Ottomatias.

Old Nickel in Amsterdam and the best bartender in the world

macoute — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:02:24 +0000

I was yesterday once again in Amsterdam and while walking to Centraal on my way home I decided to have a beer somewhere. I found Old Nickel, a bar with 46 different beers just nearby the Centraal and happy I was.
Peter, the bartender who was working there was maybe the best bartender I’ve ever met – and God knows I’ve met bartenders in my life. Peter knows the beers he’s selling and seems to remember by name all his customers after one night only.
The place has got a hotel as well with small but cozy rooms. Prices range from 40€ for a single room to about 90€ for a double in high season weekend.
After leaving Old Nickel I took a train to Rotterdam and fell asleep. I woke up at Rotterdam Centraal to a train cleaning guy removing my watch off my wrist. At that point my wallet was already gone. Not the nicest waking up, but I’ve had worse as well. I even got all my stuff back.
Thanks for Peter and all the customers at Old Nickel for a nice night and to that NS worker for waking me up. If you are around Amsterdam go and see the nicest pub I’ve seen there.

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Lightroom 3 rocks!

macoute — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:52:12 +0000

I bought a Canon 70-200mm F/4.0 L USM (without IS) today, took the first test photos and am very satisfied. But that’s not the point.
One of the reasons I decided that 4.0 is large enough aperture for me was the noise reduction capabilities of newest Lightroom. I’m geeky also in what comes to picture quality so I like my photos sharp, noiseless and clean. Lightroom allows me to live with 4.0 because I know I will lose nothing when I reduce the noise of higher-ISO pictures in Lightroom.Hah, as if I got paid from that. Anyway, here’s some proofs:

ISO 1600 image crop with some sharpening and noise reduction, before and after. Perfect!

ISO 100 image straight from camera

ISO 1600 noise reduction and sharpening applied

Full-sized crop of ISO 1600 image. At this size you can’t see the noise. Sharpening is applied bit too much to show the first image.

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Watermelon carving on Vimeo

macoute — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 09:03:30 +0000

via vimeo.com

Pretty nice handcraft over there. We had some watermelon carving at our balcony a few days ago but we were more interested in taking the extra fillings out of the watermelon to get some vodka inside than to actually carve flowers. Nice that someone has the time.

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How do you hold your Nokia?

macoute — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:25:30 +0000

The cup
Popular with smaller devices, and typically comfortable for longer phone calls, the cup basically enables you to cup the phone with your whole hand. This might result in much of the phone’s edges being covered and the back of the device sitting snugly in the palm of your hand – but don’t be concerned about this, it won’t impact the device’s performance. QWERTY device users will also find this handy for tapping out messages and navigating the phone, as the thumb is typically left free with much of the device’s weight being carried by the palm.

Hilarious. Nokia Conversations -blog writes about different kind of ways to hold phone. It seems “The Cup” is the hardest for Apple iPhone. Good thing is that those supporting “The Four Edge Grip” or “The Balance” do not suffer from call drops.
I wonder if the way you hold your phone affects also yellow display, bad WLAN reception and camera?

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I Sure Do

macoute — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:05:29 +0000

via files.posterous.com

I love it.

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