Boaty-Boat-Boat
So off to Vancouver. Our first flight since the no bag/carry on rule change and wow, what a difference. For one thing they have zone boarding now which is good. For another they are actually checking bag sizes. And for yet another thing it now takes flipping forever to board the plane.
Tanstafl as Mr Heinlein used to say. (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch for you uninitiated.)
Off to #YVR and the boat show. Hopefully, after all that sailing in 2014, this year we will have a better idea of what we we are looking at/for.
Day one. Note to self. It rains in Vancouver. Jean jackets are not waterproof.
So I got a bit wet.
My cellphone sees…
Mighty empty trains here in #yvr
How’d he do that?
Well the second issue of the magazine is off to the printers and should be on shelves next week. I did a lot of “fancy” photoshop work this issue—nothing too complex but more than I normally do. One of the articles is on the history of the Bruin Inn in St Albert and the Big Kahuna wanted to try a fancy archival/modern blend. We tried in vain to photograph it, but couldn’t get the framing right and the depth of field was screwing us. That and the photographer was constantly in danger of getting run over.
So we decided to blend three separate images in photoshop to get the desire effect. One was the original archival photo, one was a shot of the restaurant that was built to mimic the Bruin Inn’s architecture and one was of a hand holding a picture. With a lot of careful masking the picture below was slowly built. The big issue I had right up until the last minute was I couldn’t get the thumb to look like it wasn’t “photoshopped” in, which I didn’t want, even though it was. I fought with it several times in vain, but it wasn’t until Zak said the thumb needed a big, soft shadow that I realized what the problem was. It still looks a little fake, but it is miles above what I had. I guess my kid’s pretty smart after all.
Archival Photo Credit: Provincial Archives of Alberta, A11605
My cellphone sees…
Proofs!
Bad Poetry
Limer-Licks
There once was a magazine crew,
With a professional communicator or two,
One always mumbled,
The other’s lines crumbled,
And left the point all up to you.
What issued was often confused
As dirty minds too much were used,
Oh it wasn’t his fault,
Her mind just wouldn’t halt,
Till one and all’s ears were abused.
So heed this cautionary tale,
As we track down this pair in jail,
She went for offensive,
And found it expensive,
Cause he always mumbled the details.
—On occasion of sending away the magazine
Pedro Porn Star
Volume 2, Issue 1 of T8N magazine is all but done. And Pedro Migennes the Lion once again bulled her way into the photoshoots. The shotlist called for an image of the clothes first, the girl second and the bed third. There was no cat. So she changed it. It turned out though didn’t it?
Charge It!
So the other day I went to Staples to print out some cover proofs in colour. The cover measures 9.5 x 10.75 so it won’t fit full size on 8.5 x 11 sheet. So I picked tabloid on the colour printer and choked the machine. Stupid colour copiers. The machine of course, charged me almost $4 for the 4 copies I didn’t get. But the nice lady at the counter happily took my USB stick and set up the job to send to her behind-the-counter printer and all seemed well.
Just as she sent it, she mentioned there would be white space at the top and bottom and was that ok. I said sure, the cover was only 9 x 10 and there would be whitespace all around. At this, she screwed up her face and cancelled the print job. While she reset the print parameters, she told me that the reason the other copier had choked was because I was trying to print a file that was the wrong size. The next time I had an odd size I should just come to the counter and for a $3 service fee she would “fix” my file. Because the software they used automatically expanded the image to fit the paper size. And they had to tell it not to do that.
So to summarize, she (Staples) would charge me $3 ($2 if it was not a rush job) to print out my file at the size my file was. It was ‘free’ to blow it up to a bigger size, but would cost me almost double if I wanted it just the way I supplied it.
Kill me now…
A rejected version of the cover
My cellphone sees…
Second issue. Almost there…
The perfect boat
Next weekend L and I are off to Vancouver to take in the Vancouver Boat Show and meet up with Dave and Margaret of R Shack Island fame. In honour of that I thought I would jot down some boat thoughts.
I have been doing a lot of fantasy boat shopping lately to pass the time. It’s just something us fanatic wannabees do. But I have also spent some time trying to figure out what the perfect boat is/would be. There are a ton of people who have asked this very question in online forums and such and there are the corresponding ton of answers. But if you dig deep in all the replies, the answer actually comes down to “it depends what you want.” Which admittedly is seemingly less helpful than wading through a billion opinions, but after having done the aforementioned wading, I have begun to realize is actually the correct answer.
So what do I want? In no particular order or level of seriousness:
- a boat that has space and equipment for a minimum of 2–3 days away from dock.
- a sailboat to save on diesel costs
- a fast sailboat because, as every sailor knowns, if two sailboats are going in the same direction, they are racing. And who likes to lose?
- two cabins
- a comfortable, accessible main berth. (Because getting up in the middle of the night is a big enough pain as it is.)
- a reasonably roomy cockpit with cockpit table
- an electric windlass
- a reasonably long chain rode
- a reasonably roomy head
- the ability to single hand.
- a reliable engine
- a fairly dry dinghy
- a fairly good electrical system, because I am not giving up the ipad or ebooks
- good electronics (chart plotter, VHF, wind instruments)
- a dodger and a bimini
- a good fridge
What I don’t need (but I’ll take)
- a large outboard
- engine hoist (unless I get the large outboard and then its a need)
- large water tanks
- hot water heater
- sound system
- radar
- roller furling main (I’d actually prefer not)
- spinnaker
- genset (generator)
- 2 heads
- pilot berths
- a freezer
What a dream boat would have
- a pilot house (see the next point)
- a separate shower
- twin helm
- walk-off transom
- a large or separate work area
- a walk-in engine room
- a watermaker
- dinghy davits
- a gennaker or code 0
What I don’t want
- new
- microwave
- three cabins
- electric winches
- quarterberth
- cramped v-berth
- an in-cockpit traveller
- tiller steering
Here are few boats that I have considered and could be had out in the PNW fairly affordably (which is relative).
- Hunter 42 CC
- Hunter 420
- Gemini 105mc (catamaran)
- PDQ 32 (catamaran)
- Nauticat
And some available in other places,
- Wildcat 350 (catamaran)
To be continued
Day 15–16: Endings and Beginnings
July 17, 2008
Up early, we said our goodbyes and Zak and I hit the bus back to CDG. The line-ups at the airport were a bit different than anything I had ever experienced at the Edmonton International, but eventually we figured it out and even managed to use the unfamiliar (at the time) passport-scannie-thing. Zak and I snacked in the boarding lounge and eventually boarded our plane home.
July 18, 2008
Back at home Zak and I did laundry and started packing again as we were off right away for another week camping our way across southern BC with my brother. Then Leslie was supposed to meet us in Vancouver and we were going to do some climbing in Squamish.
The Girls in Paris
L & C took a couple of days to see more of Paris. I am not sure what all they got up to, but I do know they took in Notre Dame, Musée d’Orsay, the Père Lachaise Cemetery — where all the best people are buried, and The Red Wheelbarrow bookstore, another famous English language bookstore.
Thus ends the account of our 2008 trip to France. Most of my pictures of the camping trip with Doug were lost in a crash. The three of us hit Jasper and Wells Grey and did some canoeing before splitting up. Then Doug took his truck home and we headed for Squamish. Later we picked Leslie up at Horseshoe Bay.
We climbed Squamish for a few days, did a tour of Howe Sound by jetski and then drove back across BC on our way home.