More on me

Although I actually have a degree in photography, in something called instructional media, I am not employed in that field, although I have been in past incarnations, as an optical camera operator, lab technician, product photographer, all that good kind of stuff. And then much of that world went digital and I had to find different work to pay the bills. I went driving. I've been on the go ever since. I've been a taxi driver, transit bus driver, and now a Greyhound coach operator (fancy title, eh?) in Toronto, Ontario for the past five years. (Somebody once told me that Toronto is the fourth busiest terminal for Greyhound in North America. Somebody else once told me that 84% of statistics that are used in conversation are made up on the spot, and believed to be true only about 68% of the time. You can make up your own mind on that. I just know that it can really be busy.)

I still like to take pictures and I still consider myself an amateur, in the original sense of the word, a lover of photography. I've gone digital with the age, kicking and screaming only a little because I've found the new technology keeps me out of the dark. Just now I'm experimenting, as you'll read elsewhere, on infrared photography. Really, this is new stuff to me and I'm quite excited about it. Hopefully I'll have images that I can show you later on. I have two main cameras, one, which travels with me most of the time, is a Canon PowerShot S50. and the other is a Nikon DX80.

On the music side of things, I'm currently playing through all the tunes I have on the computer, playing them alphabetically from the master list, usually while I'm working on things like this, or cooking, or petting the cat, picking my nos... alright a fair bit of time. According to iTunes (I have both an ibook and an iMac, I used to be a Windows guy but I got better) if I were to just let the music play, 'All Day and All of the Night', it would only take me 20.9 days to go through it. I'm sorry, man, I have to at least have time for breaks. It's going to take somewhat longer than that, okay?

So life does interfere a bit with the 'play' project. I've been doing this for a while now, a couple of weeks probably, in fits and starts, and I'm still in the b's. I heard 'Bat Out Of Hell' a little while ago, also 'The Battle of Epping Forest'. Thomas Dolby is currently on. I have a very eclectic mix when listened this way. Hell, I have stuff that I don't even know I have. Some tunes are real surprises. I heard, oh probably an hour ago, a song from The Alligator Records 25th Anniversary Collection by a person named Kenny Neal and the song was 'Bayou Blood'. Very nice (and actually a very nice surprise as well because I happen to have a soft spot in my heart and a great fascination for N'Awlinz. I will even admit to having visited it and getting Bourboned on Drunk Street with my good friend Sid).

I used to be a musician, many years ago. I played the bass guitar in rock bands, I played in show bands. I had, at one time, a black tuxedo jumpsuit and wore ruffled shirts, accented with either the white or the black patent leather boots. Our choreography usually started with left foot on one, and I don't know how many times I played 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon'. On the plus side, the more rocky one, I also played King Crimson, Gentle Giant, and more popular bands like ZZ Top and Supertramp. But that was years ago as I said and I'm afraid much of my playing has gone to rust. I still play on keyboards occasionally and have started fooling around on my fretless Fender Jazz Bass, which I bought originally in 1969, don't ask me why I remember that.

I'm also trying to learn how to write properly and how to tell a story. I'll share some with you within this blog.

I'd also like to give acknowledgment to my friend Sid, the very talented individual who took the photo of me above, and ask you to check out his blog at http://theinfiniterevolution.blogspot.com. He'll put the tea on if you plan to stay a while.

This is actually my second foray into the land of blog. Effort the first was done for my brother and friend Ralph. If you're interested in that you might wish to check out the Campbell Brother's Winery blog at http://campbellbrothers.blogspot.com.

So this is me, get used to it.