BCIT: Year One Marks and Thoughts

 Final marks have come in and the first year of my two year diploma course at BCIT is officially over and passed. While it was a pretty intense workload I would totally recommend going back to school for any of my friends in vfx that have long since lost the love of the art and don't know if they can keep up the routine for another 30 years. Its terrifying for the first few weeks because its such a huge change, but its also exciting to be learning new skills and fun to meet new people and maybe realize you're not as old as you sometimes feel.

 So I thought I'd share my marks AND newfound statistics skills with everyone via the box plot below, which aggregates the marks from my 17(!!!!!) courses in the past year and breaks them up into quartiles according to distribution. I won't bore you all with each and every one, but my lowest mark at 84% was a tie between Communications 1 and Principles of Management, both of which have a heavy group project mark which I will attribute at least some of the slip to. At the far end of the spectrum, due to a generous marking system I got 101% in Computerized Accounting, and all averaged out I managed a 92% (weighted) average for the first year.

 I'll round out this post with a few common questions I've had from people in the last year:
Q: Can you do my taxes?
A: Weirdly enough there is more to accounting than mastering the Canada Tax Code. Going in I was sure that I'd be doing everyones taxes by this point as well, but there's actually a lot more to learn in there and I've really only scratched the surface with a ton of introductory courses. So I can technically do your taxes, but probably not much better than you can ;)

Q: Do you miss vfx?
A: That I do not. Not the work, not the clients, not the hours, not the environment, not the constant pressure to line up my next gig. I miss many of the fine people that work in the industry, but have kept up with many of them, and with summer and weekends I hope to be a little more accessible for maintaining friendships better than the last few years.

Q: Wouldn't it be funny if you ended up doing accounting for a film company?
A: Funny how things work out sometimes, but I just do 9-5:30 and my weekends are my own. haven't opened Nuke or Maya the whole time but log a lot of time in Excel and Simply Accounting, both of which the past term prepared me for.

Thanks to all my excellent teachers, my loving wife, and all my supportive friends over the past hectic and amazing year. Looking forward to September and all the challenges that will come with it.

The Ordeal of Finals and the Catharsis of Bowling

 So last week was the end of first year and concluded with a battery of 5 finals in 4 days (2 having been written the week before) to wrap up the current batch of courses. All 5 were written in the gym and given that you can probably all visualize a school gym full of desks, I decided to skip a picture of it entirely as part of the healing process.

 On the friday after the last exam (Working Capital Management) a group of the people from my set headed out for some bowling and escape from the financial education system. After a week of quickly trying to retain information to churn out answers, having a chance to drink beer and lob heavy objects around to knock down pins seemed like an excellent idea. I had never done 10 pin bowling before and did alright considering.

 Below is a picture of everyone that came out, given that our set had only 26 people or so we had a pretty good turnout and it was nice to visit and joke about with people outside of school and without the spectre of exams hanging over us any more.

Killer Whale Highlights of 2013.

Over the winter Geordie put together a lovely highlight reel from the footage I took over April through to October of my days on the water.  Working at Wild Whales Vancouver I got lots of opportunity to show off these animals and take their pictures.  Not only killer whales (both Bigg's and Southern Residents) but also humpback and minkes whales, harbour seals, steller and california sea lions. I need to work on my bald eagle footage.  Geordie really liked the jumps that I was lucky enough to get, especially as I don't see that kind of activity every day.  They are a bit statisticaly overrepresented in the video.

I hope to take lots more footage of orcas and all the animals out there.  I already have started on a collection for 2014 showcase.

Vancouver Enbridge Protest

 There was a protest in Vancouver this weekened against the proposed Enbridge pipeline. A crowd of 1500-2000 people waved signs and made speeches about preserving the traditional ways of life and fighting the fatcats at Big Oil and Steven Harper. Its easy to photograph a crowd and make it look bigger than it was, but I feel this is a pretty representative shot of the turnout.

 Across the bike lane was a much smaller (and honestly unexpected by myself) rally of people that were in favour of the pipeline. They were representing a handful of tribes that presumably stand to benefit from transportation rights and potential jobs, so I got a photo of them in the interests of equal representation.

 Regardless of which side of the arguement you find yourself on, you must agree that this woman's owl spirit outfit was as fantastic as it was Miyazaki-esque.

 

While I am personally opposed to the pipeline and hope to preserve the current state of the BC coast, I also recognize that we live in a global society which depends on oil to an outlandish degree. I laud the efforts of the organizers to preserve their culture and piece of the world, but doubt that the vast majority of Vancouver supporters would be too keen on the lifestyle changes required by all of us to truly change the modern world's oil addiction.

A Loon Trifecta

We get a decent migration of birds through BC and while these pictures have been collected over the last few years rather than taken this spring, its a good opportunity to share a few of the species of loons which we've seen out West.

This red-throated loon (easily identified by its white neck :P ) was in non-breeding plumage and stayed in the same little marina in False Creek for about 2 months in the very early spring of 2013. It was a pleasant daily sighting on my lunchtime walks and stuck around town until the very day I went to photograph it after which it swam upstream and didn't return.

Tofino on the west side of Vancouver Island proved to be a great place to see pacific loons, which were pleasantly common on the water in the December trip we took up there in 2012. Once again this bird is in non-breeding plumage and not as spectacular as it would be later in the year, but was a nice sighting all the same.

Rounding out the set, we saw this common loon in spring of 2013 just outside our bedroom in Qualicum Bay. Since this sighting was right at the start of their breeding season, its got a pretty spectacular look about it, and we had a very nice opportunity to photograph and watch it while it dove for fish nearby.

Pottering Around

I have been potting.  I never really was into ceramics.  They did not grab me archaeologicaly speaking the way bones and lithics did,  but making my own though is a different story.  See what I made.  A Hog butter dish in pink and an assortment of sushi trays.  All hand made and hand glazed by me!  I am currently working on 2 plates and a flower pot.  Future plans include more plant pots, a tooth brush holder and a sun for my mummy!

This is a detail on the lower sushi tray.  A sea horse stamp.  I used ceramic paints on it but they didn't really come out.  Maybe I should have made multiple coats?  But the linear detail still stood out.  If I did it again I would give it a coat of clear glaze to bring out the shine.

My very first one!  I am aware it looks like an evil pig.  It will steal your soul and turn it into butter which I will spread on toast.  Piggy soul toast.  He has a curly tail too (not shown). I love my piggy hog dish.  Friend did the glazing job which turned out lovely. I love his pink body. Inside is blue and white.

Manitoba Christmas Time Lapses

A little behind schedule here, but hopefully worth the wait, we shot a number of time lapses in Winnipeg and Pinawa around the Christmas season last year. Although the clip itself has been online for awhile now, I've finally found the time to pass it along to everyone in a proper place.

We have a few different types of time lapses here with an experiment in 5 second gaps rather than our usual 1 minute intervals the entire time. We had hopes of doing a few more ambitious outdoors shoots, but with daily temperatures around -40 plus windchill, it was pretty much impossible to go farther than our backyards.
Merry belated Christmas to you all and hopefully spring is right around the corner!