The Brown Knowser

One of the reasons that I've been reluctant to take The Brown Knowser from a blog to a vlog is that, in writing a post, I can just plop my ass in front of a keyboard and bang out words. I don't have the best words, but I try. With a vlog, it takes more time and effort, depending on what I want to do. For a Beer O'Clock review, the time is relatively short and the effort is only slightly more than a regular blog post. But my last to beer vlog reviews took me more than four hours, from the inception of the beer choice, the setting up of cameras, etching out a pseudo-script (I lay out what I want to say but not how I actually say it), recording the review, editing it, and moving it onto YouTube. But if I want to tell a story and illustrate it with video, that can take days, if not weeks. (My video of Korea took months.) For about a month or so, I've had an idea for a video that I wanted to put together and share on my YouTube channel . If you're a regular ...

I was never a fan of the 80s Canadian band, The Pursuit of Happiness, but after the past 10 days or so, if I never hear them again, it would be too soon. The Pursuit of Happiness entered the charts in 1986 with their song, "I'm An Adult Now," which I still hear playing at least a couple of times a month on one of Ottawa's rock  radio stations. (I dislike that song as much now as I did when it first hit the airwaves.) Because I'm not a fan of this band, the only songs with which I am familiar are the ones that received the most airplay. The only other song I know, one that I used to actually like to a small degree, is their 1989 son, "She's So Young." I liked how the song just starts off swinging, with vocals by Moe Burg leading the charge, with the music jumping in right behind him. The chorus is harmoniously backed by sisters Natasha and Tamara Amabile. It's a feel-good song that gets your toe tapping and sticks in your head. And that...

I've kind of kept this on the down-low, but just a couple of days before Christmas, I bought a new D-SLR. I know: most of you don't care. Sure, you might like some of the photos I take, but does it really make a difference whether I shoot with a big camera or my smartphone? No. When I bought my previous D-SLR, in 2015, it was a 50 th birthday present to myself. And that Nikon D7200 was a vast improvement from my first D-SLR, a D80. But when I bought the D7200, I debated whether I should spend the extra money to go full-frame, and invest in a D750. No, was the verdict. I wasn't a professional photographer : why drop so much money on something that is purely a hobby? If I wanted to spend wisely, I told myself, invest in glass. And so, I bought the D7200 (a damned, fine camera) but put more money into a new lens, the 24-70mm, f/2.8G ED AF-S. Over the years, I've taken some of my best photos with this camera and lens, but at times I wished that I could get just a ...

This Throwback Thursday doesn't go back too far. Last autumn, as I was contemplating returning to blogging (three present participles in a row!), I was also contemplating moving The Brown Knowser to YouTube , to bring it from the world of blogs to being a vlog. I began to think about what I would capture on video and which camera I would use. One afternoon, as I was driving home from work, I decided to stop in the Arboretum, just off Prince of Wales Drive, near the Central Experimental Farm. I had both my Nikon D7200 D-SLR and my Insta360 One X video camera. It was a mostly cloudy day, with the sun making only an occasional appearance, and the autumn leaves on the myriad trees were aglow in oranges, yellows, pinks, reds, and greens. I wandered underneath the colourful foliage and roamed up and down the steep hill that led to the Rideau Canal. I put my video camera to work, and composed some short videos, which I shared to Instagram . You can see the videos here , and here ,...

This week is all about the past: things I did when I wasn't blogging and things that I did after I started up The Brown Knowser again, but haven't shared yet. Last September, my youngest daughter was invited to perform a couple of numbers with Ottawa blues artist, JW Jones , at a show at Queen St. Fare. My daughter has performed with JW before, at his youth series, #613FutureBlues , and last year he was so impressed by her progress that he invited her to be a special guest drummer at his September show. I saw JW last Friday, performing a Valentine's Day show, and we chatted about this year's #613FutureBlues show, and he's aiming to hold it in April. If you know of any young musician, aged 13 to 18 years old (my kid is only 16), stay tuned for information about how to audition. Anyway, back to last September's show. It's been a few years since I've run a Music Monday post, and I thought I would share my daughter's performance. Two songs, an...

Not much else to say here... Happy Friday, and Happy Valentine's Day!

Over the years, I've shared some embarrassing photos of the hair styles of my youth, but none have been more embarrassing than when I was in my early 20s, in the late 1980s. (Well, there was that Year of the 'Fro , but let's not speak of that.) A couple of days ago, as I was searching through old photo albums (remember when we used to print photographs and place them in binders?), looking for images of DW and me, in our early years of dating and travelling, I came across some photos that stood out. Not because they were well-composed, properly focused, or of any real interest, but because of what stood out, more than anything else, in the pictures. My hair. They were snapshots taken of me. Portraits, of a kind. Shot from the waist up, with me standing on a slight angle, in half-profile but head mostly facing the lens. The first shot stood out, to a lesser degree, because I was wearing a respirator and face shield. I immediately remembered the day. A datestamp, fad...

A week or so after DW and I started dating, in 1989, we went to the movies to see Working Girl , starring Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, and Melanie Griffith. As the movie ended, Griffith's character, Tess McGill, looked out the window of her new office, and the camera showed the Manhattan skyline, I leaned over to DW and said, "Let's go to New York City." Two weeks later, we were in the Big Apple. Battery Park, NYC, 1989 We had never travelled together before, and yet we packed up our bags, met with my best friend and his girlfriend, and spent a long weekend away from what we found comfortable. It's not as though either of us had never travelled before. Just the year before, I had flown to Scotland, to visit a friend who was studying at Glasgow University, and then took a train, solo, from Glasgow to Berlin, Germany, via London, the English Channel, and the Netherlands. DW had been to Europe with her sister, who lived in Paris at the time. But trav...

I meant to send this post out a week ago, after I had completed my Dry January challenge and could resume sampling some amazing craft beer. Though I didn't consume any alcohol in January, I did drink plenty of alcohol-free beer. As I said in a Beer O'Clock video post , Partake Brewing, in Toronto, makes some pretty decent beer for those who are abstaining from alcohol and also don't want to load up on calories from soda (the beer is only 10 calories per can!). I reviewed their pale ale, but they also make an amazing stout that I loaded up on at Broue Ha Ha in Gatineau. Staying away from booze was not a challenge for me: I've gone dry many times over the years without breaking a sweat. The goal for me was to see if that cutting out the extra calories would reduce my waistline. I also challenged myself to cutting out sugar and to avoid the types of food that I love, but don't need. That part of the challenge was hard. One evening, DW cracked open a box of Ch...

It's been a while since I stopped on Bate Island. It's not usually along my route, anymore. My crossing to and from work, across the Ottawa River, tends to be the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge, the most easterly bridge in Ottawa. The Champlain Bridge, which is the city's most westerly bridge, isn't one I choose to cross. But with DW's foot still mending from a bad break, following a fall last December, I am her chauffeur, must drive her to work and pick her up. And so, the Champlain Bridge is where I cross, once again. I'm pretty good at predicting my ETA, as I leave my Gatineau office and head to DW's place of work. My last text to her, before I left work for the day, was that I should be in front of her building by 5:20 at the latest. As I crossed the Champlain Bridge, the sun was just setting, was just falling beneath the treeline that hides the town of Aylmer, on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. There is a mix of clear sky and cloud, and the colou...