CFL Season set

The Canadian Football League has announced the season schedule for 2008. It opens up in Ivor Wynne Stadium as the Hamilton Tiger Cats host the Montreal Alouettes, and the Calgary Stampeders host the BC Lions in an opening day double header. The Saskatchewan Roughriders open defense of their Grey Cup Championship against the Edomonton Eskimos. The Rider's schedule ends tough for them. Here's what the season will bring.

RIDER GAMES

Saskatchewan Roughriders

(All times CST)

PRE-SEASON

Friday, June 13 B.C. at Saskatchewan 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, June 19 Saskatchewan at Edmonton 7:00 p.m.

REGULAR SEASON

Saturday, June 28 Edmonton at Saskatchewan 5:30 p.m.

Friday, July 4 Saskatchewan at B.C. 8:00 p.m.

Saturday, July 12 Saskatchewan at Hamilton 2:00 p.m.

Saturday, July 19 Montreal at Saskatchewan 5:00 p.m.

Sunday, July 27 Toronto at Saskatchewan 5:00 p.m.

Saturday, August 2 Saskatchewan at Calgary 6:00 p.m.

Thursday, August 7 Calgary at Saskatchewan 8:00 p.m.

Thursday, August 21 Saskatchewan at Edmonton 7:00 p.m.

Sunday, August 31 Winnipeg at Saskatchewan 1:00 p.m.

Sunday, September 7 Saskatchewan at Winnipeg 2:00 p.m.

Saturday, September 13 Saskatchewan at B.C. 8:00 p.m.

Saturday, September 20 B.C. at Saskatchewan 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, September 28 Saskatchewan at Montreal 11:00 a.m

Friday, October 3 Calgary at Saskatchewan 8:00 p.m.

Monday, October 13 Saskatchewan at Calgary 2:30 p.m.

Sunday, October 19 Hamilton at Saskatchewan 1:00 p.m.

Saturday, October 25 Edmonton at Saskatchewan 4:30 p.m.

Thursday, October 30 Saskatchewan at Toronto 5:30 p.m.

The new machine

I completely forgot about this update until last night's lunar eclipse. I was getting ready to take photos of the lunar eclipse and looked up at my computer. "Hey," I thought. "My new 'puter gets a photo op." So, I snapped a quick pic of it. The machine is a major step up for me. With an Athlon 5000 processor and 4 gig of RAM, the machine came standard with a 160 gig SATA drive. I had purchased another hard drive, and that one was added to this machine, giving me 410 gig of space. Because I was going to be working with very high graphics, whether that be in Illustrator, Photoshop or any gaming (such as Neverwinter Nights which is seen on the monitor) an nVidia card was added, one from the 8500 series. That was a major step, because my old machine had only an 80 gig hard drive, 2 gig of RAM and a GeForce 7600.

What surprised me when I bought the machine, was what else it came with. I wasn't expecting a set of decent speakers, nor was I expecting a new keyboard and mouse. All of that for a $700.00 price tag. That was nice. (Enter shameless plug here) I have purchased most of my computer equipment and my camera from the local computer shop, Thorstad Computers, and they've really treated me well, so I have no complaints about going there again and again. Service was actually better than Futureshop. Are you paying attention, Big Box Store?

Until next time...

...keep 'em flyin'!

Lunar Eclipse

Last night there was a lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses happen a lot more regular than one would think, but last night's was special because of the red glow it gave when the moon was covered. It was also a total eclipse, meaning that the moon was completely covered by Earth's shadow during the eclipse. More details on lunar eclipse's can be found at NASA's Lunar Eclipse page.

I usually miss celestial occurrences such as this, but last night I was prepared. Having purchased a good digital camera late last year, this helped a lot. Adding to that was the fact that I had been given my dad's old camera tripod. That came in very handy. Setting up the camera on the tripod made certain the pictures were steady and I could adjust the angle based on the movement of the moon as the time passed. The moon was never going to be in the same location, it just doesn't happen for objects that orbit other objects. But as can be seen by the photos that were taken last night (see previous blog entry) the shots came out great.

I was also very lucky in that I had a perfect view right from my balcony. The eclipse happened in the eastern sky, beginning at about 7:55 p.m. local time, and ending around 10:00 p.m.

Here is a selection of information about lunar eclipse's.

Wikipedia lunar eclipse page
Lunar Eclipse Breakdown
CBC.ca reports on the red glow

Total eclipse

Tonight at 8:00 p.m. local time, a lunar eclipse began. I thought I'd post up pictures before giving a full phase by phase account of the lunar eclipse.


These photos were taken with a Kodak EasyShare Z812 with a 12x zoom. I always make sure that one of the higher resolutions is set, so I can work with my photos in Photoshop. I used a tripod to take the pictures and had a great view outside my balcony in my apartment.