All My Blogs

Microscopic view of blood.  The fluid is plasma. My wife and I went to a talk about live blood analysis last night.  I wasn't interested in going, but she wanted me there to see if what she was saying was true.  I was actually flattered by that, as I am often skeptical of many health-related schemes designed to separate you from your wallet.  I am often accused of being overly opposed to the myriad of claims out there purporting healing where all other methods fail.  And it's true - I am a nay-sayer when it comes to some of these elaborate means to an end, and rightly so. So, off we went, and there we were, in the front row, listening to the presenter's every word.  She had an impressive microscope (phase contrast, dark field, light transmission) with good quality optics and an HD feed to a large screen TV.  She drew the blood of a volunteer client and created a cover-slipped slide.  She did not use any stains or viscous agents.  Then she mou...

It turns out there is a strong correlation between the number of ACEs you have had and how well you are doing as an adult.  What is this ACE thing anyway, and how does it influence me as an adult? The term adverse is important to understand if we are to grasp exactly what ACEs are.  The Cambridge dictionary defines it as "having a negative or harmful effect on something."  The concept of ACE then relates to the traumatic experiences young people have had.  The number of these experiences has a direct relationship with the well-being of adults.  The trend is that the more ACEs one experiences, the poorer they manage as adults. What exactly counts as an ACE?  This is where things broaden out somewhat, but the general idea is that they can be significant individual events (sexual abuse) or long-term issues (verbal abuse) that play a key role in the person's behaviour and mental well-being as adults.   The ACE questionnaire for adults out of Californi...

Prostate cancer, cancer biopsy, cancer stages, and PSA levels. PSA, or protein specific antigen, is a protein normally produced by the prostate.  It is part of the normal production of semen by men's reproductive system.  It is also normally found in the blood, although in very small amounts.  It is measured in ng/ml (nanograms per milliliter), a nanogram being one-billionth of a gram.  The amount of PSA in the blood is highly dependent on two main factors, one of them being age, the other the healthy state of the prostate gland. The prostate gland is about the size of a walnut, or 30 g (~ 1 ounce).  Prostates may become enlarged, the risk factors being age, family history, diabetes, and heart disease.  In general, men under the age of 40 will not have an enlarged prostate, but men over the age of 80 have a 90% chance of having it.  As you get older, the risk increases. Enlarged prostates can be problematic in that they may restrict the flow of urine a...

  Garibaldi teachers, on strike, October 2005.  That's me, 2nd in on the right. I understand the need to strike.  For me, it was about class size and composition, something our Alberta brethren understand only too well.  Money has been less of an issue as I have always been satisfied with my salary.  I have stood in line with my colleagues, a placard strung around my neck, weathering the elements, as I stood up to the powers drawing up the contracts. Ah, contracts.  The good old days of contracts being worth something.  And then, with the stroke of a pen, they meant nothing.  The BC government took it upon itself to tear up the very law itself by unilaterally declaring all teacher contracts null and void.  Behold - the Autocracy of BC was born.  We all know the outcome of this atrocity.  The law eventually won, but not before the BC government spent 2.6 million defending their hypocrisy and the BCFT spent untold millions.  Not ...

Our group that canoed from Red Deer to Drumheller in 2004.   I had wanted to paddle down the Red Deer River for some time.  It wasn't until the summer of 2004 that things came together.  It took us 5 days to travel the 120 km, paddling 24 km or so a day.  On nice days, we put up a sail and lashed the canoes together and just flowed with the current.  We camped at a provincial park one night and along the banks of the badlands on other nights. I don't recall a lot about Dell on the trip, but I know we enjoyed ourselves and played cards when the opportunity arose.  I remember catching a young gopher snake and seeing a few beavers swimming in the river.  My son, Joshua, had recently turned 11.  He wasn't very interested in listening to dad, which made paddling difficult, so Ken and I swapped paddling partners and that took care of the problem. Dell and I did a second trip down the Red Deer River from Drumheller to Dinosaur Provincial Park in 201...

San Antonio River Walk - Left - without framing (cropped) - Right - with framing (original) There is something comforting about a scene with framing.  The images above are the same, except the left one is cropped more than the right one.  I actually like them both, but I find the one that is framed by vegetation is less harsh and more appealing.  The dark elements surrounding the central image draw your eye into the center, but I think there is more to it than that. I think there is something primal going on inside our brains.   We have had 6 dogs (so far), five of them dachshunds.  I have noticed that they are more comfortable when they have something above them.  Indoors, this could be a table, a bench, the insides of a box on its side.  Outdoors, it could be the branches of a bush, a den, or perhaps an overhanging rock.  It all stems from the primal urge to seek shelter and protection.  My guess is that there is something similar goin...

Four different ways of focusing on a moving object.  Center, Active, 3D and eye tracking. Stationary subjects are relatively easy to achieve critical focus on.  The task becomes much more complicated when the subject is moving.  Cameras typically have many ways to obtain a sharp focus.  Wide-angle lenses with small apertures typically require little extra help in this area, but when you are shooting with long lenses using wide-open apertures, the task is exponentially more difficult.  There are a few different ways to handle this. You generally want to use continuous focusing when photographing a moving subject as the focal plane to subject distance is constantly changing.  The exception to this would involve using center-point focusing (Box 1) where you would lock focus, reframe, and shoot.  It is far easier if reframing is not necessary and you could shoot the subject in the center of the field.  This works in some circumstance, but would not be...

Kathryn and I were in Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, in 1991 as part of our Canada trip. Niagara Falls.  Stanley Park.  Peggy's Cove.  These are all places in Canada that resonate in the psyche.  Iconic locations steeped in history and bulging with character.  We have visited all three at one time or another, although I have been at Peggy's Cove only once.  Mind you, it was a perfect day with early morning fog that later gave rise to a stunningly beautiful afternoon. Below is a photo of Kathryn sitting on one of the glacial erratics found near the docks.  The area was covered by a glacier during the Ice Age.  When the mountains of ice retreated, they deposited their earthen contents upon the substrate that carried them.  The whole region is marked by these large boulders that are strewn randomly about. Kathryn, sitting on an erratic near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia. What's interesting about the above photos is that I took them with my FE2 Nikon cam...

Tom and Eric at Mission Creek Park.  We walk every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday without fail. I am thankful for my friend Tom, who was a teacher with me at Garibaldi Secondary in Maple Ridge for many years.  We share numerous common interests, including photography, sports, cruising, computers, cooking, and our time as teachers.  We walk for an hour three times a week and enjoy the time together and being surrounded by nature.  Best of all, we enjoy talking about our common interests and the people we know. There is no substitute for spending time with someone you share history with and can connect easily with.  I have never been a very good conversationalist, but my time on our walks passes quickly as we chat about a cornucopia of subjects.  We have gotten to know each other better as well, sharing about our families and the things that matter to us.  We have a respect for each other forged over our shared experiences and knowledge.   It ha...

This is the card I made for Kathryn this morning. Kathryn has been making genuine sourdough bread and kefir drinks now for quite a while, and she is getting good at it.  In case you haven't heard of kefir, it is made from grains (like the ones in the photo above) of bacteria and yeast that join together to form a small, rubbery mass.  When placed in milk and left to ferment, the grains digest the sugary lactose and produce a rich buttermilk-type drink after a few days in a warm place.  The liquid is filled with probiotics and has good gut-bacteria in it.   The kefir grains are living colonies, you can pick them up; they have a jello-like texture.  Apparently, they have the ability to communicate with each other and transmit their will to simple-minded humans near them.  That's the only explanation I have as to why I remembered my wife's birthday this year.  The little gooey balls bent me to their will.  It's a good thing they aren't malevolen...

Charles at Galveston Island, Texas, 2014. I rarely share my devotions online, but this morning I read a bible verse that I thought had value for everyone, regardless of their faith or belief system.  Although the statement is an oversimplification of life, it is an essential truth that we should all embrace.  Imagine the lives we would have if we all stuck to this proverb. The key to doing good is in thinking about the needs of others instead of the needs of oneself.  Consider a caring parent looking after his or her children.  They are concerned with their offspring's well-being and go out of their way to ensure their safety, health, and gratification.  In return, the children offer love and joy for the caring parent.  If we expanded this paradigm to relationships in work, school, and in the community in earnest, we would find the world would be a much better place. I took the above photo back in 2014 while my friend Charles and I spent two weeks exploring...

My daughter, Leanne, rock climbing in 2008.  She was 12 years old then. Three points of contact.  That was our instruction to her at the age of three when she first climbed the great rock at the Leavenworth campsite.  She never got far from us as we helped her find handholds and places to plant her feet.  Always have three points of contact.  Foot, foot, hand or hand, hand, foot.  Establish a new secure position and then take another step. Ever since then, she has loved scaling things.  Rock faces, climbing walls, and even the odd tree.  And those early lessons never left her.  Even today, she loves climbing and has an oft-used membership at a climbing wall.  Overcoming gravity in this way has numerous advantages.  Strength, balance, endurance, being goal-oriented, and having a hobby that also serves as a stress reliever.  And she has all this thanks to that big rock she used to climb when we camped at Leavenworth, Washington. ...

Green sea turtle coming ashore in Hawaii. As a young person, I did not have a lot of experience with travelling.  I can remember seeing my first tall buildings and being gobsmacked by them, and to my mind today, they were nothing extraordinary.  But I took photos of them because they seemed amazing.  The same is true for many other things that I take for granted today. I only started travelling in my mid-twenties to any extent, and the notion of what was special or unique started to change.  With it was my idea of what would make a good photo.  The now mundane would no longer be the subject of my images.  Instead, I began to look for the exceptional, and even that would change over time. The familiar was replaced with the uncommon.  My photographer's eye began to look at things from a different perspective.  My knowledge of photography and composition took me to new heights.  Travel provided me with opportunities that just weren't there at ho...

Leanne and Eric at Gold Creek in Golden Ears Provincial Park Before I was married, I knew I wanted to have children some day.  I enjoyed kids, having been a scout leader and a Christian Service Brigade leader for a total of 8 years.  I became a teacher with the same heart for youth.  But in all my interactions with young people, I never thought of what having adult children would be like. Life after high school had its challenges with the newfound freedoms and responsibilities.  We were there to applaud the successes and support them when times weren't so good.  And through it all came the realization that maybe mom and dad knew what they were doing all along, not that such an admission would ever leave their lips.  The amazing thing, though, was that a friendship started to grow beyond the classic meme. It can be difficult to think of your children as independent adults, capable of finding their way without your involvement.  Fortunately, two things h...

Peak to Peak gondola at Whistler/Blackcomb - how much stress is on the cable? You know that if you hang a weight on a clothesline, the cord will bend where the weight is.  The angle of the bend will depend on numerous factors, including the load, the tension on the line, and to some extent, the location of the mass.  The heavier the object, the greater the angle of deflection. Now, imagine pulling the cable taut so that there is no discernible angle where the load is.  In fact, pull it so tight that the line is parallel to the ground; there is no significant curve to the line.  It takes a lot of force, and the ends have to be well secured so that they don't rip out of the wall or pull the stanchion down.  For something as simple as a clothesline pulley system with a single center weight, that would be a lot of tension. What's impressive about the Peak to Peak ride in Whistler is the physics behind it all.  The span is just over 3 kilometers.  The steel...