Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
So my website went down for 6 months this summer. I’m not to sure what happened but I believe it was a issue with my web server being attacked by a huge spam infection due to having no defined e-mail addresses. Basically anyone could send any e-mail to “whateveryouwant”@waz.ca and I would receive it. Some not so nice people started sending thousands upon thousands of e-mails to those random address and blew up my server while I was away. I didn’t have time over the summer to deal with the issue but now that I’m home after a amazing summer of working for the Ministry of Forests I’m getting the time to deal with such issues. Expect some more updates in the near future to the blog and the site!
p.s. if you sent a e-mail to me at my @waz.ca account in the last 6 months I never got it. So you can try resending the e-mail to justin@waz.ca.
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Long time no update; I just got back from a week in Mexico, specifically Mazatlan. It was nice to get out of the cloud, snow and cold and enjoy the sun and the warmth for a while. I’ll have all my pictures up soon on flickr or Facebook but here is one for now:
Right after I got back from Mexico I spent the last 3 days ski touring around Nelson, with 2 days around Whitewater and 1 day up at Kootenay Pass. The snow on the North facing slopes was pretty good considering the year and I got some pretty good turns in and fell off one cliff. It sure was different going from surf and sand to skis and snow within 1 day.
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
I could have sworn I wrote an entry in December, however I recently upgraded the database, and upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 so that might have gotten lost in the update. So it is a new year, new database and now a new update. December was just a amazing month for me, this year I started backcountry ski touring and over the holiday break I got so amazing days of skiing in. All my time was spent in the West Kootenays, hitting up hot spots such as Retallack, Kootenay Pass, the Bonnington Range, and Whitewater. Good turns, good company, good life. January isn’t shaping up to be a great month for skiing with the avalanche danger being high due to unseasonal warming and rain.
With the lack of skiing I finished off Fallout 3 which turned out to be a awesome game. I had some doubts about it at first but I stuck through the beginning and really enjoyed the experience. I have now started on Dead Space which is looking to be amazing with a great atmosphere and sweet graphics. The awkward camera angle started out as annoying, however it leads to some very scary oh crap moments. Dead Space is defiantly a game that needs to be played on a surround sound system, in a dark room alone.
I’m looking forward to 2009 and what the New Year will bring and I wish everyone the best in the New Year.
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
So I haven’t updated the blog since I got back from Montreal and for good reason. My 1st day back in Nelson I sprained my wrist on a bike ride, a week later I left for Kelowna where I resided for the last 2 months. While in Kelowna I had limited access to the internet having to go into town to PC Bang to get online. While there I got a chance to play the new game Left 4 Dead which was great fun. Defiantly a game I’d pick up if it goes on sale but for $50 I think it’s a bit steep considering I paid that for the Orange Box last year which had way more gaming material in it.
I have update the Now Playing / Reading section as well as fixed a link to the GFW podcast, which changed in the last couple of months losing some key personalities and gaining some new ones. It is still a great podcast to listen too. In Kelowna I had an old laptop that could play some older games and I started playing through Grim Fandango, I’ve almost finished it and have to say it truly is one of the greatest games of all time. Games really aren’t made like this anymore. Old adventure games made you really think about the puzzles presented to you, and some just don’t make any sense. The last time I had to use a walkthrough was Zelda: Oceania of Time another older game that is awesome. Now that I’m back home I need to finish the last chapter in Grim Fandango, and get started on some new games that I’ve been looking forward too such as Fallout 3, and Dead Space.
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
The Weekend before Adapt
On Thursday I caught a ride up to Calgary where I flew out to Montreal arriving a few days early to explore and be a tourist for a while. I got in Friday morning at 7:30 and had to make my way up to the place I was staying. Not speaking French I was worried it would be difficult to find my way and communicate with people; however that was never an issue as everyone spoke English. Friday during the day I got settled in and took a tour of downtown and Mount Royal. On Saturday I spent the day in Old Montreal taking pictures like crazy for future textures and reference. I stayed during the night to grab some nice night shots as all of Old Montreal is lit up at night and super busy. It helped that the weather was fantastic. Sunday was spent at Mount Royal taking in the ‘Tam Tams’ (A drumming session in the park) which made me feel at home.
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Saturday, September 27th, 2008
So I forgot the cable to upload pictures from my camera and not having a laptop I don’t have access to Photoshop at the moment. But the Adapt conference is now over and later this evening I’ll be on a plane to Vancouver, back on the West coast. Montreal has been fantastic and the folks at Adapt put on a really good show. When I get back home to Nelson I’ll write up a nice long post with pictures and everything that has happened in Montreal.
Thanks again to Montreal, Adapt, and the Softimage crew for Thursday night. Now off to Vancouver for a bit of hiking and a meet up with the folks from Polycount.
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
Tomorrow I leave on my way to Montreal for the Adapt 08 conference. I hooked up a ride from Nelson’s rideshare website to Canmore where I’ll hitch hike to Calgary and fly from Calgary to Montreal, arriving at 7:00am Friday. With the weekend before Adapt to take in the sights and sounds of Montreal it should be a great time.
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
I just got back from Nelson’s own Fat Tire Festival, a 3 day event celebrating mountain bikes. Friday is registration day with a costume parade down Baker St, Saturday is the XC race and on Sunday is the 3x downhill on Morning Mountain. The course was dry and dusty and you couldn’t take a berm without sliding all the way through it. Every heat down had a crash with the final heat taking out the 2 top contenders in the last corner proving it’s not about how fast you can get down, its who you can take out to get the win.
Many thanks to the Nelson Cycling Club and all the volunteers who continue to put this great annual event together.
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
Last week I had a chance to hike up Jumbo Pass in the Purcell’s. We came in from the Nelson side along Glacier Creek road so I didn’t get a chance to see any of the new construction that the developers had started until stopped by protesters. If you don’t know about Jumbo and the issues this pristine wilderness faces then check out keepitwild.ca and help stop the proposed development of this wilderness area.
Luckily we could stay at the cabin as you can see it started to snow, not bad for August 27th. According to the log book in the journal people have come up in the middle of October and had to probe for the outhouse because there was already 12 feet of snow.
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
While I was in Kelowna for June and July I got onto a science fiction kick and was only reading or playing games based on science fiction. It started when I got into Eve Online a little bit, loving how hard the combat is and the amazing sense of loss when you die. It plays like hardcore mode on Diablo. One day after work I went to the only good used book store in Kelowna and picked up 2 sci-fi books that were recommended to me, Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks and EON by Greg Bear. EON I had heard about from the CgSociety challenge a few years ago where the challenge was to create a scene based on a section of the book. Consider Phlebas has inspired the new character I am working on which I’ll have a WIP post on it soon since I’ve neglected posting anything about the 3d stuff I’m working on. The last piece of sci-fi was playing through Mass Effect which I thoroughly enjoyed. Bioware did an excellent job on the game and it had a nice KOTOR feel.
