The Brown Knowser

I wrote this post, starting at 12:03 this morning. Forgive me if I'm brief, but I'm exhausted. For most of the day, yesterday, I tore up my ensuite bathroom, replacing our old vanity of three cupboard doors for a larger one with two cupboard doors that are framed on each end with a set of drawers. His and hers. I'm not a handyman, but so far I've handled the plumbing with only a few snags: no shutoff valves (now solved), a drain pipe that was at a funny angle and had to be cut off (to be replaced today), and learning that my flex tubes are a couple of inches too short (to be remedied today). I also needed extra tools that I didn't have, but had family members loan them to me. And in the reno, Lori decided that she wanted the mirror replaced too. I just love holiday weekends, don't you? Actually, I'm recording my progress and may share this educational experience in an upcoming blog post. In the meantime, while I'm rebuilding my bathroom, wh...

Of course, I love my mom. I also love Maman . For those of you who do not live in Ottawa, who have never visited my fair city, or know anything about the plenitude of attractions this city has to offer, let me tell you that the jewel of Canada's capital is, in my humble opinion, the National Gallery of Canada. Within its confines is some of the best art that this country has to offer, plus the exhibitions that highlight works from around the globe. Even the building itself is an architectural gem, with its high-reaching columns and glass, its fountains, and its hallways. Outside the gallery, in the main plaza at the front, stands a colossal statue by Parisienne artist, Louise Bourgeois. It is an eight-legged creature made of bronze, stainless steel, and marble: the marble being the eggs of the female spider, entitled Maman . When Maman arrived at the gallery, in 2004, there was, as there always is, controversy over the expenditure on such a piece of art. The $3.2 million...

Are you a lover or are you a hater? I'm not a religious person but I firmly believe in the axiom that is held in all realms of faith: treat a person as you would like to be treated. I'm not a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination, but I try to be a good person. I try to treat people in a respectful manner, to behave towards them in a way in which I would like them to reciprocate. I've been following the news coming out of the United States on the same-sex marriage bill, and I've seen photos, of both sides, of people waving signs condemning gay marriage and others bashing the gay-haters. From what I see, there's a lot of hate going on. While I can understand the frustration of the supporters of gay rights, I think that they should firmly focus their attention on support for the people who are looking to have equal rights bestowed on them. Gay rights are human rights, and that kind of thing. I, being a supporter of same-sex marriage, join in the...

Several months ago, I wrote about how I joined a photographer's meetup group , that I joined this group to learn more about photography and to try shooting different things. However, since then, the only thing I seem to have done is to attend model shoots and gain some experience working with studio lighting and women in various states of disrobement. Not that that's a bad thing. I did attend a workshop that challenged me to take a self portrait that showed an emotion. That sort of worked: I don't know how well I conveyed an emotion but I liked the picture so much that I use it for this blog (look to your right, my friends). Yesterday, we were given a challenge to shoot three images of the same subject and present it in monochrome—a single colour. Judging by the conversations that went around over this shoot, a lot of people seemed unclear as to what was expected. Here is my impression of the theme for this shoot: What do you think? (For the project, I di...

I've never been one to shy away from commitment. Once, when I took a full-time job at a financial institute, the manager asked me to commit to staying with the bank for at least a year. It wasn't the career of my choice: I had started at the bank as a part-timer while I was in university. When I graduated, there were few to no jobs in my chosen field. I'm an English major. Go figure. So, when I was asked to commit to staying full-time for a year, I agreed. And I stayed for almost two-and-a-half years. I wasn't afraid of commitment. Lori and I moved in together after dating for about two-and-a-half years. Another two-and-a-half years after that, we married. We've been together for 24 years, this month. In that time, we've had two wonderful, gorgeous girls, and the fun hasn't stopped. So, no, I'm not scared of commitment. At least, I wasn't scared of commitment until this weekend. A few weeks ago, Lori signed the two of us up for the Ri...

Spring finally arrived this week, though you'd barely know it. Winter left us with a bang, dumping about 15cm of snow on Ottawa. Since then, it has snowed every day of the new season. Hmph, I said. While there is nothing we can do about the weather, we can try to make the best of it. So why not get your mind off the fact that we still have to shovel our driveways by starting your weekend off with a roundup of this week's posts in The Brown Knowser ? I'm No Spammer —for years, I had escaped the perils of being hacked. Now, twice in about the last four or five months, my e-mail has sent out bogus messages. But if you know my MO, you'll be able to tell if that e-mail really came from me. Wordless Wednesday: The Last Day of Winter —but not the last day of winter weather. I took a moment away from my Bate Island Project to show you other parts of this island. What I Am —do I really portray myself accurately on my blog? Photo Friday: My "Studio" —how I ma...

Someday, I hope to have a studio. A space where I can set up a couple of soft boxes and have a few backdrops. Nothing fancy. At first. In the meantime, I use what I have, which is essentially nothing. After all, most of my photos are not staged: they're shot where the action occurs. The majority of my shots don't need backdrops or fancy lighting. So far, the only time when I could really use a studio is when I shoot still photos of objects: namely, the beers that I review. When I shoot a freshly poured glass of ale and the bottle it comes in, it's nice to have a white backdrop. But I don't have a studio, so I improvise. Take today's beer review , which was shot like almost all of the beers that I've reviewed. The bottle and glass are all that you see. The base that they rest upon and the background are bright white. But the shot isn't taken in a studio. It's shot in my kitchen. My kitchen table is positioned at the back of my house, right by...

I have a little notebook that I keep on me, just in case I think of an idea for a blog post and need to jot it down. Because some of my ideas are fleeting and I don't remember them two minutes later. Yes, my mind works like that. Many weeks ago, I had an idea for a post that talked about the sincerity of my blog and whether my readers were getting a picture of the real me. Was I accurately portraying myself or was I only showing the happy, carefree me who seemed to have his shit together and was leading a rosy life? A couple of days ago, I read a blog post by my friend, Miriam , who essentially conveyed the same thoughts that I was bouncing around in my head. And yesterday, while working from home, I listened to an article on CBC Radio's Spark (Nora Young, by the way, has the sexiest radio voice) that explored the cyberworld and how people present themselves to others. Because I'm a writer, I tell stories on my blog: some are totally fictitious, some are true, and ...

Bate Island

Last week, some of you may have received an e-mail from me that contained a date and time for the Subject line and a hyperlink. There was nothing else in the message. If you received that e-mail, I hope you didn't click the link. Because it wasn't from me. My e-mail list got hacked, and surprisingly, many folks who I know only through LinkedIn were also affected, which made me wonder if there was a hacker working his or her way through that social media. What bothers me the most about getting hacked is that people tend to distrust anything that comes from you in the future. It makes it difficult if I want to send you an e-mail in the future with a legitimate link. Because I'm a writer, I tend to put some thought into any correspondence I send. So I'll place a clear title in the Subject line and I will preface any hyperlink with an explanation about where I'm planning to take you. If I post a message from my laptop, my e-mail account includes a signature tha...

This is just a blog post to say that there is no blog post today. Yesterday, I was having too much fun celebrating St. Paddy's Day and we entertained a family dinner that ran late with lots of animated discussions and lots of drinks flowing. By the time I had cleaned up, I was too tired to sit in front of the computer. I'll be back at it tonight and will hopefully have something that will make up for today.

It's been a busy week for my blogging; not just at The Brown Knowser , but also at Beer O'Clock . Typically, I try to write six posts each week on The Brown Knowser (including this round-up) and perhaps two, maybe three posts on my beer blog. If I get eight or nine posts written in one week, I consider that a productive week. This week, with this post put to bed, I have 11 entries on my two blogs. No wonder I'm so tired. If you haven't read my posts so far, here's what you've missed. Get comfortable, 'cos there's a lot to read. On The Brown Knowser : The Bate Island Project —it's not a 365 project, but I hope it will be interesting to see how this next year plays out in one spot. Better Late Than Never? —I finally get around to fulfilling a promise, six months later. With my apologies to Shaun Majumder. Wordless Wednesday: Spring Skiing —okay, it's not spring yet. But it sure felt that way last Sunday on the slopes. Dealing with N...

S ometimes, I think that posts like this one are a big of a sham. Because it's Friday, I've made a ritual of showing you a photo. Preferably, it's a photo that I shot this week: something fresh and creative. But because I didn't get out with my camera much this week, apart from when I went skiing on Sunday and with my Bate Island Project, I came up short with fresh photos. Last night, in a panic, I took some closeups of a collection of beer bottle caps that I've amassed, using my 40mm micro lens, but ultimately I wasn't happy with any of the shots that I took. So I went through my archives, looking at some of the slides that I scanned but hadn't sorted. And I came up with this one. This is a photo that I shot in 1988. On that particular morning, I arose long before the sun rose and drove all over Nepean. I took photos of old churches, of farms, of railway crossings, and, as the sun came over the horizon, foggy roadsides. Last week's Photo Fri...

As a parent, I've learned that if one of my kids screams and fusses, and threatens any other kid by waving something in their faces that could be used as a weapon, I take that thing away and I give them a time out. The parallels of this situation with North Korea. For decades, this reclusive, repressive nation has been led by megalomaniacs who have brainwashed their people into believing that they are deities. They have misled the citizens of this impoverished land that the West is evil but weak, and through the benevolence of their chosen one, they haven't crushed this foe. But every once and a while, this puny territory feels it needs to flex its scrawny muscles for the benefit of its people and to taunt the others around it. Just like a little kid. When I lived in South Korea, from 1997 to 1999, we heard the rhetoric and threats from the neighbours to the north. How the leader, Kim Jong-il, would turn the south into "a sea of flames." I used those words i...

I'm so lame. There are times when I can drag my butt so badly that it carves a groove in the ground. And lately, I tend to do it more after I've made a promise to do something. Back in the fall, I was the official photographer for the Barrhaven Oktoberfest , hosted by HogsBack Brewing . It was a lot of fun, especially when I got to meet George Wendt and share a beer with the former star of Cheers! Another great celebrity with whom I'm a fan is Shaun Majumder, of 22 Minutes and Majumder Manor fame. Shaun participated in a couple games through the day, while filming for 22 Minutes (when I watched the segment on TV that week, I saw myself for perhaps a half of a second), such as the stein race and the stein hold, where contestants held a large stein full of beer, arm outstretched, for as long as they could without spilling any beer. Over the course of the day, Shaun and I chatted, and he even met my parents (my mom even bought him a beer). Eventually, Shaun ask...

Okay, this isn't exactly a 365 project, but it's a project nonetheless. Earlier this year (I think... I no longer have any concept of time), I planned to start a photo project whereby I would take a photo every day for a year. I thought I would do a self-portrait project : a different photo of me for every day. I don't like to take photos of myself, so after some consideration I convinced myself that I couldn't take a photo of myself every day for a year. I may still take some self portraits over the year, but not every day. I did think of just taking a photo of anything every day for a year, but I wanted a theme, and I just couldn't come up with one. Pathetic, yes? Four days a week, I drive over the Champlain Bridge to and from work. And almost every time, I look at the beauty of the Ottawa River, looking to the expanse of the river to the west and the downtown core of the city to the east. And it hit me: I wasn't going to do a 365 project this year...

You may have noticed that over the past two weekends, I didn't post a weekly roundup of posts from The Brown Knowser . Did you notice? Two weeks ago, I was recovering from a nasty flu bug and wasn't even posting regular blog pieces. At the hour that I usually reserve for blogging, I was curled up in bed, in the fetal position, wondering when I was going to be better. I did recover, later that weekend, but by then I was worried about future blog posts, not in reflecting on the few I had posted the previous week. Last Friday, I was hit with food poisoning, and was once again sent to bed, crossing my fingers that I didn't have a bout of a gastro-intestinal bug that was going around. I can't believe that I was happy to learn, on Saturday morning, that my thoughts of food poisoning was confirmed. And so, again, my weekly roundup went unposted. I was actually considering dropping this Saturday summary, but a couple of you wrote to me and wanted to know why I had d...

Do you remember I wrote a story about growing up in Nepean and how I used to explore the field that separated my neighbourhood from the back of the K-Mart Plaza that used to run along Merivale Road, near Meadowlands? I used to roam that area with my good friend, Jeremy. If you haven't read that post, you can go there from this link after you've finished with this post . I was looking at some old slides, from 1988, and I came across a photo I shot in that area. By then, most of the trees had been felled, most of the field plowed. Some development was beginning. These were the last of the trees from that era, planted behind the old fire station that was next to the McDonalds. Today, they're all gone. This spot of land is now occupied by a Toys R Us. Gone is the field of my childhood. *Sigh.* Happy Friday, anyway.

One of the things that I love about my Where In Ottawa challenge is that, in thinking up clues I learn a lot of interesting facts about my city. Take this month's location , which was solved yesterday. The building, which is the Old Ottawa South Community Centre and was once the Ottawa South Fire Hall (Craham Station No. 10), is in a part of the city that was tentatively named Rideauville. I did not know that. I was going to use that tidbit as a clue, had the contest gone to the end of the week, but winner Cheryl Hynes needed only the photo and the two clues I posted to solve the puzzle. Here's how the clues break down: In the old 'hood: this neighbourhood, which lies on the south side of the Rideau Canal from Lansdowne Park, has recently been called Old Ottawa South (instead of plain ol' Ottawa South) to distinguish it from the southern expanse of Ottawa, also known as South Ottawa. The fire's out: the fire station is now a community centre. The fire ...