The Classic

Had to start with tulips of course, playing around with the camera and lighting.

Next up is hopefully some urban shots around Amsterdam.

Upgrade - Better Late Than Never

I've been a standard point-and-click photographer for the last 20 years but have finally decided to indulge a long-hidden interest by purchasing my first ever SLR camera.

I trawled through a lot of review sites and spoke with a few friends and decided a good starting point is the Canon EOS 1000D.

So hopefully as I start playing around with some of the settings I'll be able to start uploading some more interesting pictures than I've been able to produce to date.

Casual Gaming

Most Internet users these days are probably casual gamers without even realising it.

If you haven't wasted a few months weeks hours minutes playing one of these then you should give it a go.

Optimum Change

Here in the Netherlands pocket change seems to be a very important part of day-to-day life (especially at the supermarket!). We can hardly pay for anything in cash without being asked if we have the exact change. I'm not sure if there's a shortage of change or it's just what people are used to, but each to their own.

After seconds of intense research one morning I determined the optimum amount of change to put in my pocket and I felt a discovery of this nature must be shared with the world!

The smallest coin that generally gets used here now is the 5 cent coin, so it's important to have one of those, also 2 x 10c, 1 x 20c, 1 x 50c, 2 x €1, 1 x €2. And for the notes preferably 1 x €5, 2 x €10, 1 x €20 and a €50.

"Why?", I hear you roll your eyes and ask? Well this enables you to produce any combination from €0.05 to €99.95, with 5c increments :)

Metro Tickets

We found ourselves spending New Year's eve heading to our friends place in Amstel. We took the Metro from Nieuwmarkt and the guard was already at the machine helping everyone out with their tickets. We'd done it many times before so we started doing our usual purchase: 4 x 1 Hour tickets (one each for the outbound journey and one each for the return trip since it would be more than an hour before we'd return).

The guard then told us that the Metro would be closed 8pm till 1am, which we were surprised to learn, and he also told that we only needed to buy 1 ticket each as long as we checked out properly at Amstel... because the tickets last for an hour of usage, NOT an hour from when they were purchased... so we've thrown away a dozen or so usable cards over the last year! Ah well, at least we found out now rather than after another year of living here!