Personal Blog

The Celestron Travel Scope 70 is a compact and cheap 70mm refractor telescope focused on portability. I ordered this telescope for two reasons: 1) i don't have telescope in my new home and i wanted something small and inexpensive. 2) All the reviews (look here and here ) are commenting on good price/quality ration. After sometime i decided to order it from Amazon. The only bad thing when ordering from Amazon is the arbitrary time of package arriving. Unfortunately, this time Amazon used the iparcel company for the transfer that caused an extra delay of 10 days. The package The package of the Celestron travel scope. Eyepieces and barlow lens of the travel scope. The package includes a telescope tube with a focal length of 400mm and aperture of 70mm, providing a focal ratio of f/5.7. The telescope uses mostly plastic components to keep the cost and weight down, including a plastic focuser and plastic lens shade. The glass lenses seems good quality and provide beau...

Rethimno is a beautiful city of approximately 40000 people in Crete. One of the well preserved places is the Rethymnon Old Town. The town still maintains its old aristocratic appearance, with its buildings dating from the 16th century, arched doorways, stone staircases, Byzantine and Hellenic-Roman remains, small Venetian harbor and narrow streets. Small road inside the old town of Rethimno in Crete, Greece. One of the many small streets in Rethimno from the beautiful island of Crete in Greece. View of the old port  Rethimno, Crete, Greece . View of the sea from  Fortezza , an old fortress in  Rethimno, Crete, Greece . At the top of a low hill named "Palaiokastro" there is a small fortress (Fortezza). It was built in 1590 to protect the city from the pirates raids and the Turks. The name "Palaiokastro which means 'The old Castle" was in use even by the Venetians which demonstrates the existence of an even older castle at this place.  The int...

I recently went for a walk around the city. It was a good chance to test my new camera. Here are some photos around the city: Route we used. Natural history museum. Dia island. Fortress.  Sunset. After sunset. View to the inside of the walls. Sunset with city view. Open area above "new door" ( Nea Porta - Νέα Πόρτα)

Recently i visited UK for the XEN Hackathon . Before, going to London we decided to visit Cambridge for a meeting with the team and see some old friends. I will never complain about the weather in Greece. The first three days the weather was terrible. Despite the beauty of Cambridge, we were not able to enjoy the beauty due to bad weather conditions. Looking at Parker's Piece Park. Rain, rain, and... rain! Next we moved near to London Heathrow Airport for the XEN Hackathon. The Hackathon was hosted on the Rackspace Offices. The area was nice and the offices impressive, although they were quite outside of the town. We were around 40-50 people in total and although not all of the topics were interesting, i was a good opportunity to learn some things for XEN. Room scheduling: everything at runtime. I don't travel often any more, so this trip was a good excuse to see some friends and enjoy London. One place i have not visited previous times was the  Brooklands...

I recently saw a clip from the City Slickers movie about the midlife crisis. Ready to start my 30s, this was a friendly reminder about how to spend our valuable time. Here it is: Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?" Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start...