360 Panorama and Cambridge Beer Festival

First, I'll post this... I just put together a huge 360 degree hilltop view from 115 photos. Its a little crude, but if you click on the photo below you can see what it was like at the top of that hill:



Second, tomorrow I'm heading down to a CAMRA winter cask ales festival in Cambridge, England. I've been to Cambridge before and it is quite beautiful. It shall be nice to go again... I have a friend who just moved there, and another guy in the brewing program here is from Cambridge so I'm sure the combination of good beer and friends will make for a merry weekend... hey, maybe you'll see me there!

Cheers!

More travels

Well, my travels and slackage continues, since my last post I've been to Canmore, Edmonton, Rural Alberta, Canmore again, and now I'm in sunny Kelowna, BC remembering that I like wine in addition to beer. So perhaps I'll just take some time in the next few days to catch up with beer reviews and travel stories.

One story I didn't tell is that when I was in NYC I bought a nice new lens for my camera. I picked up a Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens, which I've been using almost exclusively since I bought it. Its fast focusing, and the image stabilizer is an awesome feature. And of course buying it in the states saved me about $200 CAN. My newest flickr photos which I may publish in the next couple of days should include a lot of photos with this lens, I've taken about 300! http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianwestcott/
It should be updated in the next few days.

Cheers!

Best Lightning Ever

Last night was one of the best lightning storms I've seen in awhile. Lightning was going off at least every 7-10 seconds. The power went out and my friend was stuck in the elevator. It was a good night! I took lots of photos, my favorites can be seen on my flickr profile at http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianwestcott/.

In other news, Friday was my very last day working for Alley Kat Brewing. As mentioned in previous postings, I'm heading off to Edinburgh Scotland for my MSc in brewing & distilling at Heriot-Watt University in October. I'm taking the next two months off to do some traveling to Ontario & New York, then moving out of my place in Edmonton, then maybe going up to Northern Manitoba again to see the girlfriend.

I will probably be visiting the Toronto Beer Festival on August 9th, but more on that later...

Cheers!

New Camera

Well, this last week I finally gave into this new 'ebay' craze and actually bought something I wanted off of it. I bought a Canon EOS 350D / Rebel XT Digital SLR. As you may know, SLRs have replaceable lenses and are generally 'better' that compact cameras. My brother had a bunch of lenses and other photography equipment so I figured it was about time I got a nice digital camera to use them with. This is my first digital SLR.

I used to be pretty into photography, but I fell out of it for awhile I guess. Mostly because I only had film equipment and it was way easier to just use my 3.2 mp digital point and shoot than to deal with rolls of film and the costs associated with them.

Of course, this purchase is just on the heels of my purchase of a Canon Powershot G7, and awesome camera in its own right. But yet, not SLR (its not even really that compact, but it has manual abilities, loads of good features, and can take a speedlite flash unit). Thus, my spending has been rather INSANE of late. The dSLR is great but bluky, so the G7 is still good when I don't want to haul all that SLR stuff around (camera plus 2 extra lenses, maybe an extra flash).

I've been biking a lot more lately, and I also just purched a Lowepro Slingshot 100 sling bag (over one shoulder) and its perfect. It doesn't slip around my back, is uber-comfortable, and holds everything I need it to.

Anyway... thats it. Oh beer? Hm, nothing new of late.