Bird Cage reflection

The lights on the parliament buildings are bright enough to be reflected off a nearby monument.

Bird Cage at night

Love the lights at night.

Bird Cage HDR

On our trip to Victoria, we stopped by to see the parliament buildings. They do a tour where some of the tour guides dress in period costumes. We heard the story about the architect who designed the building known as the bird cage:

Francis Rattenbury won the bid to build the parliament building at the age of 26 in 1893. He completed the construction only $400k over the original $500k budget.

It turns out Rattenbury had a rather scandalous personal life. He married Florence at the age of 31. But at the age of 56 he left his wife and married 27 year old Alma only to be murdered by his 18 year old chauffeur (Alma's secret lover) at the age of 68.

Where's Waldo?

We went to see the TSO the other day and Tonya spotted Michael Ignatieff. Can you find him?



I'll make it easier...he's standing with his wife in this picture...

Mutant feet

The mutants are among us...

Red Ball

The traveling red ball was at old city hall on Sunday. It will be on Elm Street tomorrow. It's full schedule is here.

1623 Guitars

On saturday, an attempt was made to set a Guinness record for largest guitar ensemble at Yonge and Dundas square. 1623 people played Niel Young's "Helpless" as a part of the Luminato festival.



Unfortunately, they needed another 179 guitars to beat the current record of 1,802 people. (Set playing Deep Purple's “Smoke on the Water” in the German town of Leinfelden-Echterdingen in 2007.)



Still, that many guitars together in one place was awe inspiring.




Seamus O'Regan from canada AM was on stage at one point and suggested that "...if cell phones are the new lighters...then guitars are the new cell phone..."

HD over the air

I tried out my new HDTV tuner to pick up over the air HD signals last night. Don Cherry has never looked so ostentatious. So far we get 5 HD chanels with a crappy antenna. The next step is to build one of these to see how many more might be out there.

Our new media center consists of an Acer netbook and a Hauppauge USB HDTV tuner. With over the air HD and online streaming content, who needs cable or satellite?!

TTC Buses

I got a peak at a TTC garage last week.





I like how these buses look like a sinusoid...



Someone wrote on this bus...