The lens is here!!!

Finally, after waiting for almost a month my order had arrived. It has been through all possible problems. At first, there was a long timeout until Digital Photo Club realised that they are out of stock and that they need to backorder the circular polarizer. Somehow we managed to substitute the Canon PL-C with B&W alternative. After they’ve shipped the package, Cyprus joined the EU. That caused a change of custom regulations and noone knew how to proceed with clearance. Today, after laying in customs office for more then a week, the package finally got delivered to Limassol. Luckily, local FedEx doesn’t care about personnal identity and anyone who is ready to pay the tax for the package can claim it. I’ve paid 73 CYP in cash (roughly $150 USD) and ran home. :)

I’ve made few shot around and I am looking at results while I’m writing this. Belicimo! :) When the lens is in 300mm zoom it is about twice as long compared to 75mm (the one on the picture). I can finally shoot subjects without stepping on their toes. I’ve made a picture of an old woman from across the road and she didn’t even see me. :) Finally, I can focus on one particular subject leaving everything else out of the frame, which is rather difficult with a wide angle lens. I’ll be posting some pictures pretty soon, I guess. :)

Both lens hoods that I’ve got now are plastic and light. B&W polarizer has metal base and is rather heavy. It has a sign on the side saying “Made in Germany”. Not China. Germany. By “ze Germans”.

I’ll stop here, since I am a little bit overwhelmed and overexcited. :)

Vim for Perl developers

This is my attempt to provide a clear and simple instructions on adopting Vim text editor for programming needs. I am using Perl as the programming language in the examples, but most of this document will apply equally for any other programming language.

Update: This post was translated into Portuguese by Alceu Rodrigues de Freitas Junior.

Continue reading Vim for Perl developers

Propaganda Posters

I’ve came across an interesting site – Propaganda posters. These guys have a collection of more then 1400 posters from Soviet Union, Czech republic, Poland and Cuba. You can browse through all of them and even buy most of them. Interesting. Some of these I see for the first time, but others do bring lots of memories from my school years. :)

It’s also somewhat appropriate for today’s Victory Day celebrations all over Russia.

Victory Day

VictoryToday is a big holiday in Russia – The Victory Day. On May 9, 1945 Soviet soldiers put the flag of USSR on German’s government headquarters – Reichstag, signalling an end of the Second World War.

59 years passed since that day. Most of the people who survived that war are dead now. But there are still a few. And it’s sad to see how they are living their last years. My father’s parents were teenagers during that war and they are still alive. But it seems that noone cares. The country is greatful to these people. That’s why my granma has a penssion of 12 US dollars per month and my grandpa has 13 bucks. Some appreciation, isn’t it? This is ugly as hell. :(

Anyway, I congratulate everyone with this huge holiday and I hope those who were envolved in any way have the chance to celebrate.

Trip to Omodos

OmodosToday Olga, Vladimir and I went to Omodos village to warm up our summer travelling habbits. It’s the second time I’ve been to this village. First time was together with Lev about 3 month ago when it was cold and dark. This time around it was rather warm (+25C). It was also very sunny. The village itself is small and there is nothing particularly interesting about it except for a church being in the middle of it and a number of narrow streets going up and down in every possible direction.

Omodos appears to be very attractive for tourists since we’ve met few crowded buses leaving the village while we were entering it. And there were still a lot of people. Some of the tourists prefer to live there in rented apartments. There are few caffeterias, but I haven’t seen any tavernas.

It took us about 1 hour to drive there from Limassol, we’ve spent another hour walking around and one hour driving back to Limassol. If you have about three hours to spend on a sunny weekend day, you might as well like to go there. ;)

I’ve made a number of photos while walking around. I was rather surprised to find some harsh shadows, although it was about 5:00pm. The colors and contrast are good though. Check them out here.