Hopefully the sun will come out again

A couple of weeks ago I was out at Boundary Bay looking for some Snowy owls. As the skies started to clear just a bit, a double rainbow showed up. I grabbed a quick shot with my phone.

Fall colour

I don't seem to be getting out as much as I'd like to this year. That's especially true about this fall. Not all that sure why, but that's the way it is.

That said, back in October I did get over to Green Timbers Park with my Nikon D3S and the 28-300 lens. I walked around for a couple of hours and took a few shots, but nothing really fired me up in terms of autumn colours. There were just dull yellows, faded reds and dead greens in the trees.

I had just put my gear back into the car in the parking lot and was closing the door, when something caught my eye. Right behind the car was this lovely tree in full fall colour. 

It's interesting that I didn't notice it when I arrived, nor again when I came back to the car from my walk. It was just as I was closing up and getting ready to leave.

Anyway, rather than take out the big Nikon guns, I snapped a couple of shots with my iPhone. I was impressed again with how much better the iPhone 4s camera is compared to the 3Gs. I'd forgotten, and I'll have to spend more time learning to take photos with it.

I was also reminded about being open the world around you. I often tend to get focused on what I think I want and hunt for that, rather than notice the beauty that's already right there around me. How about you? Does that world sometimes go by without you noticing too?

Halo 4: Done

I finished playing Halo 4 today. Overall, it took me about 12-14 hours or so. I'm not a very competitive person, so I played it on the 'easy' level. That was hard enough, thanks.

And what did I think of it?

Pros:

Lots of action

Great art

The mantis robot is fun to drive

Lots of the gameplay is similar to the other Halo’s in the series

Cons:

Can’t save as you go without quitting too; I find that frustrating in long sequences

Missions were not always clear, which may have been related to the fact that:

Cortina is often hard to hear

Some messages were hard to see on the background because of the colours matching, or close

No introductory manual - I had to go online to find a wiki page to figure some things out, like the controls

Crawlers are the new flood; they don’t add much and they are just plain irritating.

In the end, it was fun, action packed and familiar. Pretty much what you'd want from the next in a series.

Now, back to regular programming.

Sometimes politics just gets scary

So Obama won the US election last night. I'm glad, if for no other reason than what seems to be the prevailing republican attitude.

In an article by Mark Gollom on CBC News this morning called, Republicans do some soul-searching after Romney loss, he noted that many republican supporters "rejected the claim that the party must change, and said the electorate needs to open its eyes." 

Yep, it's our way or the highway. Scary.

It's going to be another hard fightin' 4-year session with the Republican congress, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President. I hope the American people can send a strong message that there needs to be some compromise to get America back on track. it ain't going to happen without it.

Oh no...

It arrived as predicted. There goes the next few days.