Monthly Archives: February 2013

6 February 2013


20 January 1999 — 06 February 2013

I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.

The best dog I could ever have wanted, my best friend with four legs, the kindest, sweetest, gentlest dog I’ve ever known died peacefully today at home, surrounded by his family. He was 14 years and 17 days old.

At some point I’ll write more about Goblin and what happened. That’s not going to be today, though. I feel freer and lighter and more comforted now than I have in the past week and a half, and knowing that my buddy isn’t suffering anymore is the best kind of relief I could have on a night like tonight. We’re all very sad, but we’re also all very OK with what happened, and how it happened. One could only wish the same kind of end for all of us.

Everything I said back in September is still true today. The past four and a half months have been a blessing, and the past week and a half even more so, and I am exceptionally grateful for all of the extra time he and I had together.

I’m going to miss him like crazy.

Success?

After three months of trying to think of interesting things to do with my GoPro (see earlier example; also the part where I’m seriously thinking of re-making Claude LeLouche’s classic C’etait un Rendezvous in Victoria, only the film will be “réalizé avec trucage et acceleré”), I think I finally found something useful. A lot of the waiting hinged on the fact that GoPro, despite advertising the case you get with the camera as being waterproof to 197′, is lying to you. Oh, sure, the case itself is actually waterproof to 197′. What they don’t tell you is that, with the Hero 2 I bought, the lens needs a flat plane to focus off of, and in the water that doesn’t actually work — so every picture you take under water turns out to be blurry as all hell. And here I thought it was just that I needed to drink less…

Anyway, I ordered enough extra housings to hold stuff, including the dive housing that has a flat glass plate on the front, and the camera works pretty damn well underwater, all things considered. (I also got an LCD screen so I could see what I was shooting at, not that it works very well in the sunshine, mind you.) So I set the camera up in burst mode, where it will shoot 10 fps for one second, and went out into the raging surf last week to see what I could find.



Wave photography is really hard. Who knew?

(More, including larger versions of the above, over here. Also, you really should look at the pictures I took of my adorable dogs yesterday. Includes a bonus ad for Tourism Newfoundland & Labrador, and my wife’s idea of what an adorable dog picture is.)