Last weekend I took a good look at the offerings of eBay for a very first time. I was searching for telephoto lenses for our Canon 450D. Because I did not know current and discontinued Canon lenses inside out, I had to do some research. Before, I was thinking about buying a brand new Canon EF 70-200 f4 L USM lens which is very good compared to its price. So, my criteria was something similar but maybe 1/3 of the price.
I came up with a list of suitable lenses and started following auctions on eBay. After some days I had a list of final prices for couple models so I decided to try my luck. Maybe I was too careful since I did not manage to win any.
So, the result has been so far somewhat bad. I know a bit more about old Canon lenses and I have spent several hours following auctions or researching. But how much is my free time worth of? Definitely more than my hourly rate at work. The gap between brand new EF 70-200 f4 L USM and second hand with unknown condition and sharpness doesn't seem to be that big anymore...
Archive for November of 2008
Bargain hunting at eBay
November 24, 2008Venison Deluxe
November 20, 2008
For two persons:
Box of 300g diced venison meat (available at least from Tesco).
Add some coarse ground pepper and salt, rub them to meat.
Fry with 3 nails of garlic in a hot cast iron pan with oil&butter mix.
Add water to cover meat.
Add some dry red wine.
Add two sliced carrots.
After water has boiled away add sour or single cream, around 1dl or bit more.
Serve with boiled potatoes and red wine.
Box of 300g diced venison meat (available at least from Tesco).
Add some coarse ground pepper and salt, rub them to meat.
Fry with 3 nails of garlic in a hot cast iron pan with oil&butter mix.
Add water to cover meat.
Add some dry red wine.
Add two sliced carrots.
After water has boiled away add sour or single cream, around 1dl or bit more.
Serve with boiled potatoes and red wine.
Selenium testing for Ext GWT/GXT
November 08, 2008
Ext JS blog has a post about testing web application with Selenium. It provides quick overview of Selenium and gives instructions how to set it up. For me the most interesting part of the article was the example Selenium test case code.
At work we have been using Selenium to create acceptance tests for Ext GWT application and it has been quite painless so far. In our case the most important factor was to set id's for fields we wanted to test. That makes locating the right field in Selenium much easier. Another issue was the right mouse click because the application has some contextual menus. The Selenium IDE does not register right clicks properly so it was necessary to modify those actions manually to use mouseUpRightAt.
Yesterday I was wondering how to handle Ext GWT DateField's date picker in Selenium test and I ended up typing the date value in the field instead of clicking the calendar icon. After mentioning this to my colleague he told me to check the blog entry above. From the example I learnt about /following-sibling::img. It seems to be the way to handle trigger fields nicely - something to try out next week.
At work we have been using Selenium to create acceptance tests for Ext GWT application and it has been quite painless so far. In our case the most important factor was to set id's for fields we wanted to test. That makes locating the right field in Selenium much easier. Another issue was the right mouse click because the application has some contextual menus. The Selenium IDE does not register right clicks properly so it was necessary to modify those actions manually to use mouseUpRightAt.
Yesterday I was wondering how to handle Ext GWT DateField's date picker in Selenium test and I ended up typing the date value in the field instead of clicking the calendar icon. After mentioning this to my colleague he told me to check the blog entry above. From the example I learnt about /following-sibling::img. It seems to be the way to handle trigger fields nicely - something to try out next week.
Is it impossible to get things right on the first attempt?
November 06, 2008
Previously I wrote about registering to GP and couple days ago we visited the GP for the first time. But like one might guess - there were some issues with our registration.
The whole process started when we moved to Kirkcaldy and we filled the address change form for the NHS. The GP assignment office in Edinburgh had their raffle and we were placed for a GP on other side of the town. How come I saw this happening... But we rebelled and we sent a polite email to the office. Shortly after that we got a letter from NHS apologising silly assigment and we were assigned to the closest GP. The GP was the same we visited in the very first place.
So, couple days ago we went to this GP to return the health questionnaire and to receive quick health checkup. But we weren't in their system anymore because we were assigned back to the GP on other side of the town. After some discussion with the staff, two phone calls from senior member of the staff to the assignment office and almost an hour waiting we were assigned back to the right GP. We also heard some explanation of overlapping automatic and manual patient data systems, NHS politics etc.
After similar experiences, not just in the UK, I am always overwhelmingly astonished when something actually works as promised on the first attempt.
The whole process started when we moved to Kirkcaldy and we filled the address change form for the NHS. The GP assignment office in Edinburgh had their raffle and we were placed for a GP on other side of the town. How come I saw this happening... But we rebelled and we sent a polite email to the office. Shortly after that we got a letter from NHS apologising silly assigment and we were assigned to the closest GP. The GP was the same we visited in the very first place.
So, couple days ago we went to this GP to return the health questionnaire and to receive quick health checkup. But we weren't in their system anymore because we were assigned back to the GP on other side of the town. After some discussion with the staff, two phone calls from senior member of the staff to the assignment office and almost an hour waiting we were assigned back to the right GP. We also heard some explanation of overlapping automatic and manual patient data systems, NHS politics etc.
After similar experiences, not just in the UK, I am always overwhelmingly astonished when something actually works as promised on the first attempt.
Cast iron
November 02, 2008
Finally I ordered something I have been planning for some time. A simple cast iron frying pan without any nonsense like teflon coating. Frying steaks in a teflon pan is in my opinion just mediocre way.
After some treatment with oil the pan was ready for action. The result was definitely delicious. The problem was then that I did not check the amount of meat we ate, no steaks in near future..
After some treatment with oil the pan was ready for action. The result was definitely delicious. The problem was then that I did not check the amount of meat we ate, no steaks in near future..