The city, in all it's long-weekend splendour, was insuffient to hold us inside. Karin had been planning the adventure for a week, calling the kiosk inside the park to confirm trails and availablity, plotting routes from poory scanned, pixelated maps she had downloaded from the net, and generally envisioning a grand adventure some forty-five kilometers east of the city's edge.

I was game, though relatively indifferent.

We slept in. Showered, Dressed, ensuring to dig our most outdoor-ish gear from the piles of workwear in our closet. I found my Tilly. Karin donned her red cap. And on the way out of town we grabbed some healthy snacks at Save-On and gassed Bel for her mini-adventure. The sun flirted with us from behind a sky of broken clouds, and just out of reach that elusive pattern of something grander lurked with an air of impatience among the soles of our hikers. Even the bison wandering patiently along the roadside seemed blissfully unaware of the epics that loomed.

We paid, we parked, we gently coated our arms with a conservative burst of deet-laced aerosol. It seemed fashionable, the whisping bursts of clouds hiding behind the tree-line, to leave our long pants wrapped securely around our legs. The cold seemed our biggest enemy, and even that an idle threat on the wind.

Four kilometers we walked. The road was not exactly the trail we had envisioned, twin tire-scars stretching around meandering corners. But it was peaceful, wildflowers dressing the tall grasses that saluted us as we wandered past. The flora stood still while I photographed it, the hymenoptera were busy, but patient as the shutter clicked, and a lone lepidoptera unfurled its wings and sat long enough to endure a well focused pixel-map.

Everything seemed peachy.

We stopped at the rest, snacking on fresh nectarines, a modified mix of nuts, seeds, dried fruit, and chocolate. Karin napped on a bench, while I photographed the local wilderness. A solid thirty minutes passed, and as rushed as we seemed to be, it fit that the time had come to complete the remaining eight kilometers of the hike.

Trails have a way of being either less or more than expected. When we hike in the wilds of British Columbia we found ourselves either scaling heights where it seemed no one had ever gone before, or counting steps on a wooden staircase up the side of a busy mountain. There was rarely any middle-ground.

When we stepped onto this trail, the first thing that struck my consciousness is that it more resembled a lawnmower's path through the scrub, than any path I had recently encountered. The tall grasses crept into vegetative waves over and around a meandering course. Mushrooms of all shapes, colours, and sizes dotted the greenery. Hundreds of bewildered amphibians leaped impatiently underfoot. And, in an astounding display of insect fecundity, the mosquitos swarmed like an evil cloud of doom, filling the air with the threat of annoyance, itching, and looming questions about tropical diseases which have found their way across the Prairie landscape in their six-legged hosts.

Our patient and leisurely walk had turned into an eight kilometer sprint back to the car, pausing only briefly (on numerous occasions) to apply yet another generous dose of bug repellant to our exposed skin. We dashed over lolling hills, barely glancing over our shoulders at the magnificent vistas that spread out before us. Our only thoughts were wrapped in the awareness that with a concerted effort, the insects (outnumbering us by a factor of possibly millions) could have easily carried us off to a more suitable feeding location. As it was, sprinting through the deep grass that weaved over our path, chaos among the swarm was our only saviour.

Sweat beading our brows, perspiration wringing from our grubbed clothing, we arrived in record time at the car, and with barely a hesitation retreated back into the city. It seems there are still some places in this world where we humans are more welcome than we'd like to be.

July 31, 2004 after 8PM | life , travel , walks | maybe more»

Long weekends in a warm city. Anticipation looms.

July 30, 2004 after 12PM | city , play , walks | maybe more»

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July 30, 2004 after 12PM | abstract | maybe more»

Somehow I've become a programmer.

It's not really my title. I'm a scientist. An educator on my good days. A white-collar, nalgene-holding, keyboard-jockey with a short commute, the radio bouncing between CBC and JOE depending on my mood.

Somehow, I'm writing code.

It started innocently enough: knowledge begets responsibility, responsibility begets power, power begets contempt for the system, and all this leads to a tinkering effect wherein the norms become clouded and ripe for change. And here I sit, burning the garbage scripts that melt across our servers like egg yolks drizzling across a steaming grill.

And then other possibilities emerge. Private projects loom on the horizon. The city, it's midnight thunder storms ring electric along the skyline cityscape, taunts for something more. And I hunker, lurk, wait patiently for ideas to spawn while I scratch out bits of hypertext and riddle them with preprocessor strings, like bullets mocking a paper silhouette of a generic villian.

It is odd how quickly those concepts form in the mind, each query locking neurons into tighter elegance and spurning new paths for data to run free through the oceans of my silicon logic. Text is just data, isn't it? Stories, books, and narratives are just the logical paths through created universes, no? Publishing has become much too linear, I think as I reflect on how easily a plot melds into a datasphere, and a datasphere launches countless possibilities for something grander.

But then what do I know?

July 28, 2004 after 9AM | code , meta , work | maybe more»

The city has been very warm lately.

I have been organizing my thoughts in less chaotic spaces, writing code where there should just be words. And writing words that should have more meaning than they seem to collect, idle on the roadside.

Sweat is a common factor these days. Mental and physical sweat. It is the pain that will bring later fruits, or so they tell me.

If writing were as simple as passing a thread through the eye of a needle, it would all be great. Perhaps that thread is too thick. Perhaps there is no needle. I stayed awake late on Sunday, unintentionally. There are reasons for why we toss and turn, wide awake late at night while our partners are blissfully unaware. There are reasons why things haunt us. I have ideas, concepts, thoughts. I stayed awake late on Sunday night to kick the whisping nanoturbines into motion and flush the silicon freckles into some form less volitile than my own neural networkings. If writing were an activity of complexity, then the story may emerge upon itself. If writing became an exercise in elaborate vision, the path would build itself.

It is conceptual.

It is fleeting.

I have things to do now, as time passes slowly through the open windows of my apartment.

July 27, 2004 after 12PM | writing | maybe more»

The city takes it's toll. Both Karin and myself have had our turns with a nasty head-cold over the past week. How much fun is that?

Whining aside, Ryan showed up yesterday and we-two stormed the stadium for the Eskimos vs Hamilton blowout. We were two of the thirty-five thousand people in the stands, with the caveat that our seats were first row. The sun was hot. The beer was warm. The game dwindled off in the second half when it became evident that the visiting team probably would never catch up and we were forced to simply watch our team burn off the clock. The final score of 51-30, favouring the locals, meant a peaceful retreat back into the city, Ryan and I walking it back to the apartment in a little under forty-five minutes.

The hot day resulted in a crazy-storm evening. Two massive thunder and lightning storms struck the city, spanning a four hour period. Of that four hour period, Ryan and I were perched on our east-facing balcony for about three snapping a total of two hundred and eleven photos of the city-alight attempting to capture a stray bolt in mexapixel bliss. While we didn't quite time it right to image the lightning that struck about three and a half blocks in front of us, creating the need for a half dozen fire trucks to arrive at the nearby intersection to clean up the mess, we did randommly snap a few nice shots of the night sky.

And now here we sit. Deep breath....

July 18, 2004 after 11AM | city , photography , play , walks | maybe more»

Browsing: this morning peechie had a link to a personality test. I usually don't indulge, but I thought it was a good was to start off the crazy week after a long weekend.

You are a WRCL--Wacky Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you a golden god. People gravitate to you, and you make them feel good. You are smart, charismatic, and interesting. You may be too sensitive to others reactions, especially criticism. Your self-opinion and mood depends greatly on those around you.

You may be a rock star.

Take it, and use the comments to post your results.

July 5, 2004 after 9AM | search , thinking | maybe more»

This is the twenty-third entry on this blog. That means we're picking up steam, chugging along, and heading into the deep unknown...

The city disappeared for a while. We drove out west for the weekend to go camping. Three and a half hours in the car, each way, led to a variety of stimulating activites including hiking, fishing, and eating.

It should come as no surprise that I'm tired now. And early -- early -- tomorrow morning I leave for Toronto. It is the life we lead. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

July 5, 2004 after 8AM | meta , play , travel | maybe more»