MaGnet`as BLOG (Basically Lame Objectless Gabble)

Removing icons from MacOS menu bar

2010-06-08T12:35:00.000+03:00

Hey.
Recently me and my colleague decided we don't wanna see MobileMe icon in our menu bar since we don't use it. Apparently you don't get an option for hiding this in your system preferences unless you DO use this syncing feature.
Luckily, the only thing you have to do is hold down your command button and drag the undesired icon out of the menu bar. That's it. The icon's gone, you have more space for the icons you actually use and everyone's happy :)

Preloading images with jQuery

2010-05-04T17:00:00.001+03:00

Hey.
I'm putting final touches on one web project and since we decided to put some pretty uncommon solutions into it without using flash I had to use many images and javascript tricks. jQuery is still so great for all those effects and manipulations...
And since some of the images are hidden at the beginning and exposed later, the browser downloads every single one of them only when it's needed. Sadly that's not the effect we want. The animations aren't smooth enough or foreground appears sooner than background etc.
The answer was - image preloading.
I've used image preloading techniques before, but they were so...last decade and lame :) I entered my query into google and got many suggestions. Most of them were based on selecting IMG tags and preloading SRC attribute values. At first that sounds fine, except that...some of images I want to preload aren't used as IMG SRC attributes. Moreover, most of the images don't need to be uploaded.
And finally I found the solution I actually applied. The idea is simple - creating IMG DOM elements for every image needed preloading. That's it.
We decide what to preload and the method takes care of the rest.
Actually the images I preload are loaded even before the ones that are visible at the beginning!
All you need is this piece of javascript code (and jQuery of course):

(function($) {
  var cache = [];
  $.preLoadImages = function() {
    var args_len = arguments.length;
    for (var i = args_len; i--;) {
      var cacheImage = document.createElement('img');
      cacheImage.src = arguments[i];
      cache.push(cacheImage);
    }
  }
})(jQuery)

Then you just call the function we just declared with arguments - relative paths to images you want to preload (as many as you need):

jQuery.preLoadImages("image1.gif", "/path/to/image2.png");

That's it. Both image1.gif and image2.png will be preloaded into browser cache and won't waste time loading when actually shown for the first time.
I hope you'll find this usefull.
Good luck.

The solution taken from: http://engineeredweb.com/blog/09/12/preloading-images-jquery-and-javascript

Online kite tutorials

2010-02-27T10:00:00.000+02:00

Hey.
I have facebook relations to Kitelife Magazine and Revolution Kites so I keep getting some posts once in a while. Lately both of them posted several revolution kite tutorials, performed by John Baressi himself. The guy's not only one of the iQuad four lined kites team members and not only he manufactures his own line of revolution kites, but also (in my opinion) is one of the best rev kite fliers in the worlds and it seems that he's a great speaker too :)
Now I got informed that a brand new website has been released where all these tutorials will be available for watching or downloading to your PC or iPhone!!! Visit learnkites.com and check out how simply, fluently and precisely everything's shown and explained. I hope you'll get some useful info and tips there and that this project won't stop growing and will fill up with many new tutorials.
Take care
MaG.

Google Buzz

2010-02-10T09:02:00.002+02:00

Ok...the official google blog just announced that a new product (or should I say feature) is out, called Google Buzz. It seems that what they're trying to do is to merge Google Wave ideas into gmail system and keep up with the biggest social networks on subjects like "lame chats" and "photos/media sharing".
So...I visit http://buzz.google.com expecting to get some more info on how to try this new thing out. It seems all I get is a backlink to my gmail mailbox, saying "Try Buzz in Gmail". The only problem is...the link for "buzzing" didn't appear in my gmail yet.
Can you already see it? Do I have to enable it in labs section or what?
I hope to get a look at Buzz ASAP, but the most expected things from Google company for me are Google Talk for mac and Google Voice becoming worldwide.

Addition:

Yeah, I keep looking for more info regarding the Buzz thing. I thought: "Hmm, If I can't find the buzz link in my gmail and I know it's also available for mobile phones, maybe I should try this version first...". I went back to Buzz website, clicked on Buzz for mobile and...found out that Buzz for Windows Mobile isn't yet supported. I can only have a special buzz layer in my google maps application to see the icons and info on what happened where...
Android based phones and iPhones on the other hand already have full support (even more than Windows Mobile devices ever will). Damn...greedy bastards :)
I think it's time to go and do some meaningful work now instead of wondering of what has google came up with recently...

Addition 2:
Buzz is in my gmail already. Tried to post a couple buzzes, seems to be working just fine but I can't think of any situations where buzzing would be necessary.
Probably it takes some time to get used to anything...

jQuery UI widgets

2010-02-05T10:01:00.002+02:00

Hey everyone.

I guess it's time to put something new on blog, isn't it? Almost a year passed since my last post and now I want to share something technical with you.

Those of you who aren't related to web developing, please step aside :)

As many of those who stayed know, a 1.4 version of jQuery was released recently. So I decided to have a look at what's it all about. Somehow I ended up loading jQuery UI website and found there a couple of new widgets: one for replacing buttons/checkboxes etc. and the other for autocompletion.

I'm developing a new weblication at the moment and decided to try those neat things out. So I opened that UI page again several days later and...the new widgets were gone!!!

I started a research on what's it all about and found another wiki-style webpage from jQuery guys, listing the statuses of many jQuery UI widgets, interactions and utilities development. You can check it out here.

So it looks like the button and autocomplete widgets are still in development. I wonder what happened...I'm sure I saw those things marked as "new widgets" in UI site and I even showed it to my colleague, but why did it go back to development stage?

Anyways...good luck with scripting and have a look at these wonderful tools if you haven't discovered them earlier

Snowboarding in Austria and two more days in Czech Republic

2009-04-03T13:34:00.003+03:00

Hey.
It's been several weeks since I'm back from my holiday, but it took me some time to gather all the pictures from the trip. And since I'm sick and don't have to go to work I decided to put some memories into my blog.
So as you already know four of us planned our trip to Austria since last October. Last month it finally happened. We packed up tons of stuff and hit the road with '94 BMW 316 touring :)
About 25 hours later we were there - a nice and quiet place in the mountains near Hart im Zillertal. Every morning we stepped out the sight was incredible - snowy mountains all around.
We got our not-so-cheap skipasses and snowboarded for 6 days in 4 different resorts. All the infrastructure is simply amazing there. Since you have your superskipass you're good to use all trains, busses and elevators in every resort in Zillertal. And that's what we actially did.
The mountains there are great, not to many people from "eastern Europe", snowparks etc. We even tried out the Harakiri ski run. On the map near it was a sign stating 78%. Don't know what it means :D
We also wisited hintertux. The highest point was something like 3250m above sea level.
After all the fun in teh mountains we visited Swarowski crystall museum near the factory they're made. Pretty impressive since the museum is inside the hill and most of the exhibitions are dynamic. Loved it.
Then the same day we took a walk in Innsbruck.
Next day we went to Prague. We stayed with one nice family (thank you) not far away from the oldtown. We spent twi days in Czech, visisted many bars, restaurants (including fast food of course), nightclubs. We enjoyed once again every step taken in Prague, saw a lot of churches (and the bone church not too far as well), bridges, monuments.
And then - back home to Lithuania.
Didn't want to write too much so better take a look at several pictures in random order:

Tina pulling a wooden stick out of a huge snowball

2009-02-09T23:33:00.007+02:00

Hey. Here's a short video I took yesterday of my girlfriends lab trying to pull a wooden stick out of a huge snowball which as it seems used to be a snowman. This dog's crazy about forests, nature, sticks and wood. It's not the first video clip this dog acts as a beaverdog :) Enjoy

And here's Tina in her personal limo seat:

And finally to who it may concern:
People, please stop leaving all kinds of thrash behind you. It's horrible view in every forest around the city after the snow has melted. Don't you really care enough about what will it all become?! There are garbage containers in every single yard and thrash bags in every gas station. It doesn't cost you a thing. Just take all of your stuff with you and throw it out where it belongs. This way it might be possible to spend many more great evenings in the spot you visited. Thank you.

Lemon Joy and winter retreat

2009-01-26T17:23:00.009+02:00

Hi.
Last week the wetter let me completely down. Everything started melting, dirty water flowing down the streets. I had to forget the plans for the weekend. I'm talking about snowboarding of course.
So me and my girl were sitting sadly at home and trying to figure out what can one do when the rain's not stopping. On Saturday we visited several stores, Ieva got herself a nice pair of shoes and I wasn't so lucky. I couldn't find any helmets that would fit my huge head and wouldn't cost too much. Well...I'm gonna have to find it before the trip to Austria anyways.
Later that day we got 4 tickets to Champagne bar where Lemon Joy performed. I've never seen them live except for several times in festivals and similar events with more artists performing.
I gotta say it was nice to hear all those old and many times heard songs, but it wasn't too impressive. Igor's voice sounded great whatsoever and the crowd wasn't too young so it was a great opportunity to feel young again :)
A couple of low-quality pics from the concert:

On Sunday despite the rain we went out to spend some time in the nature, to play "bring back the stick" with our lovely dog. She was running and crapping all around the field. But the weather made us turn back soon. Several pictures from the coast of Vilnelė:

Sigur Rós - Flugufrelsarinn

2009-01-22T15:58:00.003+02:00

Hey.
I randomly listened to my music playlist, as i usually do, and heard this wonderful song by one of the most famous Icelandic bands - Sigur Rós. It matched my mood perfectly and I decided to see what does it's video clip look like. After loading youtube I entered the title and found a wonderful piece of animation made by some guy from Jerusalem. Liron Damir studied broadcast design and animation, as I see it, and this was his some kind of final project. It's not the official video for the song whatsoever, but the details, the animation itself and the connection between music background and events in the video is stunning.
I simply counldn't miss an opportunity to share this experience with all of you. As Matt Stone and Trey Parker from South Park Studios usually say: "sit down, relax and enjoy"

On the edge of 2009

2009-01-06T15:21:00.006+02:00

Hi.
Happy new year everyone. I wish you all happiness, success, creativity and meaning in everything you're about to do this year.
Once again I welcomed new year free of alcohol, but the night was very impressive. We decided not to drink so we'd feel good next day (I'll come back to it later). So first we went closer to where it all took place, left out car and walked quite a bit. Here on the wall of the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports and all around if E.T.A. Hoffman's fairy-tale and P. Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker simply blew us all away. I've never seen anything like it before and it all was very impressive and great way to spend last evening of 2008. It was wonderful show with lot's of musicians, dancers, stuntmen, lights, colors, fireforks etc.

Later that night we tried to go to the Cathedral square together with thousands of other people to check out the Gert Hof's lights and fireworks performance. Sadly because of the amount of people there we had to watch it through the branches of trees and listen to the shouts of many drunk teenagers, but it still was worth to see.
Aftre that we went back home, had a glass of wine and fell asleep.
1st January 2009. We woke up at 11A.M., found out that Eglukalns skiing tracks are still closed, but Sauleskalns a little bit more far away are already opened, packed our stuff and went to visit my parents. After great breakfast we jumped into our snowboarding clothes, set the destination point in my phones navigation program ant went all the way to sauleskalns near Kraslava, Latvia. There were only a few people skiing so we had unbelieveble time on our snowboards first time this winter.
Probably the best tracks I've tried so far not to mention the reak mountains, great english-speaking personell, inventory for rent, good elevators, nice people, lights, music and stuff like that.
The next day was something like that except that three more friend joined us and there were many people skiing and boarding already. If you're interested in this resort check out their website at www.skalns.lv.
On saturday we called Eglukalns again. And this time they were open. So we only had to go for 20 kilometers and didn't have to use navigation since we've been here before.
Except for too many people everything else was great. (more info on Eglukalns at www.sventesegles.lv)After snowboarding for three hours we visited my parents once again and then went back to Vilnius feeling tired but happy.
Here we found tons of snow and it gave us the idea for Sunday. We put on warm clothes, hats, shoes and gloves and went out to the forest with our dog. The weather felt klean and cool, we ran around in the snow, kicked the pines waiting for the snow from the branches to fall on us, throwed sticks for the dog to bring them back and so on.
So, after such a great 4 days weekend I'm back to regular routine waiting impatietly for next such opportunities.
I hope to get some photofootage next time.
Now go, enjoy the snow!
Bye

Recent stuff

2008-12-14T19:32:00.004+02:00

Hey.
Sorry for not keeping you on what I'm all into right now. It's been pretty busy. I think I mentioned earlier that my car wasn't running the way it's supposed to lately. Well now it does. After investing ~2500 LTL I finally enjoy riding it again. A lot of parts were replaced, brand new braking system, ABS sensor, bearings, radiator, thermostat etc. And it finally feels so good to control that thing. No noise from the wheels, steering or braking systems, no unexpected behavior.
I visited a couple of plays at Domino theater during last months, but they didn't make a big positive impression so it's not probably worth to write a lot on this subject. De-Phazz and Milky Lasers concert on the other hand was really good. I really enjoyed listening to that electronic jazz music and feeling all the energy literally floating straight at us. These guys have huge experience and they sure know what they're doing. I heard from my friends that they keep bringing same program every year, but since this was the first time I ever saw De-Phazz live it really made me feel elevated. They have amazing vocalists, ubelievable saxophone playing guy and very funny looking guitarist.
Last month I aged 25. Yes, I'm already alive for ore than a quarter of a century. We went your for some bowling game with my closest friends, had a couple of beers. I got a bunch of table games as presents, a dart-game, and some cache. And i finally made my old dream come true. I got myself a MacBook. And it's the new aluminium version.It's been a couple of weeks since I brought it home from Kaunas but I still can't get enough of it. It seems every single aspect is thought through over and over again.
First of all it looks incredibly, weights only 2 kilograms and is very tiny, thin and compact. I've never got to use MacOS long enough before so it took me some time to get used to it. I don't only have to learn new key shortcuts but I have to start thinking different in some cases. Completely new filesystem, new user experience, new visual elements, directory structure, privilegies etc. The hardware seems to work fine as well. The battery doesn't last 5 hours as Apple states, but I still can work 3 hours or more without any wires. The screen is only 13.3", but is very bright and glossy. There's a tiny iSight camera on top of it and light sensor for controlling displays backlight level. The keyboard feels great but it takes some time so get used as well. The trackpad is probably the best new thing after my last laptop. Yes, the last one had a touchpad as well, but this thing is something completely different. It's huge, it all works as a button and you can perform all kinds of multi-finger gestures here!!! I love scrolling feature using two fingers or switching between program windows using four of them. This thing is very intuitive and comfortable.
A couple of my friends and me are going to go snowbiarding this year as well. We already ordered a couple of rooms in Austria. But I'm hoping to do that in Latvia before going there in March. Anyway, no snow here yet.
This week was pretty hard for me. Horrible toothpain started one day so I got me some medication in order to stop that. It helped at first but then later I had to do something else and do it fast. I called several dentost offices, but all of them were busy so they couldn't help me. Finally my colleague Almantas recommended one clinic for me and they agreed to check my teeth out. After some drilling and things like that I'm free of that damn pain again. For a couple of days that was the only reason neccessary for me to feel happy :)
That's it. Keep yout teeth clean guys :)

Conversations with wind

2008-10-13T10:37:00.001+03:00

Hey, just found more pictures from "Art in unusual places" festival. If interested, visit http://public.fotki.com/vejuota/dialogas/pokalbiai-su-veju-b/

Baby, did you forget to take your meds?

2008-10-10T10:53:00.002+03:00

2nd day in a row I'm high on the song I simply can't not to share with you. Reminds me of the Placebo concert almost 1,5 years ago...

And the sex and the drugs and the complications...

Autumn holiday overview

2008-09-30T23:51:00.003+03:00

Hi. I'm back to work after one week off. I never imagined it's possible to have such a great holiday in autumn here on the coast of Baltic sea.

Last weekend me and Rokas helped out Giedre with her project for the "Art in Unusual Places". It was a picture gallery hanging up in the sky. Two rokaku kites lifted a rope which was holding several quite large pictures. It's probably not the best way to watch the gallery but the construction looked pretty amazing since the two kites were so high it was hard to see them.

Several pictures from the Botanical Garden in Kairėnai:

The day after that me, my girl, her sister with husband and Tina (the dog) left for a nice quiet little town in Kuršių Nerija - Juodkrantė. I've never been there before and wasn't expecting anything I was about to discover.

My car started to make strange noises and vibrations, but we decided to carefully go further. After several hours trip we reached Klaipėda, grabbed some food and drinks and took a ferry to the Kuršių Nerija. And, after several more minutes of driving and paying the ecology fees we were in Juodkrantė. The town is tiny but very nice and quiet between Baltic and Kuršių seas. Our hotel was about 100 meters away from the coast of Baltic sea, near beautiful forest. First couple of days were dull and rainy, but the rest of them were sunny and windy (great for kites). We visited Nida, the sand-dunes, cormorant breeding place rented a sauna with swimming pool for one evening etc. We found lot's of jellyfishes lying in the sand, watched the sunset almost every evening, took long walks on the beach and in the forest, made ourselves dinner.

On Saturday early morning we left for First International Kite Festival in Palanga. And this was the day we all waited for last 4 months. After preparing the beach for the fiesta it all started. The guy from Great Britain brought lots of very impressive single line kites, two guys from Germany amazed us with their stunt kite ballets and tricks. And one more family from UK kept us all busy all day long.

We competed in precise flying and kite ballet, for the first time in Lithuania pair competition happened.

I got 5th place and am really happy with it. On the other hand I hope to score higher next time.

Dalia won 1st prize in individuals as well as in pair competition together with Jurgis (congrats!). I'll put the results between the rest of the pictures from this wonderful event (I got to say there aren't a lot of them since I hadn't enough time for shooting pics).

P.S. This is the music I used for my kite ballet:

Windy hobbies

2008-09-01T23:27:00.001+03:00

Hey y'all! Here I am again weblogging my life. Since not much is going on I'm gonna write about what lately happened to me and my kites.

First of all I've added another kite to my collection, the first one of this kind. It's HQ F-Box "Beach". Yes, it's a tiny little box kite made in china under German brand HQ. It's only 100x85cm in size, made of polyester, fiberglass frame, several rubber parts and the line. It's not stable in the air, but looks pretty good. And it doesn't require strong wind. On the other hand if the wind is too strong you can customize the kite: attach the line to another know or take the additional wings off. Here's what the kite looks like on my office floor:

Last weekend me and my colleague Valdas decided to go powerkiting since he got a landboard and a control bar for his 7 square meters Beamer III. I thought my 5.5 sq.meters outa space was tough, but it's nothing compared to the Beamer. This thing is simply unstoppable. We didn't succeed in connecting the bar the way it should be done and that's why the push/pull was inverted. After several drops and falls I tried the landboard using my own kite. And it worked for some time. The main problem was the landscape...it was very rough and the board kept stopping.

Two days since then I still feel a little pain in my muscles, but this was a nice 3 hours with Valdas not behind the tables in the office.

Here are several pics of the ground after me falling down, my pants and some of the the inventor:

Sorry for the quality, because the pics are taken with my phone. The camera is still broken. But I'll tell you something in advance: I'm waiting for a brand new smartphone to arrive. It will have 3mpx camera and many other features. But...we'll come back to this subject when I'll have it in my hands. :)

That's it for now. Peace

By the way...this Friday Kosheen is coming to Lithuania and is gonna perform for free!!! 21:00 @ Cathedral square, Vilnius. Here's one of my favorite songs by Kosheen to help you make your mind up:

I'M NOT GUILTY ANYMORE (you are, you are)

were2gether

2008-08-21T23:40:00.002+03:00

Hey. Lukas insisted me to write something about the festival I was visiting last weekend. But before that short summary of my last activities.

As I probably mentioned before that for the end of my holiday I planned to go to the Bjork concert. And I did. The ticket was also a birthday present for my girlfriend. Not much to tell since It was a shortened version of Bjork performance we saw last year in Poland. This time we didn't have VIP tickets, so had to stay behind the fence probably 50 meters away from stage. The stage itself was much smaller than in Open'er festival. But Bjork was incredibly wonderful as always.

A couple days later I went back to work. Nothing especially new here. I keep buying crap from eBay. But the new experience happened here. I made a transaction for a photo camera for my sister, but it was lost somewhere between Hong-kong and Lithuania. The seller noticed that himself and even before I started bothering him he contacted me with two options: full refund or another camera. I chose first one and today got every penny back. Now I'm waiting for another Lumix camera.

There's gonna be a first international kite festival in Lithuania on 27th of September. I'm really looking forward to it and started upgrading my equipment. I got 40 meters length lines and yoyo stoppers for my l'Atelier Cesium Access kite. This allows me to start learning new tricks and gives more time to make precision figures. Didn't have much time to try all this stuff out yet, but I hope to do that more this weekend.

Last weekend I was visiting the biggest art and music festival in Baltic countries be2gether. It was great. Even if the first thing we met there was heavy rain it all went fine. No violence or aggression, many (~12.000) young people, a bunch of music bands, musical sculptures, tents, great kitchen etc.

We were planing to see I.V.T.K.Y.G.Y.G. first, but were a little late and the rain stopped us. We had several beers in our tent instead.

Just after the damn rain stopped we went to the "active zone" and BIX concert. Incredible amount of energy, old good songs, people starting to have fun.

Just after that was the main band of the festival for me - Tricky. All the guys I talked after the show were amazed. The guys gives all of himself to his music and his crowd. Since I saw Massive Attack earlier this summer now the other trip-hop band I'm dreaming of seeing is Potishead.

After tricky we were waiting for Etiene de Crecy and his huge cubic stage. He started just the way we knew him and looked stunning, but after several more mixes we went don't to the tent-town for the night,

The next day (Saturday) was veeeery hot (~32 degrees Celsius) so me, my girlfriend, my sister and my ex-classmate decided to go to look for a lake. And we found it in Šalčininkai. We spent several hours there and then hurried back for the festival.

MC Messiah was couple hours late so we had plenty of time for drinking and chatting :) My classmate even arranged a piercing session for next day :D I heard he got 2 new earrings :)

MC Messiah and his live instrumental hip-hop show was super, but we were melting because of the heat in the tent.

Several more beers ;) I'm getting really drunk. Met the kite club members. Several beers again. :)

Fools garden was boring. They were boring probably 6 years ago, when I last saw them. And they are now.

Groove armada. I saw them last year. So after couple songs me and my classmate laid down on the grass and fell asleep.

After my girlfriend woke me up we still went to see a couple songs of Valgeir Sigurdsson (great sound) and Happyendless (not as impressive as I expected) and went to sleep. I was sooooo tired.

Sunday. We decided not to go to the active zone, because there wasn't much to see. We went looking for a better lake instead. And we found it. Except that several minutes later a bunch of Russian speaking teenagers came by and were drinking beer while listening to the Russian pop music.

That's it. We came home. A new week started. I hope I gave you the main idea of what was going on there and I hope we'll be2gether one more weekend there next year.

Good luck.

Short nights in the forest and wonderful days in Poland

2008-07-14T13:24:00.002+03:00

Hey hey hey! Didn't hear from me in a while, huh? Well I was busy with my "do-all-that-you-want" time :)

Well a couple of weeks ago me, my girl and several friends went out to the forest between Moletai and Utena to spend some quality time in the nature and celebrate the shortest night of the year. It all went fine even if the weather wasn't and we didn't have enough room to try my new Aerobie pro throwing disc out :)

We had some beers, played with the dog a lot, fished a little bit, cooked soup and meat in the fire etc.

Some pics from those days:

And now I'm having my holiday and just came back from a huge festival Heineken Open'er 2008 in Gdynia, Poland. This year the weather was amazing so we got to spend a couple days in the beaches of Sopot and Hel and spent several hours in the oldtown of Gdansk. Besides that we've seen lot's of superstars performing live for us and all that huge crowd. A little bit about each and every band we got to see...

Editors. It was a nice introduction into what we gonna go through during the festival days, but not too much.

The Raconteurs. One of the most impressive rock-style bands I've seen live so far. Jack White is simply amazing and I still keep hearing "Steady as she goes" in my head.

Fisherspooner. The best performance during the festival. It's a pity that they played at the same time as Dj Vadim did, but I think me and my girl did a right decision to see this show. It was like all-in-one music, vocal, modern dance, clothing and visualization performance that's hard to describe.

Roisin Murphy. Sounded pretty good, but not too good to keep as alive. So we went to sleep.

Interpol. Solid performance, looked and sounded great. Something the other indie-rock bands should have a look at.

Jay-Z. This Jiggah knows how to control the crowd. I wasn't expecting much from a rap band but they really did what it takes to make a wonderful show.

Goldfrapp. Not bad performance at all, but my girlfriend felt bad and we had to leave. That damn festival-fast-junk-food...

Massive Attack. The band I expected most from. I really enjoyed their "attack" but that's it. They didn't play many hit-songs, the performance was simple and predictable.

The Chemical Brothers. These guys have been on stage for too long, I guess. Yeah, they know how to make sounds and yeah, they know how to use visualizations, but all that simply isn't enough anymore. After staring at the stage for some time we left the festival area and went to sleep.

That's it for now, here are some pics from the trip:

Three wonderful ways to spend your money...

2008-06-20T20:35:00.001+03:00

Hey there. I mentioned I started using eBay in my last post. Well...finally the stuff I ordered started coming. And I got my Tomtom One 3rd Edition Global Positioning System. The device, as they say, is "affordable navigation". That means it has limited functionality, internal memory and battery lifetime, but it still is a lovely little unit.

I backed up all the original data first and then replaced the original USA/Canada map with Eastern Europe one. The device can lead the way to almost any little village, street or gas station you want. It is controlled by touchscreen, is very intuitive and lets you choose between many interface languages (including Lithuanian). It also gives vocal directions in selected voice as you drive, alerts about selected POIs (Points of Interest) etc.

But, besides that, I had to go to the custom yesterday and pay some 21,5% of taxes to get it. And what's even worse they calculated that percent including shipping and handling fees. So it came to 90Lt and the device costs 500Lt after all.

Today I got a crappy little USB hub from china to connect all those USB devices to my computer at the same time.

And, finally, I got 2 electronic tickets to Heineken Open'er festival!!! There's no turning back now. My Tomtom is gonna have quite a trip to plan in couple of weeks... :)

That's it. I'm ~1120lt poorer but much much happier than before I spent it. Now all I have to do is wait 12 more days till my holiday and that trip to Gdynia.

Well, maybe we'll think of something else before that since we have 4 day-offs this weekend.

Take care of yourselves and have a wonderful shortest night of the year.

Making history...and other things

2008-06-18T00:17:00.001+03:00

Hey, It's been a while since my last post, but today there's a special reason to brake that pause once and for all :)

Did you hear that Mozilla Firefox 3 browser was released and they're trying to make a world record of most downloads in 24 hours. If you read this before 17:00 UTC June 18 you can still be one of those record breakers. Just like me :)

Didn't notice many improvements so far, but they claim this should be a new resource saving product with brand new core and completely new user experience in many aspects.

Anyway...about my recent activities. I finally got my first credit card and started using eBay. The first impression is very very positive. I already got my very first item. It is 250GB 5400rpm 2.5" external USB Hard Disk Drive. And tomtom GPS system, USB HUB and a couple of kites are still on their ways. :)

Besides all that I made myself a solar worm-baloon (Rokas and Chyrka from 108 kites club gave me the idea). I didn't have an opportunity to try it out yet, but I hope to do that soon. The thing should be about 14 meters long and 1 meter in diameter. It all came to something about 30Lt and 4 hours of work. Here are some pics from THE process (low quality, because I used a phone since I broke my camera). Enjoy

Here starts the history

2008-04-27T22:52:00.002+03:00

Hi. How've you all been? Ain't it feeling great to live through the spring once more? :)

It sure is sad that I'm gonna have till next winter to have aride on my snowboard again, but this way the weather feels much better and we get many opportunities to do other things.

For instance, couple weeks ago we at work we decided to have a karting race. Just us, coworkers. It was fun to do, the track was a little wet so the kartings kept sliding on the corners and stuff like that :)

They kept track of all the laps we made and then gave us printed reports. It seems that I made second best time in there :)

But this isn't the biggest event of last weeks. Since the weather is getting better and better and the days are getting longer there's a need to spend more time outside. I started using my kite more often, meet other kiteflyers, learned a couple new tricks. Then last weekend me and my girlfriend went to Palanga (small town on the coats of the Baltic Sea) where the first stunt kite competition in Lithuania ever took place. We got a nice, cozy, tiny room probably 300m. away from the beach. All the weekend was sunny, the wind was just right. Here I finally got to try my new l'Atelier Cesium Access kite out. Ant it's not just amazingly beautiful. It's very easy to fly, doesn't require strong wind at all, is fast to assemble and pack up. It helped me to win the 2nd place in the competition I mentioned before. Later we had several bears with the club members and went back to our rooms.

The next day after trying Rokas's circoflex kite out we went back to Vilnius.

It was an amazing weekend and kite season opening. Pictures from that weekend can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/magnetas/PirmosAitvaruVarzybos2008SezonoAtidarymas

P.S. Happy birthday, Ostapas. We did have a great time at your party. I really enjoyed meeting you all again.

Beaverdog

2008-03-31T22:42:00.002+03:00

Hey. Last Sunday we went out to Trakai town to see our coworker racing with his Opel Astra GSI car. The weather was simply great so lots of people came, some of them brought dogs, chairs, flags, meals, firewood and everything else that doesn't have anything to do with racing :)

Andrius (the driver) was pretty damn good and really made us be proud of him. You can see his third attempt, taken by Mantas, here:

Lots of pics from this event shall be available soon at Drawgas blog (he just got a brand new photo camera so we didn't have to remind anyone to shoot some frames) :)

And between the interesting parts of the race me and my girl decided to walk a dog in the near-by forest. It was fun to do until little doggie found her new little wooden toy. Here's what it looked like:

Easter party...for dogs

2008-03-26T23:37:00.003+02:00

Hi. Happy Easter, everyone. Mine was pretty ordinary...lots of meals with my family and my godparents, long discussions on many different subjects, lazy TV channel switching etc.

And since we had more than one day-off me, my GF and her dog visited my godparents the next day again. It seems Tina and Tipas (my GF's and my godparents's dogs) had best time there :)

Here are several pics of them having fun, dancing, barking, kissing, running, jumping, falling and fooling around.

And the bathing process after all :)

Swimming cars without drivers

2008-03-19T00:06:00.002+02:00

Hey. Today after work me and my sister decided to go try her new HQ Bolero kite out. It wasn't windy enough and the surface was pretty wet, so we unpacked my old Salsa kite instead and tried keeping it in air for a while. It felt pretty good to control it after such a long period but that wasn't the conclusion of the day.

Just after packing the kite up and taking first steps towards the car we heard a strange metallic crash and once I looked into that side I saw a Peugeot car falling down into Neris river. As we sorted out later, the car started to drive by itself, without human intervention, it broke a bench down and then, after going down the slope it fell into water.

When we ran to the coast the car was floating in a stream. Then the front started to sink slowly, the headlights turned on under water, the windshield wipers started working and finally car stopped moving. Probably it reached the bottom. The trunk was still above water.

Here's the picture I took using my cell phone. It was pretty dark already, so the quality is really low, but it still gives the idea on what does the car floating in the river by itself look like.

FC Kahuna - Hayling

2008-03-03T23:44:00.002+02:00

Hey. Do you know that feeling when you hear a song that doesn't let you go for a long time? That's what happened to me last week listening to the "Groove Salad" Internet radio station on somafm.com. The song was so pleasant to the ear that I simply couldn't keep working like nothing happened. I found the video of this masterpiece that I want to share with you. And now, after the weekend, I have two albums from this miraculous duo. Enjoy

Don't think about all those things you fear.
Just be glad to be here.

New experiences and disappointments. Poland, Špindlerův Mlýn and Prague

2008-02-11T22:37:00.001+02:00

Hey. I finally made myself to write something to my blog. It's been happening so much and that`s why it`s especially difficult to begin with something.

So...about THE trip. We left Vilnius at around 6:30 AM. My fellow-traveller Giedrius was examining Auto-route software while I was driving my BMW :) It didn`t take long to reach Kaunas and soon we were at the border of Poland. After having a coffee and a sandwich in the last Lithuanian Statoil gas station we finally drove into the territory of Poland for the first time since we`re in Shengen area. We drove many kilometers through Suwalki, Augustaw, Bialystok, Warsaw, Wroclaw etc. and finally we reached the border of Czech Republic. That meant we`re almost there.

Here started the mountain roads. I`ve never driven under such conditions before so it was really interesting and lots of fun. Finally we drove into our final destination - Špindlerův Mlýn. After couple of hours of wandering in the rain we found our "Horni pramen" hotel and stayed there for the night.

1st day. Unbelievable view through the balcony, but wet, melting snow surrounding all around. We decided not to moss the opportunity and go snowboard anyway. Right after parking the car near the Svaty Petr resort the cops came by and informed us that this place is for busses and taxis only. We had to pay 500 krones per car :)

After that we drove back to the hotel and came back on foot. The 1st impression of the mountain, the lift, the tracks and the boarding itself was simply amazing. But, because of the weather conditions (too string wind) they turned the lifts off.

2nd day. Perfect weather, around -2 degrees Celsius, sunny day, fresh snow etc. Several hours of perfect boarding without too many people and ... a fall that made something bad to my wrists. At first I thought that its nothing serious but then later my left hand swelled and I started feeling pain.

3rd day. Trip to Prague. I`ve never been there before and neither my friend Giedrius did. I had a damaged wrist so the trip was probably the best possible alternative for snowboarding. Unfortunately the oldtown of Prague is simply too big for one day but that means the whole day was full of beauty and positive impressions.

4th day. My wrist was still in pain so I decided not to board one more day. I took my camera instead and went for a walk in the town. Later evening I believe we went out to couple bars with the Lithuanian guys we met on the mountain. We had some Absynth, some Vodka with Red Bull and several beers. And that bought us to pretty drunk condition :) Then we had a nice long drunk walk home in the night. :)

5th day. I decided to go snowboarding carefully. This time we went to this other place called Medvedyn. It was OK, but I liked Svaty Petr better. After falling down couple of times I understood that my wrists aren`t ready for that yet and went back to the hotel room to watch movies :)

6th day. In the morning we found out that one girl that came together with us was seriously sick in the hospital and the second car had to leave already. That`s why we put as many stuff as we could into that car and went to take care of the sick girl. After spending several hours waiting for the paperwork to be done we came back to the hotel and started preparing ourselves for the trip back.

It took whole day more to come back to Vilnius and that`s how my holiday ends :)

Now, one week later I still feel pain in the wrist, but I'm almost able to do everything on my own again.

I put some of the pictures from the trip to my web gallery (some of them are shot by Giedrius):

http://picasaweb.google.com/magnetas/200801260202Cekija

And here`s what it looks like when you go up to Svaty Petr (It was a little bit too sunny for the video to take and the only device I had was my cell phone :))

Packing up for Špindlerův Mlýn

2008-01-25T21:38:00.001+02:00

Hey for the last time before the trip. I understand it`s nothing big but for me it is huge. It`s my first trip to Czech Republic, my first trip to the mountains, the longest trip by car so far etc.

We`re leaving in eight and a half hours and the stuff isn`t completely packed yet. But before that I decided to put some pics of the newest inventory parts and the route we're going to take :)

Powerslide butt protection;
Salice goggles with antifog double lenses;
Pro tec wrist guard;
Rossignol hat;
Route from Vilnius to Špindlerův Mlýn;

A student...for the 3rd time

2008-01-23T00:26:00.000+02:00

Hey!

You know what? I`m a student again!!! :)

Regular people can`t even imagine what it feels like, but I do now. I couldn`t say its the best feeling. I couldn`t even say it`s a positive feeling. But..."Once you pop you can`t stop" :) Moreover on that comming soon.

Last Sunday I got myself a mini remote controlled helicopter, but it broke down the first day. And I was really surprised when I could return it without any troubles at all. I got all my money back and I didn`t even have to wait in a line for too long or to do many explanations. Thank you, MAXIMA.

The toy was quite fun, but I came to a conclusion: you have to pay more than 100 Lt. for a remote controlled flying toy...

Me and my roommate Giedrius are planing our snowboarding trip to the Spindleruv Mlyn. Today I took a pink marker and highlighted all the path we gonna take on the paper map. It comes to something around 1000 kilometers. And...we gonna have to come back to this subject later, when I`ll have something more to say.

My coworker Mantas told me about this new software piece called Windows Live Writer. Its a great tool for posting to your blog on most of the popular blogging systems. This post is also a test for hat program :)

And, finally, something really funny I saw today. The "American beauty" movie in five seconds:

New year, new hopes, new environment

2008-01-15T21:24:00.000+02:00

Hey, everyone!!!
Happy new year. I wish you all could say that was the best year of your life so far at the end of 2008. That`s what I said to myself after last year. Especially when during the last days enough snow fell out to start snowboarding!!!
It was like a miracle to wake up one morning and find lots of snow outside. And also a sign to get snowboarding gloves and a case for the board. Me, my girl and a friend were expecting to go to Eglukalns (www.sventesegles.lv) in Latvia for a ride, but they weren`t opened yet. So we decided to go check a skiing hill in Anyksciai. It wasn`t bad at all except for the number of people.
Then my dad got a donor kidney so he went to the hospital in Kaunas as soon as possible. I didn`t want my mom to celebrate new year alone so I went to visit her again with my girl, her dog and my sister. We didn`t drink much so we`d be in good shape next day for...snowboarding!!! :) And this time there were only few skiers so we didn`t have to wait in lines for too long and everything was simply amazing. There was one more snowboarding day in the place I mentioned before - Eglukalns. this year it`s much better than last and that was probably the best snowriding ever for me. Well...at least till the trip to Czech (more on this subject when i`ll come back).
Here`s the stuff I appended my snowboard equipment with:

The next amazing thing that happened just after the new year celebration is that we moved to a new office!!! Now we have lots of space, high-speed internet, huge windows, AC`s etc. at work. Moreover it takes less than 10 minutes to go there or back home by car. And that`s what our office looks like or what we can see through its windows:

One more christmas without snow?

2007-12-17T23:34:00.000+02:00

People probably notice me being nervous and impatient because here, in Lithuania, we don`t still have any snow!!! Half of December has passed and that`s 1/6th of all winter months. And my snowboard is still lying on the cupboard, it wasn`t tried at least for once and it didn`t see any snow so far :)
Anyways...we already started celebrating Christmas. Last weekend some of our kite club members met near Trakai town, let their kites in the air for a while and then left for some warmer place with lot`s of chats, games, dances(?), drinks and food ;) Can`t say much about the party, because It wasn`t meant for me to remember it all, but as much as I do remember it was great. It was another opportunity to make sure that people in our 108 club are warm, full of ideas and interesting.
You can find some of the moments at http://picasaweb.google.com/magnetas/108KalDos2007
This week we have to work for 6 straight days, but we`re having office Christmas party at the end of the week and then couple of evenings with my family. Seems to be calm, but warm weekend with people I care about. I wish you to have the same.
Merry Christmas.

P.S. the image doesn`t have anything in common with the subject. It`s just what I did from one of my 108 Christmas pics and didn`t want to let it go without showing you first :)

"I got a snowboard under my feet"

2007-11-22T23:01:00.000+02:00

Yeah, this Guano Apes song keeps looping in my head for several days now. And why is that? Maybe because I`m close to having all the equipment I need for snowboarding!!! :)
I have a Gravity Lost 166 wide freeride snowboard, Factory FA22 bindings with aluminium frame, SPL leather boots and finally a set of snowboarding pants and jacket from Lithuanian sportswear manufacturer "Audimas". I'm wondering if everything`s gonna fit in my new car (but let`s keep the "car" topic for the next post)...
Now I`m impatiently waiting for more snow to come and, of course, for the trip to Czech Republic next year.
I`m expecting to get goggles, gloves and some arm protection till then.
So what were the costs...
Pants - 189,99Lt.
Jacket - 289,99Lt.
Snowboard - 780Lt.
Bindings > 300 Lt.
Boots > 400 Lt.
After getting a discount for buying the board, the binding and the boots together I payed 1320 Lt.
And it all comes to...1800 Lt.
I also got "Go Snow board" book with DVD by Neil McNab as a birthday present from my cousin and am almost done reading it.
But it`s better to see once than to hear a hundred times. Here are the pics of the snowboarding stuff I owe:

For higher quality pics and more handy picture browsing please visit my snowboarding web album at http://picasaweb.google.com/magnetas/Snowboarding

Countdown till take-off: 5,4,3...

2007-10-17T22:05:00.001+03:00

The day has come. After spending 200Lt. for my new power kite lines I decided to use old ones for replacing the broken pieces. It all went fine and took about 2 hours. So i have knots for lines to attach, the other side of each of them is attached to 5 more lines. And all of those together are connecting 136 more lines. So to sum it all its like...150 pieces of very thin and strong rope :)
I didn't have an opportunity to try it out so it's hard to say if everything's fine now, but I hope it is. :) I also hope I'll know this answer after the weekend. So...a couple of days left to wait.
The repairing wasn't too difficult, all i needed was lots of line, scissors and some precision. I'm adding several pics of my new lines and from the repairing process so you could have an idea of what the hell am I talking about :)
Stay positive :D

P.S. Paul Kalkbrenner was the right artist to listen to while working :)

Dust in the wind...

2007-10-16T20:36:00.000+03:00

Hey,
Last weekend i finally got to understand why people call those things power or traction kites. The wind was as strong as 10 m/s so it was even a little bit too strong for my kite. But me and my friend Giedrius packed up and went up to the hill near Trakai town. I could feel the strength of the wind even without a kite.
Giedrius helped me out unpacking ant preparing my huge bird and here came the first attempt. The lines broke down...and the next time...and the one after that.
Then I remembered I have one more set of lines in my backpack. So I replaced them and tried once more. And this time was completely different. The kite simply picked and carried me up the hill 3 or 4 meters.
Then me and Giedrius had several jumps, several falls and finally, when my cousins arrived, the other lines broke down.
So now I know what the power kite feels like, but can't use my own yet.
Waiting for enough patience to repair it... :)

A couple of news in my digital life

2007-09-28T22:43:00.000+03:00

Hi, readers of my life :)
Well, something new happened in my life again. And it has something to do with you knowing me better and imagining main reasons of my posts here. I started using Picasa. A tool by google which lets me categorize, sort, describe, edit etc. my pictures. Even more. I can upload full albums to web and make them public for everyone to see. The address is http://picasaweb.google.com/magnetas. Check it out regularly to see newest pics and album updates.
And after putting some new software into my computer today I put some new hardware!!! :) From now on my oldie has 1280MB of RAM and I can feel that every moment I'm using it (even now, writing this post).
Well...that's it for today. I was hoping to get some emotions from kites, to make some pictures, meet the guys from the club, but wind forecasts were wrong. I'm looking forward to do all that tomorrow.
Take care

Irregular time on regular Sunday

2007-09-16T23:48:00.000+03:00

Hello.
Today was a wonderful day. I decided to get myself a new higher class stunt kite...and that's how my day started. I got HQ Salsa (1,80x0.9m). It's more difficult to pot together than the old one, but it packs up into a small bag and is much much much more precise. The wind was too strong so i broke one of its leading edge bottom tubes...nevermind :)
I met lots of guys from the club, we tried eachothers kites, had discussions on the kite subject and enjoyed every single take off, every single turn, and every single crash.
Here are some pics of Arturas (Senukas) kite that he brought from Thailand and him, trying to make it fly :)

And here's my new Salsa kite:

Kite stuff I've got so far (kites, bags, lines, handles...):

Lymphoma day commemoration. Flying lanterns.

2007-09-14T23:12:00.001+03:00

Hi.
15th of September is international lymphoma commemoration day. Here are some pics and a video from the Vilnius oldtown for you to get the idea of how we spent the time on the threshold.

Death of summer

2007-09-14T19:22:00.000+03:00

Hello.

Sorry for not writing for so long...I was too busy. Now about the last days of summer...
The last weekend of the summer was simply awesome. Me, my sister and several of my friends went to the Be2Gether festival. The main idea was to promote democracy in Belarus, so the festival took place 300 meters away from the board of Lithuania and Belarus.
The festival itself wasn't bad at all except for the lack of showers, toilets, thashcans and so on. We were a little late (because of standing in a line) to see all performance of Datarock, but at least we made it on "Fa fa fa" song. The band was great and that was the main reason we went there.
We saw Morcheeba, Blodhound Gang, The Therapy?, Andrus Mamontovas, Pieno Lazeriai (Milky Lasers), G&G Sindikatas, Radioshow, Metal on Metal, DJ Alex Gopher and several more performers. I didn't have such a party in a loooong time. Mr.Gopher made me feel like I'm 17 again :)
And now about something completely different :) I got myself a new kite. It's not brand new, but I just bought it. "Outa space" was made in 2006 and Giedrius from Klaipeda owned it (now he got a new one as a present so decided to sell this one). It is 5 x 1,2 meters, so theoretically should generate power to pull 200kg to the sky. Now all I need is a snowboard, snow and good wind :)
Didn't make any pictures of it yet, so I'll just put one from internet for you to know what it looks like.
Take care

Last.fm info. Update

2007-08-27T09:31:00.000+03:00

Hey y'all.
Just wanted you to know that from now on my weekly favorite tracks will be displayed in a flash table, so it's interactive and better looking.
Enjoy.

Last.fm: My Weekly Favorite Tracks

2007-08-23T16:24:00.000+03:00

Hey.
As I promissed I just put a new block "My Weekly Favorite Tracks" in my blog. The should normalize in several days. Enjoy

Last.fm and stuff related to my blog

2007-08-22T13:43:00.000+03:00

Hey, I just started using last.fm. (Saw Top Weekly Artists table on Latelad's blog). It's a wonderful tool, program and website all-in-one. From now on I'll be able to see and share my favourite, most loved and most listened artists, albums and tracks, recomend them, find people who listen to the same kind of music and so on. For now I just placed "My favourite artists" block in this blog, so you can see what artists I listen to. The data is not very exact yet, because I wasn't the only guy using my PC while my roommates laptop was beeing repaired :)
In the near furure I expect to put My weekly favourite tracks table here, but it takes some time for last.fm to "decide" which tracks to show this week :)
So...have a nice day and I hope you'll find something close to yourselves from these tables.

Guenther Royal Loop. First attempts

2007-07-26T10:33:00.000+03:00

Hey.
Yesterday the wind let me try my kite once more out. The wind wasn't perfect, but I was able to make my Royal Loop fly a several times. Here's a shot of one of them. Thanx MadSaras for taking it :)
I'm hoping to get more of that feeling today, because for now the wind looks pretty good. I hope it stays that way till the evening...

Weekends passing by

2007-07-24T00:02:00.000+03:00

Hey, y'all!!!

Waiting for a new post, aren't you? Well...here it is :)
I'll try to make it short and put some more visual material :)
About my last weekends...2 weeks ago I went back to Zarasai to help my dad fix his car (there were some huge problems with the engine) so he could go to the hospital on Monday by himself. It all went fine and I also got to have several beers with my old friends I didn't see for a while (thanks for great evening, dudes).
Then...a weekend after that one. My dad was still in a hospital, so i gave a ride for my mom to see her sister. I changed my cars oil and air filters there and watched my friend Darius finishing up a couple of tires (enjoy the videos). Next day (night) we went fishing, but we didn't catch much. And the morning after that I went to the biggest and probably nastiest market place in Lithuania - Gariunai. Yep, it's still the same: crap all over the place... :)
Then several evenings with beer and pool balls.
Last weekend I got myself...a kite!!! :) Two days after that the wind wasn't strong enough so i couldn't actually try it properly out. But on Sunday when we went to have a swim in a lake, the wind was simply perfect. I'm glad I had my and my girlfriends kites in the trunk. We had lots of fun flying them and I hope to get more of it during this week.
Enjoy the pics, feel free to comment, keep checking for new posts, have a good life :)

"Pleasure is all mine"

2007-07-04T20:18:00.000+03:00

Hey, folks!!!
And here I am, back to Lithuania. I spent last weekend in Poland with my friends. As the matter of fact "Heineken Music Open'er Festival"was taking place there, but first about the trip...
We left home at 7 AM on Friday. Six of us decided to go by 2 cars. The plan was to go together, not too far away from each other, but it was more difficult than we thought. Just when we crossed the border of Lithuania the other car accidentally went the wrong way, so we went just on our own. Soon we found out, that Poland has very very many villages. Just after leaving one of them here comes another. And so for like 500 kilometers.
Finally we reached Gdansk. An amazingly beautiful city on the cost of the Baltic sea. After having a walk in the oldtown and a meal there we headed to our final destination - Gdynia. Here I found out that Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia are all so close that they seem like one big city. I really loved all of them.
So we reached Baby Dolly airport. That's where our parking lot, camping area and the festival was. The line to the campings was very long so we decided not to wait and went to see the bands.
After the concert we found out that we were to late to get into the camping and had to sleep in the parking place.
The second day was spent in Sopot Aquapark with many children :) It was raining all day long, so after coming back we found our tent full of water. After taking care of the tents we went to see the second concert. There was mud all over the place, everybody was wet, dirty and happy.
The last day was dedicated to the sea and KFC. After that - the third concert.
Just after the show was over we headed back to Lithuania without a minute to sleep because my girlfriend had to go to work on Monday. It was a really difficult trip, but we made it.
Now about the bands:
1st day:
Sonic Youth - not bat, pretty impressive, but I've seen better;
The Roots - pretty interesting rapping, unbelievable lighting. Didn't miss a chance to tell their opinion on Bush;
Laurent Garnier - Live show with several live instruments and good visuals;
2nd day:
Groove Armada - impressive, but little soft music, big visual show;
Beastie Boys - rap with live dmc performance, guitars and drums. These guys know how to rap. They know how to make people scream;
Muse - some good soft britpop music before going to sleep;
3rd day:
Block party - filled with energy soft rock music, good communication with audience;
Bjork - impossible to describe. Definitely the best performance I've ever seen. She's amazing, unbelievable, adorable;
LCD Soundsystem - wasn't bad at all, but they sound better when recorded. The vocals are a little bit annoying;
I wasn't sure if we can bring the camera in and the second day was very rainy, so there won't be many pics from the Festival. But there are some form elsewhere.
Here you go, enjoy:

"Protect me from what I want"

2007-06-26T22:40:00.000+03:00

Yeah, I've seen Placebo...live...here, in Vilnius. It was amazing. And that's probably the biggest news from my camp till this weekend (except for the fact I got all my documents back).
Every single moment in the concert was unbelievable and indescribable. I felt young again. We kept jumping and screaming for more than two hours. All the guys on the stage were amazing as always, they played all the most famous songs of placebo as well as the new ones. Ech...I miss that evening. We left UPA (Utenos Pramogų Arena) all tired and covered in sweat. I kept hearing some strange noise in my left ear for two more days. :)
After that I had several weekends by the lake as well as the last one. The difference is that i got really pissed and did that with old friends i didn't see for a while (thanks for everyone there for great evening). There's much to tell you, but I'll leave it up to pictures. And...here they are:

Run, doggy, run!!!

2007-06-22T21:27:00.000+03:00

Hey y'all!!!
I wasn't writing for a while so it's time for something new around here. For now it's just a brand new video, but i promise to share some more stuff going on in my life.
In the video you can see my cousins dog running home from the beach. It was all wet so we didn't let it drive with us. I was late to take a shoot of it taking a crap really fast while running next to the car, but it still is funny :)
Enjoy

Partying season is now open

2007-05-10T00:30:00.000+03:00

Hey. It's been a while since my last post, so I'll try to make you feel better with some pics in return :)
We celebrated Valdas's 24th birthday. The theme of the evening was "characters", so we had to dress up like something(someone) from cartoons, movies or tales. It was a really nice party, we got drunk, had long and interesting conversations with interesting people, danced, played made jokes and so on.
5 years have passed since we graduated in high-school. So there was another party last weekend in a nice place by the "Čyčirio" lake in Zarasai district. It was so nice to meet all the people i learned with, to find out what they are doing for a living, to have a nice drink without hurrying somewhere. Thanks, classmates!!! :)
And here are some pics from both parties, enjoy:

PageRank and stuff

2007-04-29T01:32:00.000+03:00

Hey. I just visited my blog while watching "predator" and to my great surprise it's pagerank wasn't zero anymore. It's 3! 3 out of 10! And what is more, sitescore raised from 7.3 to 7.5. Visitors keep coming from all around the world, several each day, but that ain't the limit, right? :)
Thank you for stepping by. Take care.

And the regular life comes to an end...

2007-04-26T00:53:00.000+03:00

Hey, folks.
It's been a while since my last post so finally, after a week, I made myself to take care of this. Actually it's been a pretty annoying week. Well, at least the weekend.
Friday, after work I went home (and I saw amazingly beautiful rainbow), met my girl and so on...the regular weekend evening.
On the other hand, Saturday wasn't so common. First we went to visit my aunt and uncle and to change oil and filters for my girlfriends A3. The weather was awful, but i decided to help her out. After removing the oil leaking screw the wind started splashing the oil and one of my sweaters was ruined. Anyway, with some help from my cousins we took care of that damn car :)
Afterwards we came back to Vilnius and decided to go to play some bowling. The game itself wasn't so bad, I got my highscore (157 points) and we had lots of fun. But several minutes after we left this bowling club I noticed that I don't have my wallet anymore. There were no cash left in it, but it was loaded with my documents and bank cards.
To crown it all, I got sick the next day. And now, 4 days later, I'm getting better.
I've got brand new bank account (decided to close the old one after the theft and try another bank out), but no driving licence and car ownership documents.
We'll see how it all ends, but now I'm having difficulties reaching people I need on the phone. The line is busy all the time.
Anyway...protect your wallets, documents and health, don't mess up with nature and you should be all-right.

A really really old video

2007-04-18T09:30:00.000+03:00

Here's a video I took a couple of years ago. You can see my sisters degu (it's dead now :) ) carrying around a pile of my papers. A bit overestimated itself, huh? :)

Visitors counter

2007-04-18T00:11:00.000+03:00

Hey. I fogot to mention, that I added visitors counter from hey.lt at the right column of the blog. It counts daily visits and unique visitors. Just to show you're not the only one who's been here :)
So...let's keep the counter spinnin'... :)

Rotten milk

2007-04-17T23:29:00.000+03:00

What happens when you leave a platic bag of milk in the fridge for several weeks? The bag becomes hard and big and the milk inside - rotten. What happens when you hit his bag with an axe? Tak a look :)

Great places, great pics

2007-04-16T21:48:00.000+03:00

Hi. I wanna share some pic from the same trip the love making frogs are :) I hope you'll enjoy it. Please, put your opinion in comments section down. :)

Two frogs making out

2007-04-16T09:59:00.000+03:00

The video I took while having a walk with my girlfriend...pretty amazing :)

Cry-Eye

2007-04-13T22:37:00.000+03:00

Hi. Here's a brand new creation I made using the pic of mi girlfriends right eye :) I called it Cry-Eye, cause it looks so sad... Anyway...interesting pic manipulation...enjoy

Kernavė. Its church and mounds

2007-04-12T23:57:00.000+03:00

Hey. Last weekend, the day before easter, me and my "fiancee" were brainstorming on what to do :) And soon she thought of a trip to Kernavė. It's a small beautiful town nearby Vilnius (probably 40 km. away) and I've never been there before. The weather was great, we had plenty of time, so I agreed.
On the way there it started snowing and the wind went up. So we had to see everything, but we had to do it fast :) Here are some pics I want to share:

Delicious news

2007-04-12T16:16:00.000+03:00

Hey. I just created my del.icio.us account so from now on you can find all my favorite links under the tags located on the bottom of my blog...

Me, myself and I

2007-04-12T00:49:00.000+03:00

Here's what I made with my "Photoshop skills" :) Original picture was of me standing on the second-biggest rock in Lithuania, located in a wood near Stelmužė (famous for 1500 years old oak and a church, built without nails). People keep asking me to post someting new...so here it is :)

New season, new wheels...

2007-04-01T23:49:00.000+03:00

1st April is the day you should change your tires to ones made for summer season. That's what was my object of interest for the last week. Unfortunately it's very difficult to find rims for summer tires I have, so I bought new, bigger rims and tires after all. It's really strange, when the wheels are worth 1/4 of all cars price :) But Now it looks and feels much much better... Here's the pic of my brand new wheel and, for desert, my cousin and his Suzuki GSX :)

Spring invasion

2007-04-01T23:31:00.000+03:00

Hey. I was visiting my parents this weekend again. The weather was great so we went to their garden to take a look around and do some major spring tasks. Here's a prove the spring already came to Lithuania, a toad...

Sometimes it seems there's nothing left to see

2007-03-31T00:10:00.000+03:00

Hey there. After several days lasting delay i've got something new to post here!!! :)
I'm visiting my parents in Zarasai at the moment. It's a smal town in north east of Lithuania, where i spent my first 18 years. There's absolutely nothing to do so i'm trying to push some time with my dads PC. :)
On the way here we stopped a couple of times for my passenger to smoke and i had my camera on the back-seat. So here's a couple episodes of my pics (they aren't high quality, because ir was too dark to do something better with this equipment):

"Fishermen. Fisherwomen". I'm not sure how lucky they got or if it really satisfies them, but they were fishing for sure :)
"Smoke on the water". It was really strange. It wasn't fog or clouds, it neither was smoke. Looked like it tries to softly touch the surface of the water while actualy being scared of it...
"Almost fullmoon". Here you see actual colors. Shot taken around 8PM.
But the best shots weren't taken, cause I was driving at the moment. First of all we saw three men, standing next to eachother on the sidewalk and peeing at the same time!!! :D That's what TRUST is all about :)
And the next episode (except all those waves of strange smell) was a really really old white "Lada" car without driver doors and with opened trunk riding on the road :) The drivers seat-belt was still fastened :)

The place I work @

2007-03-27T23:57:00.000+03:00

Here's a pic of my desk, computer, chair, notebook and other stuff I use at Work. Tons of ideas were born while sitting here, lots of them came true. You can find those solutions on many lithuanian websites and more of them comming each day. Ech...I love my job...

Lost in space

2007-03-27T23:51:00.000+03:00

X-th space traveller :) My pic made wth one of Sony Ericsson's using "fancy" frames :) Thanx Giedrius for sharing it.

Make sure you're safe

2007-03-27T00:27:00.000+03:00

"When you're makin' it, make sure you're safe". Thats the title for my newest pohoto session :)
It's my petition against drinking and driving :D

We don't get any younger

2007-03-26T00:20:00.000+03:00

"We don't get any younger". The picture of my girlfriends back. Early morning. Look what my sheets did to her!!! :)

A nightride to nowhere

2007-03-25T15:19:00.000+03:00

Did you ever experience a situation, when you're doing what you don't have to (and probably don't want you) and you spend all the reward just to do it? Well...that's exactly what I did last night. :)
A friend asked me to take hime to some party in Moletai district...at 11 PM :) Why not, I asked myself, if he's the one that pays for the gas.
The place wasn't too far away, but the thougths that i could be spending my time with my girlfriend at the moment kept coming... :) The speed limits were annoying as well as a bunch of cops where some accident happened. On the other hand we listened to some good music and had a conversation with a friend I didn't see for ages... The problem was that he was going one-way. And i still had another 80 kilometers home on my own feeling so tired I could fall asleep while standing :)
And after all that I had dificulties finding a place to park my car.
But my girlfriend was waiting for me and helped me forget all this crap. That's it...I'm asleep...

When my hands get covered in dirt...

2007-03-24T21:52:00.000+02:00

Hey. I was wrong about the only post in this blog. Here i'm writing again... :)
Yesterday everything turned out just fine, so today i woke up early with a smile in my face and litle sparkles in my eyes. :) And i dcided to go to see my aunt, uncle and cusins and fix some problems with my car.
First of all, i tried to make one of my cars windows start working again...i failed :) Now it simply hangs there and when i go more than 100 km/h the wind starts to make wery strange and annoying noice...
Later i
decided to change one of my brake hoses (the other one has been changed after one accident :) ). And here i succeeded. When i took a look at the old one i understood that every ride coud havebeen my last one :)
After that i tried to wash my car, but it was to dark and now it looks even worse.
Finaly i was tired, dirty and stinking. Anyway, i'll be safe on the road from now on :)
Ehm...i guess that's enough for tonight...time to go take a shower...

First time

2007-03-24T01:53:00.000+02:00

Like every first time it's a little bit complicated, but very interesting. I'm not sure if i'll ever post anything else here, but it's worth a try. Especialy when it is friday night, 01:54 AM and you're waiting until your girlfriend will have enough of alcohol for tonight.
Even more, when she's done, you should drive down to the oldtown and pick her up (it would be really nice of you to drive her friends home too).
After all that both of us will probably be too tired for anything to happen, but we have all weekend, don't we?
I've seen all the internet, TV only shows lame music videos and "erotic movies" and books never were my favourite way to kill some time. So why not start blogging...? :)