leonard zubkoff

Condolences to the family and friends of Leonard Zubkoff, who was killed in a helicopter crash in Alaska on Monday. Leonard was the creator of Dandelion Digital, a small recording studio and producer of filk recordings on compact disc until 1999. He was also
a linux kernel developer and the maintainer of BusLogic and DAC960 projects.

More info:
- MSNBC story
- Slashdot

Lynn Gold and Jeff Bohnhoff have shared memories of their friend in the Dandelion Report. Please also see this memorial page for Leonard.

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Today's Blatherpics:

Cottage photo.

guelph visit

The Toronto-Guelph bus schedule changed yesterday. I found out when I arrived at the Elizabeth Street terminal yesterday morning a full half hour before my bus was supposed to depart, only to find that my bus was cancelled.

"If you run," said the ticket clerk, "You might be able to catch the 8:30 a.m. bus." I ran, and just barely made it. When I got to Guelph, I carefully checked the evening schedule to make sure that there was, indeed, an 8:30 p.m. bus.

Then Frebis arrived. We went to a coffee shop and caught up on each other's lives. Last time I had seen Frebis, I had just sold Inkspot, or was in the final stages of selling Inkspot. As some of you are well aware, quite a bit happened since then. A lot has been going on in Frebis's and Duane's lives as well, including an 8-month trip to Australia, New Zealand, and California.

We checked out a church at the top of the hill with beautiful stained glass windows and then browsed some shops in downtown Guelph, including a running store that had a 50% sale (I bought a pair of shorts and a top) and a great little Japanese-theme shop.





Back at the house, I looked through their trip photos, Nahanni trip scrapbook, and snooped through their impressive garden behind the house. In addition to letting me sample freshly-picked miniature tomatoes and green beans, Duane showed me their crop of corn (two types!), tomatilloes, coriander (I discovered that "cilantro" refers to the leaf stage, and "coriander" refers to the seed stage...didn't know that!), pumpkins, tomatoes, sunflowers, leeks, potatoes, different types of poppies, moonflowers, pear trees, apple trees, prune trees, other plants. Duane sells some of his produce to a restaurant in town.

Dinner was barbecued salmon, corn on the cob, and a wonderful saffron rice salad that Frebis made. We just had time for some homemade Mexican hot chocolate before my evening bus, yum.

Except that when I arrived at the Guelph bus station, it turned out that the posted schedule I had checked in the morning had changed! There was no longer an 8:30 pm bus. Fortunately, there was a bus there whose driver hadn't realized the schedule had changed, either, so he said he'd take me to Toronto anyway; I was his sole passenger (!).

It was a wonderful visit, and we're already making tentative plans to get together again.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Frebis.
	Duane, out in the garden.
	Nicki (sp?), their dog.

sopranos

So I think I'm only a few chapters away from finishing the first draft of my book, yay!

I say "think" because although I have a very rough (2 pages) plot outline, I don't break up the text into chapters while I'm writing; I'll do that when I'm finished. I estimate another week or two, and then I'll start revising.

I'm a bit behind in schedule because of the distractions of the audit, and the fact that I didn't get as much writing done at the cottage as I had hoped. Believe it or not, I'm STILL planning on submitting two books to my agent by the end of the year. The second book will be an easy reader, much shorter.

ScottM brought over the third season of The Sopranos on DVD, and Parki came over to watch it as well. Holy cow, is this a great series. Jeff and I both loved the first two seasons, and are grateful to Scott for letting us see the DVDs since we don't get HBO.





It surprises some of my friends that I like The Sopranos so much, given my aversion to violence in movies. When Scott first told me about the series, I must admit that I watched the first few episodes with some trepidation, and wasn't that thrilled. But after a few, I got hooked. Utterly, completely hooked.

I still don't like the violence, but the writing is SO good. I also find myself drawn to some of the characters despite their violent nature. On first glance, for example, Tony Soprano is just a hood and a creep. As you watch the series, however, you start becoming aware that he is so much more, especially through the sessions with his psychotherapist. I love the psychotherapist. Heck, I love a lot of the characters.

Last night, we only planned to watch two episodes but ended up watching four in a row. I was pushing hard for a fifth, but Jeff and Parki were too tired. (HA! Usually I'm the first one to crash.)

Going to Guelph today to visit with my friend Frebis, a woman I met on our canoe trip on the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories back in 1999. We've been planning to hang out for ages, but my summer was way too busy. Really looking forward to seeing Frebis and Duane again.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Our Nahanni Trip group. I'm at the top, far left.
	Duane and Frebis.
	Frebis and me at the top of Sunblood mountain. I'm on the left.

cumulus

Anyone reading my Blatherings knows that I take a lot of digital photos. I carry my Canon Elph PowerShot S100 everywhere with me; it's so small that I can stick it in a purse or pocket. On a typical day at the cottage, I'll take at least 40-50 photos.

My digital photo collection has grown exponentially since 2000, when we first bought our cameras (Jeff has one, too!). I've been storing the photos in chronological order by year and month and sometimes event, but because I don't take the time to rename all my photos, I can never tell what's in a photo unless I open up the file.

I've been using iView MediaPro to browse my images, but unfortunately iView doesn't search very well, and only opens one folder at a time. This is a major pain when looking for a particular photo, since the only way I'll be able to find it is if I know approximately when I took it (so I can look in the appropriately-named folder) or if I've posted it on Blatherings.

I'm reaching the point where I know I have to switch to a more efficient method, or I'll end up with many gigs' worth of digital images I can't easily access. Jeff suggested a program called Cumulus, by Canto.





I downloaded the demo and PDF user manual, tried it out. The demo has all the features of the full version, but limits you to two catalogs and 50 images. VERY cool program. It organizes other types of files as well, not just photos. After playing with it about an hour or two, I bought a registration key (US$89.95).

I'm going to gradually cull and categorize all my photos, starting with the present and working my way backward. One of things I really like about the software is that you can assign multiple categories or descriptions to multiple images at the same time.

I've created my categories in terms of what kind of search queries I'd be making. One category is Family, with subcategory of Ohi and sub-sub-categories of my dad, Ruth, Kaarel, Sara and Annie. Whenever I download a new batch of photos, I just select all the photos with Annie in them, select the "Annie" category and then "Attach Selected Categories". This means that anytime I want to see all the photos with Annie in them, I just select the "Annie" category.

I can finetune my search by specifying a specific date range, or add other search criteria. The search function is extremely flexible, with lots of boolean possibilities. If I wanted to, for example, could search for all the pictures of Zoë, for example, which were taken at Disneyland and that contain Amanda but not Scott. And of course, I could search for specific text in the picture description.

Looking forward to learning more about this program.

Hope you're all enjoying your long weekend!





Links/Update:

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Today's Blatherpics:

The following photos were taken yesterday evening, at my sister's place. Sara and Annie have invented their own version of Quidditch, the game in Harry Potter.

	Sara with the blodger, ducking around Christopher, a neighbourhood boy. The evening light was somewhat dim but I opted not to use the flash, following Sara's motion instead. The results were kind of cool, I thought.
	Annie, the beater, protecting the goal.
	Sunflower in my sister's garden.

ephemeral

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Phoebe Gilman, a Canadian children's author and illustrator whose books included the Jillian Jiggs series. Ms. Gilman was also very supportive of my sister and her work. More information at the Canscaip site (obituary) or Phoebe's own Web site (bibliography).

When I heard about Ms. Gilman's death, I did an online search for more information. When Google turned up a PhoebeGilman.com site, I half-expected to find a fan-run site or one of those slick but impersonal author sites created by a hired third party. Instead, I found a well-designed but very personal site with photographs of the author as a child, with friendly and conversational text.

Even though I've never met the author in person, I couldn't help but experience deep regret that the creator of the site would no longer be updating it herself. Would her family choose to keep the site online? Would they update it?





That started me thinking about mortality, history, and the ephemeral nature of the Web. I've been keeping an online journal since April/97. I've been writing on a daily basis since the beginning of the year. While I probably won't continue to write every day forever, I don't see a reason why I shouldn't keep Blathering for as long as I can keep typing.

But how long will the Web last? Web sites come and go; so do Internet service providers and hosts. Bryan Fullerton has been kind enough to host my sites so far (including Inkspot -- thanks, Bryan!).

I began Blatherings as a lark, but now it's become an essential part of my daily routine, my equivalent of many peoples' morning cup of coffee. Not only is it a great writing exercise for me in preparation for a day's work, like warming up before a run, but I've also begun to realize how great it is to have a searchable archive of all my entries. I can remind myself what I did on the last day of 1999, did I really give Sara a brussel sprout named Susie, the closing of Inkspot.

Now that I'm adding photos, it's become my personal photo album as well, MUCH more organized than the boxes of loose paper photographs I have in my closet and our basement locker. I've also gotten a bit paranoid about losing everything, so have gotten into the habit of using MovableType's backup feature on a regular basis.

I don't tend to read through my past Blatherings that often. When I do, it's usually because I'm searching for a particular date or piece of information, and get distracted by re-reading past entries. Some make me cringe, some nostalgic.

Some I don't recall writing at all, making me wonder if I'm losing braincells over time. But hey, won't that make it all that more exciting for me when I'm 102, reading my own Blatherings as if for the first time. Holy toledo, I'll say, what was I thinking? Then I'd shake my head at the follies of youth, and go back to packing for my canoe trip with Jeff.





News/links:

I'm even more jealous of those who got to go to ConJose this weekend. Just heard that Patrick Stewart gave a talk on Friday night!

Those looking for a feedback page for their blogs/journals might want to check out SignMyGuestbook.com. I noticed that Funny The World (one of the online journals I read regularly) uses it, and it seems nicely-designed and reliable.

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Today's Blatherpics:

These photos were taken at the cottage, when Jeff and I paddled to Adaskin's Bay on our wedding anniversary.