My little puppy is turning 1 year old today! Can’t believe it! As a birthday gift we went to one of his favorite places: the pet store. He got his favorite sausages, a new toy and a new juicy bone.

A lot has happened since the beginning of march when I flew to Frankfurt to first meet him. Fire has grown from a tiny, little bit shy Aussie gentleman to all grown up, confident Aussie heartbreaker. He has made a ton of new friends and got to experience his first summer. He has learned a ton of new tricks and sniffed a ton of butts. As a dog and a friend, I couldn’t be more happy with how everything has gone so far with Fire. Big thanks for all of this goes to his human mother for such a great upbringing and for continues support and tips.

Here are few photos of Fire:

​Click here to see all images from St. Louis

​Click here to see all images from New York

​Last week I bought a new lens for my Canon 5D mark II. I’ve been dying to get a fast prime lens and since the Canon 50mm F1.2 and 85mm F1.2 were a bit out of my price range, I went looking for the cheaper 50mm lenses. The are two choices, the Canon EF 50mm F1.4 USM and the Sigma 50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM.

I went with the Sigma, mainly for its superior built quality. The lens is build like a tank and feels really good on the 5Dmk2. It’s considerably larger and heftier than the other 50mm lenses (see comparison) but as the Canon 5Dmk2 is pretty large camera, the larger lens actually looks better on it.

The focus on the lens is sharp and I haven’t had any problems with it yet, the focusing ring requires more force than I would like (this is a problem when manually focusing during video shooting) but it might loosen up after some use and the DOF on F1.4 is ridiculous.

Stay tuned for more photos with this lens!

​The MacSlap I ordered arrived today and I rushed home to put it on my Macbook immediately. Had a hard time deciding between this one and the Mario, but the Lego guy was just “too cute” to pass by.

You can get these and others from macslaps.com.

That’s it, my vacation has officially started. Technically thou, I’m still sitting at the office, but I’m just finishing couple of side projects and making sure all my work files are accessible for everyone while I’m gone. All I need to do now is to clean up my desk and then, in the words of Reel Big Fish: “Sayonara Senorita!”

Work vice this past year has been pretty unbelievable! There have been some really high highs and some really low lows and few emotions that fall somewhere in between. I’ll probably write more about everything when things can be spoken off but for now, I just want to say thanks for everyone. I’m really fortunate for being able to work on some amazing projects, to work side by side with some really talented people, and having the freedom to fully devote my time to something I really enjoy doing.

You stay classy, San Diego!

Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale’s vagina.

— Ron Burgundy, The Legendary Anchorman

In little less than 12 hours, me, Matias and Saara are boarding a plane to (hopefully) sunny California where we are going to spend the next three weeks with The Extended Family™ (We’ll miss you Ninna!), enjoying the best the west coast has to offer.

After a short 20h flight through Brussels and Chicago and we’ll be greeted by Anna and Janne in Los Angeles. They already got there on tuesday as our reconnaissance unit, scouting the locations and getting things ready for us (I assume). From L.A. we’ll make our way to San Diego where we’ve rented a “Hawaiian styled” beach house for the five of us.

But for now, I need to get go home packing and get some sleep. Summer holiday, you have officially started!