Working on my presentation in the hotel and listening to my YouTube playlist - this just came up - always makes me smile...

Sam's Photo stream

, originally uploaded by hopkins.sam.

Sam is now on Flickr! I hope to see many more great shots from him - he seems to have a good eye for it - I like this one a lot. Follow the photo to see more of his shots on Mount Royal's campus.

Mozart and Salieri - by Pushkin




 
Attended the opening concert for the Mozart Festival Saturday night at the Calgary Philharmonic. We saw a fabulous staging of Rimsky Korsakov's one act opera "Mozart and Salieri" based on the Pushkin play (as staged as a movie in the YouTube clip). It included music from both composers and finished with an amazing performance of Mozart's final requiem - one of my favourite pieces. The chorus entered the house from different doors walking quietly with a lit candle and then all proceeded to the choir loft and the performance began in a low lit house with the four actors from the opera on the stage. Fantastic!! If I had the time, I'd attend the screening of Amadeus at the Plaza theatre this Tuesday (part of the festival and part of the 75th Anniversary of the theatre). I'll most likely just plan to watch the DVD and enjoy it all again.
 
Enjoy the music of the Requiem here.

Postcards from Italy



I just can't get enough of this song... it's been around for a while but just came up again on the playlist as I'm working.

ATESL Presentation

20's plenty, originally uploaded by Leo Reynolds.

I am presenting next weekend at the ATESL (Alberta Teachers of English as a Second Language) conference in Edmonton. I've always wanted to try the Pecha-Kucha (pronounced peh-CHAKH-cha) format for a presentation - 20 slides of 20 seconds each - for a presentation of 6 minutes and 40 seconds per presenter. You may have heard of similar formats like "Ignite". But the conference planners gave me an hour - so I'm just going to pretend to be 8 presenters and talk about 8 different topics - all theme related but still try out this format. I like the idea that I could then take apart the presentation and share just a piece of it in a staff meeting or participate in a real Pecha-Kucha presentation (possibly at the upcoming Tech Testdrive in the spring). But isn't the photo perfect!! We'll see how it turns out!

Catalogue Living

It isn't even Hallowe'en yet - I feel the same way as these trees!

in reference to: Catalog Living (view on Google Sidewiki)

FOUR WAYS I USE FLICKR

1. Post my own photos and organize them into sets and collections.
2. Submit my photos to groups for others to review, to play games, and complete challenges.
3. Discover amazing photos from others (love those who share under a creative commons licence!)
4. Create galleries of photos from others on themes. (Great for school)

I may not be able to take great photos (anything that turns out well is pretty much entirely by luck!) but I appreciate the efforts of others and those who take a look at my photos or possibly share a comment.  I always preview others' photos of a place before I go there and when I need an image for something, it has been the first place I go.

Try this gallery to see some pictures I have run across that made me smile.


Photo by Dunny on Flickr

River of Light - an art installation on the Bow



Mom and I hung out at the lagoon at Prince's Island on a Monday night waiting to see the orbs light up. I put the photos and video together in a video - it was great to see an art installation like this in the city!

Shrove Tuesday in Sweden

Semla, originally uploaded by Frugan.

With all the family history work I've been doing, I've been avoiding the Swedish line. Maybe eating one of these delicious looking buns for Shrove Tuesday would give me some courage to try....

From the Flickr site: "Around the world today people are marking Shrove Tuesday in various ways – in Sweden, the day (“fettisdagen” – Fat Tuesday) is marked by eating a traditional pastry, called semla or fastlagsbulle, a sweet bun stuffed with almond paste and whipped cream."

Jan 22 2010 - VID00006

Jan 22 2010 - VID00006, originally uploaded by Amanda *Bake It Pretty*.

A Hedgehog goes for a walk... He meets his mom, and an octopus and finally finds a slide "Whee". So fun!

365 2010: #5

365 2010: #5, originally uploaded by whistlepunch.

Second morning back to work and the sun didn't make an appearance all day. The snow was beautiful though and it wasn't too cold (-14 degrees) as there was no wind.

365 2010: #4

365 2010: #4, originally uploaded by whistlepunch.

Celebrating Ingrid's birthday - Jill made the cake - very yummy and we enjoyed the sparkling pear drink from Ikea. A fun night with good friends.

365 2010: #3

365 2010: #3, originally uploaded by whistlepunch.

"If You Could Hie to Kolob"... we just don't get to sing this hymn enough...

365 2010: #2

365 2010: #2, originally uploaded by whistlepunch.

End of the day and we thought the wiring was all done but when my lights didn't work, we realized we had used a plug that broke the circuit in the spare room. So one more job by lamplight.

365 2010: #1, originally uploaded by whistlepunch.

Not an "artistic" photo but one to represent a small portion of how I spent my day, reading The Fire by Katherine Neville. I finished this book and plan to keep track of my reading list for 2010. Not a recommendation however, but this is a sequel to "The Eight" which is a great story if you enjoyed the puzzle/code aspect of the DaVinci Code and want a strong female heroine to read about.

85 hours to go before I'm in the air and on my way to London. Put that way - it is clearly impossible for me to be "ready" by then. Sure, I can throw clothes in a bag, rip pages out of the guidebooks, and grab my camera and passport (no comments please, family) - but I may leave a few loose ends back this way. So I'm making the list - and doing what I can... Blogging about this is NOT on the list so that's it for now.

Flashback - I remember playing with my Spirograph - drawing out kaleidescopes with different sized rings. Here's a fun website to revisit the experience!

A fun word game using dropping scrabble tiles - Deep Leap. The letters drop down into a row. You create words to use up the letters and see the number of tiles counting down. If you can't find a word before the row fills, you may have a letter shift off the screen to allow a new letter to drop and you will no longer be able to use it. Tricky but fun... just make sure you don't end up with a line of vowels like I did!!

Fun with time lapse photography in different locations - drag the triangle around the circle to view "Their Circular Life".

Check out artPad - Paint, splatter and add text to your masterpiece.