Community vs the world

I got asked the other day why I'm willing to put (what they see as) so much time into my community association. 

There's macro and micro reasons why, and they sort of tie together. At least I think they do.

I've said for years that reading the world news is like wading through a river of shit with people making splashes by throwing rocks into it. It keeps getting worse, primarily because too many world leaders are idiots pandering to their deluded bases. Trump is only the most obvious and malignant example, but there are others trying hard. 

One of them is much closer to home than I would like. She is a failed politician that was trying to build her radio audience, and somehow got voted into power. She is well along the conservative road of destroying public institutions by withholding funding, then claiming they don't work, and selling it off to a private enterprise buddy for pennies on the dollar.

Public education is just one of the examples. In case you missed it, not one one thin dime of taxpayer money should go to private schools. The public school Catholic Board should be abolished and the schools merged with the rest of the public system. Public schools should be atheist; religious education should happen at home. If people want to send their kids to a private school, they should pay the whole freight, and then the kids go to the public school exams for access to higher education. All the money that is currently going to 'charter' (read private) schools should go back to the public system where it belongs, so they can properly serve all children. Parents and teachers shouldn't have to be buying supplies for basic education.

I took a vacation from Facebook for a while. The recent return is wading in that river of shit again. The actual news is bad enough, the AI generated misinformation is worse, and the posts that tell actual lies to stir outrage are worst of all. But other than not looking at it, there isn't much I can do about that river.

But what I can do is help make my community a better place to live. The community association is one way of doing that. We put on events that people enjoy coming to. They can hang out with their friends and neighbours, and meet new people in a safe and fun environment. We run a volunteer pantry to help with food insecurity. We rent out facilities for a wide variety of programs, for a variety of ages ranging from elderly to toddlers. We maintain outdoor facilities like ice rinks in winter, a small skateboard park, basketball, tennis and pickleball courts during the summer. We advocate to the city and province about issues of concern to our residents. 

Those residents aren't some mythical "other". They are the people living down the street or around the corner or a short walk away. We share our roads, paths, and sidewalks with them. We see them shopping in our in our local stores, or having coffee or lunch in one of the restaurants. Their kids are in one of the 3 schools in our neighbourhood or maybe go to one of several day care facilities here. Some are wealthy and some are struggling to make ends meet. Some are really old, some are newborns, and every age in between. Going to school, working, looking for work, retired, volunteering. Buying a home, or selling one, or renting. Riding the bus or driving to get to where they need to go. All of us, doing our thing in a shared space. Don't you think it's better to share space with happy people?

What I do, what our amazing staff and volunteers do, makes a real and appreciable difference to where we live. I've said many times that my lens for looking at proposals is, "Does this make our community a better place to live?"

A simple example from last night. One of the people who rent a room had to push their event back an hour. That wasn't a problem since the room was empty for the revised time. The problem was the key fob would only open the door till 6pm, and they were there at 7. I zoomed over and let them in. A dance class could go on with their practice. Happy kids.

A couple recent sunset photos for you.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

So there was a stressful moment there

I'm the kind of guy that likes to scope things out in advance. One example was the MRI last October. I'd been past the South Health Campus enough to know where it was, but not enough to know about parking. I wanted to scope it out during daylight. I found a good spot and decided to check out the inside of the building so I'd know where to go. Hospitals can be quite the maze. Found where I needed to go, sort of accidentally got checked in, and they took me early. Score!

Most recently our senior's group asked me to give them a presentation with photos of our trips to New Brunswick and Newfoundland. They'd liked the presentations about Yukon and New Zealand. I was happy to, but a bit twitchy about our projector, and how the new laptop would work out.

I went over to the hall a couple times to figure out the best way of presenting the photos, and to be sure the laptop could talk to the projector. The laptop has an HDMI port, and the projector has an HDMI in, but in between there's a dodgy switch. 

After some playing I discovered that of the 3 cables, only one would work, and in only one of the switch ports. I could cope. So there I was on Tuesday, setting up that way. Then the fun started. The screen image flickered, showing the laptop desktop then the blue screen of death. Back and forth a bunch of times. After a bit of fussing I got the image to stay up. I was doing my introduction, and went to show the first image, and, blue screen of death. Sigh.

I ended up unplugging the switch and plugging the projector HDMI directly into the laptop. That's a short cable, so I had the laptop on top of the equipment rack in the AV closet. I had to duck in and out to change slides.

One lady's husband had worked for Parks Canada in Fundy National Park for a long time, and had seen much of New Brunswick. Another lady had traveled there and seen some of it. I'd brought along the travel books, and people loved those.

So other than a sweaty few minutes trying to overcome the projector issues, it went really well. And people wonder why I pushed to have the AV equipment upgraded during the upcoming hall renovations...

In other news I was out for a walk near bridge 9. It's been warm, snow and ice is melting, the water is gushing, but it's still a sloppy enchilada out there. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago (Actually Feb 2)

Flower What the side bed looked like late 2016

Landscape Votier's Flats.

A busy week, almost like work

Our community association is updating our website. I'm the overall project lead, and there's lots of balls in the air. It's not just moving existing content into a new skin, it's updating, rearranging, and adding in some entirely new content. Some of which leads to the database we use for memberships and event registrations, which means updating it as well.

Plus, we are planning renovations to our building over the summer. I'm thankful I'm NOT the project lead for that. New flooring, new LED lighting, new paint, reworking the Board room so it's more flexible, new furniture for our staff, upgrading storage racks, new chairs, a new AV system. I think that's everything. I hope the existing AV system works for my presentation to the Seniors on Tuesday. Of the three HDMI cables, only the medium length one appears to work. 

In case you don't know what it looks like, this is our building.

There's been lots of talking about what we want for the website, and we've been working with a SAIT student to get the bulk of it done. The good news is that we brought the site in-house so we can work on it ourselves, for the last bit of tweaking and tuning and linking to the test database to see how things actually look. We know they'll work, it's the same platforms on prod. It's trying to make sure the forms are asking for what we want, and that we can get the data back out again in a useful format.

It's been kind of fun in some ways. Looking through the existing database and applying some of the data integrity concepts from a previous life brought back some interesting memories. Some not so interesting, remembering my struggles with the (then) most recent version of XL, and now struggling with some of the things Apple Numbers won't do, or does differently. I dislike XL, but at one point I could bend it to my will and make it do useful things.

Plus we've been going through several cycles of alternating winter and sun tan weather. Plus getting the new SSD and copying data to it, and figuring out where everything is and what is being backed up to where. And yes, having all the raw photos on a big SSD makes working in Lightroom ever so much better, which means one of the project is looking back through a quarter of a million images looking for the ones there is no earthly reason to keep. 

So let's just say there's lots of things distracting me from blogging, or even getting one of the cameras out for a walk.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Recent books

The headline is of course my most recent book, Memories of New Brunswick. I used some nicer paper because I got a big discount, and I'm really pleased at how all the photos came out. Those who live here can see it by asking and arranging a meetup.

I dithered a bit about it, because, well, you know I love me a good dither. But part of it was deciding which photos to include, and then I struggled with order. I had to balance trying to fit photos together on a page in a size sense, and in a theme sense, together with normally liking to do things in Chronological order. Plus of course, they had to be meaningful to me or Linda.

As a cover note, that's only half the image, since it wraps around to the back cover. I tried to treat the title as part of the image, and thus the reversed letters would show up in the reflection. I played with it a bit, then decided it didn't look right. 

The Soul of the Camera, The Photographers place in picture - making by David duChemin. This was really good, cutting to the heart of it. The gear is important, in the sense of knowing how to use whatever is in your hands, but the really important thing is the vision the photographer brings to the image. 

This is not a how to book. It's not about the gear, such as filters or sensors or lenses. It's not about the settings. It's about what's going through your mind as you walk around with a camera in your hands. Or even without one. I once had a delightful half hour over a coffee and treat, while looking at the food court as if I was holding a 70-200 lens. There were a number of lovely images that will never exist anywhere but in my brain.

So yeah, go get this one from the library.

Revelations by Wynn Bullock. Honestly, I'm still not sure what I think of his work. There's some lovely photos, ones that I would have taken were I there, and would hope the come out half as well. And others, well, meh. Maybe that makes me a philistine, unappreciative of the artistic sensibility that went into that image. 

I found this one during a visit to the Central Library to see an Exposure Fest exhibition. After looking at the photos on display, I wandered up to the 4th floor to browse the photography books. Lots there I hadn't seen in my many visits to Fish Creek. 

As an aside, I love that library, even though I've only been a few times. It was full, which is nice to see. I was there shortly after it's opening in 2018, and of course it was pristine. Now it looks lived in. You can see where floors are scuffed and other signs of wear. I don't mind, that's an inevitable part of people using a place or thing.

As another aside, I loved all the Exposure Fest exhibits I went to, except this one. The photos seemed very commercial, somewhat over baked, and oddly enough, kind of bland. I'd seen so many similar photos that these weren't interesting.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

From my very first solo astro session.

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Maybe cityscape is a better description, but this is a good example of what my brain has been doing lately. Thoughts leading all over the place, usually not going anywhere. 

Dino related

And the dinos are done. Hope you enjoyed. And yes, for that last one, I could totally see any of our cats doing that.