I'm still pseudo-neglecting the blog here, so I thought I'd do a quick weekend post to at least keep up to date.

This Saturday, Michael came to visit and so did Keizo. Michael was just in town for something to do with a Chess club at his new school and Keizo was here to run the half-marathon on Sunday. I hadn't seen either of them in a while so it was awesome to see both. Especially Michael who has been absent for almost a year I think. Matt and I had Burrito Boyz for lunch with him and played a bunch of Wii. Later, I went with Keizo and many others to supper at the Hot House near the market. It was about the same as usual but the service was really really bad. Especially given that we were such a large group!

Sunday I was up bright and early to go bouldering in Niagara Glen with people from work. It was a perfect day for it and we all had a great time. Real rocks tend to be sharper on the hands though, ouch! When I got back I went rollerblading with Chris and then we met up with Matt, Rob, Patrick, Toni and Will for supper at Epicure. I ate out way too much over the weekend, but I also had A LOT of exercise so I think it balances out.

Tonight was wing night and we went to the Butler's Pantry out on Queen West. The food was good and cheap, but I was most pleased with the walk. It's a nice night tonight, and Queen West is always fun to walk along because of all the shops and other interesting things to look at.

Alex just dropped off my new Renderman teapot that Mike got for me at Siggraph this summer. Awesome!!! Now I have one from each of the past three years sitting on my desk at work. Plus I got the cool Maya/Max/Motion builder long sleeve shirt that they gave out a Siggraph. Swag rules!

2007 Edition of the Renderman walking teapot

I'm just posting a photo I took after the concert a couple weeks back. I did it while we were waiting for the ferry to take us back. We had an awesome view of the city all lit up and sparkling. It was neat because I've never seen the city from that far south before. Also, the water was so calm which made for some awesome reflections.

Toronto at night from the island

Last week was fun. We had a big kick-off week for development on the next version of Maya and I got to meet and talk to lots of people I haven't had a chance to interact with before. And this weekend I managed to go climbing twice and swimming once so I'm feeling healthy. Plus I made really good pasta last night and Matt made apple crisp so I've eaten well.

But the really big news is...I finished the France Journal!!!! I made the big push this afternoon and transcribed the huge amount of stuff I wrote on the second last day of my trip. I'm glad to be done this, so I can stop thinking about how I haven't finished it yet.

The last note for this evening is that I also recently finished reading a really good trilogy of books, Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. This includes the book, "The Golden Compass" which is being released as a movie sometime this year. The series is to some extent comparable to Harry Potter in that the main characters are children and that is has a distinct bent towards fantasy, however it also has a lot more depth than those books. Not to say there's anything bad with Harry Potter (I stayed up late many nights finishing off those books), but I found this series to be meatier and much more engaging. I definitely recommend them.

In the interest of maintaining this blog I thought I would blog tonight given that I have a bunch of stuff to blog about. Blog!

On the weekend my brother and two of his friends came up to Toronto to go to the Virgin Music Festival with me. Really all any of us cared about was seeing the Smashing Pumpkins (OMG!) on Sunday, but it was fun to see other bands too. In addition to the Pumpkins (OMG!) we also saw Tokyo Police Club, Stars, Metric, and the Killers. The bands were good, although in the end it was all about the Smashing Pumpkins (OMG!) for me.

Anyway, I'm going to slow down a bit here and try not to get ahead of myself. On Saturday, I just did some errands and cleaning until the evening when my brother showed up with his friends. We hung out for a bit and then hit up Grace O'Malley's for some food. It was good times and I think Anthony is already enjoying Toronto.

Sunday, I was ready in good time to get to the festival in the early afternoon. Anthony and his friends were going to come meet me at my place and we'd go over together. Unfortunately, they stayed out until 4am the night before so they were a bit...slower getting up. It was OK though since I wasn't interested in any of the earlier bands. We eventually got over to the Toronto Island and had a great time at the festival. We met up with Wilson and Jonny and Rob and Rob's sister and we all used a picnic table by a tree near the main stage. Rob had arrived early, dragged the table to a prime position and viciously guarded it until our arrival when we turned it into more of a shared task. It got quite difficult as the day went on. Lots of pushy people.

So the Smashing Pumpkins had a great set (check out the set list on the Smashing Pumpkins Fan Collaborative). It was about two hours long and they touched on a whole bunch of their old stuff in addition to the new stuff. This concert was something I've been waiting for since I started listening to music. The Pumpkins are basically my favourite band of all time and I never had the chance to see them in concert before they stopped touring and broke up. I thought the chance would never come again, but it did! And it was awesome!

We stayed right to the end of the concert, so it took forever to get on a ferry off the island, but there was no way I was leaving early. The next day I had to go to work, which was rough, but instead of resting in the evening I went and saw a film at the Toronto Film Festival. The movie was called "Normal" and starred Carrie-Anne Moss among others. It was a Canadian movie and was very well done and superbly acted. Film Fest is awesome.

Tonight for wing night we went to Sushi On Bloor for some yummy yummy sushi. It was a difficult evening though. First everyone but me was at least 20 minutes late. Second, the restaurant was crazy and it took and additional 35-40 minutes to get a table. Then it took forever to get food, and halfway through our meal a waiter spilled hot tea all over Toni!!! It was pretty scary but I think she's OK now. The only good thing that came of all this was that the food was great as usual, and it was completely free due to the tea-spillage. I've never dealt with something like that before and it felt super weird to leave without paying. Overall it was a crazy night.

Hi everybody! It's been a while since my last blog, but I'm attempting to fix that now. I don't have much to say here this evening, but I did update my France blog to include a bunch of stuff from the film festival in Annecy and some of the pictures Mike has sent me.

I spent the last two weekends away from the city communing with nature. First I went to Alex's cottage with Alex and Jason, as well as Alex's brother and some of his friends. It was a great trip as expected, with late nights, swimming at the beach and much poker playing. The weather was perfect and the people were excellent. I didn't bring my camera though so I have no pictures. If you're on Facebook I was tagged in some though, so check it out if you're interested.

This past weekend I went a bit deeper into nature on a canoe trip into the interior of Algonquin park with my mom and some family friends from Ottawa. After some initial car-related difficulty getting to Ottawa, we set out early Saturday morning for the park. We canoed in to our campsite and then proceeded to set up and prepare the site for our stay. I spent a bunch of time dragging and gathering fire wood for the weekend, in particular using a small saw to cut up a very large dead tree and then an axe to split the logs. This, combined with canoeing, was more physical work than I'm used to, so I was pretty tired that night. Supper was awesome though. Steaks cooked over the fire, with garlic potatoes and carrots (cooked in aluminum foil over the fire).

On Sunday I went fishing in the morning, and was able to catch a bunch without any effort at all! The place we fished at was full of fish, and as soon as you put the line in the water you basically had a bite. They were mostly small fish though, so we tossed them back and after a while head back to the site. The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing and chatting, and also cutting and splitting more fire wood. I built the fire for that night and it was most excellent. Building and maintaining fires is one of my favourite parts of camping.

On Monday we paddled back to the launch site, headed back to Ottawa and got cleaned up and comfortable. I took Tuesday off so that we could stay in Ottawa Monday night instead of rushing back. It was definitely a good idea, despite the rolled tractor trailer on the 401 that caused the drive home to be extremely painful.

A view from our campsite

A loon

My mom and I looking out over the lake

The campsite

A cool plant thing growing up out of the water

Mmmm...steak

The fire wood

Me and my fire

Me and my fire

Into the fire

Canoes in the morning

Paddling home

Looking into the Barron Canyon

This evening I partook in an eclectic mix of activities. After supper I went rollerblading with Chris along the waterfront all the way to Ontario Place. It was a nice night for it and I was happy to see that after almost a year of neglect, my rollerblading skills are still intact. Then I came home and wasted some time on the Internet for a bit before deciding to watch a bit of TV while adding to my France Journal. I managed to add details about my time in Lyon and the trip to Rumilly. But it took a lot longer than it should have because I was pretty distracted by the movie I was watching, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (truly a classic of our times).

I've updated my France Journal with details of my time in Nice and all the fun train rides.

Inspired by my recent viewing of the Transformers movie I've decided to download the original cartoon series and watch it. Today I watched the very first episode, and I was very very happy because of this.

I also went climbing tonight as usual, and managed to scramble up a 5.12-, a new personal best for me. Good times!

Finally, I updated my France Journal again with a description of my last day in Paris.