New camera

Posted on January 8, 2010 by hoboshutterbug

Just a quick note: my new camera has arrived, and I have started playing with it. I got a very simple Olympus dSLR – the E-420 http://www.photographyblog.com/news/olympus_e_420/ to replace my beloved advanced zoom Olympus SP-550UZ that was severely damaged a year ago. Most of the photos I’m posting so far have been taken with my Olympus SP-550UZ, but the display screen is completely cracked and useless. It is a fantastic camera, with an 18x optical zoom and a wide 28 mm lens, but the cost of fixing the display ($200) was just not worth it to me, considering the price of new cameras. My new dSLR cost $350 CAN and my telephoto lens cost another $100, so it was a worth while upgrade.

I also got a little point-and-shoot Olympus X-560WP that goes underwater, but that thing is going back. It takes really grainy photos, which is a shame, since I really wanted a pocket-size camera for moments when a dSLR is a pain in the butt. I’ll keep an eye on the sales.

Next post, I promise to tell you folks a tad about me. I’m not sure who knows me out there, and who has randomly stumbled upon me, so I’ll take a bit of time in the next few days.

10 hours in Athens

Posted on January 7, 2010 by hoboshutterbug

A couple of years ago I flew from Montreal to Tel Aviv with what should have been a 14-hour stop over in Athens. Bad weather shortened it to 10 hours, but that was ample time to get from the airport to the Acropolis and back. I failed to take one thing into account: Christmas. Silly me. I’m Jewish, so I forget about minor little holidays like the birth of Christ. This incidentally would explain why I was able to get a fairly decent price with only a few weeks notice for a round trip ticket from Montreal to Tel Aviv without having to stop in New York or Toronto. Continue reading →

Obligatory toilet post

Posted on January 6, 2010 by hoboshutterbug

If you get enough travelers together in one location, a few inevitable topics of conversation inevitably come up. The usually revolve around a few basic subjects:

I almost died doing this stupid thing
I can’t believe how cheap the beer was in this location (there was one bar in Sihanoukville on the beach that had draught beer for $0.25 a glass – that night ended painfully)
I got ripped off doing this
I pooped where? There? Really?

Continue reading →

A new decade, a new start, a new blog… same ol’ hobo

Posted on January 6, 2010 by hoboshutterbug

I’ve been blogging intermittently since 2002. I have a Live Journal account that goes through periods of abuse, periods of neglect, and everything in between, but it serves its purpose as a mostly first-person rambling journal. It is a random online collection of my thoughts since 2002, but it’s not really what a blog is supposed to be. Now that the hangover of New Year’s has dissipated, I can get down to the nitty gritty details. It’s time for a new blog for the new decade. I don’t know why haven’t gotten around to this yet, but it’s time… Well I’m sure I’ve got some forgotten account somewhere taking up precious server space but amounting to nothing. The quintessential question: what should I write about? One should always write about what they know. That ultimately leaves:

Travel (or hobo backpacking, if you prefer)
Photography
Cuisine
Rats (not to be confused with actually cooking rats, which I do not condone)
Environmental issues

Which all sort of tie together, don’t they? You can’t write about travel without illustrating your stories with photos you took, or appropriately ganked with credit. You could in theory write about cuisine without photos, but I sure wouldn’t want to read those blogs. I want to see what you’re eating, and wonder why my attempt looks nothing like that. I could write about rats without posting photos, but then you wouldn’t see the fuzzbutts through my eyes and understand why I fall head over heals in love with them every day. I don’t mean rattus norvegicus, of sewer and NYC subway fame, but rattus norvegicus as a domesticated entity, such as exhibit A:

But this will not be a rat blog per say, although they might pop up periodically. And finally I pondered writing about environmental issues, as I hold them dear to my heart. But there are countless watchdog blogs out there to begin with (again, I think I have one in my name out there somewhere, possibly written in French) and that wasn’t necessarily my aim. Then it hit me. I need to write about traveling, eco-tourism, culinary arts of the world, and environmental issues. But these subjects are not mutually exclusive. So I made a Venn diagram to justify my web existence instead of stealing one. http://classtools.net/widgets/venn_1/MMEWX.htm

I guess this will be a photo blog. It will force me to do something with the 20+ gigs of photos I have sitting in my hard drive. It will give me an excuse to justify the cameras – a new dSLR is on its way right now, as is a little point & shoot number that can go under water. And heck – why not… I can mention it. I self-published this little photography number recently: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1030957.