This morning, as we entered Highway 13 next to the Bois de Liesse, my wife and I saw a very large bird of prey quietly surveying his surroundings from the top of a tree. This was my first sighting of a Great Grey Owl (Chouette Laponne) whose hunting territory have expanded to the south this year.

We were quite impressed at how huge it was. Now I can’t wait to go out there with my camera, especially after finding out that they are even easier to find on Ile Bizard. Go to this site if you want to see recent pictures.

Unfortunately that will have to wait until the end of the month since we will be driving up to Quebec city next weekend. All is not lost as I will get to photograph my in-law’s new, and amazingly cute, puppy.

As first reported in the Globe and Mail and Le Devoir, our fair city will be the host of the next big climate conference in December. The objective is to initiate discussions on a long term strategy to deal with climate change. The announcement comes only hours after the Kyoto Protocol officially took effect.

to send an unsolicited fax advertising a class on how to deal with e-mail spam? At least they were nice enough to include a phone number so that I could promptly express my true feelings. Of course I started with a very soft voice until I was sure that they had cranked up the volume to maximum.

The news on the new Ubisoft campus has just been posted on Slashdot, a very popular forum for all things geeky. They don’t seem to consider it important enough for a front page posting but reading all of those comments might be interesting.

Check out this amazing shot of Montreal City Hall. The author, David Giral, has some really nice photography of our favorite city in his Flickr account.

Reassuring news to parents everywhere, all those hours that Timmy has spent on the Playstation/Nintendo/X-box may not have been wasted. For all of these years, he was simply getting ready for college.

The gaming world is abuzz with the announcement that Ubisoft, in collaboration with the CEGEP of Matane and the University of Sherbrooke, will soon open the Ubisoft Campus in Montreal. College and university level courses will be offered in numerous different video gaming career fields.

Can you only imagine the huge LAN parties…or the virtual graduation prom that will take place on World of Warcraft?

If you don’t know what to do on this grey weekend (other than worrying about romantic doom), let me remind you that the Made in China photography exibit will only be around for another week. Check it out at La Maison de la Culture, on the corner of Frontenac and Ontario East.

Just don’t forget that iPod.

After one dead DG and a lot personalized lobbying (Mayor Tremblay promised to do a belly flop from the 10m tower), the world governing body of swimming has decided that Athens, Berlin and Moscow won’t do and returned the world aquatic championship to Montreal.

I just hope that they don’t screw up and that these will be the best games ever. With a lot of backseat drivers ready to say “I told you they coudn’t do it”, the pressure will be on.

I love snow and I don’t mind the cold, it’s the traffic that kills me. Just stare at the pwetty picture and slowly breathe in, and out, in, and out, in, and out, in, and out.

Now call that travel agent.

The start of the SAQ strike completely blindsided me, I had nothing in reserve. For almost three month, I “survived” on beer and the generosity of friends and family who either anticipated the strike or walked through picket lines (something I wasn’t willing to do). It took me numerous tries simply to find a half-decent bottle of red from the grocery shelves (Oro, from Chile). We rapidly gave up on the whites.

Stores should open on Friday and I find myself wondering what my first purchase of the year will be. Ice cider? A 12 year old Single Malt? Maybe even a bottle of Champagne to celebrate that huge paper that was accepted last week.

How about you?