The Brown Knowser

I hurt myself lifting the bag, and I still hadn't packed my clothes. Earlier this year, as DW and I were starting to seriously plan for our upcoming vacation, which starts this Friday, I gave myself a challenge. I usually travel with one carry-on suitcase and one personal item, but for this trip, I only wanted to have one carry-on backpack, which would hold all of my clothes and all of my camera equipment, including my new drone and its accessories. I was going to squeeze all of that into one bag and was going to add an empty day bag, that would carry necessities for the day while we are exploring the countryside. This weekend, DW and I started packing for the trip. I started by laying the day pack at the bottom of the larger pack, adding my tripod, my 200–500 zoom lens, shower shoes, and an electronics bag, which carries spare batteries, data cards, cables, power chargers, and more. With all of that in the backpack, I only had room left for my compression cube, which holds three p...

As the weather has been getting warmer—finally—in the Ottawa region, our thoughts have been turning to one of our favourite outdoor activities: kayaking. Last year, in early September, DW and I journeyed to Frontenac Outfitters, just north of Sydenham, to check out new kayaks . We left, having put a deposit down on two 2025 Delta 14 kayaks, to pick them up in the spring. We were becoming anxious, worried that the kayaks would arrive while we were on vacation, risking missing out on a notification and not getting our new boats until the end of May. Last Wednesday, I called Frontenac Outfitters to get a status update and was thrilled to learn that the kayaks were in transit, would be arriving either later that day or on Thursday. They notified us the next day that our kayaks were in. On Saturday, we left the house bright and early to make the two-hour drive to Frontenac. Our car was packed with all of our paddling gear, with the hope of putting our boats into the lake behind the shop, to...

In late 1996, a couple of months before DW and I packed up our lives and headed to South Korea, where we would be living for the next two years, we met with a travel-medicine practitioner to ensure that we were inoculated against any disease that could come our way. And while there were no mandates to have any shots for this East-Asian peninsula, we were planning to travel all over this region of the world. Image: ChatGPT And better safe than sorry. We received shots against hepatitis, typhoid, and other diseases (I've since forgotten and have misplaced that immunization record). We were also given vials for yellow fever, to keep refrigerated and to have administered if we decided to go to countries like India, Cambodia, or Vietnam. Unfortunately, the vials didn't stay refrigerated long enough for the long flight, so we had to dispose of them. Fortunately, we didn't go anywhere that such an inoculation was required. Still, money down the drain. For our upcoming trip, which ...

I'd been looking forward to trying this brew for a while. Even though DW suggested to my family and friends that my birthday party, in March, was a no-gift event, some people brought something anyway. From lush wine to hand-made, knitted toques, my friends and family are thoughtful. Among the generous gifts, I received a pack of assorted beer from various breweries in the east end of Orleans—an Ottawa neighbourhood that I don't get out to often enough. The pack included brews from two of my favourite breweries, Stray Dog and Broadhead, as well as from a brewery I have yet to visit and whose beer I have only tried a couple of times. OBC: Orleans Brewing Company . As I moved the cans of beer from the wooden crate that held the gift pack to my beer fridge, I read the labels of each can, and I gave an "oooh!" as I looked at one can. It was an oatmeal stout with coffee. I don't drink as often as I used to. Now that I'm retired, it could be too easy to open a beer a...

Before I started writing a crime thriller, I told myself that I couldn't do it. I'm not smart enough to think of a near-perfect crime and certainly not smart enough to have a detective figure out who dunnit. Still, I wanted to try and after I was laid off from work, I had a lot of time on my hands and didn't have a more-perfect time to give it a go. Plotting out the sequence of events that led to the murder was pretty easy, actually. I started with the idea, who could be driven to commit a murder, and how would they do it?  Once the murder was committed, I turned my attention to the murderer. What would he or she do? Would the murderer hide the body? How do they cover their tracks? So, for the first week that I started working on Dark Water , I created a spreadsheet that had the main characters, including the murderer. In the spreadsheet, I wrote the person's role in the story and notes about the role that they play in the book. For the killer, I wrote a backstory and t...

Look! I've finally started using my cameras again. For the past few years, I've taken a self portrait just before my birthday, so that I can see how my appearance has changed. I think I started doing it when I looked in the mirror one day and saw more of my dad than I did of myself. On New Year's Day, I decided to stop shaving, so by the time that my 60th birthday rolled around, I had a pretty full beard. I liked how the beard looked but a few days after my birthday, I was bothered by how the whiskers above my top lip would reach into my mouth. I would constantly stick my tongue out, touching the bottom of those whiskers. Even though I trimmed the beard, the moustache whiskers were ever-present around my mouth, and they really started bothering me. And every time I kissed DW goodnight, she'd say "Ew," which kinda hurt. DW hated the beard. And so, shortly after I shared my birthday selfies on my blog, the beard was gone. Last week, after receiving the first hai...

Last weekend, I made a concerted effort to get out of the house. I find that I spend too much time at home and don't get much fresh air. And, I've become extremely lazy. In preparation for our upcoming vacation (I can't believe we'll be leaving in only two weeks), DW and I have started training by finding steep hills to climb. On the previous Saturday, we drove to the Arboretum, between the Central Experimental Farm and Dow's Lake, and walked up the steepest slope of the hill a few times. When I finally ran out of breath, we called it a day. We hopped back in our car, drove to our latest, favourite breakfast spot, The Third , and then headed home, where I stayed indoors for the rest of the weekend. Lazy. The first week of our vacation will have us up in a mountainous region and we plan to do some hiking. And because I'm probably in the worst shape I've been in in years, I want to make sure that I'm up for climbs. Even in the towns we're visiting, the...

Until I have taken enough photos to supplement my blog posts, I'm finding ChatGPT has been a good source for creating images that work to satisfy my needs. But it doesn't always work out as planned. For example, there have been a few successful illustrations that I've made from this AI tool: the writer at a computer ; me, reading a book , or taking a photo ; and even, to some extent, of me kayaking on a river (my face wasn't replicated very well in that one so I opted to cover it with sunglasses). For Monday's post, I wanted to take an existing photo of me on my spin bike. I took the picture a couple of years ago and have used it in previous blog posts. But now that I've restarted my exercise routine, I wanted to add the image again, only I wanted to create a 3-D cartoon version of it. So, I turned to Chat GPT and wrote Create a 3-D cartoon image from the attached photo. Do not include the cords on the floor. Here's what it produced: I may have gained ...

When I first started using social media, I was slow out of the gate. I reluctantly joined Facebook because a lot of friends were using it and I could connect with those with whom I hadn't kept in close contact, and it was nice to see what they were up to. But as more and more content from people I didn't know started filling my timeline, I used it less and less, until I stopped using it altogether, several years ago, and closed my account this year. I joined Twitter in 2011 at DW's suggestion, as she was away for a couple of weeks, in Taiwan, for work, and she felt it would be the fastest way to keep in touch. And over the years, while I made some great friends with the social-media app, my feed once again became polluted, and when the biggest twit of them all bought the company, I dumped it. Around the same time that I joined Twitter, I joined LinkedIn . And at that time, I was almost as active on this so-called platform for professionals as I was on Twitter. In the first ...

Today marks two weeks since I've officially started my days as an unemployed person. Though my company forced me into retirement, I consider myself to be only temporarily retired, as I can see myself working again. Doing what, who knows? Since I stopped working, however, I haven't stopped being productive. If you're a regular reader of my blog (first, thank you!), you'll know that I've started writing a murder mystery. To that end, my weekday routine hasn't changed: I get up at the same time, get showered and dressed, have breakfast, and sit down at the same desk that I occupied while working—only the computer has changed. I tend to work on my book until 4 or 5, but sometimes go longer. I may not spend all of that time writing and I sometimes become distracted by unrelated things, but I sit at my desk nevertheless. If I hit a snag in the story and feel the need to take a break, I'll often write several blog posts in advance. (This one was written last Thursd...

I am so done with the snow. And I know: I live in Ottawa, the coldest capital city in the world, where the weather at this time of year is unpredictable. But enough's enough. A couple of winters ago, I thought it would be interesting to count the number of times that I would have to go out and shovel my driveway. Now, I'm a stickler for a clear driveway, so I would head out with my shovel whenever there was enough snow to cover the driveway and leave an impression with a footstep. Anything more than a fine dusting, and I was out there. In the 2022–23 season , I shovelled my driveway 55 times. The next year, I thought I would do a comparison so I counted again. It was a gentler season, so in 2023–24, I only went out with the shovel 26 times. So far, in the 2024–25 season, I've been out 44 times: most recently, I went out twice, on Tuesday. On Monday, looking out onto my street, there was almost no snow in the neighbourhood. There will little piles on some lawns, including mi...

There are days when I get distracted when I should be working on my book . Maybe I should go back to my old manual typewriter. You may have noticed that the past several blog posts that I've published are using AI-generated images. It's been so long since I've used my cameras that they're literally starting to gather dust. I've been telling myself that because I'm temporarily retired (I expect to take a paying job later, this summer or fall) that I can go out and take photos anytime, but I've become a creature of habit where I get up, get showered and dressed, have breakfast, and then move over to my home office. I've been doing this for more than five years, since the start of the pandemic, and it's a tough habit to break. I don't need to wait until the end of the day or the weekend to get out there. Because I haven't been taking many photos, I don't have any to share in a blog post. So, when I've written a blog post, I have lately t...

When I wrote Sonsaengnim: A Korea Diary , there were certain sections that I knew would be successful with the readers. One, in particular. And please note that there are some spoiler alerts in this post. If you haven't read Songsaengnim but are planning to, you might want to skip this post. Image: ChatGPT * For myself, I find that if the author can evoke emotions, he or she has won me over for the book. When I read, I want to laugh, I want to cry, and I want to think. I don't have to necessarily do all three while reading a passage but I have to do at least one. If I'm reading a light-hearted or comical book, I expect to feel joy. If it's really good, I'll laugh. And similarly, if I'm reading a touching story, I expect to feel moved. If the writer can create a moment that puts a lump in my throat, she or he is a masterful storyteller. So, back to when I wrote my novel. And again, spoiler alert. There are chapters that, when I wrote them, I knew were going to e...

On Thursday, after I had written Friday's blog post, I realized I didn't really have an image to go with the content. I like to add an image to my blog posts, as I feel that it helps the reader visualize what I'm telling him or her. It also becomes a draw for when I share the blog post on social media, as a visual can be eye-catching. The same goes for the right-hand margin of my blog, where the popular posts of the last month are listed. Because Friday's post was about me working on my novel, Dark Water (the name will likely change), I wanted to include a picture that would relate to the story. But I couldn't think of one. I haven't been using my camera very much, this year. I attended a model shoot with my photography group in January, I took some self portraits for my 60th birthday (I've since shaved off my beard so should shoot new ones), and DW and I took a few photos of birds at Mud Lake, a few weeks ago, but that's it. I'm retired, now. I...

Image: ChatGPT. As I said, yesterday, I have no intention of sharing parts of my murder mystery like I did with Songsaengnim and Gyeosunim . Being a 'who dunnit,' I don't want to give too much away. I will, however, share some of my thought processes as I work through the story. I've never written crime fiction before, never figured myself to be smart enough—or sinister enough—to work out a murder mystery. But the other day, while I was taking a pause from writing a chapter, I thought I would write out a brief synopsis, a teaser, of what the story is about. I didn't want to give much away: rather, this would be something that I might have on the back of the book or on the inside jacket. Here's what I've written: When Ottawa Police Services Inspector Michael “Mickey” Calloway returns to the Serious Crimes team after a mild cardiac arrest, he is partnered with Erin Hayes, a rookie inspector who has yet to prove herself, leaving Calloway to wonder: has she...

For all the writing I do and have done over the last 40 or so years, I've never had confidence in my abilities. The same goes for my photography. More than 95 percent of my photos, to me, seem okay, but only just okay. It actually surprises me when someone tells me that my photos are good (and I'm not talking about family and friends, who are always there to cheer me on). When I submitted my first novel, JT , to publishers, I didn't expect to get so much as an acknowledgement. Of course, I did, from three publishing houses, who all sent me the standard thank you for your submission but we're not interested . Essentially, you suck. Piss off. I was genuinely surprised when one of those standard rejection letters was filled with a handwritten message around the margins of the letter, from the person who actually read my novel. I still have that letter, stored somewhere in a box, among other old manuscripts, but I'm too lazy to dig it up to quote directly from it. ...

It was behaving very strangely. A couple of weekends ago, DW and I went to Mud Lake, along the Ottawa River. We hadn't been to this small trail and trove of many different types of bird in a long time, and I also felt that I needed to get out of the house, to get some fresh air, so it was a great way to start the day. And even though we were heading out too late for the peak time that birds are fluttering around, there's always something new to spot, whether it be an owl, a new species of heron, or a new duck to be found. On this visit, we spied a northern pintail duck, which I shared in last week's Wordless Wednesday . As we walked back to our car, I noticed a red-wing blackbird perched on someone's side-view mirror. And it would also flutter over the mirror or in front of it, chirping in a seeming state of irritation. "Do you think he's seen himself in the mirror and thought it was another male?" I asked DW. "I don't know," she said, "...

At my old job, we were supposed to embrace AI. When I was composing an e-mail message, AI would make its presence known—not like Microsoft's Clippy, but a subtle icon would suggest that AI could improve my message. I'm sorry, I would respond, in my head, to that prompt, but I'm a professional writer. I don't need to have an algorithm create my message or convey it in a different tone. I know what I'm doing. For our customer documentation authoring tool, we incorporated a plugin tool that used AI to analyse our writing to ensure that we were following our company's style guidelines. I never used the tool. I was my team's editor and I knew the style guidelines cold. So, the thought of using AI at work seemed preposterous. Maybe, that made me a bit of a dinosaur but I still produced high-quality documentation. Year after year, my peers and bosses praised my work, so I was doing something right. The idea of using AI for my fiction just didn't make any sense....