Life – Page 3 – Nicolas Demers

Northern Voice 2012, Part 2: In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night

Part 2 of my NV12 recaps: productivity, voice, and comics

Mike Vardy‘s talk on Saturday dealt with Better Blogging Productivity. He offered some commonsense tips such as:

Be realistic (or in his words, “get real!”): get clear about what you can and can’t do in the windows of time available to you. If you only have a little bit of time, do simple things like catch up on email or collect ideas. Save the really creative work for when you can focus on it
Build a schedule. In Mike’s words, blog proficiently not prolifically. Start small, get used to a blogging routine, and build up from there.
Avoid distractions (as opposed to disruptions). Distractions are messages, email notifications, anything nonurgent and avoidable.

Commonsense, sure, but this is stuff I definitely need to work on. I don’t have a blogging routine, and as often as not I’ll check my email when that little red circle appears over the icon. Hey, at least I turned off the sound notifications!

Then Mike offered a number of tools to help with this productivity: tasks managers like 30/30, email filters like AwayFind, forced discipline apps like Freedom (on the Mac).

But the kicker to me was when he said, “discipline is not enough. You need willpower.” Mike told the audience that he wears a Green Lantern ring when blogging as a physical focus. Green Lanterns, as everyone knows, are powered by will. And who is Green Lantern’s arch-nemesis, he asked? “Sinestro,” I replied from the front row. And what does Sinestro run on? “Fear,” I replied again, thus outing myself as a big nerd. Bottom line, then: fear impedes willpower.

And you know what? I totally get it. My take on the discipline vs. willpower dichotomy is that the former is going through the motions, tools and habits that you need to internalise until they’re second nature. Willpower, on the other hand, is the clarity of hearing that little voice pushing you to create and excel. Fears, doubts and insecurities definitely get in the way of hearing that voice.

(Incidentally, Mike and I chatted over lunch for a bit, and I learned about the Green Lantern animated series. I watched the entire first season the day after the conference, and I’m here to tell you it’s awesome. I didn’t think I’d be crazy about the CGI animation, but the technology’s come a long way, and the story, characters and action are all fantastic. Any series that stars Atrocitus, Mogo and Saint Walker is tops in my book.)

After lunch, Shane Birley‘s keynote The Evolution of the Blogger’s Voice took us on a whirlwind sci-fi trip through his blogging history. There was no real plot, just a collection of vignettes from 1998 to the present day: his time in Victoria, meeting Allyson, getting laid off from Cayenta, starting Left Right Minds, and the million other projects he’s currently got going.

Some of his posts (especially the early ones) were about looking for vindication, feeling grumpy, feeling tied down, and looking for his voice. And then his voice came, though sometimes it didn’t feel that way. The moral is: you already have a voice, you just have to find it. It may not be through plain text blogs. Try podcasts, vlogs? Keep digging, and you’ll find it.

And here’s what I’m taking from this talk. I’m not sure if this was really Shane’s point, but here goes, my interpretation:

The thing is, discipline will keep your world ordered, and willpower will keep you putting one foot in front of the other, but you need to see where you’re going, or at least hope that the tied-down-ness and the grumpiness will pass, and you will find your voice one day. All will be well.

My personal view is that Fear has many opposites, not just Willpower. Another is Hope. That’s in the comics too, by the way. Blue Lanterns (powered by hope) by themselves are apparently the weakest of the emotional spectrum (I guess reflecting the fact that hope alone is passive and kind of useless). But team them up with a Green Lantern and they boost each other’s power so as to be nigh-unstoppable. Hope and Willpower together are the greatest force in the universe.

Northern Voice 2012, Part 1: The Future And How To Get There

Northern Voice, the blogging and social media conference which I’ve been attending for two years running, happened again. This time in June instead of May, and at SFU Woodward’s instead of UBC. It’s a great venue, and suited me better, commute-wise.

I had an amazing time again this year, and of course I’m going to recap the hell out of it. Some of the talks complemented each other nicely, so I’ve decided to cover them together. Let’s start with the two morning keynotes:

Reilly Yeo of Open Media kicked the conference off on Friday with her keynote Using the Internet to Save the Internet. From Slacktivism to Interactivism. Open Media has led a number of campaigns, including Stopthemeter.ca, fighting the push by telecom companies to implement metered net use. That petition got over 500,000 signatures, made national news, and the decision-makers responded. More recently, their campaign to stop Bill C-30, the online spying bill made more national news, exposed yet again the raving paranoia of the Harper government in general and Safety Minister Vic Toews in particular. Again, the government blinked.

The moral of these stories? Online petitions do work! Online activism can make a difference! The term “slacktivism” is easy to throw around; and signing online petitions is just about the least you can do to call yourself an activist, but there’s a lot more going on than that. First, half a million “slacktivists” can’t be dismissed so easily.

Second, don’t knock petitions. Darren Barefoot said so way back in Northern Voice 2010: there are many ways to do good online, simple and complex, and it’s important to have a low barrier of entry to do-gooding.

Third, they (well, some, at least) are not just putting in a token ten seconds of effort, they’re getting informed, getting connected with like-minded people, and coming up with hilarious memes. The decision-making process is suddenly a little more human, a little closer to home. Netizens move away from passive consumption of lolcats and Justin Bieber, and towards responsible, mindful involvement.

Not that there’s anything wrong with lolcats, of course. Lolcats are awesome. But lols mixed with politics? Well, that’s best of all.

Second moral, BTW: the Harper government, for all its majority, isn’t quite the juggernaut it would like to be.

So maybe, Yeo argues, “slacktivism” isn’t the right term after all. She suggests “interactivism”: a new kind of activism, highly connected and savvy, with massive potential, and open to anyone.

But what is interactivism saving the internet for, though? Let’s ask Blaine Cook. In his Saturday keynote, The Wild Future (not to be confused with The Future is Wild, which I have on DVD and is totally awesome), Cook argues for the preservation of a “wild” internet, a net free to evolve organically, where difference is a good thing, multiple cultures can arise, coexist and enrich each other.

Let’s talk about Babel for a moment. Cook introduced it as a metaphor for the frustration we feel that we can’t accomplish the things we want, because we can’t work on things together. That’s one interpretation I’ve never heard before! And it’s true, we get more done when we work together. But when we work as one, we get the same things done, over and over. We put up the same towers, over and over. But one size does not fit all.

Case in point: UBC’s Buchanan Building is a fine example of Brutalist architecture, apparently modeled on a building in San Diego. The windows in that building relied on being set deep enough that direct sunlight wasn’t a problem. Problem is, they transplanted the exact same design 2,000 km north, where the sun is much lower in the sky, and apparently the building is an oven.

Brutalism’s been around for a long time. Many cities have a few examples, as office buildings or low-income housing, like the UK housing estates. Some worked, some became slums and got torn down. The lesson is: attempting to design urban utopias with a single, narrow vision leads to monocultures. “Machines for living in” don’t inspire community or organic cultural growth.

Seguing into the online world, Blaine drew a parallel between, on one hand, Brutalist architecture and on the other, the iPhone and social networks like Facebook. The iPhone, you say? (or at least, I said) This pretty, pretty thing with all the wonderful software, how is it anything like those giant ugly-ass buildings? Well, it’s controlled from the top down by a single corporation, and has built-in pesticides to limit the diversity of its software ecosystem. By contrast, the Android system is a much wilder place. Facebook likewise is pretty bland, omnipresent, and controlled by a corporation who calls the shots on your privacy.

Mind you, Facebook did have Cow Clicker, so it wasn’t all bad.

And let’s face it, sometimes you want the bland and the safe. It’s a push-and-pull thing, I guess. Humans settle, we make the wild places not-wild. For comfort, for support, for community. That’s not a bad thing. Not everybody can be a pioneer. But we need to be able to fork cultures, we need the space to create new spaces and ways to express ourselves, and this is something the Web enables like nothing else. As long as it’s not bled dry by big telecoms, strangled or spied on by a paranoid government, censored by churches, or turned into bland consumer networks by greedy corporations.

That is our wild future. The future of collaborative writing using Git, of open source software like Drupal, Firefox and Linux, of a hundred phone OS’s and Pinterest clones, of freely shared knowledge thanks to Wikipedia and others.

The world is so malleable, and we get to find the answers together by building them.

Imagine No Religion 2

It’s been more than a week since the Imagine No Religion 2 conference in Kamloops. I’d never been to Kamloops, and in fact had only ventured into the Interior a couple of times. So hey, this was a little closer to home than TAM, a lot of the local skeptical crowd would be there, why not go too? It’d be like a 2-day long Skeptics in the Pub.

May 18

Road trip! We left Vancouver in the late morning, and decided to take Highway 1 to Kamloops. Longer, but more scenic. We stopped for lunch in Hope, snapped some pictures, and moved on.

After that, it gets a little confusing. I took lots of pictures but for the most part I only have a vague idea of where I actually was. One stretch of Hwy 1 looks pretty much like another, and I had very few landmarks to guide me. Still, it was a great experience. How often do I get to see a semi-arid landscape like this? Don’t think I’d want to live there (I do like the green), especially with nothing but tiny-ass town for miles around, but it’s nice to visit.

And then we got to Kamloops. A pretty little town!!

There wasn’t much going on Friday night except a debate (not covered by conference fees, because it was open to the public). You know the drill: two atheists and two theologians debate the age-old question: does God/Gods exist? Actually, they only debated the Judeo-Christian God, with the same lame arguments you’d expect: Prime Mover, the fine-tuning argument, the argument from absolute moral values, atheism requires omniscience, if you consider the evidence with your heart you’ll see it, etc… All of them have been debunked, all of them show these theologians have never debated in front of a mainly skeptical audience. Not surprising, really. The other debaters, Matt Dillahunty and Christopher DiCarlo took them on and demolished their medieval arguments, though of course no minds were changed. Oh well.

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Mythbusters!

The Mythbusters were in town this Sunday! Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage took over the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for a couple of hours of fun and science. Though I’m a huge fan I hadn’t actually planning to go, since I’ve got volleyball on Sunday nights, and I didn’t think a live show would really add much to the experience—unlike, say, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer, who graced the Vogue Theatre back in November.

But no, this was totally worth it. Adam and Jamie brought lots of audience members, kids and adults, to participate in SCIENCE or play with cool tech like one of their high-speed cameras (ever see someone blowing a raspberry in slo-mo? Fucking hilarious). No explosions, because they couldn’t afford the insurance, but they did have a medley of their best blowing-shit-up moments on a big screen. (including the cement truck. That never gets old).

One thing that struck me was the number of kids, even on a school night. It’s great that their parents are raising them to love science and technology, to question and explore the world around them.

Looking Back at 2011

Not a big list this time, I’ll just mention two memorable highlights of 2011: I started working with Drupal, and I turned 40.

Drupal

Since October 2010 I’ve been in a long-term contract as a developer with a small web shop, building e-commerce sites. After a few months working in Magento I started on a Drupal project (specifically Ubercart), and instantly fell in love. Most of the work I’ve done in 2011 has been in Drupal, mostly back-end coding around Ubercart, though there’s been some digging into core code, as well as front-end / theme development here and there.

In the last year or so I’ve gained tons of experience in Drupal—as well as WordPress in a few smaller projects, both paid and volunteer. Working with both systems has been extremely enjoyable, and I feel I’ve finally found my niche. I know it’ll open many doors for me.

The Big 4-0

I admit, I used to be antsy about turning 40, but when it actually happened, I felt just fine. 40 is just a number, right? Plus, what with volleyball, Taiji, cardio and weights, I’m in way better shape at 40 than at 30—or, hell, even at 39. Finally, everyone The other part is everybody telling me I look way younger than 40. The general consensus is early-thirtyish, though I did have one friend ask me if I was 26 when I mentioned my birthday. And I was all o_O. Just goes to show: 40 is the new 30.

Holiday Photos: Find The River

As is my wont, I flew back to Ottawa to visit withe the family over the holidays. As is becoming my wont I took photos of the landscape from the plane, both coming and going. On the way over, the weather was completely overcast from Calgary to around Sudbury, but what I got was top-notch; Little towns like Temagami, Lumsden’s Mill, Fort-Coulonge, and Ste-Cécile-de-Masham, towns that I’d never heard of but suddenly became amazingly interesting places I might like to visit someday; islands and lakes like Lac La Pêche and Rapides-des-Joachims; and completely random places like some farm out near Russel, ON.

Shooting all these remote locations was great fun. I felt like a pioneer, exploring the Ottawa River… except going backward.

A couple days after landing, I took a walk up Rideau Canal from Hog’s Back Falls. I hadn’t planned on keeping up the “exploring waterways” theme, it sort of happened. Plus, I know the Rideau Canal like the back of my hand, though it was a long time since I’d gone as far as Hog’s Back. They’re small, but really really nice-looking falls.

Then, a day trip to Montreal with my parents, specifically tooling around Vieux-Montréal. That was great; I don’t think I ever visited that particular bit before; plus I got to see the inside of Notre-Dame-de-Montréal, which was phenomenal. Well worth the $5 tourists had to pay (yes, even to look around and take pictures. They must really be hard up for money).

The flight back was just as interesting. The cloud cover came and went over the prairies (sadly, Ontario was completely out), and I managed to get some good shots of Lake Manitoba (frozen), various rivers, and any number of tiny-ass towns in the middle of nowhere. Plus the Drumheller Badlands, famous for their dinosaurs.

I enjoyed the by-now familiar chore of going over Google Maps and an online atlas of Canada to identify these places; post-processing to remove atmospheric haze, that was less fun. It took me several tries per photos until I got something I was satisfied with. But even then, sometimes I had my doubts. For instance, are the Badlands that yellow? (Google Images says that yeah, they pretty much are). Or some photos were too red, or too yellow… It didn’t help that the Ottawa River pictures took place around sundown, which made everything yellower. Well, I did my best, no use worrying too much about it now.

You don’t appreciate what you have when you’ve had it all your life

Last Friday I went to a friend of mine’s Oath of Citizenship ceremony. He’s originally from the States, has been living here in Vancouver with his husband for years, and made the choice to become an official Canuck. That means a lot. I was born here, so were my parents, and their parents, and their parents; never lived anywhere else except for 6 months in Belgium when I was 8. I don’t really think much about Canadianness except when listening to The Arrogant Worms’ heart-stirring national anthem, Canada’s Really Big, or bitching about our dead-eyed Bush-wannabe PM.

Last Friday I went to a friend of mine’s Oath of Citizenship ceremony. He’s originally from the States, has been living here in Vancouver with his husband for years, and made the choice to become an official Canuck. That means a lot. I was born here, so were my parents, and their parents, and their parents; never lived anywhere else except for 6 months in Belgium when I was 8. Canada is always around me, and I don’t really think much about Canadianness except when listening to The Arrogant Worms’ heart-stirring national anthem, Canada’s Really Big, or bitching about our dead-eyed Bush-wannabe PM.

And I’d never been to this kind of ceremony, so hey, new experiences all around! I was a bit disappointed that my friend was only one of 70-odd new Canadians, but I guess if they went one at a time we’d be there all day. The judge started out with a silly, rambly speech about how this was like these people’s alternate birthday, and on every July 22^nd from now on, they might want to bake a cake with red and/or white frosting. And the frosting had to contain maple syrup, so we’d taste the Canadianness. I don’t know, it was like the Food Network or something.

His more formal remarks, about how Canada has a long history of both democracy and embracing diversity, were a lot better. He mentioned several cultural festivals that are widely celebrated at least in Vancouver, like Chinese New Year and Persian New Year, and for a second I totally waited for him to mention Pride… but it never came. Bummer.

There wasn’t a whole lot of ritual, but what there was was all right: a quick oath of allegiance to the Queen (holy book optional; my friend had a copy of Dawkins’ The God Delusion), and a promise to obey Canadian laws, then singing the national anthem. It’s been a while, and I’m glad I remembered the words. Being the only one singing in French probably didn’t help because I had to tune out all the other singers around me.

The only sticking point was swearing allegiance to a monarch. Now don’t get me wrong, Liz is a classy lady, and I know she’s a package deal with Canadian citizenship, but I have personally no use for royalty or aristocracy. No, I didn’t stay up all night to watch two overprivileged youngsters get married or make fun of Princess Beatrice’s crazy hat.

But whatever, this is a joyous occasion! This is a good country to live in, and I’m happy that someone chose Canada, Queen and all!

Northern Voice 2011

And it’s that time of year again. Time to hob-nob with all sorts of bloggers and assorted geeks in UBC’s lovely Life Sciences Centre, with its gorgeous atriums filled with natural light.

Friday Keynote: April Smith

This was different. Both previous keynotes dealt with high-level politics, how social media intersects with mainstream media and corporate power. But April Smith brought us down to earth for a moment with her stories of living in the Downtown Eastside. We learned about her work as a citizen journalist empowering the residents with access to technology—Nokia handphones, specifically. I forget the exact model, and I’ll forgive the constant product placement, especially if it turns out that they’re as easy to use as she claims. Those phones were donated by some Nokia rep, and it’s a hard reminder that this shit ain’t free, and every social movement must depend on the kindness of sicher strangers.

April was clearly nervous and reading from prepared notes—she admitted to being uncomfortable speaking in front of people—but that didn’t matter. Her stories were raw, straight from the heart, and powerfully moving. The short clip of the man whose cat was thrown out of his 5th storey apartment during a breakin. The simple brief connection that stopped a man from killing himself, just because she showed him a bit of kindness and let him see his own photo. If April hadn’t been there, with her phone, that man would now be dead.

That’s what social media means, in the Downtown Eastside. It’s about connecting with people, telling your story, and changing lives for the better.

Drawing on Walls

Okay, that was kind of a bust. I don’t think I got anything out of it, except yet a reminder that my drawing skills suck. I chose this session just to go a little outside the box (and because none of the other ones really appealed to me), but an hour-long workshop wasn’t going to give me any super-creative power. Ah, well. Live and learn.

Your Blog Is Boring and Your Photos Suck

Syx Langemann and Morten Rand-Hendriksen teamed up to give the audience some tools to make their photos suck less and their blogs less boring. Somewhat disappointingly, they mostly covered the technical aspects (Syx: aperture, shutter speed, ISO; Morten: ALT tags, meta tags, SEO, and WordPress-specific tidbits) but not so much ways to make things less boring or sucky. I guess that part is up to each of us. But I did love the sample photos Syx showed us; nothing like the portfolio of a talented photographer to get you inspired!

The Naked Truth: Canadian Science Blogging Scene

A panel consisting of Rosie Redfield, Beth Snow, Eric Michael Johnson and Maryse de la Giroday discussed science, blogging, and all related issues. Does blogging impact your credibility as an academic and researcher? What are the pros and cons of pay-to-read vs. pay-to-publish journals? What place do non-peer-reviewed blogs have in science education and research? What incentive do researchers have to blog about their work if it means the risk of competitors scooping them out (and their funding)? Why would a researcher blog?

Dr. Redfield (who did most of the talking) answered that last question: she likes the idea of a non-scientist stumbling on her writing, it clarified her thinking, serves as a memory aid, and helps her write. Also, it allows her to critique science in the media.

Good stuff, for sure.

Incidentally, I found it interesting that 3 out of the 4 panelists were women. I wouldn’t have expected that kind of breakdown for science bloggers and academics, but there you go.

Also: the following day at lunchtime, Dr. Redfield took a few of us on a short tour of the labs in the building. Behold the power of social media: there was no big announcement, no signs put up, just a couple of calls retweeted back and forth.

MooseCamp: Five Card Flickr

Five Card Flickr is fun. Our small group spent the hour with Alan Levine getting to know the game, choosing pictures, and coming up with a story. Didn’t go anywhere and it had no plot, but man was it fun. I haven’t taken part in this kind of collective storytelling since… what, my D&D days? Ooo, and check out Pecha Flickr.

Communities That Rock

How do you create kick-ass online communities? Arieanna Schweber and Raul Pacheco-Varga give us the lowdown. Some of their advice applied for blogs, others for forums and community sites, but the bottom line is pretty much the same: engage with your audience, have everything (tweets, photos, videos) point back to a single site, have proper internal linking, know how to tell a story. Pretty common-sense stuff, right? Maybe, but it has to be said. Also, keep in mind that this is hard work, and community building doesn’t happen overnight. Finally, avoid becoming isolated. It’s good to be active both offline and online.

Saturday Keynote: Chris Wilson

Chris Wilson took us on a trip down memory lane, reminiscing about NCSA Mosaic (which I also remember fondly from my early days on the WWW), his early work on Web standards—apparently he’s responsible for overlapping <B> and <I> tags—and adventures in social media. Of course, they didn’t call it that. But games like Nethack (through other people’s ghosts) and other applications allowed connections and interaction between people, mediated by technology. And isn’t that what this conference is about?

Wilson cautioned us: There are people that need to learn how to play well with others. What voice should you use? How much should you share? Sharing feels good. It makes you vulnerable, but you create lots of real connections. I guess it’s up to each of us to choose how far to take it. He closed off with a quote from the late, great Douglas Adams

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be

A Code of Ethics For The Social Web

Morten R-H again, this time discussing our responsibility, as bloggers, to the truth. This applies much more to journalism-style blogging, and reviewers, but everyone can benefit. Really, it boils down to a few simple principles: be honest with yourself and your audience; admit when you may be biased (e.g.: when you get freebies in exchange for reviews), be critical of your own biases and opinions. It is important to have such a code of ethics, and hold each other accountable, because anyone with a big enough audience has a big influence.

Trust relationships—brought up by an audience member who disagreed with Morten’s basic thesis—will only take you so far. It’s all very well to personally be critical of the blogs you follow and if you find they’re unreliable, well, to just stop following them, but (a) that does nothing to discourage unreliable bloggers, and (b) it doesn’t help people who don’t have working bullshit filters. If the Tea Party, 9/11 Truthers and the Huffington Post* have taught us anything, it’s that popularity has very little to do with truth.

(*Seriously, early on in the talk he lumped all three together. Awesome)

And here’s his code of blogging ethics

Looking Through The Lens

Alan Levine again, taking us through some of the ins-and-outs of taking good photos, both from a technical and creative standpoint. It was great stuff, but hard to summarise.

Stop Apologising For Your Online Life

Alexandra Samuel asks: is online life any less real than IRL? Are those three letters themselves a dead giveaway? She argues that no, life online is just as interesting and meaningful as offline. She proposed a new 3-letter term: RLT, meaning Real Life Too. Kinda catchy, though I’m not really feeling it. Still, who knows? It just might catch on.

Online art is just as valid and meaningful as offline art, just because you can’t hang it on a wall or show it off in a gallery. There is amazing stuff being done online, like the It Gets Better Project (and indeed, for a lot of queer youth, online is the only way to connect with other queer people); I’ll just add Pogo’s fantastic remixes.

But you also have a responsibility to your online life, as much as your offline one. Don’t be passive, invest real attention; give back, and commit to creating something real. Likewise, don’t just friend any Tom, Dick and Harry on Facebook. Friendship means something, online as well as off-. Only connect with people you feel a relationship with, not just faces that’ll increase your friend count.

Conclusion

I left early on Saturday, because I was still feeling a bit under the weather, but I’m so glad I went. Looking forward to next year’s Moose!

2010 was a good start

It’s been an interesting year, that’s for sure. A year of transitions and new beginnings. After being laid off in late 2009, I spent the first few months of 2010 trying to look for work, and not having much success. After a while I began to wonder if maybe there wasn’t another way to go about things. Tentatively I reached out to other freelance web designers, getting a feel for the industry, still unsure of what I really wanted to do, and what I was ready for.

Eventually, I landed a couple of small contracts, just enough to give me the confidence to continue. And I started a long-term contract at a small web development shop, doing interesting things with Magento and Drupal, and possibly other CMS’s down the line, exactly the kind of skills I want to develop. Plus, it’s a steady paycheck, which is nothing to sneeze at. But the difference with all the other steady paychecks I had in my career, is that this is something I really enjoy doing, and that I can see myself doing in the long-term. I’ve still got a lot to learn, both in technical skills and the freelancing life in general, I believe I’ve finally found my path.

Some other important firsts:

And they won’t be the last, that’s for sure.

What else? Well, there’s going in drag for the first (and probably last) time.

And here’s to 2011! Time to build on everything I’ve accomplished last year.

I felt like a tourist in my home town

I went back to Ottawa to visit my family for the holidays and it struck me—not for the first time—that I was a tourist in my home town. Gone for almost 15 years, coming back once a year on average, gradually lost touch with most of my friends there—but this time, I decided to roll with it, and actually do the touristy thing. Well, it was either that or stay indoors and cower from the winter cold.

First stop, Parliament Hill. I’ve only gone a couple of times, including one school trip, and at least one student protest. Was kind of hoping I could get in, but no, only staff or tour groups were allowed inside. Oh well, I still snapped some photos, then wandered around the Byward Market, the Art Gallery, and Notre Dame Cathedral.

Next day, I hit the Experimental Farm. The weather was fine and clear, though still bloody cold.

And on the flight back, I managed to get some more pictures from the plane. Picking a window seat on the starboard side was a long shot because I didn’t know how good the weather would be, but it paid off. Skies were clear for big chunks of northern Ontario, and bits of Manitoba and Alberta, as well as the Lower Mainland. Score! And once back, I got some experience fiddling with colour levels to remove the atmospheric haze. On the whole, I’m pretty happy with the results.