On the Road

Years ago we decided that we’d make room for some of the visitors to Vancouver during the Olympics. So, on Monday evening, we set out, rolling our suitcases down the hill to the Olympic streetcar. Four minutes later, we got on the Canadaline Skytrain and got off at the Vancouver airport. It couldn’t be easier, and I’d recommend anyone who’s on the fence about the new mass transit vs. a taxi to look seriously at taking the Canadaline, especially if you have luggage on wheels (which the vast majority of bags are these days). About the only down-side was the Olympic crowds, even at 8:45PM.

Our flight on Cathay Pacific left at 2:00 AM, so we had a quiet airport and some time to use the Wi-fi to make some last tweets (and to chat with a friend in Hungary – what a small world this is becoming…but more about that in a later post).

The flight was OK, but very, very cold. Honestly, it was like spending 10 hours in a meat locker; You could almost see your breath. Pam and I had coats with hoods, which we kept up the whole time. There was one blanket per person, and no more. We got in to Hong Kong at their 7:30 AM or so (a day later). After a short layover of about an hour, we boarded another flight to Bangkok. A couple of hours later, we touched down and saw their new(ish) airport, that had been built 3 years ago. It’s a very impressive structure, with caterpillar-like gates connected to a steel, concrete and glass main section. We were immediately met by two young reps. for the tour company (Abercrombie & Kent, who Pam used for her tour of Antarctica). They whisked us through baggage and customs, and we then were handed off to one of the tour guides here, who goes by the nickname Tukke (Tookie). She, and a driver, drove us through the enormous city of Bangkok, to the hotel where we are staying here, the Mandarin Oriental. It’s a very fine hotel (officially 130 years old), albeit old enough that I saw echoes of my grandmother’s taste throughout: the English colonial furniture, the palms and white palm tearoom, the pool with cabanas and teak walkways throughout. It’s well maintained, however, and the Internet in the room was good enough that I could phone my parents back in the states via Skype on my iPhone and it was good enough for them that my father thought it sounded like I was ‘next door’. The view, of the Chao Phraya river (River of Kings) is pretty impressive too:

We managed to stay awake (barely) until about 7:30 PM before collapsing and then waking up at 3, and then 6 this morning. After one of the best breakfast buffets I’ve ever eaten (included with the room – I’ll try and take some photos tomorrow), we returned to the room, and after a short rest, I write this update.
I’m going to try and update the Flickr set of our trip as we go, and it’s here: 2010 Trip to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

So, it’s off for a short boat trip across the river to explore some of the city (after we change into shorts to adjust for the heat). Then, perhaps a ride on the Skytrain (Hah, Just like home!). I’m also planning on a massage for my aching shoulder, back and neck, which may be from the plane ride, plus accumulated stress from the past few weeks.

More to come…

Happy Thanksgiving to the US

While here in Canada we celebrated our Thanksgiving back on October 12th, this one is ‘the big one’ that we hear about from the South. With that in mind, I thought I’d send a little bit of Beethovenian Good Will (by way of the Muppets) your way, my American friends and family:

(Thanks to Brenda Cadman of October 17 Media for finding this. )

I haven’t been blogging much this month (maybe it’s the rain — 22 days of it this month!, maybe it’s the time of year — very busy). I will make a serious effort to get something more substantial here this coming week. In the meantime…

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!

Be embraced, you millions!
This kiss for the whole world!

Cold Season and Another Try with FontKit

I haven’t had a cold in quite a while, so the one I have now feels particularly annoying. It’s not as if I’ve forgotten what a cold is like, but I think you can get used to them, when you get them more often (and I’m sure I did suffer from frequent colds- nearly every few months or so when we lived in Boston). It’s a rainy day, and this is Cold: Day 2 ( which means, runny nose, sneezes and a little less energy), Cold: Day 2 is always easier for me than Cold: Day 1 (sore throat, runny nose, feeling like crap). Hopefully, this cold will progress at the usual rate, or maybe even faster.

It’s Labour Day weekend, and although I do have a contract I’m working on, I do have the luxury of not having to work very much this 3-day weekend. This holiday falls on the last weekend of summer and ushers in School, Work, and general ‘Lets-Get-Down-To-It’ sort of things that we associate with the Fall season. We’ve had a spectacularly sunny summer, and it really was extraordinary, with months and months of sunshine, sunshine and more sunshine. That was unfortunate for those people who had to deal with wildfires to the East of us, but for those of us in the city or near the water, July and August have been a rarely interrupted succession of one beautiful day after another. Does this mean we are in for some weather comeuppance?  Will we see a January and February monsoon, or worse, lots of snow, like last year? Time will tell, I suppose. What I can say for sure is that for the first time in ages, the rain that we have (and there has been a little of it), is falling on a weekend. Rainy weekends hold their own charm for me; you don’t have to feel guilty about indoor pursuits like movies, TV, blogging, listening to iTunes or even cleaning up the place. I’m not missing any precious hours of vitamin D harvest, and it can be nice to be cozy, wrapped in a blanket, snoozing through some of those sniffles.

The end of the Summer really began a couple of weeks ago when Pam and I once again went to the PNE, which is in its last weekend right now. While we missed Dal Richards, (Canada’s answer to Guy Lombardo and Glen Miller and a living legend, still performing well into his 90’s), we did make it to see many of the animals (and on Opening Day, there are many of them):

The Opening Day crowds, brought out by the perfect weather were large:

We chatted with an old friend at the Home Improvement Pavilion, ate some of those famous little donuts:

and Pam got a bargain of 4 ears of roasted corn for the price of 1 (the line was so long, they were getting behind and she got a plate of not-quite-good-enough-for-1-serving ears):

We also went to the ‘Marketplace’ where you see all of those demonstrations of everything from Shammies to Blenders and ended up getting a Smart Living Steam Mop. We’ve since put it through it’s paces on our carpets, wood and tile at home and while it does not perform miracles, it does work pretty well, and we hope it will help us keep the place a little cleaner. We still do need new carpet, but that will hopefully come in the next few months or so.

So, with the season now clearly coming to an end, it’s time to return my attention back to this blog, which I’ve been giving a bit less attention this summer. With that, I’m trying to once again look at the new Font technology that will be coming soon to a web page on your screen…

Squishy Fonts?

I’ve tried some different Typekit fonts, and it seems as if the body text is always looking a bit squished. I’m convinced it’s not the fonts themselves, but the metrics I’ve specified on the original Georgia font (which is what older browsers see when they view my pages). I’ll keep at it, but for reference, here are the fonts as they appear on the TypeKit Editor page:

As you can see, the new font, Luxi (Sans and Serif) are not supposed to be that squishy, so I’ll have to work on the original CSS (and do so without ruining the look of the page for older browsers. Backward compatibility without messing up the new fonts is going to be one of the challenges for us using these new fonts, I guess.

Summer Days, Trips and Food

I haven’t been blogging much lately, partially because I am still somewhat busy with work, and also because those times when I’m not busy, I’m usually taking it easy. The weather has been so warm and sunny, and this time of year the sun sets so late (usually around 9:20 PM) that we are taking some walks after dinner, partly for weight control, partly because it’s just too good to miss the sunsets and light on the water.

With the good weather have come some trips that were a photographer’s holiday, notably one where we met my brother and his family at the tail end of Skagit Tulip Festival:

We also had a nice walk through the Rieger Bird Sanctuary on Westham Island (where we intend to go to pick berries in a couple of weeks):

Finally, we took a couple of walks through Stanley Park and Pacific Spirit Park:

As you might expect, with the laid-back weather and walks have come the summer fruits and vegetables. It’s been a great year for asparagus, and we heard that the strawberry harvest, due to the dry, warm spell, is excellent. The apricots (both orange and purple), sweet Donut Peaches (sorry, Mom and Dad, this time they were perfect – not like the ones you had), and Dinosaur egg plums are all appearing in the market, and today we saw the first of what we hope will be bushels of blueberries. Tonight, we decided to follow the cue of Edible Vancouver magazine and make this superb appetizer, Stuffed Apricots:

Stuffed Apricots

10 small, perfectly ripe apricots
2 oz.(55g) blue brie or other mild blue cheese
4 oz. (115g) cream cheese
10 small leaves fresh basil
20-40 pine nuts, toasted

Halve apricots and remove pits. Mix cheeses together until well blended. Fill each apricot half with cheese and garnish with one basil leaf and one or two pine nuts.

Here’s what it ends up looking like:

Thanks again, Dad, for the camera.

Coming Up for Air and Tired Old Phrases

I’ve had to neglect blogging for much of this month, because I’ve been working very hard. It’s hopefully going to work out in the end, but this is one of those times where I have to keep intoning that mantra “It’s Only Temporary.” So, while today was one of those picture-perfect days we in Vancouver get in the spring and summer, I must confess that I only saw it via the occasional peek at a the KatKam webcam from my windowless office. I might as well have been underground, instead out in the place that has once again been named by Mercer Consulting, Number 4 of the ‘Top 5 quality of living ranking for cities worldwide‘. While I am proud of the fact that my home is once again up there with Vienna, Zurich, Geneva and Auckland as one of the best places to live, I have to admit that for us personally, for a variety of reasons,  it’s been a very tough past couple months. However, I’m looking forward to beautiful sunny days with cool breezes, local strawberries and asparagus, walks along the False Creek seawall and the return of the Farmer’s Markets on the weekends. The fountain in the park across the street is flowing again, and the tulips are out in full force. I just have to be sure to get out and enjoy all of those things. After all, they are all only temporary as well.

Heard Often. Way Too Often

To keep an eye on our former country, Pam and I have tried to catch one of the network news channels from the US each evening over dinner, so we keep switching between TiVO recordings of Brian (Williams), Katie (Couric) and Charlie (pronounced the way Sarah Palin did in the puff-piece interviews he did her, as the sharp, twangy CHAR-ly, Gibson). I’ve been noticing an annoying tendency by both the reporters as well as the public (and politicians) for using the same phrases over and over again. Here are a few that I’ve just about had enough of:

Come Together
What does that phrase mean? Aside from the sexual double-entendre, as far as I can tell, it means to have a public meeting where  problems like gang violence, racial strife and poverty are all magically overcome by an aura of good fellowship. Sorry, I’m not buying it. It’s an empty phrase uttered over and over again in front of TV cameras by people who have no idea what they are saying.

Bipartisan
Until recently ‘bipartisan’ used to mean something. I think it meant that both of the big, iconic US political parties support something, as opposed to its more common opposite, ‘partisan’ (which now that I think of it, could have been Monopartisan). Now,’ bipartisan’ is uttered by politicians meaning (depending on which side they are on)  ‘Something I wanted but never got’ or ‘Something we should all look like we are trying for even though we really don’t want it anyway’.  Like Lite and Fat-Free or Sustainable, it’s an now a meaningless word held aloft like a flag of victory or rag of defeat.

Wall Street always followed by Main Street
It used to be that you could say ‘Wall Street’ and everybody knew that it referred to the New York Stock Exchange, as well as the other business and organizations in that general geographic area of Manhattan. Now, like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum or Flotsam and Jetsam, it has become a stupid shorthand for the hostility between the rich and connected in the Financial Services Sector vs. Middle America. Like two squabbling children, we are supposed to make sure both are taken care of, but not to let the other get jealous or sulky. I hope they break up the idiom before it becomes another ‘prim and proper’ or ‘tooth and nail’.

Bailout
‘Bailout’ originally meant ‘an act of loaning or giving capital to a failing company in order to save it from bankruptcy, insolvency, or total liquidation and ruin’. (Wikipedia). Now it’s almost become a joke phrase, meaning  Free Money.  Enough, already. It’s never funny.

…and the word or phrase that I’ve found the both the most ubiquitous and annoyingly imprecise on the news these past months:

Transparent
I’ve heard this word used so many times, I’ve started doing the old Pee-Wee’s Playhouse shtick (well, not screaming real loud, but saying ‘ding!’) every time it is uttered.  I think it was to suggest that like a glass house, the operations and decisions of an organization (such as the Federal Government) were to be easily apprehended by the public, typically by using a Web Site or some other publicly accessible medium. Wasn’t that what C-SPAN was supposed to do? (except of course, nobody but the wonks and fanatics bothered to watch it). Again, like ‘Come Together’, Transparent is another word or phrase overused to the point of meaninglessness.

There are others, but these are the ones that come to mind today. I’m sure that in a few weeks I’ll be sick of ‘Torture Memo’ and ‘Pandemic’, because they’ll have been made just as meaningless through repetition by that time.