Ilyia Kaushansky

Well, I'm about a month away from moving to San Francisco, CA and today I finally started looking for an apartment. To tell you the truth: it isn't easy, even with great resources such as www.housingmaps.com(merge of Google Maps and Craigslist) and www.apartmentratings.com.

Basically I'm looking for a 1 room studio that is located within 10 minute walking distance of this location (Civic Station BART). There are many available studios in that area, however most of them either require a year long lease, or are really expensive (expensive as in $400-500/week). Normally a year long lease wouldn't be a problem, but since I can't visit the apartment(I'm currently in Toronto) before signing the lease, it might be a big gamble.

Thus, after thinking about this for a bit I came to the conclusion that it's probably a better idea to pay extra for one month rather than commit myself to a year long lease. And so, my current plan is to live at Ansonia Hotel (thanks to RJ for recommendation) for a few weeks, and during that time look for a more long term placement.

Every once in a while a web application is released that is radically better than any existing competition. A well known example is Gmail. A slightly lesser known one is Flickr, which I want to write about in this post.

Flickr is web based photo-hosting service, with some really neat features. You can get a free account, as well as a pro-account (25USD per year). The main limitation of the free account is that it is only possible to upload up to 20MB of pictures per month, which is still ok if you aren't taking that many pictures. With pro-account, you can upload as many pictures as you want and, of course, there are some additional not-so-essential perks.

Here is a short overview of some features I love most:

• RSS feed for person's pictures. Basically you can subscribe to person's picture stream, and receive notifications when new pictures are uploaded.
• You can tag your pictures with multiple keywords. You then have the option of only viewing those pictures that have keywords you are interested in. For example here are all my pictures that are tagged with keyword 'kenya': Kenya Pictures.
• You choose who you want to share your pictures with. For instance if you only want to share it with family members, only your family will be able to view them.
  
• You can attach descriptions to certain areas of the picture. Then, when you move the mouse over a certain area of a picture, a pop-up is displayed describing that area. Example.

Overall, Flickr is a really impressive photo-hosting solution. Lets hope there is more to come !

Flickr was originally based in Canada, but was recently acquired by Yahoo. It is still unclear what implications this will have on the Flickr service; however, I believe that it's for the best. Yahoo has been doing some great things lately, and I think that Flickr will only improve in Yahoo's hands.

As I mentioned in the earlier posting, I recently went on a 3 week tour of Kenya and Tanzania. At first I planned to write a very detailed overview of the trip but then when I started writing it, I realized that my writing abilities are simply not good enough to produce a detailed, yet interesting and humorous review. In addition to that, my friend Alex who went on the tour with me has already written a really good review here.

Thus, I'm just going to write a few things in point form.

• Seeing all the animals living in the wild, in their own world with little or no human intervention is absolutely fascinating. Its one thing to see a lone giraffe in the zoo, but when you see a family of 5 giraffees, just walking around, minding their own business, not really caring for us humans - it's a completely different experience. Or take lions for example. I couldn't believe my eyes when we were driving in a truck, and there was a pride of about 12 lions sharing the road with us, walking right next to the truck, almost oblivious to our presence.
  
• Guerba - our tour guide company - really knows its shit. They've been in business for something like 20 years and it shows. Our tour guides were very informative and could answer all of our questions about African geography, vegetation and wildlife. Our cook was fantastic. We had great food every day and I was never left hugry. The tents that were provided to us were outstanding; they were easy to assemble, and stayed dry even during the heaviest of rains.
  
• Most of the people on the tour(with 1 or 2 exceptions) were in their late twenties or early thirties. Most were avid travellers, with lots of stories. Our nightly bonefires were never boring. Most people were travelling alone, so it was really easy to make friends.
• Kenyan and Tanzanian scenery is beautiful. Some of the highlights were the view of the Great Rift Valley, Hell's Gate Park(apparently that's where Tomb Raider movie was shot) , Ngorongoro Crater, Mount Kilamanjaro and Lake Nakuru.
• All bigger Kenyan cities have Internet cafes on almost every corner. The rate is around 1USD/hour, which is really good.
  
• Camping for three weeks is exhausting, especially considering the fact that we had to wake up at 6:30-7AM every morning. Now that I think about it, it would've been better to do a 2 week tour of Kenya, and a year later do a 2 week tour of Tanzania and Zanzibar(which we never visited).
• Kenyan beer Tusker is really good. I wish they imported it into Canada.

Overall, it was an incredible adventure that I will remember for the rest of my life.

Tags: Africa Kenya Tanzania Review Guerba

On June 13th I came back from a 3 week tour of Kenya and Tanzania. The tour was organized by Guerba, and I really enjoyed it.

Here is a sneak preview of the pictures (Credit for the pictures goes to Alex who also went on this tour. I didn't have a camera, so it was up to him to capture our journey on "film". I think he handled the job well)

The rest of the pictures will be uploaded shortly. Additionally, I will post a full review of the trip within the next few days.


The 6 of us who went on Guerba's Faces of Kenya tour.


This is a picture showing our typical camp site set up. This particular picture has been taken in Amboseli National Park in Kenya


Trying to ride an Ostrich at the Ostrich Farm in Kenya.


Preparing for a heavy rain. Taken at the camp site on the slopes of Mount Kenya.


Reticulated Giraffe. Taken at Samburu National Park in Kenya.


Elephants. Taken at Samburu National Park in Kenya.


On the second day at Samburu park we finally saw a cheetah. It was peacefully sleeping on the road. Unfortunately our truck got to close to it, so the cheetah got up and walked away.


Lake Nakuru attracts hundreds of thousands of flamingos. Lake Nakuru with it's surrounding mountains and wildlife was one of the highlights of the tour.


We saw lots of rhinos at Nakuru Park. This was one of them.


Taken in the Masai Village in Loita Hills in Kenya. On the left is a young Masai Warrior, and on the right is me.


Zebras. Taken at Masai Mara national park in Kenya. Few of the thousands of zebras that we saw in Africa.


Ngorongoro Crater. This looks like a deserted area, right ? WRONG ! This crater has the largest concentration of wildlife on the planet. Zebras, Lions, Hippos, Hyenas, etc - they are all there.


Tags: Africa Guerba Kenya Tanzania