Pictures from ConVocation

Pictures from ConVocation are now up at flickr. I have also set up a print ordering site.

Back to the mundane world

ConVocation is over and all the people I love so much have left our little magickal oasis to return to their day jobs and mundane responsibilities - as must I. But there is still work to do for ConVocation - as a start I will need to process all photos I took over the last four days and set up galleries. Here we go ...

Getting Started

I have created my "Hire Me" site to hawk my services as a photographer. I am using Coppermine to provide Photo Galleries. Hopefully in the next few months things will start getting interesting.

Brownies!

I made a batch of The Barefoot Contessa's Outrageous Brownies tonight. I made a couple changes though:
I increased the dark chocolate to 8 oz and reduced the chocolate chips to compensate.
I added 1 Tbsp Cinnamon (yes a full tablespoon - there's a ton of chocolate in these!) and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.
To accomodate some friends tastes I only used half the walnuts -- I poured half the batter into the pan, added the walnuts to the remaining batter and added that. This worked better than I expected as once the batter had cooled to room tempurature it was pretty thick and easy to control.
Finally, the first time I made them I cut the batch into 20 pieces - most people found these too large so I reduced them to 2x2 inch squares.
Final verdict? Yum!

Northville Fire And Ice Festival

Northville had their Fire and Ice Festival today. Festivities included a chili cook-off. I liked the chili from Independence Village best. The offerings from the Lazy Lizard, Charley's Deli, and O'Charleys Restaurant were excellent as well.

Pinhole goes digital ... sort of

OK - this isn't pinhole at all, but it is way cool! This guy takes apart flatbed scanners and builds homemade cameras around the sensors. End result: 100 MegaPixel camera (take that Hasselblad!). Another neat thing is due to the nature of the sensor he is getting really interesting distortions. I still want to try pinhole, but now I want to try this too.

Check your chauffeur's lifestyle?

Sometimes I wonder what basis people use to make decisions. According to this article:

A Vancouver man, Peter Hayes, has accused the Vancouver police of illegal discrimination because of his involvement in BDSM. Hayes says that he lost a potential job as a limousine driver when police refused him a chauffeur's permit and has taken his case to the Human Rights Tribunal.

The article also says Mr. Hayes is trying to claim BDSM is a "Sexual Orientation" under Canada's human rights laws. The police are disputing this. In another article Mr. Hayes said the police "wouldn't give him many details, except to say the concern had to do with paganism, Wiccan magic as well as role-playing, master-slave sexual practices".

Now, I'm not sure that BDSM constitutes a sexual orientiaton - it seems to me that orientation is less about what you do than who you do it with - but I don't think he should be discriminated against because of it either. What I really don't get is how any of this is at all relevant to this guy's ability to safely pilot a limo filled with passengers around the greater Vancouver area. It seems to me the VPD should be more concerned about potential chauffeur's driving record and whether they have any criminal convictions than unrelated legal activities the candidates engage in during their personal time.

Hat tip to Wren's Nest.