2017, wot a year!

So, it's the final day of 2017.

Quite a year!

Lots of things have happened this year in our family:

• David has graduated from university and gotten a job in his chosen field
• He and Jessie bought a house and moved in
• And they now have a son, which makes me a grand-father

And that's without talking of other news like new nephews, new old colleagues, crazy markets, and the election of Donald Trump in the US!

Quite a year, but a wonderful year.

On the personal technology side, I am back in the 4K club with a vengence: my new PC has a 32-inch 4K screen, and I have a new 60-inch 4K TV in the living room. If you remember well, I got a 4K TV in 2014 for my birthday in Paris, but as we moved back to Canada at the end of May 2014, I could not bring it with me as electricity and TV broadcasting are incompatible between France and Canada. So I am back in the 4K world, and I am quite pleased with it so far. Thanks to NetFlix for offering 4K content, as my local cable company offers very limited content at 4K (they do have a 4K Christmas Fireplace Video :-)

Oh, I guess I also ought to mention that I bought a new camera this year (is that still a thing?). Just before our trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon last August, Sylvie and I bought a Nikon D7500 20.9 megapixel APS-C digital camera. I admit that nowadays we take most of our pictures with our cellphones and that our Samsung Galaxy S6 and S8 phones take very decent pictures, but with a grandson on the way, we felt that it was important to get a real camera that would let us take even more beautiful pictures than just our phones.

One day, I should make a list of all the cameras I've owned. Just in the Digital Camera age, my main cameras have been the Nikon Coolpix 950 (bought in San Francisco in 1999), the Olympus E10, the Nikon D70, the Nikon D90, and now the Nikon D7500. Of course, that doesn't count the smaller Minolta cameras we've had like the Dimage X50 (we've had 3 or 4 over the years that Sylvie carried in her purse in our travels).

So in closing, I hope you all had as good and eventful a year in 2017 as we've had in our family. I'm looking forward to writing more here in 2018 than I've taken the time to this year.

See you soon and best wishes!

/misc | Posted at 09:07 | permanent link

Geeez it's cold!

Oh boy, is it cold outside in Montreal.

I've enjoyed a full week of vacation to close 2017, and it has been great and quite relaxing... But it has been bitterly cold all week in Montreal, and it looks like it's going to continue into the first week (or weeks?) of the new year.

Temperatures in Montreal are below -20 degrees Celcius (that's sub-zero for those still using Fahrenheit), and with the wind chill factor, it feels like -40 or so.

Brrrr!

Now mind you, I like the cold, so I'm not overly displeased with this. But that is because we've got good insulation in our walls and solid heating in our home, as these types of brutal temperatures will kill you in no time at all if you stay put.

Brrrr!

/misc | Posted at 08:34 | permanent link

IPv6 in Montreal

Since I've moved back to Montreal from Paris, I haven't had time to re-set the IPv6 part of my LAN, which had been running off of a SIXXS tunnel for a few years.

The good news, is that my local ISP (Videotron) has been allowing IPv6 to the home for a few years already though 6rd... it's not yet native IPv6 to the home, but as far as I can tell it seems functionally useful (information available here).

So, I activated 6rd on my Asus router and got an IPv6 address as expected. This is good, so I will set up my home server (DNS, web, etc) to also work with IPv6 and move back to a hybrid IPv4/IPv6 home network... need a couple of days to work on that, so it will probably not happen before spring (ha!).

Still, it's good to see that IPv6 is spreading. I am quite impressed by Google's statistics here... seems like over 15% of users access Google through IPv6 today. That's a lot more than I expected! Glad to see that the transition is really happening.

/inet | Posted at 02:58 | permanent link

Another New Year

Welcome to the new level, welcome to 2017, welcome to the year of the 150th anniversary of Canada.

I'm just about old enough to remember the centennial celebration in 1967 in Montreal, with the International Exposition Expo 67, so even though I've lived abroad for a number of the intervening 50 years, I feel some sort of connection to this event and I will certainly seek out some celebrations during this year to show I feel that this is a most excellent country :-)

It's been fun being along for the ride for the past 50 years, and while it's a bit sobering to reflect that I will most likely not be around anymore in 2067 for the 200th anniversary, I intend to be along for a great many years still.

So, to my friends all over the world and all over this country: I wish you a happy 2017, and I invite you to join me in wishing this country a happy anniversary!

| Posted at 17:21 | permanent link