"If you want to be happy, be."
Tolstoy

Those little feet didn't stand a chance

Transient
Deerfield Beach, FL
January 2012

These are my son's footsteps (a series, get it?*) that lasted for, I'm guessing, four waves before they were forever wiped from the face of the earth. Not long after we left this place, any evidence that he had been here had vanished.

Sure, the picture freezes things somewhat, renders them a little more permanent. But even then, it's a virtual process, eventually doomed to similar disappearance when the web server is taken offline, when the power fails, when technology inevitably leaves this platform behind. We've learned, sometimes the hard way, that nothing lasts forever, so we're left to cherish whatever somethings we have for as long as we possibly can. And even when they're gone, they're still ours to remember if we try hard enough.

The waves may have taken his footsteps away. But when I close my eyes and remember that day we all spent together, it's as real as it ever was.

Your turn: How do you hold onto fleeting moments?

* Head here for more Thematic series.

Short flight of wonder

YXU-to-YYZ
London/Toronto, ON
March 2011
Click all photos to embiggen

About these photos: Thematic explores photographic series all week long. Head here for the launch entry, and here for more background on Thematic itself. It won't hurt. Much.

For as long as I have the ability to get on a plane and travel elsewhere, I'll continue to find the experience to be magical. Sure, overwhelming security procedures and onerous fee structures - I have to pay to sit next to my kid? Seriously? - have cut into the glamor that once defined air travel. But once you finish being felt up by Gene the ambiguously dressed security agent and ripped off my a smarmy airline agent, all that's left is to board the plane itself and strap in for the ride.

And what a ride it is. From the moment the engines open up and you hurtle down the runway, it's all about the physics, baby. And what cool physics they are, incredibly simple principles being applied in real life by some of the best engineering humans have yet invented. Yet most passengers are too preoccupied flipping through the SkyMall catalog - I admit that genuine bamboo tiki bar is positively divine, but let's get real, shall we? - to even notice.

I kind of wish more of them would. Because life's pretty short, and we miss most of the fun stuff if we're too busy being busy. (Shades of Bueller, no?) We all need to take a time out - or six - to appreciate the simplicity - or complexity, your call - of being held up in the air by nothing more than a few well-worn principles of aerodynamics. Or anything else we might find magical.

Your turn: What do you find magical? What makes it magical in the first place?

Thematic Photographic 202 - Series

Pelican flyby
Deerfield Beach, FL
January 2012

For this week's Thematic series, I'd like us to try something a little different (I know I say that all the time, but this time I really mean it.)

In all seriousness, I'd like to shift our perception of photos themselves. We tend to think of them as individual entities, or unique memories, but I'd like us, this week anyway, to think a little bigger. So instead of seeing them as unique photos, I'm hoping this theme will let us see that as part of a larger continuum, snippets of life that we can, if we wish, assemble together like puzzle pieces to see the bigger picture.

So, for the coming week, the Thematic theme is series. I hope you'll think about a series - two or more pictures makes it, and that's the only real rule - that you'd like to share. Whatever that series may be, topically, is entirely up to you. If you think they're connected and they tell a wider story, we want to see 'em. That's it!

About these photos: The kids were playing in the late afternoon surf while I stood at the water's edge and did my best to shoot the chaotic scene. Our daughter saw it first, a pelican flying low over the water, parallel to the shoreline as they always seem to do. I was so busy shooting that I didn't recognize our daughter's gesture for what it was - notice the pointing in shot 2 - until Noah picked up on it and started yelling.

Now, a word about pelicans. They don't live here in the Great White North, so the only time we get to see them is when we're down south. My late father, who spent so much time on the beach with my mother and their friends, was fascinated by them, and always enjoyed my own efforts to hunt them down - photographically, of course - and the pics that resulted (like this one.)

The thing is, they're hard to get. They usually fly in leisurely packs, high and slow, wings barely moving, up and down the beach. You can be there every day for a week and not see one, then see the same bunch cross the sky - back and forth - multiple times in an afternoon, but never on anything like a set schedule. Unless you're sitting on the beach with your camera at the ready, they're really hard to capture.

So it was quite a surprise to see one lone bird flying not high over the top of the beach itself, but low over the water, dropping down at points to capture the ground effect (story for another day: It takes guts to fly so close to disastrous contact with the water, but it's so awe-inspiring to watch.) I reset the camera as quickly as I could to capture the sole pelican's flyby, then followed it as it swept on past before dropping to sea level for one last skim.

I was sure I had so little time to shift gears that I was going to botch something - exposure, composition, focus, probably all three - yet in the end, somehow I was able to record its passage.

Then, just as quickly as it had arrived, it was gone, the kids left bubbling in its wake about how they could almost reach out and touch this incredible bird, how it almost seemed to aim right for them as it made its way down the coastline. Dahlia remembered how her Zaidy liked pelicans, and wondered aloud about the connection.

To this day, I wonder if the flyby was perhaps a sign that on so many days much like today, in this very place, my dad sat right over there and enjoyed similar spectacles. I'm glad I was able to record the moment with his memory so close at hand. There's no way to know, of course, but the sense of connectedness made it much more than simply watching a bird fly past.

Your turn: Thematic Photographic is our weekly photo sharing-participation-learning activity. All you need to do is share a photo series on your own blog or website, then leave a comment here letting everyone know where to find it. Visit other participants to spread the joy, and feel free to pop back in through the week to see what everyone else is up to. Repetition is highly encouraged, as is a general sense of fun. If you're new to the Thematic thing, click here. Otherwise, have fun with this one...I know I will!

Project Glass. My version.

Heavy ball
London, ON
July 2012
Click here for more summer-themed Thematic.

Shanghai has a lovely glass museum that I was lucky enough to visit when I was there in May. I somehow got it into my head that I should bring a little piece of this place home. So as I wandered into the gift shop, I found myself looking at pieces that wouldn't shatter into a zillion little shards on the way home.

I figured a heavy, dense ball of glass would be naturally robust. I didn't figure on it giving security guards kanipshen fits as their machines zeroed in on something the looked like Fat Man's enriched uranium core, wrapped carefully in the middle of my camera bag. It made for some entertaining discussions with security agents, some in languages I couldn't even begin to understand.

That was the bad news. The good news was they totally ignored the very fresh orange I accidentally forgot in my backpack. I checked it for invasive fruit flies before I chomped it for my first welcome-home breakfast.

Seriously, it's a wonder I'm not sitting in a concrete cell. Good times.

On words and life

"Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own."
Carol Burnett

Let the Tour begin

Soft shoulder
East of London, ON
July 2010

I'm posting this shot as a way of motivating myself to get out of the house and onto the road. I've been a bit slack in the cycling department this year. Okay, I was slack last year, too, riding far fewer kilometers than I normally have. I admit the combination of changing work patterns - my growing load of media work means I often get called into studios on short notice, so commuting on two wheels just doesn't fit in as well as it did when I simply rode to an office, and stayed there, for the day - and fear are making me less jazzed about rolling the big pink machine out of the garage.

About that fear thing: For the first time last year, I felt it. I'd always ridden with a sense of invulnerability. I've been hit by a car, assaulted by a motorist and almost constantly harassed by morons who scream at me for kicks as they drive by. I had never let it bother me until last year, when suddenly I found myself worrying about not making it back home in one piece, if at all. It froze me to the point that I simply stayed inside more often than I ventured out.

I realize I'm overreacting. And I realize the need to balance the health benefits of the activity against the realistic risks of being out there on the road. So I'll push myself to take this irrational fear and shove it back into the hole where it belongs. And as for the next person who leans out a car window and yells at me for daring to occupy a sliver of the right lane? No sense letting the morons win. It's time to ride.

Your turn: What are you doing to get more active? Do you worry?

Taking pens away from morons

Every once in a while, you read an article that makes you pause and think. Sometimes it's an intelligent kind of pause, and it leads to constructive thinking that may help you see something from a perspective you hadn't previously considered. You're challenged, you learn, you grow. It's the power of words, and it explains why I do what I do.

Every once in a while, you read a different article that also makes you pause and think. Except this time, instead of learning something in the process, you realize you've lost brain cells. And you'll probably need a shower.

John Robson wrote this hideously offensive piece, Only one national day, for today's Ottawa Sun to mark Canada's 145th birthday - today! And if I'm being polite, it's some of the most xenophobic, spite-fuelled writing I've read in a while. I'm not entirely surprised, as the "news organization" he works for isn't exactly known as a bastion of journalistic excellence. To be perfectly frank, the standards of Mr. Robson's employers bring shame to all of us who professionally ply the craft every day. But this is no surprise to anyone who picks up a Quebecor-owned paper only to have the cheap newsprint rub off on their fingertips.

This piece plumbs new lows, and suggests someone missed out on the tolerant-Canadian gene when they were handing them out a few years back. I realize my writing about it here only brings more attention to a piece that was obviously crafted more for link-baited traffic generation than cogent political discussion. But to say nothing would allow idiocy like this to persist unchecked. And the Canadian journalist in me just can't allow that to stand.

Happy birthday, Canada. Please ignore the idiots in the peanut gallery who have no idea what they're talking about. They don't represent the best of journalism. And they sure don't represent the best this country has to offer. Far from it.

Golf. Not the Volkswagen.

Fore!
London, ON
May 2012

It's been such a crazy workweek (here and here) that you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd forgotten about Thematic. Well, perish the thought! It's been at the back of my mind all along: I just haven't had a spare minute to actually do anything about it.

Thankfully, I've got the best readers on the planet who have all stepped up with contributions of their own. The theme is "welcome summer", and whoever you are, you're also invited to toss your own vision of the season into the mix. Just go here.

Your turn: I'm not much a golfer - I worry too much about inadvertently injuring those around me when I play - but I do appreciate the peace and quiet of a round with friends, as well as the aesthetics of the game itself. I rather liked this one as soon as I took it. Do you golf? Why/why not?

iPhone turns 5. I write RIM's obituary.

Five years ago today, Apple started selling the iPhone. At the time, RIM owned the smartphone market, and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis at the time dismissed the new device as a toy, saying people wanted security, robust messaging and keyboards. Touchscreens and fun, he said, weren't what people wanted.

My, how five years can change empires. RIM is now sliding into oblivion while Apple is the most valuable company on the planet. Hmm, toy?

Anyway, the media storm that erupted yesterday kind of spilled into today. In addition to the two published articles (Toronto Star and Yahoo), I spent a lot of time either in front of a camera, in a radio studio, on a phone, or zinging myself from place to place as I counted every minute and prayed I wouldn't be late for anything. Here's the chronological order of events:

1. CTV Canada AM - 2 interviews with Marcia MacMillan (video here)
2. Newstalk 1010 Toronto - John Moore
3. CBC Ontario Morning - Danielle Harder
4. CTV Morning Live (Regina) - with Molly Thomas and Jonathan Glasgow (video here)
5. 570News Kitchener - Michelle Dyer
6. AM980 London - Jeff McArthur (Podcast Part 1, Part 2)
7. CHML Hamilton - Bill Taylor
8. CBC Ontario Today - Hallie Cotnam and a cast of phone-in listeners. Got to do this one from the CBC studios here in London, with Garry Ennett as always making me sound like I knew what I was talking about. (Audio here)
9. CJAD Montreal - Weekly tech segment with Ric and Suzanne (Podcast here)
10. Sun News Network - Caryn Lieberman (and, yes, I taught her to swim a few moons ago)
11. CBC television cross-country newscasts - Aaron Saltzman
12. CBC The National - Adrienne Arsenault

What do I remember most about the day? I left the house at 5:20 a.m. to get to the studio in time for my first Canada AM hit. As I stepped off the porch into the dimness of the slowly brightening sky, I felt like the 11-year-old me, delivering the Montreal Gazette before the rest of the world was awake. I could practically feel those early mornings with my stack of newspapers teetering precariously in my wagon. Then as now, the wind would blow just a little, the humidity hanging off the leaves, the shadows of the trees softly painting the ground below. You felt this time of day as much as you saw or heard it, and I hadn't realized, until this morning, just how deeply those memories were imprinted.

I got into the car and slowly eased out onto the street. Once again I found myself actively recording the journey. Once again I didn't want to forget what this experience felt like. I do that on days that feel like they're going to be significant in some way. I want to live them, feel them, remember why they were special.

Today was special. The news may have been challenging - especially for the thousands affected by the layoffs - but in my little world of tech journalism, something changed. For the better.

Onward...

--
More links and video to follow. Will update this entry as I find more.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes divorce. World weeps.

Just when you think you can believe in something again, Tom Cruise goes ahead and splits from Katie Holmes. While the optimist in me sees this as an opportunity for her to return to her Dawson's Creek days, the realist in me sees this as yet another example of celebrity silliness.

Many magazines will doubtless be sold, and TV entertainment shows (gawd, I hate them) will breathlessly try to convince us all that this is newsworthy.

Well, I guess it is if you have nothing better to do than track the lives of folks who live in front of a camera for a living.

Wait...

What I really think of RIM

The Research In Motion roller coaster continues. I've been at it almost non-stop since before sun-up doing interviews and writing near and far. I'm running off to another wave of interviews, so won't have time to update much here for a few hours. But I wanted to get links out to the two pieces I published this morning, as they provide a solid overview of where I really stand on RIM, how it got here, and its prospects going forward.

I hope you enjoy the read, and would appreciate any thoughts you have in a comment:

The Toronto Star. RIM’s choice: revamp standalone strategy or disappear
Yahoo! Canada. RIM cuts jobs, reports quarterly loss

More soon...

Update...Here's a rundown of additional media work I ended up doing today. It was a packed one:

1. Business News Network (BNN). Spoke with The Street host Pamela Ritchie. about the Google Nexus 7 tablet before shifting gears into RIM. (Video here) (alternate link here).
2. CTV Kitchener - Spoke with Meghan Furman for their 6 o'clock newscast (this is RIM's hometown TV station)
3. CTV London - Did a one-on-one interview with anchor Tara Overholt for the 6 pm newscast
4. CTV National News - Clip included in Parliamentary Correspondent Richard Madan's report (video here) 
5. QR77 Calgary. Chatted with Dave Rutherford
6. CBC Radio One national news desk. Spoke with Meegan Read.
7. 640Toronto. Spoke with Arlene Bynon (did the hit just as Telus's national voice network began to crash. Managed to get the interview done just before all inbound/outbound voice traffic went quiet. Missed another hit with CJAD because of it. C'est la vie.)
8. Newstalk 1010. Chatted with John Downs of Friendly Fire fame.

RIM melts down. Chapter LXIV.

Quiet day on the blog today, as I've been a little consumed with covering BlackBerry maker Research In Motion's latest, inglorious chapter.

The company announced its most recent quarterly financial results today. To no one's surprise, they were terrible. Huge, worse-than-expected losses, downward-trending sales of now-obsolete devices, and another delay in the release - to Q1 2013 - of the new operating system and smartphones, known as BlackBerry 10, that will supposedly save the company.

By the time they appear, there may not be much left to save, as today was something of an inflection point in the company's history, the day when, in the eyes of many, it passed the point of no return. As an analyst and a journalist, I understand the factors innately, and can write about and explain them in infinite detail. As a Canadian who lives just up the road from RIM's headquarters in Waterloo, this pains me to no end. There's no joy in watching one of Canada's brightest lights fall on such hard times, no pleasure in watching thousands of the brightest minds wonder what their future holds.

I've done a lot of writing, talking and interviewing, and it looks like it'll continue straight into tomorrow. I spoke with CTV Kitchener's Meghan Furman and CTV London's Tara Overholt for packages on the 6pm newscasts, and with Richard Madan for his report on tonight's CTV National News. I'll be on-air tomorrow morning on CTV's Canada AM, then back on-air for my regular weekly tech segment with CJAD Montreal's Ric and Suzanne. Articles for the Toronto Star and Yahoo! Canada will be live before long.

And I'll be holding my BlackBerry a little more carefully all the while. Because something tells me I may not be buying another one.

I take no pleasure in seeing these stark words on my screen. None of this had to happen.

On setting the bar just a little higher

"The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark."Michelangelo

So today I'm going to set the bar high. You?

Explosions in the sky. Not on the ground.

Light up the sky
Arva, ON
July 2010

Every street corner in town seems to have sprouted a fireworks kiosk. It seems to revolve around our Victoria Day (May 24) and Canada Day (July 1) weekends, and it always gives me a little chill as we drive past.

I'm willing to bet none of these vendors has extensive training in keeping munitions from munitioning themselves right there in the corner of the strip mall parking lot. I'm also willing to bet our resource-starved governments - municipal, provincial, federal, and any other level that may be out there - aren't sending waves of inspectors to these establishments to ensure all applicable safety standards are being rigidly met. (Truth be told, they're busy using Twitter inappropriately, but that's a story for another day.)

Of course, I may be stretching things with the use of the word, "Establishment". They're little more than hastily assembled groups of Ikea tables (the Alex model, I believe, with the trestle legs) with haphazardly piled boxes of rockets, firecrackers and bombs large enough to arm a small army of teenaged suburbanite insurgents. Hey, it could happen: Those cul-de-sacs can be nasty!

The long and the short of it is simple: They scare the heck out of me, and I can't wait until they leave so that the forlorn corners of our local strip mall parking lots can return to the grit-and-dust-covered broken asphalt deserts they've always been.

Still, fireworks look lovely, don't they?

About this photo: We're welcoming summer all week long, and what's more summery than fireworks? Click here to share your own.

Bus bullies and Microsoft Surface

Last Friday was a good day for TV, as I managed to cram in three interviews into one studio session. The big story of the day was a video of Rochester, NY bus monitor Karen Klein. After the so-called "bus bully" video of students taunting her ruthlessly  went viral on YouTube, a Toronto man, Max Sidorov, started an online fundraising campaign to raise $5,000 to send her on a vacation.

By airtime, the figure was pushing $500,000 and coverage had gone global. I chatted about how online fundraising works with CTV Toronto's Ken Shaw. Video here. (Original report is here.)

I also spoke with CTV News Channel's Jennifer Ward right after I got off-air with Mr. Shaw. Then, because things are always more fun in threes, I chatted with CTV National News reporter John Vennavlly-Rao for his package on the Microsoft Surface tablet. Video here.

Fun stuff.

Thematic Photographic 201 - Welcome Summer

Goooooooooal!
London, ON
August 2011

The calendar says summer has just arrived. The pessimists among us say it's all downhill from here, as the days will get shorter and shorter as the humidity and bug density ratchet themselves up to epic, global warming-induced levels.

But I'm not a pessimist, and I'm guessing most of you aren't, either. So for the next week's worth of Thematic - our first step into our second bicentennial - let's keep it simple and fun. Scenes from summer. That's it. You in?

Your turn: Shoot a summer-themed scene, then share it on your blog. Leave a comment here letting folks know where to find it, then drop in on other participants to share the photographic goodness. Participate as often as you'd like, and even bring in a friend - new folks are always welcome. For more background on how this Thematic thing of ours works, just click here. Otherwise have fun!

On following your destiny

"I am not afraid. I was born to do this."
Joan of Arc

This is going up in my home office, because I want it staring me in the face every time I sit down at my desk, flip on the computer and begin to string words together. Because the same thing applies to me. Not the warrior-princess/burned-at-the-stake thing. But the following-your-destiny one, the notion that we're all born to do something.

I now know what my something is. I'm doing it. Right now. I hope you are, too.

Your turn: What were you born to do?

On hearts, fears, and dreams

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream."
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Your turn: What do you dream of?

Blazing a trail through the night sky

Speed
London, ON
June 2012

This is what a magnitude -3.4 pass of the International Space Station almost directly overhead looks like. Well, not quite. It actually looks like a simple moving dot in the sky, barely distinguishable from an airplane save for the fact that it doesn't have flashing lights. And we all know a small, dim dot in a dark sky wouldn't photograph all that well. So instead I left the shutter open for exactly 44.4 seconds and this is the result.

I didn't intend to leave it open for 44.4 seconds. But I was late running out the door, so I spent a little too much time fumbling with the tripod and camera settings. Which didn't leave me a whole lot of time to precisely meter and lock in a set shutter speed. Hence the photo improv job that had me standing on a darkened sidewalk pointing my remote control at the camera and, in the absence of a methodically planned shot, trying to count seconds (badly) as I tried to guess (also badly) how much light was enough, too much, or just enough.

In the end, I think the shot sorta worked. And thanks to Twitter, I got to share it with some other folks in London, who in turn told their friends (sounds like Suave shampoo commercial, doesn't it?) who also ran outside and saw the magical dance in the heavens. Neat.

I use this site, heavens-above.com, to predict when the best passes will be in my area. If you're looking for a neat activity to share - with kids, friends, anyone - you could do worse than stare way up and wonder about the wonders high above us.

Your turn: What makes you wonder?

One more thing: What does this have to do with abstract? Everything. It weighs almost a million pounds, stretches a football field in length, flies around the earth at 28,000 km/h (which would get me to the TV station in, oh, 1.2 seconds) and is currently home to 6 astronauts/cosmonauts who stay there for up to 6 months at a stretch, protected from the ravages of space by some of the best technology humankind has yet devised. Yet from the average person's vantage point, it's a dot in the sky. As you stand alone on a darkened sidewalk, you have to squeeze your brain a whole lot to appreciate what it means as it silently marches through the sky. Sounds pretty abstract, doesn't it? Click here to share your own abstract Thematic vision.