Waterfowl

Took the refurbished camera out on the walk today and saw many birds.

One of the little diving ducks we see a lot in winter:

And this seagull who was doing his best to ignore me:

And this pair of swans:

So, so far, so good.   On the stroll back off the quay, I noticed this object lesson in what happens when you leave your canoe out in the rain and snow:

Camera bit installed

So no scenery here.  I received the new CCD for my camera about two weeks ago and have since been procrastinating about tearing the camera apart and installing it.  Today was go day.

This is where it started to look hairy;

You can see part of what  need to replace here -- it's still
beneath a lot of other delicate pieces though.

But it got so much worse:

Bottom center is the CCD -- rectangular metal plate
with a tail of flex cable off its left-hand side.  There is
way too much flex cable in these things. 

It's back together now, and I took a couple test shots of the flat and things are decidedly not pink.  I'll take it out tomorrow and see how it works outdoors.

Here's a video of someone far more competent than me doing the same thing.  It's sort of amazing.

All the trees are bare

High winds the last few days have stripped all but a very few, very tough leaves from the trees.

There were a bunch of cold-looking seagulls.down on the benches/barriers and I tried to get a photo, but I startled them by getting too close with a dog so they're blurry and in-flight.

It's that time of the year.

It's cold, and wet, but at least it's rain today instead of snow.  15C feels totally balmy!

You can see CN tower today, which looks surprising to me because it's been hidden in mist for what seems like weeks.

The Yankee Lady and the skyline with CN Tower

We were up next to the malting silo today too, and I really liked these rusted old gears.

It's like a metaphor for life, man.

Closer to home, the planters are starting to show signs of Christmas Infection.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of (wait, that's the wrong ho ho, isn't it?)

Shrink wrap it, please.

Yes, it's still cold and still snowy. The little bit of sunshine we had this afternoon convinced some of the live-aboards who haven't enclosed their boats yet to get it done, like, now.

Now I just need to wait for them to get their Christmas lights up!

Snow snow.

Yes, more snow.  And it's really starting to stick,

Even to the roads!  Oh the humanity!

It's a good thing we got the dog's rubber paw covers out this week.  She really hates snow between her pads.

So -4 today, and oh my is it windy.  I tried to get a photo of the white caps on the water today, but the camera phone just isn't good enough to capture it -- it tends to blur and blend colours so anything that's a variation on white-grey ends up just a blur.

Anyway, I saw this little guy in the marina with a big green collar on.  There were numbers on it; I'm assuming for now that it's scientific and not just "goose got his head stuck in something".

I hope he at least feels fashionable.

There is ice clinging to the sides of the various boats.  The Miss Mary looks very cold today.

Seeing the name always ends up in me humming the Vic Chesnutt song.

Meanwhile, the harbour looks really super cold, though you can't really see the whitecaps here.

Brrr!