Summer's come early!!!

It's the last day of March, and already the temp outside is at a British summer level, I knew that there was a reason I came here....

The Writting on the wall

Even though I've been living here for nearly 10 months now, I had never noticed the grafftti around the back of my appartment, but since sunday was so warm (compared to the past 3 months at least) I thought it would be great to take some pictures and show some of these pieces here.

It's great to see work like this, which I think in no way shape or form is vandalism, in fact since I noticed these, I've been paying more attention on my walk to work and have already noticed some interesting pieces. The picture on the left is the view directly from my balcony, and looks pretty fresh, but sure it must of been done before the winter at least.

Meet Lisbon...

This is Lisbon, I know it's hard to tell what this actually is, but if you look closely enough you can see that it's a cat. Lisbon (not actual name) lives somewhere in the neighbourhood, and has taken to visiting me, on weekends. I think he's just nosey as you can tell from the picture, he was curious as to what I was holding, and decided to nuzzle the camera, resulting in shot of his nose.

Jeff gave me some cat treats and some cat-nip, just incase he came around on a more regular basis. Well I've kinda adopted him, call him my Gryff substitute (my dog back in England), and because he's a cat, I don't feel like I'm going behind Gyrff's back. I think that she would approve.

I mean it's not like I'm trying to steal him... yet. But it's cool if he wants to come in and hangout everynow and again, that way I get all the benefits of owning a cat, without the responsibility. He's obviously well looked after, and everytime I see him he comes to say hi, sometimes for 10 minutes, sometimes for an afternoon.

Why is he called Lisbon? It would take me too long to explain, but I like it.

Arctic Monkey's in Montreal

When Saima was here in January/February, she noticed that the Arctic Monkey's were playing here in March, now I had heard about the Arctic Monkey's before, mainly from reading all the British websites whilst over here, and from an interview with Noel Gallager on the rental car radio when I came back to England for Emma's (my sister) wedding last August. He said that he didn't think that they would do anything, and in no way would they become successful with a name like the Arctic Monkey's.

I tracked down the album for Saima when she was over and from then on both of us where hooked, and I knew that Jeff would be into them as well, so Jeff, Jolyne and I bought tickets for $22 CAD (around £10.81 GBP) to see them on Wednesday.


I've never really been a big one for gigs before, as it has not really been my scene, but I've always wanted to see Oasis live, and since I couldn't get to Toronto on the Monday to see them live with the Arctic Monkey's supporting, seeing the Monkey's in Montreal was the next best thing, and because they were in a small venue the atmosphere was fantasitic. We had seats on the side of the stage but jeff and I ventured down into the pit and as you can see from the above picture, this is how close we managed to get.


Here is a picture from the seats we had, just to show how small the venue was, it was great as there were so many northerner's at the gig, that it felt like I was back home, considering the Arctic's aren't that well known over here and their album was only released a couple of weeks ago, I was suprised at how up for it the crowd was. Now if only Oasis will come to Montreal....

St-Patrick's Day Parade: Pt 2

As promised here are some of the pictures from the St. Patrick's day parade, it's amazing how many people say that they are Irish, when there is alcohol to be drunk, the streets were packed.



But even though I was saying that this is supposed to be the start of spring, mother nature decided to remind us that we aren't quite there yet, and that she was still holding all the cards, with a little snow fall.




The parade heads down most of St.Cathrine's, where's we started at Bishop, and headed down towards McClean's, as I started to feel the urge for a pint of guiness, and maybe some Irish Stew and possibly an Irish Coffee. Infact I think I was just in the mood for plenty of Irish based activities. Including of course, some traditional Irish music, all the way from.... Newfoundland. Hmmm ah well was still a fun day.

Heroes & Villians

A guy that we all know from Ubisoft (above) was playing with his band, Heroes & Villians, just down the road from my appartment, and when Jeff mentioned that he had wanted to go and see them as well, and none of us had any other plans for Saturday night we decided that it would be worth checking out.

Jeff and Jolyne are showing their appreciation

I've been listening to their album in work and had no idea how good they were, the venue was tiny but I think that, that just added to the atmosphere, and the fact that we were still celebrating St.Patrick's day (weekend) might of added something as well.

Laura, me and Jolyne still appreciating the music.

St-Patrick's Day Parade: Pt 1

So what... I'm not Irish, wanna fight about it??? But I'm British and that in my book is just as good. I've never really been one for celebrating St-Patrick's Day, but after visiting Dublin a few years back I became a big fan of Guiness. A few of us will be heading downtown for the parade on sunday, and I'm sure that there will be a few pints of the black stuff downed as we travel down ste catherine's.

I found this link (St-Patrick's Day Parade Route) and it shows the street closures and time of the parade for those of you that want to see what it's all about (pretty much about the drinking). I'm sure I'll have some pictures up here by next week.

For me this parade marks the beginning of Spring in Montreal...

HAPPY ST.PATRICKS DAY!!!!

"Mime's" a pint - Omnibus Mime School

Part of the new training teams mandate is to make classes like this more accessable to everyone at Ubisoft. Now I'll be the first to admit that I walked into this thinking that it would be acting as if I was trapped in a box or fighting against the wind, and wasn't exactly sure how to approach this.

Mimes are actors, whose craft is yet uncorrupted by speech, and as an animator I found this experience extremly interesting. We weren't taught any technicalities of animation or how to go about animating a scene. This session was merely an introduction, and was mainly focusing our attention on what the motivation behind certain actions are.

My day as an animator would consist of me getting up and acting out an action until I get a feel for the movement and can then translate that movement on to the screen. It wasn't teaching us a way of acting, more of 'why' we act and what causes us to act in certain ways. The basics of cause and effect. This is something I feel that on a more advanced level if it were to be used in the correct way could become an extremely useful animating tool.

24 hours in Montreal

(Yep another weather post)

24 hours in Montreal, a lot can happen. Babies are born, cars crash, big events take place, the subway shuts down, people fall over and crack a rib... and many other things. Weather-wise, the temperature can easy change by over 10°C. When rain is added to that, this is what you get. It was pretty clean 24 hours earlier. Not that it isn't in these two photos, but this is a very slippery kind of clean.

Before:


After (24 hours later):


Before:


After (24 hours later):