the ravine today while walking the dog. Nothing exciting in the pictures: perfect for desktop “wallpaper”.
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Our choir has been hosting a Symposium on this Saturday for the last few years. It has always been cold and today was no exception. There are icicles hanging from our roof and these ducks appear to be frozen into the ice.
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I read the fine manual and found out how to shoot a video with my digital camera. Here’s Finnegan licking a pie plate:
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One of my youngest cousins got married on the weekend. I did try and take some pictures after the ceremony but the selector button pointed at P instead of AUTO. I fixed this and took some pictures at the reception:
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Some day it may grow through your gate.
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Younger son’s gf brought her hamsters over for the week while she and the family visit the grandparents stateside.
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I snapped a couple of shots of Mount Laundry in younger son’s room. How can you tell the cleaning person visited today?
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In the “I don’t why I didn’t do this years ago” department, I installed a ceiling fan in the kitchen. Cool! Unlike the second floor fans I didn’t have to remove the existing junction box or worry about a vapour barrier. And this time I had an electronic stud finder to locate the joist. I still haven’t had to use any of those weights to “balance” any of the fans (more than a half dozen now) I’ve installed. Since I installed the fans I have been able to turn up the thermostat 1 C°.
I can see my workbench and table saw tops again. All that clutter was driving me nuts.
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I needed to convert a timestamp (seconds, minutes, hours, day, month, last 2 digits of the year) into a BCD string of bytes. Here’s the Perl sub I came up with to do that:
sub bcd_timestamp_string (@) {
# Convert given time or local time to BCD bytes
my @time = @_ ;
join('', map {
pack('H*',sprintf('%02d',$_))
} @time) ;
}
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I have finally finished pruning the maple in the hope that it will recover from bark splits that occured a few years ago. If not, then I guess I have started the “taking down the tree” process. We’ll see next spring.
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Finnegan had his first trim this week. I include a before picture a couple of weeks ago and the “day of” image. Witness the transformation from bear cub to dog.
The back garden looks particularly nice now with lots of self-seeded columbine in several colours together with iris and early daylily I transplanted from when my in-laws sold their vacation place in Bobcaygeon.
I also trimmed more branches from the maple tree. My goal is to remove a couple more of the large lower limbs and then see if this improves the tree’s vigour over the season and next year. Today I learned that if I can it is better to use the pole saw to trim off the very high branches. They rotate 90° and fall leafy parts straight down and “bouncing.” A chain saw cuts “too” fast so that the limb doesn’t rotate much and it falls heavily “log first” over a larger area.
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Finally I could “baptize” the PowerShot A85 digital camera and take a rainbow picture last night as well as the setting sun colouring the clouds. And, of course another picture of Finnegan our dog.
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I spent almost $150 on perennials today at the nursery where my “daughter” works for the summer. I planted some this evening before it started to rain. This is the first time I have bought perennials other than bulbs for years. I still have some I raised some from seeds many years ago; however, most of those I have I got as transplants from other gardens starting with the daylillies and violets which are from my grandfather. My wife can remember who gave the wedding gifts, I can remember where or from whom I got my plants.
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My wife’s youngest sister turns 40 this week so her husband gathered us all for a surprise party. Of course, Finnegan was there, too.
The birthday girl
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After last night’s choir rehearsal I had to return the van I used to get risers back to work. I didn’t get to bed until midnight and then had two coughing fits during the night as well. I napped at lunch, during a long program install—any chance I could get basically.
Finnegan really enjoys his puppy classes; especially play-time. Right now the bull mastiff puppy and he are about the same size. She’ll eventually be more than twice his weight.
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In moving the large daylilly to prepare for my front walkway construction, the red trillium I had planted several years ago “saw the light.” This year it bloomed again. I hope the bloom will last until the weekend so I can get a daylight picture.
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After the concert this coming weekend I’m going to line up some window sellers to quote me on replacing some or all of the first floor windows. Priorities are the living room bay window because the frame is rotting and the kitchen window because it is a slider and difficult to reach across the sink and a deep windowsill. An awning window would be better here as you wouldn’t have to rush to close it when it rained. The other four windows are OK—they just don’t operate very well and they are “old” technology. The phone number of the outfit that did all our upstairs windows in 1998 is no longer in service. Like last time, I intend to have each entire window replaced and I’ll finish off the inside “at my leisure.”
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Our maple tree is looking kind of denuded with bark missing on two sides. It didn’t give a lot of shade last year and the leaves dropped early. Is it acid rain, ozone-layer thinning, climate warming? Can I just trim the four largest lower branches and see what happens or should I take it all down?
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Finnegan now weighs about 15 lbs. He could almost fit under the rungs of this chair as an 8 week old pup. At about 14 weeks, he can stand and put his paws on the chair.
With the rainy weather we are experiencing this weekend he has to be toweled off each time come in. However, unlike before his last set of shots, we can at least take him on a walk instead of leaving him to play in the now muddy backyard.
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While cruising around my area with the google satellite map I found a plane flying over Springbank Arts Centre near Dundas Street and Mississauga Road. Gratuitous puppy image also included.
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Google maps now has satellite images. We’re the rebel house with the gray roof in amongst the brown and one green one on the bottom of the crescent. The image was taken since last June when we used to have a brown roof, too.
Finnegan fell asleep with his head on the chair rung.
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Finally got a roll of film back. Here’s how I used some left over 4×4’s and pavers to make steps for the side entrance last fall.
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My wife is back at work today after her March break. Thus I’m working at home so I can take the puppy out from his crate every so often. I just sent off a report I worked on yesterday and this morning to my boss. Though I’d love to run outside in the milder weather I think I only have an hour or so before the puppy needs to go out to do his “business.”
Today’s Firefox extension is a spell checker for textareas Spellbound. I can right click as I’m writing here and check the spelling.
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My wife’s family got together on Good Friday to celebrate one of our quarterly gatherings at Easter-time. This year’s location was chez nous and Friday was the most convenient day for everyone.
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“By mistake” I left a bit later on Thursday night because I was off for a four-day Easter weekend and I needed to collect a few things and water my office vegetation. At 5 p.m. I got a call to do some Quality Inspection (QI) work. Well, they were “desperate” and it was time-and-a-half billable work. So my first QI work started at the very bottom: inspecting some spare parts for overhauling sump pumps at a nuclear station. Instead of helping my wife prepare vegetables for Good Friday’s family supper, I worked.
All day Friday was spent getting ready for my wife’s family and one friend: a total of 22 people and one puppy. Then, at the end of the evening I had to sort music into numbered stacks to hand out at choir practice on Saturday morning. I’m exhausted. To relax I include an image of our sleeping puppy.
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Finnegan, our SCWT puppy, has to be quarantined to our back yard until he’s had his next set of shots in about 3 weeks. Thus, my wife and I have spent lots of time in our backyard. That maple tree will probably have to come down. There are more splits in the trunk bark and it is “crying.” I thought the dog had peed on the deck but pee isn’t brown and sticky. I guess the sap is running and leaking out of an overhanging branch. I’m considering a star magnolia or serviceberry as a replacement.
And that living room bay window is deteriorating badly. I guess I’ll have to call for some estimates and the kitchen window…and a two instead of four section sliding glass door to the deck would also be nice. Anyone have any windfall profits or lottery winnings to share?
Good news, too, that most of Finnegan’s deposits are now being made in the backyard. We are all learning the appropriate signs I guess.
We bought ourselves a digital camera, NiMH battery charger and 512 Mbyte CF disk. Expect more images…
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My son took these pictures of Finnegan our 8-week-old Soft Coated Wheaton Terrier puppy yesterday with his new digital camera:
Finnegan slept for about 5 hours last night and only cried for about five minutes in his crate next to our bed—he was a tired puppy. So far today both #2’s have been outside and about half of the #1’s. We went out and bought infant gates to, hopefully, keep the “accidents” on the kitchen floor.
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Here’s a family picture when I was 10, dated July 25, 1965. Yours truly is standing in the arms of my aunt. Present are my mom, her parents, two of her brothers and their wives, my siblings and one of my cousins. I presume my father was taking the picture. Items of significance include:
- I wonder if my sister remembers being a show off?
- My mom and her two brothers are divorced from those spouses in the picture.
- This is a surprising picture to me because, unlike my father’s side of the family where we “reunite” regularly, the last time I saw my mother’s side of the family get together was at my grandmother’s funeral. Even then, many of my cousins weren’t there.
- That property where the picture was taken is now occupied by several very expensive townhouses.
- I think the sun dial I got for Christmas from my mom is the one sitting just behind my sister’s left hand.
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We blew over one hundred 14,400V, 10 and 20 A fuses during tests a couple of weeks ago. The lab tech set up the digital camera to trigger when the 1000A short circuit was applied. It’s quite an impressive display for a piece of fuse wire less than 1 mm thick.
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Here’s a couple of pictures I took several years ago of a transistor-based automatic voltage regulator, the control that helps to maintain the terminal voltage of a power generator constant. Nowadays this control is probably just a sub-program in a digital excitation system.
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In typical “by the shores of Lake Ontario” fashion, there’s a crust of freezing rain forming on the 20 cm of so of snow that fell during the night. It was tough slog to shovel this morning due to the weight of the snow and ice. Though I worn a rain jacket over a sweater, I was soaked to the skin.
Yes, I could write a family newsletter; however, images are so much
better. Last night’s pics of the family get-together at my
sister's place are available courtesy
of my older son and his digital camera. Special guests: my brother and his family back from Thailand. Missing: my young nephew Crawford, with his timezone still in the Pacific Ocean somewhere, went to bed, younger son went to gf's family Christmas on account of they (her family not my son) are leaving for Mexico today (weather permitting 
).
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Looking at the pictures I didn’t realize how ugly the old walk looked. I guess we got used to it after the fifteen or sixteen years of looking at it.
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I finally got around to scanning and posting the images for the guys. The captions are somewhat anonymous but, to those in the know, the pictures should be identifiable.
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⇐ A view of the front court yard of Versailles at just after 9 o’clock in the morning. Already the temperature was over 30°C. In the roughly two and a half hours we were there the ambulance came at least three times to assist tourists overcome by the heat. The itinerant water sellers were everywhere in Paris and Versailles.
⇒ I took this shot from behind Apollo’s fountain. On the weekends the fountains are turned on. Otherwise the water needs to be conserved for the Versailles gardens. Le Roi employed a legion of gardeners. In the morning he might like to see orange and blue flowers while that afternoon his preference may have been white and red ones.
⇐ Apparently the King (Louis XIV) had a very regimented sort of day. At 10:00 a.m. everyone had to attend Mass in this chapel. The guide didn’t know at what time of day la merde du Roi took place (Just kidding!).
⇒ My wife and I pose in marble courtyard in front of le Palais de Versailles. She liked this picture so much she’s had copies made to sent out as cards to some friends and relatives. This trip was our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary present to ourselves.
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It turns out the best views of Notre Dame are from the Seine River. I have taken a few shots here including the front, the “west”side view showing one of the rose windows from two distances, and the back. The back clearly shows the flying butresses, one of the singular features of Notre Dame.
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The Cathedral Singers of Ontario, version 2003, are split into two SATB sections. The Decani sit on the dean’s stall side of the quire. At Canterbury when facing the altar that is the right side. And the Cantoris section sits on the left side, on the Cantor’s side of the quire. I was part of the Cantoris. We sang the II or lower parts when there was eight part harmony required. The Decani sang the I parts. During Psalm chanting the two sections alternate verses except for the first two and the Gloria Patri.
Hmmm, I seem to have mislabelled the images themselves. I only just found out tonight that decani and cantoris have nothing whatsoever to do with left and right.
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Leeds Castle has been called “the lovliest castle in the world.”I haven’t seen enough castle to comment but it is quite pretty. Worth the visit if you’re in the area. Buildings at the Leeds Castle site on two islands on an artificial lake on the River Len date from 857. Henry the VIII is perhaps its most famous inhabitent as he spent large amounts of money enlarging and fortifying the castle and made it his palace. Many of the post cards show this view—I noticed the swans swimming to shore so I waited to take this shot.
Much of the estate is surrounded by lovely gardens. We happen to like rose of sharon shrubs and this one was full bloom with flowers to match my wife’s top. Like the rest of our trip it was hot; hence, the shades and hats.
I have just wandered inside the castle grounds when my wife “happened” to take my picture. Some of our group tried to have lunch on the castle grounds under the shade of a tree; however, we were shewed out by the steward.
I don’t remember what this large-leaved plant is called nor does a google search reveal anything useful. I guess I could have written something down except that we hadn’t even reached the castle at this point. The castle has complete conference facilities and a golf course. I wonder if our next choir retreat should take place here?
- 2003-09-05: made thumbnails actually refer to the large images
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The ruins of St Augustine’s Abbey are not too far from Christ Church University in Canterbury. Note that it has been so hot that some of the grass has turned brown. Doesn’t look English does it? The graves of some Saxon kings dating from the 12th century are found here.
It’s too bad Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and tore down many of the buildings. Excavation has revealed that the abbey was founded in 598 A.D.
The price of admission includes audio tour devices so we learned about life in Roman and Medieval times at this site.
I don’t know whether the flowers and plants grew here naturally or were planted but it’s a nice effect.
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→ You can see the central tower of the Christ Church Cathedral from anywhere in Canterbury. Here’s a sunset view I took from the chapel at Christ Church University. Here the Cathedral Singers had the infamous after supper rehearsals. After getting harangued by the conductor one evening my wife and I decided our time after evensong would be better spent quaffing a brew or two and having supper at the pub. It was so hot but the refectory (a.k.a cafeteria) still served hot meals (no beer either). Was it our imagination but did we hear that the rehearsals went much worse when we weren’t there?
← Here' the central tower of the Cathedral as viewed from the west. Later on I’ll show what the stained glass of the large window looks like from the inside.
→ Loose kingly lips can kill a priest. The king and Thomas á Beckett had some disagreements and the king latter muttered “will no-one rid me of this person?” Four noble knights took him at his word and murdered Thomas at this location in the Cathedral. You can the stylized swords and Saint Thomas' name on the floor. Just out the door is the Chapter House and cloisters where Thomas would have entered for a service.
← Perhaps Saint Thomas (before he was a saint of course) would have preached from this pulpit; though, I doubt it as it looks more baroque than gothic in style. On Sunday the Vice-Dean preached from here. However, due to the hot weather and full length cassock plus surplice I was wearing, I had great trouble staying awake at this point.
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After our first “official”evensong service at St. James Anglican Church in Stratford we, the Cathedral Singers of Ontario v2003, gathered for a photo op. in the rose garden. Yours truly and my wife are in the crowd of penguins pictured here. Roughly half of the group is represented in this shot. This thumbnail shot links to a full size image, by the way.
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Well, it has been quite a while since I posted my own images. I have scanned a few photos from my summer vacation this year. I must note that the heavy rainfall I allude to in the iimages occurred one night and part of the next morning; otherwise, the weather was mostly hot and sunny — with much less smog than in the GTA of course.
We took a walk along the concession road. Behind my wife is the beef cattle field and, way in the back, nestled in the trees is our country home for a couple of weeks.
I walked around the corn field one morning and took a picture of the country home from across the cattle field.
Our country home is next door to the beef cattle. Their salt lick is near the garage at the end of the driveway and shade trees are here so the cows and their bull come by the fence at least once per day.
While walking around the corn field I spied these cloven hoof prints. Must be deer in the neighbouring woods.
I don't know how high an elephant's eye is but this corn certainly tops 3 metres.
I rode the Kubota lawn and cut the lawns and around the fruit trees. The great thing about this puppy was the rocker accelerator pedal, i.e., forward and reverse with a centre stop. Plus it had switchable 4 wheel drive, separate suspension lawn mower attachment for cutting over hills and an amazingly tight turning radius.
Usually there's very little water visible at the low point in this field. However, a heavy rain of 7 or 8 cm in one day left a good size pond. In the distance, a flock of Canada geese is visiting.
So much rain fell one night that it seems that have the driveway ended up in the ditch.
There was lots of grass to cut. My wife use the small tractor to cut around close to the house
That large rainfall washed out part of the concession road clear down to the bottom of the culvert.
My cousin Brian is taking a picture of his daughter Katie and her sandcastle creation on the shores of Chandos Lake.
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I took some images in the garden last night and tried out a non-table, table using CSS and some help from these tips.
Double kerria
Forget-me-nots
Front garden
Thorny shrub
The thorns
Viburnum
White tulips
Wine rack
- Double kerria
- The double kerria is putting on a great show this year as its branches didn't die back over the winter as they sometimes do.
- Forget-me-nots
- It started off as a few Forget-Me-Nots — and now they are everywhere.
- Front garden
- In the front garden, the azalea in the foreground is starting to bloom as well as the bleeding hearts towards the back.
- Thorny shrub
- I'm going email the Rec. and Parks people to ask them to remove these shrubs, they're thorny and their roots are invasive.
- The thorns
- You need full body armour to prune these guys!
- Viburnum
- The viburnum buds are just starting to flower.
- White tulips
- I like white flowers — you can see them in the evening. These tulips also contrast nicely with the violets.
- Wine rack
- Happiness is a full wine rack and happy is the gardener.
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I took these pictures during the closing night's performance of Opera Mississauga's production of "Joe Green's" Aïda.
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I took my son's digital camera and snapped a few pictures at last night's dress rehearsal. At the post rehearsal de-briefing they told us we couldn't take pictures until the last performance. It's kinda of like a kid's game — they make up the rules (or at least choose to tell us) as they go. The images themselves are URLs which will expand to full size in a separate window if you have javascript and "popups" enabled in your browser; otherwise, click on [image] to have the image appear in another browser window.
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Aida Chorus -
The chorus is assembling for a warm up from our chorus master.
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Aida Chorus -
The Egyptian (dresed) women of the Opera Mississauga and Oakville Choral
Society in the hall off stage preparing for a vocal warm up.
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Aida Chorus -
The men of the two choirs, all acting as priests or ministers.
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Aida Chorus -
Our chorus master, Gherghey (Once I get a program I will be able to spell his
name.)
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Aida Chorus -
The Oakville Choral Society president and Maestro laison, Lisa, is on the
left. I call it her "Annette Funicello" look.
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Aida Chorus -
The ministers and priests await their stage entrance
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Aida Chorus -
Some scenes are sung backstage.
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Aida Chorus -
After the rehearsal Maestro Bennett says a few words. The Hammerson Hall is
visible in the background.
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Aida Chorus -
The chorus gathered on stage around the Maestro after the rehearsal.
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Aida Chorus -
The chorus listens attentively (or else!).
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Venezia - The marble steps and high altar at Santa Maria dei Miracolli, a small church favoured for weddings. Your nuptial gondola could pick you up right at the church doors.
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Venezia - The Bell'Arte in concert on the altar stairs at Santa Maria dei Miracolli.
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I borrowed Stu's digital camera so I could post some pictures of our friends and their baby Sarah.
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2002-04-15 - Yours truly, Jim Service, holding Sarah.
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2002-04-15 - Julie looking over at Susanne and Sarah and Megen enjoying the "champagne of ginger ales"
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2002-04-15 - Julie is examining Megan's "instrument". Of course, Megan turned just as I was taking this picture. Oh, and Megan blew out the other two candles.
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2002-04-15 - Father and daughter, Matthias and Sarah. Bentley, the cat, is in the background.
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2002-04-15 - A prouder papa you'd never find at the moment!
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2002-04-15 - Megan is putting on a show as usual. It is never dull when our little Megan is about.
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2002-04-15 - Mother and daughter, Susanne and Sarah.
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2002-04-15 - Susanne and Sarah just past the carnations we brought.
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San-Gimignano - Our bus driver drove out on the country roads just so we could take pictures of San Gimignano on the hill.
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San-Gimignano - View of San Gimignano between two Olive trees
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Firenze - For a being just a bell tower, the Doumo Campanile was quite ornate so I took several pictures. Next time I should bring one of those panorama-type cameras.
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Firenze - Bottom of the Duomo Campanile
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Firenze - Julie and Iris stand beside the covered BMW motorcyle. I read recently in the Toronto Star that it may be introduced in North America.
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Firenze - Dora, Iris and Jim — Bell'Arte members in Piazza delle Belle Arti.
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Firenze - The Bell'Arte singing at noon mass in Santa Maria del Fiore, the Duomo of Firenze. The sound was wonderful with almost 10 seconds of reverberation time. Apparently it is the fourth largest church in the world.
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Firenze - Here is the high altar in the Duomo. We managed to take a few pictures round the huge building after singing at the Sunday Noon Mass. (If your choir doesn't lead a service then it has to pay to sing here.)
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I have seen this image several times and always get a chuckle out of it. Personally, I don't think there's an on/off switch on the woman model — just a lot of dials, knobs, buttons and conflicting indicators which always require careful interpretation and even more careful adjustment.
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Firenze - An evening shot of the Palazzo Vecchio (old palace)
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Firenze - In the Piazza della Signoria is found the famous statue of David by Michaelangelo.
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Firenze - A hazy view of Florence from Fieosole (where the Bell'Arte also performed a concert). You can just make out the Duomo in the centre of the picture.
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Firenze - The Hon. Jean (Canada's Prime Minister) and Aline Chrétien amongst us shaking hands. Very gracious people. He was surprised, and pleased to no doubt, to find a Canadian group was singing at the Noon Mass that Sunday. Photo by Zelda |
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