I know this poll is mostly biased towards Canon/Nikon users but oh well! So if you're a Nikon/Canon user, let me know which type of cell phone you own. I'm curious.

Canon gear, iPhone
Nikon gear, iPhone
Canon gear, Android
Nikon gear, Android
Canon gear, BlackBerry
Nikon gear, BlackBerry
Canon gear, Windows Mobile
Nikon gear, Windows mobile
Canon gear, no cell phone
Nikon gear, no cell phone
Other (please specify in the comments section)

  

Last week's mess will soon be just another memory. The insurance company paid off the price I paid for that car almost in full. I'm going to try living without the luxury of a car - using my girlfriend's/my old mazda when necessary. The idea of having no car debt for the next 5-6 years seems awfully nice right now.

I released a new site design today, which has a few sources of inspiration (the front page is very much like www.ricecracker.net for example.) The old site can be found at 2010.miklos.ca.

I remember driving through the town of Edelény (starting at photo #22 in the gallery) ... crazy stuff.
http://jui.cc/lN

Cleaned the car today, inside and out. My advice to people wanting to buy brand new cars: do it only if you don't care about winter wear. The car suffered some significant scratches during the past few months due to all the salt on the road. There's also an unusual amount of wear on the front edge of the rear door on the driver's side which I can't explain. I hope the extra money invested in the paint protection will cover the repair. One thing's for sure, I'm going to think twice before putting another brand new car through a Canadian winter, even a mild one like we just had.

Last night I learned that scrambled eggs don't have to be made in a frying pan. It is also possible to microwave them in a mug, and get evenly cooked, fluffy scrambled eggs.

We're going to Hungary next month, and we have to jump through hoops to get Nikki's passport. They didn't accept her birth certificate, it was "void", so we have to wait until one arrives that cost us $65 because we added an extra $30 to the price to make sure it gets here in 5 business days. Anyway, back to the passport thing... Here's a beautiful document justifying why a Canadian passport costs $87CAD: http://www.ppt.gc.ca/support/faq.aspx?lang=eng&id=540

The fee for an adult passport is CAN$87. Of this amount, CAN$25 is used to recover the costs incurred by the Department of Foreign Affairs in providing consular services to Canadians abroad.

As for the remaining CAN$62, the breakdown is as follows:

- 47% towards security fees (e.g.: examination, guarantor checks)
- 43% towards production fees (e.g.: material, printing)
- 6% towards administration fees (e.g.: business sustaining)

Couple of questions arise:

1) Isn't the abbreviation for Canadian Dollars "CAD"

2) "For the remaining $62, the breakdown is as follows" ... 47%+43%+6% = 96% ... What? Where's the extra 4% going?

3) Let's forget the mistakes on the site, do our taxes not already pay for government employees to sit on their ass and do their job? Or is their job strictly to sit on their ass and collect good money? Any "actual" work gets added on and broken down into 47%=THEIR already paid manual labour, 43% WE pay for their ink and paper and 6% administration fee a.k.a. just to round it off to 100% .. or wait...

What a bunch of bull.

Nikki found her sleeping like this today.

She's been known to sleep in weird positions.

In case you weren't following, Canada just won gold against USA. Our friend Mr. Varga was on the edge of his seat.

I had the Salmon Teriyaki -- delicious!
http://www.princesteakhouse.com/

We put the Mazda back on the road. It's such a drastic difference between that car and a brand new car. So many noises, sounds... Poor thing, she's mad at me for having her off the road for 5 months.

We got a bit of snow this morning... I mean not much, but nonetheless it is a reminder of the long winter ahead of us.
See today's photo archives.

The Forte's first oil change takes place at 8am. It's almost like seeing your child off on the first day of daycare. Almost. I don't really know though, as I don't have children...

Mr. Salanki once said to try coffee with nothing but honey in it. We all thought it was strange, but after messing with the ratio of coffee to honey--if you get it right--it's actually quite good. Mr. Salanki makes homemade honey, I would guess he's tried it in a lot of different foods/drinks. I've got some of his honey that I've been putting in my coffee lately and this morning's ratio turned out to be perfect. Worth recording anyway...

There are tons of pastebins out there, but I needed one for myself so here's my take. Keep in mind that more features will be added as time goes on.

Back to cottage cheese and pear halves.

Learned about overflow-x

We're back from a weekend at the island. Lots and lots of rain... click here for the photos from the trip. We ended up going to Algonquin park as well, which was very nice. If you've ever thought of going, but haven't yet, I hope you do soon! In other news; the rain we got up north traveled down to the region as well and as such Hamilton got flooded this weekend.

This past week I put a roll of black and white film in the Rolleiflex and shot most of it on Wednesday when we took my cousin Anita to Toronto. Yesterday we developed the roll in my basement and the pictures turned out fairly decent. See them in today's archives.

Nikki and I took my cousin Anita to Toronto today.. we went up to the CN Tower and showed her around town a bit... we also drove by Christie Pits and saw all the garbage the people had dumped there because of the current garbage strike. It smells terrible. Sort of like... prunes--like when an old man is making moonshine and has barrels and barrels full of rotting plums...not that I know what that smells like--mixed with an outhouse that hasn't been cleaned in weeks which has been sitting in the hot sun ever since. It was also interesting to see all the city workers on strike... man. Not a good time to be playing the tourist thing... such a shame! On the bright side I got some photos out of it (see the archives) and even shot a few frames with the Rolleiflex, which I'll have developed soon.

I noticed some changes in the Gmail interface today and I'm not sure what to think of it yet. I used to change my site all the time; functionality, design... everything. I mean I just changed it recently--albeit a minor CSS change (went from a white background to a black one if you haven't noticed!)--but the functionality has stayed the same. Changes like this new Gmail change makes me realize that when people use a site as often as one might use the Gmail interface, they're used to a certain way of navigating... changing that is not necessarily good!

Here is a photo of a storm about to hit our city. Taken 2 hours ago.

My dad was feeling nostalgic last night and brought out some baby photos of me. You can see them amongst today's archives.

Bought a new domain: dataforever.com -- which I have no use for at the moment but I'm sure it'll be useful for something eventually.

Went to Casino Niagara with Nikki and I ended up winning a 20,427 credit jackpot (Blazing 7s in a V pattern above) on the nickel slots. It actually got rounded up to 20,430 credits.
I'm pretty happy about it all. :) Half of the money is already in the bank and the other half has been distributed amongst family members.

One: I bought a new violin bow. The other one (cost me $425 at the time) got warped over the years. I picked up a new one for $125... It works wonders. If the bow is warped, it skips on the string. Now I know. I thought I was just playing it all retarded... (well...)

Two: I learned that Parker Jotter pens used to have concave buttons when they were made in the USA. Now they're made in the UK and they have rounded buttons. I bought one on eBay with a concave cap. It cost me $10.

Three: Shut your mouth. Of course these things are important.

For my mom's birthday, we surprised her with the blue VW Beetle she's been coveting for years. Here are some photos from the dinner party last night. Once she figured out that she was holding the keys to a car--which took a few minutes because the key's all fancy-like (well fancier than any key she's ever had to deal with)--she was very excited. :)

I scanned most of my negatives from the Hungary trip finally. I will have a gallery up soon. I have a good idea how I want to present them. For now I put a couple up, the latter of the two is on the main page today. It is an image of an old lady in Apagy, making cabbage rolls with her next of kin (who was sitting on the bed, camera left, out of view.) I have to tell you those were probably the best cabbage rolls I've ever had in my life. They made them in that very "kitchen"... :) I must also note that chickens, cats, dogs, PIGS(!) all liked to come and pay us a visit while we were sitting there in the kitchen. Man I miss that place, I truly do. It was so odd it was great. It was my childhood.

I shot 11 rolls of 35mm black and white and 3 rolls of medium format film during our visit to Hungary. Aside from that, I had 5 rolls of medium format shots left over from the island trip when we went up with the family and Peter back in July. I picked up all of these negatives today, and I'm a bit overwhelmed with the amount of scanning that's ahead of me :) ... Featured today is the first scan from the bunch, taken with the Rolleiflex, on Ilford 3200 film and I imagine that will stay up there for a little while until I decide what to do with (and how to present) the rest. If all else fails it'll just be a flickr set. The couple in the photo is my dad's old colleague and his wife, who still live in our old town (Apagy.) They're really good people. Very friendly and loving. It was great spending time getting to know them once again.

http://algieba.com/blog/index.php?img=153