s h u b n a t i o n

From July 1st to July 7th, Jesse, Megan, Winnie, and myself took a road trip to visit our mom in South Carolina.

This involved a 2 hr train ride from Toronto to Kingston, and then a 15 hour drive from Kingston to Hartsville, SC.  We had great weather for the drive down, and did 3 hour driving stints between Megan, Winnie, and myself so it wasn’t too bad.

We spent the night at my moms in Hartsville, had some much needed dinner, hung out with the dogs, and visited with Bruce’s parents.

The next morning we all drove to Charleston, SC.  Downtown we enjoyed the sights, went on a muel drawn carraige ride, had lunch, and took lots of pictures.  That night Jesse, Megan, Winnie and I walked up the newly built Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge to take in the fresh ocean air.

The next morning, we packed up and drove to Myrtle Beach, and stayed at the Caribbean Resort & Villas.  We spent the rest of the trip here, enjoying the beach, mini putt golf, Sonic drive in’s, shopping, people watching, segway riding, 4th of July fireworks, all you can eat crab @ crabby mikes, etc etc etc!

We finished the trip with a very long 17-18 hour drive home up I-77 and I-81, but we made it home safe and sound.

Hope you enjoy the pics!

Andrea, Henrich, Jared, Jason, Jeff, Kieron, Matt, Simon, and Winnie all spent 4 days at the Pinery provincial park near Grand Bend.

The weather was nice for camping, minus a little bit of rain at night and when we first arrived, but we were well prepared with massive tarps and mad skills on covering up key sitting and eating areas at our camp site.  I took a lot of photo’s so I hope you enjoy!

Check out the pics here

I’m not going to stop pushing this until everyone I know uses it.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

You can update to Twitter using the website, sms, and even twitter programs such as Twhirl.

I highly recommend you use it and follow me

You can also view my latest ‘Tweets’ on my blog’s sidebar.

My Dad came up and stayed with me for a couple days.  We stayed fairly busy.  I took pictures the one day we went to Casa Loma.   It was pretty neat to see how big the place was, and the history behind it.  I only took mylittle camera with me sothe pictures aren’t as nice as they should be.  Maybe next time.

Check out the pics here!

Tonight Winnie and I were relaxing at my place, watching a movie when we started to see a ton of flashes from outside. It turned out to be a severe thunder storm. The lightning was so frequent that I was able to easily capture lightning shots with my camera from my living room. Winnie and I quickly grabbed a bag to cover the camera and head up to the rooftop patio, and hide under the Gazebo and take some unobstructed shots from the roof. Surprisingly, there were 3-4 other people already up there just enjoying the thunder storm.

Tripod locked in place, and camera settings dialed in, I began snapping 30 second exposures of the Toronto skyline, and was surprised with this fantastic shot of lightning streaking across the skyline.

Tonight a bunch of us went to Medieval Times here in Toronto.  It was a great show that consisted of starting with us receiving our coloured crowns, then moving to court where we indulged on some huge beers, and pre-show antics.

Once we moved in to the arena we were seated at our colours section (black & white).  The show began as did the feast, consisting of Tomato Bisque soup, garlic bread, half roasted chicken, ribs, potatoes, and a sugary pastry stuffed with apple, all of which was very delicious.

The live entertainment was great!  We saw some cool dressage, jousting, a flying falcon, sword fights on foot and on horses.

Thanks to Joanne for the fantastic planning and getting us an excellent group rate

Check out all the great photos here!

This post should have been made on May 30th, 2008 (actual post date June 15th, 2008) when it happened but the combination of being lazy + busy meant it got missed. My good friend Todd and I are huge fans of Kaskade, a very popular House DJ know throughout the globe came to This is London (lame club) on May 30th, 2008 (Friday). We rounded up some friends and decided to check him out for a 2nd time (1st time was at Footwork Bar).  I only took pics at my place pre-drinking as I didn’t want to risk losing my camera in all the drunkness, loud music, and flashy lights. As you will see from the pics, we toy’d with Kaskade’s name a bit, and in lieu of going to ‘This is London’, we threw in some appropriate Guido Fist pumps!

Check the pics out from that night here!

On my last trip to Kingston, I picked up a new camera kit at my favorite camera shop, Camera Kingston.

• Canon EOS 40D
• Canon 17-40 f/4L
• 4GB Sandisk Extreme IV CF
• 77mm Hoya Super HMC UV filter

I’ve taken ~1000 photo’s since the purchase which has been less than a week.

Here are most recent albums I have posted in the gallery

• Kingston visit
• Queen West
• Winnie’s Soccer team scrimmage
• Winnie’s Grandma’s 82nd birthday

I hope you all enjoy the pictures, and keep checking back often as I’ve caught the shutter bug once again!

Windows Vista tutorials: Basic to Advanced customizations, tweaks, and fixes. Good for beginners to power users.

read more | digg story

Wordpress 2.5 has been released!  To be honest, I had no idea it was even coming, but I stumbled across its announcement on Digg this morning.  Hopefully not much will be noticed on the reader’s end but some of the new features on the backend look fairly promising.

That’s all for now!