Well it’s 4am a d I’m just getting up to catch the bus for my travels to Cancun, Mexico…
This will be my second trip and I’m looking forward to some R&R after 7 months of working on a kick ass game project, which I can’t talk about yet and will post here as soon as I can.
My buddy Jason is meeting me in Mexico since he’s flying in from Canada and this should be an interesting trip.
More as the trip progresses… Stay tuned ….
Last weekend I took a quick unexpected trip to Seattle to visit some friends and do a surprise visit to my biz partners. This was my second trip to Seattle and I do have to say I really like the area how ever I don’t think I could deal with the weather so much. Out of the 4 days I was there the sun only came out for 2 and boy it was like a celebration for everyone.
I guess living in sunny California we take the nice sun for granted, when the sun comes out in Seattle its as some miracle has happened. While on my visit I was able to swing by Valve Software, take a small tour and play test a bit of Team Fortress 2 which I had a blast playing.
I’m headed back up that way at the end of June so if anyone has any recommendations of things to check out, bars to visit, hidden Seattle gems or anything else hit me up or leave a comment in the blog.
This photo was taken from my buddies balcony during one of those rare sunny days in Seattle.
Looking though some of my pictures from Europe there are a few odd ones that stand out that I have labeled “WTF”.
I figured I would share some of my odd photos of signs, items, places and ads that I think you guys might get a kick out of. If anyone has any ideas on the last photo of the bunch I would love to know, just drop a comment in the comments section below.
While in Budapest its worth taking a small trip outside of the city to see Statue Park. What is Statue Park? Well during the rain of communism in Budapest a lot of statues where placed in and around the city. After communism fell 1989 in Budapest and the government of the city decided to have all the statues moved to a park which is located outside of the city instead of destroying them.
Visit Gigantic Memorials from the Communist Dictatorship in south Budapest. Cubist busts of Marx and Engels and a bug-eyed 15-foot statue of a triumphant Soviet soldier are among the surreal highlights.
I highly recommend taking a short trip out to see this park and It will only take about 45 minutes to view all the statues. You can take public bus but we where told that can take you over an hour and it isn’t easy. We took a cab from our hotel, it was about $40 US, and the cab driver waited an hour while we looked around which worked out perfectly.
Here are some photos I took of Statue Park during my trip to Budapest in May 2007.
You can see more photos at my Flickr account here and the actual Geo Locations where I took these photos since I traveled around Europe with a gps logger that allows me to tag the exact spots where I took my photos.
Here is yet another photo from my collection of 700 photos taken earlier this month on my Europe Trip (Munich, Prague, Vienna and Budapest). I’m a compete shutter bug and for anyone who knows me I usually have camera in hand or in my pocket waiting for that prefect photo opportunity.
The first night we arrived in Budapest we went on a long walk up to Buda Castle had a great dinner and Hungarian wine (Polgar) at Apetito. During our trip we liked to explore the streets, alley ways, and off beaten paths of the cities we visited. To my surprise we found our selves in a great location for a night photo shot of both the Hungarian Parliament and Buda Castle region.
Of course I only had my Canon SD900 camera (point and shoot), which isn’t great for night shots like a nice DSLR and tripod, but using my handy timer trick I was able to find some what of a stable location to set my camera and take this shot.
While looking though my trip photos (all 700 of them) I came upon this one that actually turned out really nice giving the circumstances of light, distance and lack of a tripod. This is the Parliament Building in Budapest and we are standing across the Danube river in the Buda Castle district. Here is a snippet from wiki about this building.
“The Hungarian Parliament Building (Hungarian: Országház) is the seat of the National Assembly of Hungary, one of the world’s greatest legislative buildings, a notable landmark of Hungary and a popular tourist destination of Budapest. It lies in Kossuth Lajos Square, right on the bank of the Danube, at Budapest”
I was surprised as to how this photo came out and most of the night photos of buildings usually turned out blury but I remembered a trick to do when you don’t have a tripod handy.
Most point and shoot cameras have a timer function which counts down a number of seconds and takes the photo. So finding a good stable place to set my camera i used the 10 second function, which as you can tell worked out nicely. Just a friendly photography trick to keep in mind.
If your ever in the city Budapest and you have the itch to drive a tank I have just the thing for you. While in Budapest a week ago I saw a flyer at a local internet cafe that had printed on it “Drive a Tank” of course this caught my attention and I had to find out more.
Here is a quote from their website:
“”Rushing off the road, I have the steering in my hands. Under me, a 22 ton monster of steel roars. I’m in control, nothing can stand in my way! It is only the two of us: man and machine.”
Have you ever wondered, how it feels to experience such a magnificent ride?”
It seems from the web site they have three types of tanks you can try out:
Unfortunately we didn’t have the opportunity to do this and its a bit of a drive out of Budapest but If anyone does this let me know im sure the next time I make it to Budapest im going to give it a shot or better yet shoot it with my tank 
Below are pics I scanned in from the small flyer I picked up.
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