Despite the heavy rain I decided to ride my bike to work. I was wet and dirty, but enjoyed it very much!
Tomorrow the weather is supposed to clear up, I hope so, cause I’m going to get a haircut and all.
Bikes rock!
Our mission bicycles have finally arrived. The excitement was total and we assembled them post haste.
There were some disappointing factors. I felt that my bike was a little to large for me, despite sending exact measurements.
Also the front fork clanks quite a bit, there are gaps in the assembly. I’ll have to take it to a local shop to be looked at.
As for Vlad’s bike, it was perfect, except that both front and rear rims had some scratches on them. Hard to say if it was due to rough shipping or bad packaging, but when we opened up the box nothing looked out of place.
Other then these minor (and some not so minor) issues, the bikes handled like a dream and we rode them through the pouring rain with joy.
Just our luck that after days and days of tropical heat, today had to be the day that the tropical rain started.
It better not rain tomorrow!
Update 2008-09-04: Mission is sending me a new frame and replacement parts so I can fix the problems with my bike! Yay!
I finally took the plunge and got a digital SLR camera. It was a long and painful journey of contemplation. In the end the decision was made more or less spontaneously at the store, holding each of the candidates in my hand (for the nth time…).
I settled for a Canon EOS 350D. I admit my biggest argument against it was that it is too mainstream and some have also said that it is not too comfortable in your hand.
I held the Nikon D50 and D70 in my hand, and their size surely did feel better, however I kept feeling that they were slipping out of my hand, especially if it was a little more sweaty.
So in the end I chose the 350D and as I have used it a bit, I am happy with most of the purchase. The unhappy portion is the lens.
I bought the 17-85mm IS USM lens in a kit along with the camera, and the lens cost almost as much as the camera itself. After using the lens a little, I am disappointed by the lens vs price ratio.
Surely the lens is good, but at it’s widest angle it is waaay too blurry for my tastes, the Image Stabilizer does not work as well as I hoped, and the maximum aperture of f4.0 (or f5.6 most of the time, since it’s widest angle sucks) is just not enough. At least for that price. I would rather have spent an extra 3k on an L lens of almost the same dimensions, but without IS (which I so far have not learned to use correctly). Although at 50mm, the lens produced almost the same quality as my EF 50mm f1.8 II lens, so there is potential there.
In any case, I am very happy that I can finally close that chapter and move on to actually take the pictures instead of trying to decide what camera to get.
Anyway, enough ranting, check out the pics I took today (with my EF 50mm f1.8 II lens).
This is a neat pic I took in Tokyo.
Posting this mostly to test Flickr’s “blog this” function which streamlines the process of posting pics to your blog directly from Flickr.
A neat feature.
Got more pics up now. Click “Flickr” on the side menu. Or here.
The story behind the picture of my “hotel room” in 大吉 I will rescind in my next entry. Now I gotta book a sleeper train to Kyushu. Maybe.
I might just chill at this mangakissa all night.
I mean, I can watch all the anime I want, or read manga or play games, for peanuts.
I heard from a Japanese friend that apparently because the Mangakissa are so good, they are actually somewhat of a problem since a lot of people hang there all the time.
Nice.
//D
I got flickr now!
It’s a neat quick way to share pics. I might even pay!
(so much for ungeeking, of course, we’ll see how much I actually use it!)
I still haven’t decided the URL I should have…
http://flickr.com/people/dimo/
http://flickr.com/people/zeraien/
http://flickr.com/people/angelhill/
I hate it when they say “you cant change it later!”.
Beh.
update: I went with dimo
You know I went to the USA a few months ago. Well I forgot the photos from that trip on the computer of our host in New York, and up until a few days ago I have been too busy or too lazy to call him and fix it.
He’s not very good with computers, and I loathed the idea of trying to arrange it.
In the end, it went easier then expected, and also completely differently. But that’s not important.
The important thing is that I finally have the pictures, and that means that YOU have them too!
Here they are. Oh, and there are videos too. Download the pics as a zip file here.
I spent xmas at my uncle’s house where it is sort of a family tradition to spend christmas. However this year the family tradition seems to have evaporated and every different unit has decided to celebrate xmas by itself. Family stupidity aside, I had a very nice xmas. I generally have more fun giving presents then receiving them, and this year was no different. I had prepared nice presents for everyone, including really neat printed photobooks that I ordered from Apple through iPhoto. I’ll post pics of those later. Although the idea was that we were supposed to be all together and that the photobooks were more of a family thing then a specific person thing.
I got a nice present from my mother. A day of education at a Formula 3 race track. The season for racing starts in March here, so I await with slight trepidation, the moment of truth. Those things are not Formula 1, but they can still do 0-100 km/h in 4 sec.
Well, enough of that, now I shall relax one more day before going home. The day after christmas, snow finally came and while it is a day too late, I guess in the end it does not make any difference. It’s still beautiful. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so I had to use the camera on my new phone.
So enjoy the view…
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These pics are about a week old, but I’ve been a bit busy…. heh
I just wanted to share with you the feeling of absolute peace and quiet in Stockholm during the midsummer days when every swedish person seems to magically disappear to some strange far-off place. I love it when the town is empty, and this went on for a few days…
Lazy Zealots angelhill.net/code
