Happy Birthday, Lev!

Happy birthday to my dearest friend Lev and all the best wishes! We’ll be celebrating tonight, but just in case this is read before that. :)

Whoever is reading this should take half a second of their time and visit Lev’s website at http://www.shuvalov.com. It’s not much of a hassle, but it’ll be suprisingly pleasent for the guy to check his web statistics for this month, then find them unbelievable, then regenerate them, then find them unbelievable once again, then delete any and all references to the just generated stats, then regenerate them once again. And then he should probably accept the truth. Maybe with a couple more itterations like this. :)

Bigger Europe

Tonight Cyprus joins European Union together with few other countries. This is a huge historical event.

Suprinsingly, there is not that much of a celebration in Cyprus. All TV channels broadcast the same concert by an aging Greek popstar in Nicosia. Not even a bit attractive. Only the Sigma channel manages to show the concert better than it can be in real life. Whatever.

I assumed there will be some photo opportunities outside with concerts, fireworks, and crowds. I was wrong apparently. I’ve found only one hang out in Kanika area, where they had something similar to a stage with a couple of rock bands playing. It was so horrible that it was actually a bit good. There was no sound, just noise, and there was no light, just a lamp. All my photo enthusiasm was gone in a second. And it was getting further with each other second. When midnight struck, music stopped, speakers said something like “Welcome to Europe and a very good night” and people started to get off. Not much fun. There was not that much of a crowd either. Just a few groups of teenagers below 18. And no fireworks.

Maybe next time. Oh, wait…nevermind. :)

A couple of photo links

BreakHere are a couple of useful links that passed by in the mailing lists recently.

In the other news: my latest order from Digital Photo Discount Club has been delayed due to a number of backorders. Now they’ve got everything except for Canon circular polarizing filter, so I’ve asked them to replace it with a slightly more expensive one made by B&W. They confirmed everything and promised to ship the order within the next 24-48 hours. Hopefully it will make it before the Cyprus stage of World Rally Championship. :)

The School of Rock

Went to see “The School of Rock” in the movies. This is above good film. Actually, I cannot remember any other film about rock or rock-and-roll that was this good. Even for a general comedy this film was too good. The main character is played by Jack Black, who is one of the vocalists in the band called “Tencious D”. I’d say he knows about rock from the first hands.

On one side the movie is pretty muh regular and naive. The fraud teacher comes to the high class school to earn some money, but ends up playing some rock music together with students. On the other side, the movie is full of energy, rock spirit, and very excellent music. Soundtrack has all time favourites such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, The Doors, Jimmy Hendrix, The Who, and whoever you can remember making impact on rock music.

This movie also while being lots of fun touches on some serious issues, like MTV screwing up the rock music, drugs and rock-and-roll, authoritive certification, children’s psychology, etc. It reminds the viewer in the nice way that rock-and-roll is not about getting wasted/loaded/high and it is not about making lots of money, but about something deeper.

I would recommend this movie to anyone who is, was, or is about to be interested in rock music, it’s history, and it’s atmosphere. It is very entertaining and funny at the very least. :)