Friday, December 31, 2010

Happy New Year!

I apologize for being that lazy during the past couple of months an wish you all a happy new year 2011!

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas!

This year we are lucky here and have a really white christmas. We have had snow and real winterweather for a couple of times since the end of November but it was intermixed with warmer periods and rain. Yesterday the last snow had molten away almost complety and Christmas Eve started with rain. But during the day it grew colder and the rain turned into snow. When our christmas tree was decorated and we went to church at about 4.00 p.m. everything was covered with snow. Today it's a bit below zero and in the meantime it has stopped snowing. The picture above shows this mornings view out of my daughters room and gives you an idea from how my homeplace looks in these days.

I`m so glad about our white holydays and I wish you all a Merry Christmas!   

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Dwarves and Orcs in 3D

I admit having been lazy for more than half a year by not posting here. Not the least this has to do with me having discovered 3D modelling. I started making simple things in Blender and than found Bryce and the DAZ3D Studio. The latter is specially used for posing characters and the first for creating landscapes. With Blender You can do literally everything having to do with 3D grafics, even produce a whole animated movie or 3D computer games.

I use Blender for building things like clothes, armour and weapons and all the other things you need for equipping 3D scenes. Blender is open source software and free to use. There are also free versions of Bryce and Studio which you can download from DAZ3D.

The scenes I create with 3D software are practically all dealing with fantasy subjects, showing dwarves, ogres, orcs, trolls and landscapes from my own fantasy world Endom. Some of my work is to find on my Fantasy-Blog. If you dont understand German, just scroll through the posts and enjoy the pics. Most of them are clickable to bring you to a version in higher resolution.

Be sure not to miss "The Lecherous Orc", a funny scene wihich I´m quite proud on. ;-). Here too, a click on the pic brings you to the higher resoluted version.   

Sunday, May 16, 2010

A Nipppy and Rainy May

It's already may now and normally you can go swimming at this time of the year. But this year it's still nippy and rainy. 

But I am not to worried about that because we have a country saying about a nippy and rainy may will cause rich crops. And as April was quite chilly too this year I expect a long, hot summer, at least if this silly vulcano on Iceland won't generally chill the weather with its ashes.

A chilly spring here in Western Europe often leads to a hot summer and if it's too warm too early like it was in 2007 you often will get not much of a summer. This has to do with the continent warming up too early will cause a pull that brings moist air from the Atlantic Ocean all summer long. If it`s chilly in spring the Atlantic Ocean will be warmer than the continent in summer and this results in dry wind from the east and hot weather.

The pictures here are impressions from a walk we had last sunday in the Welland, an area north of Aalen between the Swabian Alb and the Swabian Forest

Although I know the weather is ok for this season I'm a bit annoyed too: I got me a notebook computer recently that makes me able to settle with my office in the garden. I tried this last year lending out my daughter's notebook and found it very nice. No that I have one of my own I could do so whenever I want if only the weather would be better.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

A great german hunter died

Actually I`m quite busy wuth a lot  of things and have not much time to read my favourite German hunting magazine "Wild und Hund". Yesterday I happened to have a look at the issue from April 1st of this year and found a piece of news which made me quite sad: Heribert Kalchreuter died already on March 14th when he was on holydays in the Dominican Republic, just the day after his 71st birthday.

Heribert Kalchreuter was well known among German hunters and an important gamekeeping scientist who wrote several books about the subject. Among others he wrote "Die Sache mit der Jagd" which was an important book for me in building my opinion about sense and entitlement of hunting nowadays. I got to read this book for the first time many years ago, even before I started to get my own hunting license. When I found out that he was born in the same town as I, I wrote an article about him for one of the two local newspapers of our mutual birthplace Heidenheim.

I never met Heribert Kalchreuter personally but I talked to him on phone when I was writing the article about him. He really was a nice man and he sent me one of his books, "Zurück in die Wildnis" in which he tells about things he experienced all over the world such as hunting in Alaska and training young game keepers in Africa.

I planned to contact him again not at least to prouldy tell him that I had become a hunter too in the meantime and looked forward to talk about hunting which much more knowledge on my side now. Unfortunately I didn't do so yet - and know it's to late.

A sad thing, the more 71 isn't really old nowadays and Heribert Kalchreuter wasn't really retired at all. Probably one could expect to still hear from him. But even if he hadt to die  a bit early, he has had a successful life and I guess hunters will never forget him.       

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Happy Easter!


It's still a bit chilly but, no doubt, spring is here to stay. Yesterday I not only replanted my chili plants into yoghurt cups but also chipped the first vegetable patch. I guess, this week I will bring out the first seeds of the year.

This morning we went to curch  at 5.00 a.m. Our new, quite young preacher we got a couple of years ago introduced a very impressing way to celebrate the resurecction of Jesus. If you come to church a fire is burning in front of the door and its almost completely dark in it.  At first some young girls read from the part of the bible where Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemame. Everytime after a short part of the text the readings stops and the community sings together "Stay with me, be ake with me, be awake and pray..." In the same way they read from Jesus' trial,  from the Exodus and finally from the Resurection and the empty tomb as well as about the Risen appeared to his disciples.

Then we all went to the front part of the church to light the candles we had gotten at the door. At the same time dawn was coming and after the Lord's Supper we finished our service with some more singing and praying. Afterwards the visitors where invited to a comfy breakfast into the parish hall. It was really a great celebration and one more time I didn't regret to have got up at half past four in the morning. The only thing I don't like is that our parish always uses a modern version of the bible wit a text in modern German. I really prefer the celebrational and maybe a bit old-fashioned German of the good old Luther Bible.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Daylight saving time

Now that spring finally is here you can enjoy the outdoors again. Due to daylight saving time you have one more hour left for walks, grillparty, fishing and such things on working days

This weekend we here in Germany change to daylight saving time. Many people complain about it because they in fact have to get up one hour earlier. Some people get confused because they dont know what to do with their clocks and watches. And some just love it like I do.

Daylight saving time means that dusk comes one hour later and naturally that there is one more hour of daylight left after work. If you love the outdoors that is quite a fine thing: One mor hour for going on a walk, gardening, fishing and all the nice things we love to do during summertime. For many people things like hunting or fishing trips, boating or going for a swim are made possible even on working day evenings. I consider daylight saving time  to be a nice plus to life quality, isn'nt it?

Daylight saving time just means hat you get up an hour earlier and so get one more hour of daylight. Specially when you are working this is a fine thing because one more hour to the three or four hours daylight after work is really a plus. 

I love the daylight savin time!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Cold Weather, Phariseans and Dead Aunts

Actually it has been cold for over a week again instead of spring coming. If you have been out for a while under this circumstances and come in again you might like a hot drink, maybe with some kind of fire in it. That was what I met yesterday and so I made up my mind to make what people in the north of Germany call a "Tote Tante" and what I got to know when I was sailing the Baltic Sea in winter. The word means "dead aunt" and it seems nobody really knows where it comes from. However, it is'nt disputed what a Tote Tante is: It´s much like a Pharisäer (pharisean), another hot alcoholic drink from Northern Germany which means a cup of coffee with an ample shot of rum, topped with a nice dollop of whipped cream.

If you want to mix a Tote Tante instead of a Pharisäer, you just have to replace the coffee by hot chocolate. If you want you can decorate the whipped cream with some  chocolate sprinkles. So basically a Tote Tante is nothing else than a hot Lumumba too.

I can tell you it tastes really great, especially when coming in from the cold. But be careful: Like sweet alcoholic drinks generally do, Tote Tante tends to make you drink much and fast and than finally knock you to your knees! And dont drink it or any other alcohol if you still have to stay in the cold! The warmth of alcohol is deceiving. It just makes you not notice that you chill out much more than you do without alcohol.    

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Internet Censorship in Germany

Last tuesday the new german internet censorship came into force because it than was undersigned by our bundespraesident, which is the last step in the procedure to make a new law effective. The new CDU-FDP-government swears that it was not intended to make use of it and that it was only a kind of bad legacy of the old CDU-SPD-government. However the law does exist although the general public did not really notice.   

Last summer the net community in Germany was quite upset about a new law practically enabling internet censorship via DNS entries. It was planned to engage access providers to refuse connections to certain domains which are on a secret list and showing a stop sign instead of the content of these domains. Alledgedly this was aimed against child pornography, a very threadbare justification for people who know something about the net and the existing of independent sites where you can get unfiltered and uncenmsorerd information. However, a very good justification for the rank and file because most people in Germany, even if on line, dont know much about independent media and as with newspapers, radio and tv they only consume stuff from mainstream media when on the net. They believed the government's statement that the domain blocking system was the only way to keep child porn out of the german net because it frequently would not be possible to shut down the servers for they are situated in foreign countries where authorithies dont care much about what people put on the net.    

This was a very clever move: Obviously it was intended to have people being against internet censorship appear as paedophiliacs and discredit them. The worst of all: Doing so German government in fact did not shrink back from connecting a clean and honest demand like the one for freedom of information to such a dirty and criminal thing as child porn is. 

However, quite a lot of people protested and tried to show and explain the facts: With a system to block every designated domain the state would be able to easily keep people away not only from child pornography but from anything they should not know too. It was only a minority who yelled a lot and depicted the dangers of such a law and especially the fact that the list  of bad domains should be conducted by the BKA (Bundeskriminalamt, something like the FBI in the US) and so would be out of any democratic control.

To people who know a bit about computer and networks the design of the German domain blocking system itself reveals its true intentions: It can be very easily be worked around by just directing the internet connetion to a DNS server which does not filter domains what can be done on every windows, mac or linux sytem by just a few mouseclicks and hacking in a couple of numbers. So it neither can stop people who really want to visit child porn sites nor can it keep really informed and politically interested people away from the sites they want to see. What it can do is to keep the lazy and uninformed general public away from sites with independend information and opinions they heard or red about and just want to have a look at without being too eager to get there.  In a nutshell: the German domain blocking system only works very well as a tool to avoid undesired sources of information becoming common.         

The protest of bloggers and other people understanding the meaning of free information finally lead to a petition. Beacuse more than 100,000 people signed it, the German Bundestag (our ferderal parliament)  had to deal with it in a hearing. However, politicians did not really respond to the objections of the criticians and the law unobstructedly passed the parliament. Firstly Bundespraesident Koehler refused to undersign the new law and demandes more information about the case, which gave some hope to the net community.

Last fall there than was an election and government changed. The new CDU-FDP-government seemed to be not so happy with the censorship law but did not really do anything against it. Now it came into power quite secretly and almost nobody seemed to take notice. Still there is some talk in Berlin about how to get rid of the censorship but I doubt that this is to be taken serious. I guess politicíans just bank on the forgetfulness of the general public and will start to use the censorship law sequretly when nobody will think of it at all.     

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Using Public Transport

If you are used to run all your errants and make all your visits and things by car, suddenly being forced to use public transport can be a complete new experience. And not really a bad one as I happened to find out.  

On Wednesday I had to see my dentist for my regular yearly exam which you need to have been to the last couple of years to get the maximal allowance for artificial dentition from the  compulsory health insurance fund. I still go to see my old dentist in my birthplace and former residence Heidenheim although I have been living in Aalen for over 15 years now. Its only 15 miles, half an hour by car and why should I change my dentist al long as I am content with him? I´m originally an engineer and follow the old trusted rule: Never change a running system...

This time something was wrong with my good old Isuzu Trooper and she broke down at Itzelberg, a small village still about five miles from Heidenheim. Fortunately this nice little place has not only a beautiful little lake but still a little railroad station too. And even more fortunately the next train to Heidenheim came soon and did stop at this station. So I reached my dentist about three quarters of an hour late but I reached him and didt not have to wait long anyway. Forty minutes or so after I left my dentist's there was a train back to Aalen, so that I had an occassion to have a little stroll around downtown Heidenheim to see what all has changed again since my last visit.    

The most interesting in this little occurence were the things I experineced on the trains and strolling around town. Not only seeing all the changes there from nearby and out of a pedestrians view but especially how easy it is to get into nice conversations. It started with a young girl I met when I was waiting for the train at Itzelberg and once on the train a woman in maybe her fourties joined our conversation.  In an electronic mart in Heidenheim where I had a look at the TV-sets I met a woman my age or a bit older whith whom I had another nice conversation.

After having some words with one more woman at the ticket machine in the station I got to talk to one in the smoking area on the plattform where I waited for my train back. She was on her way to Aalen too and we chatted until we parted outside the station there. At least this one, I guess, would not have refused if I would have tryed to invite her on a cup of coffee to deepen acquaintance, even in the way I used to do in my younger days hehehehe... :-D

All in all I lost about two hours due to the breakdown of my good old Trooper but this was more than compensated by the nice things I experienced. I do know by now not only how the sophisticated ticket machines of our railroad company Deutsche Bahn AG work but also that it is still quite easy to get into conversations with women... 

 

         

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Winterly Impressions from East Wuerttemberg

Actually it is a bit warmer and it has been raining this morning. But last week we had what you can call winter. Here are some impressions how my place looks like in winter. When I was walking my dog Alfons a couple of days ago I took my little camera with me...

A view out my office window into the gardens between the houses of my housing area

Hofherrnweiler a former village and now suburb of Aalen/Wuertt

The edge of the Swabian Alb south of Aalen

The housing area Heimatwinkel which belongs to Hofherrnweiler  

My old friend Alfons still likes the snow 

A back road in the housing area I live in

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Christmas is over and winter is coming

Christmas holydays are over now, on monday kids will be back at school. And now it has been snowing and probably will do taht again and it will be cold for a while. That`s typically here: No white Christmas but at the beginning of january winter will come. 


Thursday, January 7, 2010

Did you already know?

Stewed rhubarb tastes even much better, if you use strawberries instead of the rhubarb!

Sorry, just remembered this age-old flat German joke and couldn't resist at all to post it here... ;-) 

Friday, January 1, 2010

A Happy new Year!

I wish You all a really happy and successful New Year 2010!

New Year's eve was like it always is at our house. We were celebrating at home drinking a wine cooter and playing a parlor game. This year it was "Carcassone". Granny and Grandpa came upstairs to celebrate a bit with us. The only new was, that my daughter was out for the first time on New Years Eve partying with some other girls.

At midnight we clinked glasses and my son and I launched our rockets, crackers and things. My wife soon went to bed after my daughter was home but I had a wonderful talk with my kids almost all the rest of the night. For me, this was the best part of the whole night of New Year's Eve, because I think it's a quite fine thing if an old dog still has a basis for conversation with his kids.