Volunteered today for the Kin Club Golf Tournament. I was near Hole Two on the Cranbrook Golf Club course checking if anyone got a hole in one. The tournament was great and it was nice to help out.

Experiencing 32-bit audio processing with the Denon DCD-600NE CD player. The DAC output has a good Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and the total harmonic distortion is low (0.0030%). I like that the CD player can be rack mounted with a bracket (check out the screws on the side).

Vinyl records have an amazing sound. CDs and MP3 files are made from a digital intermediary that is compressed and these technologies often have a limited dynamic range. The mechanical noise in the stylus and analog preamp can't be easily replicated by a digital filter.

What?!? There's a large red chair outside of the Cranbrook Home Hardware. Why didn't I notice this earlier? I now have to sit in the chair and take a picture of myself sitting in the chair. There's always something new to explore in Cranbrook.

Here's the setup of my home Internet system that I'm always working on. A new computer build with a Intel Core i3 processor provides an OPNsense firewall between the WAN and LAN.

Thinking of building your own computer from components? Also consider the environmental footprint of the packaging for these components. This picture shows that the packaging takes up an entire box. Of course, I am recycling the packaging at a local recycling depot.

Recall the Roy Orbison song "Only the Lonely" from the 1960s? My little smartcar is the only car in one of the parking lots at the College of the Rockies on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. However, the Community Forest has a few smiling people!

For part of today, I explored the beautiful Community Forest behind the College of the Rockies. Anticlines, synclines, moraines and glaciofluvial features are all on display in this remarkable area.

Today I explored a new road that the City of Cranbrook is building behind the College of the Rockies. The road is not finished yet, but when it is, the road will serve as another way to travel to the College.

I just repaired my Compaq computer, the one with an AMD Athlon XP processor. The computer dates back to the year 2001. Replaced the power supply and some of the ribbon cables.

Looking back and experiencing the DOS game Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. It was a good and tasteful game (without violence) that first engaged my love for Geography.

My little Smartcar parked in the downtown core of Cranbrook, BC. I explored the geography of the downtown area today. Note the bee decals, flowers and the happy face on top of the antenna of the Smartcar.

I finally repaired my beloved i486 computer from 1994. The computer had not been used since the year 2000 and the floppy 3.5" drive and hard drive did not function.

I headed out to the Kimberley Nature Park Society hike today. The hike was on the art of "seeing" the forest. Geology is also part of the show today, with glacial striations as scratches indicating the direction of ice movement during the last glaciation.

I explored the city of Kimberley, BC this morning to examine the ridges and valleys that surround the city. These tell a story of glaciation, and the movement and melt of glacial ice more than 11,700 years ago. It's remarkable how the geology of the Kootenays can be so visual.

Image of my electronics workbench showing various projects: repair of a 486 computer, upgrade of an AMD Athlon processor computer (circa 2001), and various circuits.

Looking back at a time when I was a postdoc doing fieldwork in the Rocky Mountains. Yes, at the time I was actually writing code for an embedded system in the field! Note the "tough" laptop and the router along with a number of wires and cables.

Beep beep! Here's a picture of my new Smart car. Ready for new adventures in the Kootenays.

Added some bling to the back of my Smart Fortwo car. Adhesive bumper material and two red reflectors make the car fun to look at. More customization to follow! Stay tuned.

I purchased a vintage green glass bowl from a downtown sale last Saturday in Cranbrook, BC. The bowl is from the E. O. Brody Company in Cleveland, OH and was probably manufactured in the 1960s-1970s. I used a Geiger counter to determine that the glass is slightly radioactive.

On Saturday, I visited downtown Cranbrook. Part of the downtown core becomes a place where vendors sell items and the Farmer's Market is active. Cranbrook is really a city and a town. I always marvel about how geography is a fundamental part of a place.

The beauty of Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) communications as indicated by a logic analyzer. The digital levels are only indicative of zeros and ones, but the signalling involves reading JDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) information stored on a memory IC.

I like to prototype electronic circuits on breadboards before designing a PCB layout. Once a microcontroller responds to a programmer (or JTAG device), I always write a program to blink an LED to show that the state machine is responding. Let there be light!

I've used many RAW processor software packages for photography, but my favorite is darktable running on Linux, my preferred operating system. Free and open source software (FOSS) is excellent to use and has no license fees.

You know that old computer from circa 2001 that stopped working a few years ago? The power supply might just need new capacitors. I extracted the power supply from the computer and removed the electrolytic capacitors.

Just received electronic components from a distributor (Digikey). It's always exciting to open the box and realize that when the components are correctly connected as per the design, a circuit will function!

I recently checked my Google Scholar account. It's amazing how information is shared around the entire world and knowledge can be cited by different people. It is indeed a small world after all!

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" --Tao Te Ching However, the journey of designing an electronic circuit begins with drawing a schematic. I always enjoy the process of starting a design. To finish the entire design can take months of effort.

Taking pictures again with a tripod and a wide-angle lens. There's photographic opportunities everywhere!

Moir Park is a beautiful part of the City of Cranbrook. Aside from the games in the park today, I noticed the mountains to the south and west of Cranbrook. Some of these mountains have a characteristic down-tilted appearance, similar to other structures in the region.