news update

Last night, I went into Yahoo Mail to see whether my oldest email account was still alive. It was. I never use it — I keep it for «sentimental reasons». It’s from 1998.

Right now, I got one of those ‘breaking news’ notices on my phone from BBC. I tend to take them more seriously than ‘breaking news’ from CNN. The latter could be some stupid sports result.

In any event, this was  about how one billion of Yahoo accounts were hacked in 2014. Names, passwords birth dates … all kinds of user details were stolen. They suspect it was a state, but wouldn’t say which one. Also, they stated no bank or credit data was stolen.

Over the years I’ve had a few Yahoo-accounts, but I went through that list and cancelled them all, except this -98 account and the one I use for Flickr … that one I have to keep, otherwise I cancel my own Flickr account, and I have all my photos there.

Now, this whole thing is so creepy and one wonders what Verizon will do now. Will they really buy Yahoo after this?!

I’ve used Gmail since 2004, but moved away from Yahoo Mail before that. For the simple reason I found all those animated, commercial ads way too annoying. Now they’re even worse.

We got our first snow on Monday. Not much, but still a little bit more than predicted. The schools were closed. In my life I can’t remember one, what they call here, ‘snow day’. I grew up in northern Sweden, so there was no lack of snow.

We won’t get to keep this snow, though. After a real cold spell tomorrow and Friday, the temperature is going way up and we’ll get rain. Probably no white Christmas for us.

I took this picture with the iPhone on Monday night, outside our building. Went out to assess the car-situation … how much we would have to shovel, if any, the following day.

Today was a totally monochrome day, but that changed in a few minutes, while we were inside the grocery store. When we got outside again, the cloud cover had broken up, and it turned out to be a very beautiful, winter afternoon.

 

WP Weekly ~ Pure [163/365]

Nothing more pure than the freshly falled snow to me. Sure, if you were to analyse it, it’s probably filled with toxic waste, but I prefer not to think about that. I’ll think about it another day 🙂

 

no snow [123/365]

I’ve found when I set off on a drive, with my mind set to “taking pictures” … it won’t happen. Or, at least, they turn out a little … uninspired. That’s what happened yesterday. We took the ferry over to Kingston Peninsula. I had high hopes of seeing all kinds of birds in general and eagles in particular. Didn’t see one bird, except these, what I believe to be, Greater Scaup. They were too far away anyway. They’re easily mistaken for Ring necked duck or the other way around, but I’m pretty sure they were Scaup.

The day was quite lovely, though. The sky was filled with those feathery, wispy clouds that make you think of angel wings and ice cream castles in the air. Yes, I know  the lyrics of “Both Sides Now” by heart. When I was fourteen, I thought those lyrics could have been written just for me — I’d “seen it all from both sides” 🙂

The covered bridges are numerous, here in New Brunswick. The first time I watched “Bridges of Madison County”, I was still living in Sweden and knew nothing about covered bridges. I thought they were particular to that very spot, where the movie took place, and only there. Here, many of them are in various states of disrepair, which is saddening. One was carried away by the Spring flood a couple of years ago.

Speaking of Spring — in Facebook I was reminded of what it looked like, here in Saint John, on May 1^st last year:

So … it really isn’t too bad this year!

little cat feet [35/365]

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg

Today

On this date last year

The Changing Seasons: January 2016 [23/365]

This year, I’m taking part in Cardinal Guzman’s «The Changing Seasons 2016». One gallery, or a single photo at the end of each month. Here you can read about the rules.

I took mine yesterday, in Rockwood Park. That’s where all my pictures for this challenge will be shot. Please, click on a picture to bring them up to size.

the snow levels [19/365]

The snow levels are still comfortable, compared to last year’s. But then we got 50 centimetres (20″) in one day, and it didn’t start until late January. The risk [or chance? 🙂 ] of another record breaking winter is still there. I don’t care which, since I’m in the fortunate situation I can do or don’t do whatever I want. No shovelling, nothing pressing to get out and slide around in it.

We did go out today, ran some errands. The wind was biting, through skin and bones … ‘nippy’ would be to mild a word.

I took this, while I was waiting for my husband, who was having a haircut, to give you an idea of the snow and our surroundings. It’s Lansdowne Ave. I’m standing with the back towards our building, which is way up high. It’s nice to walk down to the grocery store — the green sign you see to the right of Subway — but to walk home from there, with grocery bags, really gives you a good workout. It’s very steep uphill.

To the left, outside the picture, is a small strip mall, with a drugstore, amongst others. So it’s a good location, where everything is handy. This is called the North End of Saint John. If I were to walk in the opposite direction, I’d be downtown in ten minutes. Couldn’t think of a better location to live in this little city.

Here’s an older picture, where you can see part of our building looming large …  [all pictures are clickable]

 

it’s a snow day

Second snowstorm in as many days. This one is a real snowstorm, conversely to the day before yesterday. That was just a steady snowfall. Today we have winds … it’s snowing sideways.

All this makes it a good day for staying indoors, enjoy central heating, and lounging around in pyjamas 🙂

I’ve never been interested in photo manipulation, even though I’ve seen and read about so many apps for the iPhone … until now. I mentioned it in an earlier post, and it’s still fun to play with iColorama. One easily goes overboard in the beginning — they turn out to be more of a graphic image than a photograph, but that will settle down eventually.

Dragon’s Alley, Stockholm

some grass

 

WP Weekly Photo challenge ~ Grid

We often superimpose a mental grid over things we photograph to help with composition. This week, let’s go literal.

A wintry little grid … nice cooling-off effect now, when we’re experiencing record breaking, hot temperatures here in the Maritimes.

Want snow?

We have it! These, two pictures were taken with almost a month and a half in between. The levels certainly haven’t gone down, rather the opposite.

WP Weekly Photochallenge ~ Fresh

The first thing that came to mind when I saw this week’s photo challenge was «freshly fallen snow», and I would have waited until tomorrow, when we get new, fresh white stuff.