Below are the most recent 3 friends' journal entries.

Thursday, December 17th, 2009
mbarrick	9:01p	Your Friendly Neighbourhood Wood Spider Yesterday I was shooting for Canvas for Cancer and while I was waiting for the MAU to finish with the models I stepped out on the balcony to see the sun hitting this little guy's web at a pretty much perfect angle. I went back in to grab f1.4 35mm lens and this is the result. And for those of you not familiar with the Canadian wood spider, here is short informational video from Wildlife Canada and the National Film Board of Canada on some experiments done on wood spiders in the 1960's: The shoot itself went well and I am really happy with some of the images, but contractually I can't show them until after the charity auction, next fall. There was one horrific moment in the shoot where I managed subject my camera to a two-foot drop and snapped the mount off one of my lenses. Standing there, looking at my lens in two pieces on the floor was a little disheartening, but I swapped lenses and finished the shoot. I first I thought I was going to be out the cost of the lens (and, friends, lenses are not cheap.) However some time with my watchmaker's tools and some cyanoacrylate glue and the lens is fully functional again. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
mbarrick	12:03a	Gender in Canada So, on the kind of random lark I have a tendency to end up on for no good reason, I found myself wondering what the legal definitions of male and female happened to be under Canadian law. Interestingly I couldn't find any definitions. All I could find was this passage in the Interpretation Act 33.  (1) Words importing female persons include male persons and corporations and words importing male persons include female persons and corporations. ...meaning by law that "male" and "female" are technically interchangeable and effectively meaningless. So, really, even before the Civil Marriage Act was changed from "the lawful union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others" to "the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others" the legal meaning was the same (which, of course, is why it was a no-brainer to "change" it.) It'd be interesting for someone to push this, for example, by pushing for having the gender on their ID changed without any gender reassignment surgery. Even better, I wonder if it would be possible to have the gender removed off your ID since it is legally irrelevant? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
mbarrick	11:00p	Nobility Sir Wilfred Barrick and H.R.H. Queen Valerian. (2 Comments |Comment on this)