Happy New Year!

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

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!   

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.   

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.

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.       

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.

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!