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Xmas Party, Stretham (1982)

Xmas Party, Stretham (1982)
Originally uploaded by Ely Online.

My past catching up with me on someone else's flickr photostream...

Symmetrical temperatures

A pair of Apple weather widgets on my dashboard, taken at 9:30 in the morning a few days ago. The temperature difference has been greater on other days, but the symmetry of this one struck me. Something that several people have told me is that when it gets this cold, one of the things you notice is the insides of your nostrils freezing when you breathe in. I can verify that it is a very strange feeling when this happens, and I think it has to be colder than -10C to experience it. Whether it is actually freezing I don't know, but it's the best explanation I've heard.

Aerial shot of SE Calgary

More specifically, a shot of Alan's neighbourhood, including the ice rink where he has spent most of the evenings this week with other local volunteers flooding it with water (taking advantage of the -20C cold snap) so that members of the community can skate. The ice rink is in the centre(ish) of the photograph, to the left of the open space. Alan's house is in the triangular block of townhouses immediately above. I was really pleased I managed to recognise the area as the plane was approaching Calgary airport.

Here we go again

Once more into the blog... After various failed attempts where I tried to start a blog that separates out work from home, serious from playful (and failed abysmally), this is yet another blog of mine but one that will hopefully work better because it is just me posting stuff about all the different aspects of what I do and am into.

So anyway, as you can see, one of the things I'm into at the moment is extremes, going from the heat of Sydney to the Cold of Calgary in less than a day.



Last week I was in Sydney for OzCHI 2006. On the day after the conference, I went with Ann and Yoko to Manly beach to step into the ocean for an all too brief paddle.

At 3pm I was on a flight across the Pacific to the freezing north of Canada (yes, I know there is more north than Calgary). I'm getting towards the end of a sabbatical visit to Calgary, which has been going through a bit of a cold snap this week. Here you can see me, only hours after getting off the flight from Sydney, helping out Alan and his brother flooding the local community ice rink. It's 3 days later and I'm told the ice is a good 5" thick now. I'm not checking myself until it warms up over the next few days (really don't want to spend more time than I have to outside when it's below -20C!



OK, that's probably more of a post than I've managed for a long time, and at the moment it's to nobody because I haven't announced the existence of this to anyone yet. Come back soon (once you get here).