Things have been pretty busy lately, not much time to blog. I did however do something pretty cool on Monday. I went out to Mt. Nemo (part of the Niagara escarpment) with Daren, Peter and Lap to do some real outdoor rock climbing. We completed three sport routes: a 5.9, a 5.10a and a 5.10b. Daren did all the leading and the rest of us just top-roped them but it was still really cool. The views from the tops of the climbs were amazing and it was fun to be on real rock.

However, I definitely had some terror issues. I felt a lot more exposed and in danger when I was on the climbs than I feel when I climb in a gym. I was exhausted after the day just from all the fear-induced adrenalin that I experienced.

The last climb, the 5.10b, was probably the most interesting for me. It had lots of weird overhangs and even a little cave halfway up that you could stop and rest in. The climb itself was probably sixty feet and was just really cool the whole way. As I was the last person to attempt the climb I had to "clean" it as well. This meant removing all the gear from the wall as I descended after finishing the climb. Cleaning is always a bit scary at the top because at one point you actually untie yourself from the rope. Of course you're secured to the wall in several other ways at that point in time, but it's always a bit weird to untie dangling sixty feet over pointy pointy rocks.

I brought my camera, but most of the time I was either belaying or climbing so I didn't have much of a chance to take photos. I've included the few I did take below, but there are none of me climbing.

Also of note, my brother moved to Toronto on Sunday to start his Masters program at U of T next week. That's pretty cool and should allow me to see him a bit more often.

The rope on the 5.9, the route follows the clips

Another view of the 5.9

Daren belaying Lap on the 5.10a

Lap further up the 5.10a

A cool tree growing out of rock

A cool tree growing out of rock

Cliff face with turkey vultures

Rope on the 5.10b

Lap on the 5.10b

Some cool berries and rock

Last weekend Kim and I met with our photographer and had our "engagement" photos done. Of course if we had been a bit more organized we might have done that closer to our engagement, but it turned out well because we got great evening sun for the shoot.

Tonight for supper, I made Corn and Black Bean Quinoa Salad and damn it was good. I'm definitely going to make more things with quinoa in the future.

There was a huge thunderstorm tonight just after supper, seems like it swept through all of southwestern Ontario. Lots of tornado warnings and such. It was a pretty crazy storm!! Anyway, after it was done I got a couple photos of the rainbow and the sunset the peaked out from behind the clouds. Good times.

Engagement photo, Kim and I with flowers

Engagement photo, Kim and I in front of shed

Tree at sunset

Tree in the streetlight

Corn Black Bean Quinoa salad

Skydome rainbow

Post storm sunset on Cityplace

A super crazy storm came through Toronto tonight with a ton of lightning out over the lake and everywhere. I was able to capture a bunch of really cool photos of it all! Check them out below!

Lightning behind me illuminating the buildings

Lightning off to the right

Lightning off to the left

Lightning behind the buildings

Lightning strike behind the buildings

Distant island lightning strike

HUGE lightning strike on the island

Lightning arcing behind the building

Horizontal lightning behind the building

HUGE horizontal lightning

More distant lightning

Fun lightning in the clouds

More lightning in the clouds

Over the civic holiday weekend Matt and I once again ventured to Ottawa with my mom to join our good friends the Williams' on a canoe trip into the interior of Algonquin Provincial Park. My brother and his friend Matt met us there and also came with us. It was a fantastic trip, but it was over too soon. I've written up a mini journal for the it in my trips section with lots of photos, including a macro shot! So, go check out my 2009 Algonquin Trip journal.

I played a bit more with my macro stuff tonight and was even able to fashion a makeshift light box out of some plain white paper to help illuminate a couple shots using my flash. I think I'll build something a bit sturdier that I can just slap on to the camera when necessary.

This weekend I'm going on a canoe trip in Algonquin with lots of fun people. I can't wait!! I should be able to bring back lots of good pictures too.

Here are the best images from tonight, still nothing fabulous, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.

The tip of a ballpoint pen up close, check out the reflection of the lens in the ball

A wilted rose petal with small leaf

Close up of one of the figures on our German Christmas Pyramid

One of the things I would like to get is a nice 105mm macro lens for my camera. Unfortunately that lens costs about $1200. That figure isn't actually that big in the world of lenses, however it is big in my personal world so I had resigned myself to not getting one any time soon.

But, lo and behold, it turns out there is a cheap alternative! You can "reverse" a lens to get macro effects. That is, you can mount it on your camera backwards (given a special mounting ring). And, taking it one step further, if you have two lenses you can mount one backwards on the other and then mount the whole contraption on your camera and get even greater macro effects.

I happen to have two lenses, an 18-200mm zoom and a 50mm fixed. So I looked around on eBay and was quickly able to find the two tiny rings of metal I needed to stick my lenses together. The first is a male-male macro coupler, and the other is a step-down ring. Total price: $17 including shipping. Awesome, but would it actually work??

Well I have both pieces now and although I didn't have much time to play with it tonight I was able to confirm that yes, it will work indeed!! The only problem is that there is heavy vignetting due to the difference in size between the two lenses. I think that if my zoom went to 300mm the problem would go away, so I will be keeping my eyes open for a cheap 70-300mm lens in the future.

Macro photography is hard! First of all, the depth of field is almost non-existent. Millimetres matter in terms of camera position. It took me almost an hour to find the distance needed to place an object from the lens in order to get it in focus. Second, lighting is very hard because the camera tends to get in the way and cast shadows on the object. Ideally I'd have a lens mounted ring flash, but that would defeat the "cheap" part of this project. I may be able to rig something up with white bounce cards and my on camera flash though. I could also really use a tripod to better handle the longer exposure times required by the small aperture values needed to compensate for the shallow depth of field. Phew.

Anyway, here are some sample images and a picture of the whole setup taken with my old Canon A80.

My D90, with an 18-200mm lens fully extended and a 50mm mounted on the end in reverse

A spring on a finger exerciser

A TTC token

A TTC token

Last night Kim and I went with Chris and John to see the latest Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I think they did a really good job adapting the book. Of course lots of stuff was changed and left out, but overall I liked it quite a bit. The effects were great too (yay ILM!).

For supper we hit up The Queen Mother which is always great. I had the Spinach Quinoa salad with grilled chicken and split the chocolate banana Dufflet cake with Kim. Mmmm.

Today Kim made sweet potato soup for lunch and it turned out awesome. For supper we're having a roast chicken. Mmmm again.

On Saturday we went to the wedding of Mr. Michael Trink, and it was a very nice affair indeed. It was at the Westfield Heritage Village which has all sorts of old buildings and a train and fancy gazebos and is surrounded by forests and fields so it is very secluded and peaceful. It was a really good venue. The reception was good too: decent food, fabulous cupcakes and lots of fun games and singing and stuff. Michael and Laura looked great and it was awesome to see them again. I can't wait to go out to Burlington to visit.

To get to Rockton for the wedding we got a minivan from Zipcar and split the costs with Matt, Adrienne, Adam and Nicole. As usual, the Zipcar thing went really well, although the Mazda 5 is a very strange vehicle indeed. Calling it a van is a bit generous as it's very short, both vertically and horizontally. It has three rows of seats but is too tall to be a station wagon. Anyway, it did the job (ie. transport six adults to Rockton and back) adequately.

Today I went with Rob, Will and others to the Summer Cask Festival at Victory Cafe. They had 16 different Cask Ales which are unfiltered beers that are both fermented and served from a cask without any additives or extra carbonation. Thank you Wikipedia. Anyway, there were some very fine beers on hand. For $15 I was able to sample 3 different half-pints, get the most amazing sausage on a bun I've ever had and keep the glass I used for the drinking! I feel this was exceptional value. The beers I sampled were: Black Oak Summer Saison (Marmalade Edition), C'est What? Caraway Rye, and Cheshire Valley IPA. All were good. I'm not so much into the India Pale Ales though so I think I enjoyed the other two more. The Summer Saison was definitely a good starter as it was light and fruity and I don't normally start drinking at noon. The Caraway Rye was pretty special. I've never had anything like it before and very much enjoyed the unique flavour. The sausage on a bun was also a major highlight. It was good German bratwurst with lots of sauerkraut and this spectacular homemade beer mustard. All this was on a bun that was made from soft pretzel dough. Mmmm....good!

After enjoying the cask ales I met up with Kim and we went out to speak with a designer at Made You Look about wedding bands. It's a pretty cool place which represents local independent jewelery designers who do custom work. We talked with Karen Macrea, our designer, about our ideas. She showed us some samples and was very quickly able to get some designs drawn up. I had looked at rings in normal jewelery stores and was mostly unimpressed (both with cost and look). Going the custom route looks like it will be less expensive and much more likely to get us what we actually want. Also it's always cool to support local artisan-type people. So I guess that's win-win-win. Right?

For supper tonight we made Pistachio Asparagus Pesto on Penne and it turned out really well! I think that guy's food blog is quickly becoming one of my favourites. He is very prolific and the fact that he's located in Toronto means that when stuff is in season for him it's in season for me too!

Anyway, that's enough words, here are some pictures from the last little while.

Building in the Distillery District being demolished; ever-present CN Tower in the background

Pastoral scene at Michael's Wedding place (Westfield Heritage Village)

Spinning and Weaving shop at the Westfield Heritage Village

Sneak shot of Michael and Laura while they get their official photos done

The Ice House

Michael and Laura

More Michael and Laura

Matt with extra glasses

Wedding Cupcakes!

We went to the distillery district this weekend to look around and just to have a nice walk. Of course we stopped in to Soma to get some gelato and I noticed that Soma is making "microbatch" chocolate bars now. They actually purchase and process the raw beans themselves so they control almost all stages of production.

Anyway I picked up a bar made of beans from the Dominican Republic. I haven't had any high quality chocolate lately so I'm enjoying this bar even more. It's 70% cocoa content and the beans are fair trade and organic. The chocolate is smooth and has a pleasant aftertaste. I can't wait to try some of their other microbatch bars, however they appear to sell out quickly. This isn't surprising since they can't make that many at once.

We just got back from seeing Victoria Day a new Canadian film set in Toronto in the late 1980s. It's a "teen" film, but a serious one. It's not full of drinking, drugs, sex and ridiculousness but instead attempts to be true to a real teenage life (so it has a bunch of drinking, drugs, sex and ridiculousness, but in a genuine way, if that makes any sense -- the film has all that stuff but it isn't really about all that stuff).

Anyway, it was a great movie, not so much for the story as for the character development. Everyone seemed very real, and genuine. I used that word already but I really think it how best to describe the movie. Genuine. The people and events, although interesting, are also very normal. It makes the movie fantastically believable. Pretty cool stuff.

The ending was fairly flat, but I suppose that fits in with the rest of the movie. Real life doesn't tie itself up into a neat little package at the end of each stage or major life changing event.

I loved all the bits of Toronto in the movie. The neighbourhood the kids lived in was totally North York and it was cool seeing the harbourfront near Ontario Place where I have walked and roller-bladed many times. I'm a bit surprised the movie wasn't screened at the Toronto International Film Festival given the strong connection, but I guess they already had a distributor so they figured it would be best to just get it out there for everyone.

Good movie.