paris

third time’s a charm? its been almost two and a half months since we got back from paris and we’re already starting to look at heading back again. kinda just waiting for some airline seat sales.

this time around we timed it in order to be in town for the start of ‘soldes’. great sales but not as successful for me as i hoped. still backing the japanese brands and fit. mildly impressed with Kooples though. kind of a stylier version of club monaco. lots of locations around paris. l’eclairieur has some great retail spaces, their new store in the Marais is pretty amazing with a gajillion (yes that’s a real number) of embedded video screen everywhere in the store. the new Uniqlo near Printemps is pretty big. way better than their la defense location. bummed that i missed the launch of the J+ spring collection by a few days. but for some odd reason, one of my favourite stores which i luckily remembered on the last day was e.dehellerin, a 100+ year old cookware store where the local chefs shop. its a goldmine and got some mauviel saucepans for dirt cheap. of course the gorillas known as baggage handlers at KLM managed to dent one of them inside my luggage.

expanded our culinary adventures this time around. the highlights being lunch at Nomiya, the temporary restaurant on the roof of palais de tokyo and dinner at la regalade in the 14th. deliciousness in every way where i became addicted to rillette du porc, which i have since learned how to make.

managed to get last minute tickets to see werther at opera garnier. pretty cool experience. finally got around to going inside the pompidou centre and ended up going back to versailles since steph hadn’t been there before.

i’m sure there’s more but i can’t remember anymore.

camera gear is evil

seriously. it is. nothing’s ever good enough and there’s always something bigger, better, faster to fuel your gadget lust. as you may have read earlier, i picked up a Sigma 18-55mm f2.8 lens, which came highly recommended by the salesperson.

it was the same all around focal length that i wanted but with a super fast aperture. sounds good on paper and the price couldn’t be beat. well after two weeks with it i’ve exchanged it. my biggest gripe? it continually hunted for focus 1/3 of the time and spent another 1/3 of the time focusing just plain wrong. not exactly what i was hoping for that price. of course, the only other option with a similar spec was the canon 17-55mm f2.8 but at more than double the price. that’s what credit cards are for right?

well so far i like it. the AF motor is super fast and super quiet and seems to achieve focus much more easily than the Sigma. haven’t really had a chance to do much shooting with it yet but hopefully it works out. i already have an eye on what my next lens will be. except this time i think i’ll rent first. maybe a 400mm f2.8 to bring to the montreal grand prix?

dorked out

yes i really did build a custom wordpress install for my pupster. http://santoslhalper.com

i’m chalking it up to self-learning, after all i did learn how to use jquery and hack together a second Loop in wordpress. still some things i want to do though. version 2.0 coming shortly.

lighter wallet

gadget lust got the better of me again. i am now much lighter in the wallet thanks to a Canon T2i with a Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 lens. still getting the hang of it and can’t figure out if the crappy focus is user error or faulty lens. probably user error but i better figure it out before the exchange period is up…