Every day for the past week I’ve been running downstairs to the mailbox, fully expecting my second batch of Mini Moo cards to be waiting there for me, and each day it’s been a let-down. Well, except for the package from Germany, that was exciting. (The chocolates, I’m ashamed to say, are GONE as of about an hour ago. YIKES!!)

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After pulling an all-nighter last night to try and get ahead on these aforementioned projects, I had to set the alarms this morning to run errands today. It was a four-alarm morning! The downtown Ministry of Transportation office was only open until 1:00 and the veterinarian was only open until 1:30, and both are closed tomorrow. I got lucky with parking in this abysmal weather and managed to get to both a few minutes before they shut their doors, then headed over to The Brides’ Project to get more product shooting in before they closed up for the day.

The weather has definitely taken a turn for the worse here, with driving rain and pane-rattling wind. Someone left his car lights on by The Brides’ Project and I offered to pull out the jumper cables, yikes. I must’ve been feeling especially charitable, because the cables are buried deep underneath the spare tire at the back of the car, which is stored below all the photography-related stuff there: tripod, monopod, TWO ladders, plus a crate of equipment, eg. big flashlights, car parts, maps, and various sundry items. (When my battery got drained on the grounds of The Ex two weeks ago I thought of getting out the jumper cables, but I was in a deserted area after midnight and didn’t think it was safe to try to flag down anyone. I’d rather call CAA!)

I got some silly shots at The Brides’ Project with the staff, but I know I’ll be tempted to edit those and end up getting distracted with something time-consuming like creating triptychs so I’m just going to stick to one simple image for tonight! Back to work.. and stop myself from looking longingly at the chocolate…

There’s something special about having a neighbourhood sushi place where the staff greet me enthusiastically by name as I walk in the door and immediately ask me if I’ve had dinner. Then, regardless of how I respond, they rush off to make me something, anyway. That’s what it’s like for me at Vincent Sushi, the very first website I offered to make for anyone simply because I liked their product!

In fact, Vincent Sushi has been open almost exactly a year, and their site statistics continue to amaze me with the consistent numbers of regular visitors and the relatively long periods of reading time. Websites are definitely good for business, especially when it comes to food, and especially the kind of cuisine like Japanese which benefits from the presence of pictures.

I was running an errand on Monday evening and stopped by Vincent Sushi to see if they had any menu updates that I could add to the site. Soon I had a bowl of soup, a mug of tea, and a crunchy roll placed in front of me. How great is that?

AND they made my favourite — sushi pizza — to take home! How great is that?!? I had my camera with me, of course, so I took more photos for their website.

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The ache in my forearm was getting progressively bothersome last night and I knew I was only a few days away from being forced to halt all computer activity. Unfortunately, it’s how I make a living!

I bought my first Wacom tablet today, plus a full-sized Apple keyboard to improve my posture and expand my hand/arm range of movement before the symptoms of repetitive strain injury worsened.

About four years ago I had this problem — too much mouse work all at once — and I trained myself to mouse with my left hand to give my right hand a break. Then I switched back and forth. It was annoying because I programmed combinations of keystrokes for shortcuts and they were hardly shortcuts anymore after switching my mouse hand, but at that time I was remote controlling a Windows machine with another Windows machine. The keyboards were essentially the same.

However, an Apple keyboard layout is different from a Windows keyboard (the notebook version especially so) and unhelpfully asymmetrical: the Function and Control keys are only on the left side of the spacebar and I use combinations of Fn+, Ctl+, Apple+, Option+ and Shift+ in my Mac environment. With the Apple keyboard and the old-school one-button Apple mouse, I remote control a Windows machine and keyboard but the keystroke combinations between environments differ once you get past the basic copy/cut/save/paste, especially in Excel. Switching the mouse back and forth between the right and left hand is not efficient anymore because a notebook keyboard layout is condensed. Which also means there is no numeric keypad and entering figures is SLOW by comparison.

I can’t believe I lasted this long with my current setup! I’ve considered adding different devices, but the ergonomic keyboards take up far too much space and wireless mice are a) not as responsive or precise as wired mice, and b) with batteries are too heavy for constant use, causing muscle strain.

Although I prefer the reduced clutter of wireless devices, I just haven’t found any that match up to the responsiveness of wired devices — especially mice.

I read lots of user reviews for pen tablets and I hadn’t come across anyone who went back to a mouse after switching to a tablet. In the end I decided to buy a Wacom Bamboo instead of splashing out another $20 on a mouse and software I wouldn’t use on the Bamboo Fun. I also bought the full-size Apple keyboard to put my 17″ PowerBook screen further away from me (it’s big enough!), which improves my posture so I’m not leaning forward to hunch over the condensed notebook keyboard. Also, it keeps the computer cleaner and cooler because I’m not touching it anymore.

As for the Wacom pen tablet, it took a little while getting used to the pen motion and sensitivity, maybe an hour or so. There’s a lot more precision and control once your brain wraps around how to coordinate your hands with all the devices together. I also noticed I can perform most functions faster with the tablet than with a mouse, especially with the four programmable buttons at the top of the tablet, plus a touch circle that can zoom or scroll. There are also two click spots on the pen that can be programmed; I’m currently using the default right-click/context menu and scrolling options. That extra range of movement and a more posture-friendly layout is something I really should’ve invested in long ago!

Photo: my home office environment in Vancouver, October 2004. I’d had my PowerBook G4 less than one month. Four-plus years later, it’s still going strong!

I’ve been doing so much computer work lately I’ve returned to my former practice of switching my mousing hand from my right to my left (I’m generally right-handed with some ambidextrous tendencies for odd things like sweeping). I had this problem some years ago, when I was also working from home in Vancouver during the time this photo was taken, this problem being shoulder and arm strain from too much mouse work. My solution was to train myself to mouse with my left hand to prevent repetitive strain injury and fire up some neural pathways for motor activity in the other side of my brain. It’s been about four years, but I need to do it again because I can feel my right arm begin to ache a bit.

I started looking into Wacom tablets today as an alternative to the mouse. I think using a pen would be moving in the right direction, motion-wise. I actually wrote a LETTER yesterday (wow, remember those?) with a pen and it felt so foreign that I knew it had been too long since the last one. Over the weekend I bought special paper on sale with a pattern of an antique map on it (a favourite thing of mine; I’d like to make it my header background) to get myself back to writing with a pen again. My penmanship has taken a dive, and I bought more postage stamps yesterday in anticipation of ramping up my letter-writing. Yes, I am one of those stationery nerds.

(ALSO — I recently retrieved my photo printer’s power cable that I left a Birds’ and Fleecie’s place in New York City last year. I told them not to mail it because I was going to pick it up, but for some reason it took a whole year to make it back to their place. Imagine, after four years of printing photo-sized postcards on my little Canon photo printer and mailing them off to people, I went for more than a whole year without printing a single one. No one wonder my letter-writing took a dive, it just wasn’t the same without being able to send a photo along, too.)

Anyway, I need to try out some Wacom tablets (Bamboo, maybe?) to see if I like it. I know it will decrease the repetitive movements I make on a daily basis, and maybe it’ll make my editing faster. I don’t like using the trackpad on my laptop because it lacks the precision I need for photo editing. If you already use a Wacom tablet and you have some advice for a first-time user, I’d love to hear from you — either by email or in the comments section.

I think it was a couple of weeks ago when someone in the office told me I was missing rutting season demonstrated on the front (soon-to-be?) lawn, but I got a chance to see the bucks in action this afternoon and filmed a short video (less than 90 seconds):

More deer photos:

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There’s always plenty of deer around the office. Apparently last Friday I missed the excitement of buck battles on the front lawn in the midst of rutting season. (I’ll spare you all the related office jokes.)

Happy Friday!

Martin, my English houseguest, bought this old Russian camera in Latvia. I’ve never seen one of these before, but then again, I’ve not been an old-school camera collector. I’m sure they’re more common than I think.

Martin didn’t really know how it worked, and I tried to explain what I could to him, but we won’t know if I figured it out or led him astray until he gets his roll developed. The light meter is totally different, and I’m not sure if I’m putting the shutter speed mechanism in the proper position for it to be set.

I’ll see if anyone IDs this camera in Flickr.

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I’m in design-mode lately, the bill-paying mode rather than the design-purely-for-fun mode, and I’ve been finding lately that it really affects my writing. (Or maybe that’s just coincidence.) I write an awful lot of email every day, and I read over some of the stuff I send out (when I get the reply) and although the spelling is intact I’m missing entire words or conjugating improperly. At 36, is this when it all goes downhill??

After a long day at the office (I took the 7:25am ferry in and the 7:30pm ferry out on Monday), a great way to unwind is to hang out on the observation deck with the camera.

Taken just after leaving the Sunshine Coast (Langdale) to head to West Vancouver (Horseshoe Bay).

Am I turning into a local now, referring to The King Edward Hotel as the King Eddy?

At 0800 on the nose I entered the lobby to meet with the Japanese family I am looking after during their brief stay in Toronto. I informed them that the King Eddy was popular among businesspeople for breakfast meetings before work. Indeed, there was a job interview being conducted over bacon and eggs at the table directly beside us. I could hear the ambition in the interviewee’s voice as she pitched herself in the buzzwords of today’s marketing strategies.

(For the last 10 years I’ve known about the King Eddy because one of our TD clients at the company I was working for always had his regular client meetings there at 7:45 in the morning. Which was brutal considering my boss, who’d arrived the night before from Vancouver, lived on Pacific Time (-3 hours). Firing on all cylinders when your brain is expecting it to be 4:45 in the morning requires discipline and a lot of caffeine.)

In the meantime, I tried my best to communicate in the clearest English possible at a rather early hour (for me) while devouring my Swiss rosti, and planning our sightseeing for tomorrow morning. (Mmm-m-m-m, rosti — which I remarked upon after spotting it on the menu; the waiter told me the chef is Swiss.)

Before breakfast I called the tour office to confirm where the coach driver was to meet them, and he rendez-vous’ed with us promptly at 9:25 at the front entrance of the hotel. They’re off to Niagara Falls now, and we resume our whirlwind tour of Toronto in about 24 hours.

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