I helped Rachael and Adam build a wigwam this weekend. I was the Firekeeper and Chef, among other things. The canned beans were delicious, especially after working hard all morning in 30 degree weather.

Testing a timelapse script on my Canon G12. Looks like some of the images are out of focus. There is a shooting star in there if you can catch it, but you’d have to watch the HD version on Vimeo.

We got a surprise hailstorm yesterday. It was a weird day…started out all gray and drizzly, then the sun was shining and it was warm, then this hail came… The sun returned later and the trees were all ablaze in reds and oranges. Interesting November we’ve had.

I took this picture from the car. Thought it looked like a nice painting.

Currently reading…and very much enjoying. I like Miss Rand’s faith in the strength of the individual. She doesn’t go half-way on that. She says,

“Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.”

“A noble soul has reverence for itself.”

–Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Ayn Rand cites this quote in her introduction to The Fountainhead. She says, “[Nietzsche] projects at times a magnificient feeling for man’s greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual terms.” She likes how the quote “communicates the inner state of exalted self-esteem.”

Nietzsche’s own words explain it: Among artists and scholars today we find a sufficient number of those who through their works reveal how a profound desire for what is noble drives them: but this very need for what is noble is fundamentally different from the needs of the noble soul itself and is really the eloquent and dangerous indication that such a soul is lacking. It’s not the works; it’s the belief which decides here, which here establishes the order of rank, to take up once more an old religious formula with a new and more profound understanding: some basic certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.

I really like this idea and identify with it, because it speaks to a quality of the soul that is unaffected by the desires and vices and typical insecurities of mankind. It also hearkens back to a primitive soul that is much like that found in nature’s creatures. It is a soul that doesn’t have (or find) a need to question or doubt itself.

There’s a hydrangea tree in our backyard. I went for a walk after a snowstorm and was surprised to see rich fall colors still in abundance…

This video is a tribute to one of the first songs that got me into electronica and idm, and also one of the first Aphex Twin songs I ever heard. Hope you enjoy it.

Walking around Sydney listening to Amber, I was inspired to shoot this video using time-lapse clips for the song Montreal.