My first DSLR

Yesterday I traded in my old Olympus mju:400 (Stylus in the US) for a new Olympus E-500 DSLR. I wasn't that happy with my old point-and-shoot anymore and wanted to upgrade to a DSLR to have more control and be able to learn to do some more serious photography. Being on a limited budged I had to go for an entry level DSLR and after reading some reviews I was hesitant about going for the E-500. The Nikon D50 or the Canon EOS 350D Digital Rebel XT would have been a better choice according to most of the reviews I read, but most of the packs available in my local stores were 100-200 € more expensive than the Olympus one including two lenses, that not including a memory card that I would have needed to buy as well if I had gone with either Canon or Nikon. Having three of the (expensive) xD cards that Olympus uses made the decision a bit easier for me. Sure, no camera in that price range is perfect, the E-500 has a few known downsides and I will likely discover more when learning to use it but I still expect it to be a solid learning tool for a DSLR newbie like me.

Until now I only had the time to unpack it play around for a few shots, I am a bit worried about the plastic body that has a nice finish but doesn't seem to be the most robust. After reading the manual I will start putting it into action over the week-end and hope to get back with my impressions.

Rolling Stones Barcelona Date announced

Well, I already know what to do on May 27th.
RollingStones.com events.tickets

Update to yesterday's twisters

Unfortunately I had no camera when I witnessed yesterday's Tornadoes here in Barcelona. Today the local newspapers had some photos. Foto: ANTONI PASTOR / EL PERIODICO

Google Base live and working!

Google Base is live and I just posted my first item, my mountain bike. I don't think that this will actually help me to sell it but it was the first thing I could think about that I could post. Posting an item is really easy and I wouldn't wonder if this eventually becomes the eBay killer everybody was talking about a few weeks ago when Google Base first surfaced.

Now where is my Google Wallet???

Well, let's try the base

First Base: "Posted by Bindu Reddy, Product ManagerToday we're excited to announce Google Base, an extension of our existing content collection efforts like web crawl, Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video. Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items. We'll host the items and make them searchable for free. There's more info here.Some organizations are already using Google Base. Here are a few examples.

'Students need as much information as possible when they are searching for the right college or university. Google Base helps us reach students and parents and deliver more of the information they need when making important college decisions.' - Hal Higginbotham, President, CollegeBoard.com

'We want to use knowledge and information about the environment to help motivate more responsible public and private action. With Google Base, we can bring the public key insights on sustainability issues – like climate change, human health, and resource consumption – and bring about change.' – Amy Cassara, Senior Associate, World Resources Institute

'CareerBuilder.com's business model is built on providing employers with as many avenues as possible to connect with job seekers. Feeding our jobs to Google Base "

Just observed two tornadoes

That was a cool sight, two tornadoes clearly visible from our office at the WTC in Barcelona, one over the sea, about a few miles out and one over land, not very far either. This was the first time I saw a real big tornado.

They were visible for at least ten minutes but are gone now.

Like I said a few posts ago... we now have a tornado season here in Spain!

Donavon Frankenreiter show in Barcelona

Donavon Frankenreiter did a great show tonight here in Barcelona.
Here the setlist:

• Butterfly
• Heading Home
• Swing On Down
• So Far Away
• On My Mind
• Bend In The Road
• What'Cha Know
• That's Too Bad
• Love
• Call Me Papa
• Stay Young
• Fool
• Free
• Make You Mine
• It Don't Matter

Special guest was The White Buffalo

This is so weird

It just started to snow here in Barcelona, very unusual and even more considering that it's November! Even though the snowflakes melt before touching ground, I never saw this before.

Slick browser-based AJAX IM solution

I just discovered meebo.com and will give it a try. I am just tired to install more and more software that makes a mess on my PC so the concept of browser-based applications realized in AJAX is very compelling to me.

More tornadoes!

This makes me wondering if there is anything such as a "tornado season" in Spain???
Another article in english.

Spanish press gets it all wrong

The Spanish free daily newspaper 20 Minutos announced the iPod Nano as being the new 'iPhone' - I wish they were right because the Motorola ROKR's design doesn't knock me off my feet.

What would you do if you had 630.000 € spare?

Why not charter this super-yacht for a week. I have been seeing this from my office window (the Barcelona WTC is in the middle of the port) for the last few days, it's the 116 meter Turama.

Tornado in Barcelona!

Yesterday was really really windy in Barcelona, but I would have never thought that there were tornadoes. These photos were all over the papers today, they were taken at or close to Barcelona's airport:

Great expectations!

The new Stones album due out very soon can now be listened to in full length at Rollingstones.com: A Bigger Bang. After a quick listening session I have to say that at least 50% of the songs are really good or great. My favorites so far: a really funky "Rain Fall Down", bluesy "Back Of My Hand", "It Won't Take Long", "Laugh, I Nearly Died" - which reminds me of Tattoo You's "Heaven" and even Keith's "Infamy" is not bad. I am counting down the six days remaining before I can buy it.

Evidence

I had never heard of this idiotic movement before reading the Wired article about Yomango yesterday. And then when walking home from work I found some evidence of it so I decided to bring my camera today and snap a picture of it. The text says "Pasa del consumismo absurdo" meaning "Ignore this riduculous consumerism".

Everybody's... (google) talking!

Yesterday evening I was all exited playing around with the new Google Desktop and adding some of the cool plug-ins and then this morning I heard the news about the new Google Talk. The first reactions seem to be that this new IM is nothing special and that more was expected from Google. The user interface sure looks good without all these ads and pop-ups that I remember from Yahoo IM, MSN Messenger and ICQ. Google Talk uses the open jabber standard so I guess a lot of those unhappy with its UI will use it through Trillian or Gaim. As for me I hope that over time Google's Gmail, Desktop, Talk, Blogger, Picasa and other utilities will become more and more integrated and finally offer me what I am really looking for (I will know when I see it!).

Finally Online!!!

After two month waiting I am finally online at home now. Spain really seems to be in the developing world when it comes to telecommunications. Let's see if my ISP will offer a good DSL service.

Just a small experiment

It cannot hurt to try this The J-Walk Blog Link Experiment, especially since I will finally get my Internet connection at home today and have to start thinking about getting to blog regularly again.

Still offline

Sorry, no new regular posts here. I still have no internet access and yesterday I cancelled with my provider after being tired of waiting two months for the installation of my line. I am looking for a different ISP now and still hope that one day I will have an access at home.

Waiting for connection

I haven't been blogging lately because I am currently waiting to get a new ADSL line at my home. Right now I have only access to the Internet at work but here I don't have time to blog. I hope to get the new line by next week.

Whoaaaaa!

Back at work this morning I was very happy to discover that my GMail
account was upgraded to 2GB. After six months or so I am only up to 4%
of Gmail storage and I wonder if I will ever approach the limit.
Anyone still needs an account? I still have plenty of invites for you.

Haven't seen a lot of april fool's news today, but Google is always on the innovative side! 

Nice Google logo today!

More Google logos here: http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html

Something's screwed up

Well, it seems like something is wrong with my PC, no virus, but
something is definately wrong. Some websites or parts of them do not
display correctly and I get strange "page not found (707)" errors,
never seen them before! Let's investigate a bit...

Where are my ads???

I really wonder what's wrong, for about two weeks now I haven't seen
any of the Google AdSense ads on any of my two blogs. The html code is
still in my templates... I don't understand. Already have contacted
Google support but no answer. Anyway, it's been a while that I haven't
posted anything new or interesting: too much work! I hope I'll be back
soon with something to say.

My first steps on Wallop, more on this to follow 

Cool site

Although I don't plan having a baby anytime soon this is a cool site that I wanted to share: The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager

Seems I am too stupid for the Shuffle

This seems to be the solution to my problem with audiobooks: Russell Beattie Notebook - Playing Audiobooks on the Shuffle
Maybe I shouldn't have cancelled my Audible account yet?

iPod Shuffle ups and downs

So I've used my Shuffle for a few hours over the last three days now
and I have to say that it seems to have more limits than I thought.
The first time I filled it using autofill I was pleasantly surprised
by the resulting playlist in shuffle mode. Naturally, I like most of
the music that I have bought, so I had to skip a track only once in a
while when for example one of my wife's mp3s came up. Speaking of my
wife, a negative thing about the iPod Shuffle is that I will probably
have to buy one for her as well - until then I have to share it, do I
have to blame that on Apple or my wife?
While listening to music from my library I never felt the need for a
screen, I recognized most of the songs, and if not... who cares, it
won't kill me!
Wanting to try all the capabilities of this player I got a trial
Audible account to download some free audiobooks and this is where the
no-screen-option becomes a problem. If you listen to George W. Bush's
inaugural speech (got this because it was a free download) I was more
than tempted to look at a screen to be able to see the remaining
time...
I got two more audiobooks and find it quite tiresome to listen to it,
switch back to listening to some music and then having to fast forward
through four hours of audio to be able to continuing to listen the
audiobook where you left it... I guess that I will never become a fan
of audiobooks, at least I can say that I tried.
Another thing that I still have to take some time for is to figure out
how to make this iPod work on two PCs. This seems to be a big problem
until now. I have one PC at home without Internet access and one at
work with Internet access. On both PCs the installation of iTunes
screwed up something, Windows won't shut down properly anymore and
there seems to be no way to fill up the iPod from two different
libraries without disassociating it from one every time. More on that
when I get some time to play around some more...

First contact with the Shuffle

My iPod Shuffle just arrived, 15 days after I ordered it from the
Apple Store - not too bad, I was fearing it would take longer until it
would be available in Europe. I have always liked Apple's designs but
was never really considering to buy something from them until the iPod
and iPod Mini appeared. However the arrival of the iPod Shuffle and
its competitive price prompted me to buy my first ever Apple product.
Now my first impressions upon opening that nice little green box:
small,... could have been a little shorter though, light,... very
light. Very nice look and general feel! The USB cap has a good fit,
don't really think this is something you would loose easily. Didn't
have time to install iTunes and load it so I just took it without the
headphones and headed back to work after lunch.
On my work PC I plugged it in and it was recognized within a few
seconds as removable drive. Loaded a 630MB video file on it that
couldn't fit on my 512MB USB drive - done after about 8 minutes.
Let's see this evening what else this little thing can do!
To be continued...

It's on its way...

Just received an eMail from the Apple store that my iPod Shuffle was
shipped and that I should receive it in three days. The estimated
shipment date was scheduled to happen on or before february 3rd, so it
seems that there is no shortage and the Shuffles are being shipped in
Europe now.

Last Gmail invitation gone

I have given away all my Gmail invitations for now. If you still need
one keep checking out my blog, I will let you know when I have new
ones.

The new iPod shuffle - I couldn't resist!

Usually I am not an impulsive buyer but I must confess I just ordered the brandnew Apple iPod shuffle that was announced at MacWorld Expo before yesterday. 149,-Euro at the Apple store for the 1GB model, I still wonder how to explain this to my wife! True to the original iPod style, the new shuffle just looks cool. Having always hesitated to get an original iPod or iPod mini because of their rather hefty price, this one made me crack even though it has some downsides like no screen as points out this article: MacCentral: Digital audio vendors not afraid of iPod shuffle .
Now I am eagerly awaiting it to arrive at my door - according to Apple it should ship before february 3rd here in Spain. Once I get it I will post my review and impressions on the latest of the iPod family.

Sunscape the Beach Resort Map

Most of the visitors I get seem to be interested in getting information about the new Sunscape the Beach Spa & Resort in Punta Cana. Something useful that I didn't make available until now is a map of the resort, so I posted one now, just click on the picture for a larger version. I hope it will help you getting an idea of the resort layout. If you have any question leave me a comment and I will be glad to answer you. In the future I will try to post some more information out of their brochure that I still have lying around somewhere. In the meantime, all of you who are considering to go to this fabulous resort... have fun!

The mystery of the human brain

Just found this while surfing some blogs: Welcome to Michland.........: can someone explain to me HOW this works? This trick is really hilarious, just try it:
While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.
Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right
hand.
Your foot will change direction and there's nothing you can do about
it!

More Gmail invitations

Here they are, just got 3 more invitations for a free 1GB Gmail
account. If you want one just leave me a nice comment and I'll send it
to you!

Interesting thought on world events

How comes that I am better at remembering plane crashes (where, when, how many victims approximately...) than remembering big natural disasters like earthquakes for example? This question came into my mind after reading these interesting thoughts: Malletrivia: Back when -I- was a kid, the world was a better place ... right ? Media coverage doesn't seem to be based on a certain number of victims but on a certain number of "western" victims. It seems that we tend to forget horrible events after a couple of weeks if they don't touch or indirectly touch the western civilization because they get way less media attention. In the case of the SE Asia quake and tsunami a very popular tourism region was directly hit - but who still remembers details of the other disasters such as the cyclone that killed over 130000 in Bangladesh in 1991?

Sorry, no more Gmail invitations

All my Gmail invitations have been sent out for now, sorry for those who didn't get one. As soon as I get more invitations I will let you know.