Mooring

A journey ends
San Francisco, CA, March 2007 [Click to enlarge]

I like to look at - and take - pictures that have little mini-stories embedded within them (see here and here for similarly-themed images.) A photo, after all, shouldn't be just a simple and static picture. Rather, it should provoke thought, stimulate discussion and inspire action. We should come away from the experience changed in some basic way, no matter how small.

So as I strolled alongside San Francisco's ferry terminal in the shadow of the Bay Bridge and took pictures of incoming ferries, I noticed that each boat seemed to have folks on the bow, watching the docking. It got me thinking: if I lived in this remarkable place and had to take the ferry every day, I suspect I'd be on that bow as well - every single trip. The end of the journey is most certainly a time to remember, and I wondered what the anonymous folks in this image were thinking at the very moment I quietly tripped the shutter.

Your turn: So...what are they thinking?

On a wing and a prayer, again

Upgraded wing
Somewhere over America, March 2007 [Click to make Jumbo]

The Boeing 757-200 has a maximum take-off weight of 255,000 pounds, which means the sinuously sleek sliver of technology in this image is holding up approximately 127,500 pounds of airplane, fuel, luggage, and me.

I understand at an intimate level how this thing works. I am fully conscious of the unbelievable resources it takes to design one of these things, and the frightening amount of strength and flexibility built into it. Yet it never ceases to be a magical moment when the throttles open up and the plane begins its takeoff roll. First we hit V1 (the point of no return), then VR (rotation of the nose off the runway) and then finally the entire bird hauls itself off the surface of the earth.

For all the noise and bluster of the engines, it's basic aerodynamics that takes over once you've got enough speed, the difference between higher pressure under the wing and lower pressure above it that provides the lift needed to get and stay in the sky. And as I stare out the window at the wing, I smile silently in the knowledge that it's doing its job so that everyone else on the plane can think about something else. Well, everyone except me.

Your turn: Flight...science or magic?

One more thing: This isn't the first time I've explored a wing with my camera (click here and here.) I guess I'm certifiable when it comes to photos of this type.

Oops, make that two more things: I know what you're thinking; a 757 with winglets? (Come on, doesn't everybody?) Well, it turns out that the FAA has certified a retrofit kit for 757-200s that adds these vortice-reducing, lift-enhancing, drag-reducing and range-increasing devices to the original, conventional wingtips. For more background on these brilliant advances in the aviation state-of-the-art, click on the Aviation Partners, Inc. web site. Or e-mail me and I'll explain the theory. Either way, it's fascinating. Well, if you're an aviation geek.

Caption This 16

Please name this image [See below for details]
London, ON, April 2007 [Click for more power]

It's time once again for Caption This, a weekly feature here at Written Inc. where you get to name the picture (pause for a cheer. Good, now let's continue...) Haven't played before? Here's the deal:

• How to play
• Last week's entry, San Fran fire hydrant
  

Last week's winner was actually the first one to suggest a caption. Sophie wrote this:

The official San Francisco Fire Department frisbee

Sophie's got red hair, lives in Houston, and is still enjoying the newlywed newness. She writes wonderfully, too. Please drop by and congratulate her. I'm sure you'll stay for the literary dessert.

Your turn: Please suggest a caption for the powerful image above. Submit as often as you wish, and feel free to send your in-laws in for a go as well. Written Inc. welcomes all creative souls. I'll announce the winner next Sunday, along with the next caption in our endless series.

Window in brick

Painted mortar
San Francisco, CA, March 2007 [Click to enlarge]

Old brick speaks to me, especially if it's painted by a brilliant sun. I imagine bricklayers all those years ago putting the wall together, one painstaking brick at a time. I think about their attention to detail, their ability to keep it straight and level and strong. I wonder if any of them thought the wall would still be there all these decades later. Probably not: they were busy with more immediate matters, like putting food on their tables and finding that next wall to build.

I'm far from home on this bright Southern California afternoon. I'm on a trip that will hopefully allow me to continue building on my own ability to put food on my table back home. I have no ability to build brick walls, but I figure we all build our own unique legacies. Some are more tangible than others.

Your turn: What are you building for tomorrow?

Simply draped

Covered window
London, ON, April 2007 [Click to enlarge]

Window coverings aren't often a topic of conversation. Sometimes, they're used to keep prying eyes out. Other times, they're shunted off to the side when we want to take in the world outside.

But when we were over at our friends' house one evening earlier this month, my eyes drifted over to the closed shades and I couldn't help but notice how the light played on the fabric's surface.

It wasn't a major moment by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm learning that photography isn't about the big moments anyway. Sometimes, it's enough to record how the light of a single lamp seems to gradually dissipate as it works its way across the varying surface of the drapes.

Simple, really.

Your turn: A simple, yet worthy-of-a-picture moment for you might be...?

Sign of the times

Peering in
San Francisco, CA, March 2007 [Click to peek more closely]

Some facades wear their age gracefully. Others don't. I'll leave it to you to determine the degree of grace inherent in this one.

Your turn: So, graceful or not? Why or why not?

Intricate facade

Windowed vista
San Francisco, CA, March 2007 [Click to enlarge]

On my way back to the hotel from shooting the Golden Gate Bridge, I sat by the window of a city bus and shot random snippets of the neighborhoods that slipped by. I was feeling incredibly nauseous - travel and I don't often get along - and was using every iota of willpower to keep from losing it in the middle of a crowd of strangers.

When the waves of green subsided, I picked up the camera and grabbed whatever images I could. I felt like I was watching a never-ending movie, and wondered why I never did the same thing when a much younger me rode transit in Montreal. Was that city genuinely less interesting or did I simply not take the time back then?

That's an answer for another day. On this day, San Francisco put on quite the unintended show for me. Each district seemed more vibrant than the last. All kinds of people were outside, enjoying the gorgeously bright sun. And the architecture seemed to reach through the window with stories of intensely livable neighborhoods and survival against a landscape that hasn't always been so friendly.

Your turn: When you're a passenger in a moving vehicle, do you look out the window and experience the surrounding neighborhoods. If so, what do you see?

Pier 28

Waiting for delivery
San Francisco, CA, March 2007 [Click to enlarge]

Right around the same time I was doing mock battle with a couple of stuffed and mean-spirited professional sports mascots (see here for more), I was also taking some serene pictures of a facility that almost no one takes the time to appreciate.

The pier is the kind of place that seems as if it has always been old and worn. On this gloriously sunny afternoon, no one's outside and the place looks abandoned. I walk by at precisely the moment that the low-angled sun begins to move past the midline of the building. I can almost see the shadow creeping across the white doors, so I shoot fast before everything descends into the shade.

It is lonely and sad. But I could look at it for a while. Which I do, as I lean against a fencepost and settle in for a few minutes of silent reflection as the shadow completes its brief journey. I wonder if I'm the only person in this pier's long history who's done this.

Your turn: Reflecting on a bygone relic. Please discuss.

Snowy face

Look what I dug up
London, ON, April 2007 [Click for extreme dog closeup]

In this part of the world, it isn't supposed to snow this much in April. But there's a wide gulf between what's supposed to happen weatherwise and what actually does. Mother Nature doesn't accept requests, after all.

So when an early-April snowfall turned the city into a winter wonderland, we took our dog, Frasier, to the nearby dog run and turned him loose. We're still admittedly nervous about letting him off his leash. He is, after all, an exuberant puppy who needs more than a little work in the training department. But he's so full of beans that we just have to let him run free when the opportunity presents itself.

We forgot that miniature schnauzers are hunting dogs. He spent an inordinate amount of time digging his nose into the snow, and likely would have continued to do so until the final meltoff if we hadn't eventually hooked him back up and brought him home for a very long nap.

The life of a dog.

Your turn: Why is a dog's life so charmed?

Caption This 15

Please help me name this photo
San Francisco, CA, March 2007 [Click to enlarge]

I always take placeholder-type pictures whenever I go somewhere new. Signs, names, anything that can identify where I am and why this place matters.

I captured this while walking around San Francisco last month. I need your help coming up with a name or a caption for it. If you haven't played Caption This yet, you're in for a treat. Let's go...

• The rules, such as they are
• Last week's entry, Po goes to the beach

Maggie takes it this week. Her caption was too cute for words: Telli-Po-rted!

Your turn: Suggest a caption for the abstract image above. Submit as many suggestions as you wish. Call your mother-in-law and encourage her to participate as well. I'll reveal the winner - and the life-changing prize package - next week.

Jammed, encore

Cherries forever
London, ON, April 2007 [Click to enlarge]

This isn't the first time I've taken on a jar of jam (see here and here.) It likely won't be the last, because images like this remind me why I love hanging out at the kitchen table.

The colors and textures of the food and fixins are too much to ignore, and the experience is enriched by the surrounding sound of an awakening house. Kids skitter back and forth to the fridge. The dog jingles as he shadows whoever's carrying the most tantalizing morsel. The smell of fresh brewed coffee hangs in the air.

It's another one of those fleeting in between moments I wish would never end. Whenever I'm lucky enough to have one of them, I try to remember it with a picture.

Your turn: How do you remember a memorable in between moment?

Sun fried green tomatoes

Translucent color
London, ON, April 2007

Sometimes, I take a picture because it is of a subject I hope to return to in future. To wit, my water cup. I drink water all day. The colder the better. It keeps me alert and, hopefully, somewhat healthy.

When I put it on the counter and it caught the sun, I knew it was something I wanted to remember. But I had no tripod. So the compromises resulted in an image with strong geometry, but somewhat iffy technicals.

I'll come back to this kind of composition in future. But for now, a slash of reflected green across a stainless steel surface will have to do.

Your turn: Reflected colors. Do they appeal to your eye? Why/why not?

More BlackBerry jam

In yesterday's entry on my latest BlackBerry/media adventure, I touched on the fact that our daughter was home sick from school. This added another layer of uniqueness to the day.

She's 9, so leaving her home alone while I zinged off to a television studio to be interviewed simply wasn't an option. Besides, our puppy hasn't taken the babysitting certification course yet. So, late in the morning, I sealed my nomination for the all-time parenting hall of fame by dragging her nauseous self out of the house and forcing her to sit quietly off to the side while I spoke into a camera.

OK, it wasn't that bad. By then she had had time to eat some toast, nap on the couch and play with the furball. She was looking a little more herself by the time we were ready to head to the studio.

Quick aside about the studio: It's a state-of-the-art facility that belongs to the journalism department at the University of Western Ontario. When it isn't being used to train the next generation of media wizards, it's used for remote feeds for BNN, CTV, and a bunch of American networks. It's the main remote site for pretty much anyone in London who's asked to do live television.

The usual routine when you get there is simple: you sit down in the chair, they hook you all up, test for sound levels and then, when the time comes, you speak into a disembodied camera to an anchor located hundreds of miles away. It truly is a fascinating experience.

My daughter sat quietly on the far wall, watching the producer/cameraman get her dad ready for his brief moment in the media spotlight. I kept looking back to her to ensure she was fine - thankfully, she was. My initial fears that she'd inadvertently share her breakfast with the floor faded as I saw the child's wonder in her eyes. She silently took it all in, blue eyes as wide as saucers.

As we got closer to go-live time, I continued to steal glances back at her, asking her whether or not I looked like a doofus, making sure she didn't want to do the interview instead of me. We gave each other a quick thumbs-up as the producer in faraway Toronto counted down in my ear.

In the end, our too-sick-to-go-to-school daughter had a unique experience hanging around with me, and I suspect she ended up with images that, like those from my childhood when the pleasantly unexpected happened and I got to spend bonus time with my parents, she'll carry forward with her. I hope she remembers the moment as happily as I do.

In related news: There's more media fallout from yesterday's frenzy. Major stuff...

USA Today - allow me to pause, calmly, as I contemplate its circulation of 2.6 million. There, I feel at peace now. Let us continue...

Michelle Kessler interviewed me and wrote this article: BlackBerry outage exposes RIM's 'soft underbelly'. The paper used my quote for the headline - how cool is that? This is my first time appearing in USA Today, and it's a significant milestone because of its sheer size and reach. Fingers crossed that I somehow make it onto their reporters' speed dials.

(Oh, one more thing: if you've got a copy of today's - April 19 - USA Today, would you mind holding onto it for me? I wasn't able to find it in London. Weird!)

The Los Angeles Times - I spoke with Times Staff Writer James Granelli for this piece: BlackBerry outage leaves users thumb-founded. The article also carries Alex Pham's byline. Here's what I said:

Some customers might well have "dodged the bullet," said Carmi Levy, an analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Canada.

The root cause of the outage, he said, was in the core network near Research in Motion's Waterloo headquarters in the province of Ontario. It caused a backup in e-mail that left the system unable to handle even the diminished traffic at that late hour.

"It raises questions about the robustness of the system," Levy said.

I spoke to David Friend from the Canadian Press for his followup piece, RIM keeps quiet as BlackBerry system appears to be returning to normal. I was a little on the judgmental side in this one:

Meanwhile, Internet message boards were buzzing with talk that some users still weren't receiving full service. Some were still reporting that old e-mails were trickling into the system because the outage was so large, according to Carmi Levy, senior research analyst at InfoTech Research Group.

"The company that provides proactive, real-time communications through its leading-edge smart phone devices seems to have dropped the ball," Levy said.

"This is the time you want to get in front of the media... to share your perspective with the world. They need to manage that messaging stream more effectively than they have."

This was also picked up by Newsday.

The Globe and Mail ran another story, RIM gets message from e-mail outage, in today's print edition (that's three separate hits in one paper, in case you're keeping score...happy dance time!) Catherine McLean got the byline, and what's cool about it is the graphic that accompanied it. I worked iteratively with Tara Perkins, and in the end she and her team on the business desk produced a unique illustration of how the service works. It's on the page that I've linked to above, and you can view it directly by clicking here. The full roundup from today's paper can be found here.

I think this covers most of the major hits. Over the next couple of days, I'll add links to any others in today's and yesterday's entries. If you're really curious, click here to see real-time search results on my name from Google News.

Your turn: A daughter's adventure with her dad. Please discuss why kids need to get a glimpse into their parents' work world every once in a while.

About that BlackBerry outage...

Bad day for Research In Motion = good day for Carmi.

When millions of BlackBerry subscribers in the Western hemisphere realized their addictive little devices weren't sending or receiving e-mail last night, ths stage was set for a somewhat eventful day.

Step 1: My phone rings as I'm dropping the kids off at school. Business News Network (formerly Report On Business Television) wants to change the focus of an interview that had already been scheduled for later that morning. BlackBerry is now the top topic. Can do. I was interviewed by Lisa Oake on the Market Morning show. The interview can be seen here.

And because one TV hit is never enough, CTV Toronto pulls a clip from the BNN interview and drops it into a report by John Musselman. They misspell my name as "Karmi" because, well, I'm not quite sure. I guess the lack of BlackBerry service affected the old fact-checking desk. Or something like that. But it gave my friends in Toronto a serious laugh, so it was worth it in the end.

Step 2: My phone rings again. It's our PR team at the office. We're sending out a press release. From the school's parking lot, we confirm talking points as I get ready to drive back to the house to set up a command post on my kitchen table. It's shaping up to be a fun day.

Step 3: Pat the dog in the back seat for being such a good boy. We brought him in the car with us this morning, part of our strategy to get him used to being out and about. Open the sunroof, plug the iPod into the stereo and crank some Delerium (yeah, I'm odd) and kick the wondervan into drive. I've got my priorities, after all.

Step 4: Arrive home. The press release is out (News Brief: Service outage for BlackBerry email a rude awakening for users today.) E-mail and voicemail are already waiting for me from reporters eager to get my take on what this means to the future of the world (short answer: it's still spinning at the same rotational velocity, and the sun seems to be setting in the same place it did last night, so it certainly wasn't catastrophic.) Our daughter woke up looking as green as the just-awakening lawn outside our front door. So she hung out with me while I fielded enough journo inquiries to fill my beloved old Truman Show popcorn bowl. It's yellow and I'm never giving it up. But I digress.

Step 5: Look at my watch. It's well after 5. The wreckage of an insane day of BlackBerry jam hunting is strewn throughout the kitchen. I'm strangely at peace, likely because my own BlackBerry is powered off and stuffed deep in the bottom of my camera bag. I fetch the dog and take him for a walk. Priorities, again.

When all was said and done, I ended up being quoted in another bunch of incredibly cool places. Here are some highlights:

• Wojtek Dabrowski from the Toronto Reuters office interviewed me for his piece, RIM gets N.America BlackBerry email working again. As it's a wire service, it ran far and wide: Washington Post, National Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, Epoch Times, Ireland, The Hollywood Reporter, Reuters India, Scientific American, eWEEK, Baseline.

• I spoke to InformationWeek senior editor Rick Martin for this piece: BlackBerry Shutdown Sends Danger Signal For RIM.

• The Globe and Mail included two pieces with my input:

1 - BlackBerry service restored, RIM says. Byline Tavia Grant
2 - What went wrong? I wrote this Q&A on what caused the outage and potential consequences.
Oh, and I think they're running a graphic that I helped create in tomorrow's paper. Fingers crossed.

• Canadian Press (CP) reporter David Friend interviewed me for the following piece: BlackBerry addicts all thumbs again: service restored after 12-hour outage. It ran in a bunch of places: CBC, The Ottawa Citizen, The Vancouver Sun, The Montreal Gazette, The Edmonton Journal, The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 570News Kitchener, 680News Toronto, CJAD News Montreal (funny anecdote on this last one: I used to work there.)

• Daniel Del'Re from Investor's Business Daily interviewed me for his piece, Investors Dismiss BlackBerry Glitch.

• I spoke to Jeff Jedras for the ITbusiness.ca article, BlackBerry outage suggests IT infrastructure weakness: Analyst says RIM should reconsider centralized NOC model.

• Other electronic media hits included live radio interviews with Jeff Allan of 570News in Kitchener-Waterloo (this is notable because it's an hour up the road from my office, and this is the hometown of Research In Motion. RIM-related stories take on an added significance to local media, and it's always a special treat to be interviewed by K-W media. I also did a live hit with Mike Stafford from 640News in Toronto.

There's more. Much more. Including some really significant American media breakthroughs. I'll post separately tomorrow once more of the fallout has a chance to, well, fall.

Your turn: So, what do you think about the BlackBerry outage? Big deal or not? Should I work from my kitchen table more often?

Curves and lines

Hold on
London, ON, April 2007 [Click to embiggen]

I continue to walk the neighborhood around my office. The alone time gives me a chance to think reflectively without the usual interruptions of life. It also allows me to return with ever-evolving views of this historic world. I can walk the same route every day, and somehow I'll always be hit by a unique scene that I hadn't previously captured. I have no idea why this is so, but I won't challenge fate either.

I found this little detail in front of a lovingly restored century home. Someone once told me that people who buy these homes don't really own them. Rather, they serve as stewards for these historic buildings, preserving them for the generations to come. I like that sentiment. So genteel.

In this case, I'm glad that whoever was responsible for this place was sufficiently moved by the geometry of the railing to restore it to such a pristine state. The subtle curves and shadows are enough to make me want to take another look the next time I'm in the area.

Your turn: Look around you and pick out the first small detail that comes to mind. What is it?

How much is that doggie in the window?

Waiting...
London, ON, April 2007

I'm posting this tonight because Carli is absolutely right: the world needs more wiggly puppies. Here goes...

There are so many really nice things about having a dog (see here for an early observation.) The one that stands out for me is the greeting. Coming home will never be the same now that there's a wiggling, happy, fur-covered animal on the other side of the door.

What strikes me is the unconditional nature of the greeting. It doesn't matter how lousy your day has been or the mood that you're in. Your dog will be just as happy to see you no matter how dark that cloud over your head is. When you get inside and hug the now-insane animal in a vain attempt to get him to calm down, you realize that whatever it was that got you down in the first place really doesn't matter so much after all.

Here, Frasier waits for his mommy to get to the door. Note the relative peace with which he sits. He hasn't seen her yet.

Your turn: Why does a happy greeting - pet, human, whatever - matter so much to us? Can a pet heal the world?

Monsters among us

As news of today's massacre emerges out of the Virginia Tech campus, I'm left with a sick feeling of deja vu. I've been to two schools - Dawson and Concordia - that have experienced fatal campus shootings. I lived in Montreal when Marc Lepine mowed down 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique.

I have no words to respond to this latest tragedy, which stands to be the worst school rampage in U.S. history. Columbine, it would seem, was just another milestone on an ugly and worsening journey of senselessness.

Yet I feel compelled to at least make mention of it here, to add it to my ongoing life's journal. Because I worry that not saying anything might suggest an acceptance of this, that regular school shootings are a normal part of modern life.

They aren't. And I wish I had something more than words to offer up to parents who send their children to school only to have them never return home. This isn't how life is supposed to turn out. Then again, who ever said life followed any sort of script?

Your turn: Is there an answer to any of this?

Caption This 14

I need your help naming this image
Lake Worth, Florida, December 2007

This is Po. She spends her life hooked onto the strap of my old camera bag, and I take pictures of her wherever she goes. Here, she enjoys some time in the sun. For the uninitiated, she's a Teletubby, one of those annoying gibberish-speaking, freakish-dancing British imports with televisions in their tummies.

For the record, I've never been a Teletubby fan. I believe they are responsible for delayed potty training, excessive crayon-drawing on walls, and a decided lack of vegetable-eating among the post-toddler set. I think they have also touched off epileptic seizures in vulnerable TV-watching dogs, but I'm waiting for the research results on that one.

And for this reason, I'm not sure what caption this image should carry. Any thoughts? If so, read on...

• How to play Caption This
• All Caption This entries to-date
• Last week's entry, The bridge under the moon

And last week's winner? I couldn't pick just one, so I decided not to limit myself. Here's the short-list:

• Anil P called it Bridging hope
• Joel Reynolds suggested Bridge to the moon
• Pat suggested Stairway to heaven
• Theo submitted this lovely poem:

The Moon Shines
In Daylight
Upon the Strings
That bind humanity

They're all winners in my book. As are you for participating and turning Caption This into a weekly tradition that I always look forward to.

Your turn: Submit a caption for the Po pic in a comment. Fame, fortune and my everlasting gratitude will be yours if you play along.

An in between moment, morning

Looking out my hotel room window
San Francisco, CA, March 2007 [Click to embiggen]

In between moments come fast and furious when you're away on business. There's little free time to capture the spirit of this place, so you try to grab snippets wherever they present themselves.

It's early in the morning, and I'm getting ready in my hotel room. If you really want to know, I'm carefully ironing my shirt because, well, it's one of those on-the-road rituals that keeps me grounded. I've got a long day of work ahead of me. But I notice the soft glow of the morning sun reflecting off the front of the lovely old building across the street. My camera's right there, so I pick it up and take a quick couple of pictures before I get back to the serious business of eliminating creases.

Later on, I look closely at the picture I've captured of this genteel structure (click on it now, if you wish. No worries: I'll wait.) There's obvious decay in the corner, testament to its years of standing guard over this busy neighborhood. But it still looks regal, elegant, substantial.

Somewhere in this idle musing, there's an analog for humanity that I'm sure I'll be writing about before long.

Your turn: Maybe you want to take a stab at explaining the lesson this building holds for the rest of us. What is it saying to you?

Haunted

Looking for home
San Francisco, CA, March 2007 [Click to enlarge]

I touched off a bit of a discussion with my earlier entry on homelessness in this city, so I thought I'd return to the theme.

A colleague of mine pointed out after seeing the initial blog posting that vagrancy is illegal in San Francisco. Consequently, the city's homeless population is engaged in a constant battle to avoid arrest. They load up their carts and move around from place to place, never staying long enough in any one spot to attract the attention of the law. It's an endless quest for...well, not for anything, really. It's an endless quest to stay one step ahead of jail time.

This image haunts me. The look in this man's eyes speaks of a despair that I can't even begin to imagine. As he walked along the water's edge on the uber-trendy Embarcadero, legions of well-dressed city dwellers passed him by. He was completely invisible to them; a mini-drama of a distressed life on the move, taking place literally under the noses of his neighbors.

All I have is a lens and a pen. I can't fix this. All I can think as this man shuffles quietly past me is that I need to ensure such tragedy never visits my own family. I feel selfish for this, but my wife and kids have to matter above all. Then I shudder when I realize that life comes with no guarantees, that any one of us isn't so far removed from walking anonymously through the city, our worldly possessions stuffed into a squeaky-wheeled shopping cart.

These conflicting, dark thoughts echo through my mind as this nameless, homeless man slowly fades into the crowd before disappearing for good.

Your turn: As you watch a homeless person walk on by, what goes through your mind?