resistance to persistence

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What a day. Sometimes fun things can happen without even planning them. What normally would have been a quiet Sunday turned into an adrenaline filled day.

The morning started with swim class for my daughter. At 8 months it’s fun to take her swimming and the fearful neck clasping hugs she gives are so sweet. Special times.

After that I rushed home to head out on the next adventure. My buddy Kevin was in my driveway waiting to go see a Chuck Liddell MMA training session. $150 to take part in instruction, $30 to watch. We chose the watching obviously. I got a ton of photos which I’ll be posting soon. It was interesting to watch him go through some of his favorite moves (the overhand right, etc) and even some ground game. After 2 hours of that there was an hour of Q&A. Lots of expected questions -Randy vs Lesner, EliteXC Kimbo fiasco and was highly critical of EliteXC for buying up the smaller leagues and benching them. This came after taking questions from Mauro, one of the announcers on EliteXC. But overall it was positive and informative. We didn’t stick around for the autograph signing session.

Chuck Liddell and Showdown Joe

I then got a call around 5:30. My friend John was in the neighbourhood and he was going to stop in for a minute to show me something. He showed up on my doorstep with a Porsche Carrera 4S. Drool. A coworker lent it to him for the week while he was out of town. He took me for some hot laps around the city busting it open on some back industrial roads but there’s never a road long enough to try out the full speed of a driving machine like that. A good taste of adrenaline to end the day.

i noticed this watching Reggie Miller at the NBA All-Star Weekend events. He looks a lot like Barack Obama. I’m obviously not the only one who thinks so as a quick google turned up some results.

A cool way to view your Flickr photos

I came across an interesting Flickr viewer today. Airtight Interactive has created a Flickr TiltViewer. You can spin the plane of photos around, click an image to zoom and view it, move them around. It’s brings a 3D dimension to a 2D world of photography.

Try it out… view my Flickr portfolio in the Tilt Viewer

Control with the Mouse:
* Click images to zoom-in, click again to zoom-out.
* Click the background to zoom-out.
* Click the ‘reload’ button (below the image grid) to load a new set of images.
* Click the ‘flip’ button (bottom-right of a zoomed-in image) to see image details.

Hack the URL to view your own images if you want to try it out.

Walking my usual route this morning, I cut through Berczy Park by the Flatiron building on Front Street. I saw a bunch of film crew gear setting up, which is never a surprise in Toronto, but always interesting to watch. Reflectors were being setup, a camera was being mounted on a large boom arm. But no lighting yet. Usually there’s a lot of lighting setup and that got me interested to as I was walking past, I kept looking around. And then I spotted something very interesting in yellow and red.

I watch Amazing Race a lot. I love seeing the challenges, travelling the world, and reality tv in general. So I have the sight of the yellow and red checkpoint markers burned in my retinas. And that’s exactly what I saw today when I passed the park.

Amazing Race is in Toronto

The box has a lock on it. I think it’s probably so that the word doesn’t get out on who’s left in the game before the episodes are aired or where the next destination is. I’m sure there’s betting pools out there and information like that could come in handy.

I might wander back to the park at lunch time and see if anything else is happening. Here’s the map location.

I’ve posted a larger version of the image on Flickr.

UPDATE: I went back later the same day and the post was there, but no cameras. Interesting…Is Phil hiding in the bushes with the camera crew? Nope. There was a sign on the box that revealed it wasn’t the tv show, but a local adventure company running a “team building” event based on the Amazing Race concept. Run around Toronto gathering clues and your company will work better together.

Was it just a funny coincidence? J and I were driving to the mall a couple of weeks ago and I put on a comedy album from one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg, who has sadly passed away and will not be providing us with any more funny.

One of his routines is about an escalator. I’ll try to recount it as best as I remember. If you don’t know Mitch’s work, imagine it being performed by a stoned hippy kinda dude.

I like an escalator, man, ’cause an escalator can never break.
It can only become stairs.
There would never be an “Escalator Temporarily Out of Order” sign, only “Escalator Temporarily Stairs.
Sorry for the Convenience.”

I’m not making this up…shortly after we arrived in the mall, I saw this and burst out laughing. I ran to get J and we both said the joke out loud to each other and started laughing.

it wouldn’t have been as funny if i hadn’t just heard a joke about it

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Then today, I saw the bumper on this news truck, which is thankfully bragging about its slightly more environmentally friendly ability. And as I read it, I kept hearing Borat’s voice in my head. This green truck is black not. No…not quite. This green truck is black. [pause] [pause] [pause] [pause] Not.

This green truck is black not

The friday of Labour Day weekend, I had the day off to make it a 4 day weekend. I decided to go to the CNE as I’d tragically never been there, after living in Toronto for 10 years. I brought my camera along as I was sure to find some stuff to shoot. Early in the afternoon, fighter planes (F-16, F-22) were flying overhead, practising for the airshow the following day. I also saw helicopters overhead as I was wandering around in the rides, but I thought it must have been part of the airshow practise as well. As I made it further through the park, I came to an area where the helicopters were taking off. You could take an actual helicopter ride instead of just spinning around on the Tilt-A-Whirl or the Scrambler.

I’d always wanted to take a helicopter ride but never figured I would have a chance to do so. I’ve flown a small cessna and a glider before when I took some flight lessons. I’ve also been a passenger in some small commuter planes and even a seaplane. But never a helicopter. Flying is in my blood…my grandfather was a pilot. I remember when I was a kid, my dad telling me about flights he’d taken in choppers and I always daydreamed about what that would be like. The difference in takeoff and unrestricted vertical and horizontal movement is what I wanted to experience. The opportunity was staring me in the face.

If the price was right, I was in. A quick ride was only $35. That’s the kind of cash I could throw down. How could you refuse for that price? But for how long do you get to ride in the mechanical birdl? 3.5 minutes. $10/minute! Still worth it in my book, so I waited in line to pay. There was a 40 minute lineup to take your flight, but since I was flying solo, there was a family of 3 just about to go up that I could jump in with. Perfect timing. And since the chopper only flies 4 passengers, 3 in the back, 1 up front, I got to sit up front with the pilot so the family could sit together. What a score! I went from eating cotton candy to riding shotgun in a helicopter in less than 5 minutes.

The flight was really fun even though it was short. The experience of takeoff and landing is obviously much different than a plane. The chopper smoothly lifted off the ground, pointed the nose down towards the end of the short “runway” and we took off, heading west over the Gardiner Expressway and Ontario Place. We continued out over the water a bit, turning north into the city and back east towards the downtown core. It was a great view of the CN Tower and skyscrapers.

And then it was all over. We headed down for a landing, flying to the runway westbound. The chopper flew across to the end to slow the speed, banked around 180 and returned to the other end of the runway, rotating and softly landing. A quick unboarding and the classic running crouch away from the helicopter you always see on tv and it was complete.

You can see more photos from the quick ride here.

A good fun time, I’d definitely recommend it for anyone that likes flying. HeliTours.ca was running it and they also do other tours around Toronto.

sweet rims, family guy

who says that when you grow up, have a couple kids and buy a minivan that you have to give up your coolness? i spotted this minivan parked at the grocery store today. custom rims on a minivan - i’ve never seen that before. the best part…parked in a handicap zone. whoever you are handicapped custom rim rollin minivan driver, I salute you.