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Started off this period by
attending the annual labour day
Sail
Past put on by the Scottish Studies Society of Toronto. Put up
lots of pictures of the event and a few videos. Certainly had a great day.
The afternoon sailing was sold out but there was some room on the morning
sailing which I was on. I think the numbers were something like 175 in the
morning and 250 in the afternoon.
Got a visit from a couple
of neighbours this month...
On the left is LeRoy and on the right Derek
and my other neighbour err.. Don I think his name is. LeRoy has dual
USA/Canadian citizenship. You can see both are enjoying some of my home
brew :-)
Am having an interesting
month with my web site... at time of writing this Scottish TV (STV) have
taken out an advert and their Internet arm ScotlandOnTV have also
advertised. I'm told that in October we'll be able to embed some of
their videos into the site and we'll also be including their RSS text and
videos feeds. All of that should be good stuff.
There is also a possibility
that we'll be doing a lot more on the music front. We might be able
to let you purchase music tracks... a bit like ITunes. So you can mix and
match individual tracks from a whole variety of CD's to make up your very
own collection. Sound like this could develop into an excellent
facility.
I've agreed a contract to
get my Garage done and get a door knocked through the wall into it. This
should get done around end of October.
I made a Jiffy loaf and very good is was too
:-) You can get the recipe at
http://www.electricscotland.com/food/recipes/jiffy_loaf.htm
I've been working on new
books for my web site and especially the "Transactions of the Highland
and Agricultural Society of Scotland". At time of writing I've been
adding the 1876 edition and the stories are huge in it... almost books in
their own right. They are very detailed accounts of farming
conditions in various areas of Scotland along with specific articles on
various farming topics such as improvement of waste land, drainage, trees,
various crops, various breeds of livestock, etc.
Visited Jim Shields on
Sunday 16th September to pick up my oil painting and here it is for you see
here... both in his studio and then up on my wall :-)
As Jim explains it... this
is an evening scene in Autumn with the sun coming through the clouds from
the left of the picture. I might add that Jim will take commissions
and he can even do a painting from a picture sent into him and do check
out his web site at
www.aircraftworlddirectory.com.
On Saturday 22nd September
I got promoted to Knight Commander and we had the annual investiture in
Toronto. I confess to thinking it was a bit weird as we lost the
Grand Prior of Canada's Banner. There was no mention of the new Chancellor
of the Priory, Nola Crewe, and they forgot to process my own promotion so
no certificate, medal and no presentation <sigh>. We did bring in 8 new
Knights however so that was good and an enjoyable banquet afterwards at
the Royal Canadian Military Institute.
Got my award at the Windsor Investiture on 3rd
November
Also had dinner with Harold
and Janus in an Armenian restaurant and Janus, being an Estonian, kindly
gave me a Estonia/Canada flag pin. He also tells me he's ordered up an
Estonian Tartan Tie :-)
On Saturday 29th September
I headed to the University of Guelph, some two hours drive from my house,
to attend the Fall meeting of the Scottish Studies Dept. which I learned
on the day that they are now called Centre for Scottish Studies.
And the Centre for Scottish Studies now have
their own merchandise
And lots of books both new and old to purchase
And the auditorium was pretty well filled for
both the morning and afternoon sessions
Dr Graeme Morton did an excellent job of
chairing the meeting and on the right Alan McKenzie was in attendance for
the inaugrial Jill McKenzie lecture in honour of his wife who died earlier
in the year. The talk was given by Professor Christopher Whatley
(University of Dundee) on "The Union of 1707 on its 300th anniversary".
Everyone in attendance
enjoyed the lectures and there were many questions for the presenters.
Coffee, lunch and afternoon tea were all part of the fee and enjoyed by
all.
On October 15th I attended
a get together in Toronto for Jim Mather MSP who is the Scottish Minister
for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism. I wasn't actually going to
attend the event but after getting some 8 emails and two phone calls
asking me to reconsider I did. I have to say it was pretty much as
I'd envisioned in that I really learned very little. Certainly there were
many less in attendance than the last meeting when the then First Minister
came over. For me personally, apart from meeting a few folk, it was
a waste of time. Absolutely nothing to report from it. I don't even
know what they thought they'd get out of it.
On the 25th I went to take
a few photographs to find that my camera was faulty. It couldn't
take a still photograph or at least it could but it also gave loads of
horizontal lines across each picture. Mind you I had contemplated getting
a new camera so it wasn't too much of an issue. Anyway... headed out
in the car to get a new camera only to find I had a flat tyre. So it
was out to get it fixed and as it was 4.30pm wasn't much time to get to
the garage to get it fixed. Anyway... I made it and while they were
fixing it I got the new camera which is a Canon S5 1S.
Features at a glance:
- 12x optical zoom lens with
Ultrasonic Motor (USM) and UD lens
- Optical Image Stabilizer
- 8.0 Megapixel CCD
- DIGIC III with advanced Noise
Reduction technology and Face Detection for stills and movies
- Red-Eye Correction in playback
- 2.5” high-resolution vari-angle
LCD
- Long-play VGA movies with stereo
sound and Photo in Movie
- 22 shooting modes including full
manual control and 0cm Super Macro
- High ISO 1600 and Auto ISO Shift
- Compatible with Wide/Tele/Close-up
converter lenses and Canon EX Speedlite flashes
There were 3 features I was
interested in...
1. The 8.0 Megapixel
CCD as sometimes I get maps in some of the old books I purchase and
they are far too large to scan in from my A4/Legal scanner. I
did try to take photographs from broadsheet newspapers as well and
not overly successful. And so this new camera should do a far
better job of taking these types of pictures.
2. I did want the facility to take a
still picture while taking a movie and this camera allows that.
3. I did want a better zoom facility
as sometimes you just can't get near to a place you want a picture.
And an additional feature that will
be useful is that the camera can just record audio and so that could
be useful if I want to just record an audio track or voice
recording.
I went out the next day to purchase a
4Gbyte card as they only supply a 32Mb card with the camera.
And so I now have what I need to
move forward with my photography work :-)
This month has also
been interesting due to working with David B Thomson to add his book
to the site. David is a long time fisherman who left school in
Scotland at 14 to go onto his Dad's fishing boat. Since then he has
worked in some 70 countries around the world helping people to do
better on fishing both on the sea and in inland waterways. He's been
an assistant professor in Universities in Canada and the USA and has
worked on many United Nations projects. You can read his book at
www.electricscotland.com/thomson
As as to working on
the web I've also spent quite some time this month with Clan
MacIntyre helping them get the 2008 MacIntyre Gathering organised
which takes place in Scotland.
I'm also working on
an interesting project to do with the Knight Templars where we hope
to be doing some charitable work. I'm working with David
Thomson, mentioned above, to see if we can help a community in
Cambodia to get a supply of good quality water. The thing is that
there are a couple of English speaking volunteers in the area that
might be willing to supply us with photographs of the community and
regular reports on how they are doing. This means I could
develop a web site for them on Electric Scotland where we could get
to know them and actually see what progress is being made. It would
be nice to get Electric Scotland visitors involved with this so will
see how this develops.
Anyway... the weather has been very good
with lots of warm sunny days. Have managed to sit out on the
porch a few evenings enjoying the sun. So on the whole not a
great deal to report this past 2 months as mostly I've been working
on the site.
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