Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I finally saved enough courage to order some more stuff for my photo toolbox.  It’s been a really long while (more than a couple of years) that I wanted to get a new lense, which would have a wider angle view than anything that already have, and a proper flash unit.  And here I am, a proud owner of Canon 17-40mm f/4.0L USM lense and a Canon 430 EX II Speedlight flash, plus a bunch of new batteries, filters, hoods, and such.

As with any other new gadgets, there is a lot to read, learn, and try.  But I am already happy with how it fits and how it works.  Above you can see a self-portrait, practically the second image I took in almost fully automatic mode.  Georgeous!  This picture has all chances of becoming my new avatar or something.  And, of course, a few more images were uploaded to my Flickr photostream.  More to come.

This is a much delayed post about my tour of London.  It took me a whole week to download, post-process, and upload all pictures to my Flickr photostream, and I didn’t want to blog without all of them being up, so apologies for the delay.

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So here I am, in London, UK.

The journey took a bit more time than planned.  There were some heavy thunderstorm over Larnaca airport, so we had to stay on the ground.  Overall we spent a bit more than one hour in the airplane before the skies finally cleared enough for us to fly through.

The flight itself was pretty good.  Cyprus airways flight attendants were very nice and kept bringing us beers just when we needed them.  Plus the food was quite good - some sort of marinated chicken with rice, salad, and the usual stuff.  The only thing that could have been better - the movies.  I’ve watched “My Mom’s New Boyfriend” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and both of them were crap.  Better than nothing though.

Once in London, we took the tube from the airport to the center of the city and then walked a bit.  Risking to sound too grumpy, the tube navigation could have been better.  Colors and branch names are all fine, but they shouldn’t be used when splits occur - that makes it quite confusing.  Plus, anything except a straight line and a circle should be forbidden from the map.  Otherwise people have to rotate the map uncontrollably, trying to find some sense in it.  Anyway, that’s not a big issue.   The trains themselves are nice - clean, comfy (soft seats and elbow support), and technologically equipped (voice, displays, and such).

The check-in to the Hilton Olympia Hotel was fast and usual.  Surprisingly, they have a choice of smoking and non-smoking rooms.  The hotel itself is a bit dated, with oldish smells and a few details that reveal that it didn’t have a rennovation for quite a while.  Rooms are the smallest from all the hotels that I’ve seen.  But somewhat cozy.  Overall feels like a good 3 star hotel in Limassol.  But in fact it’s 4 stars.  Or so I believe.

Internet connection at the hotel is charged at extra - 15 GBP / day.  Once purchased, Ethernet connection is available in the room and credentials for wireless connection in the lobby are given.  So far I haven’t tried the wireless yet, but the Ethernte at the room passes the speed test with 3.5 Mbps up and 3.5 Mbps down.  And feels pretty fast too.  But that might be due to lower latency here in London than what I am used to in Limassol.

That’s about it for today.  I am off to bed to catch a few hours of sleep before tomorrow’s main event.

All the stars have aligned properly for yet another conference visit.  This time I am going with two colleagues to London, UK.  We are attending PHP UK Conference 2009.  It’s my first visit to UK, and I wont’ have much time around, but if you have any suggestions on what to see, where to go, or if you want to meet for beer, let me know.  We are arriving today around 21:00 and flying back early Sunday morning.

Tweets, blog posts, and pictures are coming soon.

I’d like to take this moment and wish everyone a Happy New Year.  Let the new year bring more good to your life and take away the pains and troubles.  Be happy, healthy, wealthy, and have tonnes of fun!

Maybe it’s also a good time to take a brief look back at the year 2008, as well as examine some expectations for the year 2009.

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