Sharon and Jacques’ Excellent Blog

I’ve updated the Recommendations page with:

• updates to the AVG line of products for version 8
• Added AVG Internet Security, a full featured product that compares well Norton Internet Security
• Added AuctionSniper.com, an excellent tool for winning eBay auctions

I’ve uploaded 3 new Angkor Wat related galleries:

Lunch at the Butterfly Garden Restaurant in Siem Reap:

Current Album: 0714 Siem Reap Butterfly Restaurant
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Back in the afternoon for more of Angkor Wat. We visited the largest temple, Angkor Wat. Very impressive to say the least.

Current Album: 0714 Angkor Wat in the Afternoon
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The following day we did the smaller ruins by Tuk Tuk. They have deliberately kept more of a jungle feel in these ruins. Some of you may recognize the buildings and scenery from the movie, Tomb Raider:

Current Album: 0715 Angkor Wat Day 2
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On the weekend, I was out and about looking for interesting birds to photograph. At this time of year, waterfowl predominate most of the birding and photography. At Humber View Park East at the bottom of Parklawn and Lakeshore in Toronto, I found a male and female harlequin duck. In my opinion, the male harlequin is the most the spectacular of the ducks that are found in this region. They are also quite rare in this region (a few pairs spend the winter here), so it was a real treat to find a male in breeding plumage at close range with decent light (I did buy a lottery ticket and didn’t win a thing though).

Here’s the gallery with of his friends found in the same area.

Current Album: 0302 Humber View Park East Ducks
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One of my favourite types of photography is photographing birds flying. I happened to come accross a technique where I can use panorama stitching software to create images like this:

Current Album: Birding
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Bald eagles are becoming a more common site in Ontario especially during the winter where they can be seen sitting on the ice. During a drive around my favourite birding spots, I found bald eagles at Nanticoke, Long Point and LaSalle Park.

LaSalle Park in Hamilton has had several reports of up to 9 bald eagles in the last week so I took some time on Saturday to see if I could find them. I wasn’t disappointed. I saw 7 different birds, 5 immature, 2 mature. Most were flying overhead, 1 was sitting on the ice and managed to photograph most of them.

 A pair of juveniles started to duel in midair and I managed to capture some of the action:

Current Album: 0223 LaSalle Park Birds
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To see a slide-show of the eagles, click on the link to follow. Set the delay to 5 seconds and max size to 640×640 or 800×800 if you have a large monitor and fast Internet connection. Click here to start the slide-show.

Good birding!

I have added the first of several galleries of Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is relatively unknown in North America but is considered one of the 10 wonders of the world. It is the world’s largest religious monument and its well worth visiting. It’s first mentioned in our travel blog here.  

For those that want more information on Angkor Wat, click here for the Wiki.

 Here’s the first gallery covering several of the smaller ruins and Angkor Tom.

Current Album: 0714 Angkor Wat
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During a fit of insomnia:

• I upgraded the site to the latest version of Wordpress, the blogging software used on the site
• Changed the Weather tab to display real-time weather from my weather station, updated every minute because weather is never current enough
• Added AVG Anti-Malware to the Technology Recommendations page. Its the anti-virus scanner that I use and gets the job done without eating your computer alive.

 Please contact me if you find pages that aren’t working.

One of the most incredible places we visited in Thailand was Amanpuri Resort. Sharon wrote a blog about it here and I have uploaded the photos that I took.

Current Album: 0729 Amanpuri
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More details on the resort can be found here.

I was checking the prices to stay there and discovered that a weekend there would cost more than our trip to South East Asia and the middle east for 5 months. That also doesn’t include food, drinks or tips.

People have been reporting a number of problems with the site. I’ve fixed the following problems:

• Archive link at the top of the page was not working. It now points to a proper archive page.
• Sitemap link at the very bottom of the page was not working. It now points to a sitemap page.
• RSS feed wasn’t working when it was used with other feed readers. The feed url is http://www.giraud.com/blog/feed or click on the RSS link at the top of the page above the banner.
• Several of the galleries had bad images in them

If you find errors on the site, please let me know and I’ll fix them.

I have also added a Recommendations tab to the top of the page where I list the hardware/software/technology that I use on a regular basis. I frequently get asked what to buy or what do I use. It will be updated on a regular basis.