2015-02-03: Forced Activities

Equipment Review: Cameras

I have never learned how to take photos properly
I point vaguely and press the button
I dislike the way pictures come out with flash On my little Panasonic TZ20 I shoot aperture priority and as low f stop as it will go 
When they aren't blurry they look good I think
I have an awful lot of blurry photos of people doing stuff in low light
I have read up on this a bit now
I have a New Camera it is a Nikon D3300 with 35mm f1.8 lens.

Look Mum, I'm getting all artistic and stuff. Now I need to add explosions in photo shop. Or French people kissing.

Same shot 3 seconds later with the Panasonic

Pros:

• It focusses really fast.
• It does continuous shooting which makes me sound like a pro

• It works well in low light
• It is also a cheap camera by "real" camera standards  (camera ĄU$600, lens AU$250)
• It has great reviews which seem to fit my particular skill set (none)

Cons:

• It doesn't fit in my pocket making it less spontaneous
• For some people the lack of zoom in this lens would be an issue, I never use zoom really anyway. I can walk closer if I have to.
• The memory card flap is on the side, on the Panasonic it is at the bottom so if I pick it up without a memory card the cover springs open and reminds me. With this camera I forgot to take a memory card to training last night.

Rating: 7.5/10 (so far, I will probably get stronger feelings as I use it more, feelings make me seem like a real boy)

I am an observant (and loquacious) fellow. I saw cabbage leaves on the table. This can only mean one thing (well there is only one thing I can think of).

Subtle Clues

Gołąpki! Meat wrapped in cabbage with a light tomato sauce. Hooray! Unfortunately I think there are trust issues regarding recipes. By the time I had worked out what was happening they were made and all I was allowed to do was eat them. Sometimes life is hard.

I suspect without the Polish cabbage it would be hard to make anyway.

I had to do a lot of work so not much happened during the day. We both find it easy towards the early evening to just throw our hands in the air and call the day a write-off and do nothing. Sometimes I manage to get enough energy together to review a beer but usually I just drink it. Ewa has stated that I have to occasionally kick her arse and make her leave the house.

There is a Regional Specialities bar and restaurant next to the gym. We can walk over there and have something to drink. That counts as an achievement for the day.

Food and Beverage Review: Gramar - Regionalne Specjały

ul. Warszawska 74 lok. 1
http://www.regionalne-specjaly.pl/

Doing my "oh I am excited" shuffle

I used to use ratebeer.com to keep track of which beers I had tried and which I liked. They had lots of charts and such. One of which was "Countries you have tried beer from". This shop (which is not a restaurant) could help out a lot of people struggling with Eastern European country checklists.

They have a whole bunch of the beers on tap as well but stupid licensing rules won't let you drink more than a little thimble sized glass to taste them.

No amount of "oh look over there" suggestions would convince them that I ought to be able to have a pint. I thought Eastern Europeans were meant to be corrupt law breaking types.

They carry a bunch of candies and such from other countries as well. I was less interested in them except for a cheese and chocolate one labelled "Hops". I shall eat this later. For now I want beer.
Fortunately there is a bar down the road which carries a lot of the beers. After filling my backpack with bottles for later we went there.

Rating: 6.5/10 (Good range even if I don't know many of the beers, Svyturys Double Bock is interesting in a thimble)

A couple of blocks up the road is Hary Motorcycle (http://harypub.pl/). 18:00 on a Tuesday is not the most popular time for MotorCycle pubs.

Not a mirror. Motorcycle Pub Ladies are friendly I guess. Ewa was glad the bar was quiet.

Svyturys Scotch Ale is not a new favourite for me. It has the biscuit malt of a scotch ale but a bit of geuze style sourness which just didn't do it for me. Interesting though. Could grow on me. I think the sourness might have been in the thimble of double bock as well. Might be a feature of Lithuanian beers maybe. Will have to drink more to find out.

The Motorpub mechanics are not very good, that would never get a warrant of fitness.

Their lager (jasne) is reasonably well made but lagers don't grab me in a big way.
The bar has a downstairs smoking area which is dark little caverns. Seems like it would be a good bar for spending a night ranting and drinking, I may have done some.
Oh and they appear to do karaoke as well. Not sure if this is a plus or a minus.

I think the sauce was garlic... oh the camera has a way of recording audio notes with pictures. I doubt it would have been intelligible for this one but I must try in future.

I must have drunk more than I thought as I suddenly had a craving for a kebab when I saw the sign by the taxi. Kebab here was with cabbage, beetroot, chips and a sauce. I must eat more kebabs to collect a rating of worldwide variations in them.

Yep that's a good reason.