Four Hours in Paris

Macaron

The dog and the plane

dog+door

This definitely caught people's attention!

It's safe to say autumn is here.

Sign and signpost

recent digital

Fall has fallen, summer is slipping away, and...
winter is coming.

Recent film!

One day I'll write long rambling posts.

I've been behind on taking pictures lately. Gotta take some more!

Music

This song always helps me forget my troubles and manages to give me a tiny bit of hope. Even if that short moment of hope only stays for a few minutes it's always welcome.

music

Bobbette & Belle

Sunday!
After stopping for brunch in Leslieville, we walked over to Bobbette & Belle, a bright and cheerful pastry shop, to try out some of their macarons. We picked out four flavours: salted caramel, vanilla, pistachio, and milk chocolate caramel. The two I tried were quite good although a little on the sweet side for me. However, I imagine they would be a nice accompaniment to a good cup of coffee or tea.

On a side note, I just don't understand the appeal of a restaurant that packs tables in so close that I can very easily eat off the plate of the stranger on the next table. Even if the food is amazing, who in their right mind wants such a cramped eating environment?

Sherlocked!

For those who haven't seen it, Sherlock is the BBC's modern day adaptation/re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I've been re-watching the series and picking up the small details and acting nuances that I missed the first time. I just recently finished A Scandal in Belgravia and my oh my it's just as much fun watching it again as it was the first time. This episode is nominated for 13 Emmy Awards and rightly so. The acting, writing, music, and production are in my opinion all superb.

Without giving too much away, Sherlock is hired to retrieve incriminating pictures that a certain woman has in her possession and of course, much drama and many feats of observation ensue. If you're a fan of television that involves more thought than a reality show then I would definitely recommend Sherlock. There are currently two seasons of three episodes each and each episode is about an hour and a half so make sure to watch from the first episode!

Something new

It's been a long time coming and things are still evolving but here's my new site! www.greglampakng.com.

Continuing on the theme of things that are hot and packed full of people, this past weekend I stopped by that shrine of all things barbeque, Ribfest. After living in places where things like this don't happen this was a great opportunity to experience something new. And wow it did not disappoint. All that meat! And everyone who came there with the sole purpose of eating all that meat! Have I said it was super hot yet? Because it was super hot! The combined heat of the sun and the heat coming off the barbeques made me feel like I was being barbequed myself. I was becoming one with the barbeque. I was the barbeque.

Ah yes, a pig shaped ride at a festival dedicated to eating mostly pork.

The Walking Dead game

This weekend was a long weekend in my part of the world and it just so happens that it very nicely coincided with the release of Episode 3 of The Walking Dead video game. For those who aren’t familiar, The Walking Dead is originally an ongoing series of comics that depicts the harsh realities of life in a world infested by zombies and deprived of the majority of societal basics that we take for granted today. The comics have been adapted and modified into an ongoing television series as well as into these video games which differ from traditional video games by being shorter in length and released in episodes. Each episode can be completed in a few hours and Episode 3 is no different as I completed it in a few hours on Saturday. The plot of the video games revolves around the main character, Lee, as he travels with a group of survivors in search of food and shelter whilst trying to survive in a world gone mad. The player controls Lee as he interacts with other characters and as he performs in-game actions. The controls are very simplistic with interactions taking the form of simple conversation choices and actions being carried out through button presses or point and click mouse actions. With such simple game play, the main attraction of this game is without a doubt the story telling, and in fact, I would I rather think of this as an interactive story in the form of a video game. From the first moments of the first episode I was drawn into Lee’s character and began to form a real emotional attachment with various in-game characters. As the game progressed I had to make decisions and choose actions which strengthened those emotions, and I soon came to the realization that I was actually making Lee act in certain ways because I cared about how other characters would react or how their opinions of me would change. This was really cool. For those used to playing video games, especially those who play role playing games, this form of interactive story telling is nothing new. However, for me I’m still amazed.

It’s been a long time since I’ve become quite so immersed in the characters and story line of a game although this probably has more to do with the fact that I don’t play that many games. That being said, the story line still plays a very important role and the story line of this game is indeed very strong. There are two more episodes and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

I wish I had a post about the sights and sounds of St. Jacobs...

...but I don't, so instead here are two pictures that don't do justice just how hot and packed it was.

The end of August

I seem to have hit my limit for Internet data so there won't be any new pictures for a few days. Until then I'll post pictures from August 30th (or as close to as possible) from years past.

August 26, 2008

August 29, 2009

August 27, 2010 (not very clear phone picture)

August 23, 2011

It's pretty amazing, I can't seem to remember some things for more than a few minutes but I know exactly where I took each of these pictures and for most of them I remember almost exactly the precise moment also.

First film from Canada

Fresh (sorta) from the first roll of film in Canada.

It's a dog!

Music!

Now that I'm back in a city with a larger biking culture I'm going to attempt to restart taking (bad) pictures of fixies and singles. Here we go!

This morning I stood on a street corner waiting for a bus and in the twenty minutes that I was waiting three people walked by me. In the same amount of time probably 300 cars went by me. Last night I took a short car trip down to Ikea and we drove on a section of the busiest highway in the area. If I remember correctly at one point there were five lanes of traffic going in the same direction and another two lanes that were separate but also in the same direction. Now that’s a quite a lot of cars and highway, especially for me, someone who didn’t grow up in a driving focused country, and it’s just one more adjustment that I’m finding I have to make. A car makes life a lot easier here.