Have you seen it? It's great, they got stuff.

The Tour has begun for another year, that would be Le Tour de France just in case I wasn't clear.  Unfortunately I won't be able to watch much this year, although I will see most of the 3rd week once I get home.  I even remembered to record Stage 1 on Saturday before I left town but I've been so busy that I forgot to watch it.  Most of the big names aren't here again for various reasons so I'm not really sure what to expect.  I'm sure it will be exciting by the end as usual.

I'll be heading off to Newport Beach, California tomorrow morning.  Most of my time will be spent in training mode but I'll have some time to get out and about.

If you know of a great spot to check out just drop me a line.  Apparently we've got a line on a great steakhouse already but that's about it.

I have no idea how often I'll be online but I'll be poking around when I have the time.

I'll be down there for 2 weeks and I'm sure to get a bad sunburn and some heatstroke. :)  At least I'll be able to see Lady and Dude, who will be at home, with my new webcam.

Later!

For the big holiday weekend we decided to take Dude camping at Moyie and he was pumped.  We bought a brand spanky new tent and it has plenty of room for us.  There was a pretty exciting thunderstorm around 2:00 in the morning and the tent didn't leak at all.  Dude basically slept through it the whole thing just poking up his head a couple times to see what was going on before falling right back to sleep.

It was pretty damn hot, especially when the breeze disappeared, but it cooled off nicely as the sun went down.  We stayed up late around the campfire and spent some time at the beach.  Dude really liked pouring water on the campfire before we left.

I took a little stroll along the shore after dinner and took a few pics.
Dude also took a bunch of pics with his camera.  You can see where his priorities lie.

The newest movie by Disney / Pixar lives up to it's billing.  They've certainly figured out how to make these things successfully over the years.  This one was interesting because there is very little dialogue.  I thought Dude was going to lose interest because of that but he was totally hooked all the way through.

It's a good premise that can easily be made into a very dark movie not for children but they managed to keep it light and accessible for all ages.  It centers around Wall-E, a trash cleaning robot, who's all alone after the humans have fled and he's looking for companionship.  Much excitement ensues as he tries to protect his "true love" from all the baddies.

The kids will love it for all the obvious reasons and there's enough here to keep the adults happy.

Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy Volume II is another great installment of short stories.  Any fan of fantasy, or short stories in general, should give these books a try.

There are plenty of good stories here but the absolute star of the bunch is Bill, the Little Steam Shovel by Joe R. Lansdale.  Anyone who has ever read stories to children has to read this story.  Lansdale really nails the typical children's setting and storytelling techniques but this is definitely not for the kids.  Great stuff!

As usual, I enjoy reading a smattering of different authors in a short time and I've found quite a few great authors through various anthologies over the years.

Check it out if you get the chance.

I just submitted this photo in a photo contest at wired.com, the theme is squares.  Head on over to the contest here and give me an up-vote if you think it's worthy enough.  Submit your own squares photo and we'll all get a piece of the fun.

I spent the whole ferry ride back to the mainland hanging over the back railing just taking in the views.  I did the same type of tripod spin that I had tried on the hotel balcony.  I haven't done any Photoshop work to adjust the colours on this bunch either.

I picked up a cool Gargoyle statue for the garden last week.  His new home is in the corner of a small garden looking down the side yard.  At least I know he won't go hungry just eating bugs and such as Dude offered up some popcorn without any hesitation.

Dude took one look at the wings and said "Let's name him Bat!  That's a cool name."  I think another name is in order but I have no ideas yet.  Although Bat might just stick I suppose.  Any suggestions?

Getting new specs seems to be the trend right now so I'll show of mine as well.  These bad boys come with magnetic clip on shades for the brighter days which means I can attach them properly with only one hand.

I wanted to take some shots of the ground because I've always had a fascination with maps and I absolutely love poking around in Google Maps when I'm bored.  I think they turned out pretty good.

I took a shot just north of Calgary as we left Canada and a good snow covered one somewhere over Greenland.  I also got a couple good ones of the sun just barely setting below the horizon before coming back up again.  It was overcast and raining in Frankfurt so I didn't see much until just before we landed.  The plane took a really hard bank turn somewhere over Rome and I got a shot looking almost straight down.

On the way home I took a couple shots over Scotland and I managed to find the place on Google Maps.  I was pretty excited about that.  They're on the east coast a little north-east of Edinburgh near St Andrews and Dundee.

I particularly noticed how differently the cites are laid out in Europe compared to North America.  Above Frankfurt I could see the main downtown part of the city but the other sections were all separated by green space, more like small villages or towns.  Perhaps they were different towns I suppose.  Over here a large city just sprawls outward with no real breaks and all green space just seems to get eaten up by the city.  Hmmm...

I also took shots of the screens showing our airspeed, outside temperature and map of our flight path.  We flew in this big Airbus operated by Lufthansa and it was a really nice plane.  On the way back we had the seats in the first row of the section so I was able to stretch out anytime.  Decent enough food, which seemed to be non stop, and a small screen to watch movies and such.  I remember watching the Glasgow Music Festival, Jumper, 27 Dresses and Alvin & The Chipmunks but there must have been more.