The first last thing

I know that I have done many things for the last time before we leave Halifax. If the weather stays this way, I will have had my last swim in Chocolate Lake a few weeks ago. I doubt that we will have time to go out to Clam Harbour or Lawrencetown Beach again before we blow town.

But on Wednesday we had our last bonfire in the neighbours' back yard and I knew that it was the last from the get-go. Because it was intentional and fun it really did feel like the first last thing I would do in Halifax. At least as a citizen or resident. I know that most people still consider me to be from away. And I am, again.

Cheers

PS An older gentleman in the mall parking lot was asking about my car. I guess people do that with shiny red cars. I answered a few of his questions and thanked him for his compliments. Then he said, "So, how long have you been here in this country?" I didn't know what he meant. Did he mean it in the colloquial sense of "Here in God's country" or "lobster country" or somesuch, or did he mean it in the political sense of Canada. I didn't answer him, I'm moving soon anyway.

MT

The camping trip that wasn't

So our good friends next door had arranged a big camping trip down on the Digby Neck and invited us along. He's from that island and invited friends and family to join us. It was going to be fabulous. Then I got sick. Cate was sick too, but I was running a serious fever for four days and couldn't get out of bed so we had to cancel at the last minute.

We were really disappointed at the time, but after they told us about the camping/party I was even more disappointed. Aside from the wonderful company, opportunity to meet new people, and beautiful scenery (which would have been worthwhile on its own) here's what we missed:

1) A dozen fresh lobster that other campers had pulled out of their traps. The locals aren't very impressed by them any more and the few people there from off the island didn't know how to crack them, so they were too much trouble to eat. we would have made short work of them.

2) Whales swimming by at sunset. I've never seen a whale outside of a zoo. Apparently you could hear them blowing all night.

3) Okay. I'm not sure if I really wanted to hear this, but it would be sort of cool to be able to say that I had. Late into the night, when only a few revelers were left around the camp fire, there came the unmistakable sound of a shark eating a seal.

We are definitely going to have to come back some time to visit the island.

Digital preservation crossover

Here's a cool idea to solve the problem of inadequate OCR technology and the need/desire to digitize the legacy of written culture.

http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

In a nutshell, this project is digitizing public domain books for free use. They are then offering the words that the OCR can't recognize to websites that use those Spam-filter words (a CAPTCHA) to weed out bots and spam. Suddenly a human is passively volunteering to decipher a word that stumped the OCR software.

Good cause, I figure. If you have a website that uses a CAPTCHA look into whether you might want to and be able to help out.

Cheers

Natal Day

In different provinces, the 1st of August weekend is celebrated for different reasons. Here in NS it is Natal Day. It commemorates the founding of Halifax. Which would be sort of like Ontario celebrating the founding of Toronto, I guess. I live in Halifax though, so I haven't heard a single grump about it.

We went to the fireworks on Saturday night with the kids. One of her colleagues from grad school invited us to a pot-luck and fireworks party. It was awesome. She lives no more than a block from the bridge where the pyrotechnics were being launched and the party moved to her roof just before things were to get going.

I knew that the roof was part of the plan but I expected them to have some sort of... well, I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect a 15' ladder going from the 2nd story fire-escape up to to the roof. At least it was a flat roof, but I was certain that we wouldn't get Connor up that ladder, and I was certain that Mika would attack the ladder with such gusto that it would start a tragic-comic chain of events.

Connor was scared of the ladder, and I offered to take him over to the median on the street where a hundred or so others had gathered, but he did it. Mika must be growing up because she climbed the ladder without hesitation, but with the right amount of caution. Especially on the dismount. They even came down without too much fuss and Connor -- realizing that he was a bit too eager to get down and the party was still going -- went back up and down again.

The fireworks themselves were rather cool. We didn't have the best view of the side of the bridge, but they seemed to use it to good effect. Some people were disappointed that the fog was low enough that the higher fireworks disappeared, but it sort of looked like the Aurora Borealis the fog would nearly randomly glow green, red or blue. It was a cool, if not spectacular, effect.

I can honestly say that, as a child, I never spent any time on a roof with my parents. Let alone at night. Watching fireworks. I hope that that's as cool for them as it was for me.