Pic Spocket

At home, I am known to forget about wish cards, or simply not putting enough effort into cards. I think that for this Valentine’s Day, I redeemed myself for all the previous times. I passed hours coming up with a card I made myself, based on a collage of photos of happy moments passed together. The card is also huge, printed on 13″x19″ photo paper folded in 2. Here is the front of the card:

I also put a lot of details on the back of the card:

One may find the numbers from the barcode pretty spooky… Bigger versions (up to 1000 pixels) of these are available here.

For the front of the card, I used a small program called “Shape Collage“. With this program, you can make very interesting collages of any shapes with only a few mouse clicks. Here is a video tutorial which is also a great way to see what can be done with it:

Things are taking shape for my first season of Half Ironman (HIM) long course triathlon races this year: I have registered and paid for hotels for Florida in May and Muskoka (Ontario) in September. My bike transport is also arranged for Florida. Traveling by plane with a bike is no fun at all. Rather than checking it in I will use Tri Bike Transport, a company that has trucks stopping in many bike stores across the country and delivers your bike right at the Ironman race venue without the need to take it apart. That makes things much simpler.

My training volume is currently at about 10 hours per week at this time. That may not seem like a whole lot, but that’s 10 hours of actually “doing” workouts. Considering most of my training sessions are at 45 to 60 minutes in duration each, that’s a lot of training sessions. There are many days with 2 sessions. Time adds up quickly when you include the preparation related to each session (drive to the location (pool, gym), setup the hardware, print/read the workout instructions, change, shower afterwards, etc). Right now, a typical week looks like this:

Monday: Rest day
Tuesday: 45 min swim at lunch; bike in the evening
Wednesday: Run + 30 min core strength
Thursday: 45 min swim at lunch; bike in the evening
Friday: Run + 30 min  core strength
Saturday: Long swim ; Long Bike
Sunday: Long Run + 30 min core strength

The weeks are going by quickly, I’ll tell you that! 

Bike Configuration 

I have finalized by bike configuration for the HIM races. I have made a few upgrades to my Time Trial Bike since posting about it. Here it is, in full race configuration:

It’s a Kuota K-Factor 2009 Time Trial Bike. In december, I went to a specialized shop in Saline, MI to get properly fitted on it. They raised my seat by 3/4″ and lowered my cockpit quite a bit (1.5″ IIRC). This will ride quite differently next spring.

The biggest upgrade on it is the set of ZIPP wheels. These are aerodynamic deep profile carbon rims. I am running a Zipp 808 rear (80 mm section) and a Zipp 404 front (60 mm section). I went for the ‘clincher’ version of the wheels rather than the ‘tubular’ (lighter) version because I would rather deal with a clincher tire if a flat would occur during a race. They are only slightly heavier than my original wheels, but that is mostly because the rear wheel hub is a Cycle Ops Powertap power meter (more below). Only downside is that the bike is more difficult to handle when there are a lot of crosswind (especially wind gusts), as I have experienced last fall. On the other side, the carbon rims absorb all the road defects really well and the ride becomes much more enjoyable with these wheels.

The rear wheel hub (Powertap unit) transmits wirelessly to both the bike computer and my Garmin GPS watch not only speed, distance and cadence but also the amount of power (in watts) that I am transmitting to the rear wheel. That information can be an invaluable tool for racing and training. It can help to pace yourself properly during a race. Here is a close-up of the Powertap unit. 

The funny thing is that the wheelset is worth more than the rest of the bike itself. I would normally never put that kind of money just on something like wheels, but I found an awesome deal on Ebay last fall for this barely used set that included the powertap already.

The saddle was replaced for a “Fizik Arione Tri 2” which is more comfortable and lighter than the original one. The red and white saddle also looks good with the bike’s color scheme.

Other than that, most of the additions are related to hydration, which is a key factor in endurance racing:

• Profile Design AeroDrink: the bottle in the cockpit that lets me take sips without getting out of the aero position;
• Profile Design Razor bottle system: the narrow profile bottle on the frame
• Beaker Concepts rear seat bottle holder bracket: holding 2 more bottles
• In the rear seat bracket is a small bag with everything I need to fix a flat including compressed air cans.

I added a nice personalization touch last week, thanks to Victory Circle Graphix : my bike is now sporting my name and country flag. How cool is that!

I have been putting a lot of time riding it indoors on the Computrainer (I have over 1000 km on the trainer since fall) but I can’t wait for the temperature to rise again so that I can ride outside. Bigger image versions here in the photo album.

For the last 17 days, we have kept our friend’s dog named “Trails”. He’s a brittany spaniel and he is adorable. If only he did not pull so much when walking! We worked on that small issue for the last 2 weeks and he is better now, but it’s hard to be effective when walking 2 dogs at the same time.

Other than that, it went really well. Both dogs are behaving nicely together. They are playing a lot. The bed gets crowded in the morning though..

Our friends are about to get back in town and yesterday evening I decided to break out the flashes and umbrellas and try to snap a portrait or 2 with the help of Corinne. We only did a few ones with a single setup because it was quite late already when we got to it.

Trails was cooperating pretty well: that dog would do anything for a piece of food. Not so much luck with the poor Newton. He was simply terrorized by the umbrella I use to diffuse light. Can you tell? hehe!

Album below.

Trails in studio

I am finally done with processing all the pictures taken in France last march. Can you believe how long it took me! I really need to simplify my workflow given the lack of time I have for this. Maybe I’ll have to shoot ‘jpegs’ in the future. We’ll see..

Back on topic, I have updated the Paris online album with the latest pictures. They are miscellaneous pics taken walking in Paris that simply did not fit in the other albums.

I reached the downtown area using the most convenient transport system over there: the subway. I snapped a few shots but I was stopped quickly by a police woman: seems like taking pictures in the subway is not allowed.

Back on the surface, I just walked around randomly taking pictures along my way. Here is a HDR picture (processed from multiple exposures) that I really like even if I pushed the effect a bit too far compared to my usual taste:

Typical French architecture and coffee shops:

The ‘Hotel de ville’ (City Hall) and the ‘Centre Pompidou’ (national art museum):

Lugging around my full size tripod was a chore during the day, but I was really happy to have that night. I could capture some very nice and sharp night views of the city.

Pubs/restaurants:

These 2 are among my favorites of the night shots, I am just not sure which one I prefer. The amount of headlights tracks in the first one maybe a bit too distracting.

 A few more pics:

As usual, more pics and larger version in the album below:

Paris Misc

All pictures from the Paris trip are found in the ‘Paris March 2009′ album of the Travel Section in the photo album.

The Sacré-Cœur Basilica (Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) in Paris is located on the highest on the highest summit of the city, at the “Butte Montmartre”. The interior was really nice but picture taking was forbiden - and enforced

Skyline from up there:

The basilica

Some architectureal details:

Local performer trying so get a few $ from the tourist crowd…

More pics and larger versions in the album below.

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Paris Sacre-Coeur

Here is one more serie of pictures from my stop in Paris last march. Here are the pictures of  “Sainte-Chapelle” also located on the “île-de-France”. This is another example of French gothic architecture.

From Outside

Lower Chapelle

Upper Chapelle

More pictures and larger versions are in the album linked below.

Here are a few more pictures from my stop in Paris last March. The album I added is of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. This is one of the finest example of French Gothic architecture. It is located on the “île de la cité” (“city island”).

I really like the next picture with the flock of birds taking off..

Using the 70-200 zoom, I could get some nice detail shots.

The interior of the cathedral is also really nice. My 50D camera proves very useful at ISO 1600 in low light conditions.

The ceiling of the cathedral also proved to be interesting.

More pics and larger versions in the album below!

Notre Dame

We brought Newton to the park Sunday morning to play fetch. He loves running after the ball. Took some action shots of him running at full throttle. Here are a few pictures.

More pictures and larger versions in the album below.

Newton playing ball

Here are a few more pictures I just added to my photo album, from my visit in Paris last March. This serie is taken around the Louvres Museum. I went late at night after my day of work (this was a business trip) so the actual museum was actually closed. So I took pictures from the surroundings.

Here is the hotel in front of the museum, and one of the entrance.

The water features were turned off and the lack of wind made the water still, offering a nice reflection.

Once again, I tried to force myself to find some unusual angles to give my own twist on a very well known tourist attraction.

Few more pictures…

Finally, a wide crop of the area.

As usual, many more interesting pictures are available in the dedicated album below.

Louvres Museum

Finally got some time to process and upload some more of the pictures from last March in France. I had yet to look through the pictures from Paris. Here are a few shots from the Eiffel Tower, probably the most well known landmark of the city.

I arrived on the site as the night was setting in, so most pictures are night shots.

Some of the sourroundings…

Here, I tried unusual viewpoints of the landmark to get something different. For the first one, I have put my ultra wide angle lens to work. The second picture is shot from under the structure. The third picture is shot with the 200 mm zoom.

Two black and white treatments:

Finally, a self portrait…

There are many more pictures in the photo album.

Eiffel Tower

I’ll post more pictures from Paris soon.