The Brown Knowser

Okay, it seems like I've talked about karaoke a lot this month, when, in reality, I've only written two posts before this one. This is my third post, this month, about this hobby. Last Friday, when I met some people at Conspiracy Theory's karaoke night , one of the guys told me that there's a weekly karaoke event in a mall that's close to my house. He said that it's held every Wednesday in a basement area in the Barrhaven Mall. As he described the venue, he said that you go down the set of stairs where the mall transitions from a single-level strip mall to a two-story office building. I knew the place well: both kids had attended the Nepean School of Music and had also taken classes at Kou's Taekwon-do. But the basement in the Barrhaven Mall was pretty tight, the last time I was down there, waiting for Kid 2 to emerge from a drum lesson. Where would they hold a karaoke night? When Wednesday came, I thought I'd do a bit of research. I typed karaoke barrha...

This isn't a Wordless Wednesday . I felt this post required a little explanation. Usually, when I take photos in a studio with my photography meetup group, I focus solely on getting my shots of our subject. After all, that's what I'm there for. But on my last photo shoot, at the beginning of this month, I felt I needed to get our surroundings captured, just to show what it's like while you're waiting for your turn with the model. And so here are a couple of behind-the-scenes peeks of our shoot with Ira Balan (careful: her Bluesky feed is NSFW). I still haven't finished going through all of my shots from that shoot but I'll share some more, for a Wordless Wednesday . You can see past posts of Ira here and here . Those posts are also NSFW. Happy Wednesday!

This isn't what I expected. A few weeks ago, I had planned to check out a Bells Corners brew pub, which hosted a weekly karaoke night, to see if I'd be able to practice singing new songs before I tried them out on my friends who are also avid karaoke singers. The first time I arrived at Conspiracy Theory Brewing on my own, it was filled with people who were celebrating someone's retirement. I stepped in the doorway, saw all the suits and dresses, and did a 180 out of there. I then learned that the brewhouse and kitchen was moving it's Thursday karaoke to Friday. I couldn't go for the first Friday because it was DW's birthday, but I promised myself that I would go the next week. And that was last Friday. As I had hoped, the spacious dining area was mostly empty. Someone was at the microphone: a man who appeared to be in his mid-60s, belting out a song I didn't recognize with a beautiful voice. Stiff competition, if this was a singing contest. Luckily, it...

I sent a message to all of my contacts on WhatsApp that I was deleting my account. About 24 hours later, I did just that. I didn't have many contacts, to be fair, and I have lots of ways in which we can keep in touch. Quitting WhatsApp wasn't a hardship. What was hard was saying goodbye to the hundreds of people who followed me on Instagram. Last Thursday, I posted a message stating my reasons for quitting my Meta apps. I said that I'd be closing my account within a few days. I downloaded my data from Instagram, and as soon as I had confirmation that the download was completed, I pulled the trigger. More than 4,400 photos and more than 14 years of memory. I mean, I still have the photos, or most of them, anyway. There will be some that I shot on the spur of the moment, strictly with the intention of sharing them on that photo app. The rest of them have been stored in my photo database, on a couple of external hard drives. For anyone who's ever wanted to reach me, I have...

Buh-bye. I left Twitter the very day that Musk took it over. On the day that Zuck gave the Orange Felon $1M for his inauguration, I left Threads. There was no looking back. I stopped using Facebook at the end of 2019 (wow... that's five years ago!) because my feed was constantly filling up with garbage posts that I wasn't interested in. I only wanted to see content from my family and friends. I had kept the account open, though, to keep in contact with family members with which this platform was the only way we kept in contact. This week, however, I deleted my account. I'm also in the process of getting rid of WhatsApp. I've recently opened a Signal account and encourage anyone who has my phone number to connect with me there. The only Meta account that remains is Instagram, and that one's going to be hard to quit, though I'll probably pull the plug on it in the coming days. Say goodbye to more than 4,400 photos... I've opened a Pixelfed account but so far, ...

It was never my intention to abstain from beer consumption in January. In fact, on New Year's Day, as we hosted dinner for my folks and Kid 2, who wasn't able to join us over the Christmas holidays, I had two pints over the course of our evening. They were cans of beer that I had reviewed in early December and I wanted to make space in my beer fridge, so wanted to use them up. My father and Kid 2 helped me use up several cans, too. And yet, after making space in my mini fridge, I didn't replenish the void for a few more weeks. I wasn't drinking beer at all, even though my fridge wasn't completely empty. No, I wasn't participating in Dry January: it just seemed that I'd feel like pouring myself a can—usually, after work (Work mode: OFF; Beer mode: ON)—but I'd never actually head down to the basement to retrieve a can. And with the passing of our New Year's dinner, I only had two cans of beer left in the fridge. I placed an online order for beer but ev...

Last month, when DW and I were in Akumal Bay, Mexico, with four of our close friends, I had arrived with expectations of making another travel video of our favourite Mayan Riviera resort. But after a few days of relaxation and spending time with our friends, I decided that a video wasn't as important, so with the exception of capturing video footage of what we saw while snorkelling, I didn't capture much else . One of my underwater cameras even failed me, so footage—especially of a couple of sea turtles—didn't quite turn out. When DW and I returned home from our trip, I still took the time to remove all video footage from my cameras and edit the clips. But then they sat in storage for a few more weeks. This weekend, however, I decided to see if there was anything that I could put together for a video. Of the more than 30 minutes of clips, I had enough to put a video that might bring back some memories to my friends. The video is less than three minutes long. Perhaps it m...

For many years, my friends and I have been attending karaoke nights around the city, enjoying each other's company and doing something that we like to do: sing. We've actually become rather serious about it. Some friends have actually purchased home karaoke equipment to practice for when we meet at a club, bar, or restaurant. We've also downloaded karaoke apps, which not only let us try out a song before we hit the stage but also let us know if the song is generally available on singing platforms. When I come up with a song that I want to sing, I'll check to see if one of the largest karaoke systems, KaraFun, has the song. I usually pick a song with which I'm already familiar, so I only need to make sure that I have the lyrics down solidly. Occasionally, I'll pick a song that I've heard of but may not be overly familiar with the lyrics, or may not even know the words at all. In that case, I'll listen to the song several times, just taking in the vocalist...

I missed the beard. Sure, it was itchy, grew so long that my moustache was curling under my upper lip, getting in the way with my eating and drinking. If I wanted to pluck a whisker from the 'stache, all I had to do was bite down on it and smile. Gross, I know. Last summer, when I grew my beard , there was no conscious decision to do so. I just didn't shave on one weekend, and on the following Monday, I awoke later than usual and skipped shaving so that I could be at my desk for when my usual workday starts. From then, I got in the habit of not shaving; not from wanting to have a beard but out of laziness. By the time my beard filled in, I was used to it. But I was never attached to the beard, and then one day, I decided to shave it off without giving it much thought. Last month, I saw some of the photos that I had captured of me, with the beard, and I told myself that I didn't look too bad in it. I saw one of my kayaking videos , where I had the beard, and I actually star...

I was yesterday years old when I learned a new trick on my mobile photo-editing app, Snapseed . Anybody who uses Instagram to post a portrait-oriented photo knows that Instagram crops an image to no larger than 5 x 4, and that can sometimes be rather limiting. It has no problem with a landscape ratio of 9:16, but turn that image on its side and you're screwed. Luckily, Snapseed has helped me get around that issue with a editing feature called Expand. You can take your image and add a border to it—the border can be either black or white, or you can use the Smart mode, which uses AI (I'm assuming) to determine which colour of border works best with your image. Because I use the dark viewing style of Instagram (heck, I use the dark setting on any app that offers it), I tend to pick the black border. When I import that expanded image into Instagram and maximize the size of the image, the top and bottom borders are cut off and the vertical image appears the way I want it to. Oc...

If I said "thank you" a million times, it wouldn't be enough. In June of 2011, I started this blog. It was my third blog, the first being a journal of what was going on with me and my family, intended for friends and family members who wanted to know what we were up to. I also created Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary , where I published the raw, rough-draft chapters that would eventually become my novel, which was published in 2012. Today, only the first chapter remains available to read on that old blog. When I was seeing more and more people reading Brownfoot Journal , I decided to create another blog that was separate from my family life—sort of—and was just an outlet for my thoughts and opinions. That other blog is what you're now reading. The Brown Knowser blog has been my outlet for nearly 14 years, where I've shared my thoughts, photos, fiction, music interests, my YouTube videos, and more. And for some reason, my readers like what I've had to share. Thank ...

I had actually published this YouTube video four days before My Best Photos of 2024 . Earlier, in the spring of 2024, I had posted a highlights video of Costa Rica, promising more to come throughout the year but never did anything with the hundreds of clips that DW and I had captured of our two-week excursion around this beautiful Central-American country. I became preoccupied with making kayaking videos, telling myself that I'd eventually get around to editing and producing the Costa Rican videos later. When December came around, I knew I had to get my butt into gear. And so, in fairly quick succession, I put out three videos. I've already shared the first and second videos with you, and between Christmas and New Years Eve, I produced the third installment, which covers the Pacific coast around Dominical (including Dominicalito, Uvita, and more), the Copey District (which includes San Gerardo de Dota and the Parque Nacional Los Quetzales), and our return to San Jose, where...

Happy 2025, folks! Despite the challenges that will no doubt face us in the new year, I am confident that if we stand by one another, we'll get through it, together. If you've seen yesterday's blog post, this may seem like simply a repeat of that post. Also, I've never really been one to make new year's resolutions, but I've decided that I do need to make some changes for 2025. For nearly 14 years, The Brown Knowser blog has been one of my passion projects. I love to write and my blog has been an outlet for my writing. Photography is my favourite hobby and The Brown Knowser has let me share what I hope have been images that are worth viewing. Or, at least, my photos have supplemented my writing. But another hobby has started drawing my time and energy: videos. I'm not particularly good at them but I enjoy recording them, nonetheless. My YouTube channel is another form of storytelling and I have considered it to be an extension of my blog. Videos tak...