The last stop of the 1000 Crooked Miles was right here at Zaphod’s in Ottawa. The last song of the night was Jesse’s (who was headlining) with a performance of Halifax Rap Legend, the beat taken from his upcoming album.
I know of no other rapper who can use the expression “resting on your laurels” in their rhymes. I suspect this is why MC Chris once named him as the only rapper he liked.
Hugs after the show.
I came here to get out of the house. Room, actually. I haven’t had a face-to-face conversation with anyone in three days.
I kept going through my phone book. No one. Not a single person I want to talk to. No one with whom to be myself completely, with whom to spend in company without conversation. Hank told me a morning of awkwardness is far better than a night of loneliness, but I beg to differ. The mornings always seem to last much longer.
At the same time, this is when I want to distract myself the most, and being with other people is the most effective way. I’m too busy being focused on spending time with someone else that I can forget about myself.
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In the car it’s all Kid Cudi, and even though I’ve always told myself I wouldn’t drive when I’m like this, I’d always wanted to hear this album when I’m in this kind of mood. I was never one to resist a night in cool summer air, cruising under the city lights to old haunts.
Waiting for my order affords me the opportunity to surreptitiously observe people and try to figure out their roles each clique as they interact. Even though I’m alone, it’s comfort enough to be among strangers.
Darren came up from Toronto for a visit over the long weekend.
These sessions always fulfill my quota of relationship talk. When one admits to not wanting to be in a relationship, this is followed naturally by the question, “Would you go for it if you found the perfect one right now?” from the other. Then in return, “If she came back to you and said she wanted to try again, but you only had a 50–50 percent chance of success, would you go for it?”
In our little duet, our philosophical collaboration, love is always a theme. No one else challenges our psyches in this regard.
For Audra’s birthday we headed to the Savana Cafe, with some chocolate ice cream cake at the William’s residence after leaving the very rude service we were given.
I also got to meet Jesse’s dad, Jim. He reminds me very much of his son in terms of their intellect and interests, and I found it quite novel to talk to an older version of Jesse with a soft voice and grey facial hair.
Across the table is Jesse, Caitlyn, Ariel, Ira, and Jairus. Jesse’s dad to my right.
Capturing the night sky with a digital camera is a dichotomy of limits and capabilities.
So much more is revealed when you use a camera than with the eye, because a long exposure allows you to collect a lot more light. It’s an entire world we don’t get to see otherwise. The problem becomes the fact that the stars begin to blur as the Earth rotates (although the effect is sometimes nice).
This was a 10 minute exposure at 16mm, f/4, ISO 100.
Since most Canon SLRs support a long exposure noise reduction feature (which closes the shutter, takes a second exposure, and digitally removes the remaining noise from the original), exposures with this feature actually take twice as long. I can’t imagine doing this kind of stuff back in the days of film cameras, without any kind of immediate feedback.
The faint glow on the bottom right is light pollution coming from Ottawa.
Looking at pictures of stars without context is boring. I was never interested in plain star maps because they’re so abstract compared to nebulas and galaxy shots. I didn’t understand what I was looking at, and I couldn’t possibly appreciate what I was seeing.
Messier 13 — 6 seconds @ f/2.8, 100mm, ISO 3200.
Rated as a Class V globular cluster, which is right in the middle of the Harlow Shapley scale, and the most spectacular type because it’s the best compromise between richness (lower on the scale) and resolvability (higher on the scale).
Take this photo of M13 for example. M13 is a Messier object, which is a catalog of astronomical objects Charles Messier documented to ignore because they resembled comets1, but didn’t follow traditional comet’s paths.
M13 is in the Herculeus constellation. I couldn’t see it but I knew where it was, so I took this shot and zoomed in. On my screen was one fuzzy dot in the middle of a bunch of sharp dots.
This fuzzy dot is actually a huge globular cluster, containing several hundred thousand stars. When I saw it through someone else’s (much bigger and more expensive) telescope, I could see a diffuse haze of white, and resolve dozens of individual stars around it. It was beautiful, like a series of diamonds set on a glowing jewel, and there’s no way I would appreciate a shot of Hercules if I didn’t see M13 like this.
Due to the large concentration of stars in this globular cluster (and proportionally greater possibility of extra-terrestrial life), it was selected as the place to send the first message into outer space.
It’s all these little details that make space so fascinating. These are celestial objects of such vast and incomprehensible sizes, but at the same time, they’re barely seen by the naked eye on a night with even the best of conditions.
Working hard and playing hard. It felt like vacation even though I was down there for business, just because I ended up doing so much stuff packed into four nights. I didn’t stop moving once I touched down and ended up learning so much, simply by constantly being around the right people.
Goodbye, St. Louis. We’ll see each other again soon enough.
Many, many, many more pictures under the cut.
I’m not sure what the nature of their relationship was. Both African-American girls, one clearly older than the other, kissing for several moments.
Across the river is Illinois.
Whenever I travel to the States, I can’t help but wonder if I could live here. Or anywhere outside of Canada, for that matter.
But I know it’s never more than a passing fancy. I’m always happier to touch down at home, than anywhere else.
Never, ever, ever fly through Philly. I’m pretty sure the airport is in cahoots with the restaurants and hotels, and they delay you every time you fly in to get you to spend money.
You stole:
You didn’t steal:
I have to wonder if you were so upset about not finding anything valuable that you decided to steal things that aren’t even worth selling or fencing, out of spite. It wasn’t enough to make a claim on my insurance, so I have to buy this stuff again. But I don’t really need any of it, except for the auxiliary cable, which I replaced with a fancy new retracting set and with which I’m much happier.
Just this week I was reading about that colonel being charged with a string of break-ins to steal underwear, and how the people in that neighbourhood felt shaken at the news. I empathized with them, and felt lucky that it didn’t happen near me.
But when I came out of my house and found the contents of my glove compartment spilled onto the passenger seat, I was reminded that this is a fact of life everyone is forced to accept, because no one is immune. It’s a necessary evil, to remind people that putting too much value in our possessions means we only have more to lose.
The only thing that bothers me is that I feel violated. I’m pretty sure I locked my car, but there’s no sign of forced entry, so I wonder how you got in and whether you now have free access. I can’t change my parking spot. My car will always be there, so now I need to keep anything valuable out of it. Not that big a deal really, but it’s less convenient to have to remember to bring change any time I want to park downtown. Also, in the spring I like to keep all the windows of my house open, and now I won’t feel safe doing that when I’m sleeping on a different floor.
But I still consider myself lucky. Lucky you didn’t make out with more than $100 worth of stuff. Lucky my first experience with theft was relatively minor, and an inexpensive lesson learned. Lucky I’ve been feeling good lately and that this incident is only a small blip on my radar.
I can only hope that you used the change to feed yourself, because if you’re stealing random shit from cars, you probably need the money more than I do.
But, please, don’t do it again, cause to be honest, I’d rather it was me eating those McDonald’s french fries on Friday night.
The three of us, plus boy.
Like old times — camping, weekends at the farm, studying in the comp sci lounge — with a twist.
One of us is expecting, one of us just bought a house, and one of us has been thinking about kids of his own some day.
One of Trolley’s shots.
There was a maple syrup festival in Perth. A bit of serendipity too, because I had just run out of my last cache of real maple syrup, stored in a bottle of Crown Royal my mom gave me.
Perth is a great for a getting to visit a small town without having to drive too far. We missed the pancake breakfast in the morning, but made up for it by having maple sausages.
I bought me a bottle of amber maple syrup. Apparently, it’s thicker and richer than the regular maple syrup.
Found footage, captured with my small CCD camcorder. It struggles in low light situations, but when I brought up the levels in post, out came this amazing grain that gives it such a wistful texture.
When watching this, my eyes tend to gravitate to her hands; the way she moves them with a light, but firm touch, whether it’s getting Dolly to sit down, or brushing cat hair from her nose. They were artists hands. Not particularly striking, but filled with delicate dexterity. Sometimes, I’d kiss the tip of each finger, and she’d tease me by pulling her hand away before I could finish.
It must have been one winter morning, after a run out to Second Cup with their holiday-themed paper cups, watching The Blue Planet in the comfort of a blanket with a cat by our side.
Only after finding this footage did I start to believe that my memories were real, and not just imaginations caught between the haze of desire and denial.
Even if only for a few moments, as wonderful as they were fleeting, one of them captured in 24 frames per second.
From the visitor centre we check the relief map for our trail. As I’m signing in, Heather notices my date of birth is in the 80s. I’m the only one, and they joke about how young I am — especially compared to Benoît, who’s a sixties baby — but it never feels like we’re far apart in heart and mind.
We carpool to the closest lot, and strap on our packs for the hike to the cabin.
The trail is fairly easy, and paved most of the way. It’s a very welcome detail when you’re carrying sleeping gear, rain gear, extra clothes, eating/cooking implements, camera equipment, several days worth of food, enough water to keep you hydrated on the way there, and your pack is over 25% of your body weight.
It’s been an emotional time. I’m in anti-social mode, but I force myself to get out when the opportunity comes along.
One day, we hit up a diner around noon. I wore my flip-flops, and cruised west with the wind numbing my skin. My stereo gets louder as I accelerate, and it only made me drive as fast as I could to see how loud I could push Wild Gardens. For a moment, it filled me with serene bliss, and that was enough, among the steel and pavement and summer heat in spring, to give me hope.
It’s that feeling I’ve been craving. To be the only living boy in New York.
Audra tells me I smell nice when I haven’t left the house for days. Gives me the breath-stealing hugs. And the fact that she’s so sensitive about crossing my boundaries makes her the sweetest redhead I know. It’s hard not to believe in myself when she believes in me so well.
Tonight, I saw the moon in my telescope. If it was a full moon, it would have filled the eyepiece. I could study the craters, the landmarks, and the patterns of dust on the surface. I grabbed my camera with a modestly long 100mm lens, mounted it on my new tripod, and took a picture. Unless I get a lens with a longer focal length, it’s the best I’ll ever get in capturing the moon with a sensor1.
It was a great night for observing, the forecast said, with no cloud cover, good transparency2, good seeing3, and decent darkness. I had my warmest clothes on, as I was warned that comfort and motivation are some of the most important things in observational astronomy.
I used a crater on the moon to calibrate my red-dot finderscope. Then I used the finderscope to follow the arm of the big dipper to Arcturus, the curve of which led me to Saturn, just under Denebola and in the constellation Virgo this year.
With the naked eye, Saturn looks like another bright star, but at 100x magnification, Saturn becomes a small and sharp sphere. The rings were clean but indistinguishable from each other, with the gas giant casting a dramatic shadow across them.
I looked 68 minutes into the past4, until Saturn slowly drifted out of view.