The Brown Knowser

Looking back at my favourite photos that I shot in 2022 , I was surprised that only half of the images that I shared were taken with a D-SLR. The remaining photographs were either captured with my smartphone or with one of my 360-degree cameras. When 2023 started, I knew that I had to get off my ass and make more of an effort to get back into the swing of what is my favourite hobby. The pandemic made me lazy and I was getting rusty. I vowed that at the beginning of this year, I would get out more often and put some thought into my craft. Three months into this year, my D-SLRs continued to gather dust. It wasn't until April that I actually made more of an effort to capture images. Initially, I had planned to take as many photos in a month and then choose the best of that month to share with you. But because I only went out one time in January and practically stayed home through February and March, rarely even taking photos with my smartphone, I've gone back to simply choosing th...

I think there be bots afoot. When I post a blog entry, it usually hums along and picks up a few viewers each hour, and gradually winds down in viewership as the days go by and new blog posts come along. In the course of a month, I used to see about 50 to 60 views for that blog post. And then, every once and a while I'd see a couple of hundred views in a single hour. Usually, this number would happen in the middle of the night, while I slept, and would be a shock to me when I checked my stats in the morning, while I would be setting up a link to the post, to share on social media. Sometimes, I'd see a thousand views in less than an hour. Bots. It's got to be bots. This year has been a tremendous one in the number of viewers to The Brown Knowser . For all of you real people who have supported by blog, I thank you warmly and deeply. You are the reason I keep going. Whether real or artificial, there are some blog posts that have stood out as being more popular than others,...

I first posted this story in 2011 and have made it my holiday tradition ever since. For its tenth anniversary, I've made some minor edits. If you haven't read it before, I hope you enjoy it. If you have read it before, I'm hoping that you make it your holiday tradition in reading it again. Merry Christmas and best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season! At first, we did it out of excitement for the season and impatience, unable to wait until morning. Later, it became a game about how far we could go, about how much risk we were willing to take. It was a test in organizational skills and stealth. In time, it would become a ritual. The first time we crept from our bedrooms and down the stairs, anxious to see what Santa had left us, my younger sister, Jen, and I faced our biggest obstacle: each other. "Go to bed," I whispered, not wanting her to make any noise, thereby arousing the attention of our parents, who had only a half hour ago, or earlier, had gone to be...

First told in December, 2014, this Christmas tale is now a  Brown Knowser  holiday tradition. If you're new to my blog, I hope you enjoy it; if you've read it before, I hope that it puts you in the holiday spirit. He  never cared for Secret Santas in the office, or anywhere, for that matter.  He  d id n't feel the need to pick a random name from a hat and then try to figure out something about  that practical stranger  ( he  just kn e w  that, as luck  would have it, he would  pick  the name of someone  that worked in a distant part of the office, someone that he  d id n't know well), and he would then spend money and time choosing a gift that  would  not enrich the life of that individual , would not be something  t hat  would  give th at individual  anything that  he or she would  truly want. He  used to participate in Secret Santa at work, feeling compelled by peer press...

This blog post was originally posted on December 20, 2011, and has become a traditional  Brown Knowser  holiday tale. Over the years, I've cleaned it up here and there and have brought it up to date, now that my kids have grown. If you have read it before, I hope you enjoy it again. If this is your first read, I hope it won't be your last. © 1966 Warner Home Video. All rights reserved. On some level, I'm not a fan of Christmas. I'm not interested in decorating the house nor in sending out greeting cards (actually, the entire Brown Knowser family has pretty much given up on that activity). Nor am I, especially, in heading out to the stores to shop. I hate going near shopping malls and department stores at any time of year, but I particularly loathe going out at this time of year: fighting crowds, standing in lines, searching for that ever-elusive parking space. No, thank you very much. Not being a religious person, the spiritual side of Christmas is lost on a cynic like ...

We have no tree. We have no indoor decorations. Stockings have not been hung by the fireplace, though I suspect that DW will pull those out, eventually. The oversized Christmas coffee mugs are still packed away in the basement, hardly worth pulling out at this point. Not a single treat has been baked. We have outdoor lights, strung along the top eavestrough, above the garage, and around to our front steps, where they twist around a supporting pillar. More lights on the trellis that is mounted to the side of the garage, near our porch. But that's it. Our house is in complete disarray as we continue with our renovation of the upstairs flooring. There's just no way that we'll have that project completed before Christmas Day. And this means that our living room will still have slats of hardwood, meaning that the focal point of our Christmas morning will be out of bounds. My mother is hosting a Christmas dinner but on Christmas Eve for the first time, ever. Also, for the first t...

It's the quickest video that I've made of this kind. On the computer that I've had for years (indeed, the very computer that I've used to compose this blog post), using the video-editing software that DW gave me, years ago, an 11-minute video would have taken me at least 20 hours to put together from bits of MP4 clips. A couple of weeks ago, DW bought herself a powerful new laptop, with a fast processor and video card, and downloaded new video editing software. She talked about upgrading our computer a few weeks back, and she had an old work computer that was similar but not as powerful, upon which she let me try a test video to see how fast it would be. You can see that test video here . On her brand-new MacBook, I produced my latest YouTube video. As I said, producing this video on our old system would have taken me at least 20 hours. Mind you, I did have to watch a couple of tutorials to understand the new software, but even including that time, I produced my lat...

We had ordered the wood on the day before I found out that a surgical cancellation would bump me up on the list. Though this was a project that DW wanted to lead , my help was essential. Kid 1, who was recruited to help DW, is strong but there are some pieces of our bedroom furniture that even I struggle to move. DW and I made significant progress , removing the carpet from the hallway, the study, and Kid 1's bedroom. We had removed all staples, tightened and added more screws to ensure the subfloor was solid, and installed the nosing for the top of the stairs and along the base of the bannister. But that was only the first weekend. The following week was busy with other things. DW had started a new job and was fully involved with going to the gym and playing pickleball. Her weeknights were pretty busy. And of course, last Friday, I went in to the hospital to have my appendix removed , which has effectively taken me out of action until January. I can barely bend over and I'm li...

I should have tried this beer during Octoberfest. I normally pass the imported beer section when I visit my friendly neighbourhood LCBO , and I really shouldn't. I mean, the Ontario craft beer scene is awesome but it's not the be-all and end-all. I should learn to broaden my horizons. And it wasn't in the LCBO where I found this German ale. I just happened to be cutting down an aisle in one of my local grocery stores, heading toward the front cashiers, and I happened to make a shortcut of the beer and wine aisle. Coincidence. Pure coincidence. I saw a lot of cans that I recognized but my eyes fell upon this seemingly festive label. And while the illustration on the can isn't a Christmas-festive theme, the greens and reds, mixed with the foliage at the top of the can—accentuated, no doubt, by the Christmas music that was flooding the store's speaker system—made me think of the holidays. I'm no stranger to the Paulaner Brewery label. I've had beer from this Mu...

I know exactly why this 1977 song came into my head. Words stick when you're waiting, and for me, stuck words can often become musical. I arrived at the day-surgery waiting room right on time, even though the orderly said that I was early. Early for the surgery, yes: early for when I was told to be there, no. As soon as the orderly saw my name, he informed me that there would be a delay as there were two emergency cases that required the OR. Without getting into detail, he turned and went through a door, beyond which I could see rows of lockers. A few minutes later, a nurse came to me and apologized, explaining that because of ER demand, whenever an emergency required immediate surgery, the day-surgery OR was used. There were two cases that had just arrived and would need to use the OR ahead of me. While she didn't know how long my procedure would be delayed, she told me that she didn't think it would be worth my while to go home and wait. It's hard to get upset about b...

When Google makes editing suggestions to the photos that I've shot on my smartphone, I usually ignore them. "No, thanks, Google," I think, as though I'm in a telepathic conversation with my phone, "if I want to modify one of my photos, I'll do it myself." Ninety-nine percent of the time that I accept an edit suggestion from Google, I end up reverting back to my original photo. And anyway, most of the time I'll run a photo through Snapseed to edit it right away, so Google is suggesting a change to a photo that I've already edited. Nope. But lately, I've noticed a new suggestion that Google makes to my photos: Magic Eraser. Not knowing what it was, I tapped the button to see what would happen. What could go wrong? If I didn't like what the feature did, I could undo it. I chose one of the photos that I captured of the setting sun, outside the St. Lawrence Market, in old Toronto. For reference, here's the original photo without any editin...