[Still rambling...]

Stalling was relatively straightforward. Things were even, ample warning was given and our senses weren’t really that bothered.

In comes the spin. Since in life things are rarely balanced, one wing is going to stall before the other. Angle of attack is probably high; we’re living slowly and climbing, pushing the envelope. Maybe we also try to change direction while fighting our way up. All of a sudden, one area of our life is going to spin out of control while the others are still generating lift, thus causing great imbalance in the Force and ultimately leading to the Dark Side. Chaos.

As previously mentioned, the wing that stops flying, falls. The other one, however, tends to keep a sound aerodynamic profile a little while longer and tries to keep the plane in the air. But the lift generated is massively concentrated on one side and suddenly the plane wants to rotate around its vertical axis as the flying wing attempts to fly around the falling one.

Our life plunges into a downward corkscrew motion, everything becomes blurry and our normal references are lost.

Continue reading "Aerodynamics and life - Part 2"

I had a few moments on my hands and started playing with old photos, wondering which ones would make good paintings. Here is the result. In most cases, I’ve tried to use photos that do not appear anywhere else in the photo galleries, but there are a few exceptions.

As a reminder, these are all « digital paintings »; in other words they are photographs which have been turned into paintings through the use of a software filter and then hand-retouched with the help of a pen/tablet combo. I cannot take credit for more than having a lot of patience and enjoying the masterpieces of Van Gogh and Cézanne. I wouldn’t know where to start if given an actual brush and canvas. But amazingly, computers are the next best thing...

And so it’s only logical that this year is the year of the dog. Dixit the Chinese calendar. The Chinese New Year parade was held yesterday January 29th through the streets of Chinatown. Bright colours and rainy day.

And the devil in black dress watches over
My guardian angel walks away
Life is short and love is always over in the morning
Black wind come carry me far away

[Andrew Eldritch]

It was all supposed to be different. Being here has lost a lot of its meaning. But Vancouver remains a beautiful city and BC is gorgeous. So I decided to go ahead and post the new Vancouver photo gallery any way. God knows if I’ll stay here now, but for the time being I am finding comfort in the beauty around me, and my shutter is my best friend.

Leonardo Da Vinci wrote « Once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. »

Recently thinking about this in the middle of the night, I found myself drifting towards strangely complicated horizons for a while and then suddenly, it all made sense. Through the mists of sleep, I ended up laying down a comparison of life with the principles of flight and aerodynamics. Here is what I recovered from it… To be taken with a grain of salt, but it suits me.

The bottom line is this: life should be a perfectly smooth flight. No turbulence, unlimited visibility, sufficient fuel to destination or an alternate, and an extraordinary view of the world from high above where things just seem to make complete sense.

That was the theory. But weather changes. Visibility drops. Clouds move in. The air gets choppy. A front approaches. The wind shifts and picks up. Thunderstorms rage. Fuel runs low for a hundred unexpected reasons. Mechanical failure jumps out of the manual right onto your lap. Or the shit simply hits the fan.

Let’s face it, that’s our life. We need to deal with it. Be prepared, and then live in the present and adapt.

Continue reading "Aerodynamics and life"

An expedition to Vancouver’s Chinatown, third biggest in North America, is always quite mesmerizing. Bright colours, bizarre shapes and aggressive odours take over, awaking your curiosity and overcoming your senses.

These delicate looking peels are called « sea coconut ». Their only resemblance with the fruit is visual, however, since they are really born in the sea and served as a soup.

How do you like your seafood? Dried, or dried? Here mussels, shrimp and some unidentified.

Do they look like geckos? Well that’s because they are. Dried too. A slight language barrier prevented me from asking what kind of a dish they were intended for...

2006 is here. Paix sur la Terre aux hommes de bonne volonté.

After much trouble and little sleep, the web site is back up and the blog should become alive again pretty soon; I will try to post new pictures of Vancouver on a regular basis.