Sweet surprise

I love it when I get "Thank you" messages from my nieces and my nephew...



When I was a kid, I would have never thought that my aunts and uncles or grandparents would enjoy getting letters like these that much. But then again - if I follow that train of thought - maybe they did not, because I did not write or draw anything that was as adorable as what I got from Tatjana, Pascal and Franzsika.

Not even close...

Gym stories

I pondered this morning about since when I am so religious about my weekly running.
After looking for earlier blog posts, I can tell that I am doing my weekly workouts now for more than 3 years. I didn't find a post on this, but I believe I actually started sometime in spring 2008.

Not bad.

My program did not change much since I've started, but I increased speed and time.
On Wednesdays and Fridays I cycle 10 minutes (+ 3 min cool down) at level 16 of 20 and then run for half hour (+ 5 min cool down) at 11.5 km/h on an incline of 1.5 degree. Sundays I do the same cycling, but run for a full hour (+ 5 min) at 10.5 km/h, same incline.

And I think this also means that it's time now for new running shoes. When I bought my last ones, the advice was to exchange them after 1000 km, which I have easily exceeded in the meantime...

Chuck has a gmail account...

Thanks, Jimmy!

Cat puke - a little greeting from the kitchen

When I came home tonight, the first thing that I saw was...



... cat puke on the floor in the hallways as a little welcome.
Ah - nothing beats coming home...

Hard at work, part 2

After the huge success of the missile attack on Yvon, we staged some more movies during dinner yesterday night and during breaks in today's meetings.

Memet's Mafia Misery


Geert goes Boom


Run! Run! Run!


And a very twisted one:

Watching Yvon Bombing


This is really fun...

More photos with Snapseed

I took some more photos during tonight's dinner and worked them with Snapseed.

We went for dinner to Ombre Rosse in Parma's nice city center. This place is okay for food but amazes with its wine collection:



I also liked the interior, but it was darn cold and the service was slow (still a very nice waitress - don't you love it when they speak Italian like a trickling waterfall, even if you don't get what they are saying?).



And again: not that the original photos I took with the phone were bad, but a few small tweaks with Snapseed make them look like art. And this on a phone is simply amazing...

... I still won't trade in my 7D!

My key

Yesterday night at dinner, after an hourlong drive through thick Italian fog, Memet showed me photos he has taken with his iPhone recently. Although my iPhone 4S has a pretty good camera, I hardly use it seriously. I simply acknowledge that the camera is better than what my original iPhone had and that's it for me.

After all, proper photos are taken with a DSLR and maybe with an advanced compact - period!

When talking to Memet, though, and looking at some of his shots, I had to admit that there is something, which is worthwhile exploring. Memet is using an app called Instagram, in principle one of the many apps that apply dramatic filters to your photos and turn boring, mundane pictures into pieces of art.

Tonight I recalled that I have Snapseed on my iPhone, a similar app that I downloaded for free a little while ago. The interesting thing with this application is that it has been created by Nik Software, the same guys who created the software packages I use to achieve dramatic effects such as those you can see in my recent New York black and whites.

And even though Snapseed cannot do what I do on my Mac at home, look what it made out of a simple shot of my hotel room key I took with my iPhone:



This is pretty darn impressive!
It's hard to judge how good the quality is on the small phone display, but from what I can see this is really good...

Edit January 19th:
And what you can see now on this blog demonstrates that it remains really good when it's taken to the bigger screen, too. Unfortunately, Snapseed's output size does not come close to the iPhone's native 8 megapixel shots, which is likely due to computing power.
If it could deliver these effects on the native files, I'd have to admit that this could be a competitive tool for a photographer...

Hard at work, part 1

I am currently in Italy in looong meetings and this morning the topics were not so much concerning me, so I played around with a little app that I downloaded recently. It's called Action Movie and lets you blend some action footage into videos you record.

So in one of the breaks I took a simple movie of Yvon and...



Hee, hee - bet he didn't see this one coming.
I should have taken it from a different position, but - uh boy: what a huge hello and laughter when I sneaked to the connector for the projection system and ran the movie...

Have to take some more of these.

34/36

Why is it so damn painful for a man of size to find jeans that fit properly?
I am a 34/36. Come on! - that's not that much of a stretch, is it?!

But no! - you will find millions of 36/34 jeans, but barely one 34/36.
Clearly, the world is full of fat, small dudes. And no: 34/34 is not an option. Some models seem to be long enough, but wash them once or twice and you'll see that eventually there are 2 cm missing for a decent leg length.

This.
Is.
So.
Annoying!

I was in California and the only place where I got such jeans was in the Hugo Boss outlet in Gilroy: outrageously expensive for the US, but normally priced for Europe and still my favorite pants.
And yes, Levi's has sometimes a 34/36, too, but then they only come in the 501 cut. And that's fine in principle, but who the fuck really wants to have buttoned flies? This is an invention of the devil! Oh, and New York? Nada! You cannot find proper jeans there, either.

Damn! I don't want to live in a world where you cannot get a 34/36 jeans!

Now, recently I looked again for jeans online. I tried that before and I did not like it, but sometimes desperation makes you do mistakes twice.

I checked Mexx. I checked Gap. And I checked Levi's.
And guess what: the cuts and colors I like are never available in my size! Aaaargh! It's the brave new online world, for crying out loud! Where is the bloody long tail? Why is this so difficult?!

I then settled for a Levi's 505 which looked okay enough on screen.

This jeans got delivered today and guess what: the 505 cut just doesn't cut it! Now I'll have to send it back, but - man! - while other companies actually have easy and free return policies, the wankers from Levi's make you call UPS to arrange a pick-up which can only happen on a weekday. Thank you very much, you brainiacs! People w-o-r-k, you know?!

Plus: there's actually a return handling fee of 6,75 Euros!
Bastards!

I guess I won't get around trying other online options in the future, but somehow it feels that nobody has figured out the iTunes Music Store for clothes, yet.

I wonder why...

New York in B&W: The slideshow

This is a slideshow which I ran today on the big screen in the break area of my department. I think the effect of the dangling photos is quite nice, which is why I also publish it here on the blog.

New York in Color... through and through

And if you belong to the persons who prefer color over artsy black and white, have a look here. I think most of the black and whites I published in my latest posts are incredibly powerful, though, and fit much better to the atmosphere of New York...

New York in B&W: View from Empire State Building

New York in B&W: Circle Line towards Battery Park

New York in B&W: The moon, as seen from Circle Line

New York in B&W: Circle Line beyond Manhattan Bridge