A lot of people ask me 'What are you going to do with that?' after I mention I'm going to return to school for my Master's degree. As being 'done' almost assuredly happens after you have 'started', I never paid much thought to my future after my return to school. I always figured that I would return to programming, this time within the finance industry. There is a good chance that I could fill a role here within Calgary, although I have been weighing other options as well.

Most people would agree I'm very patriotic, and I would love nothing more than to keep myself within Canada. Within Canada, the epicenter for finance resides in Toronto. Now, moving to an even larger city, with more traffic and more urbania is not very high on my list of life choices. Although if I'm going to move to a larger city, I would like to keep it in Canada. The problem: Ontario has a real thing against some dogs.

Sonja tuned me into Ontario's hate for particular breeds of dogs. After a bout of examining skill sets on a financial job website, and again realizing that over ninety percent of the financial programming jobs in Canada are located in Toronto or one of it's suburbs, I decided to dig into this so called 'pit bull ban'.

The ban comes in two parts: The original Dog Owner's Liability Act, and an amendment passed in Bill 132. The first five or so sections of the Dog Owner's Liability Act make sense. If you dog bites another person, you as the owner are liable. The later sections around search and seizure also make sense if your dog has done something to make it a 'menace to the safety of persons or domestic animals'. Sane logic around how your animal can be taken from you, what will happen to it, as well as what repercussions exist for the owner are laid out through the law. However, Section 6, as well as all of Bill 132 are completely stupid bullshit.

The Liability Act lumps Riley, an American Staffodshire Terrier, in with Pitbulls. And, Ontario does not like Pitbulls in a very big way. There seems to only be two ways an individual can own a Pitbull or one of its cousins in Ontario. The first is that you owned one before the law came into effect, and you have bent over backwards with muzzles, registration, 1.8m leashes and sterilization. The other is that your dog is a flyball competitor, registered with a kennel club which has formally (written letter) invited you to a competition within Ontario's borders.

This means as a Canadian citizen, if I want to do a cross Canada road trip, I either can't bring my dog, or I can't enter Ontario. Failure to comply could lead to 'a fine of not more than $10,000 or to imprisonment for a term of not more than six months, or both.' Seems a little steep for just owning a particular breed of dog. Especially because the process ends up with the dog being taken, and most likely destroyed.

Getting back to my future, it looks like TO is off the list. Considering my success with negotiating away The Cat, I doubt I will have any success getting Sonja to give up the dog because I landed a job in Ontario. The truth is particularly frustrating because of Riley. She is an incredibly loving dog, and is more obedient that a lot of dogs I know. A little comfort comes from facts showing that the ban in Ontario is not reducing the amount of dog attacks. Perhaps the people in Ontario will lead a charge and get the bill amended to not focus on specific breeds. After-all, if we focused on the specifics, shouldn't the man that spearheaded the law against pitbulls be working on making Saabs illegal because they stall, disorient people and cause them to ram drunken cyclists into mailboxes?

Photographers contend that gear does not make you a better photographer.  Learning about depth-of-field, composition, and moving around the aperture-shutter-iso triangle will make a point-and-shoot a formidable tool in anyones hands.  Taking control of the available light and using a tripod will result in much better photos than dropping extra money for a megapixel count.

Of course, everything has an exception.  Today I got my hands on Nikon's tilt and shift lens.  Not prepared to drop that kind of money on a lens, we instead decided to rent it.  Now that I've had a chance to play with it, I'll admit that there is really no way to replicate tilt and shift without having the gear.  Normally, your focal plane is runs parallel to the film or sensor in the camera.  With tilt built into your lens, you can turn the focus plane so that it isn't running along the same boring parallel line.

Examining the large version of the above photo you can see that the focus plane does not sit perpendicular to the viewing angle.  The bottom left of the photo is in focus, and the focus plane moves across the middle of the photo to the upper right.  The focus plane makes the braiding in the upper right pin sharp, whereas if you step off the plane the image is quickly overcome with pleasing bokeh.

It's too bad this lens costs as much as it does.

Hello June!

The year is nearly half over, summer is waking from its slumber, the yard looks like a jungle and I still haven't finished the trim in the basement. The problem, I have discovered, is that I am terrible at estimating how long something will take.

This is not something that is limited to basement renovations; it can also be found in my estimating the time it takes to create software, complete yard work, travel between two locations and even read a book. An example is the gate that leads to the back yard. Over the winter, one of the structural boards let go of some of the nails, and as a result the bottom board would drag across the ground every time the gate was opened or closed. The plan was to string out an extension cord and use a drill to pull out some screws and get the gate off the fence. Next take the gate into the shop, change out the semi-rotten board with a new board, screw it into place and then hang the gate back up. How long should something like that take? I initially thought it was going to be a couple of hours. It ended up taking over 10, putting my work into the fading hours of the day and resulting in nothing else getting done on my precious weekend time.

In all of my estimating, the reason behind my terrible estimates isn't in me predicting the work that needs to be done, it is in not foreseeing the problems that inevitably arrive. The problem with the gate: it wasn't actually square. When I got it under a measuring tape, I found that the top of the gate was an inch and three quarters longer than the bottom. I wasn't about to let that fly, so I set out with some power tools and more wood and squared it up. Then when I hung it back up, I discovered that whomever built the original fence made the gate to offset non-level fence. Out with the jack and chain, pull up the post.

Oh look! It's rotten!

Obtain a post, get it level and pack it in. Oh look, the pounding turned it and it isn't square! Rinse, repete. Then the gate went up, and could swing without scraping along the ground. The simple task of replacing an old rotting board, turned into a whole day adventure in home maintenance.

This is not an isolated incident. One of my first large scale projects was scheduled to take approximately one thousand man hours. By the time the project shipped, there was over ten times that amount of hours billed. Blowing the budget? Anyone who works in software knows what I'm talking about. You'll find a library function won't execute your call-back, the library you installed won't work on your 64-bit architecture, and when everything appears to be working, there is that one case discovered in quality assurance that is a security risk and results in a total rework.

I've been starting to refer to this phenomenon as the 'Time Ratchet'. Like the turns on a ratchet, each item doesn't itself appear to be a big deal. Although after enough turns or problems you end up with something much larger. Each of the turns of the ratchet work towards the same goal: a tighter nut. The same can be said for the small individual setback in your projects, each works towards a longer timeframe.

The Time Ratchet effect appears everywhere. I had to meet a client to talk about a photo shoot. I time boxed the entire thing into about 2 hours. Driving through downtown, I run into some traffic adding about five to ten minutes *chuck-chick*. Client takes a phone call that lasts about 3 minutes *chuck-chick*. I can't seem to find a gallery that contains the example I'm talking about. I stumble around the website for two or three minutes until I have it *chuck-chick*. Answering all the questions takes twice as long, due to divergent chat about travelling across the US border *chuck-chick*. Now the ratchet effect has me still in a cafe when I planned to be at home starting on something else.

The Time Ratchet is turned by whatever you are currently doing, and tightens up the time you have to do other things. When you are turning the ratchet, you are simply working the tool. It isn't until you get into the compressed time on the other end and wonder why it is so tight.

A stack of pay stubs made an excellent candidate in Photo Friday's Arranged challenge.

The new bike had its first good ride yesterday. Being the geek that I am, I was sure to bring along my heart rate monitor, as well as my GPS. The weather was really nice, and I was on a mission to take pictures of Charlie's Coin at the Boer War Memorial in Calgary. The total ride was about 30 kilometers, and for the most part was quite enjoyable exercise. At other times I thought I was going to die.

If you look at the heart rate chart, you can see I pushed myself decently throughout.  The low points around 1:15 were when I was on and off the bike taking pictures.  If you look at the Google Earth KMZ file, the spike in heart rate to 191 beats per minute coincides with the marker referred to as 'Killer Hill'.  I'm not sure if I was misusing my gears, but about 3/4 of the way up that hill, my heart was in my neck and I felt like I was about to keel over.  Nothing like a change in exercise routine to show you the poor shape of your body.  Granted, I haven't maintained 160 minutes of moderate intensity in a very long time.

I was pleased that I am able to keep up with traffic downtown.  I can pretty easily get up to 30km/h, which is par for the course in stop and go traffic.  I could keep up with the flow, and didn't have to resort to riding along the sidewalk like a inconsiderate moron.  The bike is also pretty fast, as I peddled it up to over 50km/h, on the downhill of course.

In the end I did my Geocaching, went for a nice bike ride on a beautiful day, and managed to collect data to get my geek on.

I've returned to bicycling after nearly 7 years. The last time I cycled somewhat seriously, I bombed around on a Giant XTC, until it was stollen. The loss was at the perfect point for the insurance company to basically give me the finger on rates. I could either claim, pay the deductible and have the blood suckers extract it from me over a few years with higher rates, or I could suck it up and just go buy a new bike. I didn't want to claim it, knowing that the single claimed theft would be on the records for years, and I also refused to get a new bike. Bicycling died for me at that point

I learned that MEC had designed a series of bikes, and were now selling them. MEC is a wonderful company, which is aligned with a lot of my beliefs, so I decided I would both return to cycling and support the co-operative at the same time. I was set back a little misreading the catalog, believing I needed to travel to Edmonton to buy a bike when Calgary did in fact sell them. Eventually I prevailed, settled on a bike and purchased it.

Talks of geometries, cassettes, tooth counts, cyclocross, clincher rims, fixies, lacing, grouppos and saddles had to be waded through before I could decide on a bicycle. The cycle ecosystem has specialized in several areas and with that specialization the usual slang followed. I decided on a hybrid style bicycle as most of my terrain is going to be cleared paths or the bike network around Calgary. It leans more towards the road bike, but does have a heavier frame and knobbier wheels.

Next was a vicious lesson in how far bicycling has come since I was last immersed in the culture. My new ride has a pedal system in which you clip in specialized shoes; these shoes needed to be put together. Have you ever had to read an instruction manual for a pair of shoes? It was quite a humbling experience. Technology progressed since I last tuned a bike, and I'm happy to say that most of of the changes make tuning a bicycle easier. The one exception is air pressure, as the tires on this bike have presta valves. I have never seen such an animal before, and every piece of pressurized air equipment I have is useless until I get an adapter.

Excitement rains over me, as this weekend is supposed to have good weather, and I have a new toy with which to play.

A photo from our trip to Amsterdam, now used as an entry for Photo Friday's Wheels competition. Here's a larger version for those that don't have access through flickr.

At the beginning of this year, I applied to the University of Calgary's graduate program and was accepted.  Excitement and change are flying about the air while an odd blend of worry and optimism mix in my brain.  I would have publicized the news earlier, but I have been flat out between work, studying for my PMP Certification, becoming Batman, and ensuring some residual photographic and programming incomes.

Most often when I mention to people that I'm leaving steady employment to obtain a Masters degree in Applied Math, the responses I receive fall into one of two categories.  The first type of response is 'what will you do?', sometime phrased as 'what does that mean?'.  For those people I'll weave a tail about how I'm going to study in the finance lab and eventually move into writing software for financial people.  The second response, usually from my geekier friends, is a vague reference to applied math not being as pure as Real Math.

Then the conversation usually moves into why I'd give up a relatively comfortable dink's life, to take a vow of poverty and return to the money racket that is higher education.  The answer to that question is complex.

I believe what started me thinking down the path was reading the book: A Thousand Barrels a Second.  Peter's telling of his predictions for the oil industry shook me a bit.  I know that oil gets broken down into many products and that the world won't just change overnight.  I actually predict another really good run, or maybe two, in the fossil fuel based energy sector.  As the price pushes higher, you'll see more technologies that rely on different sources of energy become more viable.  Throw in a little telecommuting + virtual reality to keep us off the roads and the supply-demand balance will shift and suddenly the oil and gas industry will become very tight on the margins.

I probably took Peter's words differently than most because of my upbringing in northern British Columbia and working towards a degree in Computer Science.  I found myself first set back by the tech bust and then the forestry industry getting butchered.  Both seemed like industries that could never fail.

The Dot-Coms were becoming overnight millionaires, and that there was enough of everything to go around in the new digital age.  Stories of Silicon Valley excess, and the adjusting of economics to a limitless supply of electrons made it seem that mankind had now found easy street, and for the rest of time we could employ the miracles of the internet.  I often joke that I heard the dot-com bubble pop.

Forestry in my home town also appeared to be invulnerable.  Forestry itself is set up around supply and demand, and ensuring meeting demand sustainably.  We thought everything in the world could be made from the parts of a tree, including a plethora of biodegradable plastics, and we would be able to just take our refuse and use it to grow more trees.  While I grew up you either worked at one of the many mills around town, or you sold stuff to people who worked at the mills.  Furthermore, the British Columbia Forest Service logo was the most common thing to see on the side of a white truck, which is eerily similar to the number of energy company logos I see now.  Then a piece of legislation, and the price of forest products became too expensive and the industry was dismantled.

Staring towards the future, I became pretty certain that during my lifetime I'll see the oil industry be carved up.  It won't die, both tech and forestry are still alive and breathing today.  I believe it will just become a lot more difficult to be employed in the field, and I don't want to have the unemployment cycle make me a job seeking 50 year old whose only experience is tied to a tight energy sector.

The path now forked.  If I was going to walk away from the oil and gas sector, what would I like to do?  I thought about photography, but reasoned that if I had to flog it for a living, I probably wouldn't like it as much.  I've had a couple encounters doing photography part time, that made it clear that doing it day after day, all day, day in day out would very quickly make the magic of capturing photos disappear in the wind.  I entertained the idea of making custom wood products and becoming a carpenter, and again I thought that my love of turning and making woodcraft furniture would die after I faced the reality that I'd be competing against cheap people buying cheap stuff from Ikea and Walmart.  It was around this time I began to consider finance.

I've carried a wonder of the stock market since I began earnestly investing around 2004.  Furthermore a good deal of available time, I dedicate to analyzing and attempting to understand the markets. I've written useful pieces of software to help me out.  I've voluntarily read books on finance that most people would find to be the most boring print ever put to paper.  I spend most of my day with a secondary monitor showing me what is going on in the market.  When worrying about industries, as long as there is money, there will be a finance industry and if there is no money, I probably don't need to worry about working.

At first the thought was to just switch, and I started probing into what kind of finance jobs are available.  It appeared I would either have to set myself back, and get hired on somewhere as an associate somewhere, and take a pay hit because I would basically be a programmer not knowing what he's programming, or I could try and learn a thing or two about finance before I entered the field.  A few searches about education in finance and I found the finance lab at the U of Calgary.  The rub was that the programme in which I wanted to study, required full time study and a stint as a teacher's assistant.  As the conflict with my day job would be too great, I wearily weighed my options.

Eventually the scales tipped in the favour of returning to school.  I've served notice with my employer, and have started letting people know.  There is going to be a lot of change in my life this year.

I am pretty sure that most people that frequent this site, know that I moonlight as a photographer. My workflow pipeline used to flow through a series of Adobe products, and when I made my transition to Apple, I also picked up their professional photo software.  The majority of my time sorting, rating and adjusting photos is now done using Aperture, with only the really serious editing falling through to Photoshop.  It only made sense, when the newest version of Aperture came out, that I would upgrade.

Usually upgrading Apple's software is a breeze, Aperture is the exception to the rule.

The software installed just fine, and at first appeared to be working wonderfully, but then some of the frayed edges started to show.  At first, it was the new Faces feature they include.  The computer spent about 8 hours scanning my entire library for faces, and then one is supposed to go and put names on all the faces.  The problem was the majority of the images presented to me were just black.  I went through skipping the black images, thinking that the software was confused, when I came across a straight black image, and Aperture was asking me to confirm that it was somebody.  At that point I knew something was up, what I didn't know was how deep the rabbit hole went.

The support forum recommended I perform an 'Update Previews' which took my computer under an hour for the 35k + images in the library.  After that was completed, I still saw the black images in the Faces section of the application.  At this point my business partner recommended I try rebuilding the database; I sent Aperture on its way and it methodically rebuilt the core of the library.  When it was done, I nearly died.

I navigated to the browser, and was presented with a checkboard of 'unsupported file' exclamation points.  Panic subsided when I remembered that I had the v2.1 library backed up (twice), and that I could restore anything that was screwed up now.  Back to the support forums, and I found a gentleman who encountered the same problem (also shooting Nikon), and found that the magical 'Reprocess Masters...' menu option was able to correct his problem.  I sent my computer about this task, and about 2 hours later, I can see my library.

Although, the blackout images in Faces remain.  For now I'm not going to try and fix that problem.  Take it from this early adopter: Wait for a few more releases before jumping to version 3.

This week's Photo Friday challenge is: Self Portrait 2010. I immediately thought of the gangster shot we did when we made our visit to Dorothy at the beginning of the year. By no means did I do this shot alone, but I was a big part of the creative setup of the shot.

The pseudo shotgun in my hand is from a Hallowe'en costume some years ago. The coat and hat are regular attire. We're set up on the bridge in Dorothy with a generator, and two White-Lightnings. The first is behind me, at full power, aimed straight at my back to separate me from the darkness. The second is on camera right with a super tight grid where I was thinking of a 'caught in the headlights' look. The photograph is only cropped, as I didn't even have the desire to edit out the extension cable you can see running across the ground.