A slideshow

Click (or right click -> Save target as) for full size! Click here to see them in Flickr. I almost forget yesterday was Canada Day. Happy (belated) Canada Day! I found a fantastic free photo stitcher, apparently developed (probably as a thesis project) by two guys at UBC. It was able to effortlessly stitch panoramas that commercial software (demo versions, anyway) had a lot of trouble doing automatcially. So, above are some results. Click here to go to the Panoramas set I created in Flickr where these (and in the future, more) panoramas are stored. I've also attempted some wide angle shots by stitching shots from my measly video camera (which is pretty good at taking HD video but quite inept at taking any seriously good looking photos). The results, I thought, are quite nice with a little touchup in Photoshop. See the full set here. If you care to follow my entire weekend album with guest star Jermaine, click here. Last note: uploading videos has become highly impractical with this slow internet connection, but I'll try my best as I go along.

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4 day weekend

Jermaine was here to visit, and I took a 4 day weekend. We spent most of our time walking around Stockholm, but this time I actually knew more or less where I was going. Photos coming right up. This was hopefully the first of many 4 day weekends I'll be having. Discount airlines here operate more like bus companies, which makes fares cheaper than bus or train in many cases. I've planned a trip to Paris this month, Austria with Brian to visit Kari in September, and possibly one or two more vacations in between. The boss was nice enough to grant me days off whenever I'd like as long as I make up the hours, which works great because weeknights here are a little dull and I might as well stay at work.

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Panorama test

Here's Stockholm from the top of city hall. No, I can't take credit for the panorama. It came from Wikipedia, by the original artist Johannes Akkach. I'm using it to test the embed feature of this panorama upload website I found. Now that I know it works, I have a couple of really nice panoramas of my own from this weekend to stitch and upload. Personally I think 360 panoramas are the best way to share the experience of "being" somewhere, so I might start doing that more often!

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Backtracking - Stockholm

During my first week here I visited central Stockholm a total of 4 times, partly because I had a transit pass that lasted the whole week, but mostly because the hostel wasn't exactly the place for a fun evening. Yes, I stayed in a hostel for 4 nights before I moved into my apartment. In any case, downtown Stockholm is about a 30 minute transit ride from where I live and work. Since it doesn't get dark until at least 11pm, it was quite easy to go down there for an evening or weekend visit.

During each visit I ended up spending most of my time in about the same areas, just so I won't get too lost. There will be plenty more to visit later on. Photos are posted on Flikr, and I hope to have a short video soon.

In case you didn't notice, I geotag most of my photos in Flickr, for those who are curious where I've been on the map.

This is the last of the backtracking posts... Now let's live in the present.

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First post

Two weeks in Sweden and I finially decided to start a blog. For those who aren't convinced I'm actually in Sweden, hopefully now you'll have your proof.

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