When you're dead, it's for a long time.

(grave thoughts)

Welcome!

One thing about a web page is that you should feel guilty if you don't update it from time to time. On the other hand, I have a good excuse...

(But enough of that stuff, let's talk about me...)

More information on...

Photography

Last Digital camera - A Canon 40D, which replaced a Canon 20D. Current lenses are zooms, 17-85 f/4.5 and 85-200 f/2.8. Following a long period of indecision, I broke down and purchased my first Canon, replacing the last of my film cameras, a Nikon F801. My old Nikon Coolpix 5700 now passes to my daughter, and the even older Nikon 950 - probably goes to the Digital Camera Graveyard. It was a wrench moving from Nikon to Canon, but the Nikon D70 DSLR was not sufficiently tempting, even though I had Nikon lenses, and since I wished to shoot astro-images, the performance of the D70 — it failed to give a true RAW image, according to Christian Buil's website — was a deciding factor. I also use a Canon SD600 as a scratch camera, for those occasions when I am out without the Canon kit on my back.

Previous digital cameras: Canon 20D, sold on to finance the next camera; Nikon Coolpix 5700 and Nikon Coolpix 950 (both now in the hands of my daughter, so not mine any longer); Nikon F801; QuickCams; Polaroid SX70; Sony TRV-120 (a video camera, and I am not likely to put a video page due to size/bandwidth constraints); Minox B (regret to say unused for a while, so it's also an 'old' camera). There's also an old Kodak 616 floating around here somewhere, but it's more for display than anything else.

I've used an iSight web camera to stay in touch with my daughter when she was in Japan, and most recently in California. She has an iSight hooked up to a Mac laptop, and we connect up at least once a week to chat. Usually the connection is great, with real-time video and audio, but occasionally the video is blocky and the audio is choppy. Even so, it beats telephones without breaking a sweat - and the ongoing price is right!

Old Cameras: Kodak DC50 Digital Camera, Nikon F, Nikon F801, QuickCams, Minox B, RCA SVHS, Sony TR83, Polaroid SX70.

Astronomy

For a number of years I used a Meade 8" LX200, but it was always difficult to work myself up to assemble the tripod and move out to the garden to observe. I started thinking about getting a smaller scope which could be set up quickly, but what I really wanted to do was build a permanent observatory in my garden. As it turns out, I did a bit of both.

I initially purchased a William Optics 110 mm f/6.5 SD Triplet - that's a smaller scope - but I married it to a Losmandy G11 mount on their HD tripod, which would have been more, rather than less, difficult to set up than the Meade (which I sold through Kendrick's in Toronto). To compensate for the increase in setup difficulty I had the folks at SkyShed install a small roll-off roof observatory in the garden so I could leave things set up more or less permanently, which I hopes would encourage me to observe more often, and hopefully would result in my doing more imaging. So far that hasn't worked out as well as I hoped. I have done some imaging, and the setup now includes a Celestron C9.25 for times when I want to increase image scale, but I still don't get out as much as I would like. Take a look at this Gallery page for photos of the site, or at the on-going (though irregular) blog at Starstruck for more recent info.

This is where I live...

Clear Dark Sky for Woodbridge, Ontario

Model Railroads

Sometimes you don't have enough personal time to do all the things you like to do....(see Astronomy, above).

Time machines

I'm putting together a variation on the original Tipler rotary, with the original linear cylinder bent across several directions and tweisted back on itself to form a quasilupe. I don't have enough power to get more than a few seconds beyond its formation though, so travel uptime is really slow, though soatuak dusokacnebt works quite well (sorry, the Censor Effect is kicking in, and some words just won't form - I guess it will get worse the closer we get to the Uojrof8wid Discontinuity - oh, never mind. If you can build your own, you know what I mean)).

Diabetes mellitus

Nasty disease which comes in two flavors. The insulin-dependent form (IDDM) is pretty scary, but even the non-insulin-dependent form (NIDDM) can be a slow killer. On the other hand, one of the best ways to assure that you live a long time is to have a chronic but treatable disease....

Currently my NIDDM case is more-or-less controlled by drugs: while my glucose levels are not super-stable, I have been able to keep the average close to normal levels over the past few months. As an unfortunate side effect of meds and (still bad) diet, I'm looking more and more like the "before" picture in a Jenny Craig ad.

Lymphedema tarda

The lymphatic system works alongside the circulatory system to deliver nutrients and remove foreign material from body tissues. Unlike the circulatory system, the lymphatic system has no primary pump to move the lymphatic fluid around, and it is possible for the lymphatic system to stall without killing off the entire body. When that happens the lymphatic system stagnates, lymph fluid builds up in neighbouring tissues, and usually the tissue is observed to swell up. If the fluid remains stagnant it gradually solidifies, with adverse effects upon the surrounding tissue. The condition may be caused by trauma to the system (e.g., following surgery) or may be congenital. In my case, I appear to have a late-appearing congenital form known as lymphedema tarda which is causing both legs to swell. It is currently well-controlled by using compression stockings (tight enough I need gloves to get them on!) and massage therapy (which has done wonders in reversing the most obvious effects of the disease), and I am currently in stage I.

Singing

I enjoy singing, and sang for several years as a tenor in the Chamber Choir of the Sacred Music Society here in Toronto. (Those who know me well will recognise the peculiarity of that sentence). This is a specialty choir within the Sacred Music Society , which is also affiliated (by virtue of having the same conductor) with the World Youth Day Choir. However, since roughly September of 2002 I've been inactive due to workload and health problems. I had hoped to return to the choir (though re-auditioning might have been a problem!) but given the current state of my breath control and the increased activities of the choir itself, that now seems unlikely.

After hours....

Notes:

This page was originally created using Adobe 's PageMill 2.0, but the site is now maintained using BBEdit 7.x. Web service is by Apache running under MacOS X. As an experiment, during October 2004 it was modified using Macromedia's Contribute 3. The page contains both GIF and JPEG images, and other pages may contain Java bytecodes, QuickTime movies, and so on.

This page was restored after a hard drive crash from a copy made by Googlebot/2.1. All hail the might of Google!

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