I’m dimming the lights on this photo blog, at least, for the foreseeable future.
I have launched a new blog featuring my photography at Google’s Blogspot.com. The new format is better suited to displaying my photographs.
Please visit and tell me what you think.
New site: Cycroft Photography
Ring-billed Gull_DSC7840, originally uploaded by Russ Cam.
Here’s a Ring-billed Gull having a snack at Valley Inn Road.
I’ve had a wonderful year out here in cyberspace, blogging photography and such. It’s not much fun writing if no one reads your stuff, so a big “thank you” to all you readers, and I hope you’ll return next year.
This is the week for concentrating on family, so I’ll give the blogging a rest until January 2010.
To all good cheer and good health.
Have a very Merry Christmas!
© 2009 Russell G. Campbell
All rights reserved.
I will not be posting on this blog for the next few days. My next post will probably be next Monday or Tuesday.
I have given my Internet home page—Cycroft.com—a complete facelift. Links have been updated and a News & Views section has been added. The site serves as a Web portal for my expanding presence in cyberspace and ties together my interests, which include technology, politics, photography, birding, family research, creative writing and sports—along with commentary on politics and social issues, covered in my blog at Blogspot.com, and my photography, covered in my photo blog, The Way I See It.
At the same time, I’ve published one of the Web’s most comprehensive directories of Web resources, providing links to some of the Internet’s most interesting and informative places and spaces. While this directory will be of interest to most users of the Web, bloggers, journalist, students and others who research and write for profit or fun will find it an invaluable resource.
You can see the directory by visiting Cycroft.com and following the link to “Web Resources (links).”
© 2009 Russell G. Campbell
I spent yesterday with my son, Anthony, and his daughters, Melissa and Sarah, at the Toronto Zoo. Both Anthony and I took lots of pictures. I hope he had better luck; I was disappointed in mine.
I really did not see many of the animals I know are kept in the zoo. The must often repeated phrases I heard yesterday were: “Where is it?” or “I don’t see anything…” and “I guess they’re inside.” or “There it is way up in that corner.” and “If you stand here, you can just see its head.”
Going through the zoo, I was struck by just how much zoos have changed since my childhood. Back then, all the animals were kept in relatively confining cages. The emphasis was on “exhibition” and far less on the comfort of the animals. Now the emphasis is on providing the animals a familiar and comfortable environment.
I cannot really argue with the modern notion that the animals should be treated as humanely as possible, but I go the zoo to see the animals. That’s what zoos were intended to be. Zoos have become more like animal sanctuaries than places where live wild animals are kept for people to come and see them.
Maybe zoos have to evolve even further so that they fully become sanctuaries, but with small enclosures in which a selection of animals can be on display for close up viewing.
Anyway, here’s a couple of the pictures I did take—a Grizzly Bear and beautiful Flamingos:
I’m reading the latest James Bond novel, Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks.
Devil May Care is set in the late sixties and is more than vaguely similar to the Ian Fleming originals. It was published to celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth. This new instalment in the adventures of the world’s most iconic spy has been written by one of Britain’s most admired novelists, Sebastian Faulks.
Faulks, who—like Ian Fleming—was a journalist before becoming a full-time novelist, is the author of about a dozen books, including the best-selling Birdsong (1993). He also wrote and presented the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 Television series, Churchill’s Secret Army, screened in 1999. He is a Fellow of the UK’s Royal Society of Literature.
This book is pure “Bond, James Bond” right down to the hand-made cigarettes, expensive tastes and the arch-villain who likes to cheat at sports. And as Times on Line notes:
M here is still male, curmudgeonly and pipe-puffing; Bond is the battle-scarred, reluctantly ageing veteran of a tragically curtailed marriage, brainwashing and a resultant spell as an amnesiac Japanese fisherman.
In Faulks’s own words:
My novel is meant to stand in the line of Fleming’s own books, where the story is everything. In his house in Jamaica, Ian Fleming used to write a thousand words in the morning, then go snorkelling, have a cocktail, lunch on the terrace, more diving, another thousand words in late afternoon, then more Martinis and glamorous women. In my house in London, I followed this routine exactly, apart from the cocktails, the lunch and the snorkelling.
Does Faulks pull it off? I think so: it’s a cracking good yarn and a must-read for those who miss the “real” 007. Try it for yourself.
This blog is usually about photography or technology of some sort. Every once in a while, however, I use it as a forum to get something off my chest. This is one of those posts.
Here is a link to The Hamilton Spectator’s website C.difficile community shares stories where readers can find more about this issue.
The following letter to the editor was published by the Burlington Post on Wednesday, June 18, 2008. I had sent the letter originally as an e-mail to our local MPP, Ms. Joyce Savoline with a copy to the Post.
***
BURLINGTON POST, Wednesday June 18, 2008
Letters to the Editor
I am sending this message to express my increasing concern regarding patient safety at our local hospital, Joseph Brant Memorial.
My wife, Denisé, and I have been residents of Burlington for more than 30 years. During that period, we have become increasingly alarmed about the number of negative reports we regularly receive regarding patient care at Joseph Brant Memorial.
Now, the recent outbreak of Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) bacteria has heightened our concern to the point that we dread the thought of being hospitalized in Burlington. We now ask ourselves: is being sent to Joseph Brant Memorial synonymous with a death sentence? We are that disturbed about our local facility.
Although our concern is based on anecdotal evidence and recent media reports and not on first-hand experience, the reports we hear (about) are so persistent and generally consistent that we cannot ignore them. For the most part, the reports come firsthand from former patients.
Recently, we have heard of unemptied bedpans, unchanged bed linens and inattentive patient-care staff. One patient we heard about checked out of the hospital because of a fear of dying there. One recently-discharged patient has an infection that is expected to take a year to cure. Chilling reports indeed. We have also heard that when a patient’s family member complained about the situation, that person was shunned by hospital staff members on future visits — apparently a petulant attempt to punish the complainant.
Denisé and I visited the fracture clinic at Joseph Brant Memorial last April with one of our granddaughters and noticed that several hand wash dispensers were empty and a dispenser at the main door was empty. We had to hunt around to find one that was not. This, despite the hospital’s website assurance that: “Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital supports handwashing as the single most effective way to prevent the spread of infection.”
I have not copied the hospital on this e-mail message because, quite frankly, I do not believe it will do any good. I believe an independent review or full public investigation is called for, and not just into the recent C. difficile outbreak.
Perhaps an outside firm could be hired to do a community-wide survey of those who have used the hospital in the past five years, coupled with independent surprise audits into the hospital’s personal care and cleanliness.
The City of Burlington seems to have money for a performing arts centre, a business school, library expansions, lakefront promenades, sports parks and skating rinks, etc. Perhaps, in the name of taking the basic health care of our community seriously, the City of Burlington can fund surveys and audits — although I would think this is the financial responsibility of our provincial government.
Certainly basic health care is a human right and trumps any other projects regardless of how worthwhile they may otherwise be.
We are, after all, dealing with an issue of life and death. Armed with the results of surveys and audits, we may be able to find a champion in our community who will fund a class-action suit against the responsible parties.
Please take note of the deficiencies identified by the hospital itself in its Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital Annual Performance Report 2007-2008, which states:
“The (Ontario) minister of health provided us with funds to do a study last year on the suitability of the hospital’s physical structure. The study resulted in a number of disturbing findings, key among them:
I call your attention to the points about there not being sufficient facilities for infection control and isolation or proper facilities for hygiene in each room. This, I submit, is a total disgrace and should be considered unacceptable by every elected official in our community and at Queen’s Park.
Need I remind anyone that this is a hospital that has had about 90 deaths in which infection has played some role. Outrageous!
I ask you how, in good conscience, can we spend money on any other capital project in Burlington, Halton or Ontario while we have funding issues which reportedly are leading to those most vulnerable among us dying in the very place that is supposed to care for their health?
We are an affluent community in an affluent region in an affluent province in a super rich country. How then can we have such a deplorable situation? Where is the call to action? Where is the leadership? Where are the necessary funds?
Expressions of sympathy to those whose loved ones have died unnecessarily sound hollow in the face of such inaction. With much sadness, I say again, outrageous!
To those responsible for the inaction and under funding that has led to this distressing situation I say shame on you all.
Russell Campbell, Burlington
Imagine spending most of your young life busting your guts to reach the top of your profession and, finally, when the opportunity to compete against the world’s best is at hand, along come your countrymen who tell you that you must sacrifice your dream so they can feel better about themselves.
The way I see it, something like this is being promoted at Mike Brock — Forward and Onward. Mike’s a good fellow and I agree with most of what he has to say these days, but on the issue of boycotting the Olympics I disagree with his stand.
If China is to be shunned/shamed by the international community—and I believe they should be—why call upon such a small segment of our society to bear the brunt of the inherent sacrifice? Why not, for instance, call for a widespread boycott of goods and services from China like that done several years ago in the case of South Africa?
I believe a general boycott of Chinese goods would be much more effective and would spread the pain over a wide cross section of our society. This might even lead to safer toys for our children and safer food products for our pets and ourselves, and who knows, this might even help to revitalize the Ontario economy as more good become Made in Canada—something Premier McGinty seems incapable of doing.
As for the upcoming Olympics, let the athletes compete.
I read on Mary Jo Foley’s popular blog that Microsoft has announced the availability of the final version of its Windows Live services—about two years after it first outlined its “Live” strategy.
I have been using the beta version of Windows Live Writer for some weeks now to post to this (WordPress-based) blog, and I have been very pleased with it. Live Writer is easy to use and quite comprehensive in its feature set. I’m not much of a Microsoft booster these days, but it certainly seems to have gotten its Live services right.
There is a lot of information availably on the Internet about intellectual property rights (IPR), including copyright of photographs. Unfortunately for us Canadians, most of what we see on TV and on the Internet describes IPR under the laws of the United States of America. And although U.S.A. laws are similar to ours, there are significant differences.
Because of mass media originating south of the border, general knowledge of many U.S.A. laws and legal practices is so pervasive in Canada that many of us mistakenly assume they are Canadian laws. In the case of IPR, this could turn out to be a costly assumption for some unlucky photographer.
Not being a lawyer, I wont offer any specific advice other than to suggest that photographers living in Canada, who want to protect their intellectual property, would be wise to do Canadian-based research into the subject, and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) Web site is probably the the best place to start that research. For those particularly interested in Canadian copyright, here is a link to the CIPO’s A Guide to Copyrights.
TechCrunch reports that Digg users will have full profile pages that allow them to connect to friends and share stories in a manner similar to Facebook and MySpace. Digg users will also have access to Facebook Wall-like features.
The “alpha” version of my new Web site, Beginners’ Guide to Digital Photography, has been launched at Cycroft.com. The alpha version is really a “proof of concept,” but I expect to publish a beta version later this month, just as soon as I develop an initial critical mass of content.
I was saddened to learn that Montreal Canadiens’ tough guy hockey star of the 1960s, John Ferguson, died Saturday at his Windsor, Ontario, home after a 22-month battle against cancer. He was 68.
John Ferguson was one of the most feared players in the NHL between 1963 and 1971. Acting as an enforcer on a very talented Montreal team that won the Stanley Cup five times with him in the lineup, it was Ferguson who added the toughness that made them champions after a four-year Cup drought.
During his 500-game NHL playing career, Ferguson piled up 1,214 penalty minutes, but he did more than fight. He scored 145 goals, including a personal best 29 in the 1968/69 season.
Ferguson retired at 32, then put his hockey smarts to use in new roles. He became coach and general manager of the New York Rangers and Winnipeg Jets. He served in the Ottawa Senators’ front office before joining the San Jose Sharks in 1995 as part of their player evaluation network and more recently served as a special consultant to that team.
Fergie will be missed.
A new Podcasting Legal Guide For Canada has been published and is available for download.
“Gerard Kennedy and Martha Hall Findlay are receiving salaries from the Liberal Party to help prepare for the coming election, but how much they earn is being kept secret.The lack of transparency is causing concern among some Liberals and leading to speculation that private deals were made because Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Hall Findlay were the two leadership candidates who dropped off the ballot early and threw significant support behind Stephane Dion. The secrecy is also driving speculation among some Li berals that Ms. Hall Findlay and Mr. Kennedy are earning big salaries.”
Globe and Mail, 01/03/07
About four years ago when I first began to visit blogs on a regular basis, I was taken aback by the general lack of civility displayed there, especially as relates to expressing opinions. Recent experience suggests that the situation today is much the same.
As I read letters to the editor and comments on the Internet that have been made by visiting surfers, I notice how frequently people attack writers rather than their lines of reasoning. You know how it goes: if you deplore the US presence in Iraq, your opinion is dismissed because you’re an anti-Bush leftist. Or if, heavens forbid, you favour the war in Iraq, you’re a right-wing warmonger and can have no valid opinion about, for example, how the Americans are freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny.
You express a single opinion, and these clairvoyants are able to sum up your complete political philosophy with a three-word cliché. No use of logic, no counterargument, no original thought or insight—just attack the writer as being a this or a that, and add an expletive or two for good measure. It’s a cheap, offensive age-old strategy.
At the time I was building business continuity and related disaster recovery plans so the tragedies riveted my interest on a number of levels. And, because of my work, several co-workers asked me what I thought would happen if something similar occurred in Toronto.
As I answered their questions I couldn’t help feeling that whatever I said was probably irrelevant since I could not really imagine such a thing ever happening in Toronto. Oh, I knew it was possible, but thought it highly unlikely. And I remember that, at the time, any scenarios that I formulated involved foreigners – never did it occur to me that the perpetrators could be Canadians. Such a notion would have been absurd – unthinkable.
Nearly five and a half years have passed and the unthinkable begins to gnaw at me.
Last summer, I was chilled by a media report following proceedings at the Brampton, Ontario courthouse that read:
“Prosecutors here assert that some of the men charged in a terror plot last week planned a series of violent attacks that included seizing Parliament and beheading Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other lawmakers if Canadian troops were not withdrawn from Afghanistan, a defense lawyer said in court Tuesday.”
How does one process such information? Were these men merely indulging their egos with empty threats that were intercepted by the authorities? Perhaps. And yet, these alleged terrorists are not so different from those, who in the summer of 2005 turned their rage on their fellow countrymen in London, England.
Add this report to statements made by Ali Hindy from Scarborough’s Salaheddin Islamic Centre. He participated on a panel for TVO’s Studio 2 TV program last June and claimed to know nine of the alleged terrorists. He said words to the effect that the affair was mainly a set-up by Canadian authorities. He allowed that there might have been some wrongdoing, but for the most part the charges were trumped up. Another of the panelists seemed to hold similar beliefs. This I found extraordinary. There were other disturbing comments about Islam not making the distinction between church and state that Canadians do. And that Muslims are taught to put religious law ahead of secular law.
I have read and heard such sentiments expressed several times before, of course, but it was the timing of these statements that took me by surprise. I felt immediately that there had to be something very odd going on, for here we have our police charging 17 Muslim men (five who are minors) with vile, violent crimes, and a religious leader from within their community makes claims that I found to be irresponsible.
He has the right to say whatever he wants to, of course, for this is Canada where we treasure free speech and individual rights. But the level of disconnect between his view of the recent events and that of mainstream Ontario is startling, to say the least. On the other hand, if views like his are shared, even by a minority, within the Muslim community, perhaps when they reach receptive ears, they provide some sort of license to those that have sick souls and look to turn their fury and hatred towards their our countrymen.
I shudder to think it, but I suspect there is more than a grain of truth to this speculation. And if I’m right, a lot can be explained. It helps me to understand why, when our service men and women are giving their lives for the benefit of Muslims in a far off land, some Muslims here at home hold such malice towards their own Canadian people.
The unthinkable has become thinkable; how long will it be before it becomes a reality?
Americans love to blame. I suppose that if you consider yourself perfect, then others must be at fault whenever something goes wrong. When American-based terrorists fly airplanes into American buildings, Canada has to share the blame — even though none of the terrorists entered the U.S. from Canada. When there’s a major power blackout in the north-east, New York City’s mayor and the state’s governor initially place the blame on Canada — later it’s discovered the problem had “Made in the U.S.A.” stamped on it.
Last summer, a cell of alleged terrorists is broken up in Canada and again we heard form our American friends about how Canada’s policies are to blame and that the border must be secured from infiltration from the north. Never mind that the cell’s objectives seem to have been entirely within Canada. The only U.S. connection seems to come from the cell’s attempt to smuggle guns in from south of our border. Hmm, American guns to kill Canadians — sounds familiar.
One terrorist out of dozens arrested on U.S. soil tried to enter their country from Canada, and for that American legislators must forever label Canada a “safe haven for terrorists.” There even seems to be support for those nut-bar American civilians patrolling the border out West.
For goodness sake, grow up America! Put your own house in order before looking elsewhere for someone to blame.
Coulter comes across to me as someone very much in love with herself and with little else. Apparently she’s on a crusade to make money, and it seems she’ll write or say anything that she thinks will speed her on her way.
Does she really believe half of what she says? Who knows, but knowing that people who share her value system are in positions of power in the most powerful nation on earth is going to keep me awake at night. She does have nice hair though.
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