It’s been a whole since I posted to my blog but I’m going to try and get back into it. I’m at home today (I don’t work Fridays usually). I am taking a CT course throught the CAMRT and the final exam is next week. I’m not too nervous about it at this point, the material is fairly straight forward and I like learning how things work. All of my assignments so far have gone very well and I’m not the type of person to cram at the las minute so we’ll see how things go. If I complete this course I still need to take two more anatomy courses if I want to Apply for a speciality practice in CT for Nuclear Medicine. Not sure if I’m going to do that but having these CT courses will hopefully help me out in the long term.

More later

For the past couple of weeks I have been trying to get into twitter with mixed results. I find that I simply do not have the time or desire to get full into it. I have posted a few things and gave had a few poor soles try and follow me but it’s just not that important for me to receive any amount of my time. Maybe I would feel differently if I had some friends use it but none of my friends use it.

I have had my iPhone for almost a week now and still love it. I have been surprised at how it has changed the way that I communicate with people. I am no longer tied to my computer or restricted to where and when I can email friends and family. I find myself checking facebook more often and updating my status more frequently due to the ease and simplicity of the facebook app. More later

After months of not so suttle hints my wife finally broke down and got me a new iPhone 3G. It’s absolutely amazing and will make you rethink your view of what a cell phone is all about. It does everything any other cell phone does but it does it with all the class and quality you soul expect from Apple. I’ll post more impressions and some app store rviews soon.

I took a bike trip down the Don Valley the other day and took lots of pictures with my new Nikor 55-200mm lens for my D60. This lens is going to be amazing, really enjoy the reach it has so far. The only problem is that it does not have any wide angle capabilities so I’ll have to change back to my 18-55mm lens when I need to take wide angle shots. The only other option would be to buy a 18-200mm lens but it costs about $550 so I’ll give that a swerve for now.

If you want to check out more of my photos you can go to

www.flickr.com/photos/marcjones

Cheers

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve made a post on this site.  I have been updating my other blog a bit more regularly, you can check it out at http://torontoliving.wordpress.com/  I wanted to discuss some of my impressions of my new Nikon D60 over the past few weeks.  I have a Macbook Pro as you may recall so I’ve been playing around with various software programs to organize, edit and catalog my photos.  I started off with iPhoto of course which just happened to release an update two days after I got my camera giving it RAW image support for my new camera.  I found that alright but the image editing features it offers are really sub-par.  I have quite a bit of Adobe Photoshop experience so I thought I would give Adobe Lightroom 1.3.1 a try. Apparently lightroom is used by many photographers due to its more advanced image editing (which is non-destructive by the way).  I also tried Apple’s Aperture 2 program for a while, found the editing much better then iPhoto but I think I didn’t like the long long time it takes to index the images.  I found it really sucked the energy our of my computer occasionally and I had to quit the program to get my computer running normally again.  The problem with lightroom right now is that it does not yet have an update for my camera (which is quite new on the market) and therefore does not support its RAW format.  I’ve been simply playing around with the camera lately so I have just been shooting in JPEG format for now.  I did a bit of research today and found out that Adobe did release an update for lightroom to support my camera but pulled it after it was discovered that it has been causing all sorts of problems.  Interesting to say the least.  I’m sure they will have the problems ironed out soon and get the update out again.  In the mean time I have been happy using Lightroom but have to import my photos in RAW format using Nikon’s transfer application then export them from there into JPEG format and re-import them back into lightroom…or use Aperture for a while.  

I’ve been very impressed with my camera by the way, don’t have much experience for comparison purposes but since I have been using a 7 year old point and shoot canon this is 100 times better, the picture quality is amazing and the camera just does sooooo much more.  

Well, Brigitte and I went out and bought a beautiful high def TV and home theatre on September 2nd.  We decided on a Samsung LN-T4061F, a beautiful 40 inch 1080p LCD TV and a Yamaha home theatre system with 5.1 surround.  We bought it at future shop and got a fairly good deal on it since we bought the stand and warranty with it as well.  It took them about 5 days to deliver it which kinda sucked but I was blown away by the picture once we got Roger’s in to hookup the HD cable.  I have so far been impressed with the picture, especially when watching football or baseball….golf also looks good but I’m not a huge golf fan.  I have noticed a huge difference between different networks when it comes to the quality of their HD programming.  CBS and CITYTV in Toronto look absolutely beautiful, fox on the other hand doesn’t look nearly as good.  I have since learned that for some reason fox broadcasts in 720p instead of 1080i like the rest of the networks.  I have also noticed that their sports tend to pixilate more readily, they must have the compression on a bit too hight to save bandwidth or something like that.  All in all I’m very impressed with the new TV.  I was a bit shocked last week when Survivor (one of my favorite shows) was not broadcast in HD.  I guess they didn’t want to lug HD cameras around in the jungle or something…oh well, maybe next time.

I think that’s it for now, hopefully I’ll find a bit more time to blog soon.

It’s been a while since I posted to the blog so here we go.  Brigitte and I went on a wine tour down in Niagara on the 18th of August.  We rented a Mazda 3 which was very nice, good on gas too which was an added bonus.  We wen to about 5 or 6 different wineries, most of them good, a few of them were not so good.  We were really impressed with the smaller wineries along the wine route but by the time we got to the last few we were a bit shocked at the quality of the wines.  The two wineries that we didn’t like too much were Peller and Jackson Triggs.  These two wineries were much larger so you would figure the wines would be  a bit better but that definitely want’ the case.  The wines we tasted had a weird taste to them that turned both of us off.  

After the wine tour we decided to go to Niagara falls (when in Rome).  We drove down the main street in Niagara that goes past the falls.  We were planning on stopping, parking the car and getting out and walking around for a while but it was so busy there was no where to park.  They also wanted $20 to park your car for a few hours so we ended up driving back to Toronto and went to the Astoria for dinner.  All in all a good day.

Not sure what we’re planning for the Labour day weekend but I wouldn’t mind checking out the CNE as I havn’t been there in about 15 years.

This weekend Brigitte and I are going to check out the Niagara wine region.  I have lived in Ontario my whole life but havn’t really been down to check out the wine region.  I’m not what you might consider a wine conoseur but I do like wine and am looking forward to trying a few good dry red’s.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  The weather Saturday is supposed to be beautiful so we should have a good time… too bad I have to drive.

We went to the taste of the Danforth last Saturday and had a wonderful time.  I was amazed by all the meat and things at the event…the BBQ’s were definitely going full out.  I’m not going to lie to you, I ate a lot of meat, mostly lamb but also had some chicken which was superb.  I took a few pictures and posted them on my web site, you can view them at http://myweb.dal.ca/mjones2/Marc-Jones/Photos/Pages/Taste_of_the_Danforth.html  We were planning on going back on Sunday but we slept in and then it clouded over and started raining so we just had a lazy day around the apartment.

The taste of the Danforth is this weekend in TO and I’m very excited. Both Brigitte and I love Greek food and I hear this is the festival to end all festivals for the Greek loving population.  I think its supposed to be nice and hot and sunny this weekend so I’m sure we’ll have a good time.  I think it’s also the annual beer festival in Toronto this weekend as well so it should be a good weekend.  I think we’re going to bring out camera so I’ll post some pictures when I get them.

Last Wednesday we moved into a bigger apartment in the same building…what a fiaso that was.  We had booked the elevator from 9-11 so that we could move all of our stuff, even borrowed a two wheel dolly to get thing done quickly.  Greenwin had double booked the elevator so another couple was aslo there to use the elevator at the same time.  Since they were not listed on the “official” manifest we took the elevator and began moving. Half way through the move they decided that it was their turn to have the elevator and stole it from us.  The other great note about the move was that the apartment we moved into was an absolute mess.  The girl that moved from the apartment did not clean anything.  There was cat hair all over everything, including in the oven, on the lamps and in every nook and cranny in the apartment.  We had to vacuum before we could even move any of the boxes.  Greenwin did send the painter and a clan of cleaning people up but they do a half-assed job most of the time that needs to be repeated anyways.  At about 3pm we finally got the rest of our stuff moved.  

Wednesday had to be the hottest day of the summer too of course, that just seems to be my luck when moving, it’s either -30 or +30, no inbetween here!  We have the place looking fairly good now which is nice and we still have some pictures to put up but that’s about it.  I’ll upload some pictures of the mess when I get the chance and what we did with it.  The balcony has seen the biggest transformation.  When we moved in it was covered…and I mean covered in pigeon feces.  We cleaned, scrubbed and had the Super put up netting so that there would be no repeats of the mess.  We bought some indoor-outdoor carpet and put it on the concrete, now it looks very nice…now lets hope I don’t get some strange disease from all the feces I had to clean up!

After the past two days being over 40 degrees C with the humidex it’s finally cooling off now.  The apartment is very warm, I think the cement is holding alot of heat.  I had the AC running full out for the past 4 days and it kept the place around 25 degrees which was nice but I’m sure glad to get the temp down below 25 finally.  Right now it’s 22 in the place and It’s supposed to go down to 14 tonight so I’ll be getting lots of nice cool sleep tonight.  I think it supposed to be nice this weekend as well, high of 24 or so and sunny all weekend… that never happens on a long weekend! 

Well, we had the first really hot day of the summer here in TO this week.  It went up into the mid 30’s with the humidex this week on Thursday and Friday.  I had my new air conditioner working full out during the day so it was nice and cool in my apartment when I get home from work.  I set it at 24 celcius so that it wasn’t working “full out” but still cooled and took the humidity out of the air.  There was also quite a bit of smog in TO this week.  I noticed it most on Friday when I couldn’t see the condos off in the distance due to the greenish blue haze hovering over the city.  On Friday night the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees in a few hours and the smog magically disappeared (I’m sure it just blew into Quebec but what are you going to do eh).  All weekend it has been a respectable 20 degrees or so which is nice, that means I can put a fan in the window instead of putting on the AC.  Although I prefer to have a fan in the window I’m sure glad I bought that air conditioner…and it’s still May, imagine what its going to be like in June, July and August….I think I’ll get my money’s worth out of it this year for sure.

I was approached by Michael Allen at Payscale.com to do a piece about Nuclear Medicine Technology for the blog he runs. If you want to read the whole interview you can find iton their blog on payscale.com. The interview contains information about what nuclear medicine is, how to become a nuclear medicine technologist and the average salary for a technologist, although this varies a great deal from location to location around the world.

Got Parallels running perfectly last night, Windows setup fine with no apparent problems.  I didn’t get much time to mess around with it but it seems to be working just like a native windows installation.  It appears to be very fast on my new MB Pro which was a bit unexpected and OS X doesn’t seem to be slowing down because of the extra load either.  I did install MSN Messenger and it appeared to go just fine.  The internet works so the network setting appear to be correct.  I’m not sure how much I’ll use Windows to be honest, I have found alternatives for ever program that I ever used on Windows for the Mac.  I would like to install a linux image as well so maybe I’ll play with that tonight.  If I don’t use Windows that much I may just delete it.

Well, the setup is almost complete and I have to say it is very VERY easy to install Windows this way.  I have had no problems so far which is nice, all seems to be going well with my copy of XP.  It’s getting late so I doubt I’ll be tinkering too much with it but hopefully I’ll get it all up and working by the time I go to bed.  

I am in the process of downloading a copy of parallels for the mac.  I want to see how good it is at running windows xp on my mac.  I have a new MB Pro with 2gig of ram so it should work fine…I hope.  I’ll update you as I go.

I woke up this morning and noticed that it was bright and sunny outside.  I decided to get up, make a coffee, clean the apartment up a bit then head for a nice walk downtown Toronto.  I found myself walking down Davisville Ave. craving another coffee so I stopped at Starbucks for a coffee.  I got it to go and started walking towards the subway station (I was planning on taking the subway down to Bloor then walk around downtown).  I looked down Yonge street and decided to see how long it would take to walk from Davisville to the Eaton’s Centre.  I stopped at the pharmacy to get a new pair of sunglasses since it was beating right in my face and for some reason I can’t find any of the 3+ pairs I moved from Halifax with.  I then proceeded to walk down Yonge street in the sunshine.  It took me about 2 hours to get down to the Eaton’s Centre but I had made a few stops to check out some interesting stores.  I bought a few shirts at Winners, that took about 30 minutes.  I then walked all the way to Union station, had a piece of “street meat” (a gigantic hot-dog for those who can’t translate) then took the subway up to Eglington.  I had every intention of getting a few groceries but decided against it in the end and walked home.  Long walk….I’m pooped, time for a nap.

Brigitte visited last weekend and decided to bring the cat with her.  He has never been on a plane before nor has he ever gone on a long trip anywhere.  He made out alright but he somehow managed to cut his nose on something in the cage.  I think he tried to put his nose through the plastic air slots on the side at the wrong time and had it cut when the plane hit some turbulance.  He’s fine now, doing his normal stuff, running around, waking me up at 4am the whole bit.  I’m sure he’ll do fine here.