The Brown Knowser

I used to love the adage that it's sometimes easier to beg forgiveness than to seek permission. There are many things that I've done in life where I thought there were risks in performing them. If they worked out, great: if not, I hoped I'd be forgiven. Many years ago, I wrote about how a friend and I ran into each other while trying to photograph the same thing. We were looking to get night shots of a historic Ottawa building that was lit up with Christmas lights, only the premises was surrounded by an iron gate and fencing. When a car exited the grounds through the open gate, my friend and I snuck in and found a spot where we could capture better images . But we had to wait for someone else to open the gate before we could get out again. From a legal standpoint, we were trespassing. But considering our intentions, I don't think anyone would have ever pressed charges if we got caught. We would have begged forgiveness. For a couple of weeks, I've been thinking of go...

DW told me that my blog layout, which I've had for at least six years, looks dated. I liked the look of The Brown Knowser page but I had to admit that the dark grey background with orange titles needed a refresh. I told her that I'd look into some new templates but that the process could take some time, as I don't like to just pick a style off the rack and be done with it. Even with my old layout, I adjusted some colours, changed the page widths, and made some other changes. As I said, I liked that look and was happy using it all these years. But a fresh look might make it more appealing to you (I don't know how anybody felt about the old look, if you felt anything either way). So, today's look is what I quickly came up with. I made some minor tweaks to the default settings for this template and added my own image for the background of the blog title. But I don't think I'm done. While this looks okay (to me), it doesn't grab me. DW likes it but my eyes ...

For as far back as I can remember, Thursday night was the night for watching TV. For more than 10 years, before NBC came up with it's Must See TV slogan, I would commit myself to having my homework done before 9:00 (if I even did my homework at all) and would spend the rest of the evening, in front of out TV screen, watching my favourite shows. From our visit to Boston in 2011. I was 17 when the NBC comedy Cheers debuted. In 1982, I was entering into the 11th grade at high school and had established a close circle of friends, some going as far back as elementary school. And every Friday morning, before homeroom, we would discuss the antics of Sam Malone and Diane Chambers, the trivial knowledge of Cliff Clavin, and the snappy comebacks from beer-loving Norm Peterson. When I was in journalism school, I didn't watch this show as ritually because Thursday nights were spent with my friends and colleagues in Bert's Bar, though I would try to get home in time to watch one of m...