countdown

Nice green leafs, aren't they? I picture them every year, they symbolize the start of a bit better weathers rare here in a northern area.

I have internet explorer now, not opera anymore, I like how microsoft has worked out better text on-screen rendering (with colors creating smooth corners of letters), so viva microsoft till the next innovation in that area. I also do not have to size down the font anymore, because IE shows the default size pretty good.

Yesterday, my wife screamed "Mouse, mouse!" at the evening. Guess what, within four years living in our considerably. today morning, we got this little bastard, and we got a nice photo of it, but i can't put it here in blog, because the mouse is already dead, and i love animals so much. including mice, until they're out there eating something more natural than a cheese from my fridge. So we are all sooooooooo shocked about the even (can't sleep at nights - mouses in the houses in a times of iPods and LCD monitors?)

as with animals and birds, did I already say that I love them a lot? One of my favourite birds, blackbird was lately eatenn by one of my favourite animals, cat. The unexperienced stupid blackbird made a nest to a unprecedentedly comfortable place under in woodshed. Blackbird's nest is pretty impressive, maybe only a bit more worse than the swallow's. Today the lovely blackbird is in heaven already, along with her five beautiful unborn kids.

When I walked around in the city one day, the latest trend seems to be as sunglassed as possible. I'm not an exception, wearing sunglasses makes me Terminator III by a second. Buildings collapse and humans fall when I wear them, even when there's too dark to see anything.

Who crashed down the world trade center six year ago, by the way? Do not look for the truth if you want to travel to US one fine day. But we have allmighty google these days, so if the question is still out there, enter the keywords above. By the way, google bot's will be crawl here between and under and over these words as well. So never comment anything, the big brother is watching.

I've placed a bet with many people about the gasoline price this summer. In some reason, I'm particularily interested about it (don't know the reason yet, maybe it is my old chunky car drinking gasoline rather than a lovely diesel in alien-invented diesel engine). Anyway it seems the oil industry is telling us to purchase diesel cars, by rising gasoline prices while the diesel stays the same. I find they're right - saves a lot of money for a consumer. I wish the diesels would start better when there's -26C outside.

I've been told blogs without pics are worthless and boring to read. I'm very happy if you have read so far and tend to read on. Meanwhile I have nothing to write about, so you have to accept mix of everyday shit and other lovely thoughts that I like.

Got a new toy, sony R1, without a camera, I'm like a soldier without a gun. Have used many of the great digital toys since 2004, starting with the Pana FZ10, but too lazy today to write any review. Michael Reichmann also doesn't care about how many pixels is the advantage over the other cameras, but rather to say if the camera feels good or not. The sony R1 doesn't feel best actually, but I like its ten megapixels and 24-120mm equiv. zoom, so the ergonimics doesn't matter this time. Time by time digicam geeks have put into paper they'r dream cam, so here's mine:

- Pentax *ist DS body (the best I've met so far)
- Canon CMOS sensor (Fuji's super CCD when canon's not available or there will be physical size issues to meet reqs for size and weight), 10mp+
- 24-200mm lens (R1 is amost there)
- 2 memory card bays (again, R1 is there with it, allowing theoretical 20Gb of media inserted)
- 2,5" flip out+twist LCD. I like it over the optical viewfinder or fixed LCD, in some reason.
- ability to take HDTV videos with high quality stereo sound (Canon S3 is a nice start in terms of sound).
- no more reqs at the moment

I've also finally replaced my old monitor Hitachi CM625, which is probably the best 17" monitor on earth. Today working on 20" Dell 2007FP, which has got the most appalling screen covering I've ever seen, smudging all the clean results delivered by any camera sensor larger than APS. It seems to be an issue that manufacturers do not want to produce clear-screen LCD-s, so I'd recommend a NEC 20WGX2 PRO for you, if you are serious about editing photos and making some design work. Meanwhile if you have tons of bucks to spend, feel free to visit Eizo or Lacie store, and you are quickly told, that 10-bit active matrix technology is unbeatable in this world :P

"It's a shitty life, but tonight.." - one of the most famous phrases of legendary ex-marillion singer Fish, quoting because of two reasons actually, first is that I recently caught myself with the thought selling my music collection (mostly progressive rock) to travel more (I'm afraid of the next 1929), second reason is that it's just so lovely sentence. If you have nothing to say to the world or people, you can have a beer or two and say "it's a shitty life, but tonigh". Time to stop for today, got to leave some room for upcoming pictures, too.

may

My blog has been down for some months (some accomodation problems), let's see if it will be working not again. More information to follow, soon :)

Artist Recommendation

Here's the link:

http://andrzejdragan.com/

Be sure to check the Biography page as well, who could tell quantum physics PhD is an artist on that high level?..... excellent work, every singe photo is admirable.

Meanwhile I read from the news that this year will be the end of the internet era, because of everyone is downloading videos, which slows down the speed of the internet. And of course, as often the bigger part of truth in comments relatated to the online news, this perticular news has been paralleled with the story we have told tens of years, that we are running out of fuel very-very soon :P now where's the truth, again?

Have you ever wondered when we all write blogs, then who has time to read it? :P

Let's start a NBEFTY campaign! (no blog entries for ten years) :P

The pic is taken in Spain again, near Trevelez. As the terrain is high some 1500m above the sea, expect a lot of cooler weather there.

What will we name this picture this time? I know! A life tunnel! I'm f***ing twenty-six bloody years old, and I feel I was born yesterday. That fast.

See you in ten years! Except when I ran out of supporters or sponsors for my new baby NBEFTY bloody campaign :P

:)

Happy New Year! :)

(Picture is taken in Caleta de Velez in Spain, at nighttime, November 2006.)

Spain is my favourite destination today, but let's hope martians do not destroy our planet this or next year, so there would be a theoretical chance to see other beautiful countries, too :P

Wikipedia is my favourite resource in the holy internet today, so I'm dreaming about times when I wikipedia and blogger will join forces, so I can select the word here in my blog and choose a "set this word as a link from Wikipedia" from the right-click menu :P Google, Orkut, G-mail and Blogger is acutally admirable association already, I admire the smart way they have made everything easy to simple human like everyone of us, while they always comprehend the future of globalization. So when there will be in a news that Google has bought Wikipedia, that will be the best news of a day, for me. Do they also already have e-bay? Fortunately buying something from ebay is not as easy as to make the selected text link, so I hope shopping and money will not be visible in our blogs too soon :P .. but today I will not link a single word, as I think I'll run out of time.

Opera is my favourite browser today. Easy and mail integrated to it, free, and very user friendly. Notes are saved realtime, every kind of searches are integrated, it is fast and reliable, and its logic fits my needs better than IE for example. I've tried firefox before, didn't find it a lot better than IE. Okay....

.. Were the Christmas peaceful and was the New Year's Eve fun? :) It was, for me, though I think I'm too old for fireworks and other that kind of neat stuff. We were visiting friends with our family, playing some monopol and drinking some beet.. pretty nice and peaceful.

Were you happy with 2006? I was. Not a huge success of year in term of business, however I have a daughter now and everyone is happy - that's the main thing.

I lately discovere my sister has a neat blog somewhere in the endless space there, I knew she has had it for a while, but it's me whos far too lazy to check it. Anyway I've found it interesting and it is in my bookmarks folder now. Have you also been thinking when we all have blogs, who's going to read them? In one way or another, blog is a trend, and even our minister of economics thinks so. It seems the blog has just become something we can't compete without? The super fast and easy way to declare what you have.

High-speed connection is also a standard. I'm more or less an internet geek, and Estonia has made a huge success in terms of high-speed connection and wifi. I've moved on wifi by myself (I hate these wires), also replaced traditional computer with a laptop one (finally the cables are all gone except the power cable).

There are also actually another cable remained, my 7 years old CRT monitor cable. There's room for LCD displays to produce as vivid picture as the last trinitron-based CRT-s do, and as I do not have money to buy EIZO, I have to wait for some time :P applce cinemas and LaCies are also OK, but CRT is better (also for my eyes). As with the wire/cable saga, I do not think it's over yet, now we have USB cables instead of power and network ones :P

I've also finally updated my gallery page, pics from a Spain & Portugal trip November 2006 are now up. About 300 pics out of 5000, is it quantity or quality? You tell. * * * * * * * *

I've recently discovered my old VW takes a lot of fuel travelling around in the city. When there are still rude oil remained in 2010, I'm hoping to upgrade to TDI engine/car :P I can drive 500km today with my non-turbo 1.8 gar engine today, while I could drive 1000km with the TDI engine :P, while the cost of the fues is the same. The OPEC official site also declares that the organization thinks the oil prices will be stable this year in 2007. Let's see.

If you have a chance, also check out the Dec 2006 National Geographic magazine, very interesting reading as always, special article about Dubai this time. Atlantis of this millennium?

I've also read from the news that the ex dictator of Iraq is executed lately, what do you think will it bring more peace to the world? What will happen with Cuba when it finally gets access to democracy? :) Will europeans make goods one day again? (they're making money these days more or less, as manufacturing has moved to China more or less). So living well these days seems to mean you are able to produce shit out of your mouth with asking as much for it as possible. If you want to get rich, I'd recommend you to publich a book talking about "how to get rich?" :) or convey a conference "how to sell your products better" with the ten thousand seat auditory the ticked priced $200 per face :P

Looking forward to the Peking 2008 olympic games also, I'd like to see how grand will the games be?

Will the world press officially introduce aliens to human this year? We are curious since Roswell, aren't we :)

We are living in an interesting times :)

so this is christmas?

Two days more, and it is christmas again. Have you spent all your bucks and credit cards buying gifts for your friends and family? Or did you created something by yourself? :)

Have you seen this cool picture? Describes the christmas mania well these days :P
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/12795842/

No extra news from last post. Gray and desperate, as always in November.
Fresh snow makes us smile :) Alaska forever :)

OK. Have a couple of beer now - and don't be late at supermarket, otherwise you'll be left without gingerbread dough :P

:)

Today I had a great chance to meet Graham Mitchell today. A selection of his works are represented in Pegasus café in Tallinn, do not hesitate to step in to take look. Mr Mitchell is a high end photographer, you can contact him for your next photography session :)

Here's another site I'd like you to consider to visit - Rūta Saulytė-Laurinavičienė's photography site. Beautiful work, simple but classy web design. I specially like this image :)

cordoba

one of the plazas of Cordoba (Spain) at night. Very peaceful and nice town (city?) with all its narrow old town streets, gardens and of course, the Mezquita Cathedral.

woophy-dot-com

Have you ever had photos of your country found being unused in your hard disk? Woophy.com has a solution for you now! :P - cover the area where you live or where you have been, with the photos you have made from there :)

L' Oceanographic

L'Oceanographic is one of the science centers of Valencia, Spain. It is a part of beautiful science complex called Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, which is a grand superior complex with stunning architecture.

If you ever visit Valencia, reserve few days to visit it. I had no time to visit all the parts of it, but took a day off to go to a journey to Ocean Center, which was a stunning enchanting experience to be in.

In a picture is one of many underwater tunnels, where you can see what's going on in ocean and sea life. The Ocean center is divided into five different parts, including cinema, dolphinarium, tons of aquariums, shops and underwater tunnels, enriched with little artificial environments (like rocks with waterfalls) and other extremely nice stuff.

Farm

This is where I used to spent my childhood summer holidays :)

Dreaming of living there once again one fine day, however it needs tons of bucks to be built / restored. So I don't know today when I'll be able to be there. Anyway, lovely place enough to mow grass there in summer :-)

Crow's Eye

Little son of a crow. Perhaps 3 weeks old?.. Don't know. Was not able to fly so I pictured his eye. Lovely and blue. My grandma used to say crow is a flying rat (because of the crap that crow eats. Not false, I've seen crows eating dog's shit :P)

strawberry

Hmm how tame colors. Guess IE does not support Adobe RGB?.. Anyway, I'm still not sure is it photoblog or what, just wanted to write you about a fairy tale called "US president to visit Estonia". Go get it :P

Stack Bones

Do you know what these are used for? I name it "stack (rick) bones" as my dictionary does not give me better words. These are used to stack hay so the hay can dry in the summer before getting it to loft :P Still widely used in Estonia, which is lovely in oil-age :)

...

South middle Spain has got some very nice desert (desert-like?) landscapes. If you drive from Valencia to Cordoba, you can meet several that kind of compositions :-)

:)

This is a long exposure shot from Portimao, Portugal. I had luck to visit these beautiful countries again (Spain and Portugal), if you ever have a chance, do not hesitate to go there as well. Probably more shots to come :) .. Anyway the weather is nice and snowy, so it feels a bit like christmas.

that noise

Well as I have no new cool pics to upload I use my endless Spain pics from 2005 this time to illustrate the boring article.



When did you last go shopping?

Estonians are crazy for shopping these days. I'm suspecting it is because of the gray/dark weather, so people get stressed and go in shiny and colorful shopping centres to feel themselves better.

I don't like shopping because after one minute in a mall I feel depressed and tired. Once a year is good enough (new jeans, t-shirt and shoes :P).

I think I also know why I'm not hearing so well these days - my ears might have been damaged in shopping centres! The level on sound/music is SO loud that my head becomes aching.. it is horrible. Why should I visit a shop with a loud level of music? I'd recommend you using nice Peltors in shopping centres.

The situation can be even worse in terms of sound levels. I had luck to visit Alicante's (South of Spain) one of the most gorgeous shopping centres (in terms of style it was pretty much like Kristiine Keskus in Tallinn, but a lot larger). So some young-oriented shops were not shops at all, but discotheques where you can buy clothes. So the process is like you scream to the seller: "HOW MUCH??!!" and she shouts: "WHAT?!" ... and so on.

Why can't we shop in quiet (OK with nice quiet music). Because then the naighbour shop volumes up their music, and people go there because they think there's something on sale, or just more life :P So if you want to sell, rent a nightclub and your sales will grow :P

3 weeks

have passed, what's new?

First, Estonia has a new president, mr Toomas Hendrik Ilves. I think he is OK, I also think former president of Estonia in 1992-2001 mr Lennart Meri (1926-2006) was the best president ever. Ilves is regarded to be west-minded president, so will we get visa-free relationship with USA? I'd like to go to get some pictures from Grand Canyon in this life :P

According to one of the most popular weekly report in TV called "Pealtnägija" ("witness"), estonian police is so corrupted that when your car is stolen, thiefs and police work together. Thiefs gets your number from police to call you to sell you back your car about a half price of what it's worth. So when you come to visit estonia, be sure you leave your car home. Of course we don't know the truth :P

I have not uploaded a picture within more than a month. Here's one, pure Estonian fall:



I'm lucky to have lovely Sigma EX 15-30mm lens these days, which is hell sharp at F8, and which is a good unit for some serious landscape shots (and city shots also, as the wide angle @ 22,5mm has some essence for urban photography).

We have had successful days in sports also, mr Heiki Nabi has won world champion title in Greco-Roman Wrestling :) Nice to see young talents to rise.

We have had lovely days also from other fields of sports, our world-champion 2005 mr Andrus Värnik has published three smart statements which are:

- if you win gold medal, you rule. If you only win silver in championships, you are no-one
- when people greet me with no title "world champion" I get offended.
- I'm not too arrogant after winning the world champion title in Helsinki in 2005

People got pretty angly with him as with the "no-one" he directly meant mr Gerd Kanter, #1 discus thrower in Estonia (#2 within many seasons lately, as mr Virgilijus Alekna rules so much :P). So we have a bad boy in our sport world, too.

Also what do you think will Michael Schumacher makes it to snap gold from Fernando Alonso in the final F1 event? :) I hope Alonso wins :P

---------------------------------------

here's another picture, sunset in Nõva Beach, august 2006

Gobotoru

When I entered: "define: Gobotoru" in the allmighty google that most probably sits comfortably in everyones computer today, I got zero result.

However Estonian photographers may know that alias as one of the most skilful photo editor having his work represented in many online sites, also having his works being awarded a price in terms of digital photo etiting/manipulation. This man is mr Anton Novozhilov. I'm 200% impressed how easily he can make his simple but brilliant ideas work together with stunning skills with after-editing the photos. Cheers, Gobotoru, and now everyone, did you click the link?

(haha, do you know the sentence "MoVe ThAt BuS?" - It seems I'm demanding to click the links I recommend, too heavily, completing each article with the bloody words Did-You-Click-The-Link?) :P

"lomofying" your photos

there are many ways to "lomofy" ( = to make your photo look like it was made with legendary cheap and not-so-high quality russian camera named "lomo") your digital photo, one of them is described here :P - happy lomofying! :P