After three weeks, over 17,000 photos and hours of video, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics are done. It feels strange to see the city slowly transform itself back to the pre-Olympic state (with some Paralympic exceptions).
Once I get back from SXSW mid-March, I’ll jump into the Paralympics as much as I can using my True North Media House badge. I’m also still waiting to hear from Nikon about my D90 that got a little too exposed to the elements during my adventures. I’m hoping it can simply dry out and work again but we’ll see in about a week.
For now, here’s a highlight video I made using various video and photographic content I created during the games:
Today, Duane helped get the ball rolling with the announcement that WordCamp Vancouver 2010 planning had begun with June 12th, 2010 the current tentative date.
I’ve attended a lot of WordCamps over the years…in a lot of different places. I’ve even had the honour to speak at a few of them too. This time around, I’m on the organizing committee…it remains to be seen if I’ll be speaking as it’s early days so we’ll see how things play out.
WordCamp has been a pretty fantastic place to meet some pretty awesome people, share information about the WordPress platform and have a great time. I learn something new every time I attend one.
If you’re interested in anything to do with blogging or WordPress, I encourage you to sign up for the email updates and/or follow us on Twitter. We’ll share more information as soon as we have more details!
Recently, I was asked if I wanted to come and experience the Vancouver Opera as part of their Blogger Night at the Opera program. I immediately said yes as I’ve never been to an opera before…well at least not as a member of the audience.
Huh? Were you in an opera?
Kind of. Back when I was in high school, I had the opportunity to be an extra in Aida which was being performed at BC Place stadium – I had to audition for the part which consisted of being tall enough to march around the stage. It was a huge event back in the late 80’s. My main memories of the event was being herded around the catacombs underneath the stadium for wardrobe and makeup. I was a foot soldier and had to wear a uniform and some kind of bronzer makeup since we were all supposed to be egyptian. I never actually got to see much of the opera since I was either backstage 99% of the time or marching around the giant stage behind the large animals (and the guy with the shovel to clean up after them). Sadly, I can’t find much on the internet about the event.
So tonight, I’m bringing my camera and laptop down to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre to see the opening night performance of Norma. No, I won’t be blogging WHILE the performance is going on. That will happen during the intermission and afterward.
Joining me will be a few friends including Gus and Emme as well as a fewothers that I’ve yet to meet. I’ll be updating this post with photos and my experiences as the evening unfolds so stay tuned!
Opera Update – the day after
Unfortunately there was some technical issues with the internet access at the theatre so I wasn’t able to post any photos or updates during the evening.
It’s a little hard to see but notice the surtitles above the stage are a suggestion to follow the Vancouver Opera on Twitter.
We had a chance to get a tour of backstage and the sets before the show.
The set was pretty impressive up close (apparently it took 36 hours to assemble) and to be able to walk around on it beforehand was interesting for me because of my theatre background. Everyone was surprisingly calm considering this was opening night.
So what did I think?
Having been my first (real) time at the opera, it certainly was a spectacle to see.
I arrived a little early to get setup but there were plenty of guests already lining up to get in. The people that came out were no different than fans of any kind of concert…these ones just seemed to be better dressed. Speaking of which, I was surprised to see such a range of people wearing everything from tuxedos to jeans. I was half expecting it to be like some scene from Batman with a sea of penguin suits but it was much more diverse. Certainly, many women used this opportunity to dress to the nines…I don’t recall seeing that many stilettos in one place before. I think that’s one aspect that people really enjoy about the Opera is that it’s a chance to dress up and have fun.
The Music
I’m the first to admit that I don’t have any opera music on my iPod. Norma was sung in Italian so I didn’t understand any of it except when they sung the name ‘Norma’ since it appears to not have any Italian equivalent. Fortunately (or not), there are projected titles above the stage (called surtitles) where everything is translated. It had been suggested (by friends who are opera fans) to avoid reading the surtitles as they generally are literal translations and despite the singing being beautiful, are generally kind of mundane words describing a point in the story. This proved to be generally true although it was more distracting to be looking at the stage, then look up top for the translations, then back at the stage for the action as there was quite a bit of eye travel distance from my vantage point. I was still able to follow along fairly well although I did have a basic understanding of the storyline ahead of time. The surtitles also seemed to approach Engrish on a few occasions so I had to contain my snickering a couple of times: “My joy is complete!”
There was a few times during the performance where either a costume or a set change reminded me of World of Warcraft. Nerdy yes. But I guess it’s unavoidable when you play too many videogames. Particularly when either Norma and Pollione are singing…they just looked like NPCs from WoW. Even the set was lit like it was straight out of Ironforge. I can only imagine the game designers were influenced by opera in some way. This is what happens when a geek goes to the opera.
I certainly wasn’t sure what to expect going into Norma but actually did enjoy myself. Because I wasn’t familiar with the music or story though, it’s kind of like going to see a band whose music you don’t know. You’ll still enjoy it but it gets better if you’ve heard the music before. It was brought to my attention though, that this particular production was special because in the opera world, the cast that had been assembled is like a dream team of singers. Judging from the crowd reactions during the curtain call, it was kind of a big deal.
Apparently opera people like to party backstage:
It was cool to meet Mark Donnelley backstage at the after party who regularly sings the national anthems at the Vancouver Canucks hockey games just a few blocks away at GM Place. He actually sang the anthem at the game before joining the cast on stage that night. He’s got a pretty cool Canucks business card with the job title ‘Anthem Singer’ on it too.
The cast backstage:
I actually did have a good time at the opera…despite being a newbie. It also helps to have good company to talk about what you’re experiencing but that goes for any night out.
Thanks to Ling Chan and everyone at the Vancouver Opera for taking care of us during our visit. Be sure to check out all my photos from the Opera on Flickr.
I’m back at home after a whirlwind weekend in San Francisco to attend WordCamp SF 2009. It’s a one day conference for users of WordPress which is what this site is built with.
I’ve talked about WordCamps before and even gave a talk at WordCamp Whistler earlier this year. Like Whistler, I was joined in San Francisco by John & Rebecca from Sixty4Media and Duane & Dale from BraveNewCode which I referred to more than a couple of times as Team Canada.
During Matt Mullenweg’s ‘State of the Word’ talk, it was cool to hear BraveNewCode’s plugins (WordTwit and WPTouch) getting mentioned as two (out of 3) of the most popular plugins for WordPress users based on a Twitter poll Matt ran before the event.
This year I was asked by Lloyd to help out in the Genius Bar – basically a bunch of passionate users/geeks helping others with any questions or problems they have about using/installing WordPress.
During my shift I only answered a handful of questions due to a ‘genius to customer’ ratio of about 10 to 1… admittedly it was towards the end of the day and smack in the middle of a couple of well attended sessions. We did manage to come up with a few terrible WordPress themed pickup lines.
After a day of geeking out at the conference, it was time to head to Automattic’s space at Pier 38 for the WordPress 6th birthday party featuring WordPress themed cupcakes and a whole lot of awesome food and drink:
If you’re interested in any of the topics covered at WordCamp SF, keep an eye on WordPress.tv as most, if not all, of the sessions were videotaped and should appear online as soon as they are edited together. Rebecca also covered a lot of the sessions with her excellent day blog.
Considering the amount of camera gear I brought down there with me, I didn’t take a lot of photos…mostly because there wasn’t a lot of time between trips to and from the airport. I think next time I do a quick weekend trip like this, I’ll scale back my gear a lot more. I didn’t even get any decent photos of Team Canada….of course I blame the tequila.
What an epic weekend! So much going on surrounding the best little conference ever, Northern Voice. As usual, I’ll try to detail my experiences with photos and video I shot:
Things kicked off Thursday at Federico’s Supper Club with the somewhat controversial (due to political sponsorship) opening dinner which was a lot of fun.
It seems this photo of Jenn and Nadia is a little popular with a few folks online.
I’m not sure why…maybe the lighting?
After a fun night out for dinner, it was up bright and early Friday morning for MooseCamp at the beautiful Forestry Sciences Building at UBC.
Hopefully next year a few more people will show up…
For the most part, I used my fisheye lens the whole weekend….what can I say, I love that lens. Here’s a few more images from the weekend:
Tim Bray led an awesome PhotoCamp this year which as always was a great geek out session for the photographers in attendance. The first thing he asked everyone to do was to take a photo of their neighbour in the room. Here’s my shot of Anthony taken with my LensBaby Composer (unfortunately the only time I had it on my camera the whole weekend):
