the historic roundhouse

Roundhouse, originally uploaded by sizzled.

this is leon’s now? i love the location but fear for the history of olde york.

smile on my face

…tears of a sad clown.

Just like Pagliacci did
I try to keep my surface hid
Smiling in the crowd I try
But in a lonely room I cry

eight twenty seven-january 24

Spending the last few days in Nelson has been so wonderful.

No snow falling but way less falling for me on the hills. I love this sport, this mountain and the lake.

I feel like I’ve gained 10 pounds in the past 3 days. There is definitely a thriving restaurant scene here and some impressive menus.

Here are a few of the pictures I’ve taken in the past few days without my camera which decided to die in Vancouver. Strictly iPhone from here on out, something tells me I will be buying some new apps soon.

four thirty eight-january 19

I am in Nelson now, my canon g7 seems to not want to turn on anymore so I’m forced to get busy with the iPhone. I spent the day snowboarding and made way bigger strides than any time I’ve tried it before. It’s the best feeling in the world. Loving this place and my homies right now. I’m truly blessed to be out here on the cheap, crashing on floors and couches, riding a loaner set-up and hopefully hopping on at a local night this week to play a set.

one fifty seven-january 14th

We had an extremely mellow day yesterday, complete with another burrito at The Shed and a nighttime nerd-out with Ben’s homie Bart.  A few beers, some delicious food and snacks and the end of the first season of Sons Of Anarchy.  This is a mix of some of the pictures I’ve taken with my Canon G7 since arriving on the coast. They appear in no particular order.

nine oh six

So apparently yesterday was a record breaking temperature for British Columbia. It didn’t rain until the mid-afternoon and we got a really nice walk in along the beach with Ben’s parents. I had a chance to try the burritos from a tiny spot down at the docks called The Shed, they were amazing. In fact, I’m hoping to have another one today. I took a ton of pictures with my camera but I don’t have a wireless network here so I’ll have to post those later. For now, here’s all the photos I took on my iPhone yesterday.

Ten fifty one

Spent yesterday getting familiar with the lovely town of gibsons, bc and catching up with ben and his wife dawn. The rain finally relented this morning and I’m looking forward to a boat ride we’ll be taking later on through some of the nearby islands. Finally had a shower which was pretty much the highlight of my life after a full day of travelling and no sleep.

Here’s a bunch of pics I took yesterday, expect more later on.

twelve thirty seven -january 11th

I’ve arrived on a flight that was bumpy but fast, 10 minutes early to be exact. I sat at the front of the plane and so I got off quickly. My bag is so new that i let it go around the carousel for 10 minutes before realizing it was mine. This happened after I almost grabbed the wrong bag, in fact mine is a much darker navy. Won’t forget again because i’m going to bomb the underside of it with a fatcap or something.

I’m about to catch a ferry to the sunshine coast to see my friend Ben and his family, I’m really stoked because I have never travelled to that part of B.C. but have always wanted to. My gear for the trip is my Marmot Gallatin backpack, A MEC Duffle in size Large, and a dj Bag I bought at Moog Audio in Montreal. I think the brand is UDG. Jacket wise I brought my 2 staple patagonia pieces, the Rain Shadow in black and the DAS Parka in black. I also brought a sample North Face down vest that I bought at Europe Bound and obviously some snowboarding gear. These new Gordini gloves I bought are sick, but really this is about where I am not all the crap that’s weighing me down.

bee cee

beecee, originally uploaded by sizzled.

i’m back out west for the first time since 2005, currently blogging from the ground outside the horseshoe bay ferry terminal. i might upload some photos before the ferry gets here so stay tuned. this blog will serve as my travel blog for this 15 day trip across the province to some of my favourite and soon to be new favourite places.

-photo from 2005 at english bay

I switched teams Pt. 1

Woz giving me an iPhone, originally uploaded by JonBauer.

June 19, 2009

Last week on the official release date of the Iphone, I finally gave in to the tremendous pressure building up inside me to finally cut the Blackberry Messenger umbilical.

Given that I have owned a 1st Gen Iphone(despite never taking it out of the box) and have countless friends who champion them and continually remind me of their superiority, I was surprised that I held out this long.

However, the massive rumour mill and weekly screencaps and updates on boygenius were the eventual turning point. I will admit it, I got caught up in the hype. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but 1 week in and I am confident it was the correct one.

When I got in arguments for the sake of arguing as the pro-Blackberry guy I always found myself really clinging solely to the same 2 points. Blackberry’s have instant messaging and a physical keyboard and the Iphone doesn’t.

When I finally realized the Iphone in fact packs the power of a real computer and replaces my defunct 15 gb 2nd gen Ipod, I started to waver on my dedication to those 2 things.

Here is how I have adapted since making the switch. Firstly, the touch screen keyboard: It is so much more intuitive than a Blackberry.

Yes, a Blackberry will auto capitalize a letter for you, but they also clung foolishly to certain abbreviations in their auto-fill that were maddening. I am already finding the Iphone to be adapting to some of the slang and words that I use that others might not and giving me the option to auto-fill words that a week ago it would be afraid of. This looks to be a feature that will save me time since once the Iphone learns how I type, it will give me the option to auto-fill over half of my words. I definitely ALREADY don’t miss having squared off thumb tips that are going numb from pressing my Blackberry keys!

Not to mention the other touchscreen functionality that goes completely against Blackberry’s no-frills, utilitarian aesthetic. I love enlarging pictures with my thumb and forefinger, I love that when I tap a field on a webpage, that portion enlarges automatically and the keyboard pops up, I love my screen quickly adapts when I turn the phone sideways like most worthwhile digital cameras already do.

I haven’t played with a Blackberry Storm, so forgive me if it has those features but it got such low reviews and isn’t sold legitimately in Canada with a Sim Card so I really didn’t bother with it.

Not to mention the flexibility that having a larger screen gives me when trying to view enlarged images or read a document, I didn’t even think of those limitations until given the option to hide my keyboard and only use it when I need it. I’ll take the slight learning curve that comes with the Iphone as a tradeoff for watching a widescreen movie trailer on my phone while on a road trip to Montreal.

I’ll get into the Blackberry Messenger pros and cons in my Pt. 2 of this post, have a great weekend everyone.

“Don’t stop til you get enough” RIP MJ 6/25/09