A photoblog and other things

Alberto
Beryl
Chris
Debby
Ernesto
Florence
Gordon
Helene
Isaac
Joyce
Kirk
Leslie
Michael
Nadine
Oscar
Patty
Rafael
Sandy
Tony
Valerie
William

I’m going to be getting familiar with some of these names, I think. I should start a pool or something as to how many, and which hurricane/s is/are going to hit the east coast of Florida. I will bet on three hurricanes: Ernesto, Gordon and Patty.

I think if a hurricane is getting close and dangerous this year I’ll head up to Canada – and probably have a snowstorm hit. Ah well, the powder will be good for snowboarding then I guess.

Another thing, the 10 most expensive hurricanes to hit the US (source = Wikipedia) (costs are inflation adjusted):

Katrina ($75B)
Andrew ($44.9B)
Charlie ($15.4B)
Ivan ($14.6B)
Hugo ($12.6B)
Wilma ($12.2B)
Agnes ($11.6B)
Betsy ($11.1B)
Rita ($9.4B)
Frances ($9.1B)

I’ve watched 6 of those come through while I’ve been here in the US. Daaaaamn.

Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to stuff… like Skype for example. For those of you I know back in Oz, England, wherever you’ve gone, my Skype handle is daecks. So anyway, add me to your contact list! Or, let me know what other VoIP networks you may use. Or, continue thinking “PK, I don’t really want to talk to you…”. This stuff should be all operational within the next few days.

I’m heading back to Australia for nearly 2 weeks at the end of this month. I’ll be in Adelaide from the 22nd April till May 2nd. During the weekdays I’ll actually be working but my weeknights should be relatively free. On the weekends I have to fit in a bachelor party, wedding and probably a 21st and a 50th as well. It would still be awesome to catch up any friends back there! Let me know if you’ll be around by sending an e-mail to daecks@gmail.com. Due to me losing a lot of my contacts, it’s probably pretty likely I don’t have your number.

are now online here. I don’t know what I’m going to do about the movies yet. I’d like to post them but having a sort-of permanent hosting site for them is difficult. Well, perhaps I could try Google video or something.

Anyways, Ultrafest was awesome. I actually had to take my shoes off at one point because my feet hurt from jumping around so much.

There was only one thing that pissed me off that whole day and you know it’s going to be one of those weird things that just get to me. In the Carl Cox tent there was a guy with some really expensive looking DSLR camera, much more expensive than mine. You know, he had the whole proper camera bag thing, the big hot-shoe flash arrangement, the I’m-too-cool-for-skool stance, a posse of fairly attractive women around him. I’m there with my point and shoot wishing I had my DSLR with me but knowing one had to have a special pass to bring such cameras in. Anyway, he was standing around the middle of the room, probably around 40 feet from the front of the stage. He brings out the camera to get a shot of the DJ, bear in mind it’s pretty bright in the tent because of the insane lighting…

He uses his bloody flash. Looking down at the photo he’s taken, and I could see the image result too, he sees some bright heads in the foreground reflecting the flash and not much in the background. The DJ couldn’t reflect the flash coz he was just too bloody far away, wasn’t he!?! I nearly went up to him and said “mate, forget the flash. Crank your ISO up. Set your shutter speed to something like 1/60. See what results you get”. But I didn’t, I thought I would have looked like a dickhead or something, or maybe he had a meat cleaver stored somewhere that he would have felt like using. Every shot he took he used the flash. Anyway, point is that’s one of my pet peeves: people using flash for objects further than 10 feet away (perhaps 20 feet if it’s a more powerful hot-shoe flash). It pisses me off. It almost pisses me off more than people who pull up at stop lights and are always moving forward trying to predict when the lights go green. Then, when the lights actually *do* go green, they stay there for like 5 seconds. That really pisses me off.

Pissed (the non-drunk meaning) Kristian signing off.