Happy Birthday Canada
Well it's certainly nice to be back in Canada.

Today is Canada's 142nd birthday, and though the weather was touch-and-go for a while, the evening ended up being perfect for fireworks.

I had never viewed the fireworks shot from the Québec side of the river, so I went early and found myself an isolated area where I was the only person for about 100m. It wasn't easy to get to, but the view was great.

From a photography-creativity point of view, this was an excellent opportunity to play with the Manual mode. The sweet spot for shots ended up being f/4.0, 8/10s exposure, at ISO 200. While my lens can do f/2.8 throughout, there aren't pretty lens flares when the aperture is wide open.

Dateline
One of the coolest things about traveling East over the Pacific is the dateline. This flight was the fastest I've ever been on from Taipei, at only about nine hours. It didn't go over Japan and Alaska like it usually does.

What this means is that I left Taipei Thursday at 23:55, and I landed in Vancouver Thursday at 19:15!

Bye-bye Taipei
I was hoping to write something during my stay in Taipei. Instead, I'm writing this from the plane flight back to Vancouver. The plane is a nice shiny Boeing 777. It's pitch black outside, with bright stars and a fair bit of turbulence. I'm hoping the plane will have the starry-sky ceiling like on my previous flight on one of these.

I guess the point is that I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to write anything. With this fifth visit, I know enough people and places in the city to keep busy every single night of a four week trip.

The trip has been exhausting, as always. First a week of Computex, then a whole slew of meetings and working with my company's customers. We even opened a new corporate office downtown Taipei, at an excellent location right next to the Zhong Shan subway station. Four hotels throughout the stay kept it fresh. Perhaps this is to be expected, but I'm starting to understand significant amounts of Mandarin, and starting to recognize more and more characters. Just for fun, I got two-sided business cards, with my Chinese name (史派特) and contact information on the back!

The photo is of the one chance I had to get away from the city. I was fortunate to get brought along on a trip to the Eastern coastal town of Keelung. Nothing reminds you that you're on a tropical island like a lush green coastal line falling into the ocean.

One last note: don't drink the Guinness in Taiwan. It has a funny yellow label, is brewed in Malaysia, and tastes nothing like Guinness. Try one for fun, it's an alright stout, but it's definitely not Guinness.

I can't wait to sleep in my own bed again. First, I have to spend the night in Vancouver. Maybe I'll spend the night walking along the coast rather than sleeping in yet another hotel.

The Month of May
That last entry was written in a hurry at the Toronto Airport. It didn't convey very well what was on my mind (or at least the relevant things on my mind). So, I'll try again in the last few hours before May is over. In fact, May is already over where I am right now.

May was a very busy month. It held the significance of being the one-year anniversary of moving into my own place, but it was also extremely busy because I took on a philosophy similar to that of Jim Carey's character in Yes Man, to fill every free time slot with something. For example, after getting off the plane back from Boulder on a late Friday evening, I hopped into my car at the airport and drove straight out to Markus' bachelor party not far from Algonquin Park. No time wasted. That's how the month went, every moment occupied by new experiences. The TV got very little attention the whole time.

Speaking of Boulder, the trip was also very busy. I had hoped for a bit of time for some photography or a short hike, but it didn't happen. Still, the evenings were enjoyable, with Boulder's good patio weather and many microbrews.

Markus' wedding was a blast. I bought some new clothes for the event, and felt like a million bucks being dressed respectably for once in my life. And what a once-in-a-life event: certainly, the reception afterwards brought out the best qualities of all of the people I've known for years. As vague as it sounds, all of the right elements just came together.

So, here I am now, back in Taipei, my fifth time here. The setup for Computex starts in a couple of hours. It's great that the month of May also brought about a revival of one of my favourite activities, namely travel. The attached photo is of late afternoon while flying over the Rockies. We have a family trip planned for a drive through these fantastic mountains later this summer. For now, I'll enjoy the hospitality of the locals. I am here for four weeks, so hopefully there will be time to write about some of the more interesting endeavours around here.

And before I forget, I'll recommend one of the in-flight movies I saw, Gran Torino. An unusual movie, but a very good one. Clint Eastwood nailed that one.

The Lounge
Travelling to Boulder, Colorado. Ah, The Lounge. I miss this place and all of the free alcohol.

As an aside, this past weekend marked a year since I moved into my apartment.

Canadian Hydraulics Centre
This evening a group of us from the Rideau Nautical Modellers was priveleged to go on an extensive guided tour of the Canadian National Research Council's Canadian Hydraulics Centre.

This building has been known to me for many years. It came up many times during university for many examples. The image formed in my brain had always been of a giant wavepool with a 60-segment controlled wave machine. It is so much more than that.

The first thing that struck me was just how enormous the facility is, and how extensive their research programs are. There were no less than four giant wave pools, one of which is housed in a chamber that can be cooled down to a whopping -25°C for ice studies.

The next amazing feature is the detail they use when constructing a typical model. In the example we followed, the topography of the area was duplicated in masonite profile slices at half or one metre intervals. Then, the area in between it was filled in with gravel (up to four feet!), leaving just a couple of centimetres that then gets filled in with concrete/grout. This kind of model is constructed for every study they conduct there. The craftsmanship of the models of ships, rigs, and whatever is needed is equally astonishing, with hulls being rough-cut, machined, and fiberglassed to perfection.

The CHC definitely earned its spot onto my list of interesting places in Ottawa.

Boat Day!
On the Friday leading up to my birthday weekend, I decided to take the day off and catch up on hobbies. I got loads done on my 1:12 scale Trojan cruiser, to the point that the end is in sight.

After twelve hours at the shop, cutting and epoxying the individual teak planks, then sanding old paint off the superstructure, I came home, only to put myself through another arduous task: creating railing joints. After a fair bit of work, I got one of them done. Not to be outdone by the urge to sleep, I decided to do the other thirteen as well. The railing is 1/16" rod, so the joints are really quite small.

And that's how the eve of my birthday went.

RIP Battlestar Galactica
A bittersweet ending to the best TV series ever created. This past weekend marked the series finale of Battlestar Galactica.

BSG is known for taking a TV series to new limits; to push the threshold beyond what the audience has come to expect from episodic storytelling. It's the kind of writing Ron Moore was great at on Deep Space Nine, and it was expected of him and shared by a broader audience on this show.

The finale was not what I anticipated. It was probably not what anyone expected. But it did tie most of the loose ends. I don't think it could have been done better, as a matter of fact. Nonetheless, I would have liked to have seen Apollo back in a Viper cockpit. I would like to know just what happened to Starbuck at the end, who she actually was. I was surprised that they decided to destroy the fleet rather than use it to build new homes on Earth. The effect of the Galactica's last jump was very nice. The tie-in with modern-day New York was clever, but the ending for our favourite characters felt a little out of place. Maybe this is, again, because the show works differently than others; the finale certainly felt more final than on any other series.

All in all, the show had a great run. It took guts to end it sooner rather than later. I'm saddened to have the show done, to know that the sets have been destroyed, all of the props auctioned off, etcetera. This is another end of a little era for me. Hats off to all of the people who made it possible.

Roland MT-32
The search is over! I finally found a Roland MT-32 in decent condition for a decent price.

The MT-32 is a MIDI module from the late eighties, predating General MIDI. Why would anyone want one? That's a good question. In basically every way, modern General MIDI is superior. My new Roland piano plays MIDI with almost surreal realism. However, being a nostalgic guy, I play a lot of old games I grew up with, like the Sierra and Lucasarts classics. They predate GM. They also use a feature of MIDI calles SysEx, with MT-32-specific commands to program instrument information. In other words, those games only sound right on an MT-32.

By "sound right" I mean that they sound fantastic. I hooked up the MT-32 to my laptop via a Midisport USB MIDI dongle and pointed DosBox at MIDI port 20:0. Just like that Space Quest III came to life. It never sounded at all decent on a GM card, so it was fantastic to hear. Next, after fooling around with more of the Space Quest series, I tried a couple of titles from the Kings Quest series, and they sounded fantastic as well. From the Lucasarts side, the Monkey Island games sounded better than ever. I will try some of the Indiana Jones titles later. Of course, games such as Tyrian which are designed for General MIDI sound much better through the piano.

It's also really cool to be exposed to classic Sierra shenanigans I've never seen before. The attached photo shows the MT-32 while Space Quest III is starting. Someone at Sierra decided that the MT-32 display should read "INSERT BUCKAZOID" while the game is starting. Cute.

The closest I've ever heard to these old games sounding right is on my trusty old AudioTrix Pro card. It has a Yamaha chip that fits in quite well with the older Roland sound. However, it's locked into an ancient ISA bus (in my 486), and is therefore not quite "future-proof". I think it's great that I can painlessly use this MT-32 from twenty years ago with modern hardware. This one's a keeper.

Beer Bottled
Yesterday was a perfect day of outside activity. It was spent at Mont Tremblant. I couldn't have asked for a nicer day for my one and only ski outing of the season.

The result was pain today. As such, I opted to avoid going to the gym and set about bottling my first batch of beer ever. It took a good long time, and involved about the same effort as my normal workout with entail. The results are good: 61 bottles of a tasty-looking red ale.

At the moment it doesn't actually taste great. The beer is very flat. Having added the dextrose tonight, it will be some time before the yeast does its magic and turns it into carbon dioxide. It will not be long.

For such a slow process, this really is quite exciting.