Ich bin ein Ausländer

Welcome Back?

2011-11-27T11:58:00.002+01:00

I know it has been nearly 3 years since I last wrote anything here, but as we are preparing to move to Ireland in a few weeks, I thought maybe I should start again and chronicle the experience and our new life in the new country.

Anyone interested?

Made it to Egypt

2009-03-27T15:11:00.000+01:00

Some of you may have heard. Jeannette and I have been planning on going to Egypt since, well, my employer told me in January I had to take at least 1/2 of my vacation in the 1st half of the year, and at about the same time I found a dirt-cheap flight from München to Cairo.

After a couple of weeks of preparation, everything was set. Finally, the day came. We actually stayed overnight in München (Munich for the German illiterate), since the flight left at noonish. We could have made it from Heilbronn, but it would have meant leaving home at like 4 in the morning, and who wants to do that on the 1st day of vacation?

Anyway, after a fun time in München (despite the gloomy weather), we packed up at a reasonable hour (9-ish) and headed for the airport.

As a fun aside, the München airport is a punny place. Like the shop selling stereotypical Bavarian memorabilia called "Buyern". Ha ha ha! Oh, you didn't get it? What if I told you that "Bavaria" in German is "Bayern". Pronounced "buy-urn". And it is a store. Where you can BUY stuff. Stuff that is related to "Bayern". Fine. Jokes (and puns) just aren't funny when you have to explain them.

Anyway, we got to the airport in plenty of time to make the 2 hour cutoff for international flights (Aren't we perfectly trained by the wonderful TSA?), and played cribbage to w(h)ile away the time. The flight was quite turbulent, but nobody in my vicinity reached for their barf bags (although Jeannette looked ready to strike...). The landing was rough.

We got to Cairo, bought our visas (which, of course, was a completely different procedure from that described in our 1-year-old book), got into the country, hit the bank machine (withdrawing its maximum amount, or about 300 Euros - not quite enough to pay for our hotel in Luxor in advance), made our way to our new terminal (how many times did we tell people, "No, we don't need a taxi, we're just waiting for the bus to Terminal 1"), checked in (again) more than two hours early for our flight to Luxor, and again sat down to play cribbage and wait. Since we flew two different airlines, and we had to get the visas, I planned a 4-hour layover, though things were pretty smooth and we could have done it with merely 2.

As good airline passengers, we shuffled off to our gate with time to spare before the designated boarding time, but that time came and went. We are seasoned travelers, so we are no strangers to flight delays, but there was no information anywhere, and no "two girls behind a counter" (as Jeannette called it) to ask questions to. There was only two guards at the gate with machine guns, that gave me shit the last time because supposedly I had too many AA batteries. Since when has a bundle of AA's brought down a plane?

About 20 minutes after our scheduled departure, a lady in an EgyptAir outfit came in and started yelling something. We hadn't tuned our ears yet to "English with a Cairo accent", so it took us a while to realize she was saying "Flight 201". Our thrill to board was short-lived however, because it turns out she was just passing out juice boxes to help us cope with the delay.

Eventually a man in an EgyptAir uniform came in and made a long announcement in Arabic, which seemed much shorter when he eventually got to English. Flight delayed due to bad weather in Luxor, but it is getting better so maybe we would fly in an hour. OK, that would mean we're 90 minutes late, not the end of the world.

Well, the hour came and went, without any further announcements. It was a waiting game - the guards warned us not to leave, because we could go at any time. So we sat and waited. I finished my book I had hoped to stretch out most of the trip. Jeannette managed to sleep a bit on the uncomfortable chairs. At one point, the brought us sandwiches, and no sooner had we finished them, did they announce that they were boarding our flight! Woo hoo!

The flight was uneventful, though instead of landing at about 21:45 we landed at 3:00 the next day. As we entered the baggage claim area, we saw lots of people picking up passangers with their little signs. Eventually we saw ours, outside the security area. Stupid me, I thought I would tell him we're here and realized too late that I couldn't go back to help Jeannette with the bags. Ooops. I should have known. I blame it on the tiredness.

She managed to lug everything out, and we got to the hotel at a brutal 4:00 am. But the storm had knocked the power out, so we climbed into bed via candle light... The next morning (actually, the same morning) we awoke to braying donkeys and sun streaming in the windows. It was only about 7:30, but the sun was already bright, and the sugar cane fields next to the flat were bustling with activity (much of it involving the previously-mentioned donkeys). The power was still out.

We showered (there was still hot water) and headed downstairs, and met Gamal, one of the housekeepers of the flats and the resident cook. We had mentioned that we wanted to rent bikes to get around, and he made some phone calls, and within 20 minutes or so, we were pedaling away on some old skool Chinese-made bikes that have seen some serious action in their lifetimes. They, for the most part, handle the rough roads of the West Bank fairly well.

Our first destination: The temple known as Medinat Habu. And as proof that we have arrived, I present you this:

Notice the book. It says very clearly, "Egypt", so I must be there. You can also note my awesome new European-style glasses, my ultra-nerdy photographer's vest, and the floppy green hat that protects my pasty-white nerd skin from the harsh Egyptian sun.

Sorry it took so long for this. The WLAN has been spotty since the power outage (which wasn't really reliably back online until the 2nd day).

Well, I need to go for now. Since the WLAN doesn't quite reach our flat (yet?), and even when I go to the lobby to use the internet, things are slow (Egypt must have a small or clogged intertube), getting updates will still be a bit sparse. Feel free to check on Ipernity for my latest photos from Egypt.

Water Droplets on a Cigarette Machine

2009-01-18T23:01:00.000+01:00

Ken's Buddy

2009-01-17T14:16:00.003+01:00

Found this while surfing around a bit.

It's surprising because the name is spelled right. And it looks just like me. OK, add about 50 pounds and glasses & a beard - then he looks just like me. Back when I had more hair.

At least I know that I can always borrow clothes from my buddy Ken.

The Music of 2008

2008-12-09T07:54:00.017+01:00

It's been a while since I have done a "Music of..." list, but I really wanted to this year. I only bought a couple of albums actually released in 2008, but there are several 2007 albums that I didn't buy until this year, so from my perspective they are from this year.

Also, in 2008, I have been to more live shows of bands I really like since I lived in Austin, TX in the late 90's. Shellac, Melt Banana, Dan Bern, Hanson Brothers, Firewater... And with one exception, they all had great opening bands too.

The best album of 2008 by far is "The Golden Hour" by Firewater. It is just incredible. If you only buy one album this year, get this one.

Below is a youtube video where Tod A. talks about how "The Golden Hour" was made & what it is about. It also includes some music from the album.

The best live show of 2008 was Shellac in Paris. Melt-Banana, Mission of Burma and Bottomless Pit (not to be confused with Bottle of Spit) opened. Here's a couple videos, but they don't do the show justice.

Shellac Starting the Show:

More of the excellence that is Shellac:

Mission of Burma play what may be their most famous song:

Melt Banana:

Honorable Mention (in no particular order)
Shellac - "Excellent Italian Greyhound"

Melt-Banana - "Bambi's Dilemma"

Die Ärzte - "Jazz ist anders"

Gogol Bordello - "Super Taranta!"

Spoon - "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga"

OK, yeah, these were all from 2007. For more music that actually came out in 2008, in the last week I bought both "District Line" by Bob Mould and "In aller Stille" by Die Toten Hosen. I'm still evaluating them, but in both cases I think they are good, but weaker than the last release by each artist.

Bomb

2008-11-10T18:48:00.004+01:00

A WW2 bomb was just found a couple hundred meters from my apartment.

Here's the article in the local paper.

See: It isn't far (Google doens't realize there is a path through the buildings by the traffic circle for people (and explosions), so it is even closer than it calculated...)

View Larger Map

A New Perspective on the Moon Landing Hoax

2008-10-31T17:40:00.002+01:00

I spotted this sign as were were driving around Crete. We didn't go inside, maybe I should have.

I am trying to understand how Homo-Sapiens evolved from caves on the moon, and I started to think about all the people that think the moon landings were faked. And then it hit me! Maybe, since it all happened so long ago, obviously we are just remembering things differently (hoax believers vs. non-believers), but we're all remembering it wrong. They weren't moon LANDINGS, but launches. The humans that evolved from caves on the moon colonized the Earth, about 40... no 6000... no 200,000 years ago.

Or something. Maybe they had a pair of all other animals on board as well. And it wasn't Neil Armstrong, it was Noah Armstrong!

Like I said, I should have gone in to see what was up.

Hopefully, it is just a mistake made by someone writing in their 2nd or 3rd language (I know I make enough mistakes in my 2nd language, sometimes to hilarious effect). I really, really, hope that there aren't people out there that think humans evolved on the moon.

Watching the Stars for 10 Minutes.

2008-10-31T08:02:00.004+01:00

This is what happens when you put your camera on a tripod at night in late October in eastern Crete away from (most) light pollution, set the lens to 24mm, angle it towards the sky (around 45 degrees), open the aperture to 2.8, focus on infinity, and leave the shutter open for nearly 10 minutes (583 seconds).

I think Carl Sagan was right about how many stars there are out there. The photo doesn't do it justice, but outside of the city like that, on a clear night, I could believe there are billions and billions and billions of stars out there.

UPDATE: I'm not happy when I reread that last paragraph. I know Carl Sagan is right - there are billions and billions and billions of stars out there. I loved watching his show "Cosmos" on PBS when I was a kid. Living in the city, sometimes I forget that there are more stars than those that make up Orion and the Big Dipper. That night in Crete reminded me how many there are, and it was especially cool to be able to point out the "milky way" to Jeannette, who had never really looked at it before.

Greeffiti

2008-10-30T21:06:00.002+01:00

One of the first things I noticed in Crete is that Heraklion has a lot of graffiti. And a lot of it is quite nice.

Now if I could just get someone who understands Greek to tell me what they say...

Opium For Your Ears; Whiskey For Your Soul

2008-10-17T17:29:00.003+02:00

Firewater Poster acquired after their show on 16.10.2008 at Cafe Central in Weinheim, Germany.

It was great, I recommend seeing it when they come to your neighborhood, or anywhere within 100 km. The only bad thing was that it wasn't long enough. Oh, and that the opening band started way later than they should have. But you can't really fault Firewater for that.

Set List:
Hey Clown
Bhangra Bros.
Borneo
Already Gone
Chi Cha
Bourbon & Division
Electric City
Get Out Of My Head
Weird To Be Back
--
Paradise
Three-Legged Dog
"The Tuning Song" - Tod A. (silently) tuned his guitar while the other 5 played.
This Is My Life

Hanson Brothers Set List

2008-10-12T18:17:00.002+02:00

Hanson Brothers set list from their show on 11.10.2008 at Cafe ExZess in Frankfurt (Main), Germany.

Goombah
Everything
My Game
Robot
Duke It Out
--
Stick Boy
Commando
100 + 10%
Night W/o
--
I Know You
Tranquill
Sabrina
Comatose
Jack-off
--
No Emotion
Secret
Third Man In
Danielle
--
Hockey Song
Bad
--
+Enjoy Y-self
Let's Go Out
Brewin'
Get Right Back
--
++They Made Her
Head Cheese
Road Pizza
Sudden Death

How I Single-Handledly Changed the Face of Radio in SW Germany

2008-07-24T21:08:00.003+02:00

OK maybe not single-handedly. And we have to wait to see if anything actually changes, but read on and hear (er... read) my tale....

So about a week ago, I was home alone and the phone rings. I can't remember the circumstance completely, but I had reason to believe that it could have been Jeannette calling me.

It wasn't. After a barrage of German that didn't have the usual Swabian tinge to it, my filters kicked in and I was able to make out the gist of it (note: I understand more German these days that I think I do, and I have been making rapid improvements in that field since moving here. I still speak like a Cro-Magnon at a tea party, but I'm working on it). The caller was doing some sort of a survey about radio stations in our area. I'm a big fan of music (I think I have several unfinished blog posts about music), and a big anti-fan of radio stations that I have found in SW Germany (I really like Einslive from NW Germany, but I can't get it here. Or I should say, I liked it back when I was visiting Duisburg regularly. Maybe they are different now), so I figured I would answer the questions and maybe throw my 2 eurocents in to chip away at the sucky radio establishment.

After two filter questions ("How old are you?" "37" "Gooooooood". And "Do you or any of your immediate family work for a media company?" "Nope". "Gooooooood.".), I was asked to listen to some music clips.

It started out with 30 seconds of "Radio Ga Ga". Fuck me gently with a chainsaw! I have heard that song every morning between snooze 1 and snooze 3 for the last week and a half. They proceeded to play about 6 or 7 other radio drivel at me, and then, after it was finished, I was asked whether I liked it a lot, I liked it , kinda-sorta or not at all. I said, "It's OK, but I tire of hearing this same crap over and over, and I really wish radio would play some new, interesting stuff, not made-for-the-charts mainstream turn-the-crank-here's-another-hit stuff." Or at least I tried to. Remember, cave-dweller at the captain's table?

The interviewer's response: "So, you're English?". I did correct him.

He then asked me (Ok, maybe you are wondering, but yes, there was absolutely no acknowledgment of my plea for less formulaic, more interesting radio. Just more questions: "What station did you listen to most in the last week?" "Uhhh... SWR3". A small lie. I only listen to the radio as an alarm clock (If I thought I could hear interesting & new music on the radio, I would tune in more. If I want to hear "Radio Ga Ga" I'll throw in my Queen's Greatest Hits CD) and SWR3, probably the best of the region's stations, at least for the least-annoying morning DJ criterion, for some reason has crappy reception at our house, especially the bedroom. So a month or so ago, I was fiddling with the tuning dial (yeah, it is a manually-tuned clock radio. Maybe I am more stone-age than I thought) to try to better the reception, when what sounded like SWR3 popped in and hasn't moved since. It turns out it is HR3 (for the non-Germans, SWRx is a group of radio stations paid for by the obligatory radio & TV tax that covers Baden-Württemberg, Saarland & Rheinland-Pfalz [I refuse to use Palatinate when Pfalz is a perfectly good word]). HRx is the same thing, but covers the state of Hessen.). Why HR3 gets better reception in my bedroom than SWR3, I don't know. But it sounds (musically) about the same, I don't drive so I don't care if the traffic reports are for roads in Hessen. The only downside is that I don't get the Baden-Württemberg-centric news.

So I lied about the radio station. They sound the same, so I didn't care so much. Then he asked how long I listen per day. I told him 1 hour, which is a stretch because it is usually about enough time for me to find the snooze button unless the news is on.

He then asked what's my favorite station. I was at a loss. I didn't remember Einslive, so I said SWR3. Why I couldn't say I didn't have a favorite, I don't know...

Anyway, he then offered to pay me 25 euros if I could show up to somewhere not far from my house to do an additional music review project and proceeded to tell me the available time slots.

SO, to make a long story a little bit shorter, I went to it last night. I purposely wore my NoMeansNo T-shirt and considered bringing my iPod in case I needed to demonstrate what good music is. Not that it went there, or even really could.

When I arrived, there were about 75 other people there, and a sea of laptops. We were seated pseudo randomly, and after a brief intro about how the survey thingy would work, we proceeded to click away on the laptops.

It started our with demographics. Male. 37. Repeat of the phone questions about radio stations. Then we put on our headphones and listened to nearly 2 hours of 30-(or so) second clips of music. For each clip we were to indicate whether we had heard it, and how well we liked it: very good, good, sorta good, total crap. OK, the last one was more like not so good, but still. Then, if we had heard it, we were to indicate whether you would want to hear it on the radio or not. But the way it was worded was funny, something like "if this was playing on the radio, would you be likely to change the station". So that when I want to express my desire to hear it I should click "No" and if I don't want to hear it I would click "Yes". I had to read it several times to make sure I wasn't doing this wrong.

I would say that I knew 80-85% of the songs. They ranged from classic rock to disco, to R&B to radio-friendly hard rock. There were a couple borderline "college radio" tunes, some 90's mainstream radio "alternative" and a bunch of current tunes, but not so much of the Britney drivel but not enough of that song that I heard in Ireland that I don't remember anything about. There was absolutely no Rap or Hip-Hop (the closest it came was the clip of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" which was covered by Run DMC), but there was a couple reggae songs sprinkled in. One Moby song was the closest we got to anything electronic. No Heavy Metal (not even radio-friendly stuff like Guns-N-Roses, if you can even call it Heavy Metal). So really, the clips didn't push any envelopes. Hell, it was so far from anything edgy, even the clips chosen from the few bands that had "edgy" potential (Die Ärzte or REM, for example) were the most watered-down and lyrically dull that they could find.

I seriously think that of the 400 or so clips I heard, maybe 5 got labeled "very good", maybe 20 "Good", and 60% of the remainder I labeled crap. Even the stuff I called good there was only a very select few that I said I would want to hear on the radio again. By the end, I was getting so discouraged. Why not throw one freakin' firewater song in. Or Dan Bern. Or Shellac. Hell, throw in the J.B.O. parody cover of "Go West" ("Ein Fest") instead of the Pet Shop Boys' cover. By the time (the original) "American Woman" clip came on, I dreamed that it was the Butthole Surfers, and, at the same time, was unbelievably happy it wasn't Lenny Kravitz' version. (He should get some sort of prize for making a mediocre song absolutely dull and boring. On second thought, no. I don't want to encourage the practice.) OK, none of that would really fit on "the radio". So maybe go somewhere that will: Richard Thompson's "Oops! I Did It Again" that, even when plotted on a logarithmic scale, is miles away from Britney. Yeah, it's like a google dB better.

Yeah, I should have known that it wouldn't be some "hey, why don't you suggest music to us" kind of thing. It was obviously more of a "should we switch to classic rock or R&B" thing.

The only good I see coming out of this is the last question. "When you listen to the radio, would you refer to hear x% old music and (100-x)% new music." I am just hoping that the 75 people there, and in all the sessions they did, answered such that x is a low number. Of course, after listening to the crap I did for the last hour, my mental state defined "old" as "stuff that has been played to death on the radio" and "new" as "stuff that doesn't get radio play". I'm sure the survey takers were just trying to find out if we want a classic rock station or a modern rock station.

So, maybe my results will show that I am fed up with repetitive crap on the radio, but I don't want to replace it with what was repetitive crap in the 70's, 80's and 90's. I hope that my answers will be interpreted as "I want something new, and not have it overplayed". And remember, if we haven't heard it, even if it came from a decade or 3 ago, it is still "new".

But I won't hold my breath. Instead I spent the 25 Euros on beer.

PS / plea to radio stations: There is so much great music that hasn't hit the airwaves, just playing one or two of these "new" or "different" songs a day, even if you never, ever replay them, is could still expose the music to a lot of people. I'd much rather have that, and have the chance of hearing something new amongst the trite crap that I know pays the bills, then to relegate these songs to some black hole where they will never be heard at all. And it would be 3-5 minutes a day I am not clawing my ears off after hearing that "catchy new song" for the 100th time this week.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2008-07-19T12:22:00.003+02:00

Great, high-quality entertainment with an attempt at alternative-to-normal-Hollywood distribution. Watch for free until July 20th.

Fun stuff. I'll probably purchase it when the option is available.

Swan Babies

2008-07-09T07:52:00.005+02:00

A week ago, Jeannette and I discovered the swan nest in town along the Neckar. We both thought it was way too close to the walking path. Mama Swan was taking care of her nest and 6 eggs, and it was fun to watch her lay down on them, and reach for nearby twigs to tuck into the cracks between her body and the nest. Every 5 minutes or so she would stand up, rearrange an egg or two (by sliding he beak and head under one and pushing/rolling it around) and plop down again, re-tucking her babies in.

On Saturday, we discovered that some of the eggs had hatched. Mama was still taking care of two eggs, and there were two fuzzy little swan babies swimming around with Papa. We have no idea what happened to the other two eggs...

This time I had my camera and got a few decent shots. I hope the swan family didn't mind...

The Reason I Don't Blog More...

2008-06-12T18:38:00.002+02:00

...is because 99.8% of the time I try to do anything at the Blogger management page my browser crashes and I lose a bunch of my work.

So I am frustrated.

Border Momation, Stop Their Portation!

2008-05-12T17:57:00.004+02:00

OK, so it is probably not the sprayer's native language, so I tend to cut them a bit of slack, but I'm not really sure what this means. Unlike most graffiti with spelling or grammar mistakes, I can't even guess.

Just for thoroughness, I googled "Border Momation, Stop Their Portation!" and got zero hits. I narrowed it to the individual words:

Momation seems to be the same of a rap and/or hip-hop performer (sorry, I am bad with musical genres), who has a channel on youtube.

Wiktionary defines "portation" as the act of carrying something or the act of porting software.

OK, with that information, the meaning still isn't clear.

Apparently "Portation" is also a plugin for the Archos TV+ that streams live TV from your TV+ to a laptop, Symbian phone or handheld Archo 605 or 705 with DVR station. Maybe it is a protesting the streaming of Momation's videos (or more likely, live performances) to mobile devices. But the "border" is not needed then. Unless it is international streaming.

Maybe there is an alternate definition of "Border" I don't know about. Or maybe it is a typo. Border should be Broader or something. In that case, maybe it is a plea to stop distributing Momation's work to a wider audience.

Either way, it is a very specific complaint for a sprayer...

At any rate, after this post is online, at least anyone googling for "Border Momation, Stop Their Portation!" should get a hit.

Send Your Name to the Moon

2008-05-07T20:21:00.003+02:00

So it isn't likely that the common people like me and probably you will be going to the moon any time soon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, to be launched by NASA later in 2008, will be doing the next best thing - taking your name to the moon.

Unless you are worried about interplanetary spammers or identity thieves getting your name and home planet, then sign up!

Starting May with a Bang!

2008-05-06T18:57:00.005+02:00

So, for Jeannette's birthday, we rented a convertible and drove up to the Harz mountains to hang out in Quedlinburg and the surrounding area. It's the first time we have ever been in the state of Sachsen-Anhalt (which, in my humble opinion, translates to "Sexy Hitchhike", but you probably won't find that in a dictionary.)

We had a lot of fun, because the weather was perfect for a convertible, plus we just happened to be in the right place at the right time for the tapping of the keg for a spring festival that was sparsely attended, so we got to have several free beers. I was a bit surprised, because Jeannette kept saying "Faßanstich" and I thought she meant "Fasanenstich", and I wondered when the birds were coming out. Not that I wanted to see pheasants getting stabbed, but Jeannette seemed excited about it, and it was her birthday so I was rollin' with it. The free beer was a pleasant surprise. (For the non-Germans, the confusion was between "Faßanstich"="keg tapping" instead of "Fasanenstich"="Pheasant Stabbing". For the Germans, I know they don't really sound that much alike, but I like punning, spoonerizing and playing on words in English, and I decided to start trying it in German, too).

Anyway, we had a great weekend, and would write more but dinner is ready, so you'll just have to wait. Here are some pictures to keep you occupied till then.

Back in Iowa. For Now.

2008-04-05T14:55:00.002+02:00

I have been in Iowa for the last few days visiting my and my wife's families & the few friends we still have in state. I have only had a few chances to take the camera out, and yesterday was cut short because I forgot to bring a fresh battery. Oh well. I'll try to get that great shot of the bridge in Waverly again today, and some pictures of the Quad Cities later in the week. Maybe tomorrow there will be some shots in Mason City, where I am going with Textbandit to meet Carrie who is driving down from Minnesota. Should be fun times.

Christmas Moon

2008-01-09T19:43:00.000+01:00

It was a lovely night on December 25th, and we were fairly far from light pollution, so I decided to try to take a picture or 57. This one turned out fairly good for a first attempt, don't you think?

So now you know what the nearly full moon looks like over SE Ireland.

The Danger of 2008 - Blow Holes!

2008-01-07T07:23:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year. I'm late. As usual when it comes to this time of year.

Anyway, here's a sign we saw in Ireland. Take a look. Think about it. Tell me what it means.

Weihnachtsmarkt Shoe Tips

2007-12-29T22:21:00.001+01:00

This is way late, and I intended to publish this sooner, but it turns out I lost track of time and didn't get it out the door before the Christmas markets ended in Germany. Despite that, hopefully this will be useful to people for next year, because I think these tips will stand the test of time.

Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) Shoe Tip #1: Girls (and guys, in case the male foot fashion world eventually goes this way in some bizarro world) should not come to the market in spikey-heeled footwear. That is, no stilletto heels. Why? Well, you see, many German market squares, the traditional location for the Weihnachtsmarkt, are cobblestoned. I saw several girls this year lose shoes when the spikey heel wedged between two (or possibly more) cobblestones. In one case, a third party was required to extract the foot. So, just wear something flat on the bottom. It will help after a couple Gluehweins anyway.

Tip #2: Speaking of Gluehwein, one should avoid wearing those brand new, sparking white sneakers to the Weihnachtsmarkt. It is inevitable that someone will bump into you or your Gluehwein mug, and spill its contents onto your sparkling white shoes. Unless you like purple splatters on your shoes, then avoid white shoes. In fact, black rubber boots are probably the most practical. They don't show stains, they won't get stuck in the cobblestones and they protect you from the snow.

There you have it. Two important footwear tips to improve your Weihnactsmarkt experience. Chances are, I'll forget them by next year.

Beer Warmer?

2007-12-22T11:18:00.000+01:00

We popped into the Augustiner Brewery a couple times while we were in Salzburg, and one of the first things we saw when we walked in the door was the Beer Warmer. It's basically just a big sink full of warm water, and people soak their full beer mugs in it if it is too cold. I don't understand how a still-liquid beer could possibly be too cold, but I suppose Austrians are different Volk and they apparently have different strokes.

The procedure at the Augustiner Brewery is interesting. Perhaps all Austrian (& maybe even German) beer halls are like this, I don't know. I guess much, much more research is in order. The whole deal is mostly self-service. You grab a new mug from the shelves near the door (your choice of 0.5 or 1.0 liter mugs), then wash it in the beer fountain, pictured above. Then you pay for your beer. Then you go to the guy at the keg, and he fills it up. Optionally, you can then go to the beer warmer, if you swing that way.

The first day we were there, they were serving only Märzen beer, but we came back a few days later when they cracked open the keg of bock beer. I wasn't a big fan of the Märzen, but the bock rocked.

The beer hall was pretty cool, there were 4 huge rooms, at least one of which was non-smoking. That was nice. There are several stalls outside the hall that served food. The first day I was at one of the sausage stalls, and I watched the guy put some yummy looking grilled sausages into a nice looking bun with mustard and what looked like curry powder for the woman in front of me. I asked what it was. He told me it was a "wadlfjkhao diuvkjhba" or something like that. This Salzburger Austrian dialect of German is pretty bizarre. I didn't see anything on the menu with the perceived first couple syllables, so I asked again. This time I heard a bit differently, he clearly said "wdlafhjkoa dovkjhab"! Aahh... Still not on the menu, and the woman didn't hand him much money, so I asked for one of "what she had".

It was the best €2.20 I ever spent. What I missed while watching him make the one for the woman in front of me was the toasting of the bread and, more importantly, the sauce that featured tons of onion and horseradish cubes that went into bun first. It was incredible, And I have no idea what it is really called. Jeannette was even there, and with her mastery of German and several bizarre dialects, she couldn't make it out either.

The second day we came, the day that they served bock beer, was much more crowded. We shared a table with an Austrian couple, who told me that my German is pretty good. That was nice, but they don't have to lie like that... Maybe I should have asked them what the horseradishy toasty sausagey thingy was. They probably would have just told me it was a "woldajhogka vodhjkba". But I already knew that. Eventually they left (probably because Jeannette was eating oranges with her beer), and the group of Italian kids that were waiting for a table sat with us. We talked a bit, and Jeannette decided I needed to be in a picture with them. OK! We also were quite jealous of the guys at the table next to us. They were apparently throwing a bachelor party, and had brought in all kinds of great food. I wanted to join them. I'll have to get over my shyness
before I can do that.

Lebkuchenherzen

2007-12-22T11:01:00.000+01:00

At most (all?) festivals in Germany, at least Southern Germany (I haven't spent much time in the North, especially Northeast), there are stands that sell Lebkuchenherzen - essentially gingerbread hearts with frosting and sappy phrases. Usually they say things like "I love you" or "my sweetie" or "Grandma's little sweetheart" or "my sunshine". They include holes & a ribbon so they can be worn around the neck, and everyone can see that you are daddy's little princess or treasure or whatever. Usually they are written in German too, but at some places, especially more touristy spots, there will be plenty of english as well.

At the Bad Canstatter Volksfest in Stuttgart this year, we spotted, amongst the German "I love you" and "I'm easy" hearts, the classic English "I have the tits, so I make the rules". Jeannette grabbed the camera and ran over to take the shot.

Greatest Town Name. Ever.

2007-12-22T10:56:00.000+01:00

Yeah, the town is Fucking, Austria. We think that we should open a hotel there and call it the "Fucking Hotel". And maybe a bar attached - "The Fucking Pub".

It puts this one in 2nd place:

Conversations must be interesting in nearby towns. I can just imagine someone saying: "I'm going to Wank with my friends tonight."

Salzburg at Night

2007-12-21T08:51:00.000+01:00

We were in Salzburg over the long weekend of Nov. 1st.

I don't know why it has taken so long for me to get some pictures out, because it is a beautiful city and I got some great shots there. I guess I've just been busy lately.

6 Months With Ipernity

2007-12-20T07:22:00.000+01:00

So, it has been about six months since Flickr loved me so much that I had to leave for Ipernity. For the most part, it is a good alternative. It has many of the same features as Flickr, and one can post documents other than photos (though I primarily use it for photos, and will comment based on that), but there are some long-standing issues that I have that would make it so much better. I have brought most of these to the attention of Ipernity or the appropriate 3rd party developer, and hopefully someday they'll get fixed.

First, the good stuff:

* Works quite well as a photo sharing site. Great metadata support, commenting (and nested comments), search-ability, licensing options,
* No annoying animated gifs to invite your photos to groups.
* Well tuned in to the world outside the USA from the start.

The bad:
* No automatic geotagging on upload. If I have GPS EXIF metadata in my photos, they are not automatically placed on the map. I have asked about this, and was told it doesn't make sense to have automatic geotagging because it just adds too many points. Uh, why support it at all if you don't want us to have multiple points on the map??? This is my #1 gripe. Either support it or don't, don't wrap a lame excuse around a half-baked implementation!
* Ipernity supports additional metadata about your geo points. Click the little dot on the map, and you get more info in addition to the photo. It is cool, except that for some reason whenever I upload an image, and geotag it by hand, for some reason the location name and country are automatically filled in as France (yes, both of them) no matter where the photo was taken (or where it was slapped down on the map). This is such a simple thing! Use the IPTC location information already provided in the photo for this stuff. If it isn't there, just leave it blank! Or, if they want to get fancy, they could grab the location from the map and query the GeoNames database. It's free and creative commons licensed.

Update 21.12.2007: I uploaded some pictures with GPS metadata this morning, and after manually geotagging them, the location metadata showed up correctly - no longer is everything located in France! However, I have noticed that on the few older pictures I checked, which were right in the middle of Stuttgart, the location metadata says they are in Ghana, not Germany. Hmm...

* There is no batch editor for the location information I mention above. And one must be zoomed in quite close, and only in the geotagging part of the doc manager, before the option to edit it becomes available. Makes editing a lot of information a chore, so a lot of the time I don't even bother. Why not let me change it from the doc's "home" page"?

Update 21.12.2007:One can now edit location properties while zoomed out all the way (assuming the selected dot has only one location in it). A good start. Hopefully they'll address the other issues as well.

* Stop nagging me about not using Firefox in the DocManager. I know Firefox is great, but I chose to use OmniWeb instead. Along the same lines, when I am looking at geotagged photos, why do you insist on saying "the mini-map cannot be displayed in this browser", which is 100% false. When I change my browser identification to Firefox, it displays just fine. I know you are a small team and can't try it on everything out there, but why not give it a try? Most browsers out there are not that broken.

* This isn't Ipernity's fault, but there are no (that I know of) fun sites like Big Huge Labs' "Fd's Flickr Toys" for Ipernity.
* Again, not a fault of Ipernity, but the variety of upload tools is lacking. I really, really, like Connected Flow's "Flickr Export for Aperture" a plugin for Aperture that really makes it easy to upload photos from within my preferred photo management and editing software. Picturesync from uVerse is a decent stopgap measure, but it is an extra, clunky step along the way. And the interface, IMHO, is quite horrible. Maybe I just need to write the Aperture to Ipernity export plugin myself...

Zappa

2007-12-04T00:02:00.000+01:00

14 years ago on this date, the great musician & composer Frank Zappa died.
I don't know if this street in Venice was named after him or not, but I definitely thought of him. I don't like all of Zappa's music, but most of it is great when I am in the right mood (like a lot of music), and it is all better than the typical radio tripe you hear these days. Although I think there are more Frank Zappa CDs in my collection than any other artist, I still long for new music from this creative genius.

Well, this isn't much of a tribute. I'm not erecting any statues or anything, but (and I know it isn't saying much under current circumstances) he would have made a great president.

Space Invaders Against Sexism

2007-11-23T17:18:00.000+01:00

I wonder how effective they are?

Moorish?

2007-11-19T18:21:00.000+01:00

Someone told me this window was Moorish. I thought it was Gothic. What do I know?

Heavy Metal Skull

2007-11-14T19:36:00.000+01:00

Submerged Door

2007-11-12T07:44:00.000+01:00

I've had enough flooded basements in my life for this to give me the heebie jeebies. There is water above the bottom of the door here... It has to be inside the house, too. I don't think I could live in Venice.

Statue in Padova with Girl & iPod.

2007-11-11T21:39:00.000+01:00

Good Jeannette!

2007-11-11T00:18:00.000+01:00

Having fun in Padova*.

* I refuse to use the English name of the town (Padua). I mean, why? Padova is a perfectly good name and it isn't hard to pronounce or use weird letters - the reasons (I think) that English-speakers say Cologne instead of Köln or Munich instead of München. It sure makes it easier to find on the train schedules when I use the local name.

Why?!?

2007-11-07T20:25:00.000+01:00

Why is it that so many of the shutters in Venice don't fit into the windows?????? It is really bothersome.

Hateball Rules the Scene

2007-11-05T20:59:00.000+01:00

Seen in Padova, Italy.

Not sure what it means. Let me know what YOU think it means.

Scary House

2007-10-29T17:40:00.000+01:00

Villa Morosini-XXV Aprile in Mirano, Italy. It wasn't too far from our hotel, and in a nice park. As I was taking this picture, the groundskeeper of the park was patiently waiting for me so he could lock the gate. It was nice that he didn't lock us in.

Laundry Day in Venice

2007-10-28T18:03:00.000+01:00

Gondola Crossing?

2007-10-27T11:17:00.001+02:00

Not sure what this sign means, but I like it.

Venice Sunset

2007-10-25T22:07:00.000+02:00

We don't see sunsets much, kinda living in a valley in a city on the ground floor and all. So it was nice being on a boat in Venice at sunset.

Gondola Bits

2007-10-24T20:30:00.000+02:00

A Grate Picture of Venice

2007-10-24T07:51:00.000+02:00

One of my "grate-est", in fact.

Pescheria

2007-10-23T20:09:00.000+02:00

I love how Italy is full of beautiful & crumbly buildings. This is actually above the entrance to a grocery store.

Wanted: Two Gentlemen of Verona

2007-10-22T07:43:00.000+02:00

While we were in Verona, this helicopter was searching for something. It made several passes over us before we got bored and found some ice cream.

The Moon over Verona

2007-10-17T17:15:00.000+02:00

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.

Update:

Here is a similar photo, but with different moon positioning. (The moon was being a good model that morning.)

For Tom & Jan

2007-10-14T11:45:00.000+02:00

We were kinda sorta doing a cheap wine tour of Northeast Italy the first week of October. The nice thing is that cheap wine in Italy is generally very drinkable. It's cheap as in economical, not as in tacky or sleazy.

Well, we saw this Chardonnay from Italy and as we know form their kinda sorta recent visit, Dad & Jan like chardonnays, so we decided to try it out and see what we were missing.

Yes, a nice 1 liter box of wine from Italy. It's so much easier and more convenient to throw one of these in the backpack and camp out along the river for a picnic. It's lighter. There's no chance of breakage. And it's re-sealable. With this, our collapsable plastic travel cup, and some cubes of fresh(ish) Parmesan cheese, we have perfected the art of the portable, impromptu wine tasting experience.

The Bill...

2007-10-14T08:32:00.000+02:00

So, it turns out that the final cost of repairing my lens is €570. Ouch. That's only about €100 less than buying a new one. (The price has dropped a bit since the day I bought it...)

Apparently, contrary to my initial evaluation, the optics were damaged, along with the auto-focus mechanism.

You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike

2007-10-11T23:35:00.001+02:00

That's my initial, nerdiest assessment of Venice.
More to come, later.

Seriously.

I'd Rather Eat Dirt

2007-09-12T07:24:00.000+02:00

Best graffiti I have seen in Heilbronn in a while.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

2007-09-04T06:51:00.000+02:00

After my week-long class in California, I decided to pop in to Austin and see some old friends. I lived for about 6 years in Austin, most of them on this street - Possum Trot. Austin was a great place to live - so much to do, and I worked with so many people that are more or less my age that wanted to go out and do things. I may have chosen the wrong time to come back for a few days - it gets really hot in August.

The highlight of my trip, was getting to eat good ol' Texas Barbecue again. I moved away from Austin in 2000, which means I haven't had real BBQ in 8 years. Yeah, there was some stuff that came close in Colorado, but nothing like the real thing.

I wish I could have stayed longer. It was a great time. It was great seeing my old co-workers again, who I used to see every day but now I see only every once in a while. I'll try not to make it 8 years before I see them again.

Crappity Crap Crap Crap!

2007-08-19T19:00:00.000+02:00

(Note: I was going to use a different word than Crap in the title, but since this is a family blog, I, despite my feelings, used a softer word)

Saturday started bad. I couldn't sleep. So I was awake at like 5. That's early for a Saturday, but not that much earlier than planned. You see, I was leaving for a business trip at 8. So it was about 2 hours earlier than I wanted. But probably significant. The drive to Frankfurt was uneventful. The wait at the Frankfurt airport was worse than typical airport waits (the only thing I despise about travel).
When I got on the plane, I couldn't sleep (I usually can't, but thought being tired would help). Why is it that people always have to kick my seat on the way to the bathroom. Or lean on my head.

There was a 5 hour layover in Chicago. My coworker and I had a couple Sam Adam's at the Chili's bar to wait it out. Then the flight to San Jose was mostly sleepless. But I probably had the two best conversations on the plane that I ever had with strangers on an airplane. And my bad was the first one out at the baggage claim. Cool. After a short wait for my colleague, we tried to find the rental car. There was a bus that took us there, and it waited to fill up before taking us there, so the saved time of being first at baggage claim was pretty lost.

We got to the Avis counter at about 23:00. That's in California. My body was still on Central European time, which is 9 hours later, or 8 in the morning. And only a hour or two of low-quality sleep. I blame what happens next on the lack of sleep. I really felt like I could have collapsed at any second from exhaustion.

Anyway, as we reached for credit cards & driver's licenses, my camera bag slipped off my shoulder and thudded on the floor. It seemed oddly loud, but not anything that worried me too much (other than the "damn! I need to not be doing that, because someday it will break") When I eventually got checked in to the hotel, I did a quick visual inspection of the camera and lens. Everything looked OK.

Since our class doesn't start until Monday, we decided to head into San Francisco and enjoy the day. Eventually we got the car parked and I immediately saw something picture worthy and whipped the camera out. The GPS was locked in, and I was ready to shoot in this target rich environment. But something was wrong! The part that is supposed to twist to adjust the zoom would not twist. Uh oh. The fall did bugger something up. My standard lens, the 18-200 VR, the (relatively) tiny lens with the incredible 11x zoom range, the perfect travel lens because it goes from respectable wide-angle to respectable telephoto in only one lens is now effectively a doorstop. It seems to be optically OK,and can probably be repaired for less than the cost of a new one. But I don't get to San Francisco often. I wanted my perfect travel lens for my travel!

As I was packing for this trip, I debated whether or not to bring any other lenses. The 18-200 really covers 95% of what I need. The 80-400 was out. Traveling with that beast is not fun. And it almost requires a tripod. (I think it would be great to have for photographing the sea lions in San Fran, tho). I thought about the new Macro lens. If it was me & Jeannette alone, then probably. Jeannette is the perfect wife in may respects, one of them is that she puts up with me taking wacky pictures. If one of those is a macro shot of a sewer drain, she wouldn't care. She might have her own wacky macro shots (or at least suggestions for me to try), but she wasn't coming with, and someone who may not be so tolerant of my photo hobby was, so I left the macro lens. I debated the 10-20 wide-angle lens. It isn't needed often, but when it is, it sure is nice to have. Like when you are in a tight European city, where that beautiful Gothic church is only 10 meters from a castle wall, and I want the whole thing in one shot, 10mm just might do it. I debated this lens, and decided it isn't too big & heavy, so why the heck shouldn't I? Now I am glad that I did.

It's hard to shoot San Francisco with a 10-20mm lens. There are so many things that I wanted to do but couldn't. I get spoiled by my ultra versatile 18-200mm lens.

To make the day worse:
1) Somehow some sticky glop got on the working lens (luckily not on the glass parts). I think it was sap from a tree or something. I's still trying to figure out how to get it all cleaned off.
2) We have something like 37 tubes of chap stick at home. I have one with me all the time at home or work. I forgot to bring one on this trip. My lips were killing me bby the time I got off the plane. So I had to buy chap stick tube #38. I should buy some stock in the company.
3) It was a beautiful today. I had my hat, but forgot to pack sunscreen. Again, we have around 18 tubes of sunscreen at home. Why didn't I bring any? Cuz I'm an idiot that drops expensive cameras & lenses. Might as well just get skin cancer too.
4) We have at least two giant vats of post sunburn treatment (one is aloe based, and one is something we picked up in France that is magic-based, or something). Guess where I am going with this.
5) We were wandering the streets of SF and it eventually got to be lunch time, like it does. But there were no restaurants anywhere. Finally we stumble across an Italian place that was expensive, but had a lunch specials on the high side of reasonable, so we stopped and ate. It was tasty-ish, but quite tiny. I would have been satisfied, but after we walked one more block and turned the corner, there were bazillion restaurants to choose from.

I think some of the pictures I took today were good. Maybe if I have time tonight, I will upload one or two to ipernity. But I might just sulk all night about my lens.

Must Read for Iowa State University Alumi

2007-08-05T19:36:00.000+02:00

Jeannette has posted on her Blog about the new ISU Alumni Online Directory called CySpace. It's available to all alumni, whether or not they are members of the Alumni Association, until Homecoming this year. Jeannette wrote a lot about it already that I don't want to duplicate, but I think it would be nice if all ISU Alumni could check it out, and make sure their stuff is up to date. And get in touch with us if you knew one of us. Read Jeannette's post for more info about it if you didn't get an email from the Alumni Association already.

Weird

2007-08-05T09:15:00.000+02:00

Within the span of just a couple hours, I was invited by two different friends to join two different book-related social networking sites.

The first invitation was for GoodReads and the second, about 3 hours later, was for Shelfari.

Not sure which one I like better. Both have minor problems with my browser of choice, Omniweb, which means that there are likely problems with Safari as well. In GoodReads, I am greeted with a blank page when I try to rate a book (I verified that all works well in Firefox). In Shelfari, various pages don't render properly - the shelf, for one. And my friends page is empty, yet my home page says I have a friend, it even shows a picture. Weird.

Both had the standard social networking features (friends, commenting, etc.), but Shelfari has bright colors and that "je ne sais quoi" look that says to me "we're trying to be hip and cool" while GoodReads has a subdued monotone look that says "we're trying to appear intellectual". I don't like GoodReads' font. Maybe it's not the font, but the fact that they don't put a capital letter anywhere in the site. So maybe I can't put my finger on it (cue Ween song), but something just looks wrong with GoodReads. Shelfari scores more web 2.0 points in the name department. Which probably reflects the "hip & cool" vs. "intellectual" thing as well.

Which one is better? Too early to say. By look alone, I am more drawn towards the Shelfari. I guess I just like the candy colors. But for an objective test, I did a search for the author Greg Stolze. GoodReads gives 15 results, all on one page. Nice. Shelfari returns 100 results across ten pages (ugh) unless I refine my search to "author" (not available in the search bar - in other words, I have to search and then refine the search to search by author name. Yuck.) Trouble is, refine by author doesn't change the results. And there is no way to return all results on one page. And there is no way to skip to an arbitrary page, just previous and next. On the first page of results, "previous" is a hot link that goes nowhere. Oops. Oh, and remember I searched for Greg Stolze? Why am I getting hits for a book called "Greg Noll" by Drew Kampion. Oh, it must be OR-ing my search terms. Not cool. Putting "Greg Stolze" in quotes drops the results to 5 pages, and gives me only results of books that are authored by Greg Stolze, either as the sole author or one of multiple authors. That's something that GoodReads doesn't give me. That is, what happens in GoodReads if I do a title search on one of the books where Greg Stolze was listed as author 9 of 11 in Shelfari? Well, the book exists, but only the 1st author (as listed in Shelfari) is in GoodReads. So if I want all of Greg Stolze's works, even where he is not the primary author, I am out of luck with GoodReads.

Neither site had Greg Stolze's book "Scary Face", which was has no ISBN and is available from Lulu.com. Jeannette was able to add it quickly & easily in GoodReads. I couldn't find any way to add books like this in Shelfari.

International: I entered the ISBN of my German version of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" into both search fields. GoodReads churned for a while and then returned 15 results of things that weren't even remotely close. It found the right book when I removed the dashes from the ISBN. Shelfari found the book without problem with or without the dashes.

One last comparison. My browser always has multiple tabs open. Shelfari nicely puts "Shelfari" in the web page title, and therefore the tab name. With GoodReads, I only get "find books". Popping back and forth between these experiments and writing about them, I always had trouble finding the GoodReads tab. "find books" just doesn't jump out at me. "Shelfari - Search..." does.

Here's the summary after a mere 15-30 minutes of use:
Shelfari: Colorful. Frustrating search. Minor rendering problems in Omniweb. More complete book details. No obvious way to add books not currently in the database. Better ISBN search.
GoodReads: Monochrome. Nice search (except with ISBN search). Javascript(?) problems with rating books. Allows users to add books. Does not seem to support multiple authors of books. Do you think you could title your web pages with GoodReads?

Which is better? Dunno. They both have bugs that put me off at the moment. Maybe by the time I finish off the stack of Discworld books I just picked up on the cheap, one or both of the sites will have matured enough for me to be able to really use them.

What a strange twist of fate that brought me invites to both of these sites on the same day...

More Tigers

2007-08-02T21:39:00.000+02:00

Here they are, by request.
Here they are, more Stuttgart's Finest.

Wilhelma Zoo

2007-08-02T07:25:00.000+02:00

This is my first blog post since my move from F****r to Ipernity. Hopefully it all works out OK. Ipernity is pretty nice - it does the essential photo hosting that the former photo site did, but it also allows other media - video, music, whatever. The sharing via groups feature is missing, but supposedly coming soon. I'm happy, except there are a couple bugs and interface quirks (mostly relating to geotagging), but overall I am satisfied.

Last weekend we went to the Wilhelma Zoo in Stuttgart. I took so many pictures, I filled all of my memory cards (5 & 1/8 GB is only ~320 pictures since I am shooting RAW) before we even finished seeing everything. Part of the problem was the baby sumatran tigers. They were just so cute & playful, we spent a long time watching them and I burned 25% of my photo capacity just on them. Not that it wasn't worth it!

Here are a few more shots from the zoo.

If It Seems Dreary Around Here...

2007-07-04T22:04:00.000+02:00

...My Flickr account expires soon, and I decided not to renew it.
Too many of my friends have left due to recent troubles(see my last post), and it just isn't fun for me anymore.
I am looking for an alternative. So far,ipernity is winning. But it's hard, because the workflow tools for uploading are not there, there are no groups yet, etc.

Anyway, because of that, I decided to delete most of the photos on Flickr that aren't interesting, so that the 200 that Flickr allows in a non-paying account will at least be somewhat interesting. So far I have whittled the over 2000 photos down to 399, so about 50% more have to go. I'll wait a few days for that...

Anyway, many of the photos on my blog have been deleted since they were hosted at Flickr. I'm sorry. But it had to be done. Maybe some day I will replace the photos somewhere else. And some day, maybe, I will feel like sharing new photos again.

Flickr Going Downhill Fast

2007-06-14T17:37:00.000+02:00

There have been numerous incidents at Flickr lately that indicates that the cool little photo sharing site it used to be is no more, probably due to the Yahoo! acquisition or else a victim of its immense popularity.

One of Thomas Hawk's photos was deleted after Flickr recieved a bogus DMCA takedown notice.
Flickr censors photographer Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir (by deleting a photo with all of its helpful comments from Flickr members) who had complained about a company that stole one of her photos from Flickr and had made thousands of pounds selling the prints on E-bay.

Flickr member Violet Blue had most of her photostream censored by Flickr. Read her side of the story here.

All of these incidents annoyed me, and every time, Flickr staff had explanations and apologies and assured people that it would be addressed so that it can't happen again. Of course, all of these people are pretty vocal and high-profile. I am sure this crap is happening every day with the nobodies of Flickr, like me. I fully expect my one picture which has been #1 in explore for more than a year to take a sudden nosedive in popularity after this post.

But I didn't get too worked up over these incidents. I have invested so much time in Flickr, and even money to upgrade to a "Pro" account, and I'm basically lazy. So there was nothing really getting me too worked up. But I can't help but thinking of Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous (but often misquoted) poem (translated from German):


When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Well, yesterday this did come for me, so to speak. Flickr did something that seemed popular (and extremely long overdue) - they added the ability to view the interface in a few languages other than English, namely French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Traditional Chinese.

But at the same time, something else happened. From the Flickr Help page:


What is SafeSearch?
SafeSearch is a feature that allows you to control what turns up in your searches on Flickr, and it's on for everyone by default.

Note: If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe
content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.

Huh? What? So now I am forced to look at only what is deemed "Safe". Thanks. I thought I was an adult in a free country and could choose my own path in life. But Flickr doesn't see it that way, and has decided that everyone in Germany, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore have no freedom of choice. That's censorship. And, unlike the other examples above - it affects huge swaths of the world population.

The matter is made worse by the not one but two complete crap responses from Flickr founder Steward Butterfield. There is absolutely no explanation or reason for this. We'll see how this plays out, but I can see that my days on Flickr are probably numbered.

Update: Someone from the Flickr Staff finally told us why (which was the biggest problem). Only two days late. And still completely bogus, as anyone can sign up for a US. Yahoo account and get around it. And anyone in Austria or Switzerland is restricted in the same way as Germany. Or that moderation in Flickr is self-moderation. Or... I could go on for a while. It wasn't well thought out, and it isn't well implemented for the stated goals.

Me talk pretty some day

2007-06-13T21:00:00.000+02:00

Preface: I want to make it clear that I have no delusions that I speak any foreign language fluently, and I butcher the German language almost every day. I respect anyone that tries to get by, whether in everyday life or just on vacation or whatever, in a non-native language.

We see a lot of t-shirts with English words written on them, most with questionable meaning. (Nothing is percolating into my brain at the moment, though... It is hard to remember nonsense. Unless it's Jabberwocky.) Sometimes I just stare in disbelief that someone would actually wear such a thing. Take this "lovely" belt buckle as an example.

Ignore the stylish graphic for now. The words read (with the line breaks)

Gas Grass or 
Ass Nobody 
Rides For 
Free

The designer apparently never heard of punctuation. Would it hurt to throw a comma and a couple periods in there?

OK. It is inconceivable to me that someone would actually pay money for that and wear that. So far, I haven't seen this in the wild, just in a store window. I guess nobody wants to advertise that they give free rides to Ass Nobody or Gas Grass.

The next example of something I would never wear is this lovely t-shirt. Jeannette has actually seen someone wearing this one.

It reads "*L.A.* Cocaine Business"
When we saw that in the store window, Jeannette and I had the discussion that pretty much hit these points, in this order.
1) I don't want to wear that. Ever.
2) I do want to see someone wearing that while trying to go through customs at some U.S. airport. Or Singapore.
3) Don't people in the "Cocaine Business" call it "Blow"?
4) Isn't your business just another word for your job?
5) So, based on 3 & 4, shouldn't it read "L.A. Blow Job" ?
6) Now that's a completely different image.
7) I imagine a film. There's a couple of guys trying to make a living (in L.A., of course). They have gotten themselves involved in the seedy underground. At least one of them is an immigrant and doesn't speak English very well. This English as a second language character makes arrangements for the two of them to deliver cocaine for the local drug kingpin, with the assurance that if they do this one right, they would be trusted to do more. When he excitedly tells his buddy about their new employment opportunity, he says something along the lines of "It's a blow job! And if we do it right, we'll get to do more blow jobs all over L.A.!" Haven't decided what the response will be yet. That's why I'm not a scriptwriter.
8) It seems like it could be something said by one of the dumb thugs in the excellent German movie Knockin' on Heaven's Door.

OK, we'll that's it for today. And in case you don't know already, I borrowed the title of this post from David Sedaris. He wrote a book with the same title. He used it first. And he's funnier than I am. Usually.

The Best Geotagging Solution Yet

2007-06-05T22:16:00.000+02:00

Back in December, I talked about the attempt Jeannette and I were making on an elegant geotagging solution where the key components would come from our employer.

For various reasons, that project is on hold. But I still want to use the capabilities built into my camera to automatically geotag my photos, but I was not happy in Strasbourg and Barcelona carrying around the setup I had. (see below)

I have been yearning for a solution, and even tried out a few things (unsuccessfully). With the upcoming vacation season, the sense of urgency has increased, so I bit the bullet and invested in this:

The two small boxes replace the Nikon MC-35 cable, the 6-foot long GPS serial cable and the old & clunky Garmin GPS reciever.

The larger box is a Holux GPSlim 236 bluetooth GPS receiver and the smaller box is a bluetooth-to-serial converter doodad from Foolography that plugs into the camera's 10-pin accessory port. I don't think the creator has decided on a model number yet...

These two things completely eliminate the cable clutter. The only downside is the loss of the 10-pin connector for my remote release. But I am working on that...

So far this system has worked quite well, especially considering its small size. After extensive testing on our trip to Paris over the long Easter weekend, I can say I am quite happy. But there are some strange points I will bring up:
* The Bluetooth connection is flaky. Once the connection is made, it is pretty solid. I'd say about 66% of the time, the connection between the GPS and the module on the camera is made within a second or three of turning on the camera. About 25% of the time it will take much longer. Maybe 10 -15 seconds. The remaining 10% or so of the time it simply will not connect, and I have to switch off the camera and back on before the connection is made.
* The Bluetooth connection is much more reliable when I keep the GPS close to the camera. I had originally intended to keep the GPS unit in my backpack, but it was unreliable. Currently I have a cell-phone pouch (thank you Jeannette!) attached to my camera strap. Not perfect, but working acceptably well.
* The Holux GPSlim 236 battery life is incredible. I get at least 12 hours on a charge.
* The battery on the D200 is not seriously diminished, if I turn off the camera between bursts of shooting. Nikon made an interesting decision (or maybe it was just a mistake) to keep the exposure meter on when there is incoming GPS data. This means the camera is burning a lot more power than it does in its idle state when nothing is happening. The battery will die in a few hours if I don't turn the camera off. I think it is more the exposure meter remaining on than the Bluetooth-to-serial module.
* The Holux GPSlim 236 normally locks in pretty quickly (less than 1 minute), assuming I haven't moved a great distance since the last time it was on (and locked in). But sometimes, and I haven't figured out what causes this, it will take forever, like it is reading the entire almanac. It is very frustrating when the GPS doesn't lock in quickly, more so than when the Bluetooth connection isn't made.
* The Holux GPSlim 236 is very good (but not perfect) at keeping a lock in a city. It beats the heck out of my old Garmin, which is no surprise considering the Garmin is around 8 years older than the Holux. I think the quality of the position reported by the Holux is better too. Comparing geotagged photos with both GPS units using Google Maps, the Holux geotagged photos seem much closer to the right place than the Garmin. I really like that.

The Next Aperture Script

2007-06-05T21:02:00.000+02:00

Recently I talked about the Applescript I worked on to add extra EXIF metadata to the Aperture database. It works great for me, but a couple people that have tried it have had problems with it, mainly because they use some options in Aperture that I don't that causes problems. Most of those problems, if not all, would be solved by doing the metadata extraction at import, when I know the name of the source file and the reference to the file in the Aperture database.

The basic principle was not very hard, in fact, it came together a lot quicker than I ever would have expected. But it took a while to bring it to a state that I would want the rest of the world to see it. I can put up with some things that I am sure others wouldn't, and I had to make it easy for the end user to use it in their own way - which meant taking out all the hardcoded paths and stuff...

Then I had to get all fancy. As I have mentioned in the past, I am a big proponent of geotagging, either with a direct connection between the camera and a GPS or software that syncs GPS track logs with photos via the time stamps. Since I was working on all this metadata (thanks to exiftool) on the front-end of the import process, and I have the GPS EXIF data available, why not query the GeoNames database and write the City, State & Country IPTC tags as well?

I was all ready to write my own parser of the GeoNames, but somehow I stumbled across the Geo::GeoNames perl module on CPAN. That sure made things easy.

The perl part came together pretty fast, but the Applescript part was slower - Applescript is probably the most readable language I have ever seen, but the elegance (if you want to call it that) of it is only in the finally working code. There are seriously some major syntax gymnastics going on when I try to figure out how to put things together. I think the open-endedness of the syntax is what makes it so hard. I think that anything should work, or that what I wrote originally is just the same as what I eventually got to work.

In the end, I cobbled together something that works great for me. Yeah, there are some rough edges I would like to work on, but for now, I need to live with what I have and spend some more time with my wife.

If you are interested in learning more, or using it for your own needs, or you just want to criticize my sloppy code, you can find more info, and a download link, here.

What Happened After the Death Star Blew Up

2007-06-02T14:36:00.000+02:00

Absolutely Hilarious.

Photo Published Online

2007-05-25T18:40:00.000+02:00

I just had one of my photos of the Pont Du Gard published online by the European Travel Commission.
Cool!

It's at the bottom of this page.

Followup on the Applescript

2007-05-24T07:34:00.000+02:00

Here are some of the technical details about the Applescript I mentioned Yesterday.

The first key line of the code I added to Mr. Gross' Applescript, is just a list of the EXIF tags I want to grab. Not exactly anything fancy, but this actually requires a modicum of thought, since, by default, exiftool will output the fleld names in a human readable format with spaces, but in order to keep the command-line happy is to use the form of the tag without spaces. It is usually pretty easy to figure out.


set DesiredEXIFData to "-LensID -Lens -LensType 
     -FocusMode -FocusDistance 
     -AFMode -AFPoint -AFPointsUsed 
     -ShootingMode -MeteringMode 
     -Flash -FlashSetting -FlashType -FlashMode"

I chose tags that I think would be interesting and help me learn as a photographer. Some are redundant - Lens ID, for example, is a superset of "Lens" and "Lens Type". I also added a couple that Aperture will read, such as "Flash". The trouble is, Aperture will only print "0" or "1" for flash, or something else similar. I understand the binary thing, but sometimes the number is "2". Exiftool will report this field as words with meaning: "flash did not fire" or "flash fired, return detected".

The tags need to start with the "-" character. And they shouldn't end with an "=" or you will erase the value in the source file. (By default, exiftool only does potentially destructive things after making a backup).

I decided to separate the fields desired from the actual call to exiftool, because I was distributing this script to the rest of the world and recommending that the user edit the desired fields based on their own needs and equipment. I figured it was harder to screw up the whole shebang this way.


-- Ask exiftool for tab-separated fields
set output to do shell script "exiftool -t " & DesiredEXIFData & " " & (quoted form of m_imagePath)

Pretty self explanatory. The "&" symbol is Applescript's text concatenation symbol. It's how you stick the fixed command stuff to the variable stuff.

Sharp readers will notice that I don't provide the full path to exiftool. That might come back to bite me sometime. The thing is, I don't have any idea if I installed it in the standard location or not. And I have no idea whether the end user will either. It works for now, so I am gonna live with it.

Now that we have the exiftool output, I have to do something with it.


-- Separate output by lines
set output to the paragraphs of output
-- Tell Applescript that tab is the delimiter
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {ASCII character 9}

The exiftool argument "-t" will output the outputs the field name and the field value separated by a tab.


-- Do the following for each line of output
repeat with fields in output
-- split line into two fields
  set fields to fields's text items

fields's? cringe!


-- the next two lines are probably not needed, but it makes things easy to read
  set MetadataField to item 1 of fields
  set MetadataValue to item 2 of fields

-- this does the actual write to the aperture database
  tell curImg
    make new custom tag with properties {name:MetadataField, value:MetadataValue}
  end tell
end repeat

I think between the comments and Applescript's syntax, it is pretty easy to figure out what is going on.

Speaking of Applescript syntax, I think it is great at how readable it makes the code. But I always find myself struggling to try to figure out how to write it when I am coding something myself. Coming from C or Perl or bash, I find it frustrating to try to figure out how to string together things to make a working program.

Well, that's all I added to Mr. Gross' Applescript. I tested it quite a bit before I unleashed it upon the world. Within a couple hours, someone had come up with a fix for the one known bug that I decided I didn't want to fix because it rarely affected me (and never after I figured out what caused it).

There are at least two people who have tried it out, it worked for them and they like what it does. Feels good to give something to the world.

My First Ever Applescript

2007-05-23T22:41:00.000+02:00

A discussion on dpreview.com about Aperture and how it doesn't read maker note EXIF fields, specifically the Lens ID, got me thinking. The wonderful exiftool can read this data, why can't Aperture with its team of crack Apple programmers?

I thought of a workaround. Aperture supports the addition of arbitrary metadata to images, and I use it for things like saving the URL and flickr ID of the photos I upload there. Why not read the data from the image using exiftool and stick the result into a new custom field.

I have diddled around with Applescript in the past, but never really did anything that worked. I got bits & pieces working here and there, but never finished because the need went away, I figured out how to do it some other way (like in Perl), found someone else's solution or some similar result. This task didn't seem too hard, so I poked around and found out that there is Applescript support to write custom metadata.

I then encountered the big hurdle. Talking to Aperture with Applescript is easy and you can do a lot of stuff, but everything is relative to the program's internal database, yet I need the path to the actual image file so that exiftool can do its thing. I didn't see an easy way to get Aperture to reveal a path to the original file or get a reference to the image in Aperture's database based on the path of the image file.

Frustrating! I know both bits of data, I just had no clue how to use them to get to my end result. And I still don't, really, because somebody else figured it out and did the heavy lifting for me: Brett Gross' "Reveal Photo File" Applescript. This handy tool will reveal in the Finder the currently selected image(s) in Aperture. Mr. Gross was kind enough to distribute his Applescript in a readable form, so I was able to yank out the bits that open the finder window and instead squirt the path over to exiftool, get the data I need and then write it back to Aperture.

So now this script is chugging away on my 15k images. It's not the fastest, but most of the slowdown seems to be due to the size of my Aperture library. I tried it on a smaller library of about 200 images and it was done in a minute or two. The current task has been running for a couple days, and at the rate it is going, it will require a couple more. Really strange. And frustrating, because my CPUs are never going above 50% utilization and I have a >1GB of free RAM. I guess the disk is the bottleneck here. I just don't understand why the execution time is so non-linear.

My next step will be to write a new version of the script that will do this all at import, which I hope will be faster.

Please read my post at dpreview.com for the download link and instructions for use.

A Visit From Flat Stanley

2007-05-10T10:25:00.000+02:00

Flat Stanley came to visit us from a friend in Colorado. He happened to show up just before we left on a vacation with Jeannette's sister and her husband, so Stanley got to see some cool stuff.

Day 1 (Saturday)

The first day he was here, we tried to take it easy, since he had jet lag, so we wandered around Heilbronn.

When we left our apartment, he immediately saw the playground in front, and wanted to play. Jet lag? Yeah, right. Jeannette and Stanley played a bit, but eventually I had to be the big meanie and tell him that he could play on a playground in Colorado just as well as he could here, so we were going to go out and see some special things he could only see in Germany. Stanley knew I was right, so he wasn't too mad about having to stop playing.

We started our stroll along the Neckar river. Behind Stanley, you can see three important things. First, there is the Taxi Boat - it is just like a normal automobile taxi, but it goes up and down the Neckar river, taking people where they need to go. Next to the Taxi Boat you can see the Heilbronn flag. It looks just like the French flag turned on its side. You can also see a tower, called the Götzenturm, or Götz's tower. It was built about 500 years ago, and at that time it was called "the new tower", but soon it was used for a jail for a knight by the name of Götz, and since then it has been called the Götzenturm. The tower was part of the defensive wall that was around Heilbronn, used in the middle ages to keep invading armies out of the city. Now the wall is gone, because the city grew too much to fit inside it. All that remains of the old wall is this tower and another tower that Stanley will visit later.

Next we saw the Rathaus, or City Hall. It stands in front of Heilbronn's market square, where in addition to the farmer's market on Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday where we can buy fresh fruit, vegetables, cheese eggs and meat, we have festivals. Unfortunately, there was no market or festival on the day Stanley visited, so the market square is almost empty. The city of Heilbronn has a webcam in the market square where you can check to see if anything exciting is going on. Just click here. Remember that it is 8 hours later in Germany than Colorado, so check in the morning or it might be too dark to see anything!

The Rathaus has a very beautiful clock on the front. This clock tells us more than just the time. We can see the phase of the moon (the upper circle), in the center we can see the time, and at the bottom we can find the day of the week and the day of the month. In the basement of the Rathaus is a nice restaurant where you can eat yummy specialties from Swabia, the region of Germany where Heilbronn is located.

Across the market square from the Rathaus is the Kilianskirche, or the church of St. Kilian. St. Kilian brought Christianity to this part of Germany many centuries ago, so he is a very important figure for the Christian population here. The church was built about 600 years ago, but, like most of Heilbronn, was very badly damaged in World War II (more on this later). It has since been repaired, and looks quite beautiful.

Next we saw the Bollwerksturm, which, like the Götzenturm, was part of the medieval city wall of Heilbronn.

In this picture, Jeannette and Stanley are standing on the Adolf Cluß Brücke (bridge) with the fountain in the middle of the Neckar river behind them. During the winter, when the fountain is turned off, there is a family of herons that live on the small island formed by the fountain. The Adolf Cluß Bridge is named after one of the famous residents of Heilbronn, Adolf Cluß. He was an architect who moved to the USA shortly before the American Civil War. He worked for the Army during the civil war, designing cannons. After the war ended, he stayed in Washington DC and designed over 70 buildings there, including one of the buildings of the Smithsonian Museum. We are very proud of him here in Heilbronn, but unfortunately after a century, only a couple of his buildings are still standing. You can learn more about one of Heilbronn's most famous citizens at both Wikipedia or at adolf-cluss.org.

Stanley also got to see the Trappenseeschlößchen, or the "small castle" on the Trappensee. Currently this building is an auction house, and it is the oldest existing secular building in Heilbronn.

At the Trappensee, we started a hike in the forest on the edge of town.

One of our two destinations for the hike was this small chapel in the woods. It was an important place because there is a natural spring here.

Our final stop was at the Ehrenfriedhof, or the memorial cemetery for the victims of the air raid on Heilbronn on December 4th, 1944. On that evening, 255 British bombers dropped thousands of bombs on the city of Heilbronn. After about 25 minutes, 6530 people were killed, among them over 1000 children. 4985 of these victims are buried here, in a collective grave.

Day 2 (Sunday)

Jeannette's sister and her husband were coming today, and while we waited for them to arrive, we had breakfast. Stanley enjoyed his pretzel, and he was so full after eating it, he jokingly said that we should call him "Fat Stanley" from now on.

Stanley has just met his long, lost cousin from Berlin, Ampelman. Actually, this sign is made in the shape of the "don't walk" lights from the former East Germany. Ampelman just means "Stop Light Man".

He and his green brother are very popular symbols in Germany, and the people in Eastern Germany are very proud of him. Most people think that these crosswalk symbols are much more fun than the lights almost anywhere else.

After Brigitte and Randy arrived, we all went to Untergruppenbach, a small town outside of Heilbronn that has a nice castle, called Burg Stettenfels. There was a renaissance fair there, and we got to see lots of knights with swords and armor. We even got to see one of them slay a dragon.

That worked up a big appetite for all of us, so we went to a special restaurant for the region called a Besenwirschaft, which simply means "broom restaurant" in English. The reason it is called a "broom restaurant" is sort of a long story, but I think I can explain it. One of the most important agricultural products in the region around Heilbronn is wine - there are vineyards everywhere and there are a lot of small farmers that make their own wine. These small-time wine makers are allowed to have a restaurant to help sell their wine, but they are only allowed to be open for short periods of time every year. Because they are limited in how long they can be open, the various "broom restaurants" will stagger the weeks that they are open, and the traditional way to advertise that they are open was to hang a broom in front of the winemaker's house. The restaurants can only serve simple foods, so professional chefs are not allowed. It is always a friendly place, because there are never enough tables for all the visitors, so you almost always have to share a table with strangers. Stanley had a lot of fun (he didn't drink wine though!) and his new favorite food is Krautspätzle, which is noodles and sauerkraut.

Day 3 (Monday)

Today we went to Heidelberg. Stanley was excited about riding the trains, so he wanted to document everything. The day started at the Heilbronn Hauptbahhof (Hbf), which means "Main Train Station".

Here Stanley and Jeannette are getting on board.

Stanley is in his seat, ready to go. That kid packs a big backpack!

On the way to Heidelberg, we passed by the Audi factory in Neckarsulm, just north of Heilbronn. I snapped a picture of the hundreds of brand new cars, some of which are on a train as they come out of the factory. The train was going too fast for Stanley to be in this picture - we didn't want him to get sucked out the window!

Heidelberg is probably best known for its gigantic, but unfortunately ruined, castle. Here you can see most of it, along with Randy, Brigitte, Stanley & Jeannette. It is on top of a big hill, looking over and (at one time) protecting the town below.

Here is Stanley, posing with the stone guardians at the main gate of the castle.

This is one of the big towers of the castle, that was partially blown up when the French army ruined the castle in 1693.

Stanley and Jeannette are looking out one of the windows of Heidelberg Castle.

After visiting the castle, we explored town. It is "Spargel" season in Germany, and there are piles of asparagus everywhere! Almost every restaurant has a special menu with asparagus dishes during this time. Stanley didn't know that Asparagus came in different sizes and colors.

In addition to the castle, the "old bridge", as it is called, is another famous site in Heidelberg.

There has always been a monkey statue at this end of the bridge in Heidelberg, but this new brass monkey, that funky monkey, was put there in 1979. It supposedly gives you good luck if you touch it, and Stanley figured it would be even better luck if he got his picture taken with it!

On the bridge behind the monkey, you can just barely see the high water mark for the Neckar river in Heidelberg.

While we were in Heidelberg, we also got to see a protest march parade though the old part of town. These people were protesting the upcoming G8 summit that will be happening in Germany in a few weeks.

Unfortunately, we had to get back on the train and go back to Heilbronn. But Stanley wasn't sad, because waiting for us back in Heilbronn was the May festival - a big carnival with rides and bands (and concession stands in the shape of giant corn cobs!).

Stanley had fun on the Ferris wheel and singing along with the band. The dance floor was a bit too crowded for Stanley to pose with the band, and it was too dangerous for Stanley to stand up on the Ferris wheel, so unfortunately we don't have any pictures of him at the festival.

Day 4 (Tuesday)

Today is May 1st, a holiday in Baden-Württemberg and much of the rest of Germany. We decided to spend the day with Jeannette and Brigitte's grandmother, aunts and uncles in Urloffen.

But first, we had to get on a different train to get there. On this train, Stanley could look at the driver's controls.

We stayed with Karl & Mathilde, Jeannette & Brigitte's great uncle and aunt. They are farmers, they grow apples, pears, plums, strawberries and cherries. They also have some free-range chickens for fresh eggs. These chickens will jump up in the air and take food out of Karl's hands, which is always fun to watch.

Urloffen is a small town, too small for castles and palaces and giant churches. But they do have a stork family that lives on top of a building downtown. It is a very tall, narrow tower that they use to hang up the fire hoses to dry.

We spent the day visiting with family and eating cake. It was a good holiday!

Day 5 (Wednesday)

Today we took another train, this time to München, or Munich in English. München is the 2nd largest city in Germany, and is in the heart of Bavaria, the largest of the German states.

The first thing we saw was the really, really tall Frauenkirche.

We then saw the city hall in München, but unfortunately it was being repaired so it was mostly covered with scaffolding. We did find the inner courtyard, where there were some gargoyles that Stanley liked. These are just fancy waterspouts for directing the rain water away from the walls.

We also saw Schloß Nymphenberg, a big palace in München. The palace is surrounded by beautiful gardens full of swans, geese and ducks.

The swans were very playful, and some of them even ran over to us to meet Stanley.

You can't go to München without seeing a Biergarten, a place where people meet, talk and relax in the fresh air under the shade of chestnut trees. That also usually means drinking beer. Stanley didn't drink any, but he did want to have his picture taken next to one of the giant beer glasses, called a Maß.

Day 6 (Thursday)

Today was a hard day for Stanley. We visited Dachau, the site of the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany and now a memorial to those that died there and a reminder to the world of the atrocities that were committed there, with the goal of making sure that we never forget it, and that it cannot ever happen again.

Because it is impossible visit Germany (with the intent to learn something about the people, history and culture) without dealing with the Nazi times and World War II, we didn't want to skip this in Flat Stanley's travels. Obviously the lighthearted nature of the previous days with Stanley can't be maintained here. We felt the smiling Stanley posing here was inappropriate in this place, so you won't find Stanley in photos here.

I think other web resources, such as the official Dachau Memorial web site or Wikipedia can fill in the details about the concentration camp at Dachau, but here is my short take. The camp was established in 1933 and became the model for other concentration camps throughout Germany and the occupied lands. Between 1933 and 1945, approximately 200,000 people were imprisoned and used for slave labor here, simply because of their political or religious beliefs, their sexual orientation or their nationality. Over 32,000 of those people died here, usually from disease or malnutrition. Of those 200,000 prisoners that didn't die here, many who were too sick, injured or otherwise unfit to work were shipped off to other places to be killed.

Day 7 (Friday)

Today Stanley got to go to the very southern border of Germany, into the Alps, and see more castles. The Alps are Germany's tallest mountains, and to Stanley, look quite similar to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The Alps are not nearly as high as the Rockies, but they are still impressive mountains.

The first castle we saw was the famous Neuschwanstein castle. It was built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria in the 19th century. It is probably the most popular tourist destination in Germany, but photography wasn't allowed inside so we only have outdoor shots of Stanley. The castle is a candidate for one of the "New 7 Wonders of the World". More information about the castle, as well as pictures of the inside, can be found at the Neuschwanstein Official Web Site.

After seeing this fancy and relatively new castle, we hiked over to the ruins of the castles Hohenfreyberg and Eisenberg, two late medieval castles that were left in ruins by the Austrians as they left this area in the 17th century. Now they are a pleasant and relaxing place to hike & explore, away from the crowds at Neuschwanstein.

Finally, after all that hiking we took a ride down a "Sommer Rodelbahn". In the winter, it is a bobsled track, but after the ice has melted away, people can ride down the track with a special sled with wheels and brakes.

It was a long trip and we all had a lot of fun, but the next morning, Stanley had to climb back in his envelope and go back to Colorado.

I hope you all enjoyed reading about Stanley's adventures in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, and I hope that the pictures help you visualize everything that Stanley got to see.

If you want, you can see all of these photos on a map.

Paris, Part 2

2007-04-27T07:56:00.000+02:00

Paris is a big place. So big that we knew that we couldn't "see it all" in our long weekend there. So we had priorities. One of those for me was to visit the Louvre, or at least part of it. You see, when I was in Paris last, exactly 20 years ago, I was a geeky teenager trying to be cool amongst the other teenagers on the trip. It was cooler to go to Pére Lachaise and see Jim Morrison's grave than to see the centuries of human culture collected in the Louvre. Oh well, that's what I did back then. I did have a great time in Paris back then, but I've grown a lot since then, and darn it, I wanted to see the Louvre.

On the other hand, the weather before the trip was gorgeous in Heilbronn, after a colt and sort of dreary winter, and the last thing I wanted to do was spend a lot of time cooped up inside when the sun is shining! So We decided that if the weather was crappy, we'd hit the Louvre. And we'd get there early enough that we'd be towards the front of the line, if not at the front.

So on Saturday, when we woke up, and it was cold and cloudy outside, we decided to go to Montmartre.
Yeah, in hindsight, all this "let's go to the Louvre if the weather sucks" thing kinda flopped. In reality, because of my massive cold, we got up much later than we normally do on vacations, thus making the chance of not waiting long in line at the Louvre pretty slim, and we incorrectly assumed the weather in Paris would play out like it had in Heilbronn the week before - cold and dreary in the morning but warm, sunny and overall gorgeous in the afternoon.

So Montmartre it was. We started outside the Moulin Rouge and worked our way up to the Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart) basilica, and were quite disappointed that the low-hanging clouds prevented us from seeing much from the tallest hill in Paris. At this point, we'd been there for nearly 24 hours and I still hadn't seen the Eiffel Tower, supposedly visible from anywhere in town. I was beginning to think they sold it for scrap metal.

So we worked our way back down the hill, and took the Metro to the center of town, thinking we'll see how the Louvre lines were looking. When we emerged from the subterranean tunnels of the Metro, the sun was shining and it was warm enough to shed the hat & jacket. So we popped over to the Saint Chapelle church, built to house the crown of thorns in the 11th century. The books I have read said it is worth it to visit on a sunny day, because the stained glass windows were unbelievable.

Since the church is located inside the Palais de Justice, we had to wait in line to do the X-ray and Metal Detector thing. And then wait in line again to buy tickets. But it went pretty fast. The picture above doesn't really do it justice, but the beauty was marred by the fact that they made absolutely no attempt to control the amount of people crammed inside the church. Surfing a wave of annoying and self-centered tourists is never fun.

After that, we decided to find out if the Eiffel Tower had indeed been sold for scrap, and we headed in the direction it was supposed to be. Shortly after that, we stumbled across this marvelous entrance to the Metro. We really liked the shiny bits and colorful baubles. Oooh! Shiny! Aaah! Colors! Yeah, I'm easy to please.

We popped into the courtyard inside the big ol' U-shaped palace that makes up the Louvre, and headed down to the Jardin des Tuileries. There were tons of people out and about, enjoying the beautiful weather. I've always had problems taking pictures of people on the street, so I gave it a shot. This girl was just sitting at the base of the statue reading, and I thought it looked so idyllic.

When we got the Place de la Concorde, we stopped for a few minutes to look at the Obelisk. While we were there, I decided to continue practicing taking pictures of people on the street and got this couple in mid-embrace.

And these guys, apparently the bus drivers or something, "relaxing" in the cargo bay of the bus.

Eventually we made it to the Tower - yes it is still there. It was extremely crowded and we were getting hungry, so we found some food somewhere (can't remember where...), stopped by the hotel to pick up my tripod and headed back to the big ol' tower for some nighttime photos.

This is looking up from below the Eiffel Tower. I like it because it shows just how intricate and detailed the construction is - it isn't just big honking girders slapped together. It has some elegance.

Finally, we decided to do that kissing thing too. The next day, Jeannette woke up with a cold too. I wonder if there is any correlation between those two things....

Despite our dumb mistake of not hitting the Louvre in the morning when the weather was bad, it was a great day.

CSI: Heilbronn

2007-04-25T19:27:00.000+02:00

Some time today, two police officers in Heilbronn were shot. One was killed, the other was seriously injured.
Nobody knows what happened - the two were found near their car this afternoon, with their guns and handcuffs missing.

All afternoon & evening, police sirens are blaring. Helicopters are circling. Cops in bulletproof vests are everywhere. Every car trying to leave the city is being checked, and so traffic is backed up for miles.

Outside our apartment a few minutes ago, about 10 police cars & vans pulled up and the police piled out. Some had their hands on their guns, at least one carried a big machine-gun.

I have seen my share of police in Germany, but I don't recall ever seeing them ready to whip out their guns, much less have them out & ready (like the machine-gunner). Even the police around controversial demonstrations seemed calm and cool.

The spectacle outside our place was similar to things that have happened before - a routine control of the teenagers down by the river. But there were about 5x the number of police and they were armed and ready for business this time.

This all happened on Theresienwiese, which is not far from work. Which is not far from home. Which kinda gives me the heebee jeebies since the perps haven't been caught yet.

Paris, Part 1

2007-04-22T17:23:00.000+02:00

As I said before, Jeannette and I were in Paris for Easter weekend. Our train arrived at around noon, so after we checked in to our hotel, we headed out for lunch. Our guidebook was full of walking tours of Paris, one of which went right by our hotel and passed by a place they claimed was jam-packed with cheap Indian and Pakistani restaurants. Since we don't get good Indian food in Heilbronn anymore, we decided that this was the way to go.

The tour wasn't all that exciting (though it did take us past some great Space Invaders). When we got to Passage Brady, the place with all the restaurants, we tried to check out the menus of the various places, but we were verbally bombarded by the waiters trying to convince us that their special is better than every other restaurant's special. In French. And we don't understand that much French. At least not when people are trying to get the whole sales pitch out in less than 10 seconds. I think all I got out of them - all 10 or so of them - was "cheese naan".

I'm not really very big on the pushy "come into my establishment" way of doing things, so we went to the restaurant where we weren't bothered. It was also mentioned in our guide book as being one of the better ones. Well, we weren't impressed. I mean, it started good - no harassment before commitment, and the Tandoori Chicken that I got as the appetizer part of my lunch special was the only Tandoori chicken that I can recall ever tasting good. But the rest was just ... well, boring. And it wasn't what I would call cheap.

A cheap lunch to me is around 5 euros per person. This was 12 euros. For the lunch special. Lonely Planet really disappointed us on this one.

So we finished up the walking tour, which didn't really get much more interesting. But it was good to be away from home in gorgeous weather. The tour ended not far from the famous Père Lachaise cemetery. I had been there 20 years ago on my last trip to Paris, but Jeannette had never been, despite something like 7 previous trips to the "city of light". So off we went to the strange world of tightly-packed sepulchers and weird sculptures that is the final resting place of so many famous people.

Eventually we got kicked out. Not because we were bad or anything, it was just closing time. And at that, I'll close this for now.

Surreal

2007-04-11T20:53:00.000+02:00

We were in Paris for Easter weekend. (On a note completely unrelated to the rest of this post, except for the fact that it concerns Paris, don't go to Paris for Easter weekend. Unless you like battling crowds and dealing with lots of closed things). On Sunday we got to the Louvre early and were among the first 15-20 in line. We got through the ticket machines before most people could even find them and had a nice morning checking out the famous works of art.

When we left the palace grounds, and looked down the Rue de Rivoli, we saw a row of swastika flags. The photo above doesn't show the whole effect. The whole block was lined with them. What the hell? We knew the French elections were heating up the next day - was there some big political rally for a Nazi party or something?

We had to check it out - not because we support that sort of thing or anything - but because there is no way you could see this in Germany. At least legally in such a public place.

As we were walking there, Jeannette pointed out the McDonald's logo with the Nazi flags, and I found it a very strange combination and had to take a picture.

It turns out it was a movie set. Apparently starring Moritz Bleibtreu. I tried to do the Paparazzi thing. Maybe the pictures turned out... Haven't had time to look.

More from Paris, later...

Prices

2007-04-10T20:54:00.000+02:00

Either beer is too damn expensive in France or it is too damn cheap in Germany.

Framed Church

2007-04-02T07:45:00.000+02:00

When I was walking by today, without my camera, I saw these lovely green buildings framing the Kilianskirche tower. When I came back with my camera, it just didn't look the same. But I tried anyway, and it isn't that bad. But not the image I pictured in my mind.

Here's another attempt. I like the stripe effect.

I hope yesterday wasn't an "April Fool's" prank played by mother nature. It was a beautiful day, and I hope it stays that way until it's time for winter again.

Flea Markets

2007-04-01T17:30:00.000+02:00

Jeannette has always been a big fan of going to flea markets in Germany. Before moving here, we went to them when we happened upon them, but never really found much to buy. Upon moving here, we've been to the Heilbronn Flohmarkt many times, and I am usually pretty unimpressed. Every once in a while, when there is something we need, like light-bulbs, we can pick them up for slightly cheaper and possibly with more convenience. But for the most part, the Heilbronner Flohmarkt is dominated by people selling Russian DVDs and CDs (completely useless due to my due to my linguistic limitations) and a few other things that don't interest me all that much. It isn't that often that I need a 30 cm bolt. (Of course, when I need one, I know where I can go.) Even the Skittles I bought on the cheap one time, despite having a familiar package, had a horrible taste. Because of this, I have had a negative attitude towards flea markets lately.

Last weekend, we were in Frankfurt and, in addition to finding a restaurant with the best Pad Thai I have ever had (at least in Germany - the next best I remember having was in Austin, and that was a long time ago), we had a positive flea market experience. Again, I found several cheapo CDs and Jeannette got a couple pairs of Levi's. And they were good CDs - typically flea market CD sellers have 87 copies of one-hit-wonder pop music drivel sampler CDs, a huge selection of CD singles that are occasionally interesting but cost 6 euros each, and the one good CD they have is inevitably R.E.M.'s Monster, and we already have 2 copies of that.

Yesterday we hit the flea market in Stuttgart, about 20-30 minutes before it officially closed (many people had packed up and left already). Despite that, I found some cheap and good used CDs (I would have liked to listen to about 30 of them, but stuck to buying 3) and Jeannette found a good lead on an Indian-style ring she has been trying to find. Overall positive experience.

Before last weekend, I had decided that I really didn't like flea markets. Now I know it's just that Heilbronn's flea market is not up to par.

Paypal Update

2007-03-24T07:27:00.000+01:00

Got this e-mail yesterday:

Our review is complete and we have restored your account.

We appreciate your patience and thank you for your help in making PayPal the safest and most trusted online payment solution.

Sincerely,
PayPal

I never did fax or mail anything to them. I never added a credit card and an address.

All I did was bitch & moan 3 or 4 times to customer service and they caved in.

Doesn't really say much about their security policy, if one can get around it with a few whiney emails.

I canceled my account.

How Annoying Can PayPal Be?

2007-03-21T17:35:00.000+01:00

I have used paypal for years for the occasional internet transaction where using a credit card was not possible or practical.
Things like paying for server upkeep to my brother when he was in charge of hise.org. It was a decent service, and as long as you never click on a paypal link in and email (because they are always phishing attempts) and be careful about clicking on paypal links in web sites (many are legit, others are also phishing), it seems to be pretty secure.

Since I rarely used it for things like ebay auctions or similar things, I have never run into the most common complaint I heard: they don't do anything to protect the customer if there are scam ebayers.

Well, recently I got a legit email from paypal. The important part said:

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. ...

We have reason to believe that your account was accessed by a third party. Because protecting the security of your account is our primary concern, we have limited access to sensitive PayPal account features. We understand that this may be an inconvenience but please understand that this temporary limitation is for your protection.

So I tried to "unlimit" my account, and jumped through the reasonable security hoops they have in place for the first two steps.

The last step of the "unlimitation" process is to confirm my location. OK, great. Their method of confirming location is by entering credit card information. But I was stopped cold on this step, because it won't let me use a credit card with a foreign billing address.

At this point, the line We have reason to believe that your account was accessed by a third party. is setting off the BS detector. They don't care about me and my account security, they know that no "third party" has accessed my account. All they care about making sure I have a credit card on file. Why tell me one thing when you really mean something else, paypal?

OK, so I checked their FAQs and tried to figure out how to wrangle the system into letting me use a foreign address. As it turns out, one must cancel a paypal account in the original country and open a new one in the foreign paypal site. OK, great, let's cancel this account then.

Oh wait, I can't cancel my account, because it is limited! A limited account can't be canceled. That is limiting!

So I fire off an email to customer service inquiring about the Catch-22 I am in:
I can't cancel the account because I am limited and I can't "unlimit" the account because I need to have a US address, which I don't have.

Their response:

If you want to close down a PayPal account but have forgotten your password, no longer have the email address registered to your account,

Did you read my friggin question. The password is not the problem. Why mention it? Neither is the email address.

and do not live at the residence registered on the account

That was an AND right. Logically, all conditions of the AND must be true for the outcome to be true. They weren't, so why should I bother reading on. After all, you didn't even read my email. But I'm a big boy. I'll keep slogging on.

you will need to fax the following:

FAX? OK. From Germany? That is gonna be spendy... I will not spend money to close this account. Bastards. But it gets better.

A copy of your current valid Driver's License. The license must list your current address.

OK. But wait, German driver's licenses don't have addresses on them!

A copy of a proof of address such as a utility bill, financial account statement or check stub that lists your previous address.

How do they know that I received utility bills in my name at my previous address? And my wife has a different last name. Hell, so does my mom. There are tons of ways that I can live someplace and not have a utility bill with my name and address on it. But I probably have something. It will take a boatload of digging, but I can probably find something acceptable. Like my mortgage papers. That might be good enough for them. Not sure really what that proves, however.

The email address registered on both PayPal accounts, if funds are to be transferred.

What the heck does that even mean. I am not trying to transfer funds. Oh wait! You didn't even read my inquiry! I hate customer service people that don't even try. What a joke.

So I fired off a response to customer "service" and basically told them that their response didn't help. I wasn't that nice, but not exactly mean, either. I inquired about why faxing was required and what we should do about the fact that German licenses don't have addresses. I expected a very long delay, but to their credit, they managed a response in about 24 hours.

Of course the response was totally unhelpful:

I am sorry, due to virus concerns we are unable to open file attachments.

Hint to Paypal: Ditch windows. Get a Linux system or OS X or something. Hell, I would send you a TIFF, I think you could even grab a SGI Indy at Goodwill in Colorado Springs. That will open a TIFF. Or just be smart about handling that attachment. What a BS excuse.

Kim then proceeded to tell me again where to fax the information or, if I wanted, where to mail the info.

OK great. They still want me to pay to close an account. Bzzzt. Not. Gonna. Happen.

Kim also didn't respond to the more important point: what to do about the fact that my license doesn't have my address on it. What will they accept? Nobody can tell me. I especially won't fax or mail something, and then have them tell me it isn't good enough.

I am sure we'll go around several times. Eventually I'll just say forget it and let the account rot, and filter all paypal emails to my junk bin.

Why is it that customer service people, and not just paypal's, can't ever answer the question asked in email enquiries? Is it really that hard?

Wow! What a Show!

2007-03-11T15:00:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned recently, we went to Achern last weekend to see Dan Bern perform.

We were quite happy to find the venue small and intimate, seating only about 50 people. We not only held ticket numbers 1 and 2, but we got seats in the front row and center, since we were the first to arrive.

The venue was a small former chapel, and the acoustics were great.

It was an incredible show. He played several new songs (at least one he wrote just that morning thanks to jet lag) and he even spoke to the audience in decent German. He was very entertaining, and even told a couple jokes. (Humor in a foreign language can be difficult!)

We really liked his short explanations of several of the songs. Of course, if you listen to the lyrics and think about it, everything he said in his explanations was already there - but it was interesting to hear his thought process when it came to the words he chose.

At the end of the night, we were quite happy. After the encore, he had retreated to the upper floor of the chapel, but the crowd still wanted more. He popped his head over the balcony railing and sang us one more song, unpluggd and a cappella, that he said was too complicated to play on the guitar. It was a wonderful new song about how he saw Branford Marsalis in a small club in Prague.

We wanted to talk to him after the show, but it was obvious he was tired, so we left, content with the show. Of course we wanted more, but in the end, it was excellent and well worth the mere 8 Euro ticket price, rental car fee and fuel cost.

So, if you see a poster like this one, check the date and get thee to the stated venue. You won't be disappointed.

And, to paraphrase his final song:


I did not see the Romans in the coliseum 
I did not see Lenny Bruce in Paris 
I did not see Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium 
But I saw Dan Bern at a chapel in Achern 
At a chapel in Achern I saw Dan Bern
So--there

Hee Hee

2007-03-02T16:28:00.000+01:00

There is this tree outside our window between the bike path and the river that we call the peeing tree. Because people (men, usually) often decide that this particular tree, for some reason, is a handy public toilet. There are other trees nearby, but they get nowhere near the attention that this tree gets. At least from humans. I haven't noticed any trends in dogs or other animals.

Right now, As I am typing this, a soon-to-be-married couple is getting their wedding photos taken. It is a nice location by the river. But they are using the peeing tree to lean on. Maybe they should go to the other side of the river and take pictures on the Giant Wooden Penis next.

Dan Bern vs. Fahrverbot Sonntag

2007-03-02T07:28:00.000+01:00

Ever since I got an email from the Dan Bern HQ several weeks ago, informing me that Dan Bern would be performing several shows in Germany in march, we have been planning to go. In fact, the closest show is actually on a weekend, and we nailed the date into our calendar. There is no question whether or not we are going. We are. End of story.

Well, not quite the end... We weighed the options of getting there. The train goes to the town we need to go to, but won't be able to bring us back due to the estimated ending time of the show. So we would need a hotel. When we calculated the price of round trip tickets (the price advantage of the Baden-Württemberg ticket evaporates, since the trip spans 2 days) and a hotel and decided that renting a car and paying for gas would be cheaper. Plus it lets us visit a few people in the area of the show, but don't have such great rail access.

So everything is set, and were psyched. Then I hear on the radio that Sunday is this "live without a car day" and everybody is supposed to not drive on Sunday. I didn't get whether or not we're sending a message by not driving or just learning to live without the shackles of oil-based fuels or what.

What irks me is that I will be driving a car that day. And people will probably look at me with that same kind of "how could you be doing that" look that I get when I cross the street against the light to catch the bus. The look of disapproval is common in Germany, especially from the older crowd. Sometimes it even comes with the voice of disapproval.

What those people that will be giving me the look on Sunday don't know is that I live every ordinary day of my life without a car. Without the weekly stop to the gas station. Without spewing Feinstaub all over Ilsfeld or Stuttgart. (Confused: see this or this.)

I'm all for trying to be less dependant on cars. I don't have the knowlege and/or equipment to measure how much wear and tear on the world we have avoided by not having cars for the last two+ years, but I know that we have saved a lot of money, I am probably getting more exercise, and I don't have that stressful drive home like I used to (a traffic jam after a crap day at work - used to get me really annoyed, but now is a thing of the past). The only thing I really miss is being able to listen to NPR on the way to & from work. That's how I heard about Dan Bern in the first place.

Still Here

2007-02-27T23:55:00.000+01:00

I'm still here, I've just been busy taking pictures, as you can see from my reflection in this picture.
Actually, that's not really true. I haven't been shooting a lot lately - I have been trying to work through the backlog of thousands of photos from the last several months and uploading the good ones to Flickr. Since it has been cold & rainy the last several days, and Jeannette is away on a business trip, I have plenty of time for it.

So, hopefully there will be more soon...

The 5th Season is Ending

2007-02-19T21:14:00.000+01:00

Fasching, the 5th season in Germany, is coming to a close. This year we participated by watching a couple parades, one in Offenburg a couple weeks ago and Heilbronn's on Saturday.

The one in Offenburg was a lot of fun. The costumes seemed to be better - almost like realistic fairies and creatures that came out of the Black Forest just for this event. There was a lot of audience interaction. There was lots of confetti being noogied into people's hair (mine included - I was finding it for days afterwards) and teenage girls thrown into cages. Jeannette even got dragged off and had her shoelaces tied together with like 11 knots. On the downside, the candy distribution at the Offenburg parade was nearly pathetic.

On the other hand, the Heilbronn parade had more bands playing really fun music. Especially Ferro Tamburo, who was one of my favorites 2 years ago as well. The candy distribution was quite good, but we were too close to a bunch of grabby kids, so not much made it to us. At least Jeannette didn't get whomped by a bag of flour like she did last year.

I think the pictures I took at the Offenburg parade were some of the best action shots I have ever taken. Action shots have always been my downfall... The Heilbronn pictures weren't as good, but still not bad. There are too many to publish here, but if you are interested, have a look at the photo sets on Flickr:

Offenburg Narrentag 2007

Heilbronner Faschingsumzug 2007

Master of Light and Shadow

2007-02-10T18:30:00.000+01:00

So there is a part of town that used to be a cloister in the middle ages. More recently, it was the estate of the family of Adolf Cluss, who is best known as the architect of several significant post-civil war buildings in Washington, DC. Now, the buildings on Klostergasse house a variety of shops - there is a musical instrument store right next to a sex shop which is right next to a dance school. In the next few weeks, these buildings will be torn down to make room for a big shopping mall. I don't have a problem with that, it's not like they are tearing down the Cloister or the Cluss house now - both are long gone and replaced by post-war architecture.

But there are two things I will miss. First and foremost is Sharkey's, Heilbronn's "American Bar". Sometimes I just need a good ol' American burger, which is surprisingly hard to find in Germany. No, I don't consider McBurger Donald's King to be an option. I'll miss Sharkey's partly because I can get interesting stuff - like a very unhealthy and gigantic chili cheese burger with a plate of onion rings (proper onion rings are even harder to find in Germany than a properly made bacon cheeseburger). Partly because Sharkey's isn't a giant culture monotonizing chain. Partly because it is just a 5 minute walk from home. Partly because their cole slaw is to die for (and they only gave you a few forkfuls, which makes it even more enticing!). Partly because Sharkey's was the only place in town that I know of that showed the USA's final game of the World Cup last summer. Every other place in town showed another game, because the much more popular Italian team was playing a game at the same time. I understand, there are more Italians and fans of the Italian soccer players here than there are fans of the USA's football team. Sharkey's probably could have had a full house showing the Italy game, but stuck to their "American Bar" name and showed the USA game. Even when it meant upsetting a couple of Australians who were watching the Monte Carlo car race that happened to be simultaneously in progress.

Anyway, enough about Sharkey's. The other thing I will miss after the renovation of Klostergasse is the old Foto-Mangold mural. It is a worn and weathered black & white circle-art that reads "Meister über Licht und Schatten" (Master of light and shadow). I don't know why I like it so much. But I know that every time I go out shooting pictures, I have problems with the light and the shadows. It would be nice to master it. Like Foto-Mangold. I guess I will have to keep working at it until some day, this will be me:

Prognostication

2007-02-08T07:35:00.000+01:00

Today I'm feeling like a real Nostradamus or Miss Cleo or something. OK, really it was yesterday that I felt that way, but it took me a day to get around to blogging about it. Cut me some slack, yesterday was a busy day, even if you leave out all the augury.

OK, I won't keep you in suspense any longer and I'll reveal my prediction. The future I have seen, and will tell you all now. Brace yourselves, this is a whopper.

In exactly 372 days, the entry on this blog will read "I'm 37, I'm not old!"

Mark my words.

Maultaschen Recipe #2

2007-02-01T07:32:00.000+01:00

A little over a year ago, I blathered on about my 1st recipe that featured maultaschen, Schwäbisch Lasagna. Well, I am happy to report that I have another fine maultaschen dish for all y'all. And this one is much easier.

Background Nugget #1: Please see the Schwäbisch Lasagna entry if you don't remember what maultaschen are, and/or if you live in a place where they aren't easy to come by and you need to make your own. Or just do a web search - google, for instance - on how to make maultaschen. I still buy mine in the store in convenient 6-packs. Well, sometimes Jeannette buys them.

Humorous Morsel #1: The cafeteria at work serves maultaschen occasionally. They also have an English translation of their menu. They usually translate maultaschen as "noodle bags". Sounds tasty!

Background Nugget #2: There are many places that serve maultaschen fried in a pan with eggs. Someimes it is really good. Like at the Waldhornschenke. Some places it is just so-so.

I have tried to make it a few times, and, like the unmentioned culprits in nugget #2, usually it is pretty dull. But last night I managed to make it turn out pretty well. Jeannette was even happy about it. See:

Anyway, on to the recipe...

Oil for cooking (I used peanut oil in an unknown quantity)
1 onion
1 really big garlic clove that turned out to be like 3 smaller ones in the same "wrapper"
6 maultaschen
5 eggs (if using the big honkin' genetically modified eggs in America, you can probably cut back to 4. or 3).
shredded gouda
pepper
salt

• Heat some oil in a frying pan.
• Finely chop an onion. In this case, fine should mean small bits, not how well or stylishly you do it.
• Chuck those onions in your hot oil and sautée those babies.
• After a couple of minutes, decide that maybe garlic would help. Dig through the kitchen until you find the garlic press, squish the garlic into your onions.
• Cut your maultaschen into strips. 1 cm wide, or maybe 1/2 inch. Whichever unit you are calibrated to will work.
• When your onions are pretty soft, throw the maultaschen in. Add freshly ground pepper and salt.
• add a couple eggs. Stir it around a bit. Decide that you need more eggs, throw in another one. Still need more, so chuck in a 4th. Decide that 4 eggs is probably OK, but that only leaves one in the carton so you might as well throw in the 5th. Do so.
• Stir the eggs around until they are nicely scrambled, everything is mixed and the maultaschen are warm.
• cover with a generous layer of shredded cheese (I used gouda).
• reduce heat, cover pan and wait until your wife gets back from her jog.
• assuming cheese is gooey, serve.
• Add a bit more pepper
• eat

Serves at least 2. We were kind of piggy last night. We didn't use any sauce, but often this dish will be served with a sauce. Either runny thin tomato (as opposed to a thick italian tomato sauce) or brown.

I know I don't describe it well, but it was really yummy.

First Snow of 2007

2007-01-25T17:53:00.000+01:00

Yesterday it snowed for the first time this winter. And it snowed a lot.
There was so much snow, that my friend who lives in Heidelberg, who left home at 7.00 in the morning, didn't get to work until 3.00 in the afternoon. It is normally a little over an hour to drive. On the radio, the traffic annoucements took 5 minutes or more to read, when normally it is about 30 seconds.

After work, I took a few pictures of the snow, but only from my balcony. I wasn't in the mood to deal with it "in the wild".

I really like the icicles on this one.

The glow of the cranes through the trees is nice.

We had quite the drift on our balcony.

And finally, our Ikea fiber-optic lights in the flower boxes looked really cool.

Bad, Bad Blogger!

2007-01-22T22:27:00.000+01:00

So it has been over a month since I have updated this here blog thingy. Between the holidays, vacations, work, visiting in-laws and getting sick, Jeannette and I spent way too much time working on our 2nd annual new year's update for family & friends.

Click that there link up there and find out what we were up to.

Busy Lately

2006-12-17T16:19:00.000+01:00

So, Jeannette and I have been working for the last several weeks on a paper to present at Embedded World in February, but it was due on Dec. 15th. We had it finished a week early to go through the appropriate approvals at work, but we were a bit naïve to think that our first shot at our first paper ever would just sail through the approval process. I actually believed that people would like us to trumpet our company's products and show the world it is easy to put them together in interesting ways. Well, it isn't that simple, it turns out, and it is even more difficult when the headquarters in California declares plans to reorganize and save money (meaning job cuts) the day after you put the paper in the approval loop. Needless to say we missed the deadline, and since the dust hasn't settled on the work situation, the whole presentation thing is on hold (if not altogether off).

Since we didn't get the paper signed off, I don't want to say much about it. But it involves GPS, wireless communication and my camera. Since it doesn't look like I will be able to build the gadget any time soon, I decided to take a look at GPS alternatives. You see, from the photo below, to do this right, I have to carry my GPS, tethered to the camera by 7 feet of cables, while trying to operate the camera and zoom lens at the same time. It is a pain.

So taking a cue from a guy on the Digital Photography Review forums, I decided to go with the Bluetooth GPS route, which eliminates 6 feet of the cables, like so (not my picture):

So I need to find a replacemeny for my ancient, by technology standards, Garmin GPS-12 that I got for my birthday from my dad in 1999. I hate to get rid of a perfectly good piece of tech, but this unit is getting long in the tooth. The sensitivity isn't great and it eats batteries like crazy. And it is bulky. So I have been searching for the new candidate. And I think this is what I want. It is a tiny little super performance GPS receiver that is solar assisted. That is, the battery lasts 50% longer when the solar panel is exposed to the light. Yeah, it would be cool if it could be powered 100% by light alone, but we're not there quite yet, technology-wise. Maybe someday. Until then, this baby is small enough, quite powerful and it spews its data out via Bluetooth, eliminating the cables.

But I have run into snags. I am having trouble finding it in Europe (there are several on Ebay, but people keep outbidding me!). In addition to that, I am having trouble finding the Bluetooth to Serial Converter that I need anywhere in Europe for a reasonable price. And Ebay isn't helping there either.

So, hopefully I can get those two pieces (Santa, are you listening?) soon, and get rid of this cable fiasco. And then, I need to figure out how to deal with the other part of the little gadget we wanted to make. But I'm not gonna talk about that, at least not right now.

Sunrise over the Neckar

2006-12-11T19:37:00.000+01:00

One thing nice about the short days this time of year is that I am usually awake to see the beautiful sunrise. Well, not the actual sunrise, since the horizon (and thus the sun) is blocked by several rows of buildings, but the nice effects of sunrise are quite visible. This morning, just before leaving for work, I saw this out my living room window and had to take a picture. The colors never are quite the same as in real life, in this case, the sky was much more pink than the camera saw it.

Check Out Those Buttresses!

2006-11-30T07:37:00.000+01:00

I've always liked flying buttresses. And the copper-topped flying buttresses on the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg are some of the nicest I have seen in a while. Like a lot of things (especially butt resses), you have to pay to get the best view...

Friday Afternoon Excitement

2006-11-24T20:34:00.000+01:00

We were walking down the street in Strasbourg Friday afternoon when we came across this Renault Twingo that was on fire. Shortly afterwards, the fire fighters came, with their nice, shiny helmets, and put out the fire. Soon all that remained was the bad smell.

This all took place outside a driving school. I am just going out on a limb and guessing here, but I think maybe, just maybe, the student failed the driving test.

Mrs. Allanimal

2006-11-23T18:45:00.000+01:00

So at work we have this intercom system, so that if you aren't at your desk and someone really needs to get a hold of you, you can be paged via a loudspeaker in every room.

So, today, I was paged. But instead of the guy saying "Herr Doktor Allanimal" (OK, the doktor bit I made up), apparently it was "Frau Allanimal".

For the Germanically-challenged, that means everyone for the next two hours had a good laugh when they saw me, since they paged "Mrs. Allanimal" instead of "Mr. Allanimal".

Ha ha very funny. Maybe it would have been if I hadn't been having a crappy day already.

Someone Fed the Monkey

2006-11-22T21:22:00.000+01:00

Despite the signs all over Singapore's Bukit Timah Nature Preserve (the only remaining bit of rainforest left in Singapore) that forbid the feeding of the monkeys, someone still gave me a banana. It was yummy.

Greetings from the Philippines

2006-11-14T15:11:00.000+01:00

I've been in the Philippines since Sunday night. Almost didn't make it. Long story that I am sure I'll get to eventually. Anyway, haven't seen much of the sights, since the hotel seems to be in the middle of nowhere and getting to and from the office (and anywhere else) also takes a while. I'll talk a bit more about it later, but the main thing I have to say is that Singapore and the Philippines are so very different. Except for the fresh fruit at just about every meal. I've probably had more fresh pineapple in the last 8 days than I had in the rest of my life.

A Bit More from Singapore

2006-11-09T08:37:00.000+01:00

Not a whole lot more to say at the moment, other than things are going well. I did want to share this picture of a Singaporean building, which is sometimes called the Durian, but I think it looks more like bug eyes.

Speaking of Durians I saw this sign in the subway:

I don't think I need to justify the smoking ban, the eating / drinking ban or even the flammable "goods" ban. But Durians? Well, I think wikipedia sums it up best. Read, in particular, the section about their taste and smell.

Hello from Singapore

2006-11-08T06:28:00.000+01:00

I have been in Singapore since Monday night, and the Jet Lag is nearly gone. So far, the work part of the trip (the real reason I am here) is going well. We may even finish early (but I won't count the chickens too early...).

The picture above is the view from my hotel room balcony, on the 35th floor of a 70 storey building. I didn't have a tripod, so it is a bit blurry and noisy. There is also some blur because I forgot about how glass tends to fog when moved from an air-conditioned environment (my hotel room) to a hot, humid environment (the balcony). Oops.

Last night we were entertained by a Singaporean, who took us to an incredible seafood restaurant. He ordered all the food, and it was all quite incredible. We sampled at least 6 dishes, with great names like drunken prawns, bamboo clams (this one contains enough garlic to make the Vampires run for the next time zone!), black pepper crabs and butter crawfish.

It was all very good, and stuff that I would never would have ordered on my own. I like to tell myself I will eat anything, but I tend to be a big weenie about ordering stuff. I get what I know I will like too often, rather than diving in and trying something new. So it was nice to have someone make that decision, because if I looked at the menu, I probably would have found something boring to eat instead of the exciting stuff we got to sample yesterday.

This trip is a big bunch of firsts and record breakers for me. First time in Asia. Closest I've ever been to the equator (slightly more that 1 degree away). Farthest east (until I hit the Phillipines on Sunday). I just wish Jeannette could be here to experience it all with me.

Well, I am on my lunch break at work, so I should probably get back to work. We're hoping to have our stuff done tomorrow, so we can take Friday off and have some fun.

I'm Off

2006-11-05T18:09:00.000+01:00

In about 1 hour, I hop in a car to drive to Frankfurt to wait in the airport until I get on a plane to sit for 12 hours until I get to Singapore. In that too short but too long hour before I go, I am trying to figure out what to do. It is dark & cold outside, so going out is out. I can only say "Bye, I'll miss you" to Jeannette so many times. So I decided to show you some silly pictures from Berlin. Not all of my silly Berlin pictures, just some.

First: here's me, in my best attempt to imitate the Tick's pose on my T-shirt. I am only slightly taller than the TV tower, unlike the Tick and the City's skyscrapers. But I think I did OK.

Here's Jeannette, attempting the same. But she doesn't have anything on her T-shirt to compare the pose with. If I were a better photo manipulator, I would combine those two so we were standing on either side of, and still dwarfing, the TV tower.

Inspried by the "I Crush Your Head" guy on Kids in the Hall, I had to crush the TV Tower's ball. The effect isn't quite perfect. I'll have to work on it.

OK, this one isn't so silly. But It is interesting. Zooming in on the ball and all those antennas.

Also not silly, except that I have captioned the photo as: "A strange light beam melted the Fernsehturm in Berlin's Alexanderplatz today. Authorities are still investigating..."

(Don't worry, it isn't really an orbital tower-melting laser. Its just the sun and some wacky effects of light whose name eludes me at the moment. Physics classes were sooo long ago!)

OK. Hopefully I will be able to send an update from SE Asia. If not, see you in 2 weeks.

Bunch O' Stuff

2006-11-03T22:44:00.000+01:00

Well, I have barely even started on my recap of my trip to the former DDR with my mom & step dad, and I have been lagging behind on the tagging and commenting and tweaking of the photos. Which is a big bummer, because there are some really good ones. And of course, I keep taking more. Which makes it hard, because some of those are really cool and I want to share them.

But life has been busy. Take a look at Jeannette's blog, and you will find out about one of the exciting things I have been up to. Plus I am getting ready for a 2-week business trip to Singapore and the Phillipines, which will most surely mean even more photos to get behind on.

It is getting cold here, and the leaves are changing and the swans are migrating. We have seen a lot of foreign swans lately - the stretch of river outside our window seems to be a popluar runway for them.

And we went to a Halloween party, thrown by an American friend, but most of the guests were German (or at least Eastern European and still not hip on the whole Halloween thing). Well, I made a couple important observations:
0) This one is number zero because I actually noticed it last year or the year before. Anyway, why can Germans spell Halloween correctly, but insist on calling it Helloween?
1) Germans think that the only appropriate Halloween costume is a witch (female) or a vampire (male). Or something involving spiders (unisex, but leaning towards feminine). Our costumes weren't. We got funny looks. I guess I will have to wear more black next year.
2) I tend to be detail-oriented in my Halloween costumes. To me, the little things really matter, and they are synergistic and really make the costume work. Very few other people even notice the little things, so my costumes tend to be a big waste of time (except that they make Jeannette and me happy).
3) Not having a car, and therefore having to walk to the train station and take a train to get to a Halloween party in a country that doesn't celebrate the holiday can get you a lot of strange looks.
4) Consider your audience with the costume. I could explain this better, but I think I can sum it up as: If you are going to a party where hardly anybody knows you, don't dress up as a big nerd in a costume that could make the characters in "Revenge of the Nerds" look downright studly. You see, what happens is that these people that don't know you think that the costume is really you.
And with my costume, that meant nobody wanted to talk to me.

At least I got to go home with the cheerleader.

Busted!

2006-10-30T21:39:00.000+01:00

So while we were on vacation, we had a rental car that we rented using the rate we get from work. They made the arrangements, picked up the car, etc. like it was a car for a work-related trip, except that we paid with our personal credit card.

Well, sometime during the trip (at 10:15 am on the 23rd of September, on Maximilianallee, 250 m inside the city limit) I was "blitzed". That is, caught in an automated radar speed trap. I was going 62 kmh where I should have been going no more than 50. I saw the flash and said something along the lines of "crap". (I couldn't say much more, my mom was in the car!)

I then promptly forgot about it. Well, today the bill came in the mail - but not to me, to the finance people at work. D'oh! They were all ready to fight it, because I wasn't traveling for work at the time. How could it be me? Besides, they didn't think the picture looked at all like me. Someone who was involved and good friends with Jeannette, called her in and asked if it was me. It obviously was.

I was busted. My first speeding ticket ever. In 21 years of driving. I was going a whopping 38.5 MPH.

By the way, here's the picture they got of me.

Why I Want to Live in Ancient Babylon (aka The Pergamon Museum)

2006-10-22T16:30:00.000+02:00

After my visit to the Pergamon museum in Berlin, I have decided that I really want to live in ancient Babylon. Why? Well, let me tell you.

First off, they made gates to the city out of this beautiful blue brick and covered them with dragons and lions and bulls. That's so cool. And it gives everyone a good feeling about the place.

This particular gate was dedicated to the goddess Ishtar, and if I remember my teenage days of playing Dungeons and Dragons correctly, thinking specifically of the picture in the D&D book "Deities & Demigods", Ishtar was quite a hottie. All the more reason to move to ancient Babylon.

Grrr!

I didn't bother with the Audio Guide so I can't say for sure, but the ancient Middle East had lots of bird-headed guys running (and flying) around who weren't afraid to carry a purse. That's way cool. Where I grew up, a guy carrying a purse would have been ridiculed. And even more so if he had an eagle head.

Did I mention they have sphinxes? They have sphinxes all right. Any place with sphinxes, especially flying sphinxes, is pretty darn cool in my book.

And their writing was way cool. Even better that they wrote on dirt. And it lasts for centuries! I doubt if this blog will still be here in 1800 years. Either way, you'll probably forget about it in a mere 1800 seconds. Or less.

Checkin' out the ol' "Double D"

2006-10-15T12:23:00.000+02:00

I know it has been a long time since I blogged last. There has been a ton of stuff going on, and a lot of my free time has been spent going through the massive number of photos I took on vacation and since. That, and among other things, I have gotten myself hooked on this hilarious web-based RPG, The Kingdom of Loathing. So, in other words, I have been slacking off on my blogly duties, but except for that last bit, I have had a good reason for it.

As I mentioned last time, we took a two week trip with my mom and step-dad to some of the major sites in the former German Democratic Republic (DDR) -- "East Germany" to most Americans. Our first stop was the beautiful city of Dresden.

After we checked into our hotel, we tried to go to the Radeburger Brewery, in the nearby town of Radeburg. Since they use the Dresden opera building in their Advertising and web site, I drove to the wrong place. Needless to say, the people at the opera ticket booth were confused and we didn't get to see the inner workings of a brewery. But we did get to see some interesting things in the tiny, crumbling town of Radeberg.

Like this infinitely-long line of alternating green and yellow houses. (I was quite impressed that an infinite line of houses would fit in a tiny town, too!)

And this cool, but crumbling, tower next to the railroad tracks.

But enough about Radeberg, not because I have said & shown everything, but because these are the only interesting photos I have ready at the moment. So I will wait until I am ready before I say much more about Radeberg.

After the mishap at the brewery, we headed back into town. We decided to take the tram into town rather than drive, so that mom & Larry could get the hang of public transportation in Germany. They needed to learn these things, because soon we would be in Berlin, where the public transportation system is bigger, scarier (or at least more confusing) and more essential to use.

We spent two days checking out the old town, the part of town that had been obliterated at the end of WWII, and since rebuilt. The most famous of these rebuilt buildings is the Frauenkirche, which was reduced to a pile of rubble and remained that way for nearly 50 years until rebuilding began in 1993. The reconstruction was paid for by private donations - no tax Marks or Euros were used, and original stones were used where they could be. It was finished just in time for Dresden's 800-year birthday, which is being celebrated this year. Dresden, though generally nice, didn't offer us any birthday cake.

We also got to see the ultra-modern factory where Volkswagen makes the luxurious Phaeton. Unfortunately our timing didn't sync well with a tour, but it was still fun to see elevators and converyor belts move the partially constructed cars, visible through the glass walls of the building.

For people that like shiny things, there are plenty of them in Dresden. Like this Angel on top of the Saxon Art Academy.

Or this statue of August the Strong.

The cool thing about that statue is that it even stays shiny at night (and it stays crunchy in milk too, but that's a totally different story).

Most of Dresden looks good at night, too, not just shiny, crunchy horsie statues.

Dresden also has plenty of swirly balcony thingies for wives to pose behind. Since there are so many, you don't have to wait as long for other posing wives to get out of your way. Just walk a few steps to the next one, and eventually you will find a free one.

Dresden has some of the most fun graffiti too. Most graffiti will come and go (someday I will talk about my theories of graffiti migratory patterns), but this little orange-outlined blue cloud and pink lightning bolt has hung out on the 8th floor of the Verkehrsbetriebe building near Dresden's Albertplatz for over two years. It has made me smile every one of the several times I have seen it in the last couple years.

Well, that's a summary of our quick jaunt through Dresden. Beautiful city, highly recommended.

So, for those of you that read all this because I mentioned "Double D" in the title and were hoping for some bra cup size reference, sorry to let you down. As you may have noticed, execpt for a mention of Radeberg and the Kingdom of Loathing, this post has been exclusively about Dresden. And the German license plate symbol for Dresden is "DD".

Back Home

2006-09-30T19:36:00.000+02:00

For the last two weeks, we have been touring the former DDR with my mom and step dad. Here they are on the Augustusbrücke in Dresden. We had a great time, but it was kind of exhausting for all of us. Over the next few days, however, I hope to have the log of our adventures online.

Biergarten Season Winding Down

2006-09-14T04:50:00.000+02:00

The Biergarten closest to our apartment, Hagenbucher, had its farewell party last night, despite the fact that were in the middle of a 2nd summer (August was miserably cold & rainy). The last weekend in July, we were at another nearby Biergarten, where we were educated about the history & significance of the Biergarten, thanks to this nifty card.

For the non-German readers, here's a quick & dirty translation.
It all started in Catholic Bavaria. In 1539, the beer brewers were only allowed to brew beer from September 29th to March 23rd. No beer in the hot summer months? Unthinkable! The tasty liquid would have to be prepared in advance. But where would it be stored and how would it be cooled? The solution was to put it into deep cellars that were shaded from the sun by chestnut and linden trees, and in these cozy places beer could be served in the summer. Times have changed, but you may still bring your own food to the beer garden. The legal definition of a beer garden states that this is so. Otherwise, it isn't a beer garden and is at best called an outdoor bar. Beer gardens fill an important social function because they have always allowed an unconstrained meeting point for all strata of society. Conviviality and coziness amongst the trees has become an ideal and irreplaceable pleasure.
Our Biergarten Am Park remains a traditional beer garden. We want to provide our guests with a comfortable and quiet place where they can relax and recuperate. Meet friends at this cherished institution or simply enjoy the fresh air and outdoors.
From the end of March to the sometime in October we would like to give our guests the possibility to spend a summer-like day here. (The German is more poetic than that, and I am at a loss of how to say it in English at the moment)
We wish you a pleasant stay in the Biergarten Am Park.

They will remain open for a while, it seems, but it is inevitable. Summer is nearly gone. Which means we'll have to have to while away our days in a cozy Besen instead of a convivial biergarten.

Oh well, either one works for me.