Happy St. Patty's Day

I used to have a passing interest in a site called worth1000.com. I thought that it was a great site for the Photoshop contests and challenges although I never actually posted anything, just critiqued. However I was torn between that and another facet of worth1000. In addition to the Photoshop contests they had logo design competitions for companies too cheap to hire a designer. IMHO this only exploited talented amatures by paying $100 for the winning logo.

Recently I received an Email (which is weird because I had no idea that I was on their mailing list and haven't even visited the site in a year or two) advertising the launch of their new online photo editing, vector program, colour editor and effects editor, all named after birds to go with the Aviary theme. This was in response to Worth1000 members complaining about needing expensive software to enter their contests. I tried the vector program and it's not that great but could never replace Illustrator. It will be interesting to see how it takes off and whether it will force the bigger guys like Adobe to come down in price. I look forward to trying out the other applications when I get the time. They have video tutorials but I think that you have to sign up with Worth1000 to save anyhting that you make. If anyone out in the blogosphere tries it out, let me know what you think. you can find it at aviary.com

My Mom Has Joined Flicker

Hopper 1 Originally uploaded by heyjudexxoo's

My mother has joined the flicker community. With her retirement she now has the time to get out and enjoy herself and post pictures about it. If you like pictures of Quilts, Crafts, or things found on the ground, I encourage you to help me encourage her by visiting my Mom's flicker page and leaving crass, mindless, thoughtless, ignorant, boorish, oafish, asinine, graceless, tasteless, tactless, clumsy, heavy-handed or all around buffoonish comments on her pictures. Just don't be mean, it was her birthday last Sunday.

Happy Birthday Mom
Love,
Doug

New to my Blogs of Note List

This addition to "The Best of the Blogosphere" list, to the right of my posts, is long over due. Justin Currie's, "The Art of Currie" is blog that I frequent via my friend James' blog "kalamafraz". Why I hadn't added him earlier, I don't know. If you don't already know Justin through Kalamafraz, you should check out his tremendous talent on The Art of Currie.

Late Blog

Well this post is about two weeks late but as they say, better late than never. The picture above is of the beautiful tulips that I bought Rae for Valentine's Day. You can see more on my Flickr Photostream. Also missed was a post about Louis Riel Day in the third Monday of this month that also marked the half year (182.5 day) milestone of my smoking freedom and the birth of Blog Therapy. Not a day goes by that I don't feel like lighting up again but I guess I've been stubborn enough.

The Legend of the Fox

A friend of mine recently decided to learn how to play the piano. His motivation was to be able to just step up to a piano and entertain friends. When I heard this, I instantly thought of The Man Show's late great master of ceremonies, The Fox. If you remember TheFox (featured in the above video) and you knew the 'Los (my friend learning the piano), you would understand the connection (sorry 'Los, you know it's true).
If I were to learn piano I would want to follow in the footsteps of the great Victor Borge or Rolf the dog.

Skating at the Forks

This past weekend Rae and I took advantage of the warm weather and went skating on the Assiniboine River at the Forks.


There, we watched friends play in an annual, river curling competition. The people we went to see ended up winning the tournament for the second year in a row. Congratulations Don, Dave and the rest of your team.

To see more of the weekend at the forks visit my flickr page here.

Der König von Schnitzel

Tonight Rae and I enjoyed dinner at Winnipeg's only German diner that I'm aware of, the Kraut King (located under the parking lot on the corner of Garry Street and Portage Avenue). This wasn't our first time trying this restaurant and it is sure to become a regular treat. If you've been following my blog, you'll know that Rae and I are taking German language classes. When we learned about a popular German dish called Currywurst, we really wanted to try it and as far as I know, the Kraut King is the only place in Winnipeg to get it.


At the heart of the Kraut King is the grille. There is something that I appreciate about the open kitchen concept where you can see how a kitchen is kept. It may be paranoia, but I've seen enough of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares to be wary.


Kraut King also makes a fine Wiener Schnitzel. It was served with a tasty spicy mayonnaise for lack of a better description. They also offer great Bratwurst, large Pretzels and more dishes.

If you don't mind curry I would seriously recommend trying the Currywurst.
See more Kraut King photos here.

Photographing my food has been inspired by my friend K-Jin