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.

Can't anything go right?!?!

I'm taking in positive thinking. Really, I am. Because yesterday I was happy. Got a new harddrive for my computer. 250 gig. Wow! The thoughts of days gone by came back. How am I going to fill this thing? In truth, I know how. I work in graphics and a lot of my images can be huge in file size. This drive, though, would be good to put all of my artwork and writing on and ease some pressure off of my 80 gig.

Or so I thought.

Simple situation. Thinking back, I should have started the backup first.

I set the jumpers so the drives would act as master/slave. All good. Checked the bios, there they were. Nice. Began the boot process. For the next three hours. And I began to realize, my 80 gig decided now was a good time to start dying. So, there I was. The sudden realization that four years worth of artwork and writing, was now lost. Gone into the void that takes computer equipment. No hard copies, no backups. Shame on me.

Not all of it was lost, fortunately. I have a good number of backups on my laptop, not 100% of it, but a good amount of it. But there were some projects that took a great deal of time in creating that I would have to start all over again. The pain of thinking about that began settling in. Along with a mix of emotions. Anger, worry, fear. At the point where I think I was going to start to cry, I realized that now might be a good time for that upgrade I had always thought about getting. My computer was three years old, after all. I was pushing it pretty hard, and I had always thought that I should start planning a new system. I'd build something that would be able to stick around for a few years.

That got pushed up to this morning. I walked to the local computer store, and told them what I needed a new system to do, and what I wanted a new system to do. It has to be able to run Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign. It has to have a decent amount of space. DVD burner. And it has to be able to handle a good number of games. Granted, a lot of those games are older, but they'll rip along nicely with the new system I have planned. I remember playing Neverwinter Nights on an Athlon 600. I can't wait to see it on an Athlon 5000. Duo core, 2.7 gig processing power. Complete with a GeForce video card that will make my old one look like a Sunday driver doing 25 on the freeway.

And, there is a good chance I can recover my backups off the old drive. It's not completely dead. It just won't boot. Here's hoping.

So yes, I am looking at a lot of positives. I have my laptop. I have a roof over my head. I have food. I have electricity. I have my job. And spring is not that far away. Life is starting to look a lot better when I take those things into perspective. And when I read funny captioned cat pictures.

moar funny pictures

Until next time...

...Keep 'em flyin'.

Writing to resume

I know, I've been incredibly lax on the writing, especially with updating the latest Canyons of Steel story, Nobody Guns For My Family. I promise, I will be getting into it again. I hit a bit of a writing wall a while back, and things, like the weather, turned cold. When that happens, I just can't find the urge to write. The same, sadly, could also be said of my blog as I was not as faithful as I could have been in updating it. But, I have started getting back into the swing of things, as I have new rants on world views that I can start posting again.

Until Walker hangs up his shootin' irons...

...keep 'em flyin'.

Ultimate Championship!

Funny how you learn about something by reading something else. I was doing some reading and checking out old comic books online, when I found a few links to the website for the Canadian superhero, Captain Canuck. Seems the Captain is still alive and kicking. Richard Comely is still at it, putting out books in short series. Cool idea, considering that seems to be the way to go for independent comics these days. And low and behold, there was more.

Captain Canuck: Unholy War, written by Reil Langois and Drew Langois of Swan River, Manitoba. A short four issue mini series that chronicles the West Coast Captain Canuck. Nice look, good short story and brought back some good memories of the 80s and even the short lived 90s Captain Canuck.

More research showed something else, though. Big companies like DC and Marvel and even Image comics like to do the big blockbuster cross overs. But the independent comics usually don't get the option of a major teamup with Batman or Spider-man. That now changes with a series called War of the Independents. War of the Independents will cross over some of independent comics biggest names. Shi, Savage Dragon, Cerebus, Dawn and a whole lot more. And Captain Canuck, both the classic version and the new West Coast Version. I'll leave details out for now, but the July release should be an interesting read. I know I'm looking forward to it.

Until next time...

...keep 'em flyin'.