Questions from answers

Will my kids be wearing one of these?

eric — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:00:27 +0000

This video is from the TED website, which has a lot of interesting speakers on it. This one talks about merging the cell phone with a webcam and video projector with some other cool things. Anyway I thought it was quite cool in some ways, perhaps scary in how it would really affect us.

Blast from the past…

eric — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:55:02 +0000

Back in the early 90’s I lived in Houston, Texas for a couple of years. It’s a long story of how I ended up there, but it was a great time in my life where I did some work, went to school and met some great people. I ended up going to church at Second Baptist, one of the largest churches in Houston. While I was there I met Cliff Young who was starting out the band Caedmon’s Call. They started playing at various churches and venues around town and at one gig they needed a fill in bass player, so they asked me if I could fill in. It was a one off thing for me which was fine, as I’m not the greatest bass payer, but I enjoyed the experience. It was cool to see how they eventually landed a record deal and went to moderate success in the Christian music industry. To my surprise, recently a video showed up on youtube of the show that I filled in on bass for them back in 1993. Calculating the years between then and now is a bit troubling, but nevertheless through the wonders on technology, here is a song from that day.

The Big Picture

eric — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:34:58 +0000

I’ve been periodically checking out this site called The Big Picture. It’s a sub site from the Boston Globe that takes news-type events and puts a post of amazing pictures from it.

Some recent great recent posts are

Earth Observed

Year in Photos Part 1

Year in Photos Part 2

Year in Photos Part 3

The ones from Obamas inauguation are great too and the most recent post about Chinese New Year, the last picture is really cool too, etc.
Anyway i think you get the idea.

One more cool thing is it has a feed you can add to keep up with new posts.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/index.xml

Enjoy

Merry Christmas from us!

eric — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:54:01 +0000

To those out there that read this blog and didn’t receive our Christmas card, here it is in the virtual world.

From our family to you have a merry Christmas and all the best for 2009!

And I call them my friends?

eric — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:43:27 +0000

Flogging Molly – Vancouver

eric — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 07:18:26 +0000

A few weeks ago my friend Jason and I went to see Flogging Molly at the Commodore Ballroom. I first heard about Flogging Molly at the beginning of the summer and really got listening to them a lot. When I heard they were coming to Vancouver, I knew I had to go.

Before the show Jason and I went to an Irish pub for a dinner we both quite enjoye, although it was quite a lot of food. I think the waitress thought I was an idiot for wondering what the countdown clock was for–St Patrick’s Day, duh!

At the show we sat through 2 opening acts, The Girls and Beat Union. I can’t remember much about The Girls, except they were guys and Beat Union, sounded like what you’d expect to hear from Brit-Punk.

When Flogging Molly came on the crowd was ready to have a good time with a mosh pit and all. We were right at the front with one person in front of us. It was a great spot to see the show and we mostly avoided the mosh pit beside us, I am 36 after all! The sound was quite loud I thought and I like it loud! At the front it seemed like the sound wasn’t quite balanced as I couldn’t hear the singing very well. After I while I went back a bit in the crowd to get a bit better balance of the sound.

As for the show it was a lot of fun, I knew most of the songs and was signing along when I could. I even went in the mosh pit for Rebels of the Sacred Heart. I almost lost my glasses in the process, but it was fun. At the end of the night I could barely talk and my ears were ringing.

If they come to your neck of the woods I’d definitely recommend you check them out.

Here are a few pics from my point and shoot from the night

Photo Hunt Results

eric — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:31:05 +0000

Back in June our local Photo Club held it’s annual Photo Hunt, I did blog about it. Our club reconvened after the summer break and one of the things they did was announce the results…I came in second place out of 21 photographers, I guess my 50mm lens came in handy!

I even received a funky trophy too!

Radiohead – Vancouver

eric — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:59:16 +0000

The crowd gathered, the band came on, the crowd squished together and the rain began to fall. This was the scene when Radiohead came to Vancouver. I’ve never been a hard core Radiohead, but have enjoyed a lot of their songs. This was my first Radiohead concert, so I was eager to see them, as it’s been 5 years since they have been in these parts.
Radiohead had an interesting stage with organ pipes dangling around them and the ever changing light show, but for Radiohead it’s about the music. They’re a band that is not so high in entertainment, but more in letting sense their soul through the music.

During some of the more mellower songs I could hear the rain falling around, which was kind of weird. Keeping close with everyone around me I didn’t notice the rain too much although I finally took my glasses off as they kept steaming up.

At one point the crowd on one side was getting pretty rowdy and Thom had to remind them they were not at a Rage Against the Machine concert.
Radiohead had come out for their second encore and had played 24 out of their 25 song set and I had yet to hear Paranoid Android. Thom asked the crowd if they wanted to hear Idioteque or Paranoid Android, I am glad the crowd agreed with me. And when we awere all singing ‘rain down’ it seemed very appropriate. A nice way to end the show.

Despite the rain, Radiohead still put on a fine show even without the entertainment.

Here are a few pictures from the concert.

This is after the show as the crowd was dispersing.

Pemberton recap

eric — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:43:54 +0000

This past weekend was the inaugural Pemberton Music Festival. I have to say it takes a lot of vision to want to turn some farm fields into the biggest music festival BC has ever seen. When I first heard of the festival I was quite excited, then I saw the ticket prices at $250 plus fees for the weekend plus camping seemed way over priced. Then I looked at the 3 day line up and most of the acts I wanted to see were on the Sunday with Coldplay headlining. When tickets first went on sale they only sold 3 day passes, but I was hoping they would eventually sell one day passes. Then I was being optimistic and hoping they would sell one day tickets for $100 each. When they eventually went on sale they were selling one day tickets for $150 plus fees! That was crazy to me, could you spend one day at a concert and spend $170 at a show and say it was worth it? So I skipped on buying one day passes and said I’d pay $100 to go the show and not more. I resorted to daily checking Craigslist. About a week and a half before the show I reached a deal with a girl to get 2 tickets for $225 for my friend Glen and I, it was a bit of a compromise as I would be spending $12.50 more that what I had hoped. A time transpired I lost contact with the girl and I was again looking for tickets. Then a week before the show I put an ad in Craigslist looking for 2 tickets at $200 and then a day later I got and email from someone who lives close to me was selling 2 tickets for $200. He won them on the radio and was unable to go, his loss, my gain!
Pemberton is 30 minutes north of Whistler with generally only one road to get in and out unless you want to make the long journey the other way. When people began arriving on Thursday, there were news reports of people waiting in traffic for up to 8 hours and confusion as to what exactly was going on. Then on Friday with the dry weather we have been having, there was lots of dust and some people leaving early because of allergies. On Saturday there were reports of the kinks slowly working themselves out and I was optimistic that by Sunday things would be going along a lot more smoothly.

On Sunday I met up with my friend Glen in Whistler at 11:30am for lunch. The trip up to Whistler went a lot faster than we were expecting considering the whole road is practically a construction site. We ate lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory and were on the road again to head up to Pemberton at 12:30. We left ourselves 1.5 hours to make the 30 minute journey in order to make the first act I wanted to see at 2pm. The drive was going well until about 10km to Pemberton when traffic was at a standstill. There were a few times were did not move for 20 minutes at a time! It took us over 3 hours to make the last few km. Needless to say I missed The Airborne Toxic Event at 2pm. The next band I wanted to see was Vampire Weekend at 3:30. The time was getting to 3pm and my friend Glen wasn’t to into seeing Vampire Weekend so I said I’d walk/run to the show while he would eventually find a parking spot. So I started running to the show, uncertain how far exactly I had to run. It ended up being about a 5km distance in the warm sun. Ironically as I started running the traffic became better and my friend Glen wasn’t too far behind me.

Once I got to the show things got better, I had arrived finally!
I missed the first few songs of Vampire Weekend, but I caught most of their set. The sound was great and the mostly college age crowd music. I thought they put on a decent show.

There were 2 stages and once one act finished the other started. Next up on the smaller stage was Wintersleep from Halifax. I had heard only a couple songs from them, but was pleasantly surprised their set was more electric than the acoustic singles they had put out. Glen and I were quite impressed with their show and after Coldplay was probably one of our favourite bands of the day.

Next up on the other stage was Death Cab for Cutie. This was another band that I had only heard a few songs from. They had a good size crowd watching them, but seemed to only put on a mediocre set. I did however want to hear more stuff from them and have been listening to the Transatlanticism and Plans albums recently which I have enjoyed.

We had missed the band N.E.R.D. because we weren’t too interested but they were late and made the 2 stages start overlapping, so we missed the beginning of Matisyahu. Again I think I had only heard one song from Matisyahu before, but I have to say he put on a solid show, which I really enjoyed. Even though he is a white boy and Jewish too, he really can do reggae/rap like the best of them, with a great backing band as well. I would definitely see him again.

Next up was Jay-Z, we weren’t too keen on seeing him, but we did want to position ourselves to get in a good spot for Coldplay after Jay-Z. I can’t say I really understand rap, like women are called bitches and we should say ‘Ho, ho ho’ like it’s Christmas. Anyway for the most part it was entertaining and the crowd seemed to be into it as well.

And finally at 10:10 Coldplay finally showed up on stage. We were about 15 rows back and feeling very snug with the people around us. We thought their would be a lot of pushing a shoving when Coldplay started, but thankfully the crowd was quite well behaved, except for those making out in the Porta-potties during Coldplay’s set??
Anyway Coldplay put on a great show and had the crowd singing along for a number of songs. Then they went into the crowd and sang an acoustic version of the Scientist which the crowd enjoyed as well. They put on a great show as I was expecting, a great way to end the day and the festival.

It was midnight before we returned to our car and the parking lot didn’t move for 2 hours and we finally made it back to Whistler at 3am. It was a long day but worth it. If I ever go again, I really hope they work out the traffic problems, otherwise it could be a great festival for BC.

Photo Hunt 08

eric — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:46:47 +0000

Last weekend our camera club held its annual photo hunt. I was able to use my new 50mm 1.8 lens which Shelby gave me for my birthday, thankfully I was able to use it a few days early.

For the photo hunt we could only take one picture per topic, no deleting pictures. It was a little tricky as I’d find a photo-op for a topic but wondered if something better would come along. We had 8 hours to complete the task within a certain boundary in Langley.

These were the topics we had to find:
1. Self portrait

2. Texture

3. Foreign

4. Nature

5. Reflection

6. Something old

7. Something new

8. Something blue

9. Lost or Forgotten

10. Something broken

11. A picture of your camera taken with your camera

12. Empty

13. How bizarre!

14. What’s in your bag?

15. Pairs

16. Quiet

17. Stranger

18. Odd one out

19. Yellow vehicle

20. Things thrown out

21. Lunch

22. Graffiti

23. Red shoes

24. Object in a parade

25. Colourful

26. Black and white

27. Train

28. An interesting sign

29. Shadow

30. Stairs

31. Shiny

32. Thing which name starts with the letter “F”

33. Wildlife

34. Bricked up doorway

35. Unique trash receptor

36. Langley

Here is a link to the pictures I took, see if you can match any to the topics.