Easily Distracted

Had a bit of excitement on the way home, today. As I was walking home from the bus stop, after work, I noticed a lot of muddy water bubbling up from the street. A water pipe had broke. I must have just caught it in the early stages. Went home, my mom had already contacted the municipality, and went out later to check on it. The bubbling puddle had become a lake. Some neighbours were directing traffic around the hole initially, and then eventually telling people to take the long way around. We couldn’t use our water for a while, and now it’s a little brown, but at least we can use it!! Just don’t plan on drinking it for a while. Hours later, people are still working on it. Not quite sure what the status is.

(photos below)

My beloved Canon IXY (ELPH) digital camera has finally (mostly) died, thanks to me putting it in a bag that had falsely secure liquids. (It got beer on it and now it behaves very strange and lacks some features, such as playback.) Oops. Anyway, I don’t like having to be so careful with my camera; it interferes with my lifestyle. So, a logical choice for my next camera would be… a waterproof camera? 🙂 And since I know I like Canon cameras already, a waterproof Canon would be great! Luckily, Canon released their first waterproof camera, this year.

I’ve had the Canon PowerShot D10 (youtube, dpreview, dpreview group test) for 2 weeks now and taken over 100 photos. The interface and features are a nice refinement over my old Canon camera, but there are a few notable things that irritate me. It’s a little larger and heavier than I would like for a point-and-shoot; most importantly, I can’t put it in my pocket. 🙁 It lacks HD video, which I would love and is common for digital cameras this size and price point. It seems to select a rather high ISO setting, compared to my IXY, when on Auto and in lower-light situations – I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing or not, but I have to get used to it. And, of course, making a camera waterproof puts some restrictions on the physical interface: no sliders, no knobs or dials… just buttons. But overall, I have tested it indoors and outdoors in different lighting, in the pool, the ocean, and the rain, and it seems to work pretty good. It turns on really quickly, and the battery life is fantastic (it’s just started flashing for the first time, and I’ve taken a lot of video, as well). In addition to being waterproof to 10 metres, it’s shock resistant and cold-resistant, so I will definitely be using it on the mountain, this ski season. It’s certainly not perfect, but I think I’m going to keep it. 🙂

Here are a selection of photos taken with it:

A couple nights ago, on April 18 (!!!!), it started snowing in Deep Cove. This is NOT normal Spring weather! It’s even more strange because Deep Cove was the only place to get dumped on so bad, even compared to places right next to (and higher than) us! Anyway, it started as hail, then became snow, then became a mixture of rain and snow – which became really heavy. This new and sudden weight caused lots of trees and branches around us to fall. One of them fell onto our deck.

With all these trees falling down, the natural progression would be power outages. Along with the thunder and lightning, there were also a couple loud hums followed by the sky glowing an electric blue (an overloaded power transformer?). I couldn’t find any news items on this, yet – maybe on Monday. By this time, I was already soaking wet from using a handsaw to cut the branch fallen branch and shovelling the snow off our driveway, so I grabbed a flashlight and went for a walk. I frequently heard cracking as trees or branches were falling. The loud humming noise was coming from what I assume is a substation on the other side of Myrtle Park. Eventually, the power came back on, so I went home, had a hot shower, and went to sleep (was planning on heading to Whistler, bright and early).

It was a pretty random night. Blogged about it with Twitter a little.