There were some mediocre interim banners up when the redesign went live and they’ve been officially replaced.
To enjoy: 15 fresh photos, taken by yours truly over the past few summers. Some abstract, some less so. I hope to add another batch into the mix towards the end of the month for your collection and trading fun!
This place was open and running when I was a kid. I wouldn’t say thriving, but busy enough.
The slides were horrid, the fiberglass worn thin from however many years of summer riders and Canadian winters. I remember sitting in the hot tub and with a raw back, not quite bleeding but probably close, shredded by a long day sliding. I’m not sure, in hindsight, if it was really as dubious as I remember or if, being a kid and all, over the years my imagination has made it that much worse. I do remember the milkshakes were fantastic.
Fast forward to me as a teenager. The park closed after some property deal or other went sour. In truth, I suspect they simply weren’t getting the paying traffic anymore. A few years after that there was a big thing in the news papers that it had been vandalized by some punks. Windows smashed, the empty pool filled with remnants of beer bottles. I remember wondering why anyone cared; it’s not like it’d ever open again without a pretty major overhaul anyway.
A few years after that I found photography and in the following summers we found ghost towns and toured all the neat old places we could find. This was, admittedly, the first and only place we ever ‘trespassed’ into to get photos. I say trespass in the sense that we hopped a small fence to get inside, but I doubt anyone would have raised any big deal about our being there; it had been abandoned for a long time by the time we came up.
They demolished the whole thing the summer of 2011, some years after these photos were taken. Other than those my friend took while exploring beside me, I’m not sure if many others exist out there. So that’s sort of cool. A surviving record, and a good memory of warm days spent with awesome people and then-brand new cameras.
You can see more here
And with that the year is over!
We had two presentations of our J5 robot – one open house trade show style and one stand up presentation to leaders of industry for direct feedback. Both were really good and I speak on behalf of the group when I say we’re proud of the end result. The crowd response was really encouraging and I daresay we impressed even the professionals.
The robot itself is one of the ASNT projects (ASNT being SAIT’s robot division) and we were commissioned to design and build the panels to cover pinch points and generally look good. We used magnets on the panels and body so they’re removable and allow for the ongoing robot construction which will happen after we move on. The panels themselves are made of Sintra, which is a 3mm PVC foam that we hand formed to curve using a heat gun (it has a soft point of like, ~65 degrees C) and then painted on the outside with mica pearl and clear coats while black Rocker Guard protects the inside (and fades it out of notice). The grey and red bits are vinyl that we did up in Illustrator and plotted out. It worked out, actually, that instead of doing a bunch of difference random shapes we could just reuse the J5 logo over and over in it’s various pieces.
The group is (and this was chosen by random and just happened to work out) familiar: Alex Forrest and Duncan Carmichael, who you’ll recognize for our Stealth Chair. We’re an awesome group and a good spread of talents to combine into an awesome outcome. It’s been really good working with them again.
Met up with local photographers and cool dudes @MorganGarvin and @VernTheBunny the other week to shoot Calgary’s new Peace Bridge.
It’s nice to have spring again, but I haven’t picked up my camera in a long while and just wasn’t feeling it. Also: I think I take better shots when I’m alone. More shooting from the hip as I walk though an broad area as opposed to going to a specific area with friends and then staying in the same place trying to find things to capture. It’s just a different style, I guess.
That bug tried to kill me, I swear. I have no idea what it is but it’s much bigger than I thought anything that lived around here was supposed to be. Ever since those nuclear powered taxis started showing up…
Today’s open house went smashingly and I’m still processing photos and things from the event / of the project. Tomorrow we’re presenting the whole kit to a panel of industry leaders, so you’ll just have to be a wee bit patient.
Also in the pipeline: my sandal project.
Stay tuned, sports fans!
The question is usually slipped into the footnotes of emails. Normal big picture questions are posed and then at the bottom this by-the-way “How do you have so much time to do all these things?”
Since I usually answer it with some witty one liner I feel like a proper open reply is in order:
It’s not a secret, it’s just a matter of priorities. Most people look at my average 47.7 posts per month and although they range from lengthy writings to one sentence links to videos (the average is 373 words per post) they wonder where I get the time to do it at all. It’s not really about words, it’s about content and unfortunately that I can’t quantify to average. I admit it varies a lot. There are posts that are utter rubbish. There are gems of inspiration that I like; one sentence among many that really speaks back to me.
There was a saying in school:
Choose two.
I’ve chosen, so it seems, sleep and work. I’ve chosen what I see right now, at this moment in my life, contentedness. I’ve been fortunate in that a lot of my work is with the people I would hang out with in my personal life (and I do, it’s not that I’m 100% shut in) so it creates a sort of mixed bonus.
People wonder where this comes from because they imagine adding it and maintaining their personal life which is simply busier than mine. I’m an introvert in the true sense which means that while I appreciate my social life, which I do enjoy, I can’t stand it for very long. I need this alone time to recharge. While I’m alone, I tend to do the things I love: reading, writing and working (I say work, but it’s synonymous with play in my case). I rarely watch shows or movies by themselves; I consume them while drawing or modelling. Compared to my friends, my video game play time is pretty low.
I enjoy what I do, which is this, so I do it.
It’s about priorities. Mine just happen to be here. No secret magic multitasking time travel involved.
I’m reminded of just how dismal my ocean renders are in comparison to the majesty of the real thing.
Photography by Corey Arnold who, it should be noted, wins the award for most bizarre photo ever.
I’ve been saying this should happen for years, so imagine my delight when they finally go through with it. Canada won’t be minting any new pennies, eventually phasing them out of circulation altogether.
Hearing the news about my soon-worthless mountain of physical currency I rushed over and began sorting and counting. As it turns out these past two years have only given me 143 pennies. A dollar and a half. For that alone I’m reassured that the currency is more work than it’s worth. I organized the stacks as seen in the photo above into equivalent amounts – ten pennies = two nickels = 1 dime and so on. It really shows just how much weight and volume is wasted when compared to dimes. Nickels are on the fence for me; not really sure if I even want those around.
So, down with the penny! I’m all for it.
I do think, however, and I mentioned this on Twitter just now, that someone should organize a charity to take in everyone’s pennies and donate it to a good cause.
This is one of those things that makes it’s rounds on the blogs and is neat but doesn’t really say anything until you think about it much later. Last night I was driving down the big hill and had a perfect view over downtown during the sunset and got to thinking about how the skyline might be different in a surrealist world like Victor’s. It was a funny thought – I hadn’t thought of them in a long time – but such is the curator’s memory, I suppose.
So I went back and found them. There’s a fuller gallery here, among lots of other places. If you haven’t seen them before, well, just keep them in the back of your head for the next time you see your own skyline.
