Cycling in the city (Copenhagen)

Since a while ago I have been looking at different cities and how ready they are to ride a bike on them. During this, almost, 2 years living in UK I have been going to work cycling more than the 80% of the days. My office is around 6 miles (10 km) away from my house in Ipswich. Cycling there takes between 25 and 40 minutes, depending on the weather conditions and the company (usually when you go with more people takes longer due to speaking).  Getting there is quite easy and save as we have a full cycling paths network inside and surrounding the town, so as soon as you can imagine you are inside one of this cycling paths.

Today, by using 4 different videos with true histories of people that lives in Copenhagen I would like to show the people how  easy and comfortable can be to go by bike to work skipping traffic jams, not looking for parking and also because it is increment friendly and healthy for yourself. Copenhagen is a city with more bikes than population and where it is not difficult to see entire families going anywhere by bike, from the dad in the shut that goes to work to the little kid that can either go with his own bike or in a special chair in his parents bike. This makes Copenhagen a place where the bike culture is deeply attached to the people and even if you go just for visiting it makes you feel that you have to ride a bike to know how would you feel in the city, kind of comparable as visiting the monuments and museums of the city.

In comparison with my home town Madrid, where cycling is basically a sport that you might do at the weekend and where if you go by bike in the city most likely you will be going through the side-way (which is illegal) because nobody respects you, where you don’t have spaces special for bikes, where it is almost impossible to combine bike and public transport because of restrictions in the metro for instance… So i wish this changes ASAP as Madrid, with all the hills that it has, can easily improve the quality of live with just a few changes in the infrastructure and car culture that we have over there. Other big cities in Spain have started to change this issue by implementing a hire bike service, where you can get a bike somewhere and drop it in a different place.

Hopefully with the Olympic Games candidature our politicians at Madrid think twice about this issue and act in consecuence.

Right, after all I have said here you can see the videos:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Intrusion into HDR

This is an idea that has been in my mind for quite a few time already but that until today, a sunny with cloud intervals in the sky I haven’t realized. So this morning, after being doing a few thins I had to wrap up I took my EOS 350d with the 18-55 lens and with my bike I went for a photo ride around Ipswich.

The topic I have chosen today it has been something very tipical in this country, the pubs. I haven’t taken a photo of all of them but I think that as a first approach you can figure out how they are. But let’s focus on the HDR which is what I wanted to try today.

As we can see on Wikipedia, this is a brief definition of HDR: In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.

The way you do it is taking the same picture 3 times at least with a different set up on the camera, meaning that you take a normal photo as if you only want to take one photo of the scene and then you take a high exposure and a low exposure of the same item, therefore it is highly recommendable the use of a tripod when you make this kind of photography. However if it is in daylight and the speed you use is fast enough you can take them without it.

To get the more possibilities and the best marked effect with HDR you must shut your photos using RAW format. Then the image is not compressed and it is easier to handle into a wide range of colours and other settings by the program you use. As the photo is taken in RAW, the weigh of this one is way more than a compressed one in JPG as many people use to take them, so have this in your mind because it is esasy to notice that we are running out of space in the card. To compose the final image that will produce the effect. I have used Adobe Photoshop CS4 in Mac OX to compose the HDR photography. The way you do it is really easy, as the programs does all the work for you appart of the postprocess that you would like to add to the result. I haven’t done anything after that because I liked the result and because I am still learning this work.

There are more examples of my ride into my flickr gallery so I invite you go around and have a look to them

When the car is cheaper than the public transport

Well, most of you know that now I have my car here in the uk, since I have it with me I have been using it to go to work, shopping, traveling a little bit around Ipswich,…
But let’s center on the main use that I give to my car, which is going to work everyday. Before having my bike and going riding as I do when the weather is convenient (I mean when it doesn’t rain) I used to go by bus to my work place, which is next to Ipswich. You can take 2 busses to go there, super route 66 and 66B (only in pick time). Apart from the fact that it is overcrowded, the 66 takes arouund 35 min to go there and a single ticket is 2,40 pounds where as the day ticket is 4,50 pounds and the weekly is 15 pounds, that makes you a mean of 60 pounds per month because it is better to get this kind of ticket rather than the monthly. Apparently 60 pounds for public transport is not that bad, but if you take into account that that ticket is only for one of the companies that is operating in Ipswich only, despite of being the biggest one, the ticket is quite expensive on my view.
On the other hand If we compare this with a car, that takes you from dor to dor about 10 min, because here we don’t have traffic jams due that this is not a big city as London, Madrid,… You have to pay a mean of 35 – 40 pounds in petrol per tank and with one tank you have enought to go from dor to dor the hole month and you are free to go anywhere anytime, not having to wait the queue in the street with the british weather.
I honestly think that is woth to go by car being this cheaper and faster.
My question is… Why the public transport is as expesive in the UK? If they claim that we have to be “green” and not pollute the atmosphere with our cars, why don’t they do something in this aspect to try to call people to the public transport?
All of this not entering in the discussion that if the petrol is cheapper why the price of the ticket is still rising?
I have to say that I still will go either by car or by bike, but I will try to avoid as much as I can the bus service in Ipswich.

Flickr was born again

It’s being time since I uploaded my last photo into flickr but after buy a pro account a couple of months ago and having done so many photos, finally I and feeding my account again with new photos.

Yesterday I started with 2 new sets.

• Porto, where I have uploaded some photos that I didn’t put on facebook due that I think that this 2 platforms are for different purposes.

• The second one is Oslo, this time in winter all snowy and white. I know that summer ones are not either there, but time to time I have a delay in this aspect that.

Apart from that, now that I have the uploader tool installed in my notebook it is going to be easier to upload photos directly from my computer to the gallery, due that it allows you to create sets, add tags, remove them… So it makes our lives easier on the managenment . I will be uploading photos untill I stay up to date. However, as I have been traveling quite a lot in the last few months I have to say that it will take long to finish that work.

Just to finish I want to invite you to have a look to the gallery and feel free to criticise the work done to imporove more and more my photography.

Maradona no es el único que engaña

Beuno, acabo de ver esto en Marca y no es que sea la mejor historia del mundo, xo a este tio yo le daba un oscar a la mejor interpretación por engañar a 3 personas (dos linieres y un árbitro) quizás tambien deba ir a las olimpiadas en la disciplina de salto, porque se le da bastante bien la cosa.

Mirar el vídeo y recordar, esto no lo hagais en casa.

Luego nos quejábamos del España – Corea que estaba mal arbitrado.

Gran Cagada

Ayer vi una noticia en la que leí una cosa que no me creía que pudiera pasar, pero sí. Antonio Lobato seguira dciendo tonterias el año que viene en La Sexta. Por qué lo han hecho? No voy a discutir que después de tanto tiempo Antonio no sea un “experto de la F1″ (a Fernando le conoze mejor que nadie, al resto…), pero la manera en la que narra las carreras no es la ideal.Por no hablar de las traducciones que hace en las ruedas de prensa dejándose la mitad de las palabras que dicen e incluso a veces cambiando verdad Antoñito? Para eso mejor cállate y deja que los pilotos hablen en inglés.

Bien, pues esto pasó esta temporada, se nota que hasta Fernando está un poquito cansado de él.

En telecinco hay otra persona que sabe bastante más, no es otra que Gonzalo Serrano, que dejará la cadena también tras el GP de Brasil. Ojalá los directivos de La Sexta recapaticen y den marcha atrás y se quede con Gonzalo y Pedro como comentaristas, entonces si que tendremos un buen equipo de comentaristas. Aunque yo prefiero que prescindan también de Pedro Martínez de la Rosa y éste este en la pista dando espectáculo como él bien sabe.

Leopadstrip

http://leopardstrip.wordpress.com/

This is the new blog dedicated to the 4th  occupant of the car in our imminent road trip that, at the moment I am not going to tell you more. Here you could see the daily adventures of this new stowaway on board. Where he goes, who he meets everything about him. Soon, online. At the moment you can read his own introduction to the world and some of his travels since he was born some moths ago, not even 1 year.

Post en español o en inglés?

Desde hace tiempo me viene rondando por la cabeza esta idea. ¿Será mejor escribir en inglés? Ahora que estoy en Inglaterra ya estoy pensando cada vez más en mudar el blog de idioma, no digo traducir las entradas que hay, pero sí meter alguna de vez en cuando en inglés. Sinceramente creo que queda bien, pero da un poco más de pereza, ya que siempre es más fácil expresarte en castellano, aunque te pases todo el día hablando y escribiendo mails en inglés.

Si bien todo esto viene a que te preguntas por qué estoy escribiendo un blog, a quién quiero llegar con él? En mi caso la respuesta es simple. Yo lo utilizo para que mis amigos, mi famila sepan algo de lo que hago aquí, en Lovely Ipswich pero también para relajarme. Cuando tienes bastante tiempo libre (aquí se cena muy pronto) escribir algo te llega a relajar, ya que lo haces porque quieres y sin que nadie te diga … tienes que poner esto o lo otro, simplemente eres tú plasmando lo que piensas.

Con lo que en estos 6 meses me comprometo a darle más vida a este chiquitín (no lo mismo con mi flikr) e ir introduciendo post en inglés para que también la gente de aquí pueda leerlos. Más que nada serán los relatos de viajes y demás cosas que hagamos aquí, en Ipswich.

A por la certificación

Llevo mucho tiempo diciendo que quiero sacarme el primer nivel de la certificación de java que ofrece sun microsystems. Pues bien, tenía el libro por algún lado, lo perdí, pero lo estoy recupereando y me doy de plazo hasta abril para estudiar y presentarme en abril al exámen de certificación.

Si por esas fechas estoy en España, me lo sacaré allí, en cambio, si continúo aquí en Inglaterra me acercaré a Londres y haré el exámen en aquí en el mismisimo centro de la city jeje.

BTT in Ipswich

Hi all,

Hace dos semanas, fuimos a descubrir nuevas cosas en tierras inglesas. Nos cargamos de valor, cogimos nuestras bicis el sabado por la mañana y nos dispusimos a llegar desde Ipswich (town centre) hasta Alton Water, un lago que hay a unas 9 milas de Ipswich. El viernes eramos muchos, pero finalmente sólo 5 valientes fueron al encuentro a las 10:00 am.

La ida fue muy buena, había gente que sabía ir, pero en coche, y nosotros no queríamos coger el mismo trayecto, ya que la carretera no es muy buena para llegar allí. Pero finalmente cogimos un par de mapas de la zona y nos pusimos en marcha por las calles hasta llegar a las afueras del pueblo, donde igualmente estuvimos en la carretera un tiempo hasta que cogimos un desvio desconocido por todos, pero que salia en dirección a nuestra meta.

Después de atravesar una granja, un pueblo desconocido por todos, preguntar a una extraña pareja de ingleses dimos con un camino que nos llevaba a nuestro destino, con lo que nuestras caras se tornaron en una cara de satisfacción por no perdernos jejeje. Finalmente, tres horas mas tarde de nuestra salida llegamos al lago, un lago de unas 11 milllas de diámetro y muy frecuentado por windsurfistas, normal, hay un club de vela en el lago. Teniamos un problema y era que ya sólo nos quedaban 3 horas de vuelta para dar la vuelta al lago y volver de nuevo a casa, pero comimos rápido al borde del lago y nos dispusimos a dar la vuelta, ya que era nuestra finalidad y José se unió a nosotros allí para dar la vuelta.

La vuelta al lago se puede dividir en dos partes, por un lado esta la primera mitad que es sencilla y luego esta la segunda parte, con unas cuantas rampas más duras, pero más divertida que el paseito de la primera mitad, y más llena de barro también jejeje.

Una vez acabamos la vuelta nos pusimos en marcha con, alrededor de una hora de luz y, claro conseugimos pasar el bosque y el pueblo con luz, menos mal, pero al final, en la carretera se nos hizo de noche y tuvimos que hacer parte del trayecto con nuestras lucecitas en las bicis, como de costumbre hacemos para ir de BT a casa jejeje.

Y, claro no nos fuimos a casa directamente, sino que hicimos tambien nuestro tercer tiempo en el Cafe Nero en la esquina de Butter Market Street, el cual fue muy agradabe y lo utilizamos para tomar algo calentito y descansar con unas biscuits. Porque todos sabemos que era sabado y el sabado hay que salirrrrrr.