Fishing report: Perch - 5th May 2012, Toronto, Ontario

Spring is always exciting for everybody, especially for people, who addictive for fishing.
You can catch different kind of fish during spring in Canada, which is allowed to be caught.
In these warm days I went for fishing. I don't like fishing at fish farms because it is not natural and prefer go to different lakes and rivers.

Every time I take my son with me, he is very excited even if we don't catch anything.
This tim we decided to go to lake Simcoe - Innisfil, Ontario, Canada. It is ~1hour of drive from Toronto by Hwy 400 - exit 85. If you don't like fishing - just go there with your kids and you will not be dissapointed.

The weather was beautifull that weekend. Usually I go for fishing early morning or night time, but this time we came to that place only afternoon at ~3pm and I was very surprised what happened next.
We were alone at 3pm at peirce. We used chiepest line, weight, float, hook and worms as our tool :-)

, but .... fish started bite like crazy. Here is result after ~2 hours:

What I noticed, that people started come at that place at ~ 5pm. Pierce was full of kids catching fish at 6 pm, but catches were not so crazy when we came to that place.

We came home at ~8pm, but fun was not over. We decided to cook fish. Perch is very boned fish, but you should know how to cook it. That night we made fish soup and baked potato.

We started from fish cleaning:

Soup:
1) In cold water put cleaned fish and salt - fish will give good taste

2) Take out boiled fish from water. You can throw it out if don't like spend time with bones

3) Put potato in boiled water

4) put rice in boiled water

5) after a while soup is done

Baked potato in oven with fish:

1) put cleaned fish in backed baking sheet as bottom layer. Put cut potato, onion, black pepper, carrot, salt on top layer.

3) bake it in 350F and apply fish broth on top layer of potato from the bottom from time to time.

The taste is perfect.

Have a good time!

How I started draw pictures by oil paint.

Hi,
I just want share my fisrt experience of draw pictures by oil. I never ever did it before but I have crazy ideas in my head.
How it started think about drawing pictures

I always spend time in public transport and both my hands are free - this is benefit of driving car.
I use to live at house and of course I had to drive my car to work and back. I usually spent about 1 hour of driving one way. I moved downtown Toronto less than year ago and started use public transport. Even if I spend ~30 minutes to get work I would liked to to something.
Nowadays you can see many people use they smart phones to play games (most of time) or just simply holding phones in hands and looking at contacts, simetimes writing messages to their friends. In any way - One day I took pen in my hands and started draw different pictures.
Some-times I showed it to people and they responsed me with most liked pictures. I started like it and would like move it to canvas and put it on walls in my apartment.
I don't know why but I wanted to use oil paint. many people warned me that it is very complicated for the beginner, but I did't care.

Buying accessories for oil painting:

I started look at stores, where I can buy accessories for oil painting. One of the good stores is Deseres (pricy one but good), which is located not sor far from my place at Younge and Eglington (main cross).
I bought following:

1) oil painting set for the beginners, which included: oil paint of different colors, dissolver, pensil, eraser, low odor thinner, couple of brushes, paletter, cloth ~75CAD. I was very surprised that thinner didn't smell at all.

2) 4 canvases for the price of 16CAD

3) another set of brushes (I had a feeling that I will start use them) ~20CAD (not the best one but it worked for me).

4) Gesso - I used it as a base to put it on canvas before start paint ~13CAD. Gesso is the preferred sealer for the porous canvas. It is an isolating layer between the canvas and the paint.

5) Stand  ~110CAD (it was on sale)

Drawing pictures by oil paint

I didn't finish any special courses and classes of drawing, so I use to use youtube and internet articles for the beginners.

1) I adjusted canvas by setting wood triangles ant the back of the canvas
2) Applied gesso to canvas and waited until it dried out
3) Draw draft picture by sing pensil
4) applied oil paint by using thinner from time to time

This is my first work I ever done on canvas by drawing by oil paint:

This is my second work:

This is not finished work but here it is:

The same but a little bit late (still working on it):

Guys,
If be honest, I don't even know what style it is. I am just doing it for fun. May be people will tell me what it is.

P.S.
Professionals probably will laugh at what I wrote here. As I said at the beginning, I am beginner and never did it before. My whole point is to do it for hobby. I am enjoying do it. In addition to that, it is a good chance to change environment for my brains. If you ever thought to start draw pictures - try it. Nobody will blame you. First of all, it is for yourself. I am not going to sell any of my work and don't want think about money at all - you should draw it with clear mind.
Instead of it, I will give it for free if you like it.

What does it meen to have community hours in Canada?

Did you get community hours in Canada?
Before I start this article I want say that I don't have any outstanding charges on me.
I recently got 40 community hours to complete during next 9 months, assigned to me by Court. It happened because I broke bail conditions. I am not supposed to be close to my wife and her relatives closer than N meters. It is a long story, which I described in previous articles.
I was going to my work and accidently got in bus with my wife's sister. Court charged me that I broke bail conditions. By other words they said that I had to jump out of the bus on next bus stop. It happened in June of the 2011. In december of 2011 I had court hearing and in the result 
I got 1 year of probation and 40 hours of community work - stupid, isn't it?

My friends asked me what does it mean. Actually, I had the same question. I went to probation officer and she said that I have to find it by my self or coordinator will assign me to do something. I selected second option and was assigned to one of the community centres.

Staring from this point if you get community hours you have two options: finish it as soon as possible or do it slowly and relaxed. I wanted finish it over asap to spend later more time on weekends with my son. I have just finished it today! so... what did I do? here it is:

clear windows and mirrors:

mop a floor in a party rooms after parties. The Canadian flag is a symbolic here :-)

again - mop a floor in washrooms

Clean corridirors floor - I love this assistant now :-)

Desinfect floor in washrooms:

and ... just kidding:

Not bad at all. My environment and people were very friendly!

What I want say at the end is that I was not doing it alone. There are community centre's employees working there.
They do it from day to day. Every time I was leaving home, they were saying "thank you". One day guy, who works there brought his kid, who was helping us as well.
so.. people, every time you go for swimming or skating to community centre and if you see clean, think that somebody does it for you.
I very respect people who do it for our good life.

P.S.
I am a pro glass cleaner now :-)

How to upgrade iPad 2 to iOS 5

I bought iPad 2 in end of October of the 2011 and happy to use it. When I bought it, it contained IOS operation system with version 4.3.5 (8L1).
To check your current OS version on iPad you can by clicking on Settings->General->About->Version:

iPad - check OS version

Apple released new OS version 2 weeks later - version 5, so I had to upgrade my iPad2 OS version by myself. I will describe my experience of upgrading IOS version 4.3.5 to version 5.0.
I missed some printscreens, but here is what I have.

Prerequirements:

1) Make sure your iPad has enough battery charge, because when you connect iPad to computer, it's battery is not charging. You will need battery to keep power for the synchronization and upgrading IOS for at least 30-40 minutes.

2) Download iTunes from following url and install it to your computer
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Process:

2) Plug in iPad by USB cable to computer.

iPad2, connected to laptop by USB cable

iTunes will be run automatically with following message:

iTunes: prompt to download new IOS version 5

you can cancel it and you will be able to do it from main screen:

iTunes: iPad2 information

click on "Update" button.
If you have purchased items, you have to transfer it to local computer. You will be probably see following screen:

iTunes: alert about purchased items to be transferred to iTunes Library

Of if you click on "Sync" button at the right bottom corner of the iTunes window

iTunes: Sync button

you will probably see following dialog box:

iTunes: Need computer authorization to transfer purchased items

To authorize your computer to sync purchased items at Apple store you should do following:

iTunes: Authorize this computer

iTunes: computer authorization was successful

After you authorize your computer, click on "Sync" button again and you will see synchronization progress:

iTunes: transferring purchased items

After sync is done you will see message that device can be disconnect, but we don't want it:

iTunes: iPad sync is complete

4) start IOS update:

iTunes: start updating IOS

click "Update" button and you will see software update dialog box, which will describe what new features will be available in IOS 5:

iOS 5 Software update dialog box

You able to save text to file by clicking on "Save" button if you need it.
In anyway, click "Next" button and read "License Agreement" if you really enjoying it :-) and click on "Agree" button. iTunes will start download iPad software update.

iTunes: iPad Software Update

iTunes: Extracting software

iTuned: iPad2 - preparing to restore

iPad2: Connecting to iTunes

iPad2: Update in progress

iPad2: Select language

iPad2: Country select

iPad2: Enable Location Services

...

4) Restore settings

restoring apps...

....
Done.

Post upgrades steps:

Everything went smooth during upgrade, but .... as always there is something wrong.
I found that my 3G connection didn't work anymore. My 3G data plan service provider is Rogers.
I tried login to cellular data by using Rogers credentials and saw that my plan is still active:

iPad2: after upgrade to IOS5, Rogers Canada 3G didn't work, but dataplan was active.

but when I used Safari, I was getting message to buy new plan.
I tried different options, including network reset but it didn't help. I even tried visit support web site but it has an issue too.

I thought that it is temporary but on next morning I got the same problem.
I gave up and went to Apple store to get new SIM card from another service provider to avoid future problem, such as keep calling to Rogers support and keep spending my time.
My old data plan was almost exhausted, so I made that decision and selected Bell. I paid for new plan - it took me ~10 minutes and it started work:

iPad2: Cellular Data Plan has been activated with Bell Canada