Facebook’s facial recognition might need work

Facebook is rolling out facial recognition technology, with the premise that tagging our friends and family in photos is time consuming and they would love to help us by making it easier.

Starting this month (July), you’ll see Facebook prompting you to tag people in photos so they can learn what name goes with what face.

I can’t help but think there are a few more bugs to work out.

Here is what Facebook just prompted me with:

Can you make out who this is a picture of?

Here you go, here is the original photo I have in my PEI photo album on Facebook:

Hehe :D

Onwards towards Digby, and through the Annapolis Valley!

When we left Yarmouth we were still all fogged in.

All around the southern side of Nova Scotia, there is a faster bypass, and the original highway. We usually stayed on the old road that went through all the little towns. After Yarmouth, it was like a constant town all the way to Digby, and actually past Digby for quite a way as well. Many of the town centres are 3 kilometres apart from each other, meaning the communities are all strung together. In land, there is nothing. All the towns are on the shore and many people are fisherman.

The forecast was for a hot day so we knew the fog would HAVE to lift eventually, and it did once we started heading down the Digby neck.

Here are some photos once we could see past the edges of the road:

Digby

Digby

Digby

The Digby neck is a long penninsula stretching south of Digby. Pieces of it are connected by short ferries. We went as far as the first ferry were the traffic was backed up a bit waiting for a ride.

Here comes the ferry with one vehicle from the other side.

Digby

It loaded up with 2 propane trucks and headed back to the other side.

Digby

The current here was incredible! The ferry edges out from the dock and then gets thrown into the current and fights to end up at the dock on the other side. This looks like it takes a lot of talent from the captain – much more than the calm cable driven ferries elsewhere in the province.

Digby

Digby

Digby

We turned around, rather than continuing down the peninsula and headed back to Digby.

On the way, there was a beautiful picnic stop on the side of the road with a little inland lake. I knew Monty would love nothing better than getting wet, but we weren’t sure he would want to be totally wet during a hot day, so we thought we’d keep him on his long leash and just get his legs wet.

Digby

0.25 seconds later. So much for not getting wet!

Digby

Digby

Digby

Digby

Digby

Monty was just standing there, staring at us, wondering why we weren’t throwing anything for him to retrieve.

I threw him a pathetically little stick and Monty couldn’t find it, so he was looking for it under the water! He’s never done that before! That was one of the favourite past times of his auntie Surf.

Digby

Digby

Got it!

Digby

Digby!

Digby

Digby

Digby

Digby

Digby is nice and had many tourists. We wanted to load our little cooler up with scallops, but by this time it was suddenly HaH outside… (hot as hell) and we weren’t really convinced they would stay cold enough even in the cooler, so we decided not to take the chance.

The next town I really want to return to explore was Annapolis Royal. It had huge old houses, lots of shops, and Fort Anne right in town. But it was too hot to leave Monty in the truck without wind blowing in his back windows so we couldn’t do much more than drive through town.

Jeff took me to see the tidal hydro generated facility he knew was close by.

Digby

Digby

Digby

It wasn’t moving too much water when we stopped, but Jeff said last time he was there, about 10 years ago, it was roaring.

Driving through the Annapolis Valley was really nice – and it had vegetable stands every 3 kilometres in each town! I’m SOOO jealous and can’t understand why that produce can’t make it up to our area for sale. We stopped and I had some ice cream, we bought some delicious looking green beans to bring home, and bought a container of raspberries that were grown around where we stopped to let Monty get wet.

They were DELICIOUS, and half the price of raspberries from California in the grocery store.

Here is a picture of the basin near Minas Basin:

Digby

And a few hours later, Home Sweet Home!

Yarmouth

Day #2 ended early in Yarmouth in the early afternoon.

The fog hadn’t lifted, and it was raining, and we decided to just stop wasting our sightseeing time looking at fog. We checked into our hotel early and had a good nap.

Sometime between 5 and 6pm the fog finally lifted! We decided to search for a good seafood restaurant. Jeff found a few possibilities in a south shore travel magazine so we set out with Lady Garmin to have a seafood FEAST!

Unfortunately, Lady Garmin, our GPS, led us to a grass covered empty lot, and 3 other closed restaurants.

Yarmouth lost its fast ferry from Maine this year and the effect on the town was certainly noticeable. It was kind of eerie and sad to see the grass and weeds growing through the asphalt at the ferry terminal.

We drove all over down town and then headed back towards the hotel where the chain restaurants were. The only family restaurant we could find was Boston Pizza. :-/ At least I ordered the shrimp and scallop fettuccine, but I’m not sure it was local.

After dinner we headed back to the waterfront were we had spotted a boardwalk earlier for some photos and so we could walk Monty. And guess what we found?!

Fog.

It hadn’t even been gone for 2 hours and it was back.

There was a cool shipwreck across the bay from the waterfront. Can you make it out?

Yarmouth

Yarmouth is a really nice place and it was stocked full of the big historical houses and buildings that I love. Here are a couple of my favourites that were side by side.

Yarmouth

Yarmouth

Did you see the steps in the top window? Cool, eh? It looks like it goes up to two more little windows up higher.

Yarmouth

Oh and guess what else we found when we were driving around after dinner?

A big seafood restaurant on the waterfront. The one that Lady Garmin thought was way down the street in an empty lot. I don’t know how we missed it :( Next time…

Shag Harbour UFO Museum

One of the biggest highlights of our vacation was our stop at the Shag Harbour UFO Museum!!!

Are you familiar with the Shag Harbour UFO incident of 1967? We watched an hour program on TV last year about it. Here is a quick intro from Wikipedia:

The Shag Harbour UFO Incident was the reported impact of an unknown large object into Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, in October 1967. The impact was investigated by various Canadian government agencies, and at least one underwater search was launched to locate the remains of any associated objects. The Canadian government declared that no known aircraft was involved and the source of the impact remains unknown to this day. It is one of very few cases where governmental agency documents have formally declared an unidentified flying object was involved. Several interviewed military witnesses, including a diver involved in an attempted recovery, have claimed an alien spacecraft was responsible. It was also claimed by several of the witnesses that the U.S. military was involved in recovery attempts. The case was also briefly investigated by the U.S. Condon Committee UFO study, which offered no explanation.

More from Wikipedia

Here are a few photos from our visit:

Shag Harbour UFO Museum

Shag Harbour UFO Museum

Shag Harbour UFO Museum

Shag Harbour UFO Museum

Shag Harbour UFO Museum

Shag Harbour UFO Museum

Jeff refused to have his photo taken with the aliens :>

Shag Harbour UFO Museum

The museum was actually in the Halifax paper just the day before we visited!

UFO museum’s rocketing attendance defies skeptics – http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1191793.html

Day 2 – Shelbourne

On day 2 of our vacation, we woke to a weather forecast of heavy rain (25mm) with periods of fog.

That translated into a viewless drive around the coast, in the fog, and pouring rain. Pouring might be too weak of a word. As I’ve told you Ontario folk before, rain drops are wetter here in Nova Scotia (yes I am serious) and when it pours you want an ark.

On the way into Liverpool, I wanted to find the Bowater Mersey pulp and paper mill. Using not much more than our noses, we were able to find the main front gate, but the fog blocked out any more of the mill.

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Shelbourne is a really nice old town. I just couldn’t get enough of the big old east coast houses we saw in almost every town. Shelbourne seems to have preserved much of its history – especially by preserving its old waterfront.

In between downpours, here are some photos from Shelbourne, mostly from inside the truck:

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Asking price is only $174,500!

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Home to Bridgewater, Day 1

This week we finally ventured around the southern end of our new province.

And I’m sure it was really nice.

If we could have seen any of it.

Damn fog.

We did get a few photos when there was something other than fog visible, so here are a few shots from day 1.

Summer Vacation 2010

Monty had a great time. Unfortunately he has to ride in the back of the truck, but there is a cap on the truck, and he has a big vari-kennel to ride in, with water, and the all the windows in the cap were open. We stopped when we could and let him have adventures.

Summer Vacation 2010

This picnic area wasn’t too far from Halifax. There was a busy beach on the ocean side, but in land, on the way to the outhouse, I spotted this little lily-pad covered pond.

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Lunenberg was nice. The fog lifted and we found a shady spot for the truck so we could visit some shops.

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

Summer Vacation 2010

The streets are very steep in Lunenburg and I was wincing watching the horses struggle to pull wagons of people down the hill to the water front. Do you think horses can get calf cramps? Look at this horse stance.

Summer Vacation 2010

Jeff spotted the Bluenose II. It was stripped down and barely recognizable off to the edge of the waterfront in a boat yard. I didn’t think it was polite to photograph her all naked like that so we didn’t. That and we couldn’t get a good camera angle.

There were lots of tourists all the way from Halifax down to about Lunenburg. Chester and Mahone Bay were packed with Ontario plates, a few B.C., New Brunswick, California, Florida, North Carolina, New York, Manitoba, and I saw one from Saskatchewan.

We stayed the night in Bridgewater. Luckily the hotel kept our reservation and had a room for us. They told Jeff another hotel had a fire that day and rooms were scarce. Unfortunately they didn’t have a ground floor room that we wanted so Monty didn’t have his crate to sleep in that night. I took him for a good walk to wear him out, but his sleepy time ended at 3am. After that, every noise made him want to growl at night and we’d have to pounce on him before he barked.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Hot Tub Time MachineFinally, out of the 4 movies I rented on Friday, the last one was the best!!

I have heard Hot Tub Time Machine compared to The Hangover, and it wasn’t even close to that funny, but it was hilarious and had me laughing and screaming out loud, and in one place, I almost suddenly vomited!

I love John Cusack in everything, so that alone made this movie a winner. And I didn’t know that Chevy Chase was going to be in this movie – nice surprise.

Lots of laughs, but don’t watch it if you consider yourself too mature for such humour B)
I am not, and laughed loudly.

4/5 stars!

I FOUND JEFF’S HAT!!

Jeff’s infamous Canadiens cap was missing throughout the playoffs, missing from Jeff’s head, missing from all of our photos….

HAS NOW BEEN FOUND!!

We had scoured this house for days during the NHL playoffs to find the hat.

Jeff even moved on and bought another, although it paled in comparison to the glory of its predecessor.

Want to know where it was?

I found it behind my laser printer!

Jeff and his hat

Precious – why didn’t I learn my lesson last time?

Precious
I watched Precious this afternoon. I think I felt like I had to watch it so I could vaguely keep up with pop culture.

I should have known better.

Anything ever recommended by Oprah is garbage.

And I think they all have the same story line.

Black young woman, repeatedly raped and beaten and abused and can’t read and write finally finds salvation in an alternative school with a sweet patent teacher who will change her life.

But, as any Oprah favourite, it refuses to have a good ending because her father has impregnated her twice, and as a bonus, also gave her HIV.

Did I wreck it for you?

Good, don’t watch it. It’s awful.

Plus, I don’t know if it was just for this role, or if the actress Gabourey Sidibe normally talks like this, but I could have used subtitles. She mumbled like she had a mouth full of marbles and I almost turned it off twice in the first 15 minutes out of pure annoyance. I easily missed half of her lines in this movie.

Who needs a movie like this? It’s not a true story, so someone, somewhere (Oprah?) thinks that this is entertainment.

My rating? 0/5

Please remind me to stay away from anything with an Oprah recommendation!!

The Messenger

The MessengerWe watched The Messenger tonight. I would have given it a 3/5 stars, but the ending, or lack of an ending, bumped it squarely back to a 2/5.

The Messenger stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster as two army men who are selected to notify the next of kin when a soldier dies in Iraq.

I enjoyed the role that Woody Harrelson played but the movie just didn’t leave me with anything.

Jeff was bored soon after the movie started and left the room for awhile to do other things.

Recommended for rental? Nah.