Month: December 2003

Finding Nemo


Today is really cold. But it’s a strange kind of cold. You don’t know it, until you freeze to death. Sneaky. :)

Me and Olga went out for some low-lite photography and did exactly that – we got frozen. Actually, Olga did. But she looked so cold that I could almost feel it.

Then we met with Hazard and tried to get ourselves into movies, but that was still too early and too kid-crowded. So we went to Hazard and whached a show on video and then “Finding Nemo“. That’s a new animation from Pixar studio. Better then the previous one, as usual. The animation though should be ranked PG-13 as it’s kind of intense and sometimes scary. Those who want to argue, consider the fact that a loving mother and her 399 newly born babies were killed withing the first 2 minutes into the movie. That’s almost as bloody as Rambo or Terminator. Mine fields, dead ships, sharks and other huge-teeth fish full of tricks, jelly fish… That’s not for infants. For everyone else – highly recommended. :)

2003-12-12

Friday. Since I have been in the NOC during the night shift, I had most of the day to myself. Morning started with a quick visit to the doctor together with Olga. Doc reassured us that recovery is proceeding normal and there is nothing to worry about.


Breakfast and a visit to the bookshop. That’s an experience I don’t have more often then something like once in 5 years. Mostly I get all my books from Amazon or from the college library. At least I used to. Bookshops haven’t changed much during the last 5 years that I’ve been ignoring them. Same all staff. Postcards, pocket novels of the tasteless fame, dictionaries, notepads, and few best-sellers like “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings”. And few shelves of Stephen King, of course. :) In the whole bookshop, I managed to find only three books about photograhy. One of them was in Greek, so it doesn’t count. I bought both others. One of them looks really nice, with hard cover and lots of nice pictures inside. It’s called “The Essential Photography Manual” by Tim Daly. I’ve heard it being recommended few times over here and there. Paid 25 pounds for it, and so far read about one third – entertaining, easy and informative. Very nice. The other book is “The Compact and Digital Camera Handbook” by Daniel Lezano. It’s a small format, soft cover and doesn’t look all that impressive, but it was only 10 pounds, so I got it just in case. :)


Most of the afternoon I’ve spent designing and developing the new version of the site, playing Quake 3 and doing other useless stuff. :)


In the evening, I went for low-light photography session, which turned out to be a complete failure… Well, apart from maybe one or two pictures. I’ll need more practice here, for sure. Anyway, it did bring some nice experiences. I learnt few more useful things about exposure control.


Picked up Lev from office and we went out for a beer. First, we decided to check out on that brewery thing that was so popular with us in summer. Unfortunately, it was closed at the time we came. They were getting ready for the “Beer Day”-special opening at 21:00. That’s rather stupid, if you ask me. Opening this late in the evening on a moderately cold Friday won’t result in all your tables occupied. And you don’t have to be BA major to understand that. :)


Instead of waiting for more then an hour, we opted with Bavarian Delicatessen place. It’s a small German shop and caffe with meat, cheese, and, should I say, beer.


After a couple of hours there, we moved to my place and watched “Resident Evil“. It is one of those few million movies about deadly virus, underground labs, mutations, zombies and a SWAT or some other special forces team rescuing something noone knows what. It is also, I think, related to in some way to the computer game. Anyway, the story is pretty boring, but the movie is somewhat stylish and nicely done, so if you are into this kind of movies, then get it and watch it. :)

2003-12-11

Today I started to work on the new version of this site. It will be a complete rewrite with a new design and everything. This time there will be more then just lynx compatibility. Perl code will be also at the most mature way I can afford now. Functionally it will also provide much more. It will have to deal with my new passion – photography. Blog will be revorked too, bringing everything to the database, providing preview before submit, and maybe even a spell-checker. :)


Now that I started to manipulate digital images a bit, I realized how slow my home computer is. Upgrade is not in the near future though. Back to the 20th century. :)

2003-12-10

Finally, we managed to get into the Italian restaurant that Hazard was talking so much about. “Il Gusto” (in Akrotiri) proved to be an excellent place to eat at. It is about the same as Germany restaurant but Italian only. Mussles for starters were great, as was the meat for the main course. The prices are reasonalbe, but not cheap. :) One thing is for sure – it was not the last time we were there. :)


Watching “Almost Famous” afterwards. It happens that I saw this film, but neither Olga or Hazard did. I wonder how did that happen. I remember that we didn’t go when it was in the movies and that I had a DVD a couple of times at home, but it refused to play. Strange. :)

2003-12-09

Off to Hazard today to watch some plain old Harry Potter with him. This is the last movie in the “Educate the Hazard” series. :) Apparently, Olga does enjoy watching fairy tailes a lot. And I almost forgot how good the movie was, so it was a useful experience for all three of us.


I’ve also borrowed the rest of digital camera equipment from Hazard, leaving him nothing but memories of it. Oh, wait… I think there were a couple of lenses in the package too! I’ll talk to him about it next week. :)