Schwartz's Deli

While we were passing through Montreal, we made a point of taking a quick jaunt to Schwartz's Deli for a smoked meat sandwich. Schwartz's is a Montreal institution with a constant lineup for dine in and take away, a wall of celebrity photos and a poster from the Schwartz's Musical they apparently made a few years back.
Once you're inside you are typically seated wherever there's room, with different groups of people often sharing the same table since every chair is a precious commodity there. We lucked out and were able to sit at the counter to watch the food being prepared and to have a bit more room to ourselves.
Montreal smoked meat is certainly tasty and the pickles they have alongside were nearly large enough to keep Kathryn happy. I find it a bit more rare than I typically go for, but as a once every decade or so treat it is pretty great stuff.

Zaphod Beeblebrox's

Summer on the west coast has been a bit of a chilly bummer, but around Canada Day in Ottawa it was a fiery haze of awesome. Needing to get out of the heat and rehydrate a bit, we managed to take in a drink at Zaphod Beeblebrox's, which gets its namesake from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and was high on Kathryns hit list for watering holes.
The bar itself was nothing particularly special or memorable, but the drinks menu made the trip worthwhile, Kathryn here is enjoying a Pangalacticgargleblaster, though perhaps not one as impressive as described in the books.
While not actually a referenced drink, I still found the Deep Thought to be quite good and since we were sharing drinks anyways it made sense to mix things up a bit and see how a few of them tasted. I will say they poured a decent drink for less than I had expected to pay.
So all in all, fun in a nerdy way.

Quebec Archaeology

Quebec had a few neat archaeological surprises for us. First off there was a display in Montreal which alternated between Indiana Jones props and actual artifacts, juxtaposing the films against the real science. We couldn't take pictures inside because of copyright and nonsense like that, but suffice to say that movie props only look good on film and look a bit chitzy in real life, while artifacts still look impressive under closer scrutiny. Luckily enough this display was only in Montreal for a few months and that was its only North American stop before going to Europe and Japan, so we really timed it well given that it opened the week before we arrived.
On the more traditional approach, the Archeo Topo near Tadoussac was a very nice and modern museum with a collection of first nations and early settlement artifacts along with a large selection of taxidermied animals. As we were there in the middle of the week and had the courtesy to bring our own archaeologist, the fellow running the place was very helpful and let Kathryn poke through some of the cabinets. The displays themselves were quite good and he was eager to provide us with booklets of English translations.
We also had a poke around the area itself as the chap in the Archeo Topo had mentioned a few spots nearby that he had found stone tools. The mosquitoes were quite bad and I'm not much help from telling stone tools from stones, so we didn't turn up anything in our quick search, but it was a fun attempt all the same.

River Otter

Saturday was a very nice day in part of a very drab summer, so I took the opportunity to go out for a walk around Stanley Park with my new camera and wildlife lens. As luck would have it, I ran into a river otter having a swim and a snack in Burrard Inlet.
Quite a few people were gathered along the seawall by the time I got closer and I only saw a splash of something I assumed was a seal swimming away and the crowd began to disperse. Luckily enough a few seconds later the otter turned around and pulled himself up onto a rock near the sea wall with a fish he had caught (or been in the process of eating when the first crowd had irritated him enough to move, I wasn't entirely sure).
It took a few minutes for the otter to chomp through his meal and then disappear back into the water, during which time I was able to get quite a few nice closeups and some decent video as well, hopefully all without disturbing his lunch TOO much.
I've seen river otters 3 times in Vancouver now, but that was the best look I've had to be sure and made for a rare treat on a day that was already very nice to begin with.

A Film Legacy

This summer is a milestone time for me in film. For better or worse not only have I been working in film visual effects for a decade now, but having just completed a contract on Friday, this summer I have now officially worked on more movies than I have lived years. Now many of them are terrible and my contributions to them are tiny, but each one is still a personal involvement which soaked dozens if not hundreds of hours of my life to make.
Now there's a few fun things I found out while poking through that list of titles. Of all the movies I've worked on, I've only actually seen 19 (54%) of them, and that includes 2 that aren't out yet that I'm sure I'll get around to on DVD. And of those, 6 (17%) included talking animals of some sort, because Hollywood can't make enough talking animals.
There's a lof of criticism in film these days that everything is a remake or a sequel, but surprisingly only 11 (31%) of the films I've worked on have been sequels, remakes or prequels. Even more surprising to me, 18 (51%) of them have been original properties, though I may have different criteria than some... if it has Beatles songs then I called it original, but if its based on a comic character then its not.
Last of all, how many of these films are actually good? I went through the list at rottentomatoes and a rather sad result comes up. Only 5 (14%) of these films have scored more than 50% at RT or been seen enough to earn reviews. I've worked on a handful of direct-to-DVD movies and typically if its not even good enough for a small theatrical run its not good at all. Ah well, maybe in 10 more years I'll have a few more popular sequels based on comics :P

Siggraph

Anyone that has visited us in even remotely nice weather will have been on a walk along the seawall where the new Vancouver Convention Centre has been under construction for ages. I have always liked the design of it as its grassy roof vainly does its best to offset the carbon the downtown core produces. Its covered in nice art and walkways which are always pleasant to walk past, but I finally had a reason to go check it out properly.
Siggraph is the biggest world vfx/computer tech/nerd trade show and not only was this its first year being held in Vancouver, but it was the first year it was outside of the US at all. I got a free pass to check out the exhibits through work and if I were really into motion capture, 2d to 3d conversion or 3d printing I likely would have gotten more out of it. All things considered it was a neat chance to see some big displays of upcoming tech and catch up with a few friends. There was a small job fair on site as well which may or may not yield anything useful for my employment in the long run.
More interesting than the convention itself is the fact that higher ups for nearly every huge vfx company are in town, talking about opening a Vancouver facility, and keen to talk to anyone with more than a few shows under their belts. The best part of this was the ILM party which had an open bar, lots of senior staff to mingle with and door prizes. I lucked out and won a door prize for a limited edition Star Wars figure autographed by Dennis - Freaking - Muren, which is pretty cool if you're a vfx nerd.
So all in all it was a neat opportunity to check out part of film culture and meet a bunch of interesting people, but I don't know that I'd travel to another city and shell out thousands of dollars to do it again. But next time I have a free pass when its in town, I'll check it out.

The 120-foot Slip n' Slide

Back in the 60s a toy company made a sheet of plastic that you could connect to a hose and let kids slide on in the backyard. And this summer a friend of ours laid out 120 feet of plastic sheeting covered in liquid soap and seawater to create the best damn slip n' slide ever.

Setup along the seawall on one of the Celebration of Lights fireworks nights, the slip n' slide drew quite a bit of attention but Denny is a pretty groovy guy and made it open to all comers, so there were all sorts of kids and passersby hurling themselves down it along with us.
It also seemed like the ideal moment to get some extra mileage out of my waterproof/crashproof/idiotproof pocket camera so we have a little montage of some of the highlights below. (or watch it in 720p here)

Rumor has it that the slide will get extended by another 60 feet (as you can see in the video, most people still had a bit more momentum at the end than expected) for a reappearance in late August.

Pride Parade Timelapse

This summer once again provided its week of parades and fireworks to celebrate gay pride and explosions. We've covered this in previous years, so for a change this year we set up our new time-lapse trailcam at the side of the parade route and let it take a picture every 30-60 seconds for 5 hours or so. The results are below and set to suitably cheesy techno music. If you don't like the size of the available preview (or if the embedded video gives you trouble), you can see it in glorious 720p here.

These sorts of trailcams are designed and intended mostly for hunters and 99.9% of the sample pictures I could see from them when we were casing them out on the internet were either 10-point bucks or turkeys. So I think its pretty great to put them to the test in a display of urban love and acceptance :P

We'll be shooting quite a selection of time-lapses in the coming weeks, so hopefully everyone following along at home can enjoy them too and won't be too sick of them by the time we're done :)

The Canadian War Museum

In Ottawa we soaked up as many museums as we could fit into the time we had and one that we were both keen to see was the Canadian War Museum. It was redone in 2005 and is an incredibly impressive and well built museum. The exterior looks and feels like a bunker and the central gallery leads into sections detailing all of the major conflicts of Canada from pre-contact to Afghanistan.
We spent a full afternoon there and only managed to absorb a fraction of the details and stories available but it was entirely overwhelming. The World War 2 section had one of Hitlers cars which was a chilling artifact of an evil empire.
Ther was also a huge gallery off to the side of the main displays which was filled to the brim with every sort of field gun, tank, and artillery device imaginable along with an assortment of support and supply trucks. Strangely enough there was going to be a grad party there that evening which struck me as an odd sort of setting to choose while celebrating a coming of age, but whatever works I guess.
All in all a world-class museum and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone passing through Ottawa.