It has been a while. A summer. Barely got to stay a straight week at home. So there has been a pause, but also a bunch of photos. I'd like to start the season with a rather gloomy one. Taken from the window of our bus in Dublin. Spooky, isn't it?
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Shaky expression
Among all the photos taken at the Eestifoto Animal Sports seminar, this one somehow appeals to me the most. The horse has such a geeky expression :)
Monday, May 21, 2007
Jellyfish
Was totally blown away yesterday when I opened the front page of flickr: they had my photo there. Oh, turned out this was not the case. Just somebody had taken a very similar picture of the same jellyfish tank in Monterey. Here's my version:
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Back in business
Have beaten the jetlag and distilled the 1600+ photos from the trip into 128 more or less OK images. Here we go again!
An image from a series of shots taken at the Monterey Aquarium Medusa tank.
An image from a series of shots taken at the Monterey Aquarium Medusa tank.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Day 17: Home at last
Uh, it's done. Back at home. The end of the trip went relatively smoothly. The only aggravations were the fact that the flight to Tallinn was 40 minutes late (hm, why did Estonian Air made as much loss last year as they had made profit a year earlier?) and that for some reason none of the lounges at Gatwick granted admittance based on my Eurobonus gold and economy ticket to Tallinn with EA. I have always been there and it has been one of the main reasons to get my gold card at all and till now I have not had any trouble on any airport with a Star Alliance flight to board. Strange, shall investigate.
Ah, home sweet home. Boarded my flight home and the first sign was there. During all my flights with all those various airplanes and all those different people for the first time my personal space was invaded mercilessly. That was not done by a 200 kg British bachelor with a couple of pints under the tie (which I would have at least understood) but by a normal-sized Estonian girl in late teens. She quite obviously _needed_ to open that newspaper as wide as possible and obviously needed to have her elbows reaching exactly as far as she found comfortable. Not in a condition to pick a fight I drew to a corner and tried to sleep.
Second thing about home were the newspapers. The main articles of "Eesti Päevaleht" were about a bear cub growing up in a refuge, an essay about history of parliament in Estonia (inspired by a three-week old incident where a member of coalition was given a beating for targeting a question towards the member of government) and endless ravings about Pronkssõdur (a bronze statue of a Red Army soldier that represents the glorious victory of Soviet Union over fascism that has been turned into a pilgrimage site and a source of international turmoil by reckless actions of the government). Oh, there were also a couple of paragraphs on elections in Nigeria and France, but that was about it. How come there are thick interesting newspapers produced every single day all over the world but the ones in Estonia are full of week-old crap plus selected international news.
After arriving in Tallinn, I was greeted by a huge passport check queue. You see, only one officer was there to do the work. And so, my arrival to Estonia took longer than my admittance to the US of A. Brilliant, welcome to Elbonia!
Ah, home sweet home. Boarded my flight home and the first sign was there. During all my flights with all those various airplanes and all those different people for the first time my personal space was invaded mercilessly. That was not done by a 200 kg British bachelor with a couple of pints under the tie (which I would have at least understood) but by a normal-sized Estonian girl in late teens. She quite obviously _needed_ to open that newspaper as wide as possible and obviously needed to have her elbows reaching exactly as far as she found comfortable. Not in a condition to pick a fight I drew to a corner and tried to sleep.
Second thing about home were the newspapers. The main articles of "Eesti Päevaleht" were about a bear cub growing up in a refuge, an essay about history of parliament in Estonia (inspired by a three-week old incident where a member of coalition was given a beating for targeting a question towards the member of government) and endless ravings about Pronkssõdur (a bronze statue of a Red Army soldier that represents the glorious victory of Soviet Union over fascism that has been turned into a pilgrimage site and a source of international turmoil by reckless actions of the government). Oh, there were also a couple of paragraphs on elections in Nigeria and France, but that was about it. How come there are thick interesting newspapers produced every single day all over the world but the ones in Estonia are full of week-old crap plus selected international news.
After arriving in Tallinn, I was greeted by a huge passport check queue. You see, only one officer was there to do the work. And so, my arrival to Estonia took longer than my admittance to the US of A. Brilliant, welcome to Elbonia!
Day 17: Going home
The day started off with a packing frenzy. Had to open my bag three times to accommodate forgotten items and the it now looks like a particularly round pig. Checked out from the hotel (albeit having a nasty habit of sometimes hiding my pillows and complaints when they were not able to do room service 0830 AM it was OK. Not good, but OK) and headed towards the Marine Headlands.
Was driving happily along US-101 when the Hertz Neverlost (tm) thing went "proceed to the route" and positioned the car on its on-screen map somewhere near the eastern border of the State of California. Frustratingly enough it kept doing that for the rest of the day. Sometimes coming to its senses immediately, sometimes requiring somewhat longer to recover. Very strange.
Marine Headlands is such a beautiful place. Spent what was left of the day on a beach (should look up its name) that was a such a peaceful place. Strangely, the fact that it was pretty crowded did not change that impression. The ocean, cliffs on both sides of the beach and rolling hills in the background. Beautiful. There were surfers in the water but for some reason (being lame?) they didn't do much actual surfing, I only saw two guys manageing to stand up for a couple of seconds.
The place was also a paradise for dogs and those were present in all shapes and sizes. From a tiny chiuaua in lila outfit two a rather large rotweiler. Made acquaintance with most of them, took as many pictures as I could (yes, Margus, your new lens is perfect for dog-shooting) and exchanged smiles and a couple of words with the owners.
At some point I felt tired. Just bloody tired, hungry and homesick. Farewell to California it was, then. It managed to grab me for the last half an hour when a huge grey waterbird (could not make out what exactly it was) flew across the road just in front of me and landed in a pond nearby. In an attempt to get closer to it I discovered a dragonfly heaven and was stuck for some photography. The light was very harsh (it was close to midday) but there's a hope for some imagenary. Got one of a big dragonfly munching away on a smaller one, lelt's hope my hand didn't shake too much.
Then it really was it and after a futile attempt to find a parking space in town for some food I headed towards the airport.
You've got to love the San Francisco International Airport. It's international terminals are big and airy. It is never too crowded, there are plenty of places to charge your laptop and even food both in and outside the security gates is tasty.
So it is done now. Gave the car back to Hertz, checked my bulgeing bag in and am sitting at the gate. Even the US Government knows that I'm about to leave the country.
Time for conclusions, then.
The car, Mazda 6 from Hertz, was good. The steering felt strange till the very end and it was surprisingly sensitive to side-wind on one occasion on the coast. However, the gearbox was very good, ergonomix spot on and fuel efficiency reasonable. What did they do to the poor v6 under the bonnet, is unclear, however. If felt like it was missing a pair of cylinders: below 4000 nothing was going on and even above that there was no real shove. All in all, it was OK. The navigation system was also good despite the hickups and I actually prefer its graphics to the one from Garmin.
Travel arrangements were terrible. There's no other word for it. Jüri and Bertrand were forced to spend a night in Frankfurt, also courtesy of Estravel. Maybe next time I'll just go and book the whole trip through the internet myself?
People were generally very kind and the meetings I had were very useful. I'm proud to work with these guys.
Weather was not so good. The rain on Saturday and the cold cloudy wind in Washington should have not been there.
Photography was good. How good exactly, shows when I get home to my big monitor and can do some sorting. In general, I think that the second time on the Big Sur yielded some spectacular images. The Washington zoo was cool, too. What is obvious, though, is that my 10D is not cutting it any more. It's slow on bursts (the Lexar card, despite being a 133mhz one, is also of the slow sort), takes far too long to start up, the screen is too small, the sensor magnification is limiting (you shouldn't have to lug an additional ultra-wide zoom around every time there's a chance for some landscape-worthy light), minimum ISO is 100 instead of 50 and above 400 only black and white images can be produced due to the noise. It's time to start saving for the 5D or whatever will have replaced it by the time I get the funds together. The fact that I now own sensor-cleaning equipment (Sensor Swabs + accompanying liquid) is pleasing: some of the shots from Washington were ruined because of dust on the sensor, this will not happen in the future, I hope.
As a summary, I'd say that (although am not home yet, any of the airlines could still loose my bag or I could still be late to the flight home despite 5-hour delay) the trip was a success. Both personally and for the business. This blog will now revert back to it's normal, more photography-oriented self and your's truly hopes to start publishing on humararchitecture.blogspot.com on a more regular basis once the jet-lag has worn off.
Was driving happily along US-101 when the Hertz Neverlost (tm) thing went "proceed to the route" and positioned the car on its on-screen map somewhere near the eastern border of the State of California. Frustratingly enough it kept doing that for the rest of the day. Sometimes coming to its senses immediately, sometimes requiring somewhat longer to recover. Very strange.
Marine Headlands is such a beautiful place. Spent what was left of the day on a beach (should look up its name) that was a such a peaceful place. Strangely, the fact that it was pretty crowded did not change that impression. The ocean, cliffs on both sides of the beach and rolling hills in the background. Beautiful. There were surfers in the water but for some reason (being lame?) they didn't do much actual surfing, I only saw two guys manageing to stand up for a couple of seconds.
The place was also a paradise for dogs and those were present in all shapes and sizes. From a tiny chiuaua in lila outfit two a rather large rotweiler. Made acquaintance with most of them, took as many pictures as I could (yes, Margus, your new lens is perfect for dog-shooting) and exchanged smiles and a couple of words with the owners.
At some point I felt tired. Just bloody tired, hungry and homesick. Farewell to California it was, then. It managed to grab me for the last half an hour when a huge grey waterbird (could not make out what exactly it was) flew across the road just in front of me and landed in a pond nearby. In an attempt to get closer to it I discovered a dragonfly heaven and was stuck for some photography. The light was very harsh (it was close to midday) but there's a hope for some imagenary. Got one of a big dragonfly munching away on a smaller one, lelt's hope my hand didn't shake too much.
Then it really was it and after a futile attempt to find a parking space in town for some food I headed towards the airport.
You've got to love the San Francisco International Airport. It's international terminals are big and airy. It is never too crowded, there are plenty of places to charge your laptop and even food both in and outside the security gates is tasty.
So it is done now. Gave the car back to Hertz, checked my bulgeing bag in and am sitting at the gate. Even the US Government knows that I'm about to leave the country.
Time for conclusions, then.
The car, Mazda 6 from Hertz, was good. The steering felt strange till the very end and it was surprisingly sensitive to side-wind on one occasion on the coast. However, the gearbox was very good, ergonomix spot on and fuel efficiency reasonable. What did they do to the poor v6 under the bonnet, is unclear, however. If felt like it was missing a pair of cylinders: below 4000 nothing was going on and even above that there was no real shove. All in all, it was OK. The navigation system was also good despite the hickups and I actually prefer its graphics to the one from Garmin.
Travel arrangements were terrible. There's no other word for it. Jüri and Bertrand were forced to spend a night in Frankfurt, also courtesy of Estravel. Maybe next time I'll just go and book the whole trip through the internet myself?
People were generally very kind and the meetings I had were very useful. I'm proud to work with these guys.
Weather was not so good. The rain on Saturday and the cold cloudy wind in Washington should have not been there.
Photography was good. How good exactly, shows when I get home to my big monitor and can do some sorting. In general, I think that the second time on the Big Sur yielded some spectacular images. The Washington zoo was cool, too. What is obvious, though, is that my 10D is not cutting it any more. It's slow on bursts (the Lexar card, despite being a 133mhz one, is also of the slow sort), takes far too long to start up, the screen is too small, the sensor magnification is limiting (you shouldn't have to lug an additional ultra-wide zoom around every time there's a chance for some landscape-worthy light), minimum ISO is 100 instead of 50 and above 400 only black and white images can be produced due to the noise. It's time to start saving for the 5D or whatever will have replaced it by the time I get the funds together. The fact that I now own sensor-cleaning equipment (Sensor Swabs + accompanying liquid) is pleasing: some of the shots from Washington were ruined because of dust on the sensor, this will not happen in the future, I hope.
As a summary, I'd say that (although am not home yet, any of the airlines could still loose my bag or I could still be late to the flight home despite 5-hour delay) the trip was a success. Both personally and for the business. This blog will now revert back to it's normal, more photography-oriented self and your's truly hopes to start publishing on humararchitecture.blogspot.com on a more regular basis once the jet-lag has worn off.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Day 14-15: The end is near
Day 14 was nothing spectacular: the usual work thing and in the evening the folks down here took us out to an excellent sushi place. Can't remember the name (it's only a couple of blocks from our south campus) but the atmosphere was very homely and sushi excellent and plentiful. Thanks, guys!
Today we planned to go out and play with Jüri and Bertrand in their hilariously large rental car. It's a Mercury Grand Marquis and a quite new one. The fake wooden inserts! The uncovered wires leading to rear screen heating! The ancient green lighting and only a little younger buttons on the dashboard! I have heard, that American cars are poor on packaging but this was just ridiculous. The car is actually bigger than a long wheelbase 7 series BMW (5361 vs. 5179 mm) but has no more legroom in the back than a 5er. How do they do that? Also, I'm highly suspicious of cars I can push down 10 centimeters with one hand and that have bumpers that actually bend while I do so.
Anyway, we started off to a place called Fry's that was literally jaw-dropping. It's the single largest electronics store I have ever seen, roughly the size of a really big supermarket back at home. Very good selection, too. However, they didn't have, and apparently did not know of, the IR-blaster thing I was looking for (allows your media center to control an external device via its infrared sensor). What they did have was an xbox 360 with Guitar Hero running on it and I was instantly hooked. Hooked, I tell you! They also had Lego Mindstorm but I could carry myself out of the place before forgetting the size of my luggage and the limit of my credit card.
After that, it was back to the cool photography store I had discovered and after finding out that stuff actually costs 30% less than in Tallinn, severe shopping was done. Excellent.
Next item on the agenda: Mythbusters. Finding their address was easy (do your own googling, will you?) and getting there was a toddle thanks to the Garmin device Avis had given to the guys (not the hideous Motorola I wrote about earlier, must check it out). We got there, I took the camera and... no CF card. Checked the bag, no CF card wallet either. Damn. This is just me: you go off for a day full of photography and you forget all of your media. Jüri had been more considerate and I hope I will get a picture of me and the M5 Industries logo. From the moment on, me and Bertrand shared a quest to find compact media (he had just bought a camera) which we completed at Ritz Camera on Market street completely blowing my photography budget in the process.
By that time, our adventures had made us hungry, the next stop was for some steak (Joe's Grill, near Union Square. Questionable service, questionable prices, questionable steak, not recommended). After we had finished, it promptly started to rain heavily. Which destroyed my hope for photography and the need for that 2 GB Lexar card I had just purchased. Oh well, you can't have too much storage these days. We headed back to base.
Decided to spend the evening at the movies. Hot Fuzz was supposed to be good and, guided by google, I ended up at Century Berryessa 10. Admittance cost reasonable $10 (wee bit cheaper than in Tallinn, would not dare to compare standard of living, though) the medium-sized popcorn was humongous and so was the mid-size coke. The movie itself was a mediocre one. Good old English language, good old English countryside, a tad weak storyline and some good action sequences. Good laugh, though.
Tomorrow I'll be off to Tallinn. I do think I will find time for some closing thoughts during my 8-hour stay in London but you never know. Seeya!
P.S. Some idiot has started posting spam into the comments here, will switch moderation on.
Today we planned to go out and play with Jüri and Bertrand in their hilariously large rental car. It's a Mercury Grand Marquis and a quite new one. The fake wooden inserts! The uncovered wires leading to rear screen heating! The ancient green lighting and only a little younger buttons on the dashboard! I have heard, that American cars are poor on packaging but this was just ridiculous. The car is actually bigger than a long wheelbase 7 series BMW (5361 vs. 5179 mm) but has no more legroom in the back than a 5er. How do they do that? Also, I'm highly suspicious of cars I can push down 10 centimeters with one hand and that have bumpers that actually bend while I do so.
Anyway, we started off to a place called Fry's that was literally jaw-dropping. It's the single largest electronics store I have ever seen, roughly the size of a really big supermarket back at home. Very good selection, too. However, they didn't have, and apparently did not know of, the IR-blaster thing I was looking for (allows your media center to control an external device via its infrared sensor). What they did have was an xbox 360 with Guitar Hero running on it and I was instantly hooked. Hooked, I tell you! They also had Lego Mindstorm but I could carry myself out of the place before forgetting the size of my luggage and the limit of my credit card.
After that, it was back to the cool photography store I had discovered and after finding out that stuff actually costs 30% less than in Tallinn, severe shopping was done. Excellent.
Next item on the agenda: Mythbusters. Finding their address was easy (do your own googling, will you?) and getting there was a toddle thanks to the Garmin device Avis had given to the guys (not the hideous Motorola I wrote about earlier, must check it out). We got there, I took the camera and... no CF card. Checked the bag, no CF card wallet either. Damn. This is just me: you go off for a day full of photography and you forget all of your media. Jüri had been more considerate and I hope I will get a picture of me and the M5 Industries logo. From the moment on, me and Bertrand shared a quest to find compact media (he had just bought a camera) which we completed at Ritz Camera on Market street completely blowing my photography budget in the process.
By that time, our adventures had made us hungry, the next stop was for some steak (Joe's Grill, near Union Square. Questionable service, questionable prices, questionable steak, not recommended). After we had finished, it promptly started to rain heavily. Which destroyed my hope for photography and the need for that 2 GB Lexar card I had just purchased. Oh well, you can't have too much storage these days. We headed back to base.
Decided to spend the evening at the movies. Hot Fuzz was supposed to be good and, guided by google, I ended up at Century Berryessa 10. Admittance cost reasonable $10 (wee bit cheaper than in Tallinn, would not dare to compare standard of living, though) the medium-sized popcorn was humongous and so was the mid-size coke. The movie itself was a mediocre one. Good old English language, good old English countryside, a tad weak storyline and some good action sequences. Good laugh, though.
Tomorrow I'll be off to Tallinn. I do think I will find time for some closing thoughts during my 8-hour stay in London but you never know. Seeya!
P.S. Some idiot has started posting spam into the comments here, will switch moderation on.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Day 13: US is getting to me
The day consisted mostly of work-related meetings that were tiring (people loved my presentations, though, which was nice). So nothing spectacular there. However, later when I went out to have some dinner and discuss situation with Jüri and Bertrand something happened. My Hertz NeverLost (tm) thing broke down. It went "acquiring satellite" and just did not get anywhere. Figuring that it would come to its senses sooner or later I drove off, towards a random highway. Still acquiring. Pulled over, shut it off, then back on. Nothing. Turned off the ignition, nothing. At that moment it hit me: I am god knows where without a map, without clear understanding of where my hotel was or where I was going to and I didn't even have a compass. These are all the things I used to have when I drove in the States before I started renting GPS systems (Well, this, and maporama. Used to print out routes to and from all the places I was probable to go and just have a huge stack of paper in the car). Anyway, the luck turned, and after some waiting with ignition off the darn thing did a reboot and after asking my confirmation to "thou shall not use me while driving, you idiot!" displayed a route. Thank you. Next time, will have a map, and Lonely Planet, and compass and important routes and will study the map to understand the basic topology. A promise.
There was this horrible massacre in Virgina Tech at the beginning of the week and this brought me to two thoughts I'd like to share.
Firstly, it was the press coverage. Was sitting on my bed at the hotel watching CNN (or fox or cbs or whoever, they all had the same basic information) when they were about to reveal the identity of the shooter. Went and checked upon Estonian news later and turned out most of the bigger sites had published the news about the identity a couple of hours before CNN had it. Heck, they even knew it was because of a unhappy love story. Makes you wonder, how come an Estonian newspaper had news like this before any of the big US stations that were on the story like ravens. Until you read the Estonian articles more thoroughly. One of them said the guy was Korean at the beginning and Chinese at the end. The other said that each of the victims had at least 3 "showers" of shots ("valang" in Estonian) which the gun the man was using is just not capable of. So my theory is that they just acted upon some rumor going around and not facts that the US stations were waiting for. Used to think that Äripäev was the only crappy newspaper in Estonia but seems the general level of journalism is way lower than what I thought.
Secondly. You see, every liberty a society enjoys, has a price attached. You get democracy and you also get the chance that a charismatic idiot gets elected. You get freedom of speech and you also get people claiming there was no holocaust. You get freedom to carry a gun and you also get lunatics running amok with them. And there's the unfortunate catch. With the last one, the people who actually enjoy the liberty are not the ones paying the price. Because, well, they own a gun and are therefore pretty unlikely to get shot at (or at least can retaliate rapidly). Instead, kids at school and people on the streets will suffer. Just stating the facts here, people in the US have to make that choice.
There was this horrible massacre in Virgina Tech at the beginning of the week and this brought me to two thoughts I'd like to share.
Firstly, it was the press coverage. Was sitting on my bed at the hotel watching CNN (or fox or cbs or whoever, they all had the same basic information) when they were about to reveal the identity of the shooter. Went and checked upon Estonian news later and turned out most of the bigger sites had published the news about the identity a couple of hours before CNN had it. Heck, they even knew it was because of a unhappy love story. Makes you wonder, how come an Estonian newspaper had news like this before any of the big US stations that were on the story like ravens. Until you read the Estonian articles more thoroughly. One of them said the guy was Korean at the beginning and Chinese at the end. The other said that each of the victims had at least 3 "showers" of shots ("valang" in Estonian) which the gun the man was using is just not capable of. So my theory is that they just acted upon some rumor going around and not facts that the US stations were waiting for. Used to think that Äripäev was the only crappy newspaper in Estonia but seems the general level of journalism is way lower than what I thought.
Secondly. You see, every liberty a society enjoys, has a price attached. You get democracy and you also get the chance that a charismatic idiot gets elected. You get freedom of speech and you also get people claiming there was no holocaust. You get freedom to carry a gun and you also get lunatics running amok with them. And there's the unfortunate catch. With the last one, the people who actually enjoy the liberty are not the ones paying the price. Because, well, they own a gun and are therefore pretty unlikely to get shot at (or at least can retaliate rapidly). Instead, kids at school and people on the streets will suffer. Just stating the facts here, people in the US have to make that choice.
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