Ricardiblog

2012-01-24T14:16:00.001-05:00

Please visit my new blog, Adventures in Wonderland.

Well, that didn't take long.

2012-01-05T18:19:00.002-05:00

In my previous post, I hinted that I might be considering bringing together my disparate blogging activities here, at Life Science Tools of the Trade, and at the Occam's Typewriter Irregulars.

It's done.

Please welcome the brand-new, shiny, Adventures in Wonderland, kindly hosted by my friends over at Occam's Typewriter. You can read a bit more about the history behind the move in its inaugural post.

This dear old Ricardiblog will continue to live here, but I will no longer update it. Please feel free to visit me at the new place. I'll probably be tweaking it and poking it for a while, so don't be put off if things work a little differently. It's still me behind it all.

2010 R.I.P.

2012-01-04T17:01:00.000-05:00

Time for a little lazy blogging to get the year started.

Last year, I jumped on a little meme that Cath directed me to, namely the idea of listing the first sentence of the first post of each month. It failed a bit, since there were three months where (shock!) I didn't post a single thing. This year, surprisingly enough, isn't as bad, although June has gone AWOL and many of the entries aren't actually sentences at all.

January. About the hockey pool: "Yes, the holiday break is over, and all excuses about 'being away from the internet' or 'being too sleepy/full/hung over to make my picks' are now invalid."

February. Lazy cross-posting: "If anyone's interested, I've put up a new blog post at Life Science Tools of the Trade."

March. I re-designed the blog's template, and posted a photo of a fish: "Today's news - nothing much, just a template re-design."

April. It's not even a real sentence, but it's about LinkedIn's April Fool's Day joke: "...on visiting my LinkedIn profile today."

May. An exhortation to go and vote in the Canadian federal election. I've cheated here, by including both a fragment, and the real sentence that follows it: "May 2, 2011. Federal Election Day. Get out and vote... please."

June. I didn't blog a thing in June, apparently.

July. Not much here either, just a teaser about the 2011 Honda Indy Toronto race: "The 2011 Honda Indy Toronto."

August. A summary of the Indy race. I've cheated again, since the first bit of writing is actually a photo caption. Here's the first full sentence from the body text: "I'm a bit late, the race having taken place in mid-July, but here's the beginning of my synopsis of this year's Honda Indy Toronto weekend."

September. Another sentence fragment, about fish: "...to bring you two new arrivals at Château Ricardipus."

October. This isn't a full sentence either! "The 2011 edition of the annual pumpkin photo:"

November. Even more lazy cross-posting: "I'm cheating."

December. More photography, and yet another incomplete sentence: "An impromptu project to capture some of the energy of Toronto's streets, financial districts and commuter hubs."

All that cross-posting kind of makes you think I ought to concentrate my efforts on one blog, not three, doesn't it?

Angel

2011-12-24T21:57:00.002-05:00

In the spirit of the holiday season, I give you one angel ornament, photographed through the viewfinder of a 74-year-old (more or less) camera. Which is now loaded with film and will, I hope, produce some interesting photos in coming weeks.

All the best, loyal reader (or two) for the holiday season. Merry Christmas if that's your flavour, happy holidays regardless, and all the best for 2012. As usual, my resolutions will be to (a) drink less coffee, and (b) blog more. Which, of course, I promised last year, and pretty much failed to deliver.

The Street in Motion

2011-12-01T14:38:00.003-05:00

An impromptu project to capture some of the energy of Toronto's streets, financial districts and commuter hubs. The motion is intentional, as an attempt to reflect the bustle of rush hour in Canada's largest city.

All photographs were shot with a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W130 pocket camera. Most consist of elements from several exposures layered in Photoshop CS4 and processed with a variety of plugins, mainly from Filter Forge's excellent freepacks.

The full set of images is here.

All images copyright © 2011 Richard F. Wintle.

Honda Indy Toronto 2011 Diary - part III

2011-11-13T20:21:00.004-05:00

Part I, in which we arrive on Friday and attempt to shoot IndyCars in front of every available sponsor billboard, is here.

Part II, in which Saturday rolls around and I end up covering the NASCAR supporting event as well as lurking around pit lane, is here.

This is Part III - the main event, the IZOD IndyCar series race - and a bunch of other things.

Even during a packed race day schedule, there's inevitably some waiting around.

The day started off as usual in the Media Centre, located upstairs in the Allstream Centre (née "Automotive Building") on the Exhibition Place grounds. The morning update and safety briefing was augmented by some words from the event's chief of security, Charles Burns, a genial gentleman who nevertheless falls squarely in the "do not make this man angry with you" category. Pre-race briefing over, we had our daily pow-wow with team lead John. Race day is what we're here for, and we needed to make sure we had all aspects covered. Two photographers with "race mode" pit lane access, a couple in the grandstands for crowd shots, careful discussion of who would shoot driver introductions, the grand marshal, the anthems, flyby and other pre-race events, and a scattering of the remaining team members at key points around the track. My assignment: turn 1, for the start, and all the re-starts after the inevitable accidents during the race. In 2011, IndyCar introduced "double wide" re-starts instead of single-file, line-astern ones - promising some fireworks as the cars gallop into turn 1 when the green flag flies.

But first - morning practice, and a couple of supporting races. I shot a bit of the Canadian Touring Car Championship from turn 5, and scuttled over to Winner's Circle for the post-race festivities. I see a lot of this series throughout the year, but seldom have the opportunity to shoot the podium.

Always good to get the eventual race winner on-track.

Touring Car class winner Tom Kwok takes a pasting.

Next up was IndyCar practice, an opportunity to shoot some pit lane action, something I've never done. I took advantage of a handy TV camera hole, still empty this early in the day.

Graham Rahal and the Service Central Chip Ganassi Racing team.

Next up was more serious business - Firestone Indy Lights, a fiercely competitive series full of up-and-coming drivers. I spent a good chunk of this race doing other things, but made sure I was at the finish line to practice again for the chequered flag shot. It worked, and I even managed the sprint back to the podium ceremony. That went fine, but the obvious photo-op would be to catch race winner Stefan Wilson with his big brother, IndyCar driver Justin. Did I get the shot? No, I did not.

A happy, but very sweaty, Stefan Wilson. Shortly after this, he came after the photo corps with his champagne bottle.

And now - off to turn 1 for the main event. It turned out to be not a bad vantage point for pre-race fireworks, although the military fly-by was completely obscured by a large tree, which I was more or less directly under.

The starting fireworks - fun, but never spectacular in broad daylight.

And then, after a couple of pace laps - the start!

Lots of cars, and a full grandstand - this is what we're here for.

I waited out most of the race in turn 1, working my way around transiently to a couple of other photo holes towards turn 2. And I have to report that despite half a dozen crashes and re-starts, the drivers behaved themselves beautifully, with not so much as a minor fender-bender. The most excitement was when rookie James Jakes ran a little wide, and passed within touching distance on the wide line around the corner.

He's going slowly, and sensibly keeping out of Danica Patrick's way.

And so it went, until, with 45 minutes or so left, I skedaddled back to the finish line - just in time for a massive crash at, you guessed it, turn 1.

Not to worry though. Joined by my comrade Patrick, I was there for that all-important chequered flag photo - one chance, and one only, to nail the race winner at full speed, on the painted line, hand triumphantly in the air, with the chequers flying from the flag stand and a grandstand of cheering fans behind. At full speed, even a fast burst of continuous shots is going to miss - this is a single photo that needs to be squeezed off at just the perfect time, just as the car flickers into your peripheral vision. And we nailed it. Both of us.

That, my friends, checks all of the boxes.

All that was left was a murderously hot and breathless sprint to Winner's Circle - for the fourth time that weekend - through throngs of fans with the same idea. Into the crush of press, elbows up and peeking through heads, arms and assorted photographic paraphernalia. My photo of race winner Dario Franchitti hopping out of his car wasn't as good as last year's effort, but the podium was well covered since our whole team was there, so it didn't matter much. And by hanging around for a bit, I wound up with a couple of fun shots, including this one of 1-2 team-mates Franchitti and Scott Dixon, clinking champagne bottles after hosing down their crew (and a few innocent bystanders).

Yes, Dario's looking right at me.

And that, as they say, was a wrap. With a day's worth of racing plus a whole lot of fan, vendor area and other "event" photos in the can, it was back to the Media Centre to sift through, pull out the A-list shots to hand in, say some goodbyes, and wearily wend my way home for the last time.

Next year? If I get the call, you'd better believe I'll be there.

(All of Sunday's photos are in this Flickr set.)

Motorsport, Astrophysics and a Nobel Laureate (peripherally)

2011-11-05T23:31:00.003-04:00

I'm cheating. This post actually lives over at Occam's Typewriter. So feel free to take a look at it over there, if you like.

Boo!

2011-10-31T11:55:00.001-04:00

The 2011 edition of the annual pumpkin photo:

Nikon D5000
AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G
0.8 seconds at f/4.0, ISO 320
metered at +2/3 EV since the D5000 underexposes everything

A slight break in the motorsports action...

2011-09-10T18:12:00.002-04:00

...to bring you two new arrivals at Château Ricardipus. Introducing:

Penny:

and Bob:

Both photographs taken using a Nikon D5000 with the AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 lens, at f/2.0 and ISO 1,000 in available light. Penny: 1/80th sec., Bob at 1/40th.

Honda Indy Toronto 2011 Diary - part II

2011-08-27T19:05:00.010-04:00

(This may make a little more sense if you read part I first.)

NASCAR Canadian Tire Series podium, late Saturday afternoon.

Saturday
Once again, it was all about crowds, fans interacting with vendors, and generally any photos to tell the story of the event. And I took a lot of those photos, believe me - swinging through the Thunder Alley vendor area, past the team hospitality tents, and generally lurking around in the paddock and pit lane whenever I wasn't doing something else.

But first: some minor clean-up of the "cars in front of sponsor billboards" assignment, since it seems the entire team collectively failed to hand in anything in front of one key sponsor's signage. So - off to turn nine.

On the way, I snagged a through-the-fence shot of popular Canadian driver Alex Tagliani in morning practice, ripping down the back straight (known in civilian times as Lakeshore Boulevard). Here I'm shooting through the brand-new safety fencing - much stronger now, and generating some interesting horizontal stripes. The previous diagonal chain-link was much easier to "disappear".

The Dr. Pepper car would have been better here. Next year, maybe.

Unfortunately, the fence is obscuring the Future Shop logo on the car's sidepod, but what can you do?

Having hit Thunder Alley, still quiet this early in the morning, I took a quick swing through pit lane to grab some driver shots. Here's Graham Rahal, hailing some acquaintances. You can tell it's early - look how empty the grandstands are. Not a bad driver shot, but a total fail as far as capturing the excitement of the event.

He's got perfect teeth.

I also came across Helio Castroneves. This is the last of a series, from bare head through full helmet, as he suits up to go out on track.

Love that yellow/blue/white Penske livery.

And here's last year's winner Will Power. I like how he's staring back across his shoulder down pit lane, looking as though he's greatly concerned about something.

You'd never guess he's actually in line for the porta-potty, would you?

And on the way - finally, a chance for an IndyCar with a crowd in the background. This is a keeper, a nice addition to the "hand-in" shots, banked before race day comes on Sunday. Vitor Meira, racing for A.J. Foyt Enterprises.

That's what we need - car, sponsor signage, crowded grandstand.

And so, to turn nine and the Pizza Pizza billboard, sorely neglected yesterday. I spent the rest of the qualifying session getting shot after dull and boring shot of almost-in-focus cars, until I finally nailed a nice head-on one of Mike Conway. And then, right at the end of the session, what happens? J.R. Hildebrand stalls his car, right in front of the billboard I need! Are you kidding me? Easiest photo in history.

If he looks like he's parked - he is.

I'll admit to shooting some fun stuff along the way, including a nice photo of eventual race winner Dario Franchitti, and one of Justin Wilson laying down some rubber, and playing with slow shutter speeds a bit - good fun for me, but not really useful for the event.

Ryan Hunter-Reay, at 1/25th of a second.

The last race of the day was the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series Streets of Toronto 100. Not at all a priority, but we needed on-track shots of a key sponsor's car (the #84 Schick Hydro Chevy of J.R. Fitzpatrick), and last year's winner, popular Canadian driver Andrew Ranger. I threw in pole-winner Jason Bowles as well for good measure. So, off to the "false grid" where the cars line up before the race.

This is Dexter Stacey, not any of the "key" drivers - but I like the shot.

Next I went trackside, and ultimately to the podium ceremony. On that little jaunt I didn't just nail all three drivers before the race, but each of their cars rolling out, and each on track to boot. And since Ranger won, after tagging him crossing the finish line I high-tailed it to the podium ceremony for good measure, picking up a text message from team leader John asking me if I could get to it. "Already there!" - it felt good to send that reply.

Winner Andrew Ranger with Kim Green of Green/Savoree - one of the big bosses of the weekend.

And that was pretty much a wrap. I collected podium shots of all the NASCAR finishers, although my photos of them spraying champagne weren't good. And the ones of Ranger's car taking the chequered flag, from the grandstand, were useless, but a helpful education for Sunday's IndyCar race. You'll see the finish line photo from the marquee event in the next post.

And so, back to the media centre for the usual hour or two of editing and handing shots in, and off home to bed. Saturday's photos are in this set.

Next: Sunday - Race Day. IndyCars, Canadian Touring Cars, and a bunch of podium ceremonies.

The Part I post, including Thursday and Friday, is here.

Honda Indy Toronto 2011 Diary - part I

2011-08-24T23:18:00.006-04:00

Sebastian Saavedra - the most colourful car of the weekend.

I'm a bit late, the race having taken place in mid-July, but here's the beginning of my synopsis of this year's Honda Indy Toronto weekend. You can read about last year's event, if you like, in four, count 'em four, separate posts:

• Pre-Race Events
• Friday - Warming Up
• Saturday - Getting Busier
• Sunday - Race Day!

This year, once again, I was lucky enough to be credentialed by the event (Honda Indy Toronto / Green Savoree), back on a team with seven others (six repeat offenders from last year, and one new recruit). With eight of us instead of twelve, the ship had to run a little bit tighter. Minor modifications to the shot list, more consistent trackside access, and a single team instead of two all contributed to what turned out to be a pretty tight and effective team. I was sporting a Nikon D5000 and a few nifty lenses this time, a big improvement from last year's Sony DSC-R1. And again, the group was great - lots of laughs, hard slogging around the track for three days, good-natured one-upmanship and showing off our shots. And sunscreen. Lots of sunscreen.

Thursday
The week's fun started off with an autograph session with Alex Tagliani at the downtown Toronto Future Shop - an event I sleuthed out online, and got access to by the gambit of simply asking the store manager, who then pitched the request to the chain's PR person, who said "sure - as long as the store manager says it's ok", or words to that effect. Ask, and ye shall... you know.

Tags was a champ, charming fans old and young, and when he heard who I was shooting for, hauled me off to the brand-new Bowers and Wilkins display - his sponsors. This cheesy-grin-product-shot was entirely his idea, proof positive that the man knows the value of keeping his sponsors happy.

Go on, buy a B&W iPod dock, you know you want to.

Friday
First day on-site, and a chance to check out what would be my race-day assignment, the photo holes in turn 1. After some general faffling around trying to discover the access point, I made my way there and explored the scissor lift to raise us above the catch fencing, and a couple of other likely spots through the fence. A chance to practice a bit, and bank a few Ferrari Challenge and IndyCar shots.

One great-looking Ferrari - Ryan Ockey / Ferrari of Ontario

Sebastien Bourdais, from the turn 1 photo hole.

Friday afternoon brought more time for IndyCars in front of sponsor billboards, and a chance to explore the track a bit. Here's my favourite - Marco Andretti, shot using the D5000's kit lens, an 18-55mm zoom, through a friendly corner worker's flagging hole. I reached this area, just inside turn 8, after a protracted hike around the inside of the track from, oh, turn five or thereabouts.

This would have been better in front of the Dr. Pepper billboard.

Of course, the day also required shooting as many fan and crowd photos as possible, since once again the event opened its doors, providing free admission (courtesy of the Honda Dealers of Ontario... go and buy one now!). Catching drivers in the paddock and on their way to and from practice sessions wasn't too hard. Here's Newman Haas Racing's Oriol Servia, grimly taking on the burden of being a professional race car driver.

Yes, it's overexposed. He still looks great.

The day wound up with NASCAR Canadian Tire Series qualifying - not really a priority for shooting, but fun and plenty loud. This time, I stuck myself in the photo hole on the inside of turn 1, picking off the big stock cars as they rumbled around in front of the Princes' Gate.

Dave Connelly, making some noise.

Not a bad day at all. Of course, most of the "shots to hand in" were of fans, crowds, that kind of thing, but in among all that I was pretty confident I'd gotten turn 1 scouted out for Sunday's race.

The next installment will be Saturday... more billboard photos, Helio putting his helmet on, and a whole bunch of NASCAR.

More photos, as usual, are in my Autosport collection, if you want to skip ahead:

• Thursday - Autograph sesson with Alex Tagliani
• Friday
• Saturday
• Sunday

It's almost here...

2011-07-06T22:33:00.003-04:00

The 2011 Honda Indy Toronto.

And like last year, I will be there all three days, media credentialed and shooting like mad.

Rainy Days and Mondays...

2011-05-11T21:01:00.001-04:00

...get me down, or so the song goes.

These photos, on the other hand, were taken on a Tuesday evening. With only my pocket camera to hand, the trusty Sony DSC-W130 that I picked up out of the rewards catalogue over at another online haunt of mine, miles of not-so-open road between work and home, and a dreary day - well, it seemed a good opportunity to experiment.

I'll figuratively tip my hat to fellow Flickr member Giuseppe Basile, who has taken some very nice shots in this general style. Take a look at this one, as an example.

I actually messed these last two up a bit, intending to focus on the subject while letting the raindrops on the window fall out of focus and provide some kind of nice, shimmery blur. That was the concept, anyway, but I underestimated the W130's ability to focus on things very, very close to it - and got the raindrops sharp instead. Happy accident - I think they ended up looking better this way.

Somedays, I guess, dismal weather is good, and somedays it's helpful to have only the simple gear along. If I'd tried this with my DSLR, I probably would have failed miserably. But that's not always going to be the best solution. With a weekend of car racing coming up, I'll be quite happy to haul the "big" camera along - and have no rain, I hope.

Vote, Canada.

2011-05-02T15:18:00.001-04:00

May 2, 2011. Federal Election Day. Get out and vote... please.

On the edge

2011-04-06T17:56:00.005-04:00

It's amazing what you can find in your own neighbourhood.

Here at the northern edge of Toronto's suburbs, we're pretty much on the frontier - the frontier separating southern Ontario's disused farmland from rampant housing developments and suburban sprawl. Just a few minutes' walk to the north is a roadway, recently expanded to four lanes from the two that were there when we moved in, twelve years ago. On the other side - farmland, some of it still in use. But few, if any, of the farmhouses standing in the fields are inhabited. One by one, boards are appearing in windows, outbuildings are being dismantled, and the last remnants of picturesque rail fences are falling into disrepair.

The whole area, like much of this part of Canada, was farmland, supporting mainly a mix of dairy cattle and feed corn, with crop corn and other vegetables scattered here and there. All over are dotted barns with their characteristic double-angled roofs, a style I've always thought of as somehow Dutch in nature - although I have no good reason for thinking this.

Most of these are on the verge of collapse, too, waiting for the day when their surrounding fields are sold to developers and the bulldozers come.

There are few other reminders left of the stoic people who first came here to farm. Maple itself, although a fairly old town by Ontario standards, has essentially no historic buildings to speak of. Memorials to the settlers and pioneers are thin on the ground, although I tripped across one recently, tucked away among some trees adjacent to an industrial property or two, looking for all the world like a war memorial. It's labeled "Primitive Methodist Church", and "Pioneer Cemetery", although the mid-1800's seems a bit late to be talking about "pioneers" in these parts. Nevertheless, I'm glad it's there, as a little reminder of things past, as things future grow up all around it.

Technical details
Nikon D5000
Top photo: AF-S DX Nikkor 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR
Bottom two photos: AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G, Tiffen circular polarizer

A little surprise...

2011-04-01T11:04:00.004-04:00

...on visiting my LinkedIn profile today. I had no idea I was so well-connected.

Of Spring, and things.

2011-03-26T17:55:00.007-04:00

First American Robin of the year. Shot through window glass.
Nikkor AF-S DX 55-300mm, 1/30th sec., f/5.6, ISO 200

Spring's coming.

Robins, House Finches, Grackles, Red-Winged Blackbirds, Goldfinches - all summer residents, and all appearing in the back yard over the last week or so. Despite a dumping of snow on Thursday, causing Mr. Robin to blow himself up into a ball to stay warm, they're here to stay, warbling from the rooftops and madly scurrying around collecting nesting material.

On the other hand, I was scurrying around myself on Friday, heading to Seneca College to give my more-or-less-annual guest lecture to students in their Bioinformatics Program, an enjoyable chance to catch up with an old friend who runs it, and to test-drive my latest slide deck, which uses rather a lot of photos of zoo animals to make various points. That all seemed to go well, and gave me an opportunity to explore the adjacent York University campus a bit, an interesting conglomeration of coloured concrete, strange angles, and metal details. I particularly liked the huge and ironically impersonal monolith of the Ross Humanities and Social Sciences building, and the crazy internal details of the Joan and Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Art, full of interesting design elements, half-finished sculptures, and enthusiastic arts students.

Ross Building
1/200th sec., f/8, ISO 200

I decided, on this occasion, to take only a single, fixed-focal-length "prime" lens with me, a technique used by many, many photographers over the ages, including the incomparable Henri Cartier-Bresson - no zooms, no wide-angles, no telephotos. In this case, I had just a 35mm lens that on my DSLR gives more-or-less the same "normal" field of view as Bresson's 50mm mounted on his venerable Leica. The idea is to use your feet and hands and eyes to compose the photograph, rather than a zoom ring.

Wall detail, Centre for Fine Art
Indoors - 1/640th sec., f/2.8, ISO 1,000

Having trundled around Keele Campus for a bit, I'm finding myself rather pleased with the little 35. As expected, it's a bit soft at very narrow apertures, likely due both to diffraction inside the lens and also the resulting slower shutter speeds, showing up my less-than-rock-solid hands. Also as expected, when fully wide-open it does suffer a bit from coloured fringing around bright objects. But in its sweet spot, which I don't think I've quite hit in either of the photos above, it's rather nice indeed. There will be more photos coming... once the weather warms up a bit.

The lens in question.
Shot with Nikkor 18-55mm @ 18mm, 1/6th sec., f/3.5, ISO 200.

Hockey Pool, week 24

2011-03-21T16:24:00.009-04:00

Once again, my turn to host the update, brought to you by the letters V, W, X and the number 610, which coincidentally is the size of the heap of points amassed by perennial leader Lavaland.

This week again, she was the biggest gainer, after a couple of less-than-stellar performances that allowed me to sneak within one point after week 23. Cath and ScientistMother also had a strong week, while I slipped a bit. Bob seems to be tanking, which means I don't have to look over my shoulder quite so nervously at the moment.

Overall, Lavaland's strong performance over the weekend has catapulted her back out in front, although I was actually leading by one point earlier in the week. After a strong week 23, Chall suffered a big deflection, leaving ScientistMother planted firmly in fifth. Cath's good performances over the last three weeks have paralleled the leader, letting her hold on to fourth.

What will happen over the rapidly-decreasing number of remaining games? Will I catch Lavaland? Who will win the duel for fourth? Will Bob regain his mojo and chase me down for second? Stay tuned folks... but not here, because that's likely my last update for the year. Twitter is your friend, hashtag #VWXpool.

Weekend Update

2011-03-20T19:39:00.006-04:00

Today's news - nothing much, just a template re-design. The blog looks more modern, but still rather "like a Blogger blog".

The background will probably be changed, but it'll do for now. Suggestions welcome. In the meantime, here's a photo of a fish, from a recent trip to the zoo.

Technical details
camera: Nikon D5000
lens: AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G
exposure: 1/80th sec.
aperture: f/1.8
ISO: 1,000

Product Photography (not quite) 101

2011-02-08T21:31:00.007-05:00

For the past few days, Chateau Ricardipus, or at least a very small part of it on and around the dining table, has been transformed into an ad hoc photo studio and marketing operation. In her role as co-chair of our school's Parent Council, Mrs. Ricardipus is spearheading a Spell-a-thon and associated prize draw. The dining room has been taken over with Justin Bieber paraphernalia a-plenty, as well as various toys, gift certificates, and whatnot. Perhaps rashly, I volunteered to take photos of the prizes, to be reproduced at small size to go on ballot boxes, and also as 8 x 10-inch promo posters.

Rashly, I say, because I have this much experience at photographing products:

None.

A really terrible previous attempt.

Never mind - fresh from reading Michael Freeman's Top Digital Photography Tips, I transformed the dining room table into a veritable homonculous of a studio setup. Developing through a few iterations, the final version involved a base and backing of white foamcore, a gently bent piece of bog-standard printer paper as a background, a mirror underneath and a couple of cookie boxes to hold the whole thing up. Side lighting came from a couple of Ikea gooseneck lamps, an el cheapo $25 off-camera flash, a desk lamp, some sunlight through a window, and the pop-up flash on my Nikon D5000. Sheets of white tissue paper diffused the sidelighting.

Predictably, the results looked - well, pretty amateur. The mess of colour temperatures from the natural light, the incandescent lamps and two totally different flashes really messed things up, and there were ugly shadows everywhere, although I got some workable results. This photo, of my newest lens, will give you some idea:

Not too bad, but covered in different coloured reflections, and that shadow is U.G.L.Y.

Fortunately, a couple of Flickr contacts had some good suggestions. Charles suggested this video tutorial - which as well as being amusing, made me feel a little better, since one of the two approaches to budget product shooting involved, you guessed it, two Ikea gooseneck lamps(!). Brian, on the other hand, pointed me at this excellent setup he built, out of a cardboard box, and, wait for it, white tissue paper and desk lamps, among other things. Both of these guys take very nice photos - so I felt a little better.

The next day, I found myself with one more prize to photograph - an iPod nano, in devilishly white, shiny, dust-prone and reflective packaging. Taking further hints from the incomparable Ken Rockwell, particularly on using a glass base to make the shadows "fall" out of shot, I quickly whipped up a new setup, which you can see here, bolting my D5000 on to the trusty old Velbon tripod, setting everything up in front of a mirror and using some handy drawers for the Ikea clip lamps.

Ready, set...

"Battery exhausted."

Yes, I knew it had been running down the previous evening, and no, I hadn't stopped to charge it. All that live view on the LCD screen to frame the shot had finished it off. Do I have a spare battery? Heck no. But at this point, I was bound and determined to get the shot - and so whipped out Mrs. Ricardipus's trusty Sony DSC-R1, and in a fit of supreme laziness, hand-held it more or less next to where the D5000 was sitting on the tripod. And took what turned out to be, I think, a rather nice photo, even if its graininess does show up just how badly the Sony does in low light with the sensitivity turned up to even ISO 400.

Of course, by the time I took this shot, let alone edited it, she'd already found a perfectly good promotional photo, made up the poster, and printed it. But darn it, I got the shot, and that's what really counts, isn't it?

Yet even more cross-posty goodness!

2011-02-03T12:31:00.004-05:00

If anyone's interested, I've put up a new blog post at Life Science Tools of the Trade. Nothing earth-shattering, just some musings the complexity of high-throughput DNA sequencing data analysis, and the need for clean and clear visualization tools for the end user.

We'll be returning you to the regularly-scheduled wafflings about car racing, as soon as the weather warms up. In the meantime, the Canadian International AutoShow is coming, at the end of February. Stay tuned for the inevitable flood of photos.

Hockey Pool, week, um, er, 17 I think.

2011-01-31T21:45:00.007-05:00

And so, I have the unmitigated pleasure of bringing you the VWXYnot Hockey Pool update for week 17, the Lamest Week Of The Year™. For those of us (me included) who faffled around with their picks, bewildered by the apparent lack of games, it's because the NHL All-Star game intervened with the real schedule. And, in case you missed the connection, it's the All-Star game that makes it the Lamest Week. Trust me on this.

Of course, there were other things going on as well, not least of which was the Rolex 24 Hours At Daytona (won again, somewhat predictably, by the Ganassi Racing team), and of course the NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown, which was actually quite fun to watch, even though the many caution flags resulted in it running overtime. Which meant, of course, that my PVR missed the end of it. Nevertheless, let me take a moment more and throw out some congratulations to Canadian series champ D.J. Kennington, who outlasted dozens of other drivers, and finished second overall.

Mr. Kennington, last July.

But enough of that! On to the results...

Thin week or not, nothing really startling happened with the overall standings. Lavaland's still on top, I'm still running roughly parallel in second, and so on and so forth. The only notable change is that Gerty-Z and ScientistMother have switched spots, following a very strong performance by one, and a rather flabby one by the other.

Weekly totals... look at that blue bar for ScientistMother!
And here are the standings for the last three weeks or so:

So there you go. I am, in fact, creeping up on Lavaland - but very, very slowly, and with the newly-adjusted points values for the players, I really have no idea how my picks for this week will pan out. Stay tuned...

And so, into 2011.

2011-01-15T22:56:00.005-05:00

Not much to report, really... after a grueling couple of months writing grants (oh, and I think the Christmas holidays were in there too), I'm back to having a bit more spare time. Time, among other things, to dig through some old shots from last July's Honda Indy Toronto race weekend, and edit a few of them.

High-contrast, black and white treatment. Why not?

I've written a couple of guest posts over at the Occam's Typewriter Irregulars blog. I'll be concentrating on science-y things there, since OT was founded, and is largely populated by, scientists (although the writing is fairly diverse). Good writers there - well worth a visit.

My other blogging gig, over at Life Science Tools of the Trade, should pick up a bit this year - I've committed to at least one post per month, which doesn't seem like much, but believe me, would be a big increase over my past efforts. That will be all science - techy stuff, as compared with the OT Irregulars, where I'll be largely posting things for a lay audience. I'll probably keep cross-posting those ones from here.

Otherwise, I think this place will stay much as it has been, which means, of course, more about cameras and cars, mainly. On that front, a few months ago I finally bought a DSLR: a Nikon D5000, kitted out with a couple of lenses including a 55-300 mm zoom, which should be fun for my motorsports pursuits. That means that I can stop borrowing Mrs. Ricardipus's lovely Sony DSC-R1, although it will still get used for various things (like that photo of the Christmas tree from a few posts ago, for example). It also means that the old film SLR is now long gone.

The dear, departed Pentax MZ-50 and 100-300 mm lens - now traded in.

So far, the D5000 has been fabulous, although I'm still learning it - both where all the controls are, and how it responds to different lighting conditions. But I'm very happy with it, and it's proven adept at a variety of things, from close-ups of expensive cars under dodgy lighting, to long-range snaps of zoo animals,

a bit of landscape shooting,

and even, with a rented lens suitable for low light, some concert photography.

So - among more important things, 2011 should bring, in no particular order, a lot more writing about science and other things, and many more photographs, at least some of which will be of things with wheels. Good times, I trust.

Cross Post - Shakespeare and DNA, part II

2011-01-04T10:16:00.002-05:00

Hadrian's wall. Although Roman, it has about as much to do with Julius Caesar as it does with either Shakespeare, or genome assembly.

Another cross-post to point you over to the Occam's Typewriter Irregulars blog, where I try to explain "genome assembly" the process of putting many fragments of DNA sequence together to make an entire genome sequence. All of this aided by using bits of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

The post is right here: Genome Assembly - a primer for the Shakespeare fan

Hockey Pool, week 13!

2011-01-03T09:59:00.011-05:00

Yes, the holiday break is over, and all excuses about "being away from the internet" or "being too sleepy/full/hung over to make my picks" are now invalid. 2011 is here, the Canadian Juniors are poised for a semi-final game against the USA, and the VWXYnot Hockey Pool standings have made their way over here this week.

Overall standings for the past three weeks. I'm not winning.

Maintaining a convincing lead is Lavaland, even though week 13 wasn't exactly a stellar performance (tied fifth or second-last for the week, depending on how you look at it). Bob has catapulted from fifth to third, and I've clambered up into second overall. There's a real dogfight for third through fifth developing, with Bob, Chall and ScientistMother separated by only four points.

Looking over these three weeks of results, I'm also giving myself a "hard charger" award for the steepest slope. Hey, it's my blog, I can do what I like.

At the bottom end of the standings, Gerty-Z's excellent week has meant a jump from seventh into sixth, while Cath went in the opposite direction. Thomas is still bringing up the rear, although trending in the right direction.

Points gained in week 13, as ugly blue bars.

The biggest weekly points total goes to Bob with a whopping 42. Gerty-Z also had a convincing week with 38, and I was third with 36. Thomas has improved a bit, Lavaland had an uncharacteristically poor week, and Chall and Cath are tied for the limpest performance.

So there you go. I apologize for the ugly graphs, but the deadly interaction between Excel, PowerPoint and Blogger is at least partly to blame.

Onward to week 14!

'Tis the Season

2010-12-24T17:22:00.003-05:00

Obligatory long-exposure Christmas Tree photo, 2010 version.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

More Cross-Posty Goodness

2010-12-15T15:43:00.004-05:00

Here's a little ~~lazy blogging~~ cross-posting: I've just put up a new post at yet another of my haunts, the Life Science Tools of the Trade blog. Actually, "haunt" is a good term, because I took it over from various other bloggers, all of whom have since disappeared. I swear I don't know where the bodies are hidden, really.

Over there, I'm whingeing again [So, going with your strengths then, are you? - Ed.] about the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information's venerable PubMed literature search engine, and how maybe, just maybe, Google Scholar is a better bet. Dear old PubMed is a tool that many (most? all?) scientists, at least those of a biomedical bent, are very used to using to find published articles. Unlike Google, it sits on top of a curated, and keyword-indexed, collection of relevant literature. Also unlike Google, it is completely unable to search inside articles using free text queries, and appears to occasionally be somewhat less than adept at finding things.

The post is here: PubMedically failing.

Genome Science and William Shakespeare

2010-12-11T22:49:00.004-05:00

Appearing together, at the Occam's Typewriter Irregulars blog.

Scoot on over and have a look, if you like. And while you're there, feel free to check out the rest of the blogs. Occam's Typewriter, brand spankin' new, "the sharpest blogging network in the box".

2010, in the words of the proprietor.

2010-12-09T12:41:00.006-05:00

With a tip of the chapeau to Cath over at VWXYnot, from whom I've borrowed the idea, here's a quick recap of the Ricardiblog for 2010. The first sentence of the first post from each month.

It's a pretty miserable collection, truth be told, with three months missing entirely (although, in a strangely recursive way, we could put "With a tip of the chapeau to Cath over at VWXYnot..." in as the first one for December, I suppose). A New Year's resolution for 2010 suggests itself - try to be a bit more consistent with posting. Although I did fire off half a dozen at Life Science Tools of the Trade, and I will soon be posting sporadically at another, as yet undisclosed, location. Stay tuned.

Anyway, here we go, sorry set of sentences though it is:

January: "Happy New Year, to anyone who might still be reading."

February: "Just a quick guerilla post to point anyone who might be reading at a worthy initiative - the Scientia Pro Publica blog carnival, which as I understand it is a regular initiative to bring interesting science to the attention of the general public."

March: "Time to brag a little."

April: Um, er, apparently I didn't post anything in April.

May: "A post?"

June: "The recent G20 summit in Toronto, truth be told, was only a minor inconvenience to me."

July: "I'm excited." [Ok, this is the first sentence of July - the first post per se consisted only of a photograph.]

August: "Saturday." [Hm. That's not really a sentence is it? The next one is the much more long-winded "A much earlier mandatory photography meeting than the previous day, and a quick brief for today's assignment - shots in the paddocks, the areas where the race cars live and are worked on, when they're not on-track."]

September: Argh, didn't post anything in this month either.

October: "There is a protest brewing, if I can mix metaphors so early in this post."

November: "One by one they left behind the bright fields of innocence and stepped into the darkness of experience." [I didn't write this, but it's a sentence. And there were no other posts in November to draw from.]

December: Um, er, I'll get back to you on that.

November 11, 2010 - Lest We Forget.

2010-11-10T21:01:00.004-05:00

One by one they left behind the bright fields of innocence and stepped into the darkness of experience.
Their brave departures were discrete and humble.

Some do not return. Their absence is as big as sorrow, as wide as grief.

[Click image for larger. Text and images from the Ontario Veterans' Memorial.]

2010 Ricardipus Racing Awards

2010-10-31T15:15:00.013-04:00

Once again, in what is becoming an annual tradition around here, I give you:

The Third Annual Ricardipus Racing Awards!

[cue sounds of crickets chiriping]

Well, these may not be as exciting as the official series awards, but in late August I again trekked out to Mosport International Raceway for the 2010 edition of the American Le Mans Series race weekend, the Mobil 1 Grand Prix of Mosport. History will record that the race was won by a rather speedy Porsche RS Spyder, at the hands of previous Mosport Trans-Am winner Klaus Graf and 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans champion Romain Dumas, on loan from the factory Audi team, more or less.

But, once again, the Ricardipus awards are emphatically not about the race winners - they're about silly things not related in any way to the podium.

So - here we go:

Loudest Vehicle: #3 and #4 Chevrolet Corvette C6.R (tie). The two 'vettes rumbled their way to a win in this category, for the third year running. Nothing else came close, although the Lotus and one of the Porsches from the World Challenge race earlier in the year would have given them a run for their money.

The noisy end of the Corvette.

Friendliest Drivers: Patrón Highcroft Racing - Simon Pagenaud, Marino Franchitti, David Brabham. Truth be told, most ALMS drivers are pretty friendly, but this crew just edged the competition slightly (Romain Dumas from the Cytosport team losing a point or two for talking on his phone a lot). Pagenaud was a co-winner of last year's "Most Cheerful-Looking Driver" award, so this is kind of a double for him. Honourable mention to Paul, Lord Drayson for being generally friendly, cheerful and a lot more available than your average member of the British Peerage.

Brabham (foreground) also wins for "silliest sunglasses", in a tie with series rookie Frankie Montecalvo.

Best Livery Featuring Teeth and Mermaids: Green Earth Team Gunnar. In a surprising development, there was only one entrant in this class, which replaces last year's "Nicest Paint Highlights" category, ably taken then by Melanie Snow's pink-detailed Porsche.

It's also got seashells and fish on it.

Silliest Doors: Drayson Racing Lola B09/60. Just edging out last year's winner, the attractively re-painted Dyson Racing Lola (see below), the Draysonmobile wins by virtue of its reflective silver window coatings - attractive, but undeniably silly.

Also the unofficial winner in the "looks like a space-ship" category.

Special Award: Best-looking Car That Tested on Friday, Crashed on Saturday, and Didn't Race on Sunday: #61 Risi Competizione Ferrari 430GT. Last year, they managed to crash the sister #62 in qualifying, but started the race after an all-night rebuild. This year, although the #62 raced, they weren't able to put Humpty Dumpty (below) back together again in time.

Fun trivia - the driver who crashed this car was Pierre Kaffer, who had trouble with the same turn in a Porsche two years earlier.

And, finally:

Special Award (Public Relations and Marketing category): Best Job of Re-Painting a Car in a Popular "Classic" Livery to Avoid Association with a Company that Just Flooded the Gulf of Mexico With Crude Oil: Dyson Racing. Last year's green-and-white BP livery mysteriously disappeared earlier in the season, in favour of the perennially-popular Castrol colours. The cognoscenti were not fooled - Castrol is, of course, a BP brand.

Great-looking vehicle, in any colour scheme.

So there you go. I'm slightly heartened by these awards being only marginally sillier than the ALMS's "Tightest Firesuit" and "Mr. Modesty" awards, which you can read about here. And, as always, you can see more of the race weekend by heading over to Flickr for the full set of photos.

See also:

2009 edition, featuring loud Corvettes, Gil de Ferran driving through the grass, and pink details on a Porsche.
2008 edition, with a smiley Aston Martin, some horrid day-glo yellow paint highlights, a Ferrari hiding behind a post, and a slightly bent Porsche.

Boo.

2010-10-30T21:03:00.003-04:00

Happy Hallowe'en, everyone.

Science Is Vital - For, as they say, The Win.

2010-10-27T19:51:00.004-04:00

And so the rally, the lobby of the British Parliament, the Petition (with over 33,000 signatures at the time of delivery to 10 Downing Street) and most importantly, the news that science funding in the UK will not be cut by the threatened 25%, but is instead frozen for the next few years, have come and gone. A success by any measure.

Large amounts of media coverage, reports from those "on the ground", and associated commentary, are nicely aggregated on the Science Is Vital website, right here.

And, those of you who were were able to sign the petition received a nice thank-you note from Science Is Vital Commander-in-Chief Dr. Jennifer Rohn, the text of which I will quote here for the benefit of the rest of us (the petition being sensibly limited to signatories resident in the UK). Thanks to Aled for passing this along - he signed it, have you? There's still time.

(Any errors in the following are my fault as a result of stripping truly mammoth amounts of html formatting out of the original email. Honestly, I've never seen so many <span> tags in my life.)

Dear Supporters,

The Chancellor revealed the results of the government's Spending Review yesterday. The science research budget has been frozen. This means that we will be spending 10% less on research in 2014/15 than we are today. It could have been far, far worse.

We’re encouraged that the government has listened to the economic arguments showing that science is vital. It is a difficult time for this country, but protecting science will result in a better future for the UK.

There is no controlled experiment, a world in which the Science Is Vital campaign did not exist, a world where nobody raised their voices to defend UK science. And we know that some people in high places believed in the economic importance of science independently of us. But I think that we can all take at least some credit for this result. Our central message was powerful, and it seems to have been heard and heeded:

33,000 names on a signature delivered to Downing Street, gathered in only 3 weeks
2000+ (police estimate) scientists and their supporters demonstrating outside the Treasury
100s of articles, radio interviews and TV films in national and international media
a 45-minute meeting with Science Minister David Willetts to discuss the issues
a question raised in Prime Minister’s Questions
a packed lobby in Parliament, including Prof. Adrian Smith, sent by Vince Cable to report back
110 MPs from all main parties signing our Early Day Motion

All of you had a part to play in these achievements. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks, especially those who put in a little extra: the marshals and first-aiders at the rally, those of you who volunteered their time to design posters and artwork, to make placards, to nominate slogans, who donated the videos, photos and comments to enhance our website, or sent us links to important pieces of evidence for the economic case; who travelled from far away to attend the rally or the lobby; who donated money to the cause; who helped spread the word by emailing their departments or deans or student unions, or took the time to explain the issues to friends and neighbours who then went on to sign the petition or write to their MPs – the list goes on. It just goes to show how powerful people can be when many act as one.

UK science is still not entirely safe. While we have made cuts to science, our competitors in the US and Germany are increasing their investment – there is still a risk of a brain drain. Reforms to university funding, severe pressure on capital projects and the detail of the allocation of the budget are all still to come. The UK science community must weather this.

Science is Vital. As a campaign we’re going to keep on fighting for the interests of science through these tough times of cuts and change. With your permission we’ll occasionally email you with updates and requests for help. But for now on behalf of the entire Science Is Vital team: thank you once again for your support, and for helping to make a difference.

With best wishes,
Jenny Rohn

If you'd like to contact Science Is Vital, contact them here:

Science Is Vital Campaign
c/o CaSE, Gordon House
29 Gordon Square
London, England WC1H 0PP

And one more thing... all that saving of Science funding ain't cheap, so if you'd like to contribute, I'm sure the good folks at the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) would love to hear from you:

Thank you to everyone who contributed to cover our campaign and rally costs. The response has been great. Please click here if you would like to support CaSE (Campaign for Science and Engineering).

All of the above is Copyright © 2010 Science Is Vital Campaign, All rights reserved. Technically, I didn't ask for permission, but if the SciVit folks are upset I'm sure they'll let me know.

Cross-posted at Life Science Tools of the Trade.

Science IS Vital

2010-10-01T15:10:00.001-04:00

There is a protest brewing, if I can mix metaphors so early in this post.

Among all the technical widgetry, complex protocols and other knick-knacks that we all use as our daily "Tools of the Trade" (including, I cheerfully admit, the occasional blog-friendly computer), there is one that is the Great Enabler, the Sine Qua Non of experimental research:

Money.

All research scientists spend copious amounts of time applying for it, securing it, agonizing over how best to spend it, and justifying what they did with it. All of us, either directly or through various intermediate agencies, obtain it from taxpayer-funded sources. All of us are dependent on government policies to continue to facilitate this flow of funds, and those policies, in turn, depend on public opinion. Science, politics, money - they're all connected. And in the United Kingdom, that connection is now being rather severely strained.

I am not, I think, the person best equipped to summarize the recent flood of rhetoric resulting from UK politician Vince Cable's remarks about cutting research funding. For one thing, I'm not located in Britain (although I am a British citizen, with a long-expired passport to prove it); for another, it's all been collated for us on the rather informative Science Is Vital website. Let's just say that there are many persuasive arguments why restricting basic research funding in this way is a bad idea: a prominent editor of Nature makes some of them in this slightly whimsical letter, and many more are listed here.

The suggestion that the UK cut science funding dramatically, and focus only on research with immediate commercial applications (at the expense of longer-term projects, and fortuitous discoveries), has galvanized the British scientific community. The result? A call to arms, a petition to sign, currently with over 9,000 signatures, a rally in London on October the 9th at 2:00 PM, and a Parliamentary lobbying session on the 12th. A whole lot of somebodies have been hard at work at this - you can find some of them, and more background information, here. Particularly impressive is the engagement of a number of prominent research institutions and organizations, and some fairly weighty scientific names, including apparently over 25 Fellows of the Royal Society. All of this is supported by a letter-writing campaign, an astonishingly active Twitter feed, and far too many supportive blogposts and news articles for me to even attempt to link them here.

So - if you're in the UK and at all sympathetic, why not start with signing the petition? Don't bother if you're located elsewhere in the world - to maximize impact, it's restricted (by postal code) to domestic signatories only. Fair enough. Then think about writing your MP, attending the rally, and signing up for the lobbying session.

If you're elsewhere, as I am, you could always do your part on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever on the web you hang your virtual hat. Your British colleagues, I am certain, will thank you.

Honda Indy Toronto Diary - Sunday. Finally.

2010-08-15T21:30:00.005-04:00

Yes, I know that the Honda Indy Toronto race was a month ago. It now seems longer, with all that's gone on since - not the least of which was sifting through 1,400 or so photos. Nevertheless, here's the final installment of my not-quite-realtime updates. Let's just call it "asynchronous communication", and move on, shall we?

If I may quote from the above link:

A sender can wait arbitrarily long between transmissions and the receiver must be ready to receive data when it arrives.

Sounds a bit like this blog, doesn't it?

Anyway - on to race day, Sunday, the Main Event.

Another early-morning photography meeting, but a different mood - this was Race Day. Today we had the head of Security give us a few words on access and staying safe. Today, we learned about the all-important "Race Mode" - during the marquee IndyCar and supporting Indy Lights races, there would no longer be pit lane access for any save a very limited number of photographers (among whose number I was naturally not counted - not that I'd been expecting it, being new to this, and not working for a major newswire, network, print publication, or the series). Today, there was a more serious feeling hanging in the air. For the professionals in the room, this day is bread and butter - good shots mean photo credits and payments today, tomorrow, and just maybe a little beyond.

And today, I was back in the all-important photo bib again - at least, one shared between three of us. We quickly sketched out a schedule so that I could shoot some of the Castrol Canadian Touring Car race from trackside, while the others could work different aspects of the day's events. The rule is clear - no bib, no access to the track.

But first - the day's assignment. Documenting, for the race organizers, every single booth in "Thunder Alley" the infield vendor, fan activity and hospitality area. I won't torment you with these 150 or so photographs, but I will say that as an assignment, it was dead simple. Immobile booths in bright sunshine. Snappity-snap, done. Although I actually made several swings through it at different times during the day, to ensure that I got everything.

And then - on to the Touring Cars. I had a ton of fun shooting the race and the ensuing victory celebrations, including overall winner Sasha Anis getting a firesuit full of champagne, courtesy of his second- and third-place colleagues.

Hanging around for the Indy Lights pre-race activities turned out to be worthwhile, with a combined US-Canadian military honour guard, the presentation of an oversized charity cheque to the last race's pole winner, and new Saga lead singer Rob Moratti belting out the anthems.

Honestly, I had no idea they'd changed singers. He did a fine job.

And then - on to the IndyCar race. Despite some early frustrations, I did manage to get trackside for the later stages, waiting until the victory lap and then scampering over to Winner's Circle for the confetti, the fist pumping, the hugs and handshakes and champagne spray.

For the record, the aptly-named Will Power won, and after giving his car a big smooch, leaped up on top of it for the sponsor-logo-laden photo op of the day - that fist pump, with the first inklings of a confetti-cannon shower starting behind him, the ESPN TV crew nearby to document it all for broadcast. Magic moments indeed.

And then, back to the Media Centre again - but this time, stopping off trackside for some shots just for me. I'd been waiting all weekend for the Trans-Am race, and, lurking inside a tight little photo hole on the inside of turn 1, I managed to catch the shot of the weekend - Blaise Csida's Corvette, blowing flames as it ripped around the corner. By then, most of the crowd had left, just a few of us quietly cheering on the die-hards in their big V8 muscle cars.

And so back to the Media Centre, for the final quick edits, photo submission, handshakes all around, and home, the weekend lingering in a heap of 1,408 photographs, a pair of aching feet, a slight ringing in the right ear (thanks, Trans-Am drivers!), and some very, very good memories.

Weekend stats:
- 1,408 photographs, 191 "keepers" (13.5%, or about one in 7.5)
- maximum focal length 71.5 mm, minimum 14.3 mm
- minimum shutter speed 1/2,000th sec.
- one IndyCar driver posing because I asked
- two drunken fans posing even though I didn't ask
- five racing series (IndyCar, Indy Lights, World Challenge, Trans-Am, Canadian Touring Car)
- photos of three podium ceremonies, one pre-race ceremony, countless catch fences
- photos taken from at least five grandstands, five photo holes, two public hospitality areas, several paddocks, and one pre-race false grid
- two sore feet
- one ringing ear

Honda Indy Toronto Diary - Saturday

2010-08-05T15:14:00.005-04:00

Saturday.

A much earlier mandatory photography meeting than the previous day, and a quick brief for today's assignment - shots in the paddocks, the areas where the race cars live and are worked on, when they're not on-track. As my previous paddock shots from various events at Mosport International Raceway were apparently part of the reason I was offered this gig in the first place, this seemed like a fair enough request. And I like looking at race cars up close.

But first... this morning, for the first time, the coveted numbered bibs were distributed - my ticket to trackside shooting, beyond the crowd control fence, and through the "holes" cut in the safety fencing, which, last year and from the public areas, looked like this:

Now, all good things don't last, and in fact my bib had to be returned fairly quickly so that someone else could use it - frustrating, since I had been looking forward to getting trackside for the World Challenge sportscar race later in the day. Sadly, it was not to be... but at least I did squeeze off a few shots of the Firestone Indy Lights practice session in the morning, including this one of British driver Pippa Mann, who would ultimately finish eighth in the race despite suffering a broken hand earlier in the weekend.

And from there, off to the paddocks, keeping in touch sporadically with team leader John via text message, for an enjoyable day of digging around for shots of fans enjoying themselves, and mechanics working on cars. On the way, I came across Indy Lights driver J.K. Vernay, who would go on to win Sunday's race.

The rest of the day involved diverse activities such as convincing Armed Forces personnel to pose with IndyCar driver Milka Duno - not so difficult, as it turned out,

chasing various Canadian Tire NASCAR teams around,

being distracted by the entertainment in the Bud Zone (and completely missing the NASCAR pre-race activities as a result - in my defence, I just blanked on the fact that there were two stages on that side of the track, one of which was for the podium ceremonies, the other being occupied by a rock band and copious numbers of Budweiser employees),

and finally shooting the NASCAR post-race ceremonies, as practice for the headliner, Sunday's IndyCar race. Quebec native Andrew Ranger won, in a Dodge, and managed a nice podium appearance despite somebody having put the chequered flag on the stick upside-down.

And then, back to the Media Centre for a frenzy of editing and submitting photos, and to realize that in my other assignments, namely shooting the NASCAR pre-race (which I missed), and getting the all-important "attractive waitress wearing a sponsor's uniform, pouring delicious sponsor products for happy fans as a race car covered in sponsor logos passes a sponsor billboard in the background" shot, I had, essentially, failed miserably.

So - a day of ups and downs, and building excitement for the coming main event. More, as usual, in the Saturday set.

Honda Indy Toronto Diary - Friday

2010-07-28T20:13:00.006-04:00

So... after a night of poor sleep, waking up repeatedly in nervous anticipation (yes, really - I don't think this has happened since I was a young boy, awaiting Santa Claus), I drove down to Toronto's Exhibition Place at an unreasonable hour of the morning. There, I spotted my team leader John, standing on a corner waiting for a few other photographers to show up.

So - with minor faffling around, I parked in the oh-so-desirable underground parking, and headed back out to meet John. From there, we made our way to the Allstream Centre (née Automotive Building), site of the media centre, photographers' room, morning briefing, and copious amounts of bottled water and pop. No coffee, but fair enough - stocking the media centre with coffee would likely bankrupt the event.

A safety meeting, some location assignments, and off we went - sadly lacking the numbered photographer's "bib" that allows trackside access, but still with carte blanche (provided by my Media Pass) to investigate all the paddocks, grandstands, and most importantly, pit lane. This access would change dramatically later in the weekend - but more of that in future posts.

The first order of business - a press conference with popular and occasionally controversial IndyCar driver Danica Patrick:

I must say, having seen her up close and personal, she (a) is very well spoken, (b) is very small, (c) is tremendously photogenic, even early in the morning in a bland meeting room, and (d) showed a real flash of interest and enthusiasm in answering a question about the relative difficulty in parking an IndyCar as compared with a NASCAR stock car. Too bad the journalist asking the question made some ridiculous comment about teaching his sister to park. Still, she acquitted herself with grace, leaving the newbies in the crowd (myself included) a little star-struck.

Right - on out the door. I snapped a few shots on the way to my assignment, through the fencing on Lakeshore Boulevard, a.k.a. the back straight:

When you have no "photo bib", you have to just deal with the fences. And, truth be told, I wouldn't have wanted to be much closer, as IndyCars traverse this part of the track at about 270 kph.

The assignment for the day was to try to capture fans having fun. I did, I think, an ok job of this, but the shot of the day for me was this one of IndyCar driver (and eventual third-place finisher) Ryan Hunter-Reay. Just after I snapped some shots of him signing autographs, he headed back to his team trailer and absolutely lit the paddock up with his smile. The sunlight co-operated, and I wound up with this shot:

For the rest of the day, I tried to take other "fan shots", but found a little time to photograph the SCCA Pro Racing World Challenge (re-branded for the weekend as the "Acura Sports Car Challenge") drivers in a practice session. Although I could only shoot from pit lane, rather than through the trackside photo holes, I got a few shots that I'm happy with. Here's a rather pretty Porsche Cayman S, skipping into pit lane:

And that was that. Back to the media centre for frantic editing and submission of my photos to my team leader John, who passed the "keepers" on to the race organizers and their PR company, along with hundreds of others from my fellow team members. More photographs, if you can bear to look at them, in the Friday set.

Honda Indy Toronto Diary - pre-race events

2010-07-24T17:21:00.011-04:00

So, here I am, a week later on and I'm finally organized enough to write something about the amazing weekend I spent at the Honda Indy Toronto, the annual dust-up on a temporary street circuit in and around Toronto's waterfront Exhibition Place. Last year, I bought a general admission ticket for the Friday practice day and acquainted myself with a track I'd only been to once before, in 1990. That time, I had a grandstand seat, it poured with rain and was miserably cold, and Al Unser Jr. won. Last year, it was hot, dry, and I had a happy day exploring photo opportunities around the track while making sure I didn't inadvertently trip into any restricted areas.

This year, the game changed entirely.

This year, I was recruited onto the volunteer photo corps for the event, by a contact who had seen my 2009 photos on Flickr, and was impressed enough to offer me the gig. This year, I spent all three days on site, plus some shooting of pre-race promotional events. Twelve hour days, plus staying up into the early hours editing photos "for fun", endless slogging around the track, buckets of sunscreen, access to the media centre, shooting assignments, a shot list to be filled - a very, very different experience from my usual "buy a ticket, show up and shoot whatever I like" approach that I've applied time and time again at Mosport.

I have in mind to write a few posts - not a diary, exactly, since it's taken me over a week to get to this, but more a chronicle for me (and you, if you care) of what turned out to be a fairly gruelling, but absolutely enjoyable, gig.

Let's start off with a few "keeper" shots from the pre-race activities at Yonge-Dundas Square, on Tuesday and Wednesday before the race weekend. An easy lunchtime skip over from work, and a location I shot at last year as well. On Tuesday, Canadian favourite driver Paul Tracy was on hand to mingle with the crowd, sign a few autographs, and oversee the Honda Pit Stop Challenge, which pitted members of the media against each other in a tire-changing competition:

The team from local radio station Fan 590 won, in case you were wondering:

Wednesday's big news was the unveiling of the brand-new Hot Wheels livery for the Fazzt Race Team entry of another Canadian favourite, Alex Tagliani. Characteristically photogenic, wearing his new race suit, shades and a blinding smile, Tags wowed the fans, posed with the kids, and even engaged in a protracted radio-controlled car duel with one young fan.

Thursday's call was to sneak down to a business-district watering hole, the Duke of Devon, for an all-Scottish photo-op between super-charismatic driver Dario Franchitti and some members of Celtic FC, who happened to be in town for an exhibition game. Quite a scrum, involving lots of photos of pieces of TV cameras, microphones, photographers' heads, and the occasional lunchtime patron, but at least I got a couple of interview shots, and a not-too-bad one of the jersey handoff.

That's team manager Neil Lennon in the middle, along with captain Scott Brown.

But - the big event was yet to come. That will be another post, or perhaps two. In the meantime, if you like this kind of thing, there are more photos in my Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Flickr sets.

Photow00t, part II

2010-07-09T20:59:00.006-04:00

I'm excited.

Next week begins the run-up to the 2010 edition of the Honda Indy Toronto, a weekend racing event on the grounds of Exhibition Place. I went last year, for the first time since 1990, and had a blast wandering around on a general admission ticket, taking lots of photos as you might expect. This year, I would have been tempted to do the same, especially since Friday admission is now free.

But - I won't have to. Because this year I am an official member of the Volunteer Photo Corps, meaning full access all three days, as a photographer credentialed by the event's promoter. Fantastic! Paddock access, trackside, media centre - you name it.

Now, all of this comes with expectations, of course - I will not be free to roam. There are location assignments. There is a shot list that needs to be filled.

It'll be very different from my usual "shoot five hundred photos that I like and sort out the good ones later" approach. There will be latitude to be creative, to be sure, but this will be more like photo-journalism - get the required shots, get them fast, compose them in the camera as close as possible to how they're going to finally look, because there won't be time for editing, and get photos that tell the story. A whole new kind of challenge, and it will be fun.

Now, all I have to do before next Friday is make sure I have the shot list, a spotter's guide, a fully charged camera battery and a pocket full of empty memory cards and earplugs, and I'm all set. A new camera wouldn't hurt either, but that just ain't gonna happen unfortunately.

Watch the race on TV - you might even see me. 12:30 PM Eastern, Sunday the 18th, on ABC.

Happy Canada Day!

2010-07-01T10:41:00.001-04:00

Taken in Maple, Ontario, appropriately enough.

G20

2010-06-29T18:41:00.005-04:00

A bunch of excellent officers, keeping my street corner safe.

The recent G20 summit in Toronto, truth be told, was only a minor inconvenience to me. Which makes me lucky.

However - there has been a lot of idle chatter about the police response to protests, with various discussions of whether the police arrested the right, or wrong, people, how they responded, and whether Human Rights(TM) were violated.

I am completely uninterested in being drawn into these debates. However, let me just throw out a few personal observations for you:

Every police officer I saw was armed with (at least) a handgun, and a taser. Nobody was shot, and nobody (to my knowledge) was tasered. Nobody died. This seems a sharp contrast to numerous local business owners and innocent citizens from the Queen St. West area, whose property was damaged or destroyed.
All the protests that police are widely shown to be rushing, disrupting, and attempting to shut down - were in illegal areas. There was a designated area for peaceful protests, which to the best of my knowledge was not used. At all. Even by "peaceful" protesters.
The smashing, looting, and burning that ocurred on Saturday and in small part on Sunday, was propagated by people hiding inside "peaceful" protests. Given this, doesn't it make sense that the police broke up such supposedly peaceful protests when they occurred on Sunday?
If you're going to illegally block downtown streets, providing a haven for hooligans to hide in your ranks, don't you think the police might decide that the best course of action for public safety would be to break up your little soirée?
If you're going to defy riot police, shouldn't you expect to be arrested? Just a little thought.
On Monday, the day after the G20, there was a legitimate, peaceful protest outside Toronto Police headquarters on College Street. Nothing was broken. Nobody was hurt. Kudos to the protesters, and to the police.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Toronto Police, Ontario Provincial Police, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and various other police forces, Fire Departments, and EMT services - well done, all of you. You did a sterling job.

Riffing

2010-05-15T16:11:00.003-04:00

A post? Well, kind of. But as a result of a post over at Naturally Selected, by science journalist, editorial-type, erstwhile bemused postdoctoral fellow, former LabRat, and occasional Ricardiblog reader RPG, I came across a rather interesting article about the rate (or guesses at it, anyway), of non-paternity in western society.

You can read my take (i.e., "shameless stealing of RPG's idea and mild analysis thereof") on this at my other blog.

In other news: I am now Twittered. As yet, I have very little concept of why.

And more, and more, and more.

2010-03-27T12:05:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since my last "post featuring silly numbers of car photos", so here you go. Those bored stiff by this sort of thing, feel free to look away.

I've taken some shots at a couple of recent events - first, the Canadian Motorsports Expo, back on an unseasonably warm day in late January, and then at the annual Canadian International AutoShow in February.

The Motorsports Expo was rather modest in size, and was held at the somewhat grandly named International Centre, out near Toronto airport. The stars of the show were found at a booth celebrating the 50th anniversary of Mosport International Raceway, another of my favourite photographic haunts. First off, a stunning, but never terribly successful, Panoz LMP-1 Roadster S. Unusually for this kind of car, it had a front-mounted engine.

The other real stunner at this show was a Frissbee KR4 Can-Am car. From the last gasp of Can-Am in 1986, long after its glory days were over, this is basically a Lola T400 Formula 1 chassis with full bodywork and a Chevy engine in the back. Up-and-coming driver Paul Tracy would win the last ever SCCA Can-Am race in this car, at Mosport.

At the AutoShow, the usual bombardment of generic-looking new models was in evidence, along with a disappointing lack of exotics. But there were a few, including the astonishing presence of a Ferrari 599XX, the biggest, baddest, craziest front-engined sports racer the Scuderia has ever built. Unfortunately, it was hidden in a back corner behind a concrete post, but here it is anyway.

There was plenty more to look at, but the highlight had to be a tribute to motorsports legend Carroll Shelby, including some cars that are real legends, such as this rather pretty Shelby Cobra Daytona coupe, one of only six ever built.

And, of course, among the selection of stunning Cobras, Mustangs and the like, a few Ford GT40 race cars, including this absolute beauty, memorably crashed by one Mario Andretti at the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans. Its sister car won the race, prompting driver Dan Gurney to spray the assembled multitude with champagne, thus starting a new racing tradition.

So there you go... more cars, more photos, more hours on Photoshop. And more Motorsports and AutoShow photos over at Flickr, as usual.

DNA Sequencing, Not Really Explained (with pictures)

2010-03-23T22:22:00.005-04:00

For fun, and because we needed a few shots for some publicity materials, I hauled the Sony Monster in to the lab last week. Apart from a few arty shots of my colleagues, which I won't post here, I spent most of the time taking photos of interesting equipment, at strange angles. As one does. And then processing the heck out of them, a task made easier, more enjoyable, and much, much faster by the combined virtues of (a) a new laptop with Intel Core i7 processors (what?), and (b) an upgrade to Photoshop CS4, all the way from the now-stodgy-looking CS2.

Honestly, I know what it all does, really.

Anyway, in lieu of a "real" blog post full of pithy and insightful commentary (yes, yes, I know, that's definitely not what you've come to expect here, is it?), I give you: a quick guide to some of the lab widgets. In one part. With captions. Do feel free to clickety-click on the photos, if you'd like to see them a little bit larger.

Here's part of the lab - for reference, the whole operation is about 15 times the size of this aisle:

Right. First, we have an Applied Biosystems 9700 thermocycler, essentially a programmable machine that changes the temperature of teeny, tiny test tubes in a predictable way. Its primary use is for taking vanishingly small amounts of DNA, and making "carbon copies" of them via the famous, Nobel-Prize-Winning technique known as the Polymerase Chain Reaction. One application is "cycle sequencing", by which we take a piece of DNA and make copies of it in such a way that we can figure out its "genetic code" of those (warning - hackneyed description alert!) "building blocks of life", the nucleotide bases A, C, G and T.

Now, a pair of mighty Beckman Coulter BioMek NXP robots, used for pipetting 96 tiny volumes of liquid at a time:

One thing we use those for is to "clean up" DNA sequencing reactions that come out of the aforementioned thermocyclers. These buffed, polished and waxed reactions then get loaded into an instrument that separates each reaction down a teeny, tiny, skinny little capillary filled with a gel substance. Count carefully, there really are 96 of them:

This is fabulous technology, and similar in many respects to the methods used to complete the Human Genome Project. Nowadays, we have higher-throughput instruments, that generate DNA sequence at rates approaching a million times faster, such as this rather unprepossessing looking Applied Biosystems SOLiD (version "3 plus", in case you were wondering):

Yes, it really is big, and yes, it really does have its own computer nodes underneath it - the panels are off to allow some of the heat to escape.

So there you go, the cook's tour around a part of the lab, conveniently located across the hall from my office, just far enough away that the people who work in it don't have to worry about me actually pressing any buttons or tripping over anything. The sharp-eyed among you will also notice that in the first photo, everybody was clearly hiding from me. I like to believe it was because I was holding a camera, but you never know.

Photow00t!

2010-03-01T19:07:00.006-05:00

Time to brag a little.

Despite taking hundreds and hundreds of photographs of cars, some of which I'm very proud of, it turns out that the very first photograph I've licensed for commercial use is of a downtown building.

This building, in fact:

Dominion Securities Building, with blurry person.

That photo will appear, in due course, in a fine publication about Canadian Business and the Law - at least, I presume it will, since today they sent me the cheque. Quite by coincidence, as yesterday I emailed the person who solicited it in the first place, finding that her website and email address have since disappeared off the face of the internet.

Now, that's not the first photo I've licensed - in a sense, I've granted various people "licenses" of one sort or another to use my photos in various places, such as NowPublic, Schmap, or in school or university projects. And the first written license was between myself and a company that employs a fairly regular reader of this blog, to use a couple of photos on some promotional literature. Those, I exchanged for a very spiffy iPod.

Some artistic DNA sequences.

Some DNA sequencers, last year.

But today's cheque - well, that seems like some kind of milestone. A sale! A palpable sale!

Now, I just need to shove the guilt aside, and put the fee towards the "get Richard a new DSLR camera" fund, instead of doing something useful with it, like buying retirement savings, or putting it in the kids' education fund, or something.

Sigh.

Scientia Pro Publica

2010-02-19T10:15:00.002-05:00

Just a quick guerilla post to point anyone who might be reading at a worthy initiative - the Scientia Pro Publica blog carnival, which as I understand it is a regular initiative to bring interesting science to the attention of the general public.

I’ll let Stephen Curry, the host of this edition, fill you in on the details. More can be found at this post from his blog, Reciprocal Space, including a link to the submission form. Here’s Stephen…

“…if you’ve read or written a blogpost about science, nature or medicine in the last couple of weeks that you think might enchant or enthrall a public audience, please think about submitting it to the carnival.”

The submission form has more detail on the general idea behind Scientia:

The purpose of this blog carnival is simple: to provide a large public platform that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing published within the previous month in the blogosphere. This means the host should be able to understand what you’ve written. If the host can’t understand it, neither will the public. Acceptable submissions include “translations” of scientific papers, original essays about a scientific topic or theme, and reviews of books about science. Other submissions may or may not be accepted at the current host’s discretion. Topics range from basic to applied sciences; from physics, chemistry and biology to pharmacology and medicine. Scientia is published on the first and third Monday of each month, and of course, because this is a traveling blog carnival, it is seeking hosts.

Submissions will be published on Monday, March 1, so you’ve got a little time to either write something, or snag a post from the last couple of weeks or so. Of course, since it’s ongoing, you can contribute as often, or as infrequently, as you like.

Go on, you know you want to.

Scholarly Googles, foibles and FAILs

2010-01-04T11:15:00.007-05:00

Martin Fenner's recent blog post about ORCID, a way of uniquely identifying research scientists (or, I suppose, in principle, just about anybody) in databases, got me thinking a little about how this might solve some of my own problems. Briefly, as I understand it, ORCID will allow easier identification of published papers in the scientific literature and attribution (correctly, one hopes) to individual authors. It promises to solve a whole host of problems, including differentiating between researchers with identical names (just try looking up papers by "A. Wong", or "J. Smith" - go on, I dare you), or the same person publishing under different names (like a married name, for example).

One example where this might be useful is when granting agencies want to measure the "impact" of the funding dollars they've put into a project. And, in science, the most frequent measure of impact is the publication. Scientist "X" has a grant from the Big Granting Agency, so let's find out how many papers Scientist X has published, count them up, and report that number. Easy, right?

Not necessarily.

Conventional search engines such as PubMed (for the biomedical sciences, which is the area I inhabit) are easy enough to search, but are keyed to a limited number of descriptive terms (keywords, author names, and the like). And PubMed doesn't handle the problems identified above (one name, many people, or one person, multiple names) at all, as far as I can tell. Searching PubMed using "R. Wintle" finds a bunch of publications that I didn't write; by contrast, using "R.F. Wintle" misses one that I did. For people with more common names and/or a lot more publications, sifting through the results for relevant ones becomes a real chore. PubMed, too, only deals with biomedical papers - so if I'd happened to publish some interesting algorithm in a Math journal (oh, go on - it could happen), that would also be missed by both search strategies.

But it gets worse. The issues with PubMed (which is, after all, a curated set of publication data - in other words, it contains only "potentially relevant" information) absolutely pale in comparison with the monster that is Google Scholar. Scholar has a major advantage over PubMed, as it indexes each article's full text, just like Google does with web pages. So, looking for acknowledgments in the text ("thanks to Scientist X for helpful advice", or "experiments were performed in the facilities at Big Shiny Lab") becomes trivial. PubMed can't do this. Not at all.

But - and this is where it becomes tricky - Scholar is not smart enough to do date ranges smaller than a year. So if, for example, one wanted to find all publications acknowledging experiments performed at Big Shiny Lab in the first quarter of 2010 - well, you're out of luck. Or should I say, I'm out of luck. And this, unfortunately, is precisely the kind of data I need to gather. Four times a year, as it turns out, for one funding agency. For others, I'm occasionally obliged to do it based on the fiscal year (April through March), or various types of "government" years (July to June, October to September), which Scholar also can't do. PubMed can deal with monthly date ranges no problem, but not with full-text searches.

See the problem? Presented with the question above, I can search Google Scholar for all of 2010, and then manually go through the resultant mess of hits to (a) find those in the first quarter, rather than the other nine months of the year, (b) eliminate the inevitable duplicates, and (c) trim out the remaining chaff caused by spurious keyword hits. This, as you might imagine, is both time-consuming and irritating. ORCID, truth be told, won't solve this particular problem. Nothing will, unless Google smartens up and puts "proper" date tags on its indexed publications and implements a more sophisticated date-limit on searches (which, by the way, I've asked them to do - go on, you can ask too!).

All this leads me to the inevitable conclusion that there must be a better way. Data-mining from indexed publication records is not an easy task, and people much cleverer than I have spent a lot of time (and money) on it. What I'm looking for, of course, is a push-button solution: show me all the publications, in a certain date range, containing relevant references to the Big Shiny Lab, sorted nicely and with all the redundant hits eliminated. If we (and by "we", I mean "somebody") can search the whole web, harmonize identifiers using something like ORCID, index thousands of scientific journals, and dig through it all with sophisticated keyword strategies, surely a little request like that isn't too much to ask?

2010

2010-01-01T11:04:00.006-05:00

A winter scene, on the way home.

Happy New Year, to anyone who might still be reading.

The annual trip down to the other end of Lake Ontario is over, the slew of Christmas presents packed into two vehicles and transported back home, and calm has descended on Chateau Ricardipus for the time being. Back to the Land of Wireless Internet™ again, which makes just about everything easier. Blog posting, obviously - but also looking up trivia ("where on Earth have I seen that movie actor before?" being a favourite question around here), uploading photos to Flickr of course, and even (*shudder*) doing work. From home. On a Statutory Holiday.

Our next, biggest challenge will be re-synchronizing ourselves with the school/work day schedule by Monday morning. No more sleeping late, lounging about in pajamas until mid-day, and snacking throughout. No more staying up to watch movies. Back to the daily routine, which, to be honest, is looking like a nice option after two solid weeks off.

And for the new year? Well, given recent events, I'm hoping for less travel, at least to the US, since border crossing has once again escalated into a complicated gauntlet of security checks, restrictions on what you can and can't be reading/working on/playing with on the plane, and other general Scroogeiness. And just when I'd perfected the "shoes and belt and pockets" security-check dance. No, in the near future I'm hoping for nothing more exotic than a trip to Montréal, for which I will once again take the train, an altogether much more civilized experience than negotiating airport security these days.

Or perhaps somewhere I can drive, since I rather enjoy transporting myself. Armed, as always, with a camera, and the potential for some diversions along the way. Like that last trip home, where I detoured along the Loyalist Parkway for the first time in many, many years, revisiting the Glenora Ferry, which I remember as being a highlight of family trips when I was young. I'm pleased to report that some things, in keeping with the Christmas theme of tradition, never change.

M.V. Glenora, coming to take me home.

All the best for 2010, everyone.

What's the Buzz?

2009-12-02T19:31:00.005-05:00

I may never know, as it turns out.

Famous retired U.S. Air Force pilot, astronaut, second-man-on-the-moon, and occasional assaulter of moon landing naysayers, Buzz Aldrin, was supposed to show up this afternoon for a meet 'n greet session in the lobby of the MaRS Discovery District, which happens to be the building complex where I work. He was in town, apparently, to speak at a conference on the "Business of Ageing", which, not surprisingly, was also going on at MaRS.

He didn't show up.

Well, actually, I have no idea if he showed up for his talk or not, since I wasn't registered for the conference and wasn't really interested in attending. But, after all the hoopla and publicity laid on, even to the point of the provision of free Tim Horton's coffee (!) for the assembled multitude, it was a wee bit disappointing that he didn't appear.

I'm glad, in retrospect, that I forgot to haul the Sony Monster with me for the photo-op, and that I just passed by the lobby on my way back from having some more RAM stuffed into my (quite topically) ageing laptop. But just think of the opportunity for a photo caption missed:

Buzz Aldrin on MaRS!

Highly clever, me.

OpenLab 2009

2009-11-26T16:25:00.003-05:00

An acquaintance (ok, I read his blog, whatever) over at Nature Network just posted a reminder about OpenLab 2009, a worthy initiative to curate and publish (on paper, no less!) the best of science blogging, including prose, poetry, comics and other artwork. So, if you happen to be a scientist, or someone who writes about it, and doesn't already know about it, consider yourself informed.

If you've written anything excellent since December of 2008, you've got a few days left to submit it... December first is the deadline. Or you could write something new between now and then, presuming you publish just a teeny bit more quickly than I do.

Go on, you know you want to.

What Next?

2009-11-19T20:05:00.003-05:00

I'm honestly not sure what to do with this blog.

Obviously, I'm not diligent about posting witty, erudite and captivating anecdotes about my life here... nor tedious, maudlin and petty ones.

I've toyed with the idea before of turning it into a full-blown photo blog, and the idea has even more appeal now that I've taken a look at Dodge's rather nice iPhone photos, but I doubt there would be much appeal. Photo blogs from professional photographers are good to look at; from amateurs, not so much, most of the time.

I also ~~don't~~ maintain another blog, as some of you know, called Life Science Tools of the Trade, which I inherited from three other co-authors who quite rightly bailed on it as a bad job, going on, in at least one case, to bigger and better things.

Hm... there's also the poetry blog, which is looking similarly un-used. Really, the only site of mine that's getting a workout is my Flickr account, bits of which show up here, from time to time.

A funk. That's what it is, a creative funk. Must be.

Anyway, suggestions on a postcard, please, to the usual place. In the meantime, as is my wont, here's a picture of something colourful and tilted, and of course, one of a car.

San Francisco

2009-11-09T17:30:00.004-05:00

This is a confusing place.

Here, there's a blend, a mixture, a complete mélange, of different things. The Ferrari Store is just around the corner from a gentleman who would like your spare change. "Chagall, Matisse, Picasso" proclaims a sign - but is there anyone nearby who can buy?

My own hotel, the Hilton Union Square, is fairly opulent, although like the other San Francisco hotel I've stayed in, has tiny, noisy rooms. And it's just down the street, in either direction, from serious dives - hotels that look more populated by drug addicts, crack whores and other similar characters, than reasonably well-heeled scientific tourists such as myself.

Even the restaurants are a confusing mess - sushi, presumably affordable; burger joints, with tasty offerings at a reasonable price; over-the-top bistros and diners that no self-respecting, publicly-funded science geek would ever be able to afford.

It's an interesting city, this San Francisco, I'll give you that - hills a-plenty, the harbour, historic sights. But somehow, oddly, it doesn't really seem like a Pacific Coast settlement. The shore is commercial, to be sure, and full of people fishing, gulls preening, sea lions fishing, pelicans dive-bombing - but somehow, it's not marine.

It's an odd place, San Francisco, but all that said, one, I think, I could get used to. If I had the inclination, the mobility, and of course, the disposable income. For now, though, I think I'll hold steady just north of Toronto, and retain this town as an unusual, puzzling, tourist attraction.

Boo. Allegedly.

2009-10-31T18:20:00.001-04:00

Happy Hallowe'en, everyone.

Once again, I was in Southern California.

2009-10-12T19:30:00.003-04:00

This post was written a couple of weeks ago, in an airport. And never posted, until now. I apologize for the out-of-dateness, but, as I've noted before, this is a blog, not some real-time, Twitter-like social networking thingamabob.

I like airports.

There's a curious sense of being static - outside of "normal" life. Here, in the departure concourse at Pearson's Terminal 1, it's almost quiet - at around 9:45 in the morning on a Thursday, there are flights departing continuously, but there's no sense of bustle, no crowds pushing, no nerve-wracking "run run run". Compared with, say, Heathrow on a Friday night, this is peace and calm.

And there's more to this sense of being "outside" the usual run of things. With no reasonable internet access (although plenty of paid options), and no need to be on the phone, a certain quiet sets in. I've no reason to frantically call anyone, no need to sign up for the only-slightly-extortionate per-day internet access, and thus no immediate ability to check email. I'm not on Twitter, I don't have an iPhone or Blackberry (yet - although that will doubtless spawn its own blog post in due course), and so I feel, strangely, a bit cut off.

In a nice way.

I'm using an honest-to-goodness text editor to write this post, rather than Blogger's online interface, or something more fancy. I've a few photographs from a recent car show, and a trip to the zoo, to edit - that will take up some time, since I've once again overestimated the amount of time I'd need to get to the airport, check in, pass customs and security, and find myself sitting in the departure lounge. I'm completely off-line, which is an unusual situation in this day and age. And one that could easily be rectified - but I've blogged about being cheap before.

So - how do I follow Eva's peregrinations? I can't check in on the quiet that has recently encompassed the Science Advisory Board, nor post at my other nearly-morbid blog. I can't even see if my recent Faculty of 1000 article review is being voraciously devoured by other scientists around the world.

Ah well. I suppose I'll wander the halls, hoping for interesting airport architecture to photograph. But in the meantime, I'm strangely content - a quiet airport, a chance to sit and think, and of course, write it all down for you to read.

Next stop - Southern California. Again.

Sounds like Whoop

2009-09-24T19:32:00.002-04:00

Helpful sign on the inside of my hotel room door.

I'm in California, (not) whoopin' it up.

Oh, and before I forget...

2009-09-19T20:31:00.003-04:00

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr matey!

That is all.

Second Annual Ricardipus Racing Awards

2009-09-13T18:46:00.006-04:00

One advantage of being settled in a state of more-or-less Status Quo is that it becomes very easy to recycle blog posts from one year ago. In the spirit of which, I give you the Second Annual Ricardipus Awards, for participants in the 2009 Mobil 1 Grand Prix of Mosport. Once again I refer you, if you're actually interested in the race results that is, to the official document. For the record, the Patron Highcroft Racing Acura ARX-02a, piloted by drivers Scott Sharp and David Brabham, won outright, and in the next class down, the rather pretty Acura ARX-01b of Luis Diaz and Adrian Fernandez clinched the season championship.

But these awards aren't about the race winners. They're about other silly categories that I dreamed up last year, and maybe a few new ones to boot.

So, with no further ado, here they are:

Loudest Vehicle: #3 and #4 Chevrolet Corvette C6.R (tie). In a repeat of last year's performance, these two shook the ground when they went by, despite having significantly less horsepower than last year.

There was lots of local interest, with a GM plant nearby.

Honourable Mention: de Ferran Motorsports Acura ARX-02a. Although various other cars were nice and loud, this one gets the nod for a divine combination of engine noise and ridiculous backfires into turn three, all day long.

Simon Pagenaud, going really really fast.

Most Cheerful-Looking Drivers: Gil de Ferran and Simon Pagenaud. An honourable mention goes to Gunnar van der Steur and Adam Pecorari, whose rather pretty car was eventually excluded (disqualified) for a technical infraction. They looked happy before the race, though.

They weren't smiling like this when they signed autographs for me...

Nicest Paint Highlights: Melanie Snow's #56 Porsche 911 GT3 from the GT3 Challenge support race. There really just isn't enough pink in car racing.

Melanie Snow is very fast, but Simona de Silvestro is even faster.

Friendliest Driver: Barrie, Ontario native Kyle Marcelli, who tore up the track in the IMSA Lites support races. I suspect it was the nice chat he had with my brother and I that inspired his performance.

He came second in this race, and first in the previous one.

Silliest Doors: Dyson Racing's Mazda-Powered Lola Coupes. These cars probably also win my awards for "Best Looking" and "Hardest to Photograph at Speed".

This car would have a bit of a crunch in the race.

Best Save: Gil de Ferran. Gil fell off turn two while leading the race, put his foot down, and drove around the corner through the grass. Most people would have spun and crashed. Olivier Beretta gets an honourable mention for doing exactly the same thing later in the race.

He's probably still doing well over 100 kph.

Special Award: best-looking car that spent last year in the shed: Robertson Racing's Mark VII Doran Ford GT-R. Last year, they blew up the engine in testing.

What a looker.

And, finally:

Best Performance Rebuilding a Car to Race on Sunday After the Driver Smashes it up on Saturday Afternoon: Risi Competizione. The team stayed up all night, rebuilding the left side of the car, which ultimately finished second in its class after starting from the very back of the grid.

Sleep? Who needs sleep?

So there you go. As before, lots more of this kind of thing over in the relevant Flickr set.

Status quo

2009-09-05T20:25:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, a lack of change is good.

While others muse on Autumn after moving to a far, fair city, or wax eloquently about their new home after wandering to the Antipodes and back, I find myself, in many ways, where I was last year, and the year before, and the year before that. Which, I confess, suits me well.

I've an upcoming trip to Southern California, to the same general area as I visited before. That fits my comfort level nicely - I've been to LAX before, and rented a car from the same agency as I will this time. The trip down the Interstate I know well, and the final destination won't be hard to find. Even better, I know the hosts of the conference I'll be attending - it'll be a social visit, as well as business.

On the home front, despite frightening weather recently, things are calm - and pretty similar this year to last, too. The notable exception being that Mrs. Ricardipus is now a fully graduated, and (temporarily, we hope) unemployed school teacher.

A graduation rose.

And other things haven't changed much - still employed, still dealing with early-fall grant-writing season, and once again relaxing following the Mobil 1 Grand Prix of Mosport, which I and my brother also attended last year. We had the annual cottage weekend earlier in August, and it was pretty much as it always is, too. Which is a good thing.

The red Ferrari was around last year, too.

I really find that I'm content, in a Jane Austen, settled-in-the-neighbourhood, kind of manner. Yes, it's a quiet life, but I know my limits. I'm well in my comfort zone, and happy about it.

One deep breath later.

2009-08-21T19:29:00.004-04:00

Jane Street, last night.

Last night, it thunderstormed. A lot. Enough, in fact, that the storm spawned several funnel clouds, at least one of which was powerful enough for most people to consider it a full-blown tornado. The City of Vaughan, which includes the ~~lovely little village~~ sprawling suburb of Maple where I live, was clobbered. But not as hard as Woodbridge, just minutes away, where around 200 homes were destroyed.

Closer to, houses only one street away suffered severe damage, with pieces of roof being peeled off wholesale, the streets full of shingles and fragments of plywood sheeting as a result. Street signs were bent flat to the ground, and I drove through what I guess to be about 30 centimetres of standing water at one point. A friend from around the corner reported seeing a tire fly past her window - prompting her to retreat with her family to the basement.

This morning the weather is beautiful, and city work crews, labouring under the edicts of a municipal state of emergency, have done a stand-up job cleaning up the roads. For the most part, people seem to be taking all this calmly; tornadoes aren't unheard-of in this part of southern Ontario, although generally they stay a little farther north. But many have lost their homes, and one family in Durham has, regrettably, lost their eleven-year-old boy. I'm selfishly trying not to think about that, and breathing more easily now that the weather seems settled.

Automobilis Repari!

2009-07-29T17:58:00.003-04:00

Following on from the last post, the Ricardipus-mobile is now fixed. It's like magic: throw a wad of cash at it, and hey presto! it becomes repaired even while you're not there to see it happen.

And there I was, thinking I might have to buy a replacement:

Despite what I said about it before, this would have done nicely.

Memento mori

2009-07-24T10:24:00.005-04:00

The Ricardipus-mobile, prophetically parked in a cemetary.

Friday morning, an enforced day off to deal with the sadly-stricken vehicle. Having been suffering from a mild case of throttle-lag over the last half-year or so, it decided yesterday that enough was enough.

About ten minutes from home, the CD player decided to cut in and out. At first I wasn't too surprised, since it skips from time to time, but fairly quickly it became obvious that this was an electrical, not mechanical, problem. Next, the car did something really weird - it refused to change gear. I'm pretty sure I was stuck in third, and nothing I did with the shifter (ok, you standard drivers, I know it's not really a shifter per se) would make it change - off with the overdrive button, which should have moved it from fourth to third, or into either second or first with the stick. Neutral, it could do fine, but that's hardly helpful for forward momentum.

Not so useful.

Nursing it around the last set of streets on the way home, all kinds of electrical gremlins started creeping in - the windshield wipers stopped working, the indicators started flashing at double-speed, which is usually indicative of a failed bulb, and the car was distinctly lacking in "get-up-and-go" (or, at this point, "keep-going-please"). Flipping off the headlights helped a little, but by the time I actually wheeled into the driveway, it was done. Just for fun, I shut it all down and then tried to re-start it... you could hear the crickets chirping.

That would be about right. Zero kph.

Maddeningly, it started just fine this morning and I was able to drive it down to the local dealership, a nice bunch of people who just opened, and are only taking delivery of their diagnostic service equipment today.

Maybe they'll lend me this one instead?

They are optimistic, but I rather suspect that the poor old Protege is not going to be ready to go for the annual cottage weekend, which is approaching fast. And, for added fun and games, with a train strike likely to start today, finding a rental car next week will likely be nigh impossible.

Cars. Stupid things. Too bad I love them so much.

This is where I need to get to.

Photos, and things

2009-07-20T19:23:00.008-04:00

Gosh, it's been a long time.

Things have been happening. Not, as Mr. Ollivander says in the first Harry Potter book, "Terrible things, but great", but rather "uninteresting things, but time-consuming".

Ah well.

I break my silence to let you know of a couple of mildly interesting developments on the photographic front... first, I've discovered the self-publishing site Blurb, an add-on service of Flickr (although I guess it stands on its own as well). Although a little pricey, for vanity items or gifts I think it's just about right. I downloaded their rather spiffy BookSmart software, which comes with all kinds of pre-designed but tweakable layouts, and after a bit of faffling around, managed to put some photos from last year's Mosport ALMS race into a rather nice (if I say so myself) little paperback. Which you can see here, should you be so inclined. I never did get its "slurp" feature, which directly ports photos from Flickr into your book, working, but never mind - upload from my own computer worked fine.

Now, don't go all crazy buying the thing, thinking you'll make me rich - you won't. Blurb doesn't allow its authors a profit unless they pay a monthly maintenance fee, as far as I can tell - which is only five bucks, but I honestly can't imagine there's any point. The price per book is steep, too, given that it's only about twenty pages long, but the finished product once ordered was rather nice and glossy, and as a souvenir, well worth it I think. I may do some more, although I can see that putting a large number of photos into printed albums would be an expensive proposition.

In other news, I have been approached, for the first time ever, to provide a photograph for a book. A real, honest-to-goodness book, published by a real, honest-to-goodness publisher. So far, the release has been signed, the fee set, and I'm awaiting a decision by the editorial team as to whether they're actually going to use it or not. In other words, I imagine they're weighing all of the competing photos and making decisions based on style, content, and cost. We'll see, but it's a bit exciting, anyway.

Generally speaking, when people have asked to use my photos for educational projects (for example, the C. elegans photo below), I say yes, and I haven't objected to some of my other photos being used on various websites. Heck, I've even dropped a few into Wikipedia pages that I've authored, like this one about the mighty Akai AX80 synthesizer, or this one about the equally-mighty Sequential Circuits Split-8.

A nematode, circa 1999 I suppose.

The photo below of College Street appeared, with my permission, in Schmap Canada, some kind of interactive guidebook thing that, truth be told, seems kind of lacking in content and confusing to use. It's on this page, somewhere, but I'll be darned if I could have found it without that link having been emailed to me.

College Street, out the office window (more or less)

Even strange Wiki-type news site NowPublic has occasionally asked for, and been granted, permission to use photos in their news stories, at least those stories that didn't offend me at the time.

None of these activities pays, mind you, so the textbook development is a little bit exciting. But I'm just vain enough to enjoy the ego gratification of seeing my photos get used and credited here and there, anyway. Of course, a certain website catering to expensive toys has stolen my car photos before now, as has a somewhat dodgy Toronto news website, and probably many other places I don't know about, but that's the danger of posting the things on Flickr sans watermarks, I suppose.

Back to it, I guess... I spend so much time fiddling around on Flickr these days that this blog might as well become a photoblog of some kind, I think. We'll see. In the meantime, because I know you've all been missing me posting tales of cars and racing, I give you this:

A big smiley Maserati, a few weekends ago

And, as a teaser of a blog post to come, here's a shot from the 2009 Honda Indy Toronto race, an event I last went to nineteen years ago, in 1990.

Scott Dixon, slightly tilted

In the words, then, of Cornelius Fudge, in the fifth Harry Potter book:

"He's back."

Father's Day 2009

2009-06-21T20:01:00.003-04:00

In celebration of Father's Day, I thought I'd share a photo of myself with one of the Junior Ricardipi:

Thought question - where's the camera?

That's JR#2 on the swing. JR#1 and Mrs. Ricardipus were nearby, at the splash park.

Perhaps in a little while I'll post a photo of the Most Excellent Gift they gave me. We have to all sit down and assemble it first, though.

Happy Father's Day, you lot (or whatever subset of you lot this applies to... you get the idea).

This is not a flippin' "Tweet", it's a blog post, get over it already.

2009-06-17T06:05:00.000-04:00

From yesterday's Metro, which is admittedly not the most reliable news source in the world:

According to a new study from Ipsos Reid, 74% of Canadian internet users are unaware of Twitter. Of those who are aware... just 6% reported having used it.

I feel vindicated.

Pedantry

2009-06-16T18:55:00.000-04:00

My eight year old son just corrected me on the plural of Paramecium.

Sigh.

Summer's here, and the time is right...

2009-06-09T19:41:00.010-04:00

...for racing in the streets.

Or so the song goes, anyway... the Bruce Springsteen song, that is.

Street racing may not be legal, but there’s nothing wrong with a road course. It’s been a long winter, and as well as being the traditional time to open up the cottage, Victoria Day heralds another long-standing event: Speedfest Weekend at Mosport International Raceway.

Mosport, about an hour east of Toronto and north a bit, is a legendary track in racing history. Some of the greatest have competed here: Jim Clark, Mario Andretti, Richard Petty, Jackie Stewart. Stirling Moss, the story goes, even made suggestions to improve turn 5, the "Moss Corner" that now bears his name. Canadian icon Gilles Villeneuve contested the 1977 Grand Prix, his last appearance here before his death at Zolder in 1982, and even “The Maestro” Juan Manuel Fangio is said to have driven the track. Nestled in rolling hills, surrounded by woodland, with a view on a clear day of Lake Ontario to the south, it’s a beautiful place to hike, take photos, and enjoy the scenery. As long as you remember to take some earplugs.

Up at the crack of dawn and eastbound on Highway 407, narrowly missing a goose that decided it would be an excellent place to stand, and onto the country roads that lead to the track. The day started bright, but bitterly cold – three degrees Celsius, and very windy. Just before nine in the morning, after nearly being blown off the bridge over the pit straight and unintentionally taking a few photos because my numb fingers fumbled the shutter button, I headed for the relative shelter of the paddock.

Damn, it was cold up there.

Here, the cars wait to compete, while mechanics, spectators and drivers buzz around. I met Flickr acquaintance f1design, avid motorsports fan and photographer par excellence. He and his friends were likeable, enthusiastic, and tooled up with some serious photographic equipment that put my (ok, Mrs. Ricardipus's, actually) camera to shame, much though I like it.

The day consisted of hiking the track, which at 3.9 km in length and surrounded by hills and at-times dense woods, was a workout. We made the entire circuit during the course of the day, stopping at different vantage points during a full slate of races. After some qualifying sessions, the first was the Speed World Challenge Touring Car event, with race-modified Acuras, Mazdas and BMWs dueling for the lead.

Acura vs. Mazda... the Acura won, this time.

That was followed by the GT race – this time, high-powered sports cars: Corvettes, Dodge Vipers, Porsches, a Mustang Cobra and a pair of surprisingly fast Volvos, in the hands of pro- and semi-pro drivers.

Not exactly your parents' Volvo.

Next up was the Canadian Touring Car championship, a very competitive race featuring a huge field of lightly-modified road cars: Subarus, Hondas, Hyundais, Fords, Toyotas, BMWs... even a Mini:

It came second in its class; not a bad result, really.

The final event of the day was the Trans-Am race (not featuring any Pontiac Trans Ams, though – the car took its name from the racing series, not the other way around). Here, heavily modified Jaguar XKRs and Corvettes battled with a lone Mustang and a hopelessly outclassed Mazda RX-7. A spectacular run by German driver Klaus Graf, starting dead last and demolishing the field to take the win, was the day’s highlight.

Klaus Graf, taking everyone to school.

At the end, after a tiring walk back up the hill to the car parked in the infield, I said goodbye to 'f1design', and headed home, nursing a nascent case of sunburn on both ears. I’ll be back in August for the repeat of last year's American Le Mans race, if not before.

Two photographers, heading home. I'm neither of them, obviously.
--

I took over 240 photos on the day. Some of them are shown here; if you’d like to see the rest of the ones that turned out well (far less than the number taken, believe me), they’re found in this set. More information about Mosport’s history can be found here, for anyone who might be interested.

Just ticking over...

2009-05-09T20:54:00.008-04:00

Been a bit quiet around here recently, hasn't it? Sorry about that.

The usual onslaught of busy-ness, which I've complained about frequently enough not to bother you with it again, coupled with rather a lack of creativity, and rather a lot of things to photograph, edit and post to Flickr, has been undermining blog posting rather.

Ah well. Perhaps I'll update you on a few things that have happened recently in some future posts. In the meantime, it's shaping up to be an interesting week and Victoria Day long weekend to come. And the most notable occurrence, one that I know that many of you will be intensely jealous of, is:

Ye Seconde Visite of Huge Alex.

Yes indeed, Aled is coming to sunny Toronto again, and like last time, will stop off at the ridiculously-named place where I work for a coffee, a natter, and maybe, just maybe, if we're both feeling sufficiently secure in publicizing the event, a photo-op. He's already reminded me that it's my turn to buy, in case you were wondering.

Slightly less exciting, but still fun, will be another visit to the twisty goodness that is the racetrack at Mosport, this time for the Victoria Day Speedfest. Rather an over-the-top name, but it should be good fun, with GT Sports Cars, Touring Cars, and the SCCA Trans-Am series all rolled into one weekend. I've already got my ticket, and I'm even planning to meet up with yet another internet-only connection, Flickrite f1design, coming down from Ottawa or thereabouts for this event. Should be an enjoyable time, as long as it doesn't pour with rain like it's doing this weekend.

That's about it for now, I'm afraid... as mentioned, I'll update a few other things soon. Unless I'm too lazy, or forget.

Epilogue

2009-04-20T10:13:00.003-04:00

Now that I've (finally) finished reading the article referred to in this post about Shakespeare, I thought it was worth mentioning the authors's final remark:

There are perhaps other questions in history or the humanities that may benefit from proctologic examination.

I leave it open to suggestion as to what these questions might be.

Racing, in the rain.

2009-04-18T09:02:00.009-04:00

There are always times when I feel like this - having to step lightly on the gas, tap the brakes carefully, react quickly at every turn and try, no matter what, not to skid off the road. Fortunately, these times are infrequent, and are interspersed with periods of calm, times to relax, to breathe, to ease the grip of the hands on the wheel, unclench the muscles in the back of the neck, let the laser-focus lapse a little. This, I'm glad to say, is one of those times.

Time to read a good book, for a change from all the scientific papers I've been plowing through recently - and the book in question this time is, perhaps not surprisingly, The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein. From which I've borrowed the title, obviously, but which also provided the inspiration.

It's been a while since I've encountered a book that grabbed my attention like this one, and also since I've had the time to read one. And let me tell you this: it's excellent. The premise is simple enough - a man, Denny, has a dog (predictably named "Enzo"), a wife, a daughter, and a dream to be a professional race-car driver. The twist? The narrator is the dog.

Now, this might sound ridiculous, but I'll tell you something else for free: Stein is a genius, and his adoption of Enzo's point of view is a tour de force of voice appropriation, and entirely convincing. Enzo tells us Denny's story from ground level, filling in detail from his imagination where necessary, giving us flashes of humour and insight into the lives of both dogs and people. The story, though gently framed, is gripping - not about racing so much, although the metaphors are beautifully executed, but the drama of Denny's daily activities. At about 90% of the way through, I am, in an appropriately clichéd way, having trouble putting it down. The best books, I think, are the ones where I can't wait to find out the outcome, or the next event; this is one of those.

Unfortunately, the best books are also those where, once at the end, I am disappointed that there isn't any more. But that's a premise of good entertainment: always leave the audience wanting. I know this one will be like that, and even so I can't wait to finish it, to find out how and when and where Denny and Enzo will end up. Even on a weekend when I will want to watch the Chinese Grand Prix and another American Le Mans race (from the storied Long Beach circuit - how Enzo would comment!), I'll be curled up on the closest couch, turning pages, imagining myself twitching around the hairpins of Denny's life. And keeping a close, close eye on the sky.

12 hours on Saturday

2009-03-22T10:46:00.006-04:00

Question: Is it possible, being a member of a family of four, each with busy schedules, as well as being piled under a variety of different work assignments, to watch or otherwise pay attention to almost all of a 12-hour car race on television on a weekend?

A: Apparently yes, but it requires the use of multiple technologies.

And so the 57th running of the American Le Mans Series Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring is over, having occupied most of Saturday's daylight hours and a good chunk of the night as well. And yes, by employing a complicated dance involving running up and down the stairs, laptop in hand for the live scoring and timing updates, and switching to internet radio feed when necessary (like, for example, when Speed TV inexplicably saw fit to go away from coverage for a couple of hours of NASCAR qualifying in the middle), I actually managed to stay in touch with almost all of the race.

Which, as it turned out, was epic. The new LMP1 class Acura prototypes were fast, but had a number of reliability issues resulting in them falling out of contention, whereas one class down in LMP2, last year's Lowe's Fernandez Acura ARX-01b was reliable, steady and fast, finishing first in its class and beating the pants off a couple of also-unreliable Mazda/Lola coupes fielded by Dyson Racing, who have switched from the Porsches they ran last year.

But the real drama was up in LMP1, a battle royal between the new Audi R15 and updated Peugeot 908 turbo-diesel monsters, with the veteran Audi crew of Dindo Capello, Allan McNish and "Mr. Le Mans" Tom Kristensen eventually prevailing.

And, as in previous years, down in the GT2 class there was another battle shaping up, with the slightly updated red Ferrari F430 eventually walking away from the Porsche teams, and the five-year-old Panoz Esperante fending off a late Porsche challenge to grab third in class.

It's the first time I've watched this race around what is essentially part of an airport in Florida, and it was hugely entertaining - very high cornering speeds, horrendously bumpy track, and most importantly, a good, solidly-contested event with no dirty business at all (although one of the Flying Lizard Porsches might disagree, having been slightly punted by the Panoz with an hour or so left to race). Congratulations also to the Robertson Racing Ford GT in its attractive new red-and-gray livery, which qualified a very respectable fifth in GT2, finally finishing in seventh after being collected in a collision partway through the race. A much better result than last year at Mosport, where the car unfortunately spent most of the time relaxing with its feet up.

And so, where does this leave me? Well, I did manage to get some work done on the laptop during all of this, and didn't totally abandon my family. Now Sunday's here, I've still got lots to do, the weather's a bit chilly for yard work, and because I wasn't in Florida yesterday I don't have a raftload of photos from the race to edit, like I did from the race in late August last year.

Next up: St. Petersburg, on April the fourth. I'm already planning my viewing strategy.

Willy Shakespeare's Naughty Bottom Bits

2009-03-18T22:40:00.004-04:00

Generally speaking, I don't like to duplicate post content between different blogs that I contribute to, but this was just too good to leave languishing at Life Science Tools of the Trade. So here you go, fortunate readers.

Some of you may know that I spend my days in a research lab (ok, in an office adjacent to a research lab, if you must split hairs) and, as a sideline, yammer on in various science-related discussion groups. Recently, in researching (and I use the term in its modern sense, roughly translating as "looking on the internet for approximately three minutes") in order to find something to contribute to a discussion about inappropriate scientific article titles, I came across this absolute gem of a paper:

All's Well That Ends Well: Shakespeare's treatment of anal fistula, by B.C. Cosman, published (appropriately enough) in the glamourous journal, Diseases of the Colon and Rectum.

I had no idea. With morbid fascination, I read the abstract:

Textual and contextual evidence suggests that the French king's fistula, a central plot device in Shakespeare's play All's Well That Ends Well, is a fistula-in-ano.

Really? I'm fairly certain I've seen this play performed, at least in a television adaptation. It was a long time ago, and certainly long before I began to do research on gastrointestinal disorders, but I would have thought that I would remember references to the French king's backside. And I've already learned something else: I don't think I've ever come across the term 'fistula-in-ano' before.

Reading on:

Anal fistula was known to the lay public in Shakespeare's time.

I suppose that makes sense. I hadn't really thought about it.

In addition, Shakespeare may have known of the anal fistula treatise of John Arderne, an ancestor on Shakespeare's mother's side. Shakespeare's use of anal fistula differs from all previous versions of the story, which first appeared in Boccaccio's Decameron and from its possible historical antecedent, the fistula of Charles V of France.

Ok, now the author's getting serious. Or the article's getting silly. If you've read Bill Bryson's excellent biography of Shakespeare, you'll recall that precious little is actually known about the Bard. I'm willing to give Cosman the benefit of the doubt, and presume that the venerable John Arderne really was a relative. He certainly did write a treatise on the indelicate topic of anal fistulae, which you can even read online. Go on, you know you want to. All the rest of that, about Boccaccio and Charles the Fifth, I really can't be bothered researching.

Onward:

This difference makes sense given the conventions of Elizabethan comedy, which included anal humor.

Again, I hadn't thought about it - but no surprise there, really.

It is also understandable when one looks at what wounds in different locations mean in European legend. In this light, it is not surprising that subsequent expurgations treat Boccaccio's and Shakespeare's fistulas differently, censoring only Shakespeare's.

Well, ok - they removed the reference to the King's bum. I'm not really surprised. Other 'wounds' were much more socially acceptable, I suppose. After all, we're talking about a culture that endorsed public beheadings.

Cosman's abstract ends with this screechingly funny statement:

This reading has implications for the staging of All's Well That Ends Well, and for our view of the place of anal fistulas in cultural history.

Indeed it does. I know that I shall never view the cultural history of anal fistulas in the same way again. Or perhaps at all. And I'm certainly going to be paying closer attention the next time I see All's Well That Ends Well performed. Paying closer attention, but ready to run for the door if the King's nether ailments are about to be revealed in glorious and personal detail.

It's a good thing there are curated literature search engines, like PubMed. Otherwise, how would I ever learn about these things?

I have absolutely nothing to say

2009-03-07T13:08:00.003-05:00

...so here's a photo of a carbon monoxide detector.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled, non-automobile-related, programming.

2009-02-22T12:39:00.004-05:00

I've been a bit absent recently... busy, among other things, editing around a hundred or so shots from the Canadian International Autoshow, which I attended for the first time ever (believe it or not) about a week ago. I'll avoid deluging you with all of them, but in my usual style I'll hand out a few arbitrary and tongue-in-cheek awards.

Nicest presentation
The Lamborghini display. They had their cars up on a low podium, eliminating the need for silly barriers and ropes that get in the way of photography. Here's an LP 640 roadster, staring you down. The white LP 560 roadster at the top of the post was right next to it.

Biggest surprise
A Ferrari 288 GTO, lurking in the exhibitor booths. Ridiculously fast and very rare. My photos of it aren't terribly good, unfortunately. Twin-turbo V8 goodness, from 1984.

Friendliest owner
The guy at the paintball emporium's booth, who let me under the ropes to photograph his Ferrari 360 Spider. Maybe he was feeling relaxed since a Playboy Bunny was doing all the heavy lifting, talking to prospective clients. There she is in the background, at the strange intersection of exotic sportscars, fantasy warfare, and adult entertainment.

Most photogenic
Not the aforementioned bunny, but this Mercedes-McLaren SLR Roadster 722 S. It might also win for "most unwieldy name", although the Ferrari F430 16M Scuderia Spider gives it a run for its money there. Unreasonably pointy and very expensive, with silly doors.

Nicest rims
The Maybach. Just love that logo and the overall shiny goodness of these.

Prettiest Corvette in the historic Corvette display
Hard to choose, but I have to go with this 1953 C1 convertible. Just love those red rims and whitewall tires.

Best use of a hexagonal design element
The Honda FC ("fuel cell") Sport concept car. Extra points for environmental friendliness, but a penalty for not actually having the powerplant installed.

And finally (for now, anyway):

Nicest car that I actually sat in
Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG Roadster. I'm not usually a big fan of Merc roadsters, but I think I could just about deal with owning this one.

There you go. Lots more to see in this Flickr set, if, as Mr. Bennett says in Pride and Prejudice, you can bear to.

On reading Charles Darwin's autobiography

2009-02-07T12:54:00.008-05:00

"There is something in that young man that interests me."
– Sir J. Mackintosh, on Charles Darwin, 1827

And so it's upon us - Darwin Day, the 12th of February, 2009.

In sorting through the writings of Charles Darwin for something that I could read and write about, I quickly realized that a lot of his works are very dense, very long, and deal with subjects that, quite frankly, don't interest me that much. A case in point: the lengthy monograph The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms, with observations on their habits, or the succinctly-titled, but equally daunting, Coral Reefs. Even those that are available as audio books would take hours and hours of listening to wade through.

Baffled and bewildered, and growing increasingly desperate, I stumbled upon an absolute gem: Darwin's autobiography, edited and annotated by his son Francis. Tipping the scales at a mere 38 pages once I'd shoehorned the Project Gutenberg version into a Word document, it's turned out to be just what I was looking for: engaging, conversational, full of interesting anecdotes, and refreshingly free of sentences like "In the latter case, water charged with excrementitious and decaying matter would be slowly forced outwards, and would bathe the quadrifids, if Iam right in believing that the concave lobes contract after a time like those of Dionaea." (from Insectivorous Plants).

Darwin, it seems, didn't feel that he was a particularly interesting person, which seems a little surprising given his impact on science over the past, oh, 170 years or so. And this assertion isn't supported by the anecdotes in his autobiography, some of which I will gleefully quote here:

On his early years at day school:
“I believe that I was in many ways a naughty boy”

This sentiment is echoed in his later observation about his years at Cambridge:
“I had been rather extravagant at Cambridge, and to console my father, said, "that I should be deuced clever to spend more than my allowance whilst on board the Beagle;" but he answered with a smile, "But they tell me you are very clever."”

The idea of Darwin as a cheeky schoolboy, or a dissolute youth, really hadn't occurred to me before. He was also, apparently, an exceptionally good shot and an avid hunter, skills which would benefit him in his later travels as he collected his way through South America and beyond, in side trips from the HMS Beagle.

The autobiography does, however, reveal a lot that we might have suspected, such as an early passion for collecting insects. At Cambridge, he relates that "...one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one."

Now that's dedication.

As the book progresses, more interesting facts come to light, such as his arguments with his friend, fellow collector, and ship-master FitzRoy about slavery, which Darwin vehemently opposed. At the same time, he reveals that he is keenly aware of experimental bias:
“We had several quarrels; for instance, early in the voyage at Bahia, in Brazil, he defended and praised slavery, which I abominated, and told me that he had just visited a great slave-owner, who had called up many of his slaves and asked them whether they were happy, and whether they wished to be free, and all answered "No." I then asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether he thought that the answer of slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything? This made him excessively angry, and he said that as I doubted his word we could not live any longer together.”

Fortunately, they managed to patch up their relationship, so that Darwin could complete the Beagle voyage, an event that he refers to as “the first real training or education of my mind”.

The rest of the book, remembering that it's not very long, is a dense narrative of his interactions with various learned scholars, and a rather nice summary of his writing, including of course discussion of the famous On the Origin of Species. It's a fascinating read, and contains a few more quotable gems, my favourite of which has to be this one:

"I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Tierra del Fuego, thinking (and, I believe, that I wrote home to the effect) that I could not employ my life better than in adding a little to Natural Science."

Brilliant understatement from a brilliant man. I'll let him finish up in characteristically modest style, with the final words of the autobiography:

"Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these, the most important have been—the love of science—unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject—industry in observing and collecting facts—and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points."

He obviously had some idea of the impact of his discoveries at the time; but even he couldn't have imagined the discussion they'd engender, two hundred years after his birth and one hundred and fifty after the publication of his most famous work.

Happy Darwin Day, everyone.

Why is science important?

2009-02-03T09:36:00.004-05:00

Alom Shaha has an interesting project on the go: a "film and blog project" he calls Why Is Science Important?, which he tells you all about right here. The tagline, encapsulating the idea behind this very nicely, is

"A collection of thoughts from leading scientists, public figures, ...and you."

I've added the emphasis on "and you" to, um, emphasize that anyone can contribute. And I'd encourage anyone who might happen to be reading this blog to give it some thought, if it seems important to you, and send something along. Notable Nature Network blogger and occasional Ricardiblog commenter Richard P. Grant contributed this piece, arguing in his inimitable style that science is "beautiful and essential". And I've put in my own two cents' worth, in this article about how scientific method makes us better able to cope with the barrage of information around us. Unfortunately, it turns out that Jenny Rohn, a much, much better writer than I, made a similar point earlier, in this nicely articulated piece. Ah well.

So - I'd encourage you to peruse Alom's site. It contains contributions from all manner of folks, from a man who's constructing the world's most accurate thermometer, to this very musical physicist, to a 12-year-old student. There are some lovely thoughts buried in there. My favourite so far is astronomer Seth Shostak's quiet understatement:

"Science is, very simply, our future."

Go and have a look. It's well worth the read.

Now erasing hard drive. Please stand by.

2009-01-23T11:48:00.003-05:00

Those of you who've been unlucky enough to be within whining range recently (greatly extended following the development of the internet) may know that I've been working much of this week on fine-tuning a Letter of Intent for a grant application. In total, it's about 20 pages long, although if condensed to solid text it would probably be closer to eight pages or so. Figures, tables and similar things make up the bulk of the document's real estate.

With it 95% finished (in truth, close enough to "done" that it could have been submitted), I sent it off to the boss for final proofing. As I often do, I clicked on the email attachment just to be sure that everything was all right.

It wasn't.

Microsoft Word presented me with a little dialogue box, the gist of which was "Word can't find the file - the path is invalid, it's lost or broken or something". "Fine", I thought, "the email attachment process didn't work properly, so I'll just do it again".

Nope.

What followed was a long and protracted period of flapping around, the net result of which was discovering that the file couldn't be (a) opened on my computer, (b) opened on somebody else's computer, or (c) emailed to a web-based email account and opened remotely. Mac vs. PC didn't help either. Maddeningly, the file was still there - sitting on the desktop, and I was even able to get its properties, ensure that Windows really thought it was a Word file, of about the right size, and located where it appeared to be. It was just broken, and Word didn't even have the good grace to identify it as a corrupted file, let alone offer to try and fix it. Which, truth be told, has usually worked in the past.

Yes, I know I should have had previous versions backed up in other places, but I've generally never had problems in recovering crashed Word documents. Perhaps this time, I'll learn. Also unusually, there were no previous versions emailed around to others for comments that I could have used; paper copies were circulated at one point (and thank goodness I still had one; if recovering the file wasn't going to work, I was faced with re-typing the thing from hardcopy). Argh.

With some help from a less-panicky graduate student seated nearby, who located the excellent little freeware utility WordRepair v1.1, I was able to grab the text out of the corrupted file. I'd opened it using a text editor previously, and it was pretty garbled; WordRepair (from the good folks at GetData) gave me nice, unformatted text instead. It dropped a few digits from numbers and the odd punctuation mark, but otherwise made life much, much easier.

What followed was a few hours of re-building the document, as compared with what would have been an all-night effort re-typing it. The timeline went something like this:

5:00 PM - rant and fume, thrash about, calm down enough for grad student to help out
5:15 PM - try a few other, unsuccessful ways of recovering the file
5:45 PM - photocopy only existing paper copy of document, just in case
6:00 PM - drive home, blasting loud music in futile attempt to calm down
7:30 PM - arrive home, after battling obnoxious traffic for much of the trip; eat dinner
8:18 PM - addresses and cover sheets fixed
8:23 PM - executive summary pasted back in and re-formatted
8:44 PM - technologies description section (about five pages of text) fixed
8:56 PM - organizational chart pasted back in and fussed around with a bit
9:15 PM - list of "statements of work" done
9:17 PM - budget section rebuilt from another document
9:26 PM - completely fixed, after the usual arguments with headers, footers and pagination

And there I was, thinking I'd be up until 1:00 AM at least. Which, as it turns out, I was, but working on other things instead.

Some days, I hate technology. But I've said that before.

Blog for Darwin

2009-01-15T10:52:00.003-05:00

This looks like fun:

A "blog swarm", where not only are they soliciting Darwin-themed blog posts to celebrate the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12th, 1809), but are intending to aggregate them all as well. Regardless of your views on Darwin the man, his scientific prowess (or not), his writings, or the whole evolution vs. creationism mishmash, this still sounds like a very interesting initiative. As I'm firmly in the Darwin camp (although with reservations about certain of his published works, some of which are a very tedious read), I'll be participating, both here and over at Life Science Tools of the Trade.

You can too... click right here to find out how.

Thanks to Heather for alerting me to this.

VIA Rail Onboard Hi-Speed WiFi...

2009-01-07T22:33:00.005-05:00

...isn’t. Which is why you're getting this post four hours later, from the hotel, rather than from the train.

Anyway, here I am, on a train from Toronto to Montreal. Last time I went to Montreal, which was also the first time I’ve been there for more than an overnight trip, was last November. During which I took a bunch of photographs with the work Nikon Coolpix L16. Photogenic city, indeed.

But – remember this post? I was awaiting my shiny, new, Sony DSC-W55 camera, and despairing of it arriving prior to my trip to Washington. And with this in mind, I give you:

Ronald Reagan National Airport

Yes, the new Sony arrived, and is a much-more-spiffy-than-anticipated DSC-W130, megapixelier (no, that’s not a real word) and shinier than the W55 that I was expecting, and still featuring that all-important Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar, pre-KonicaMinolta, lens. Whatever that means.

Here are a few sample shots, since I’m still proud of the thing:

Reagan National, again.

It can take macros, too.

Takes nice downtown night shots, it seems.

And now, here I sit, an hour and a half into a four-plus-hour train ride, gloating over the camera, anticipating the delicious VIA rail meal, awaiting that moment when I decamp into the government-sponsored hotel room, plunking myself down on the multi-hundred-dollar-per-night bed, missing the kids and Mrs. Ricardipus, feeling satisfied with myself for using the passenger rail system to cross the boundary between English and French Canada, and awaiting the morning. I may never have been west of Paris, nor east of Victoria, but I feel like a proper traveler, again.

More shots to follow, I suspect.

--
An update - the train was on time, the hotel room is very, very small, and the WiFi on the train, um, er, sucked. Which is why I'm posting this later at night, from the hotel room. Ah well. This post - it is what it is.

A meme in 99 parts

2009-01-01T10:40:00.000-05:00

I've borrowed this list from Wyldwoods, whose interesting answers are in his post here. By all means, go ahead and fill this out yourself if you like.

Rules:

Everyone uses this same list of 99 Things.

Feel free to add editorial comments (mine are in square brackets).

Change the font of each item according to the legend below.

That's it! Simple, really.

Things I’ve already done: boldface
Things I want to do: italics
Things I haven’t done and don’t want to: plain text

99 Things

started your own blog [obviously]

slept under the stars [lots of tenting, but not open-air, yet]

played in a band [see here]

visited Hawaii

watched a meteor shower [the Perseids, among others]

given more than you can afford to charity

been to Disneyland/world [will probably happen, but I'm not enthusiastic]

climbed a mountain [Snowdon, in Wales; and also one in the Gaspé Peninsula]

held a praying mantis [seen one up close, though]

sang a solo [ugh; with the aforementioned band - audio evidence right here (mp3 format)]

bungee jumped [no thanks]

visited Paris [twice (once shown here), would happily go again]

watched a lightning storm at sea

taught yourself an art from scratch [digital fractals, among others]

adopted a child

had food poisoning

walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

grown your own vegetables

seen the Mona Lisa in France [I've been in the lobby of the Louvre - that's as close as I got]

slept on an overnight train

had a pillow fight

hitch hiked [no thanks]

taken a sick day when you’re not ill [kind of depends on your definition of "ill"]

built a snow fort

held a lamb

gone skinny dipping [in the middle of the night, in a freezing cold lake in the Laurentian mountains]

run a marathon [again, no thanks]

ridden a gondola in Venice

seen a total eclipse

watched a sunrise or sunset [both; here's one]

hit a home run [will never happen, not enough upper body strength]

been on a cruise

seen Niagara Falls in person [a few times]

visited the birthplace of your ancestors [some of them, anyway]

seen an Amish community

taught yourself a new language [I'm assuming rudimentary html doesn't count]

had enough money to be truly satisfied [sad to say, will never happen]

seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person [yes please]

gone rock climbing [at Rattlesnake Point]

seen Michelangelo’s David in person

sung karaoke [not in a million, billion years, unless I'm rewarded by #37 above]

seen Old Faithful geyser erupt in person

bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant

visited Africa

walked on a beach by moonlight

been transported in an ambulance [no thanks, unless it's a better option than the available alternatives at the time]

had your portrait painted

gone deep sea fishing [for mackerel, in England]

seen the Sistine Chapel in person

been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris [didn't go all the way to the top either time I was there]

gone scuba diving or snorkeling

kissed in the rain [almost certainly, although I can't pinpoint a specific occasion]

played in the mud

gone to a drive-in theatre [the one near my childhood home has been replaced with a grocery store]

been in a movie [been on local TV though]

visited the Great Wall of China

started a business

taken a martial arts class

visited Russia

served at a soup kitchen

sold girl scout cookies [I'm hoping my daughter will take care of this one for me]

gone whale watching [yes, if dolphins, or watching from the shore, count]

gotten flowers for no reason

donated blood [many times]

gone sky diving [no thanks]

visited a Nazi concentration camp

bounced a cheque

flown in a helicopter

saved a favourite childhood toy

visited the Lincoln memorial

eaten caviar

pieced a quilt

stood in Times Square

toured the Everglades

been fired from a job [a summer job in high school; it sucked anyway]

seen the changing of the guard in London

broken a bone [not to my knowledge]

been on a speeding motorcycle [does a scooter count?]

seen the Grand Canyon in person

published a book [I co-published a poetry chapbook once, but it was self-funded, so hardly counts]

visited the Vatican

bought a brand new car [this one, and also this one; but not this one, unfortunately]

walked in Jerusalem

had your picture in the newspaper

read the entire Bible [I'm not religious, but it seems like something I should do out of interest]

visited the White House

killed and prepared an animal for eating

had chickenpox

saved someone’s life

sat on a jury [not yet, but I'm on the list]

met someone famous [two Nobel laureates, and a couple of minor actors and TV personalities]

joined a book club

lost a loved one

had a baby [twice, if being a father counts]

seen the Alamo in person

swum in the Great Salt Lake

been involved in a law suit

owned a cell phone [I was a late starter though; my first was one of these]

been stung by a bee [probably; wasps, certainly]

So that gives us totals of:

35 Things I have done

29 Things I would like to do

37 Things I have not done, and could do without.

Your turn, if you will.

Arriving, again

2008-12-29T13:44:00.003-05:00

As I return home along the highway, I'm reminded by this sign:

that not everyone will be returning home these holidays, and that some of those driving this week on the Highway of Heroes will be making one final trip to CFB Trenton.

Lost keeping the peace, in keeping with the season.

Arriving

2008-12-05T13:32:00.005-05:00

Every now and then, when I despair of finding anything worth reading on the Internet, I come across something like this little gem from Nature Network blogger extraordinaire Richard Grant. Now, he blogs eloquently and wittily on a consistent basis (in at least three places I'm aware of, and probably more besides), but sometimes he outdoes himself.

What grabs me most in his post is his description (in part) of what he likes about a career in science:

"I also love taking people and showing them something new: looking down the microscope and saying will you look at this!... and that enthusiasm for the natural world, that wonder at its beauty and coherence, is what has kept me a scientist."

Sentiments I can relate to, really, even though I spend precious little time these days doing science, and none whatsoever at the laboratory bench. Yes, you can do science in front of a computer, even if you're a biologist. Trust me on this. Even in front of a screen, I still get that "wow" moment from time to time, when something jumps out of the data and says "Hey! Here's something about the way life works that you didn't know before! In fact, here's something that nobody knew before!" Precious moments in between the routine, the reporting, the grant writing, the administration.

Earlier in his post, Richard also muses about why he got into the whole thing in the first place:

"Maybe it was because I couldn’t think of anything anything better to do?"

Which is, I think, meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek (difficult to believe where Dr. Grant is involved, I know). But I too have often thought that I became a "scientist" because (a) it seemed interesting, and (b) I couldnt' think of anything better to do, either. And yes, it's hauled me around a bit, in and out of industry and to and from humans and their diseases, and nearly-microscopic worms and the secrets of their nervous systems, among other things... but ultimately has gotten me where I am now, through a series of events that make up a story far too tedious to go into in detail (so that'll be next week's blog post, then).

As RPG considers the next phase of his illustrious (or should we say "interesting"?) career, his post makes me think of my own - through this and that, I actually feel as though I've "arrived" somewhere... namely right here, in my current position. That's not to imply that there aren't other places to go. But after this many years, my career seems to be well in order, which is not something I would have said at any time in my life until just about now. Fortunately, Richard has unintentionally managed to remind me of this. So thanks, mate, and good luck with whatever's next.

A Thanksgiving treat for my American friends

2008-11-27T00:01:00.008-05:00

And a Happy Turkey Day to all of you south of the Border. Even those of you south of the border who happen to be north of where I am.

But let's not get into that again. I've waffled about the geography of the United States as it relates to the time of their Thanksgiving holiday before, difficult though that may be to believe.

In the meantime, a special present for you all, found inside the Thanksgiving turkey at Chateau Ricardipus earlier this year, and in pristine condition, still in its wrapper:

It's a Turkey Lifter. Any resemblance to a few mangy bits of string with a couple of plastic handles attached is entirely coincidental.

The instructions, which are admittedly rather difficult to read in that photo, are quoted here for reference. I hope they may be useful to someone.

Place Turkey Lifter across full length of flat rack in roasting pan. [Ed. note: what rack?]
Place turkey, breast up, on lifter so the two middle clips are under back of turkey. [Ok, seems reasonable so far.]
Raise one loop over wings and breast. [I bet that's more difficult than it sounds.]
The other over drumsticks. [Hey! That's not a complete sentence!]
Rest loops over turkey, not over pan during roasting. [Presumably, to stop it from adhering permanently to the pan.]
Lift roasted turkey onto platter with Turkey Lifter. [Yeah right. Pick up a 20-pound, searing hot carcass with two bits of string and some plastic doohickies, while it drips scalding juice all over my extremities? I think not.]
Remove Lifter and discard. [Even though it's adhered permanently to the turkey, not to the pan.]

It further goes on to instruct:

NOTE: Lifter is to be used only once. [But, but, but... I like keeping sticky, turkey-smelling, rotting bits of string around! Really!]

And finally:

Do not use when grilling as string may burn. [I refuse to comment on this.]

So there you go. Crystal clear. I bet the wretched thing is even patented.

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans.

poppies

2008-11-12T19:50:00.006-05:00

I had intended to post something for Remembrance Day, but ironically enough, I forgot.

Instead, I give you this lovely piece, written by Junior Ricardipus #2. Forgive the spelling, the sentiment is rightly felt.

Popys are inportint becus they are red and red is won of the colers theat th solgers wore.

I think that says enough.

In Camera

2008-11-02T14:59:00.003-05:00

As some of you know, I'm fond of taking photographs and ~~clogging up the internet with them~~ posting them to Flickr. My weapon of choice for this, in recent years, has been Mrs. Ricardipus' rather nice, Zeiss-lensed Sony Cybershot DSC-R1. Which is a lovely chunk of a camera, with a big, fat (if fixed) lens, 10+ Megapixel resolution, and rather more features than I really know how to use.

However, it is too large to conveniently pop in a pocket (unless I really want to look like I'm smuggling a bomb under my coat), and is also a bit expensive to haul around while traveling. So more recently, I've taken to purchasing disposable 35mm film cameras on my trips here and there, which are a) expensive per photo, b) use film, which gets me into the whole scanning nightmare, and c) typically equipped with tiny little lenses that I swear are made of dubiously high-quality plastic. Which can sometimes give you some interesting optical distortion effects, to be sure:

Rainbows in the corners.

but are generally, in a word, crap.

Things changed a bit recently, with the appearance of a rather nice little Nikon Coolpix L16 at work. Which, conveniently, lives in my office. And also conveniently fits in a pocket, has a lens that isn't made of plastic, and takes rather nice photographs. In exchange for occasional use of this beastie, I replace the batteries on my own ticket. Seems fair, I think, and it spends its days available for taking photos of people and things in the lab when needed, like this rather fabulous microscope:

A different kind of digital camera.

Of course, it sometimes gets used for things outside the lab, too:

Parked across the street.

All of which means, of course, that I've been after a nice little point-n-shoot of my own, that I can happily take traveling, leaving the work camera where it belongs.

Which brings me to this... joy of joys, I have finally accumulated enough reward points for contributing my knowledge, wisdom and tongue-flappery (in the cyber sense) to this discussion forum, that I just ordered myself a slightly out-of-date, but still (allegedly) fabulous Sony Cybershot DSC W55. While it won't arrive before my trip to Montreal on Tuesday, and probably not before my next trip to Washington in the middle of the month, it should be well and truly in hand before the following trip to Montreal again, in January. And well available for shooting from the hip while traveling hither and thither throughout the Greater Toronto Area, like this:

This amused me slightly.

I'm very happy - it's been a long time coming. Let the flood of photos of questionable quality begin.

Seven Things

2008-10-29T13:46:00.004-04:00

I've been tagged by Debi, who wants me to write Seven Random Things About Ricardipus. So here you are:

1. I am currently suffering from a case of Paronychia on my right index finger. Go and look it up, it's not as bad as it sounds.

2. Last year, I co-authored a thirty page report on new genomics technologies, for Health Canada (the federal government health ministry). I've never met anyone who's read it - at least nobody that I didn't give it to myself.

3. Despite all my waffling on about racing and sportscars and so forth, the first car race I've ever been to was this year, in August. You can read about it in this ridiculous post.

4. Speaking of cars, I got my first speeding ticket ever this year, at the age of 40. I'm not sure if that's pathetic, admirable, or just random chance.

5. I confess to being tremendously lazy when it comes to learning about politics, politicians and policies - federal, provincial, municipal. It's only one of the things I could confess to being tremendously lazy about.

6. I work in a building complex called MaRS. Isn't that exciting?

7. I'm going to Montreal next week, a city I've very rarely visited.

There you go. In the spirit of this, I tag Wyldwoods and new Ricardiblog reader Pinklea, although it occurs to me that since Dawn has tagged the entire internet, I didn't really need to.

Leaving summer

2008-10-23T20:11:00.007-04:00

It is autumn, and I am busy. Very, very busy. But not too busy to get out to the local Conservation Area a couple of weekends ago, to take a look at the fall colours. They're legendary around here - maples in bright golds, oranges, reds. The only problem is, that like the other in-between season (spring, that is), autumn only lasts for about a week here. Case in point - it snowed yesterday.

So you have to be quick. Quick, if you want to see those maples exploding in orange against a brilliant blue sky, fluffy white clouds floating by, the air crisp and cold and scented with wood smoke:

Or the riot of colour over the marshlands:

Or the local wildlife, doing its best to compete with the foliage for your attention:

Or those yellows - those glorious, glorious yellows, a last gasp before winter's blinding whites and drab greys set in:

Whoops, sorry about that. Not sure how that one slipped in there.

Daddy's girl.

2008-10-01T22:38:00.003-04:00

"I like that horsey."

"Which horsey, honey?"

"The one on that shield."

I swear I didn't put her up to this.

Not again...

2008-09-29T22:00:00.005-04:00

...there's a federal election coming. A side effect of having a minority government with no real opposition - they might as well call an election, with the best case scenario (for the government, not necessarily for Canada) being a majority victory, and the worst case scenario being another couple of years added on to the current term. It's not like anyone else is likely to win.

Sigh.

As I understand it, the parties can be described pretty much like this:

1) Conservative. Mostly blue. Used to be called Progressive Conservatives until they were slaughtered in a previous election, merged with the Reform Party (a bunch of ultra-conservatives from out west) and changed their name. Also, they weren't really fooling anyone with the "Progressive" tag anyway. Currently in power. Policy seems to be somewhat lacking. Led by a not-so-very-charismatic Prime Minister who is now best known for wearing a friendly, homey sweater vest in his TV commercial.

2) Liberal. A cheerful shade of red. Slightly less conservative than the Conservatives. Roundly slaughtered last time around by a combination of the Conservatives and the NDP (see below). Now led by some guy who a) is widely seen as an intellectual egghead, b) at the last leadership convention defeated another guy who is also widely seen as an intellectual egghead, and c) allegedly sounds like the Swedish Chef when he speaks English quickly. Absolutely no clear policy on anything, as far as I can tell.

3) New Democratic Party. Orange. Not new, not democratic. Occasionally described as pinko commies, by people just slightly less charitable than me. Led by a guy who is famous for living in community housing while in office as a highly-paid municipal politician. Platform based around a complex mix of carbon credits, expensive social programs, and national bankruptcy.

4) Bloc Quebecois. Kind of dark blue with white fleur-de-lis on it, or something. Nobody outside of La Belle Province cares, but that didn't stop them from getting enough seats in recent memory to form the official opposition. Led by some French-Canadian guy. Platform is based on separation from English Canada, determined defence of the French language and culture (France could probably learn something from this), and not a whole lot else.

5) Green Party. Green; somewhat fuzzy around the edges. Running in every single bloody riding in the country; unlikely to win any of them. Led by some person or other who talks a lot about the environment and rides around the country on a train, or a bicycle, or a hang-glider, or something.

And not to forget:

6) The usual grab-bag of independents, party dissenters, embezzling, criticizing and/or adultering ex-government ministers who've been booted out of caucus, street musicians, ex-hockey players (don't laugh, there are at least two in the Senate) and the like.

Now you know everything you need to. October 14th - go out and vote.*

*This public service announcement may not actually be very useful for anything. You've been warned.

On the road again

2008-09-28T13:25:00.004-04:00

No, not another trip down Highway 401, solo in the car, nor to the sunny southern states. This isn't an epic road trip in the manner of Dawn, either - it's just the morning commute. I'm on the road again because we're into the school year, and Mrs. Ricardipus is back in classes.

So, with drop-off duties for the Junior Ricardipi messing up my morning train schedule, I've elected to drive all the way downtown to work, a couple of days each week. Which, although environmentally unfriendly, is actually kind of a pleasure. Good music on the stereo, and the opportunity to explore the city as I negotiate its twists and turns, looking for the best saw-off between speed, scenery and calm traffic. It's even almost cost-effective, since staff parking where I work is only marginally more expensive than the train ticket, and less expensive than the trip should I decide to use the subway in even one direction to or from the train station to the office. What about the cost of gas, you say? Let's just ignore that for now.

Naturally, such a drive affords opportunities for on-the-fly photography of local buildings:

Don't try this at full speed, folks.

The downside, of course, is that I am afforded every opportunity of being distracted by things parked at the side of the road, like this:

You know, I've never seen a 328 GTS before.

and this:

A bit less high-performance, but very pretty.

Not to mention the local Lotus and Aston Martin dealerships. It's surprising how easy it is to modify my route to pass by them.

Ah well, dangers abound everywhere. If I wasn't driving, I'd be walking to the station most days, and I'll confess I was late for a train because I had to stop and take photos of this pretty little Datsun:

A 260Z. Pretty in blue.

And the Ford GT, well that was a different story entirely - I made the train, but did have to run a bit.

Photoshoppery has occurred.

Sad case, me. But there you go. Driving to and from work, a couple of times a week, keeping my eyes peeled, shooting digital from the hip.

Gah! Another weekend.

2008-09-20T19:00:00.004-04:00

Today:

Two swimming lessons (one for each of the Junior Ricardipi).
One ballet-jazz combo dance lesson for JR#2.
One birthday party (for JR#2).

I am, as they say, le tired. [WARNING: the video clip that links to is NSFW, contains minor language and stereotyping of various ethnic groups, and is funny as heck. Use at your own discretion.]

And I have five pages of a grant to write, by tomorrow evening. Not to mention fiddling around with my new Talk Like A Pirate Day present, which will doubtless chew up some additional time:

This hardly leaves any time for a social life (not that I have one anyway), taking pictures of buildings at ridiculous angles (as I do), or even blogging about recent interesting events, such as having coffee with Rikaitch's dad and his lovely wife on Friday (which I did).

Perhaps I'll tell you more about that visit when I have a bit more time than I do now, but let me tell you that Rik's dad is an interesting fellow, both he and his wife were very friendly, and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting them. I've no idea what they thought of me, but there you go. Chalk up another win for the internet, I guess. And I've a lunch date in mid-November, in Washington DC, with another three people I've only met online. Combine all of this with my ever-expanding (but possibly not terribly useful) LinkedIn network, as well as occasional visits to the Nature Network, and I'm beginning to feel like a true cyber-citizen of the twenty-first century, tooled up with digital paraphernalia, meeting internet connections, tapping away on the laptop at the kitchen table while eating leftover pizza and cake. What fun it is, being me.

Mothballs

2008-09-14T10:59:00.002-04:00

And so, we've reached a strategic point: the point at which the large finished room in the basement is once again required for a birthday party. Which means some tidying, some paring down of the old toys and books scattered around it, and some moving out of things that are a) breakable, and b) rarely used.

Including, as it turns out, all of the electronic music equipment I've accumulated over the last 25 years or so, which I confess I've barely touched since we moved in, nine years ago - certainly not much since the basement was finished and it was all installed in that room. So goodbye, for now, to the following dearly loved bits and pieces of electronica, which are now stashed mainly in the workroom, possibly pending re-installation sometime in the future. But maybe just waiting for Ebay.

The synthesizers: a collection of digital, analogue, and hybrid beasts from the unexciting end of the professional musical instrument scale, circa the mid-1980s:

The rack of associated gear, including a few more synthesizer modules, a 12-channel mixer, and an extremely dodgy 1985-vintage sampler:

Various and assorted home-made distortion boxes:

The guitar amplifier, which would be more useful if I could play guitar with any level of skill:

And even the AKG dynamic microphone, with its built-like-a-tank construction and post-cold-war German industrial chic:

Sad times indeed, although as years go by I'm finding it increasingly difficult to be sentimental about all of this. I expect the birthday party, with crafts, games, and an overarching Princess-y theme, will be a great success. And if I need to satisfy my electronic music obsession sometime in the future, well, I've got a laptop and a digital audio interface that almost works, so I guess I'm set. The rest of the hardware, it seems, is doomed to storage for now.

And the award goes to...

2008-08-30T10:41:00.006-04:00

Well, the 2008 Mobil 1 Grand Prix of Mosport has been over for almost a week now, and I think it's high time somebody handed out some awards. Not for the race-winning Audi R10 TDI, which has enough hardware already, nor for David Brabham and his best-in-class Patron Highcroft Acura. Not for the Corvettes that keep dominating the GT1 class, nor even for the Risi Competizione Ferrari that finally had a GT2 win this season. If you want those results, have a look at the news article, or for real fans, the race results.

No, I'm talking about some awards I've dreamed up, having spent the entire day at the races with my brother, fully tooled up with cameras. I've come up with some new classes, and these are my picks of the winners:

Loudest Vehicle: #3 and #4 Corvette C6.R (tie)

When these two went past in tandem, the ground shook.

Honourable mention: Panoz Esperante GTLM, seen here with its bits hanging out.

Loud as hell, slow as molasses.

Car that looks most like it's smiling at you: Aston-Martin V8 Vantage

Too bad it was so slow.

Most egregious use of day-glo paint highlights: Tafel Racing #73 Ferrari

Sorry, I was a long way away. Their other car had orange ones.

Worst attempt at hiding behind a post: Risi Competizione #62 Ferrari F430GT

I can seeeeee you.

Most attractive car without wheels: Robertson Racing Doran Ford GT-R

I was looking forward to seeing this one race, but apparently they blew it up in testing.

And finally, a special award for Best attempt at turning corner 2 while missing a wheel goes to Marc Basseng and the VICI Racing Porsche 911 GT3 RSR.

He was fine. The wheel in question is sitting off in the distance.

More of this silliness, including a picture of the fastest ambulance in the world, a Corvette showing its naughty bits, and a guy who just looks like he should be driving an Aston Martin, are in this Flickr set. There may be even more - I haven't developed the film yet.

Can't wait 'til next year...

--

EDIT: THIS JUST IN! A special award suggested by Dawn:

Car most likely to crash: #22 Porsche 911 GT3, from the IMSA Challenge GT3 Cup support race.

Please, head on over to the Flickr page and leave your own Vista pun there, if you will.

Vroooooom!

2008-08-25T00:03:00.003-04:00

The race winner.

What a great day. Very tired now and should have been in bed a long time ago.

More pictures to follow, believe me. Have a look in the ALMS Mosport 2008 set, if you like.

Revisiting an old idea

2008-08-23T11:37:00.004-04:00

Some time ago (February 29, if Blogger is to be believed), I posted about putting art on my office wall, and Debi even asked me to post a photo of the final arrangement.

Six months later, I got around to taking the picture. So here it is.

Yes, I know they're not quite square to each other.

Sorry for the brevity of this post. Lots to do - gearing up for another consulting project, a quick trip to Washington, DC on Monday, and a day at the American Le Mans Series race at Mosport tomorrow, with my brother. Should be fun, first time I will have ever been there, even though it's only about an hour away.

If you're interested, this video tells you a bit about the race and the place. I'll be fully tooled up with two cameras, two memory cards and a roll of film, so with a bit of luck I might have a few good photos to post. Or possibly a bunch of really, really blurry ones.

Once again, an August weekend

2008-08-09T11:57:00.006-04:00

Wheeling down Highway 401, listening to Neil Young, his guitar either whimsical and plaintive or like a horde of demented bumblebees, as he rips through the litany of classics on disc 1 of Decade. I'm on my own this trip, as Mrs. Ricardipus and the kids have driven down to Kingston ahead of time. I spent the last Wednesday in July breaking the back of a forty-plus hour consulting project, and the three-hour drive is a welcome break. Sharing the car with a couple of Ikea mattresses, some miscellaneous things for the annual cottage trip, and a budgie, this is maybe the first time I've driven any appreciable distance on my own in ten years or more.

This, of course, enabled by the still-reasonably-novel situation of having two cars, a first for us. Mrs. Ricardipus, driving her iPod-enabled Honda Civic, still with that "new car " smell:

It is shiny.

and me, in the aging Mazda Protege. Which has but a CD player, meaning that I've got a perfect excuse for trolling through my music collection, including that of Mr. Young and his Crazy Horse compadres.

The grill is slightly bent. I didn't do it.

Opinions vary among the smaller members of the family as to which of these is best described as the "stinky car", by the way.

The cottage trip was its usual self, with the addition of a family of friends who haven't been able to make it in recent years. At its top, ten adults, six kids, six automobiles, three inflatable boats, a canoe, and a sailboat. Oh, and seven fish, tying the record from two years ago.

While on-and-off rainy, there was enough sun and heat for plenty of swimming, and the rain and clouds made the lake and sky particularly beautiful, at times:

Big sky, big lake.

There was mist one morning.

And there was the usual selection of flora and fauna to look at. I've been trying for years to get a decent shot of a dragonfly, and I think this might just be it.

So there you have it. A mainly relaxing, occasionally hectic, and thoroughly satisfying long weekend on Desert Lake. More photos, if you will, are in the cottage set.

Lazy Blogging (again)

2008-07-19T08:44:00.003-04:00

Here's a meme, shamelessly stolen from this post at Debi's place. Because I'm too lazy to write one of my typically rambling posts this morning.

1) Go to Wikipedia.
2) In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year.
3) List three events that happened on your birthday.
4) List two important birthdays and one death.
5) One holiday or observance (if any).

I've blogged about my birthday before, so for even more laziness, some of these answers are recycled.

Events
1356 - English defeat the French at the Battle of Poitiers, because they think they own France.
1778 - The Continental Congress passes the first budget of the United States. And they've been in debt ever since.
1944 - Armistice between Finland and Soviet Union signed (End of the Continuation War). They had their own private war?

There are so many events worth mentioning... Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starting their career together (1900), the US banning Charlie Chaplin's re-entry (1952), their first underground nuclear test (1956), the Wheel of Fortune game show being created (1983). But here are a couple more notable ones:

Special Mention - Events (coolness category)
1970 - The first Glastonbury Festival is held. Mud, music, mud, and non-prescription pharmaceuticals. And mud.

Special Mention - Events (silly category)
1959 - Nikita Khrushchev is barred from visiting Disneyland. That communist bastard.

Birthdays
Well, Ferry Porsche obviously, in 1909, links to the Nazi Party notwithstanding. The second, American Actor Adam West. He's the real Batman, you know.

Other candidates: Jeremy Irons, Lol Creme, Twiggy, and Nile Rodgers.

Death
I think I'll have to go with Orville Redenbacher (1995), humorously described in Wikipedia's list as an "American botanist and businessman".

Observance
There can be only one. Talk Like A Pirate Day, of course. Although I gave serious consideration to the sixth day of the Eleusinian Mysteries, St. Kitts and Nevis Independence Day, and Chilean Armed Forces Day too.

So there you go. September the 19th. Send me presents.

Um

2008-07-15T06:46:00.001-04:00

Another find in the patent literature:

11. A method to provocatively test for schizophrenia in a human comprising administering S-(N,N-diethylcarbamoyl)glutathione to the human and correlating the induction of a hallucination in the human with schizophrenia.

Now that seems like a bad idea - diagnosing schizophrenia by causing a potentially schizophrenic patient to have a hallucination. Although I suspect that were this to become standard medical practise, an awful lot of people might show up at their doctors' offices claiming to be schizophrenic.

Nothing, however, beats this classic, entitled "Semen taste-enhancement dietary supplement", US patent #6,485,773, which you can find here. From the summary:

This invention regards a novel and unobvious dietary supplement formulation of relatively specific ratios of fruits, vegetables, and spices that when ingested by the male results in a significant improvement to the taste of the male ejaculate by reducing its generally salty and/or bitter taste while also adding a pleasant flavor that is considered by 98.5% of all customers as very enjoyable.

It goes on to point out that:

No negative effects were experienced by any in the market-test group nor by any of the thousands of customers who have used this product, thus far.

See? There is good science in the patent databases. You just have to dig for it.

Overcast

2008-07-13T11:37:00.002-04:00

In the new organizational structure that is life with a teacher-in-training in the family, and the necessity of shuttling around two now very active kids who are too young to be left on their own, I find myself now driving my very own vehicle in the morning to the local commuter train station. Which is a welcome change from the endless parade of buses that I've been accustomed to in recent years.

All this gives me time in the car, to and from, to listen to music and in so doing dig back through my music collection, almost all of which is a) on compact disk, and b) has never been put onto my Minidisc player, let along any kind of iThing. So there's a large back catalogue of music I've been missing out on, and am happily rediscovering.

Albums, for example, like Dead Cities by The Future Sound of London, an indescribably complex electronica mish-mash from the late 1990's, which has some truly incredible pieces on it: from the downbeat grooves of My Kingdom, to the aggressive video-game grooves of We Have Explosive, through the ambient floatiness of Vit Drowning and Through Your Gills I Breathe, to one of my very favourites, quiet and sad and poignantly calm: Everyone in the World Is Doing Something Without Me.

It's the musical equivalent of the far-off rumble of a jet passing in an overcast sky - lonely and bleak and a reminder that there are people all around you, going places, doing things, absorbed in their own lives, completely outside your own.

Quite like myself, isolated away in the green Protege, on my way to and from the station, humming along with the 1990's, oblivious.

Happy Canada Day!

2008-07-01T16:43:00.002-04:00

Like the title says - Happy Canada Day to all Canadian readers, ex-patriate or not, or anyone else who's happy to accept the wishes. Eh.

See? We told you gnomes were useful.

2008-06-28T12:36:00.002-04:00

Spending my Saturday morning, as I do, trolling through published U.S. Patent Applications so as to help out a consultant friend and make a few bucks in the process, I came across this one:

United States Patent Application 20050069541
Karlik, Stephen J. ; et al.
March 31, 2005
Composition for and treatment of demyelinating diseases and paralysis by administration of remyelinating agents.

Which I didn't find so terribly interesting (you'll be shocked to hear), until I came across this particular claim:

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the effective blood level of natalizumab is about 1 gnome.

Hm. I always suspected that gnomes were useful for something.