Okay we are in summer so it's time to put up some photos!

 Yep, this post is going to be photos that I have taken recently in parks and all around wherever I have found myself lately. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. All photography there part of this particular blog post in the public domain.

 

I started this last night on a whim so I have no idea what I would've put here but I will make sure that every single photo can be downloaded in full resolution, so all links lead to the full resolution photo sitting on my Google Drive.Standby and will see what happens.😀 

All shots taken with a Canon G7 market 3

 

 

 

 

 

 There are more photos to see on an earlier post I made. Not necessarily from the same camera. This older post is a bit of a time warp. You can find them in the article: Yahoo, it's the beloved weekend! (Free Photos)

I do have a few photographs for purchase up on Displate. If you've never heard of this company they print artwork on metal with the result being that the posters are held on the wall by simple magnets. They ship all over the world. 

And Just for the Heck of It…

Here is a variation on on the BEE photo. A lightened up, with saturated colour poster, suitable for printing on 8.5 x 11 paper. "IT BEE SUMMER!" indeed 😎 .

Patrick

PS: If anyone would like the RAW image versions of these shots please let me know. These are in Canon's CR3 format are unedited and of much higher quality. Note however that not all devices can display them. There is also no lens correction. However if you have an idea what I'm talking about they are worth the extra effort.😀

Life Is Short; Don't Rush through It

Click to enlarge.

At least in the industrialized developed parts of the world, the modern human experience it's a funny thing.

We are all so busy filling our lives with everything. Even when we take time off there is a tendency to fill those days up with an official activity or vacation and we plan these events out. It is my impression that more and more people are effectively rushing through their days. By doing so I think a major point of existence is being missed and that is taking the time to appreciate all of the unique and wonderful things as well as some of the more complex or not so wonderful things.

To do this effectively one must learn to Stop. Put down the plan. Take some time to let go of the technology or other distractions and deliberately do without for a while. You will be amazed at what you're missing and that tends to be your very life in its finer points. The realization may hit you that life is not infinite so why are you rushing it? Every one of us will reach the inevitable and and regardless of what you believe it will be the end of what you know as existence now. You may live forever perhaps but it will be in a different form and in a different way. The point is that you cannot come back to the way you are now. So appreciate things by getting out of the routine and occasionally deliberately stopping for a day or two if you can.

Every second that passes you by cannot be renewed or redone. Stopping every once in a while will increase your appreciation of your very existence and those around you. It will definitely deepen your appreciation of everything, so when you do go back to your full speed you may see things differently and really understand the tremendous uniqueness of where you are at.

It's pretty straightforward stuff and yet so profound.

PS: The photo of the roses at the top of this page I hereby place in the public domain. The full-size image has been uploaded simply click on the picture.

If you have difficulty downloading picture click on this link to open the image in an alternate way which will give some browsers the ability to save the file. If that still does not work for you please send me a note via the contact us form.

Take care Patrick

Never Assume Anything. Cherish Everything.

Let the sunshine in!

 Boy if this isn't the perfect article for a sunny Sunday

One of those serendipitous moments when you suddenly realize your place in the world and how lucky one is to be alive and able to appreciate and interact with the world. Indeed just a joy in the realization of the serendipity 😃.

Once again I'm going to say what I've said many times earlier on this blog [paraphrasing myself] "I have seen too many people take too many things for granted…" I am going to add to that statement "and not appreciate what they have." I had to go downstairs earlier this morning to return a phone to someone and noticed that the dining room was full of people munching on food well before the normal lunch hour. Where I live they officially only serve lunch and dinner as well as a midday snack. The unofficial breakfast is because of some additional funding founded during Covid to bring in someone to handle small tasks not related to health care. At the end of this month we lose that wonderful person and will no doubt be going back to a normal schedule. Now, I only eat lunch and dinner so was pretty much unaware of this routine, even though it is been going on for a few years. My only defence for not noticing this is that I am such a nerd I have a tendency to discard what isn't immediately pertinent to whatever project I am undertaking.

 However some of the tenants just don't get it. How lucky we all are that we are for the most part still functioning and have a support staff that the rest of the world should be jealous of. (And they probably are). Yet there are ongoing grumblings about this and that. It kind of pisses me off so pardon me will I choose to stay in a more positive frame of mind. I think that about does it for this short post. I'll include a little video so you can see my general enthusiasms. (by the way: I uploaded a full-size version of the flower at the top of this post in PNG format it is  huge about 26 MB in size but you are more than welcome to download it.)

Have a great day everyone.

Patrick

Iconic pop-culture imagery from the past

 

This post originated from one of those spontaneous ideas that just occurred to one out of the blue. "Where the heck did the original test pattern used on old-school TVs come from and why to to bizarre picture?" I got quite excited about the idea and just a little while ago started digging into it. Almost instantly however I found a website called "Print" with an article entitled "Deciphering the Language of TV Test Patterns" by Stephen Heller which pretty much gives you all the information you could ever want in two minutes. So that took away my thunder.

"Wacky Pack" sticker.
Photo by Tom Gill
License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Still though there is something to be said about enduring iconic imagery. I suspect if you're born in the 60s or earlier the test pattern is a major icon for you. So what will be the iconic images of today? Immediately I would say "the Internet" but it really doesn't have a universal symbol. There are some general ones, and definitely one which indicates Wi-Fi but nothing super specific where everyone around the world would know right away "that picture represents... Something." Where 90% of the people seeing the image would understand what it's referring to immediately.

I wonder if we are getting away from, iconic imagery in general? My childhood was certainly loaded with them even if a good chunk of that was thanks to commercial advertising.

 
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holder  Thomas Altfather Good

The Campbell's Soup can comes to mind (The four 50th Anniversary "Art Of Soup" Campbell's Tomato Soup cans featuring a facsimile autograph by, portrait of, and quote from,Andy Warhol. The commemorative cans were released on 2012-09-02 at Target Stores. They contain actual tomato soup.) Does anyone remember the "Wacky Pack" stickers that came out in the 70s they were kind of a mad magazine artwork format where they would do a take off on products?   I'll include images in this article if I can find copyright cleared examples.) There appears to be quite a big online hobbyist community dedicated to just Wacky Pack stickers so click Wacky Pack link if you really want to go down memory lane. For now I'll post a few images in this article.

 As you can tell I'm writing this on the fly because I really do want to get something posted tonight.

Maybe we will look back a few years now and the icon of the early 21st century will be the cell phone.

"Wacky Pack" sticker.
Photo by Tom Gill
License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Although I must admit it won't be too exciting to look at. When a cell phone is turned off it looks like a black rectangle. Perhaps this is a time in to the old sci-fi movie 2001 a space Odyssey in which a mysterious "black rectangle" is discovered at several points in the movie.

What other icons or images helped shape my early life?… Oh I have one "The How And Why Wonder Books" series of books. Just the perfect kind of reading material for a young Geek mind. I had a small orange crate to hold my collection of maybe 15 to 20 books. They were great.

There was the original series Star Trek. But that's really not worth covering here because Star Trek iconography is still tremendously popular and all over the Internet. There are people out there that could do a much better job at covering its associated iconic symbols than I ever could.

Wonder Bread postcard 1961.
Photo by Steve Shook
License CC BY 2.0

Heck as a child even our bread was an icon. The "Wonder Bread" pattern was all over the place.

If this article sparks any imagery or iconic symbols for you. Let me know in the comments and we will keep adding to this post.

Take care and I will try to post another item in 24 to 48 hours. It is been very busy this week which is why there is been the disruption. Okay now let's see if I can find all the iconic artwork necessary for this post 😀.

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4.0 International license.
Photo by James Vaughan

Take care Patrick

Yahoo, it's the beloved weekend! (Free Photos)

License: Non Commercial
No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

 Yahoo, it's the beloved weekend! Here's a few free photos.

I can't think of much to write today. Myself and my brain are just not in that space.

Although usually I can come up with something to say almost instantly today, for whatever reason-The Rabbits Just Aren't There (and I have no idea what I mean by that last statement, because it just occurred to me and since I do most of my typing by voice dictation it just came out and I think it sounds rather cool.)

So for today I am just going to post some pictures I've taken over the years using various cameras and edited with Corel PaintShop Pro Ultimate. (Software publishers site.) If anything strikes your fancy you are free to download it and use it as you wish. I hereby declare that anything you see in this post which is using this domain is in the public domain.

I do have a few photographs for purchase up on Displate. If you've never heard of this company they print artwork on metal with the result being that the posters are held on the wall by simple magnets. They ship all over the world.

Okay here in no particular order are a few photos taken over the years.

All but the last one, which is a picture of the Sun Tower taken in Vancouver are in their original full-size files. Simply click on the photo. Unfortunately the original of the Sun Tower has been lost to time. 

The photos were taken across the lifespan of three cameras: (Links to the Canon Camera Museum.)

• Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III
• Canon PowerShot SX120 SI
• Canon PowerShot SX620 HS

Enjoy your weekend and continue to have a great day.

Patrick

PS: This post will scroll off the front page of the blog in about 10 days. If you would like to revisit it easily click this link and bookmark the resulting page. Tip:All posts can be permanently bookmarked in your browser by clicking on their title and then bookmarking their own webpage. You will know you have the correct page when you see only one article.

 Click photo to enlarge, and then right-click, to save.

Also available on Displate as a metal poster. Direct link here.

 

 

Also available on Displate as a metal poster. Direct link here.

 

 

 

"Iconic" a language for symbols. Something whose time has come

Attribution Forsaken Fotos on Flickr
Creative Commons license 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Have you noticed that computers and related equipment are moving away from text based interfaces in favour of the icon symbology?

It looks cute, most of the time but as someone who helps people with technology, the move toward graphic symbolism seems to be backfiring. Even myself when looking through the myriad of icons in my video editing package spend an ever-increasing amount of time just trying to find what symbol relates to what function. While I know there are standards of therefore some of the more common functions and indeed it can make it easier to produce software when you don't have to translate the entire interface to another language it can also unless you're very careful make the interface a mess.

I think we are going to end up having to create a visual script, an abridged version of the written word, to represent some of the features coming along. It could be called "Iconic". Something that would actually be taught so that by the time a child or person was faced with a multitude of images they could find their way through the maze. This would go a long way toward simplifying a lot of things will still keeping the information quality of the symbol high.

Or is there something out there like this already? Would emoji's qualifying? Not quite. From my limited experience with them they don't appear to have enough context or infer information in the defined away.

One of the most frustrating experiences now days is when I open up a new manual and it indicates an icon in the text, but doesn't give it a name, and the icon itself is too small to make out in the details.

I think the visual language of "Iconic" is something whose time has come. It would sure save me a lot of grief and time. Who knows it may even eventually replace the written word.

Take care Patrick

New Year's Eve Blurb 2023

 

This is going to be in ultrashort, "New Year's Eve Blurb". I'm wishing everyone who reads this no matter where there are the world to take a moment strictly for yourself. The world can get on for at least a minute on its own. Actually let's extend that to four minutes, and here's why:

Earlier today I was pondering how to start the new year off in my assistant living residence, which can always choose a little extra joy, a little play is good for the soul regardless of your age. So for no particular reason I put together this little video made up of photos from humble and the new James Webb telescope. All the material comes from either the Hubble website or NASA's Flickr account. (Details are in the end of the little video.

So without further ado, and wishing you a great new year. Here it is..... (Turns out it's too big to upload directly to my site. As an alternate this is a link on my Google Drive)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hAoNDQa7Dyf8yvFMj1TY67G-8XS-Va8i/view?usp=drive_link

All the best Patrick Clark

"Genius is the rediscovery of childhood."

 

Have you ever noticed that children between the ages of two, to lets say about years old, have unbridled enthusiasm. They simply light up like Christmas trees when ever they noticed something going on. They frequently enjoy the box a gift came in more than the do the actual gift.

They try the box on, if they can fit into it. Exploring every little facet of the thing (yes this may involve destroying it in the process :-)). They are little learning machines, and it is obvious watching them they are having great deal of enjoyment. What was it Einstein said, and I may be paraphrasing here, "Genius is the rediscovery of childhood."

You know for me, I think that is the biggest lesson we can learn from the festive seasons. Simply the rediscovery of the joy found in finding something new.

This is been but a short entry on this blog, because sometimes it doesn't take a lot of words to remember what really is important. The joy in learning something new and approaching it with enthusiasm and curiosity.

Starting 2021 with a legend...

This is just going to be a very brief post to kick off the new year.(All links open in a new tab or window.)

Well I had planned to post something on January 1, 2021 but do a slight mishap with my router, and that's an understatement, things were postponed.

I was looking around for something unique and I ran across this painting. It resonates with me for some marvellous reason. Based on "The Accolade", by Edmund Blair Leighton. 

"The Accolade", by Edmund Blair Leighton.

This is a reprint obviously and possibly a reimagining, I am not familiar with the original painting, by an artist known as M. Dam. So I bought a print through a company called  "Displate".

Perhaps it is because it harkens to those romantic and powerful characters of legend. A queen bestowing some great honour on one of her knights.

I believe these prints come all the way from Poland and are done on mental. So it is going to take some time for the shipment to come through. What a marvellous way to start the new year.


Happy new year everyone! Take care Patrick Clark