Kylie

So, I went to see her last night. It was a good show, but I must admit - for a concert, I felt a little out of my element.

It wasn't the music - that was pretty good. The staging was great, the costumes and choreography were incredible. I even had my usual spot (front, middle, on the rail).

I think it was that, as I looked around, it was just a different crowd than I see at most shows. I was sharing the spot at the front with a lot of other men, which I hadn't quite anticipated. And the vast majority of them had good tans, sleeveless shirts, carefully manicured facial hair and very expensive glasses. I felt just a tiny bit out of place.

In fact, I kept having these visions of it turning into one of those things like in a magic show where they need a volunteer, or at a comedy show, where the comedian starts to work the audience. I just imagined the music stopping, and the spotlight swinging directly to me, with a caption going onto the big screens: "Here's the straight one".

They would start to pepper me with questions to try to prove my guilt:

"Quick - spell Issey Miyake!"

"How does the Sex In The City movie end?"

"Where's the best place to go dancing in Geneva? WHERE?"

And I would just crumble under the pressure. I wasn't even sure what would happen then... would they kick me out? Make me wear a tank top? Or worse - get me to dance?

Yeah, I didn't know which direction it would go, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be pretty. Thankfully, I was able to make it through without attracting too much attention.

Plus, I got a pretty cool tee shirt. And that, after all, is what concerts are all about.

Shiny

I was thinking this morning... a couple of years ago, I got a birthday gift from a friend... it was a cool little shoe-shine kit in a nice leather case. As she gave it to me, she said, "I wasn't sure what to give you... but I was talking to another friend and we were commenting on how your shoes are always in such good shape, so I got you this."

Well, I thought (and still think) that it was a very kind and thoughtful gift.

But it occurred to me this morning... if my shoes are always in good shape, wouldn't it be a pretty safe bet that I already had the stuff to shine them?

Curious.

Anyways, it's not my birthday now, so please don't read this as some kind of hint for you to send gifts (as if you need a reason), but I was putting away some shoes this morning that, to my shame, do need to be shined.

Good thing I've got the kit!

Jet Lag

So, jet lag is a bit of a killer.

There were a lot of 4 AM mornings for me last week, which is part of the reason that there were not a lot of blog entries. Jet lag is tricky when you're an adult who understands it and even should be well-traveled enough to have some tricks to deal with it. It seems, though, that it can be even more complex when you're three, and you Daddy is telling you it's time to sleep but your body is pretty sure that's not quite right.

Anyways, the week went really well - some great time with family, wonderful visits with friends, a few junior bacon cheeseburgers and Jon & Erin's wedding was great.

Needless to say, the little chick was more or less the star of the show. Well, except for Erin, but that's probably how it should be.

She was the flower girl, and she had an amazing little princess dress that my mom found for her, complete with veil, and some beautiful little white shoes with light but colorful embroidery on them. Her hair was after-the-bath curly, and she was in a pretty great mood. Our multiple practices of walking down the aisle the night before paid off, and when her turn came, she looked a bit nervous but walked down slowly, just like she was supposed to, helped to keep track of her cousin, who was the ring-bearer, and made her way to the front.

Then she saw me, and in the quiet of anticipation for the bride, this little voice rang out "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" as she threw herself up onto the stage and into my arms. It was amazing.

I took some pictures.... these are my favorites, but you can see the rest here.

Sheila

I was thinking that a sheila was a female kangaroo, and that made me wonder if anyone was actually named that in Australia.

But I looked it up, and it's actually slang for a woman.

So, my question remains. But besides that, the fact is that the Aussies have the best slang in the world. Take these examples:

Bluey : pack, equipment, traffic ticket, redhead
Bluey : blue cattle dog (named after its subtle markings) which is an excellent working dog. Everyone's favourite all-Aussie dog.
Bluey : heavy wool or felt jacket worn by mining and construction workers.
Bluey : bluebottle jellyfish
Bingle : motor vehicle accident
Bonzer : great, ripper
Budgie smugglers : men's bathing costume


And those are just the highlights of the B's!

Once again, I fear that I may have been born on the wrong continent...

Good Little Traveler

A while ago, I was considering joining a blues band. I don't know what I was thinking... I really don't like blues. I guess I just like to play; thankfully, the band never got off the ground, so it saved me the trouble of having to figure it out the hard way.

Anyways, I thought that "Good Little Traveler" would be a great name for a blues band. And it's based, as you may have guessed, on the little chick.

Well, we're in Canada now, which is what reminded me of this. She did great on the flight, but it was almost a close call. Even though I bought an adult ticket and an accompanying child at the same time, they had our seats reserved for a dozen rows apart.

"Why," you ask? Who knows.

Anyways, the guy at the Geneva airport noticed it, but didn't have access to the Air Canada seat system, so sent a message on to Frankfurt. When I got there, they managed to get us in two aisle seats, one behind the other. I guess if I would have waited, I could have flagged down an attendant to try to change the seating, but I figured I'd give it a go, first. I thought maybe we could sit side by side in the middle section, and the person who had a middle seat beside me would be happy to trade for an aisle in the row in front. Ideally, we could even trade out to a side section where there are only 2 seats... much easier to keep the little chick contained if there's a wall on the other side.

So, it turns out that asking older Germans to trade seats is kind of a pointless exercise. They either didn't understand why I felt I needed to be next to my three year-old daughter, or they grasped that, but failed to see what it had to do with them. I tried a few people, and no one was willing to part with their previously-assigned seat. Alrighty, then.

Eventually, I noticed a woman in the side section a few rows in front of us. I went and asked her if she spoke English... and she did.

Good start.

I explained what had happened, and asked if she'd be willing to take one of our seats. She said "of course" and, in fact, was packing up and ready to go before I even finished explaining. Then I just hoped the other person who was supposed to be by a window would be just as understanding.

Thankfully, she was. She said she was flying solo on this trip, but had had the same thing happen with her kids before, and was happy to help. And the little chick did just great.

So it makes me wonder... when they get two tickets booked at the same time, on the same credit card, do they do some kind of seat lottery to see where to put them? Or was there someone who looked at our names and ages, and figured that I might like to have a break on this flight? Either way, it seems a bit strange. I'm glad it worked out.

We're enjoying being back... and, despite the jet lag, have had a wonderful couple of days so far. I think it's going to be a good week.

How have you been?

Choosing A Camera: Part II - The Bad News

[To see the other posts in this series, click on the creatively-titled "choosing a camera" label at the bottom of this post]

So, what do you want to do with your camera?

And why did I start off by saying it's bad news?

Well, here's the thing. There are two things that small cameras (digicams) are good for:
1. Keeping with you
2. Taking pictures rather unobtrusively

So if you what you want to do is to take pictures wherever, whenever, with as little hassle as possible and be kind of discreet while doing it, your problems are solved. For everyone else, please keep reading.

The bad news for the rest of us is that that's a very, very short list and, as far as I can tell, it's more or less exhaustive. Which may mean that you need a DSLR, with the expense and complication that that entails.

After having time with both, here's what I can tell you: given the same skill of the person who's holding it, the DSLR just makes better pictures, more reliably, with less work, every time. This may not matter to you - it mattered a lot to me. For most people, a smaller, inexpensive, less complicated camera seems like the way to go. And, for you, it may be. Try my checklist and see how you fare:

You may want a digicam if:

• You lose stuff a lot and aren't insured (you can substitute "lose" with "immerse", "broil", "drop", "accidentally bury" or "run over", as needed)
• You won't carry anything with you that's any bigger than it has to be
• You figure your phone actually takes pretty good pictures
• You mostly just want to email your pictures or put them on facebook
• You spend a lot of time in Barcelona or other places where, eventually, everything you are carrying will be stolen
• A picture is a picture... who cares?

You'll need a DSLR if:

• If you look at other people's pictures and think "why don't mine look like that?!?"
• You want to put your pictures up without people knowing right away that you took them yourself
• You have tech-lust
• You want to take pictures of birds, planes, or other things that are far, far away
  
• You have someone to carry stuff for you (commonly referred to as a "husband")
• Take beauty seriously, and get a little pissed off when it's messed with
  

If you're somewhere in the middle, then you may be able to get away with a superzoom.


So, there are a couple of significant points that need to be explained here, for this to really make sense:

First, why does a DSLR make better pictures than a digicam? There are a couple of reasons:

1. Better "glass" - you get what you pay for, and most lenses alone for a DSLR cost quite a bit more than most compact cameras. The lenses let more light in, are manufactured to much higher standards, and are more complex... as a result, everything that goes through them looks better on the other side
2. Bigger (and better) sensors - the number of megapixels is not really a great indicator of how a camera will perform. My 6MP Nikon will take far, far better pictures than any compact 10-12 megapixel camera you can buy. Why? The number of megapixels describes how much information the camera stores to record the light coming in, but think of it like type on a page: as you get more, you can get a more detailed "story"... to a point. But eventually, the type gets so squeezed together on the page that it overlaps, and instead of giving you a more detailed view, gets a bit jumbled. Well, as you increase the number of megapixels but keep a small sensor size, you lose detail and also gain a lot of noise.

That leads us to the other tricky point: how can a camera with all those settings, with lenses you have to attach, make it less work to take pictures? Well, it doesn't. But it makes it less work to take great pictures, and here's why:

Some of what makes a great picture great is the subject. Some of it is the composition. Some of it is how the light is focused (the lenses) and recorded (the sensor). But a lot of it is in what you do after the picture is taken. Are the colors flat? Does it look dull and washed out? Maybe the black bits have little specs in them and don't look really black. All of this needs to be fixed in post-processing, in a tool like Photoshop.

Well, some of the pictures from my camera look great straight out out of the camera. But with a digicam, odds are good you're going to have to tweak more, to buy some more software to take out the noise (the little light bits where it's just supposed to be dark)... it takes more work to get it to anything approaching the same level of quality, and even with that, it won't ever get to you where a good lens and basic DSLR body will. So the DSLR may be a bit more work (once) to set up, but the "convenient" digicam will suck minutes off of your life with every picture that needs to be manipulated more to get it to be the way you want.


So - to sum it up, if you're not too fussy about how your images turn out, if you use them in fairly low-demand ways (small snapshot prints, email), if you want something cheap because you'll probably wreck/lose it, or if you just need something very, very compact or discreet, then a digicam (or maybe superzoom) is the way to go.

Otherwise, you may as well start looking for a second job.

Next, we'll look at how to choose a compact camera, if that's the family that will meet your needs.

Horse Fair

We went to a horse fair today with some friends in France. It had everything you could want in a fair: line dancing, plenty of facial hair and.... uh, horses.

I took a couple of pictures. I thought maybe you would like these ones:

You can see the others here.

Happy Birthday...

... Little Chick. I love you.

Cow Wrestling

Yes, you read it right. It's a fascinating insight into Swiss culture, and it's on TV right now, complete with slow-motion replays of the cows digging in the "ring", standing side by side, apparently unaware that they are supposed to be locked in fierce combat, and wearing huge bells. It's like Sumo, but without all the rice-throwing.

I'm recording it, so if you live in Calgary (or Geneva, for that matter) you may, at some point, have the pleasure of watching it in all of it's "wow, did they really put this on TV?" glory.

And I'd like it to be noted and added to my cultural sensitivity score that I didn't put culture into ironic quotes in the first paragraph. I should be a diplomat, or something.


Oh, and for those of you unable to wait for the full version with slow-motion replays, interviews with the farmers and their families (none actually with the cows yet, but I'm keeping a close eye out), and what I'm sure is riveting commentary, you can get a taste here:

Sammy Or David?

Yes, I'm a child of the 80's. But walking around in the sunshine listening to Panama followed up by Why Can't This Be Love is just a beautiful thing, no matter who you prefer.

Anti

Ligue Contre La Rheumatism Vaudoise

I pass it every time I go to work in Lausanne. I may not be spelling it quite right, but that's just because it's French. The rough translation is the league against rheumatism in Vaud (one of the Swiss cantons). And there are two things that it makes me wonder:

First, it is, in a very French way, rather aggressive. But, that said, it's a more appropriate name than we usually use in English. Think about it... who are the anti-tobacco nazis in Canada? It's the Canadian Cancer Society. Shouldn't that mean that they're in favor of it?

The other thing it makes me wonder is this: Vaud is not really, in a global sense, that huge a place. There are only about 600,000 people. Do you think that Rheumatism (or their valiant struggle against it) is unique enough that they need their own society? I'm not suggesting that we leave the rheumatic vaudois and vaudoise to their own devices. But maybe there's someone who'd be willing to help.

I Don't Know Who I Am, Anymore

Well, I have a friend who just did the Myers-Briggs thing (MBTI), and so I decided to revisit mine as well.

And I'm shocked. Here are the results... you may want to sit down for this:

Well, there goes my ENFJ label. I'm not a J, I'm a P!

So I'm guessing that Miss Spitfire, anonymous, and a couple others are following this with interest, and probably quite a few of you are just idly wondering if I've posted more pictures at the bottom or not. Sorry, no. But maybe it will help if I explain a bit.

You see, the J stands for "judging" and the p for "perceiving". But they don't really mean what you would usually guess from the words (whether someone is judgmental or preceptive - hardly an even set of options on offer there!). In fact, they indicate if you prefer more open-ended situations (perceiving) or are happier with structure (judging). Or, alternately, do you tend to flit about like an artist (P) or should you be working for P&G (J).

Well, I guess this changes for me, day to day and situation to situation. At work, I crave flexibility. If an interesting opportunity comes up, something that suits me and that I could really nail, I want to be free to pursue it. In terms of how much mess I'm happy to live in at home... bring on the structure, baby. In any case, today - or lately - it appears I've been moving away from valuing that structure, planning, and step-by-stepness to embracing the chaos. Or, at least, a little more flexibility.

This proves, anonymous, that I am NOT fussy. Used to be, maybe. But not any more - I'm a new man now!


Well, the second thing that is interesting is the "multiple intelligences" test. I'll tell you, I was thrilled with the suggestion that I would even have one. But several? Yeah, baby!

You'll notice (or, more likely, I'll point out) that my scores for my second and third place intelligences are tied. And they are for intrapersonal intelligence and interpersonal intelligence. Here, then, are the characteristics I am likely to have.

I am (since I'm so interpersonally adept):
* Extroverted
* Enjoy social events, groups and crowds
* Enjoying teaching others, like to counsel others
* Have many friends
* Enjoy team sports (?!?)
* Love meeting new people
* Cooperative in groups
* Empathetic, sensitive to others' moods

And (due to my unquestionable intrapersonal strength):
* Introverted
* Prefers working alone, independent
* Philosophical
* Perfectionistic
* Often thinks of self-employment
* Enjoys journaling
* Intuitive
* Spends time thinking and reflecting, self-aware, likes learning about self

So, this could go one of two ways. Either it's a bit of a joke since it's tough to be many points on both those lists, or I am up for just about anything.

Guess which option I'm picking?

Have a good weekend, everybody. Thanks for reading.

Speaking of Cameras...

Mine wanted to get out and enjoy the sun after work today. Here's what it found.

You can see the rest here.

Choosing A Camera - The Basics

Well, anonymous asked a question about this in a comment a while back, and I think it deserves a post (or a few posts, likely) on its own. I've had a lot of friends ask over the last couple of years, and so it will help to get it here where anyone who wants it (and, unfortunately the poor guy researching Nickel in the periodic table who doesn't) can see it.

Here's the thing I don't like about blogs, though. If you're reading this today, or tomorrow, or before whenever it is that I will get the next installment up (which is hopefully not, as Ni pointed out, a week), it will all make sense. You'll read it, and then be ready for part II when it comes along.

For those of you who are finding it later... I'm sorry. Sorry that you have just read the post (or two, or three, or fifteen - I won't really know until I'm there, even though you've already been) that I'm going to write later, since they appear above this one in the page. It's all been fairly convoluted, I'm sure. You started with lenses before you even knew you wanted an SLR, or something like that. But it's not my fault... I have my emails with the new ones showing up at the bottom, and, if I could, I'd do my blog the same way.

But I can't. So, here we go.


So, maybe you're camera-less. Maybe you're shooting film. Maybe it's time for an upgrade, or maybe it's time to get serious. What do you do?

Well, you need to decide what you're going to buy. And what you're going to buy depends, really on three things:

• When, where, and how do you want to take pictures? And what of?
• What do you want to do with them once you have them?
• How much do you want to spend?

Before we get into those in the following posts, just to make sure we're all kind of talking the same language, here are some of the terms I'll be using, and how I mean them:

digicam (above - some old ones) - a very compact, portable camera, the kind you can easily put in your pocket, usually 6-10 megapixels, 3x zoom



superzoom (above) - a camera that's a little less compact... the lens sticks out in the front, and it looks like the old-fashioned kind. It's called a superzoom because it has a long zoom ratio (usually more than 10x), but can't have different lenses attached




DSLR (above) - short for Digital Single Lens Reflex. These are usually not very compact, won't be fitting in your pocket, and feature lenses that can be changed. These range from 6 to 25 or so megapixels. Also known, to people who carry them, as a "big" camera, or "real" camera. Snobs.


Next: When, where, and how do you want to take pictures? And what of?