So, to recap, these are pictures from last year's MAfest in Makarska.

At night, we hung out mostly at Rokatansky, a nice little beer cafe with an outdoor area to sit in. We wandered around a bit to check out other places too, but what we encountered was mostly crappy dance places where the younger folks were going to presumably get laid, blasting really loud, crappy techno. So, Rokatansky it was! And we enjoyed that place. It was filled with other strange creatures such as us so we found it to be a great fit for us.

You can see the usual group here hamming it up, notably with Talaja milking his own tit. The first pictures here are of me, Diego Garcia and Esad Ribić at Rokatansky. The view of the sea at the end, with the pool, is the view from our hotel room in Baška Voda. The view looking up at the mountains with the guy on the beach and the hotel there; that's our hotel. And that's Talaja, as always, dancing around and having fun.

The 2 pictures towards the end in the cavernous restaurant are of the final dinner we had. Our hosts treated us to this amazing feast in this little restaurant that we basically took over. It was utterly fantastic. The wine was a domestic red (black) wine that was really very strong and tasty as hell. I couldn't drink enough of it. Loved it! And the food was served up course after course, presenting us with a very wide range of dishes over the course of hours. We had all sorts of different kinds of food representing a wide range of choices and all at the highest level of quality. Really, it's one of the best meals I've had in Croatia and in the top ten meals I've ever had. So, thanks to our hosts for EVERYTHING. We had a fantastic time.

We're leaving today to go to the 2008 edition. Come say hello if you see us. Buy us a beer, wouldya? I'll be the white boy over in the corner.

The next set of pictures to go up, sometime next week, will show the trip we took after Makarska last year. Giulia, Nara, Esad and I went to Hvar for 3 days afterward and enjoyed more sun, swimming, eating fish and relaxing. Nice!

And now, continuing with more pictures from MAfest 2007. You can see that we had a lot of fun. The same group is featured again, noticeably with Diego Garcia leaning back pretty fucking far in that first picture and Misch looking all Cuban, smoking a cigar while wearing the flag of the Netherlands.

Our routine was to sleep in a bit. Everyone would be lounging around the pool, so we'd meet up there, have some coffee and enjoy being outside by the sea. I'd usually manage to lure a few people into the sea, which was pretty cold at this point. We had Bura the first day, the cold wind from the north, so the sea was chilled down for a day or two. But we still went in. We'd then go grab some lunch at some place on the seafront in Baška Voda where we were staying, a little north of Makarska. Baška Voda is a little town and is quiet. Makarska is much louder and larger and bustling. Though it's nice, it's also nice to actually stay outside of town to have some quiet and enjoy the sea.

That said, we had a pretty hard time every night finding a way back to the hotel. Taxis were no longer running by our 3AM to 5AM returning home time. We lucked out each time, but it was a real struggle that was very lame.

The show itself was pretty nice, though it's the smallest comics show I've ever been to. It was a nice venue surrounded by plants and the occasional drunk guy wandering the streets. Part of the show was outside. People sat at tables out there having coffee and beer and artists did sketches and mingled with the fans. It's a good show to see the artists at as you can approach them easily. Giulia and I did a talk about our jobs as colorists, answering questions about what we do and generally laying out what our job entails.

One of the days when we were wandering around in Makarska we came across a Havaianas shop. They make sandals. And Nara had made some custom sandals and display stuff for a fashion show in Zagreb for that same company. They had Nara's stuff on display at this shop in Makarska! What a coincidence! You can see in the photos her various offerings. It was pretty cool to come across randomly like that.

Eventually we'd head over to the book store cafe near the church. It's just down from the show and has a nice little outdoor terrace to sit at. I drank a bunch of Laško pivo and we smoked some cigars that I brought.

More photos to follow soon...

With MA Fest in Makarska quickly approaching, I think it's finally time for me to post pictures from last year's show.

Our friends Diego Garcia and Giulia Brusco flew in to Zagreb to hang a few days. Diego stayed at our apartment and was a great guest, very curteous and a pleasure to have at our place. We then went to the show, where our gracious hosts offered us hotel rooms right on the sea. Very nice! We stayed in nearby Baska Voda.

We spent most of our nights drinking at Rokatansky, a local cafe/bar where many of the people affiliated with the show hung out. Esad spend the time being crazy, as usual. The pictures where his face looks all distorted look like that because he was shaking his face back and forth as fast as he could, so his cheeks were swinging around. Funny shit. And we all took turns using Giulia's hair as our own. I like Misch's best myself.

The stars of this little drama, on this post at least, are: Esad "The Barbarian" Ribić, Kresimir "Misch, The Cuban Mouse" Certić, Diego "The Trappist" Garcia, Giulia "The Red" Brusco, Dalibor "Đugro" Talajić, Me-Matt "Žujo" Hollingsworth, Branka "Nara" Nikolić, Goran "Đuka" Sudžuka and Bob "Bad Taste" Solanović.

Wow, I've been tired for the last two or three days.

I've been working for 14 or so hours a day for about the last week. But it doesn't seem to be that. Maybe it's the weather. Croatia is the only place I've lived where the weather can make you tired. Not sure exactly what it IS in the weather that does this. Pressure? Sometimes it's Jugo, the winds from the south. But there's not Jugo right now, or doesn't seem to be.

So, what is it? Anybody who lives here know? Do we have some weird weather phenomenon right now making me tired? Or maybe it's just all the work.

Incidentally, I will be attending MA Fest in Makarska, Croatia, next week. I will leave with Talaja and Esad on Thursday. It's a little comic show right on the beautiful Adriatic coast. That's one of the reasons I'm working so many hours. I'm trying to catch up with work. But I also have a lot of work right now. And Goran Sudžuka's stuff (linked at the left) is especially slow for me. Still, it's coming out nice. My wrists have been hurting a bit because of the heavy hours though. I'll try to soak them in the sea and see if the magical salts help.

Now back to work.

Stupid Microsoft!

I'm bummed today. And it's because of Microsoft.

I use(d) their software, Zune, for music. They have a monthly subscription, which gives you unlimited downloads of their music library. I was paying $15/month since December for this and LOVED it. I downloaded maybe 300 albums in that time and got a LOT of new music. Fantastic! The music only works while you have a subscription. That's the catch. But I didn't care. $15 is not much for unlimited music. If those albums were $10 a pop, which is not unusual, that's $3000. And I've paid for 5 months, so $75. Not bad.

But today, when I started up the software, it said "new software available, click to update". But, after updating the software, the new version now eats ALL of my CPU resources. I have a 2.4 gigahertz processor. This is enough. I am normally running Photoshop, Firefox, Open Office and XnView all at the same time without trouble. And I USED to also run Zune. But no more. This new version literally would tie up more than 90% of my processor at nearly ALL times. Which would mean that when I was typing an e-mail, it had a major lag. And so did Photoshop. I couldn't paint while I was waiting for it to do something. Ridiculous.

See these screencaps. The one with the processor used up to 100% is with Zune, the one at ZERO is without Zune.

Microsoft are idiots. They always do this. They try to add so much functionality that the software uses up all of your resources and no longer works. See Vista. Damned idiots. I even called tech support to see about downgrading, but no such luck. So, I promptly canceled my membership. Back to 300 less albums and iTunes, sadly. Oh well.

Fucking Microsoft.

The ćuk has returned! Yay!

Last year, starting in spring, I would hear this regular whistle outside at night. The sound is so regular and consistent in tone, duration and the length of time between sounds that I had initially thought it was something electronic. It sounded artificial.

But Nara, moja zaručnica, told me that it was in fact a ćuk, a small owl. After that, I loved hearing it. Gajnice has a lot of plants and is close to some forested areas, and this is a reminder of that that I enjoy. Eventually, sometime in summer, the ćuk disappeared. I cannot remember exactly the timing, but I was sad the little owl was gone.

Across from our apartment is a large kesten, or chestnut tree, that the ćuk spent much of it's time in. It would also switch spots, presumably moving around the neighborhood to find an area with fresh bugs to eat. The kesten has come into bloom lately and I remember the ćuk last year arriving sometime around then. So, I'd been awaiting the arrival of the ćuk.

And last night, it returned! Yay! In the same tree, we could hear that short, high pitched whistle filling the air and terrifying the local insect population.

So, welcome back little ćuk!

I have not seen the ćuk yet, but maybe one night I will. It's immersed in the heavily hidden areas of the branches up high, with no clear line of view to it.

If you're curious, the ćuk is also known as the Eurasian Scops Owl, or by its Latin name, "otus scops".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otus_scops

And here's the Croatian page:

http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%86uk