To commemorate this special day, I’m going to skip ahead in my travel photos slightly to post a few pictures fitting of today. On August 8th we took a walk down to the port of Varna and stumbled across a peculiar ship:

Desi asked if I could take photos of it, and we were welcomed aboard. This ship is the only one in Varna powered exclusively by the wind. The deck area was set up with tables and glasses, and appears to be a ship you can rent for drinking parties. That’s not the best part though, the best part was the pirates.

Yep, the ship was filled with people in full pirate garb. They were very charismatic (if not a little crazy) and were laughing and carrying on. While they let me pose with them, they had a better idea for Desi, and let her borrow a very elegant dress that was on board. I must say, she makes the most beautiful pirate ever:

After taking enough photos to fill my memory card (I’ll have more to share later), we headed on our way back down the shoreline to meet with Desi’s dad for dinner. This pirate encounter was one of my favourite moments in Varna Really was quite fun and unexpected!

P.S. sorry for the lack of updates. Currently I’m working ~60 hours a week and my free time since work has started again has been limited. Hopefully the updates will continue soon

Yarr har har!

It’s interesting to see how things change even only after a few weeks. Everything was much greener, and felt more “alive”. I spotted some interesting things here and there, and I thought I’d share.

This Red Trillium was a little off the beaten path. I hadn’t seen them in the area before, so it was a nice thing to find. There were two plants, and this was the bigger of the two.

It had just finished raining when I was out, so the water was still collected on many of the plants along the forest floor. This patch of greenery was a great example.

There are many more pictures below. I’m not sure what the names of the plants and critters are, but if anyone is reading this wants to fill me in it would be quite helpful!

Edit: Thanks for all the hints and identifications! I filled out the descriptions a little better

Also, I added another six banner images to the rotation. Below is my favourite, followed by the poll!

I’ve attended every performance they have done in Ontario so far.

Actually, more than that. I’ve volunteered to help out at every performance in Ontario. On March 13th and 14th they performed in Kitchener, where I helped out by running their costume contest and worked as a photographer. This grants me full backstage access and the ability to sit anywhere in the concert hall I’d like, which is simply amazing. So I spent my evenings last weekend taking photos of something I was passionate about, and filled my 16GB memory card twice. Here’s one of my favourite photos from the show:

Needless to say, it was a sold-out show both days.

The conductor, Jack Wall, is a video game composer himself. His recent success was with the Xbox 360 and PC game Mass Effect, one of my favourites from last year. He also did a lot of the music in the Myst series of games, among many, many others.

Tommy Tallarico, the main guitarist, is quite accomplished as well. He’s done a lot of composing himself (Earthworm Jim, Advent Rising to name a few) but also was a co-host on the G4/TechTV show Electric Playground.

The music was performed by Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. One of the best performances I’ve been to! They always use the local orchestra to do the performance.

Splitting Adam was touring with the group this time. They work for Electronic Arts and had a song featured in the game Need For Speed: Undercover. Great tunes from these guys as well, I wish them the best of luck!

All in all, it was a great show. There were a few new segments I hadn’t seen before, but even the older ones were great to hear again. Each show they always play a different set from their list of 30-40 different segments so it’s always something different. You’ll find a larger selection of photos below, and if you want the whole set of “keepers”, you can grab ‘em here (warning: a lot of photos). I’m not sure when they’ll play next in the area, but I’ll be sure to help out. Always a blast!

P.S. Almost all of the concert photos were taken at ISO 3200 or ISO 6400. I am extremely impressed with my cameras performance at these settings!

Music created for video games often has an extremely high production quality, and game music is probably the biggest market for composers. The orchestral scores of many big-ticket games are great to listen to. I’ll throw together a playlist of tunes while I do homework, edit photos, or just tinker with anything else.

So when I found out that Square Enix had a Final Fantasy XI Premium Box set of all the music from the massively-multiplayer role playing game, at clearance prices… I jumped on it! It arrived today. Holy crap is this a huge set! All of the soundtracks from the game and every expansion, plus a great piano remix CD – complete with all of the sheet music for every song! Well beyond my ability to play, but nice to have none-the-less.

This should keep me entertained until my new computer arrives… UPS says its on its way in a couple days

Switzerland To Be Devoured By Black Hole

I’m not sure who exactly these spammers are trying to attract, but a title as absurd as that actually made me check out the contents. the text contained in the e-mail reads: “Cindy Mccain Talks About Her Boobs” followed by a link to a phishing site. C’mon spammers, follow your crazy untrue news titles with equally hilarious content! Do Italy and France get devoured too? Was it because of that giant subatomic supercollider they built bordering Austria? Fill me in on uninformation!

As an every-day internet user and technology enthusiast, I always find myself with opinions or comments about the things around me. A blog seemed like the natural way for me to share these comments and observances with the word, so here I am!

Yeah, I’ve had tons of sites before, mostly relating to video games. here’s my attempt at something a little more personal, whether it be pointless quirky things barely worth talking about or deep philosophical monologues, you’ll get what’s on my mind.

Be warned!