The surveryors-fun section was once on the website of the students of the faculty of geomatics, still lives on in the google cache, and I decided to create a mirror of it on this site.
I had quite some problems getting these latest updates done. A friend advised me, to not slavishly follow the duty to produce one update per month. He probably is right. But I see enough stuff to do, but have big problems getting things done. The monthly schedule seems to be the right balance, between daily blogs, and random updates. Oh well, I will see.
Sign by the elevator in our hostel in rome
I have been to Rome for seven days in the week of All Saints Day. I have never been to Rome before but the eternal city definitely lived up to the expectations; it has been great. Greeting to my travel companions Andrea, Christoph and Martin. You might want to check out the gallery.
I am starting to get unhappy with the quality of my camera. I knew, that was moment was going to come when I bought my IXUS back then, but I feel kind of attached to it. I am always having such a hard time to let go and move on.
Time to say goodbye to my trusted backpack - after several serious
sewing sessions, it finally fell apart. It is a wonder, I made it through
Norway with it.
Me, always having problems making up my mind when investing in new stuff,
just went to ebay and got myself a more or less identical rucksack for
10 bucks. It aktually lacks some minor details compared to the broken one,
but it is fine as a solution for now.
Well, you know, it is not that easy. But I actually think I have some easy stuff upcomming. Maybe putting up a public list helps to keep me on track:
The sunrise over the Plansee was awesome
I followed the tempting beauty of the lake
The magic wonderland of King Ludwig II was bizarre
View from the pavillon above castle Linderhof
Offroad monster compared to my vehicle
By starting my walk up to the Heimgarten at 615h, I evaded the merciless sun [Walchensee
in the back]
Did not get anything done in July at all - just sweating and avoiding dehydration. The pictures above are from a very fruitfull short trips to the bavarian/austrian alps. I pulled some dividend out of my car and used it as my base of operation and living for two nights. Sleeping beside the car below the amazing starlit sky of the mountains is refreshing.
Returned from Norway and put a gallery online. Awesome trip. I am planning on putting a written report together
Greeting to my travel companions and thanks for the great tour!
I tried to do a whole page seamless collage. It proved to be hell of a lot of work. Probably my picture foundation was weak as well. There were some great ideas in my head, but realising them was tough. Project my-first-seamless-full-screen-collgae is hereby postponed.
As my current employment offers a relatively high work-life balance, I can free my mind and my evenings for all kind of things: take for example lectures. Our local college invited Claus Hipp and Heiner Geissler to hold speeches about ethical questions in society and business. A short summing up of the events:
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Dr. Heiner Geißler, *1930, catholic studied philosophy and law elder statesman, author, mountain climber incoherent fact of the day: the 300 most rich people own 1 billion dollars. The three billion poorest people on earth earn 1 billion a year. Mr. Geißler spoke like a politician - or rather elder statesman. I like his dynamic, smart and spirited aura around him. He was quite smooth and apparently used to be talking to and in big groups. Some of his answers to cuewords seemed, as if he had already answered them several times in his life. Some of his answers did not quite hit the question on the head and wandered off which felt a little bit unprofessional. |
Dr. Claus Hipp, *1939, catholic studied law and art entrepreneur employing ~1000 people, playing the oboe, professor incoherent fact of the day: 75% of all tax-related literature is published in german. Mr. Hipp spoke like a businessman. He seemed like a very nice and reasonable guy. He had a very down to earth like, no bullshit touch around him. He felt like the nice, wise uncle you only get to see from time to time. |
Both lectures were not that enlightening, even though never boring. I liked the crowd in our local college asking more or less quite intelligent, nice questions. I missed the visionary power in the grand scale in the speech of Mr. Hipp. Contrary to Mr. Geißler - even though he lacked the concrete facts Mr. Hipp offered on the small scale of his business. I do not feel the need to state a winner of the duel. Oh - and none of the contestants offered some all too big and grand new insights.
I told you about my webcam last month. Now there are first results to be seen. Head over to the entry about my LED-frontpanel and see a video (400kb, 5sec, xvid) of it in action
I participated in a didgeridoo workshop - building an instrument (binding it and forming a mouth piece out of bee-wax), being able to produce the first base tone(sound) and finally trying to accomplish the "circular breathing". Now I need to practice. I am loosing/needing to much air when playing. And the circular breathing seems like an impossible task. I can do it with a straw, a cup of water and bubbling away, but but not with the didg. Here is my base tone (125kb, 33sec, ogg) after the workshop. Do not bet on it having improved until now.
I have been to the "Click - Doubleclick" exhibition in the Haus der Kunst in Munich. It has been nice and refreshing. Go there. Till sometime in mid-April. (ah - on the pic one can actually see, it ends on the 23rd of April)
me, being shocked by the barking dog, set of by the motion detection of my webcam
I got myself a cheap webcam of ebay for one Euro plus three Euro shipping in order to get a simple video stream to play with. Video over USB is supposedly a bad idea but it is good enough for a start. I want to play with some motion-detection and probably build a retro-scope.
publicly provided ice art in Ergolding
![ice parade on the edge of the frozen Königssee [King´slake]](../news_pics/0602_icecones.jpg)
ice art provided by mother nature along the Königssee
waiting for summer
![caravan of the lost on the frozen Königssee [King´slake]](../news_pics/0602_exodus.jpg)
caravan of the lost on the frozen Königssee
my car with improved drag-coefficient
sunset over the Flutmulde
The winter has been exceptionally great. Temperatures below zero since November more or less without longer above zero breaks. Huge amounts of snow, bringing chaos and destruction to mountain regions, but at the same time joy and delight to my heart.
So let us suppose the climate change is definitely coming. That could either mean we are constantly getting warmer and more rainy winters which would be horrible. So this was probably my last real winter. On the other hand it could mean, the seasons are getting more and more extreme and unstable, meaning one warm winter on the one side followed by an extremely cold winter on the other side.
Going away from the long term assumptions: the autumn has been as great as the winter, so I am hoping for a splendid spring.
p.s.: I just checked with the entries of last year and it seems, as if last winter was as great as this one. Praise the Lord.
As Jakob Nielson writes in on of his many columns on his highly recommendable page useit.com, do not write anything under your name in the internet, if you do not want a potential future employer to eventually read it sometime. The data will more or less for sure be indexed somewhere in the net - it might not be the next best public search engine, but it will be indexed somewhere.
Very good point Mr. Nielson makes there. On the other hand a very boring and sad fact. Of course one should not expose ones most inner thoughts to a broad public like the internet, but a personal website should be free for thoughts and opinions. It should be free of purpose, like art, or at least something in that direction.
I guess, one will have to choose a path somewhere in the middle, in between the two extreme positions. Between considering each and every word one writes for future self marketing and actually stating ones opinions about politics, products, companies, public persons and what not - like Maddox does on the best page of the net.
Or, go the easy way and write superficial, irrelevant and mostly boring stuff, like most of the net does - and I do most of the time on this page.
It would probably take a lot of work to produce some worthwhile content to get linked by some other pages - or even get a three digit number of links on del.icio.us. BUT - the web, being strange as it is, created a link back to where I described how I created my leather IXUS-Bag. I can't read a single sign of japanese - but who gives a shit?
Who wants to have a ready made print on his shirt, when you can print any text on a shirt? You can even go to shirtalarm.de, give my email-address as referrer and get a discount on your order. Of course, real men try themselves in custom prints:
I would love to get a customized piece of clothing. Maybe something along the line of "dumm fickt gut" or whatever comes to your mind.
Other people are summing up the events of the passed year in their december posts. The least they do is a best of list kind of: my best records 2005 or movies I saw this year. Even though self-reflection is a good thing, I shall not make a subsumption of my life in 2005. It would be much too boring for you and depressing for me. Well it is actually not that bad. I am in fine health, have a nice job and feeling okay.
I went through some of my old entries on my site, and it is amazing what bullshit I once wrote. Well actually not that long ago. I was - and I still am - desperate to get some content, so I wrote, whatever came to my mind. But that is okay, better to write some bullshit, than not write anything at all. If ten percent is even distantly insightful, I am satisfied.