One of the things I really enjoy about the new TV show Heros, is the comic-styled paintings by Isaac. Now some of them are being auctioned off to raise money for the Epilepsy Foundation. I would like this painting of Hiro fighting the dinosaur, but I have a feeling these paintings are going to go for a mint.

Update: The print went for $9,200. Less than I thought it would, but definitely too rich for my blood.

Hurray for Jaime. He bought me a Flickr Pro account. I've been wanting to expand my foray into digital photography for a while now. I still don't own a digital camera of my own, so my current flickr account either has photos digitised from film, or when I've borrowed Jai's camera.

I am hoping very soon to get a digital SLR, either the Canon XTi(400D) or the older Canon XT (350D). I've had a Canon film SLR for many years, and like the creative control of an SLR. I was tempted by the Canon S3i, which is almost an SLR, but reviews have swayed me in favour of a full slr.

So mostly it will be happy-snaps on flickr until I can get my new camera and hopefully get back into photography seriously. I was really into it when I finished high school, but could not afford all the developing and printing that was necessary to shoot enough to really hone one's skills.

Why doesn't Google just buy Viacom?

Life's been a bit of a roller-coaster lately. A bunch of real ups and downs. Two weeks ago I got the all-clear to take the cast off. It was a real thrill to a) not have walk with a cast on my leg, and b) stop looking like a gimp. So that was an "up". But then the actual walking around on a foot that had been cast for 10 weeks was a real "down". All the muscles, tendons and ligaments have atrophied, and according to my physiotherapist, the broken bone, while looking like a corkscrew now, is the only bone in my foot in the right place. So its been a pretty painful fortnight. I have managed to get to the gym once, and I'm hoping go regularly enough to lose my "sitting on my arse for three months"-fat.

Work is similar. While I am thrilled to no longer be unemployed and so relieved to finally be getting a regular paycheck, I am so miserable in my new position. I've tried to make the best of it, keep my chin up and just knuckle down, as the cliches go, but it's not helping. A great deal of dissatisfaction surely comes from how the position was misrepresented to me. While they advertised for extensive web technical skills, only about 2% of the job is technical or web related. It was also supposed to be technical writing, but it seems to be 95% boring student administration work. It doesn't help that my boss has spent less than two hours training me in the month I've been here, so it's been a real muddle-through-on-my-own type of scenario. The program utilised to access to student records is pure 1985 technology, and any ideas offered to streamline processes fall on deaf ears. Also, I miss working with geeks, rather than middle-aged women from the suburbs.

On the accommodation side of things, we are still debating whether to move or stay in our apartment. Our flat is expensive, not-exactly modern, but is in exactly the location we want, and has a lot of space. Today we saw an apartment in staff housing out at UBC. A two-bedroom modern flat, with a fireplace, plush carpet, a kitchen to-die for and its $350 less a month then were currently paying. Only problem is that while living on campus sounds good, its actually quite remote. There aren't any real restaurants or shops around and its a good 20 minute hike to where you catch the many buses that run from UBC to the rest of Vancouver. UBC has gardens, birds, trees, and is the proverbially "nice place to raise a family", but we're just not in that phase yet. We currently live 2 minutes walk from the supermarket, have about 30 restaurants within 10 minutes walking distance, and have a 5-block walk to the beach. And while we're not right downtown, its a 40 minute walk to be downtown (think Glebe). So for the time being, we'll stay in our less-than-perfect but large and well-located apartment. At least it has room for visitors, of which we should have many this year.

*Wondering about the title?