Fort Langley and Filming of Super Natural

January 20th, 2012 Thomasso

For the last couple of days, during the little freezing weather stint, the sleepy little town of Fort Langley has being the epicenter for the television science fiction/horror show, “Super Natural.” They have being filming here for most of all day and night over the last two days now, mostly taking up the down town area between Mavis Avenue and 96th Avenue along Glover Road.

I just found out that this was “Super Natural” being filming here from some of my Twitter friends a couple of hours ago. Thanks @DearHeartxoxo !

At first I thought they were nuts shooting in these frigged temperatures that we have been getting for the last week. But it appears that minus ten is nothing for these guys -  they can handle just about anything.

Today has ended the freeing period that I hated so much, marking the end of five solid days straight of minus degree weather. Now it is above freezing, but rain, or drizzle, is plaguing us, and all of this melting snow is just soaking everything. There is a storm warning, but I fear that that will hit us tomorrow as wind and rain will rule the day tomorrow. But it is warmer out, and that makes me mildly happy.

The filming normally does not bother me except for the odd traffic snarl; however, last night the flood lights that were lifted on top of two huge cranes, that bothered me as the light shown into my bedroom window. They were shut off around ten thirty last night, but I still had to force myself to sleep, with the curtains drawn, but it still looked light daylight outside. Tonight is more of the same. They have the same two cranes up, and again the light is shinning onto Glover Road, one block over form me. They are very bright, so the spill-off from them makes it look like the light is shining right at my windows.

You can see the tree on the left is lit up from the crane on 96th Avenue, and the light that you can see is over at Glover and Mavis Avenue – one block away. These are massive lights, and they are bright!

Fortunately, it is Friday, and staying up late tonight is an option.

Posted in Around Town, Bitching about weather, Diatribe, Events, General, Humour, Photographs, Socail Media, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Breaking News: Changed My Twitter Pic!

January 7th, 2012 Thomasso

Breaking: I just changed my Twitter image, the image that is used as your avatar when you use your Twitter account. After almost six weeks having the new camera, it dawned on me to shoot a better looking image for my Twitter Identity with it instead of the web-came one I had before. So keeping with the theme and tradition, I used the same pencil that I have always used.

I have kept the same general image because I find it is hard to follow when Tweeps (Twitter users) keep changing their images around, especially when they use obscure alphanumeric names as their handles which are almost impossible to keep track of. I am now at just over 800 followers, and I am following the same number on my Twitter Account. Keeping track of that many people with weird names, I need all the help I can get, so changing your photo throws the whole memory game out the window for me.

After having the new camera for almost six weeks, I finally just got around to taking a good quality image for my Twitter Account today. Below is the stock image that I cropped and edited my final image from.

Regrettably, using Twitter, you are limited to an image size of only 700k bits, so any edge on image quality is a boon once you start reducing your image size down to this small 76 x 76 px size area.

Posted in Art, Diatribe, Events, General, Humour, Photographs, Socail Media, Twitter | Comments Off

What Has Tom Been Up To?

November 22nd, 2011 Thomasso

So much has gone on with me in the last four days, that even I cannot laugh it off, and I still have so much more to do. Right now I am living off of just a couple of hours of sleep as the wind storm from last night kept me up. The power outage from the storm, with the pounding rain and tree branches hitting my roof, sleep was just not going to happen so I stayed up. But I was tired before that too. Perhaps I should just start at Friday, and finish off my post with today’s events. You, reader, should be clear once I have itemised my last few days.

(pay no attention to the mistakes in this post – I’m exhausted and will clean them up tomorrow)

Friday was dedicated to the last day of a week from Hell. Both in terms of work, and my personal life, Friday was a painful one. Personally, I was just getting over a harsh flu. Compounded to the pain and suffering of the flu was an equally hard work week of tedious issues and problem solving. It was not the amount of work that created the harshness, but the quality of it. I learned that some players in the business really “kicked the can” as it were, with our forth quarter budget, and made some really bad calls. This translated into an extremely chaotic round of finger pointing at the retails side of it, but fortunately in my department, I only received the stress of working with these people.

On my personal side, I had made preparation to volunteer for the civic elections in Langley Township. I helped a candidate out. I only helped out becuase of my friendship connections and ties to this person in the neighbourhood, not my political colours. Only the ignorant and weak minded would accuse me of playing partisan politics at this level – you know who you are! So I volunteered, helping out a friend in need. I did enjoy myself.

Going into Saturday, the day of the civic election, my commitment to volunteering kept on going. The only difference, was I planned on taking it easy, but I was asked to continue to help out with my friend’s campaign. There was the striking of the political ads signs – which under law each candidate has but a couple of days to pull all the signs from the streets and road, or fine would be given out. So I helped pull signs.

My own personal candidacy was on Monday, so I had to focus on that. The magic balance was now lost, between helping a friend versus getting myself ready for my big moment. I was running for a seat on the Board of Directors for the Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s (KPU) Alumni Association, and I had planned spending most of Saturday working on that. Instead, my time ran out on Saturday–and I got to bed around 11:30pm that night.

I almost slept in Monday morning for work. Right from the start of the day I was chasing time. I ignored the other departments as much as I could, fearing that the spill over from last week’s “meltdown” could erupt again. This was the last thing I needed, more stress. While at work, I start sending out tweets to people that I knew who were alumni from the university. Regrettably, getting people to come down to vote on a Monday night was not going to happen. I was too new and had very little exposure to the alumni to get the confidence of voters from the student body. So I tried to conjure up any support I could before I headed down to the Surrey campus. However, not before my work would throw one final hard ball at me.

A crises started brewing in my department becuase one of my co-workers made some errors, and then refused to clear them up before the end of the day. We have a policy that of you make a mistake, you clean it up, even if that means staying some extra time in the day to clean it up. My co-worker refused, and left. I was responsible, and I made some quick patchwork fixes so that I could leave it until Tuesday. My time had already lapsed into my preparation time for the election, which, I had to be there for 6:00pm–less than one hour’s time. Leaving work, late, getting home, I had to forego the fancy clothing, and settle for just changing into a sweater and grabbing my laptop and bag. Yes, still wearing my jeans and street shoes.

The election was held after an hour of formalities with the KPU Board of Directors of the Alumni Association. Each candidate was given two minutes to make a speech, and then had to field only two questions from the room.  I spoke, and was never asked any questions. Sadly, out of the seven of us vying for the six seats, I came in last. I only received 12 votes out of the possible 19. Defeated.

However, I took with pride becuase this was my first time, and this was a learning experience, and learned from it I did. I was offered to join various committees in light of my interests in volunteering with the Alumni Association, but I made myself not make any promises until I had a clear head.

Monday night when I got home, there were weather warning posted on the net. I went straight to bed as it was past 10:00pm, and I was dead tired. Not even 30 minutes into my sleep I was awaken by the sounds of flying branches hitting my window, and the wind pounding my roof. It was brutal. Widows rattled, the walls shook and I could feel the cold air in the room. Then like clockwork, the power went out, just after the second gust of wind started dumping branches on my roof. No sleep.

The power came back on around 5:00am this morning, and soon after my alarm clock went off. I got dressed and headed off to work. Trees were down everywhere. Because of the darkness, my lack of sleep, and the slippery roads, I hit one of the wooden road barricades, as the main road was closed due to a tree down across it. I backed up, and took another route. I spent today being as quiet as I could. The only real interesting thing that happened that gave me contact with the outside world was the grounds keepers accidentally set off the fire alarm late in the work day. But I continued to lay low until I left for home. Now I am fighting to stay up without napping so that i can get my bio-clock back in sync.

Posted in Bitching about weather, Bitching about work, Diatribe, Events, General, Graduation, Socail Media, Story Telling, Twitter, University classes | 1 Comment »

A Blend of Rendering and Camera Work

November 17th, 2011 Thomasso

It has been cold out, so I have been staying indoors, both at home and at work. With all this time hiding from the cold, I am spending it with my camera, and using it with the instruction handbook that I never read since I bought it. Also, I have been seriously working with some of the these 3D graphic programs that I had downloaded last month. It has been so nice to get better acquainted with the computer and camera.

The first image came from my new camera. I was taking photos of the Moon, using my 18-55mm lens, that came with it, when a seagull flew by in front of my shot. After looking at it on the monitor, the photo jumped out at me as being a very good image, so I processed it and posted it on Twitter, and now here on the blog. I do not own a telephoto, yet, but when I do get one, I want to do more shooting of far away objects with the camera. I am still drooling over that DSLR, the rang of options are incredible compared to my point and shoots cameras.

The next two images are from the same program I talked about earlier this week, called Wings3D, that renders using Povray. I am just starting to see the cool stuff that I can do with this program. I hate that this software has next to no help files, compressive guides or user manuals with it. There are some YouTube videos, and a very basic PDF files to download, but that is it. You are running it strictly by trial and error; which is sad when I am finding that it is a wonderful program to use, but it is complex and has unusual mouse and menu options.

The end results of working with Wings3D are very cool. I can now see why this is a heavy-duty modeller program. You can take a primitive object, like a sphere, and turn it into a 3D face by stretching and manipulating the mesh. I am still finding some options difficult to figure out, but I am making progress.

So this is what I have been up to when sitting idling by at my computer, or outside, going to and from work while it is still daylight.

I am waiting for the sky (weather) to clear up so that I do some night time photography. One of my primary goals with the DSLR is to take shots of the stars using long exposures and apertures adjustments. I have a 25.5cm reflector telescope, and for it I have purchased a mount to use with my DSLR, so I want to start using it for taking photos of celestial objects.

I cannot wait!

Posted in Around Town, Art, Astronomy, General, Photographs, Software, Twitter | 2 Comments »

Bad Bad HST

August 26th, 2011 Thomasso

This morning as I was driving into work, I had the radio tuned to CBC Radio One, and I was listing to Premier Christy Clark Talking about the results of the HST Referendum. What was odd, from my point of view, was her focus on the “Plan B.” This was odd because the results were not yet released, and she was talking about her pending defeat four hours before the results were to be released. Suspicious, but she is government, so sure; I’m sure hundreds of people knew well before the release of the results.

So I as listened to her babel on about how the government is going to listen to the people and obey the results, it dawned on me that it does not matter. The tax, whether this one, or a new one, the likelihood of an increase is inevitable because the government only needs to ramp up the old PST to match revenue lost from the HST—so simple—and yet so true. As taxed beaten as we are now, I believe we have not seen anything yet. Sure the voters dealt a shot over the bow of the Liberal’s ship, but they hold us hostage with their majority government in Victoria.

As news officially hit the Twittervers that the HST was overwhelmingly voted out of existence, my colleagues, most from the political right, were somewhat confused. It is funny because, they choose the HST because it was the best out of the two evils for them, yet, fighting in favour of a tax goes against every fibre of their been. It was cute to see because, as our accountant put it, “what does this mean…?”

Like good sports, they all agreed that they were going to put their faith into the government, and they hoped that the next eighteen months would be a smooth one for them. Yes, “faith in government…?”

My take on this—I am glad that the British Columbia Government got a taste of the voter anger from the 1.6 million voters who took the time to mail in their ballots. With 54.73 voting to scrap the HST, not for one second was this referendum about the practicality and good government management of the HST and its affairs. This was about a sloppy, megalomaniac Premier who resigned because he lied to the people of whom he represented. This was a vengeance vote, a vote directed at the confidence of the government by its people. I was stunned when the tax appeared back then, right after I heard our leader say at the time that he would not implement the HST. So now, here we are, as one of the only jurisdictions that have recall legislation, we used this valuable tool at our own government, and it seems to be a bitter pill to swallow, but for most us, this was the medicine that we needed.

Do I regret what we have done?

Not really. I see a silver lining out of all this. As a consumer, my buying habits have change a lot since the 2009 meltdown. Buying gas in the US, shopping for bargains and making due with less, has already created a more adaptable environment based on living with the HST. Reverting back to the old style PST only means that old customs of living will easily become reacquainted ones again. I think businesses who are crying about the loss of HST should really look forward and think about the future—their survival depends on it.

Some cool links about the Vote, and the HST.

B.C. votes 55% to scrap HST

Interactive map shows breakdown of HST vote

Posted in Diatribe, Events, General, Social economics, Social Justice, Twitter | Comments Off

When Trust is Garbage

August 6th, 2011 Thomasso

About a week ago I started seeing the Tweets streaming from members of the Kwantlen Student’s Association (KSA) with regards to the 2006-7 scandal involving allegations of election fixing, misappropriation of moneys, theft and fraud from that council. I was attending Kwantlen at that time, 2006-7, and I do remember having personal issues with the, then Student’s Council. But since then, with all the news about what was going on with that council, at that time, eventually student life mellowed down, and my time there as an undergrad went smoothly.

There was also apathy on my part becuase as I looked at the student’s council as nothing more than just a group of students having fun. I never took into account that that was my money they were squandering with. In fact, I now wonder why I even had to pay into it. I now believe that students should have a choice as to whether they wish to become a member rather than being held hostage with the tuition. I see a need that the government needs to change the law regarding societies, and that students must have the op-out option. Sorry present day KSA members, but this is how I feel about it right now.

Yes, I am that mad about it. When this trust is broken, it can never be rebuilt, because in Canada, white collar crime seems to be nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Justice is lacking here.

I believe that the student’s council must be reconstructed from the ground up, reflecting these past years of abuse, so that transparency and integrity are forged into law. Having elected officials secretly spending money with no worries, covering their tracks  – is – sickening, disturbing and weak.

Very rarely did I have the option of participating in any events with the KSA during my time as an undergraduate. I was a student who worked during the day and did my classes at night. I commuted to the campus, attended my classes, then commuted home. When I think back now, I fed these guys very well with my forced contributions, and that angers me when I read the Forensic Accounting Report of 2007. It is one thing when our Federal, Provincial and Civic leaders miss use our tax money, but quite another when it is a society whose acting in my best interest. Listening to it all over again on the news just opens old wounds again.

What triggered me to write this post?

When I read this news story from the Surrey leader, titled: “Kwantlen student lawsuit on ice,” August 5th, 2011, it made me want to write this post. However, it was not until I read the Forensic Audit from 2007 today that I started writing this post with heated energy. You can read the document here, PWC Forensic Audit 2007, as someone secretly posted it on line. The PDF file is 8.1MB, at 108 pages, and covers a lot of details and heart wrenching accounts of what was going on during that time at the KSA.

This is the first time in a very long time that I had to stop and really focus on what it was I was writing becuase of how much, and how close, this hits home. In hindsight, I should have paid closer attention to the KSA, perhaps even getting involved with it more, but my situation at the time limited me from doing that.

It all seems to be coming out in the wash anyway. Thanks to some students, both members and non-members of the KSA, for caring and taking on the fight to rid the bad, dirty and disgusting from a place of public privilege and trust. If it were not for them, I would be too ashamed to tell people that I was student associated with the KSA.

As for the future students who will pay their fees to the KSA: beware, be forewarned, and be suspicious by keeping an eye on your representatives. These people, your elected council, are there for you. Vote, participate, and get informed becuase without this attitude, the chances of this repeating again in the KSA is a possibility.

Posted in Art, Criminology, Diatribe, General, Graduation, Law, Photographs, Socail Media, Social Justice, Twitter, University classes | Comments Off

My Twitter Charted

August 2nd, 2011 Thomasso

I decided to chart my Twitter Followers Count, just to see what my trajectory looks like. Here are the results shown in this line graph of my three years using Twitter.

I took the data from my Twitter History and divided this line graph into 37 months, or three years, going from July 2008, to July 2011. Yes, I have being using Twitter for the last three year. Time flies!

The left X-axes of the graph is the number of followers I have gained over the last three years.  The Y-axes is the months, starting from July, 2008, to July 2011.

This graph shows that my interests in Twitter really took off in November to December of 2010 after taking a communications course in University earlier that summer. The value of social networking was realised as was my determination to make my mark, and my network took off as my Twitter experience increased, showing today with a follow count of over 500 followers. Hopefully I can maintain this trajectory and reach a follower count of 1000 by November or 2011.

Posted in General, Photographs, Socail Media, Twitter, University classes | 2 Comments »

Twitter Milestone: 500

July 26th, 2011 Thomasso

Today I passed 500 follower milestone. It is an achievement having all theses followers. I started working through Twitter vigorously since my graduation to keep in touch with colleagues, and as a means of keeping up dated with the latest news. From the time since activating my Twitter account in 08 with but a few followers, then seriously using Twitter  just over  seven months ago, the discovery of meeting new people has being fantastic.

Reaching 500 followers is a great!

I have followers from all over the world. I have followers who share the same love of academics as I do, and the rare Criminologists that I have found who also follow me now. The discussions are always very interesting, and many times over, I laugh at the text (the 140 letter posts) as there is always a comedian everyday who Tweets something funny. From art to news, to drama and gossip, there is never a dull moment in the Twittersphere.

Posted in Events, General, Socail Media, Twitter | 3 Comments »

OK, where’s Summer?

July 16th, 2011 Thomasso

I’m going to jump on the bandwagon of crying for our summer season back and wanting sunshine and warm weather. I laughed when I heard on the CBCnews network yesterday that on Twitter, the hash-tag #bummersummer, is now trending as one of the most common tweets posting on social media network. What happened?

While Ontario and Quebec deal with a scorching heatwave, we on each coast, both in British Columbia and Newfoundland are experiencing spring or fall like weather instead, still with no change so far this summer. My Ontario friends are wishing that they were living hear becuase they cannot deal with the heat, yet, we are crying that we want at least a taste of that heatwave.

Last week we had a fairly bad hail storm in Fort Langley that only lasted about ten minutes, but it caused some minor damage around town. Lots of trees lost leaves and some branches, and along Glover Road a tree brought down a single house’s power line that shut down the road for a couple of hours. At one end of town that ground was completely covered with hail, that looked more like snow, while the other half was almost dry as bone.

This has being an interesting year so far for weather. What will we get next week – the mystery weather season?

Posted in Bitching about weather, Diatribe, General, Photographs, Socail Media, Twitter | Comments Off

Was it a Riot? My City is in Shame.

June 16th, 2011 Thomasso

When I got home from work, I prepared myself for the game, as millions of other Canadians did becuase this was the final big game to prove which team was number one. Hockey is, after all, Canada’s game; our favourite past time as most of us as kids played some form of it at one time or another. In anticipation, I made my dinner early and made sure that I was not going to not be disturbed while watching the game. I did, however, know that the momentum of the Vancouver Canucks was on a downwards roll, so everything was on this final game to decide who was going to take home the cup.

I also knew that Vancouver has a history of rioting after such events, for example,  back in the 1994 Stanley Cup play-offs, when the Canucks lost to the New York Rangers, people turned into hooligans then and went on a rioting rampage through the streets causing millions of dollars in damages. But every city has had its share of riots in one form or another. What makes this so embarrassing is that Vancouver was just on the world stage hosting the Olympics, and that seemed to go fairly smoothly with just little hiccups from a few idiots. So what happened to our peaceful attitude?

Some say, from my Twitter stream, that it was from not enough police on the streets, to the police and the city totally under estimating the potential for such violence to occur. Either way, it did, and we now have a huge P.R. problem becuase of it. But could the police have gone further to at least contain last night’s situation?

I argue that, no, the Vancouver Police could not have gone to point that they could have totally stopped the violence and rioting that we seen last night. Controlling that many people would have required something on the order of what we seen in the G20 protests in Toronto several months back, and that would have being very unacceptable both in terms of Vancouver’s image, and the cost to the taxpayers.

What was intriguing was the use of social media that was given to the police, by the public, so that the police could start identifying and using these images, and videos, as evidence in order to prosecute the accused for their acts of hooliganism. So the age old question of private freedoms versus public rights popped up. The terminology that was used by my Twitter friends was the use social media as a form of surveillance in such cases as last night riots to lay charges by the police.

I am in full complete favour for the use of such media as a tool for laying criminal charges and the prosecution of such individuals by the police. My argument is two fold.

First, police already use such tools out in the public sphere for catching and bringing to justice people who are committing a crime. The courts are already equipped with the tools in the justice system to handle the difference between arbitrary issues and the weight that such evidence is placed against the accused. Photographic evidence is very difficult to use in the courts as it is. The photographer literally must be there as a whiteness if the image is in question, but then now you have a whiteness, which is the strongest form of evidence there it in Canadian Courts, testifying against the accused.

Second, as the use of cameras from smart phones and other devices become the mainstay of everyone around the world, so too does the way these tools are used by all parties in cases of criminal events like rioting. Perhaps the court of public opinion is the most serious for seeing the electronic eyes of these events. The the armchair philosopher who is tying to critically analyse these images, this is secondary to the pure entertainment value that the media gives them while these scenes are played repeatedly every hour of the day until the news losses its splendour. You do not go to a major event without your social media device. Protesters use them, police used them, and the value that we give them changes, from recording history making events, to tools for presenting your side of history, from your point of view. So now the question of surveillance rears its ugly head from the use of social media.

Like yourself witnessing a criminal event, the electronic eye’s gaze is also a party to the criminal event, and at a moral level, and under law in our Criminal Code, you do have an obligation to come forth and  present what you have seen to the police and court of law. But people seem to have a fear of authoritarian governments, and the use of surveillance over the general public they seem to bring with them. (See the movie, or read the book, 1984 as an excellent example). I believe today that the conditions have being met in Canada that justifies the use of such tools for bringing to justice those who cause such damage during acts of great civil unrest. We have balance in our justice system, and a very strong media and public process system that polices the police.

I strongly request that anyone with images of rioters from last night come forward and share your eyes with the police so that justice can be served. For the few people to created such distasteful acts in our city is unacceptable. There is a moral judgement that each person must make, and it is between the public good versus the private rights that each Canadian holds dearly. I hope I have convinced you to make that choice and move forward with it.

Posted in Around Town, Criminal Law, Criminology, Events, General, Law, Law and Order, Socail Media, Social Justice, Twitter | 1 Comment »