< rant />

Moving up the Greek Islands

2009-07-11T15:45:00.004+01:00

Kos and Kalymnos to Thessaloniki (8-11th July)

We spent the morning looking around Kos, it's various Roman ruins and a castle built by Knights of the Crusades. It's starting to get very hot during the day now, well into the mid 30s. We took the hydrofoil across to Kalymnos which takes about 30 mins, we're staying here for 1 night and catching the late(10pm) ferry to Thessalonaki on Thursday. Sonia from Pension Alexis organised the accommodation for us at Greek House, we have a small studio which looks out across Kalymnos' capital of Porthia. Spent the afternoon relaxing before heading out for a swim at the beach where all the locals cool off in the evening at about 6pm.

The monastary above Porthia, Kalymnos

Thursday - it's hot, 29 degrees by mid morning, in the evening the locals at the bar said it reached 39 during the day. Spent the morning looking around town and visiting the museum, lunch down by the harbour. In the afternoon we took a bus up to the monastery that sits above Porthia, the view from there is fantastic, walked back down into to town afterwards and headed straight for the beach. The sunburn from Rhodes is starting to dissipate, still very pale compared to the locals.

Boarded the ferry at 10pm, we had a 4 berth cabin for just the 2 of us, very comfortable and the 20 hours flew by with the help of a few cans of local lager, leftover pizza, and a movie and some TV episodes on the netbook. Arriving into Thessaloniki at 6pm on Friday, no surprise it's hot, we wandered around looking for our hotel for far too long. The city is mainly boring/ugly concrete apartments, but has lots of lovely old churches dotted everywhere and the main bar/restaurant area is really cosmopolitan and relaxing.

Our cabin on the Ferry

Saturday was spent visiting museums and so forth, have now seen enough broken pots and reconstructed graves to sink a very large ship. A short but violent thunderstorm hit late afternoon so got a bit wet, was quite welcome though as the shower at the hotel leaves a lot to be desired, water for example. R in a bit of a flap when she realised she'd thrown out a crucial bit of our InterRail passes, so a speedy trip to the Train station and some rather confused people at the ticket office, and managed to get replacements, so we dont get fined 50 Euros each for messing up the tickets! Note to self, even if it looks uninportant, don't throw anything away!

Agia Sofia, Thessaloniki, Greece

Our train to Sofia in Bulgaria leaves at 7am Sunday morning, another late night (most people seem to start eating around 10pm in Greece) and early start on the cards.

More photos to follow! Yes, there will be some of us, and no, there are no '18-30' type photos, we're much too old for that kind of carry on haha. The whole collection is on flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachaelr/collections/72157620533221612/

Lovely Kos (Κως)

2009-07-07T17:13:00.007+01:00

Arrived in Kos town last night, on a ferry from Rhodes.

The island is beautiful, as most Greek Islands seem to be! We're staying at Pension Alexis, which is fantastic. Large, clean rooms (ours has a balcony overlooking the port and Castle!), and a very friendly welcome from Sonia and her son, who run the Pension. Dinner was at a local Taverna recommended by Sonia.

Today we hired scooters and drove out to Mastichari Beach in the morning, where I had a quick swim, and we had lunch at 'El Greko' restaurant, where my sister L. used to work 5 or 6 summers ago (photo on the left was taken there, mix of salads and dips, yum!). The owner Catherine was there, and she remembered both L., and Mum, who was a holiday rep there at the same time. Lovely food, and a beautiful location right on the beach.

Drove back to the Askipillion, where Hiprocates used to teach apparently. Almost had a problem with taking the camera in, which was weird... no tripods OR 'professional' cameras, tho I've seen 'pros' working with point and shoot cameras, and total incompetents with the big 1DS Canons, so the type of camera really doesn't determine what you'll be doing with the shots! Was ok tho, took lots of 'snapshots' with us in them, so there is no way we could have been mistaken for 'professionals' haha! Bit more driving around in the afternoon, then found a cafe with free wifi.

I've been quite impressed with the wifi and internet access in the Greek islands so far - fast ADSL connections, and most cafes leave their wifi open to use as long as you're drinking. Beers are around 2.50-4.50 euros for a 500ml, so it's not too bad, esp as we were going to have a beer anyway!

Booked up ferry for tomorrow afternoon (hydrofoil!) going to Kalymnos, the next island over. And also booked a cabin on the big ferry from Kalymnos to Thessenolaki for Thursday night - takes about 20 hours, but a lot of that is overnight (leaves at 10PM, arrives at 6PM the next night), and we have a private cabin to hide in with air con, and there are plenty of bars aboard to keep us entertained.

Next post may be from Kalymnos, or from the Ferry to Thessenolaki, even the ferries have internet here!

Rhodes, but where's the Collossus?

2009-07-05T12:59:00.003+01:00

Arrived in Rhodes, Greece on Sat 4th July, after a rather boring flight from Cyprus to Athens, a delayed plane (not sure why), then sitting on the runway for another 2 hours while security threw a group of Greeks off the plane. Wish we knew what they were saying, was rather heated for a while, with some fists being thrown about.

Weather is much more forgiving than Cyprus, only a lovely 22-24 deg, and a nice breeze. Got up really early this morning to take some photos before the hordes of tourists came piling off their cruise ships. Cats everywhere, most are strays. Staying at 'Mango Rooms', a nice budget place with double rooms, and a bar right in the middle of the twisting Old Town alleyways in a lovely square.

Found a fantastic taverna last night, Taverna Kostas, which is in the Loney Planet, so not that off the beaten track, but the food was good price and really nice and rustic (spicy meatballs YUM!). Today we trawled the tourist trap shops for a while, and we both picked up knock off sunglasses for €6 each (Gucci for me!), then up a tourist-trap clocktower (which did happen to have the best view in the Old Town), and onto the Palace of Knights, which is full of mosaic floors 'borrowed' (forcibly removed?!) from the Island of Cos (Kos).

K is off on his own now doing some exploring, as I'm too tired to go out in the sun.

Next stop, the island of Kos, via ferry tomorrow afternoon.

First stop - Cyprus

2009-07-03T17:29:00.004+01:00

We've arrived at our first stop on the mammoth tour of Europe, Cyprus!

Our first stop was Pafos for a night, staying in a Holiday apartment right on the harbour/beach, with a very welcome swimming pool.

Yesterday we hired a car and drove up to Polis and the rather disappointing 'Baths of Aphrodite', had a nice ocean swim, then back down to Limmasol and through to Lefkosia.

The weather is fantastic, it hit 34 deg C today in Lefkosia (Nicosia), which might not have been the best choice of day for a walking tour outside the Venetian City walls. We've been all over Lefkosia today, including into the Turkish occupied section of the city, where we looked at the mosques and indoor markets. To cross into the North of the city, we had to get issued Turkish visas on a piece of paper to keep in our passports - the short 20m walk through the UN 'green line' zone was like walking into another country all together, from a modernised, busy city, to a small Turkish town. Dinner tonight will probably be at a Taverna, which doesn't really get going until 9.30-10pm.

Tomorrow we fly to Rhodes, from Larnaka Airport, so we have about a hour to drive tomorrow morning to reach the airport.

No photos online yet, we need to find an internet cafe or connection we can upload some pics from, hopefully soon.

Edit: Uploaded some pics, and added to post

Baaaa! UK ad filmed in Wellington Train Station

2009-06-13T14:55:00.003+01:00

Keep seeing the Trainline ad come up on the telly, and always thought it had been filmed at Wellington Train Station (in New Zealand).

Turns out it was! And they're not hiding it - there's a note on their site:

The advert was shot in Wellington Station, New Zealand. Why? Because sheep in the UK don't have woolly coats in the summer.

I've always liked the main building at Wellington Train Station - bit of a shame the platforms are so rubbish tho! They've managed to hide the supermarket that's taken over one end of the main entrance, and some of the old drycleaning shops etc (are they still there?!). The timetable board shown in the Ad isn't there tho, must have got that from a UK station and spliced it in.

Here's the ad for anyone that hasn't seen it:

The trainline.com link.

A few (?!) years ago while walking through Wellington, we spotted another UK ad being filmed, for Sugar Puffs. Starring the 'Honey Monster', he was jumping down onto a skip in an alleyway just off Courtney Place. Not knowning who the Honey Monster is, it looked rather weird to us! Been looking on YouTube, but can't find that ad. Let me know if anyone finds it?

Row row row your boat..

2009-06-06T13:58:00.002+01:00

... or not, as the case may be for these poor boats!

Taken at Lake Windermere, Lake District, England.

and we're off!

2009-05-13T20:08:00.003+01:00

next group of ebay auctions have just started...

broken MacBook 13" (white)

Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop

Crumpler laptop bag

Wireless keyboard and Optical Mouse

And my beloved Canon 350D + a whole lot of accessories and 2 lenses (going to miss you! *sniff* *sob*)!

My life as an eBay'er

2009-05-10T17:17:00.004+01:00

We've decided to have a HUGE clear out of stuff we don't really need anymore, and the eBay'in has started. 2 days of shredding laptop hard drives, reinstalling Windows (euck!), dragging out old dusty boxes, looking for those install and driver CD's that I *swore* were still in the box, a few hours crafting up the listings in GarageSale (a rather nice Mac OSX app for creating eBay auctions), and a photo-shoot later, and we're ready to go.

First item up: a copy of Partition Magic 7 (with cd, licence key and user guide). Bidding starts at 50p (postage extra)... bargain!

Still to come this week:

A Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop, my prized Canon 350D+18-55 kit lens with extra lens and accessories, a Crumpler laptop bag, wireless keyboard + optical mouse, and a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop.

Later in the month/early June:

2x APC UPS backup systems, a Samsung 17" LCD monitor, and anything else we find while packing up.

London Marathon 09 images

2009-04-28T18:50:00.005+01:00

Shots from the London Marathon.

Update- a selection are now up for sale on Alamy.com.
Celebs, the elite, and the plain ol' wacky :)

G20 for sale!

2009-04-23T18:40:00.005+01:00

Totally forgot to post that my g20 images are up for sale on Alamy.com.

All available under Editorial licenses only.

I'm shooting the London Flora Marathon this weekend also (got myself a press pass), so they will also go up on Alamy. If anyone out there wants me to look out for them at the finish, drop me your runner ID, and estimated finish time - if I'm still in the Media Gantry, be sure to wave as you go by :)

Chewy Anzac biscuits [del.icio.us]

2009-04-18T03:59:21-07:00

so long, and thanks for all the hits

2009-04-05T16:34:00.004+01:00

The last few days have been rather exciting on my flickr photostream - was getting around 400 hits a day for two days there!

No big suprise really - posted up a big set of images from the G20 protests, and they got quite popular.

Now to work out how to get the views back up to even half that level - I'm back to my usual 30-40 views a day now.

Protests turn nasty

2009-04-01T20:36:00.005+01:00

Almost got myself caught up in a clash between peaceful protesters and Riot police...! Got some video and photos... flickr set is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rachaelr/sets/72157616232224840/

Writing maintainable SQL [del.icio.us]

2009-03-31T01:43:21-07:00

Ajaxload - Ajax loading gif generator [del.icio.us]

2009-03-30T12:15:51-07:00

'Loading' animated gif creator

Epping Forest

2009-03-24T19:46:00.004Z

Took a wander around Epping Forest on Sunday - covered 11.5 kms over the afternoon, lugging a 400mm f5.6L lens around! Fantastic lens, will hire one again if I'm after some more wildlife pics :)

As it is spring, there were a lot of Mandarina Duck and Geese chasing each other about which was pretty comical at times. Rest of the set is on flickr here.

Monument

2009-03-15T17:40:00.002Z

Well worth the 300-odd step climb to get to the top! Frustratingly, the viewing platform has small size mesh 'protecting' the public. Which is fine for teeny digicam lenses, but no good for a wide angle SLR lens, booo!

Almost gone

2009-03-01T19:24:00.001Z

West Pier, Brighton, UK. There's not a lot left now, after the fires.

Safari 4 beta - first impressions

2009-02-24T21:47:00.003Z

First... it's fast! Really quick rendering and DNS resolution.

Good:

- Coverflow history - probably a bit too gimmicky for me, but it's a nice idea

- fast fast fast!

- CSS3 support - tho I've not found many sites that make use of many new features

- Resizeable text areas! Just spotted this on a forum I post on... some text areas (not too sure how it's defined) have a grabby handle on the bottom right corner, for making a text area bigger. Nice feature :) Not sure if it messes up layouts at all.

Bad:

- For some reason, installing this causes Mail.app to crash if growlmail notifications are enabled. Grrrr. had to go remove the growlmail bundle and turn off growlmail in the growl prefs to get Mail.app up and running (some webkit exception everytime mail was downloaded)

Middling:

- not too sure about the tabs yet - keep accidently shutting the wrong tab down, but that's cause i'm used to the X being on the right from firefox

- top sites page - I cleared out all their 'defaults' (cnn, disney, c'mon!), but it's not catching up with my browsing history yet. Will wait and see on this one..

That's about it for now - 30 mins in, and nothing else to moan about! Anything that speeds up browsing has got to be a good thing.

mini hackintosh

2009-02-22T18:03:00.004Z

Gizmodo have a nice walkthrough guide on turning a dell mini 9 into a 'hackintosh' using the Type 11 install.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook

I've been trying to convince the other half to let me do this to his mini 9, but I think he's enjoying the ubuntu install on there too much! Would make a very nice travel laptop tho - however it's fine with ubuntu too :)

shirts

2009-02-22T13:10:00.003Z

Shirts.
Shot at Broadway Market, Islington, London

Add Contact Pictures Using the Facebook iPhone App | JoshCampoverde.com [del.icio.us]

2009-02-13T11:07:11-08:00

One of those 'of course!' duh! tips - how to grab full screen photos from any app (Facebook in particular on this hint), and assign em to a contact.

Video - Multi Photo Picture Packages [del.icio.us]

2009-02-12T00:51:31-08:00

PhotoKeywords.com: keywording service [del.icio.us]

2009-02-08T03:58:54-08:00

Stock photo keywording engine from Yuri Accurs

The day London stood still

2009-02-02T19:55:00.002Z

A little bit of snow, and all of London is disabled! Quite funny really. Made for a very quiet day at work, as only a few people actually got as far as the office.

skate

2009-01-20T18:14:00.002Z

skate

Originally uploaded by rachaelr
taken on a walk between Finsbury Park and Alexander Palace last weekend.

Natural History Museum

2009-01-11T16:36:00.002Z

Natural History Museum

Originally uploaded by rachaelr

flickr funniness

2009-01-05T21:33:00.002Z

corkboard

Originally uploaded by rachaelr Every now and then, I check my flickr stats to see who's nosying about.
For some strange reason, I had 5 hits on this one yesterday, taking it to 100 hits all up! For a pretty rubbish photoshop job, it's got a lot of hits :)

River Thames

2009-01-05T19:29:00.002Z

River Thames, originally uploaded by rachaelr.

Wandering about on the Thames Path, early afternoon on New Years Eve. Was *freeeeezing* cold, and really overcast. Brrrr!

Shot from London Bridge, with view of Tower Bridge, HMS Belfast and City Hall.

macosxhints.com - A brief tutorial on symbolic links [del.icio.us]

2009-01-01T13:46:38-08:00

Keeping connected in Europe

2008-12-30T20:07:00.003Z

We're planning to spend a few months this year travelling Europe before returning to NZ for the medium term future, after 7 years of living in the UK.

To keep 'connected' while we're away, I've been looking into 3G data plans, so we can jam a 3G USB stick into either the MacBook or the husbands new Dell Mini 9 'netbook', and upload photos, email, and skype family and friends. Sadly, the only slightly decent option I can see, is via Vodafone UK, who have a £15/month plan (3G allowance), and a 'capped' roaming charge at around £8.50 (tho I can't find it anywhere on their site, so this is just rumor!) /day in certian countries. That *might* be OK, but it's only on a 24 month plan... which is crazy money :(

A lot of hotels in France and other western European countries have free wifi, but I have a feeling we won't be staying in hotels with that many star ratings for most of the trip!

I've tried to have a look around Vodafone sites in other countries, to see if we can get a 3G prepay sim, but as soon as you switch to English language, all you get is info on roaming in their country.

The EU has been working on lowering roaming costs in member states, but if you don't pick up a 12 or 24 month contract, it doesn't apply, so I'm not too sure of our options!

If anyone has any tips on staying connected around Western and possibly parts of Eastern Europe without using dodgy cyber-cafes with their malware laden PC's, or getting totally ripped off using my iPhone as a modem at £3/MB in EU states, and £6/MB anywhere else (need to pwn the phone also to get that working which I haven't got around to yet), let me know in comments.

Borough Market Dec 08

2008-12-28T15:43:00.003Z

Borough Market Dec 08 - buying our xmas provisions, yum!
Originally uploaded by rachaelr

Fixation - Canon dealers [del.icio.us]

2008-10-12T05:20:20-07:00

5D mk II

3D Reflections in Photshop, Photoshop : Tutorials : Dr Quincy [del.icio.us]

2008-09-08T23:49:18-07:00

Lorem Ipsum dummy text generator [del.icio.us]

2008-06-20T05:04:46-07:00

nice dummy text generator. can specifly num paragraphs, num bytes, num words etc

SVN red book [del.icio.us]

2008-06-18T03:25:47-07:00

svn red book

Tower Hill to St Pauls [del.icio.us]

2008-05-26T23:46:40-07:00

Grunge Fonts [del.icio.us]

2008-04-09T03:10:46-07:00

Lighting Essentials for Photographers [del.icio.us]

2007-11-25T03:26:12-08:00

glam type lighting - one brolly light, three reflectors