One of my favourite buildings in the city of Toronto is the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM for short), and my favourite space in the ROM is the 1933 rotunda with the spectacular gold and blue venetian glass domed ceiling. On this page I've collected some history and description of the room, some photos, even an audio tour from the ROM. It is a wonderful space, especially now that it can be enjoyed in relative peace, rather than as the cramped, busy, and loud main entrance to the museum. No visit to the ROM is complete without stopping in to the rotund for a moment or two.

OK, the last of the Snowshoe videos - one more educational video, a fun one, and one I actually made myself:

• Walking downhill in Snowshoes
• Extreme Snowshoeing
• Short video of walking in the woods in Ontario

Enjoy, as always!

If you've already run through the three beginner snowshoeing videos then you're ready for three more:

• Safety hints
• How to use poles on Snowshoes
• How to run in Snowshoes

Some good skills to master whether you're out on a trail at your local ski resort, or if you're breaking new trails in the forest. These quick videos are by Sheryl McGlochlin for eHow.com and are worth a look.

A quick search on YouTube and I found some good introductory videos on snowshoeing by Sheryl McGlochlin for eHow.com. We'll start with the basics:

1. How to put on Snowshoes
2. How to walk in Snowshoes
3. How to get up if you fall

I found it really quite easy, once you have the snowshoes on, but these videos will give you a sense of what to expect.

We managed to get out on the snowshoes for the first time this season in mid-December. There wasn't a ton of snow yet, maybe a foot, but enough to enjoy the Ontario forest. In some places there were branches sticking up through the snow, but not a lot. Here are some shots of the wonderful old lodge nearby, the afternoon sun in the forest itself, then down to Nottawasaga Bay which still has exposed sand. You can't see it in the photo, but the ski hills of Blue Mountain are directly across the bay, and look amazing all lit up for night skiing.

Dan Brown's latest book The Lost Symbol, is full of all sorts of references - religious, scientific, artistic, historical, architectural and on and on. If you're like me, you'll want to learn more about many of them, so I've started collecting maps, photos, videos, audio-clips, and other links to expand on some of the details in the book.

I've divided all this information up into multiple pages, organized chapter by chapter - you should read the chapter in the book first and then delve deeper into the items I present for that chapter -- in many cases you won't want to even see the titles of the links. You might want to skip some altogether, or dig even deeper into others...

I passed through the south end of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery and noticed that the outside work on the new Mount Pleasant Visitation Centre is pretty much complete. The visitation centre ( don't call it a funeral home ) has a long, protracted history reaching back to initial plans in 2004. It looks like they've done a nice job of the building and landscaping, and the running/walking/biking path is now open. Here are some photos from the end of September, 2009.

Toronto has not one, but two fashion photography exhibits this fall. One at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and one in the new crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).

• Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937
• Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913 - 2008

Both shows are worth checking out if you are a fan of classic fashion, modern fashion, or portrait photography.

Here's a quick 3 minute video from the U2 360 Tour here in Toronto on September 17th, 2009. It was a good concert, with the dome open. I'm not a huge fan of huge concerts, but the sound was great, and there was a fair amount of energy. The famous 'claw' stage, designed by longtime U2 collaborator Mark Fisher was really impressive - great sound and lighting, with a huge 360 degree colour display. Live shots of the band from moving cameras really added to the show, and eventually the screen spread out and down.

Rannie Turingan is a prolific and influential blogger and photographer here in Toronto. For one of his latest projects (which won him a Nissan Cube) he set out taking panoramic photos with his iPhone. Here are three ways you can enjoy those photos. Whether you're just visiting Toronto on vacation, or if you live here, they are well worth a look!

We'll run through three choices:

• Standard web page and online map
• iPhone and Blackberry specific web page
• iPhone application (that also runs on an iPod touch)