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‘gailatlarge.com’ Category

  1. Tweak Tweak

    May 9, 2013 by Gail

    David's birthday flight (May 30, 2012)

    David’s birthday flight (May 30, 2012)

    You might’ve noticed I’ve been messing around with the blog lately — fonts, header image, some text in the pages and such. Small changes, kind of like changing the shower curtain or the magnets on the fridge. I like change, but change happens whether you like it or not (ageing, for example), so my attitude is that you might as well embrace it. Work it, even. Because it’s usually better when you choose the change rather than the other way around, especially if you are resistant to change in general.

    The most significant change to the website this week is behind the scenes: I’ve upgraded my hosting account to a dedicated IP and a suite of features — none of which is evident or remotely exciting to a reader, only to a website owner. However, as a reader you will notice the site loads much faster. This is the one change I’ve been wanting to make for a while, but the Bluehost rep told me they were introducing another package between the standard and pro accounts soon. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade directly to the Full Shebang as this site has over a dozen sub-domains, and this domain alone gets enough traffic to warrant more bandwidth. After a few days, I’ve seen for myself that search engines (particularly Google) take websites with dedicated IPs more seriously — crawlers and traffic have increased exponentially since I upgraded.

    Meanwhile, David’s birthday is coming up at the end of this month and I’m still trying to figure out how to commemorate it, whether to fly again, in what type of aircraft, or if I’m going to do something completely different this year. I’ve got a few weeks to decide. Here are the photos from the previous seven years of birthday flights:

    May 30, 2012 – flew in a Cessna 206 float plane with Cameron Air from Billy Bishop Airport (Toronto)
    May 30, 2011 – flew with Tyler Bator from AVP (Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Airport, Pennsylvania)
    May 30, 2010 – flew over Mount Pocono Airport (where David got his pilot’s license) in a helicopter, which was also where I flew in a helicopter for the first time (Pennsylvania)
    May 30, 2009 – flew with Alan Highhouse in a Piper Super Cub (Pennsylvania & New York)
    May 30, 2008 – flew with Alan Highhouse in a Piper Super Cub (Pennsylvania & New York)
    May 30, 2007 – took the controls of a Cessna Skyhawk for David’s 40th birthday (Brampton, Ontario)
    May 30, 2006 – scattered David’s ashes from a Piper Cub stunt plane flown by the legendary “Flying Farmer”, Stanley Segalla over the Hudson River in upstate New York [RIP Stanley Segalla: March 5, 1914 - March 31, 2011]

    Posted in Flying, gailatlarge.com, Unabashed Geekiness | No Comments

  2. Reviewing The Non-Goals For 2012

    January 2, 2013 by Gail

    today's sunset

    today’s sunset

    How did I fare on the Non-Goals for last year? January 10: Non-Goals For 2012

    These are the things I resolved to continue in 2012:

    Walking home at least four days per week.

    Partial success? Partial fail? I was fairly consistent until the summertime, after a slew of weddings and travel. Then it was sporadic through the autumn and petered down to occasionally after the work ramped up in November-December. Need to come up with a new form of exercise.

    [Update: freshly joined the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre. BlogTO helped me get off the fence and decide, by rating it one of the top fitness clubs in the city. I didn't want to join a corporate gym (my afternoons are corporate enough, why spoil the morning?), I didn't want to sign a contract, either, I wanted to go month-to-month. My local gym only gives global access with a full membership, and the staffed hours didn't work with my schedule. Other selling points with the JCC was that the whirlpool, steam and sauna are in both the men's and women's locker rooms, which is very convenient and private. The pool is saltwater -- no chlorine! There's also a towel service, plus a laundry service so gym clothes are always clean. Even with the additional services, the membership total is covered by my work benefits. As well, there are massage therapists on-site at the JCC, so I don't have to go to a separate clinic for that anymore.]

    Reserving the word ‘awesome’ for when it truly is, which is not every other sentence.

    Success! Not called anything ‘awesome’, even stuff that would definitely qualify.

    Not owning a TV, microwave, coffee pot, or dishwasher.

    75% success! Although, I did not buy the coffee pot, it was here and I used it.

    Keeping up the trip average. (At least one overnight stay is the criteria of a trip.) Until last year I maintained an annual trip average of 12-14, and in 2011 I dipped slightly below with 11 trips.

    With only seven trips in 2012 this was half my average, a pretty poor showing, but I have good reasons. In 2012, I started off in Montreal for New Year’s, Ottawa for Easter, New York City in May [e-shoot], Mexico in June to shoot a wedding, Seattle and Vancouver for my birthday trip in June (with an unexpected stop in Las Vegas thanks to Southwest Airlines mechanical failure), Philadelphia for the August long weekend, and NY/ON/VT/NH/QC in September/October.

    Meeting new folk in new places. Travelling solo means I make conversation with the ordinary citizen on the street, on the bus, waiting in line somewhere, and it’s no big deal. It opens up a cultural exchange, without an agenda.

    “New places” was way down this year, which means my meeting new folk in new places is way down, too. I’m certain this down dip will go right back up this year.

    Meeting new folk in my own city. I’ve done pretty well last year to maintain a social life, considering I have two jobs. Still, I meet new people all the time at weddings, events, through volunteering, circles of friends, shooting assistants, other photographers, scouting locations, with clients, patients, musicians, you name it. My Toronto collection in Flickr currently has 129 photo sets, 28 up from 2011. Contrary to what I feel some days, I do more than work!

    Yessireee, I met more Torontonians this year and expanded my social circle. I also added two new photography assistants to my roster.

    Keeping my cat healthy and happy. Now that Xena’s on daily heart meds and only has five teeth left, hopefully she (we) will sail through 2012 without seeing the vet.

    Not one trip to the vet in 2012! Victory!

    Driving cancer patients for the Canadian Cancer Society. Even though I don’t like waking up early, I’ll do it for patients. They are always very grateful.

    I was out of town less this year, which meant I was more available to drive.

    Keeping up my four websites.

    gailatlarge.com – turned 10 years old at the end of July!
    gailatlarge.net – few updates, but I cleaned it up, which is still progress
    imagelegacy.com – completely revamped and hosted on 4ormat’s servers (faster)
    ImageNation – haven’t updated since March! yikes!

    I’m also webmaster for another two websites, one for income and the other for charity. Believe me, even *I* don’t know how I manage to maintain SIX WEBSITES.

    Completely renovated the paid one and survived a migration on the volunteer one. Being a webmaster was rather taxing this year.

    Maintaining my sanity. It was a bit touch-and-go at times but I managed not to lose it in 2011, let’s keep it that way for 2012.

    Sanity was maintained. I have irrefutable evidence in the form of a large report from many hours (14, in my estimation) of data collection.

    So how did I do in 2012? Not bad: I scored well on most of the maintenance goals, and between Xena not going to the vet and my car staying out of the mechanic’s garage, I’d call 2012 a win!

    Posted in Gail at Large, gailatlarge.com | 1 Comment

  3. Happy New Year!

    December 31, 2012 by Gail

    Happy NewYear 2013

    I had to do this very quickly in Photobooth before running out the door, and SOMEONE WAS UNCOOPERATIVE.

    Nevertheless, after several attempts the wrangling is over, and we have a really crappy, self-made e-card for you. Enjoy your evening, wherever you are!

    Posted in Critters + Creatures, Gail at Large, gailatlarge.com, House of Fielding, Xena & Beano | 2 Comments

  4. Some Thoughts After A Decade Of Blogging

    December 29, 2012 by Gail

    Maddy's artist statement

    June 2012 artist statement by Maddy (age 10)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

    • There’s something about taking time out every day to stop and write something. Sometimes I will look for a photo first and write something about it, sometimes I will write something and look for a photo to accompany it. The only constant about every entry is that there is at least one photo and some text. Other than that, it’s wide open.
    • When I was younger I felt I lacked focus and discipline. Over time, I realized I can maintain focus and discipline for things that interest me, it was just a matter of finding out what interests me. I’m very proud of the longevity of this blog, it’s been my longest-running venture to date.
    • Blogging bakes together many of my interests: photography, travel, volunteering, writing, aviation, food, the arts, and more. It is a very fulfilling expression of interests.
    • Humans are social creatures, we do things for ourselves and others. We can keep things we make and not show them to anyone, or we can share and connect with others and grow. I’m very much into personal growth.
    • At first blogging was a bit of a student phase (Vancouver 2002), it became a leisurely pastime (2002-2004), which turned into a valuable means of communication when I moved across the country (USA, late 2004), became therapy (2005-), and a bit of a calling card personally and professionally (Toronto, 2006-present).
    • Blogging is what turned my interest in photography into a more serious venture. It made me more self-critical about what I chose to show.
    • Blogging requires a longer attention span than other social media. I use Twitter and Facebook for the ephemera; the free services can be unplugged at any time and I don’t want to put my content there, where I have little- to no control over it.
    • Blogging under my own name, on my own domain, gives me a sense of ownership and accountability. I’m not one to make big, sweeping declarations, but if I did, it would be right here for someone to call me on it in the future.
    • There is minimal advertising in my blog for a reason, and only in archives. I don’t write for a living, I write for personal reasons and therefore I want to keep this site as non-commercial as I see fit. I’ve thought about advertising in the past, and every time I see it on other blogs, I know I don’t want it here.
    • The years between age 30, when I started, and now 40, as I continue, have yielded over 4,500 posts. If I make it to 10,000 I’m going to throw a big blog party! (I should have one at 5,000…)

    Thanks for reading!

    Posted in gailatlarge.com | 4 Comments

  5. 10-Year Blogiversary

    July 28, 2012 by Gail

    birthday cupcake

    my delicious 40th birthday cupcake — thanks M&R!

    Dear Blog,

    You and I have been through a lot together in 10 years. I created you just after I turned 30! If I ever forget what life was like at 30, all I have to do is dive into the archives. Why do I even need to remember anything anymore when I’ve got you?

    You’ve brought me many surprises over the years, and I’m thankful none of them involved getting Dooced fired from my job for blogging.

    You may recall I started out pretty slowly because I didn’t know what to write about back then. All I wanted to do in those student days was to procrastinate from writing essays by writing nonsense online, and soon I became quite prolific at posting ridiculous things that still — inexplicably — drive traffic here a decade later: awful plastic surgery (.com, which is still going strong, although I haven’t written about it since), handwriting, those Azalea Trail Maids (still the post with the most comments), French ganache cake, drunk texts,  and a score of other seemingly random things that have nothing to do with my day-to-day life, yet send other people here.

    my handwriting, which is getting worse by the year

    my handwriting, which is getting worse by the year

    Search engine algorithms will forever remain a mystery to me like they were in 2002, but blogging has evolved in the past 10 years. Many personal blogs have been abandoned for social networks like Facebook, which ironically has improved my blogging here by hosting all the “fluff”, the worst of the phone camera pics, and links that will eventually go stale, which leaves this space for the good stuff, i.e., writing and photos. And here I thought Facebook was completely useless!

    It was only fairly recently that I came to this realization, that this space could certainly do without the ephemeral stuff like YouTube embeds. Broken image links drive me bananas, and I’m still returning to early posts to fix them. It’s like painting a huge bridge slowly, and every time you cross it to go home you find missed spots or a bird has crapped on the wet paint. Blog, you’re never finished, there’s always maintenance.

    On the picture front, smartphones are definitely smarter these days compared to 10 years ago (remember early PDAs like Palms and Treos?), and their little cameras nowadays rival any of the early point-and-shoots I was using back then.

    You may recall, I bought my first digital camera in 2002 — the Canon PowerShot A20? — and it had video but no sound. Which didn’t bother me at the time since those were the pre-YouTube days when hosting and streaming video was expensive and nothing was free, anyway. I distinctly recall being stuck for solutions for showing video in this space, which in retrospect was probably a better situation since the videoclips were rather awful. I had some videoclips hosted for a while on my SFU webspace, which of course disappeared once I was no longer a student so those links are stale, too.

    You might be wondering then, Blog, why I would keep up a microblogging site like Tumblr when I have less and less time for you? Well, don’t feel betrayed; I don’t write there, I just post pics. I have over 23,000 photos online now and Tumblr — which has a huge community — is just another place to show my stuff. You are still #1!

    The move from Blogger to WordPress at the end of 2005 was a rough one, I know. Unexpectedly, that’s when your true value came to light and life took a turn for the harder. That’s when I saw how important — and often necessary — it became to write, write, and write.

    I even got David in the blogging habit, too, which he kept up in the hospital. Any way to distract the mind from places you don’t want it to go.

    Dave blogging away at Mercy Hospital

    Dave blogging away at Mercy Hospital, hooked up to an IV bag and a bag of chemo

    Life in Toronto gave me plenty to write about and photograph since 2006, and that’s without blogging anything work-related.

    So here we are, Blog, 10 years and 4,400 posts later. 2006 and 2008 were still the two biggest blogging years, due to having the most free time. Nowadays it’s fewer words and more pictures, but I’m all about the pictures these days. Maybe one day I’ll return to writing more and photographing less, but I sense that is a long ways off.

    10 years of blogging

    10 years of blogging

    Happy 10th birthday, Blog! I don’t know what the future holds, but I’ll be blogging about it.

    Love,
    Gail

    Next in series

    Posted in Gail at Large, gailatlarge.com | 2 Comments

  6. Got A Cold? Tweak Some Code

    February 11, 2012 by Gail

    my website on a 30-inch Cinema HD in 2005

    my website on a 30-inch Cinema HD in 2005

    If you read this website via an RSS reader you probably won’t notice anything different except the pictures are larger, but if you click through you’ll see some changes ’round these parts.

    Yeah, this is what happens when you have to quarantine yourself for a while. Well, me, anyway. Most people would just watch TV or movies with a box of tissues, but I’m sitting here sneezing and tweaking code with a roll of toilet paper on the desk in front of me.

    I’ve edited a wedding and FTP’ed it to a folder for the client, I finished renovating my blog, I’ve tweaked my travel photos blog, and I’ve been archiving files from 2011 to external drives and making more space on my hard drive. I seem to be more productive with a cold than without… only because without a cold I would be well enough to go out and do things.

    But I sure don’t want another cold to get this productive again! (The original title was “God A Code? Tweak Some Code” because that’s what a congested person sounds like, but I didn’t think people would get it.)

    I found the photo above in my Flickr catalogue from seven (!) years ago, when my website was still on Blogger. (Actually, it’s still there where I left it.) David and I were drooling in visiting the Apple Store in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, on the way home from a day in Philly in March 2005. I wanted to see what my website looked like on a 30-inch cinema display Mac, and was stunned to see how narrow it looked with all that extra screen real estate. Thinking back over all the templates I’ve tweaked, now I wish I’d kept screencaps of all the various incarnations of this website so I could compare them. This blog turns 10 years old in July, so I’m using the Wayback Machine to see if I can collect some for that 10-year anniversary post.

    Posted in gailatlarge.com, Unabashed Geekiness | 6 Comments

  7. Non-Goals For 2012

    January 10, 2012 by Gail

    Wellington Street

    seen while walking home on Wellington Street

    I actually had a New Year’s Resolution for 2011, just one: to go on a date. My first thought was that I blew it, I don’t remember any dates, but after some thought I would say it was open to interpretation. My second thought is that if *I* am not aware that it’s a date, then it’s not a date…

    Moving right along…

    On my way to Montreal for New Year’s, I started digitally jotting down a bunch of notes for a Year in Review for 2011, which got me to thinking about things I’ve been doing in 2011 that I want to continue into 2012… which I promptly forgot about until the other day when I read the same over at Chookooloonks, and there Karen links to Erin doing the same. I’m sure there are others.

    There are goals and then there are things you want to maintain, the non-goals, but still rather important — after all, they were once goals, and if you drop them, then they end up in the goals list again. We’ve all said it before, with a pang: “I used to do such-and-such…”

    Anyway. I resolve to continue in 2012:

    1. Walking home at least four days per week. I adhered to that average from June 29 until mid-November when I went to England and it became inconsistent due to travel and then a compromised immune system in mid-December and then more travel. Since last week, I’m back to my walking routine. My newest route is 7kms.
    2. Reserving the word ‘awesome’ for when it truly is, which is not every other sentence.
    3. Not owning a TV, microwave, coffee pot, or dishwasher. Why not? Because it means I cook instead of nuke, drink less coffee, take a time-out to hand-wash dishes and listen to the news instead of reading it, and if I owned a TV I would watch it mindlessly. It’s also the same reason my futon couch is never in a couch position. My apartment only has beds. I’m much more productive this way.
    4. Keeping up the trip average. (At least one overnight stay is the criteria of a trip.) Until last year I maintained an annual trip average of 12-14, and in 2011 I dipped slightly below with 11 trips. (I just counted 15 trips in 2010, so maybe I should adjust that average.) The hardest part was working every single day from September 6 to November 15 without a break and feeling like I was losing my mind, reaching nearly the end of the year with only seven trips, but then I caught up by going on four in six weeks. I know some people think this trip average is crazy, but it was never a conscious goal. These numbers became the average over the course of years and knowing what keeps me happy and motivated and inspired. Travel (the process, not just the destination) plays a huge role in my worldview and perspective on life. I would never give that up completely, not even for a photography business. There are currently 79 photo albums in my travel collection on Flickr.
    5. Meeting new folk in new places. Travelling solo means I make conversation with the ordinary citizen on the street, on the bus, waiting in line somewhere, and it’s no big deal. It opens up a cultural exchange, without an agenda.
    6. Meeting new folk in my own city. I’ve done pretty well last year to maintain a social life, considering I have two jobs. Still, I meet new people all the time at weddings, events, through volunteering, circles of friends, shooting assistants, other photographers, scouting locations, with clients, patients, musicians, you name it. Sometimes it all becomes a blur, so I review my Toronto collection in Flickr (currently 101 photo sets), to remind myself that yes, I didn’t just work!
    7. Keeping my cat healthy and happy. I’m down to one pet now, after a horrible 2011 of losing Beano and having both cats go through the discomfort of veterinary treatments. We were at the clinic far too much last year. Don’t ask me how much I spent. Now that Xena’s on daily heart meds and only has five teeth left, hopefully she (we) will sail through 2012 without seeing the vet.
    8. Driving cancer patients for the Canadian Cancer Society. Even though I don’t like waking up early, I’ll do it for patients. They are always very grateful.
    9. Keeping up my four websites. Most people don’t have a website, but I have four under my name (actually, there’s a fifth but it’s kind of a portal to the others and I don’t count the Tumblr), and even with major time constraints I have somehow managed to keep them all updated, although one is rather static and informational (ImageLegacy.com), and two are photoblogs (gailatlarge.net and ImageNation). But gailatlarge.com will be 10 years old this year, of which I am most proud because I never thought I would be able to maintain it this long!
      I’m also webmaster for another two websites, one for income and the other for charity. The capitalism and socialism balance each other out nicely, ha. I would link to the former but I have to revamp the site (I just found out today there’s new management). Believe me, even *I* don’t know how I manage to maintain SIX WEBSITES.
    10. Maintaining my sanity. It was a bit touch-and-go at times but I managed not to lose it in 2011, let’s keep it that way for 2012.

    Posted in cameraphone, Fave, Gail at Large, gailatlarge.com | 2 Comments

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