Yup, it’s been quiet around here, really really quiet. My brain is empty these days, ideas aren’t coming easy at all. Lazy has taken over. Though as of pretty much now, I’m re-working the whole elicitbliss online’ness. Cleaning off the server, doing something with elicitbliss.com since 2005 is so 2005, and its almost 2009, and nothing thats up on that site has any relevance to what I do these days. Its a big lie pretty much.

I’ve got a bunch of local files to get together and clean up, then get my direction in motion. I’m still working on the actual direction, there are a couple, just got to pick which fork of the road looks best.

More to come.

Well another summer done, another wack load of pictures. I pushed up the last of this years nangor pics to flickr last night. Had to sort though 1300+ pics in order to widdle it down to 130 some. So be happy that I spent a week doing that.

Not as pleased with the variety of shots from this year to last year. The frisbee shots are pretty much the highlights. Other than that lots of water skiing and wake boarding, and some other various shots. Brian has a whole bunch as well, again mainly water skiing, but he had a long lens so a lot of nice close up action shots will be around at some point. Not sure when he will get to those, but I’ll put up a link when he does.

Hit the link bellow.

flickr album >

Back from a week or so of vacation, and back from blog hiatis. Bunch of stuff is coming so stay tunned. But now back to sorting 1300+ vacation pics.

The past while I haven not really been to into a lot of the threadless designs. It’s actually been quite a while since my last purchase. I’m thinking almost a year to be honest, or ten months, hard to say without checking records. It’s not really that the designs suck, their pretty awsome. I think its more I like the smaller simpler, one kinda image somewhat smaller chest area kinda designs. A lot of them are quite elaborite and large and complicated with multiple images to make one point. I like the more logo like designs. Lots spoken in a a small amount. But thats just me. Sometimes the ones I really like are on a colour thats not suited for me to wear. Can’t wait till you can select the colour options that the designer has made. That would be awesome.

My date with the queen is complete. Back on Canadian soil now, and waking up way to damn early. Been back in Ottawa since Wednesday now, and trying to get back into a what was normal schedule. Passing out at 9 and waking up at 6 and felling like I’ve sleep in is fun, but I’m sure it wont last.

London was fun. Saw a large chunk of the city and my feet can attest to that. Met some cool people, and made taste with a decent amount of new beer. Got at least one train ride into my system, though wasn’t over to Europe. Just means I have to go back. I enjoyed the city and took some good things from it. Ottawa feels so small now. London has a nice deep personality to it, with new and old buildings have strong contrast. Much more character and interesting. Ottawa is nice, but its missing some of what London has. Or I’ve just lived here to long. Did a little bit of shopping, but not really my thing. Though Uni Glo is my new favorite store. Only 3 in the world, Tokyo, London and NYC. At least one is on the same continent.

Took over 2300 pictures, but don’t worry you don’t have to go though them all. I sorted out 450 for you to gaze upon. There were a lot I took for myself, just because, or to get the best shot out of the situation. I think I may just be trigger happy though.

London flickr set

I wont go long winded on all the happening, but just assume what you will. Didn’t do anything crazy like people were advising me to. I had good tourist fun. And hey. I wanted to remember it though more than just pictures.

Though I’m sure a trip to Tokyo won’t have that same outcome. Trigger happy will help there.

After a couple days of doing the whole tourist thing, my feets suspension are shot. Though in two to three days I have covered most of the main london attractions. London and tower bridge, the tower of london, old london, the south bank. Various squares, the palace and st james park, british parlement and big ben, and so on and so forth.

A bunch of pics have been pushed to flickr in the london album (edit: fixed the link)

Saw the musical Joseph last night. Was interesting, there were a slew of technical issues with the stage so they had to stop and start again re-doing full scenes and sections. Once it hit the intermission, which was extended an extra 30 minutes, we got word that we would be getting a full refund to ongoing technical issues and that we would get the full 2nd act but playd out in a concert style performance. This involved very minimal stage changes but was still done really well for them pulling it together though the elongate intermission. Then it was off to the pubs with our extra cash for a couple pints. After works brad and i wandered around the south bank, and then actually into the Thames since tide was down. Took a bunch of night time shots and killed and extra two hours. Then it was time to find food, which was challenging. Seems like everything closes really early in london.

Today we hit up the Borows market then the south bank again for lunch. Then I was off to the london eye and the Tate Museaum of Modern Art, while Brad went and finished his school work. The eye was fun, the pods are roasting though. Might be a while till those pics are up, still have the last two days to go though. Then it was off to the museum. Didnt get to finish all the exibits since I started fairly close to closing time so I shall have to go back. The main hall was amazing. The whole museum was build inisde an old coal power plant, which creates and awsome atmosphere and layout, and a really really large main hall. That was the only are where pics could be taken, and those will be up at some point as well.

Still lots to do, not going to be able to hit paris it seems due to time lines and such. But id prefer to spend more than 1-2 days there so that means a nice full trip will be planned for next year possilby. Soon though. Now that I have a taste of europe I need more.

the adventure begins. right out of the starting gate as well, or airport gate that is. toronto is a nice 45min flying time after all your check in and security and waiting around inside of an hour etc. so what happens when the toronto airport closes down for and hour due to heavy cross winds in a thunderstorm? you first circle toronto for 45 minutes while you wait for clearance to land on the one and only runway open. then once you get cleared you start back to toronto. 15 mins later you get canceled on your approach and you have to head back to ottawa to get more fuel and wait trapped in the plane for an hour on the de-icing tarmac. lots of free snacks and orange juice and pop while watching episodes of entourage on the in flight entertainment units, your plane gets fuel and off you are again to toronto. holding pattern again while you wait your turn to land on the only runway open still and your down. four hours in air flight time plus 1 hour or so on ground means a nice delay. it also means you miss your original connection in toronto to london.

off the plane in toronto, checked with the ground crew on connection status, seems all good, just need a new boarding pass for a later flight. off to the customer service desk, and time to wait in a line. then anyone looking for international re-bookings was told they had to go up the stair and out through security and to the other side of the terminal to get in line for international check-in with everyone else whose trying to check in for the last flight out. those of us from ottawa looking for just a pass for a plane that leaves in an hour and security to go though again. so a little talking an convincing later all of us with already checked baggage get our own line and dude to check us in at lightning speed. running off to security, getting though there at a decent speed, then running through the terminal to the gate. get there double check that its the right flight and that there is a seat, then being told its going to be an hour more till boarding since their going to wait for the rest of the connections delayed due to the hour close down earlier. so all that stress and running around for nothing. time for some water and sugar and chilling on the floor. on the flight and ready to go. 7 hours in the air, 3 hours of sleep on the plane, 6 hours delayed. landed in london at noon london time, 7 ottawa time.

was lucky to be at the front of the plane so getting off was fast and meant i had no customs line to wait in, 5 questions later, and i’m through in 3 mins. getting my bags was the same. 10 mins or less i had both bags and was off to find the tube station, a good 30 min stroll away on moving floors. got my tube 7 day oyster pass and onto the tube i went. 2 hours later was across london an in brads hood. my cell phone wasn’t working cause there is no cdma network in the uk, and had no coins yet. found a red booth with a card slot, brad came and found me and then it was coffee and beer time. that was a damn long ass day.

well, its finally up. so enjoy and bask in its sweetness. some things still haven’t been put in but the main shell of it is done, so adding stuff will be easy in the future. there are some new things down the sidebar, shared rss items from my google reader, as well as my twitter feed. there are still some sifr things i have to tweak, so if some post titles look a little funny ore really out of place that will be fixed soon. as well the iphone skin isn’t done yet. but thats fairly easy to put together once i have some time.

overall there were some design things i had to drop from my original concept just due to development restrictions, but it still looks pretty much the same overall. so enjoy and let me know what you think.

well. i magically somehow (thanks to my brothers friend matt) figured out the stupid ie 6 and 7 issues i was having with the new blog layout. so. as of now. a week after i coded the full firefox and other regular browsers, and lots and lots of fighting with ie, its set to go. there are some live tweaks that i will have to do, but tomorow (or today as it is now) it will be live. some features will be missing cause they will be added when needed. but should be a nice change. so keep a look out.

well was going to do a boring post about how i spent all weekend moving all my email into google apps gmail and fully using imap with my iphone and how big an ordeal that was which took me all weekend. as well as that i wont be using my iphone as a phone for a while cause the telus contract kill fee is way to ridiculous, now that i have an actually number thats been given to me other than my guess’timations.

but instead i actually got into photoshop, and fireworks as well, and did a crap load of work on some new designs for the blog. mainly the design is now in the forward direction, got 75% of it done. so i just have to detail the crap out of it, work some things out, then *bam*, i get to build it. i’m pretty pleased with it so far considering it just kinda happened. running across the right font sometimes just sparks something. other than that i did some designs for my back end server, as well as started the temp splash page for the main elicitbliss.com. that 2005 portfolio really needs to go. there isn’t much to replace it at this point. but something kinda new with not much up there is better than something that doesn’t really show my current design level. so i’m hopping this weekend i get it built in my beta area so that i can push it over to live sometime next week. o, and the new wordpress 2.5 backend is freaken sweeeet.

ps. new laptop soon.. its in alaska. mr fedex tracker told me so.