Thanks Charlotte

Well Charlotte was on my case this weekend because this blog looks like its been completely abandoned. So to spite her, i’ve added some pictures and this tasty entry.

Lets see here, we have pictures from Hiking the Lions with a bunch of my friends. It was more badass then usual as a huge storm had ripped apart the second third (that’s right) of the trail and it was crazy misty and spooky!

I’ve begun to add pictures from my vacation to Kauai a couple weeks ago with my girlfriend. There are so many pictures to go through, so expect many more, but there are a couple up there at the moment.

On a nerdier side, I’ve been in the process of redoing my development infrastructure and we’re almost ready — I would like to finish it tonight actually. So I’ll post with more details when it’s ready, but theres now a couple of spots for open source and private development projects (of which there are a lot in the queue), private and public subversion repositories, and much more. I’m very excited!

Peak of Black Tusk, Garibaldi Lake in the background

Whew! Its been a while since I’ve posted. Work has been killing me and I don’t get online much afterwards (unless its in the video game variety… j/k. Kinda…) so I haven’t been posting, plus people seem to be digging my last post, so I haven’t been too worried.

My buddy Alan Stremel is back from his Asian saga and he’s a very positive influence on my blogging frequency, so I should get started up again.

We did a great hike this weekend, all the way up Black Tusk, between Squamish and Whistler. Its 30km roundtrip with a vertical gain of almost 2km (4km roundtrip), which means its long and steep. One of the greatest hikes I’ve ever done. Posted the pictures in my gallery if you want to take a look.

Pyong!

I put up a couple holiday albums. Just to let you all know.

Sturdy concentration and a keen eye are what it takes to make it in this game.

We did our office Christmas party this year at a bowling alley which turned out to be one of the best parties we’ve had. I dominated the alley with a gentleman’s score of 154. I’ve put up a new album with some of the best shots.

I also had the opportunity to test out my new f/1.8 50mm which was amazing for the job, trading off depth of field for speed, so some of the pics aren’t as overall crisp, but hey – no flash ever.

I promised to put up a couple pics from my new place, so here they are.

ps. you can click the pictures for a bigger view

Living Room

Sunrise, thanks day light savings time.

View overlooking False Creek

Sunset

Kitchen

Freighter on the Horizon

Well, work has been incredibly hectic these last few months, mostly due to the fact that I am now the technical lead and we did some HUGE upgrades this summer. Things aren’t really slowing down much so I took the weekend off and hung out at my parents cabin at Point Roberts and had a little love affair with my new(ish) camera.

I’m completely and utterly unhappy with my kit lens (18-55mm f/3.5-5.6), but I wasn’t really expecting much and I guess it delivered what I expected. f/5.6 is way too slow for almost everything at 50mm. I have to shoot at ISO 800+ exclusively to get anything at a reasonable shutter speed.

Thanks Lens!

On the other hand, my telephoto (75-300mm f/4-5.6) is pretty wicked! Its nothing special, but its miles better then the kit lens and acts as a pretty good ‘make-do’ macro/portrait lens as well. I was able to shoot some pretty nice macro shots of a snail at the point. Actually almost all my pictures from the newest album are with the telephoto lens, surprisingly; including all the portraits and the telephotos of the freighters and sunset. Just waiting for my prime 50mm, then i’ll be happy, but the bokeh and colouring from the telephoto is great in the meantime!

I also haven’t gotten into post-production of images yet. I have Adobe’s Lightroom which is pretty nice but I haven’t played with it a ton yet. I noticed a lot of the colours in the new album are a bit muted and boring, partly due to me not punching them up afterwards and also because of gallery’s resize/quality settings, which I have now raised for the future.

Well I took my new camera on its first trip down to the Persian Teahouse and the good old Cambie for Alan’s birthday celebration.

Harrrowwwww!

I’ve put them all up in a New Album.

I’m still learning the camera a bit and the lighting was a little difficult so some of the shots are a little out of focus but all in all I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out. I’ve just become a huge fan of fast prime lenses.

Vatican Statues

I’ve just gotten back from 2+ weeks in Europe and I’m starting to Footstop It now. The delay is because of the astronomical price and crappy service of the internet where I was staying.

You can find it at: http://www.footstops.com/brite/

I’ve also posted a couple new albums from the trip in my photo gallery.

Mike and me at Chesterman's North

I just posted the latest pictures album from another trip out to Tofino with Mike and Jools. Crazy weather weekend though: rain, hail, snow, and sun in 20 minute intervals all weekend long.

Excellent conditions, good offshore wind but waves never really impressed and Sunday was just mush. I bought a sweet 6′6 Blue funboard, nicknamed “The Mrs.”. Me and the Mrs are driving to Tuff on Friday, got room for 2!

Jeff, Nick, and Ben at the reception

Congratulations Jeff and Melissa on getting hitched! You two seem very happy and I know that Jeff came out on top in this deal. I’d also like to thank Kevin and everyone else that made the wedding possible. Everyone had such a good time… especially the wedding party.

As for the wedding party: Jen, Jamie, Ben, and Nick, it was awesome seeing everyone and hopefully we can all party again sometime soon because I had way too much fun.

Got the Wedding Pictures album merged and posted… thanks to Segal and Ben for their great shots. If anyone else has any others email them and I’ll put them up!