Devauld.ca

Mike and I had a meeting to partake in some photography this past Monday evening. First we went by T & T Supermarket with the goal of fresh rambutans. We were initially disappointed because it would appear that they sold out of rambutans since my last visit. At first we thought we would settle for some Star Fruit and Dragon Fruit but later found the object of our desire frozen at the other end of the store.

We then set up the lights, and Mike showed off his swanky new lens and we took a few pictures. I would have posted more photos, but as I discovered about half way through the shoot, I had some particulate matter on my sensor. I believe I could make the pictures usable, but the effort is a lot more than I'm willing to expend at this moment. I'm starting to believe more in doing the work on the front end, with the camera in my hands, so I don't have to spend as much time in front of the computer for each shot.

Of the few that I placed up on my photostream I think that the Carambola shot is the best.

It has almost become expected for me to complain about the weekend being over, and I wouldn't want to disappoint. This weekend was especially short, being that the restful portion of the weekend was only a single day.

I've been attending classes for a Master's Certificate in Project Management which is put on by the University of Lethbridge. The course is very enlightening, and after only two sessions I have already learned a great deal about how to properly run a project. The difficulty around the course is that to accommodate working professionals and weekend lovers, the course straddles weekdays and weekends. So until June, every second weekend is going to be a little shorter.

The course didn't stop me from getting out and enjoying myself. On Friday night, the usual crew attended the Roughnecks game at the Saddledome. We were hosting the Toronto Rock, and they beat us down quite bad at the start, and our come-back wasn't there resulting in a 12-9 score in their favor. At the time I was quite dissapointed, but it turns out that we beat them on their home turf to a final score of 17-13.

Saturday night Sonja and I attended a fund raising benefit for a young man who has been found to have terminal cancer. His wish is to take an Alaskan cruise with his family, so the benefit was to raise funds to have the best damn cruise ever. A silent auction, a long drive contest some appetizers and a Flames game on the big screen all come together at Schank's north for a rather nice evening.

Sunday was my only day off, and I spent most of it getting through my list of things to do. I fixed the house's downspouts so my backyard will no longer be a skating rink, I changed my oil, and replaced some bulbs in the Buick. If you think that changing bulbs is a trivial task, try changing the rear low beams on a 2000 Buick. I wish you all the best. After the outdoors stuff was done, I had Sonja help me out with some Photography, then I edited some pictures while plowing through a massive chunk of laundry. After everything was completed, it was almost time for bed. Just enough time to squeeze in a viewing of Office Space

This week's Photo Friday challenge was tricky. I even had to resort to the dictionary:

I ended up going with this picture, because the feel and appearance of these rocks is very distinctive. I found them on the beach in Mexico, and took a picture on a piece of coloured paper.

So after precisely fourteen days of absence, I received a newer Xbox 360 back from Microsoft. They didn't send me a brand new one, as the one I have is obviously a refurbished model. But it runs, so I'm more than happy.

I didn't even manage to get it set up and play it, on the night I got it back, but the next evening, I was sure to enjoy some electronic goodness. The first order of business was finishing up Lumines. I got down to business and obtained the last two achievements I was missing. Although my achievements tell me that there is no higher to go, I know that Jerry has a higher 60 second time attack score, so I know I'm not done yet.

The real blessing of the return was being able to enjoy the launch of Crackdown. After the demo I was pretty excited to get my hands on the game for periods longer than 30 minutes, and when I got the retail version, I definitely was not disappointed.

In a nutshell, you play a genetically modified human that 'evolves' at a heightened rate and you work for the Agency, attempting to stamp out crime.. Right from the onset of the game, you can jump higher, lift more and punch harder than the common scum on the street, but as you play, the actions you take boost your skills in certain areas. Already my crime fighting avatar can leap two storeys up, throws cars, and has a never ending arsenal of guns.

The game satisfies some long lost video game needs. The leaping is just great fun, and you don't have any problems getting around. There is something about leaping rooftop to rooftop while avoiding fire, that just seems....fun! Thus far the only drawback I can see is that the game is quite short on story. I've only played it for two evenings and already I've destroyed over 15 of the 21 gang leaders that you need to 'complete' the game. I'm sure there is some re-playability in the time trials, but for $60 I was hoping for a bit more to be there.

I haven't been posting much lately, as most of my time sitting in front of this computer was spent in making the new snazzy theme you see before you. A little bit of time in Photoshop, a little more on CSS and the biggest section spent on trying to get it to look the same between IE, Firefox and Safari. As far as looks go, this is about as far as it's going for the time being.

The switch to mephisto was really pleasant. Their use of the Liquid template engine was a little awkward at first, then I realized that even though there is an interface to edit the design with a browser, I didn't need to use it. As soon as I got dug in on my local copy with TextMate I was chewing through problems about as fast as I could find them. Please have a look about, and let me know if you see something awry.

The work on Devauld.ca is not finished, however. I still want to get a handle on these plugins that mephisto uses and wrangle up a Tag Cloud liquid filter, as well as a 'Archives' section that works and the snazzy Flickr widget to showcase my photo stream.

If you'd like to grab a hold of my theme as a starting point of your own, you can grab it out of my subversion repository here. Do enjoy