Haven't been hiking in years. Nice to get out in the mountains for a few hours.

This is the nice thing about riding a bicycle most of the time. You wind up taking routes you'd never take in a car.

A charming domestic scene out back of the vet clinic next door. Table for two, plants, watering can, gargoyle, and a drying rack. What more could you want?

Yeah, that was my first thought, too.

When I look at this picture, I automatically see the stairs as leading upwards. Of course, stairs, by themselves, have no up or down direction. It's only when someone's using them that their direction is defined. At least, for that moment.

Darn philosophical, eh? Now, where's that darn cat?

Garden lounging season is getting shorter and shorter.

I'm guessing that this is where "official" photographers at the games might be put. Inside the cage, of course.

Ah, sunlight. Something Vancouver's usually in short supply of, but, lately, plenty.

I'm going to leave my little exam question for a while, just to see if anyone's inclined to take a stab at it. I'm not so much interested in whether anyone gets it right or wrong, but how they arrived at the answer they picked. I'll explain eventually.

It's pop quiz time! And it has nothing to do with photography. I'm trying to check up on my assumptions about how people's minds work, so, if you feel like it, guess the right answer to the following question:

1) The stapedius muscle:

a. stabilizes the tympanic membrane

b. connects the ossicles to the cochlea

c. helps propel sperm toward the oöcyte in the uterine tube

d. constricts the Eustachian tube

e. limits vibration of the stapes

No Googling! And feel free to explain how you arrived at your choice.

We'll return to our regular broadcast later.

This is what life's a lot like, don't you think? Pick a button. "Oh, I pick number 4!" Very nice, but what exactly does button number 4 get you? The buttons aren't labelled. They're just there and you've got to push one. Good luck!

Deep, huh?

"White Meters"..............nudge, nudge.........

O.K., well, after yesterday's rant, I figured a little humour, you know? Very little, I'll admit, but......

So, did I mention that I'd bought an ebook reader the other day? A Kobo. I picked it over the Kindle because the Kindle, apparently taking a page from Apple, will only let you do what Amazon wants you to do - buy books from them. The Kobo, on the other hand, will let you check books out of your local library, or download books from other sources. In other words, you paid your money, so you own it, so you should be able to do whatever you want. The same reason I prefer PCs (Yes, I have an iPod Touch, but that was bought in a moment of weakness. The sound sucks, and, like every other Apple product, you have to do what they want you to do. If that's not congruent with what you'd like to do, tough.) But, back to the Kobo.

Great idea. So far, though, not so hot execution. First, out of the box you have to download set-up software to get rolling. Did that. Installed it. Launched it. It froze. No way to fix it, so I uninstalled it, downloaded a new copy, and installed that. It worked. Downloaded a couple of books from the library. First one - fine. Second one - froze again. Had to reset the reader, which blows away anything already downloaded. O.K., so, two books - no big deal. Read one. Turned out I liked using the thing. Small, light, holds lotsa books - what's not to like? Downloaded some free books from Kobo to my computer, then tried to synch them with the reader. Guess what? Froze. Total reset, again. After which, synched just fine. A day later, downloaded some more free books (all classics, of course). Tried to synch 'em. Froze. Reset. Detecting a pattern, maybe?

Finally, today, crazed optimist that I am, I decided to actually buy a book from the Kobo site, Julian Barnes's latest. It was ten bucks, so how could I lose? Well, turns out I couldn't even buy a book. "We're sorry, but your credit card provider is declining your purchase.". WTF? On ten bucks?!? You see, I pay off my credit card in full every month, early. I'm never anywhere near my credit limit. So, as you might imagine, I was a tad perplexed. Call the credit card company. "Nope, we haven't declined anything, Mr. Connor.". Well, phew!

So, there you go. My ereader, Kobo-style, experience so far. Nice to read on............if you can get it to work. If I don't hear anything back from their "Help" (not so far) desk by Tuesday, back it goes, and I keep accumulating paper. Paper doesn't crash.

Yes, the fascination with shrubbery is rearing its ugly head again.

Go see "The Trip". Funniest movie I've seen in ages.

Fall, I hate to say, is in the air.

For fairly obvious reasons (at least, I think they're obvious), I named this file "let's talk" (though without the apostrophe since that wouldn't work too well as a file name). Turns out to be darn appropriate. As you may know, I like to watch "The Daily Show" of an evening. Sure, it's a day behind when I watch it on-line, but... Those of you familiar with the show know that it's about 20 minutes long. Well, it is if you've got a decent internet provider. Mine's not. Telus. Note that name, Canadians. With Telus it's turned into a two-hour show. Ten seconds of show, thirty of freeze. I finally decided to voice my displeasure (politely, of course) to Telus. I went to their web site, found the ubiquitous "Contact Us" link, and hit it. "We're sorry. The page you're looking for...". They can't find their own "Contact Us" page?

He was running to tell his friends that it was a baseball diamond.

The things you see poking around in an overgrown garden while your pal talks on the phone.

Grape vines - you can't keep 'em down. Reduced to nothing just a year ago, these leaves are now part of a hulking ten-foot monster slowly taking over Paula's backyard. Again.

Gees. First it was the power supply in my computer going out on me, then, all day yesterday, my ISP goes down. Really kills one's faith in "cloud computing", I'll tell you.