Ich habe vor einiger Zeit bei einem Contest auf Kwerfeldein, dem sagenhaft guten Digitalfotografie-Blog von Martin Gommel, mitgemacht. In dem Contest ging es um den entscheidenden Moment (persönlich oder technisch) in der Fotografie. Ich hab das dort so dargestellt:

Viele “entscheidende Momente” in der Photographie stehen schon hier. Der entscheidenste Moment für mich allerdings war der Erwerb meiner ersten digitalen Kamera.
Warum? -Ganz einfach: Ab diesem Tage gab es nur noch den vollen Speicherchip oder leeren Akku als natürliche, knappe Ressourcen bei der Ausübung von etwas, das ich heute als eines meiner wichtigsten Hobbies bezeichne. Zu Schul- und Studiumszeiten, wo Geld leider kein nachwachsender Rohstoff ist, habe ich sicher viel zu viele Bilder NICHT gemacht. Die Digitalfotografie hat in diesem Punkt meine Welt für immer verändert: Heute fotografiere ich was ich will, wo ich will und vor allem so oft ich will. Denn ich entscheide, wie oft ich ein Bild vor Ort mache bis es so ist, wie ich es will, und nicht mehr mein Geldbeutel. Der “entscheidende Moment” ist also die Freiheit – und Freiheit dürfte für künstlerisches Schaffen das wichtigste sein.

Große Worte, ich weiß. Aber so ist es halt. Tja, und vor einigen Tagen erreichte mich die Nachricht, daß ich gewonnen habe. Ich erinnerte mich schon gar nicht mehr genau daran, denn Alex schickt mir jede Woche mindestens einen Tipp, wo gerade mal wieder grell teure, aber supergute Fachbücher zum Thema Webdesign, Kommunikation oder eben Fotografie verlost werden. Da kann man schon den Überblick verlieren. Umso mehr hat es mich gefreut und echt vom Stuhl gehauen, daß ich dieses affengeile Buch von Joe McNally gewonnen habe, das im Original-Titel „The moment it clicks“ heißt, und überall nur extrem gute Kritiken geholt hat. Freu mich schon drauf, damit mein Photoblog wieder mehr hochwertiges Futter bekommt!

Nachdem ich ja neulich nicht nur meinen Blog sondern auch den meiner lieben Schwester auf WordPress migriert habe, bestand nun in der frisch eingeläuteten Ära nach Blogger die Notwendigkeit, meiner Schwester eine gute Lösung für das Präsentieren von Bildern auf Ihrer Seite bereitzustellen. Dazu habe ich mich auf die Suche nach geeigneten WordPress Plugins für Bilder gemacht.

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Freunde, Umsteigen macht echt Spa?! Ich war ja auch immer einer derjenigen, die diesen ganzen Browser-Fuzz eher sp?ttisch bel?chelt haben, aber bei Firefox ist nun endg?ltig Schlu? mit IE. (Naja, zumindest fast, da sich die Uni ja vehement wehrt, stadard-gerechte Seiten und Applikationen zu programmieren.)
Viele Blogger, die MovableType nutzen, haben wahrscheinlich wie ich bislang noch gro?e Vorbehalte gegen?ber Mozilla-Derivaten gehabt, weil die Anzeige der Templates und Forms nicht immer wie in IE war, besser gesagt, man haz ja z.B. sehr die Richt-Text Editing Buttons im „New Entry“ Template vermi?t. Das hier hab ich eben grad installiert, und seit dem ist auch mit diesem Bug endlich Schlu?!
Eine weiter Lobpreisung m?chte ich gerne auf die vielen unendlich-coolen Extensions f?r Firefox singen. Meine pers?nliche Hitliste wird angef?hrt von den Developer-Tools (unentbehrlich f?r Webdesinger und Coder), Mouse-Gestures (kennen und sch?tzen einige vielleicht von Opera), IE-view (falls es mal wirklich nicht ohne den IE geht, ?ffnet man mit einem Klick von Firefox aus den Link in IE), Image-Zoom (zoomen mit Maustaste und Scrollrad – endgeil!), und Edit-CSS (live-editing von CSS-Angaben f?r die aktuelle Webseite).
Fazit: Klein und schnell – browsing deluxe auch ohne Micro$oft!

Stell Dir vor, Du zappelst in Deinem bevorzugten Club mit Deiner Lieblingsfriseuse zu schlechter Technomucke ordentlich ab, und jemand mit einem Internetanschlu? macht ein Foto davon.

gefunden via psycko

the only excuse for not blogging for so long is the weather and all the activities related to it. however, i have made several attempts in the past days to blog, but somehow i could not get the animated gif i wanted to share with the audience to an acceptable filesize (yes, there are still visitors using dial-up…), which was driving me crazy. now you guys wonder what the planned content was, and i will not fail to report my sheer exitement about a stunning afternoon at krefeld’s horse-racing circuit. don’t get me wrong, i still like horses best when smoked, sliced and on my sandwich -or at least from a secure distance-; but seeing these powerful animals flexing their muscles as they race for victory with sharp eyes and flying hair is truly an impressive scene. although we pretended to inspect the horses before the race (mainly by imitating the viewes and analytical talk the people next to us held), we didn’t place any bets. that was due to the fact that of the three horses i judged as either ‚cripple‘, ‚tired‘ or ‚weak‘, two were among the top three and the other ranked fifth. so, when it comes to judging horses, next time i stick to my taste ;) — back home in hessen we had high-percentage sit-ins with my cousin (i haven’t seen her for at least 5 years) and my uncle. the next day, we made the first big move in my grandma’s house. my father had arranged for a huge van we filled up with equally old and heavy furniture, which was supposed to be my sister’s and my stake of the heritage. dividing up heritage-stuff in an empty house is a pretty shitty thing for all being involved, i can tell you. — today, alice and i booked our rental car for our holidays in crete. after having checked several rental companies, we were left with holiday autos and sunny cars, both offering almost the same price and conditions. as we found, it’s of crucial importance to select a rental company offering unlimited insurance coverage, especially referring to our irish outback action when we were lucky to have the extra insurance waiver. i just hope that everything works out as planned, since i tried to change our flights today. i must say, i was a little surprised when i checked the travel voucher with the tickets and all, as i had to find the flight’s duration to be almost 5 hours! gee, in five hours you can almost get to jo-burg. now, since we booked a direct flight from d?sseldorf earliest in the morning, i had to find that our flight stops at frankfurt, meaning that i could have boarded in frankfurt at a way more pleasant time due to an unmentioned change in the flight schedule. now, i am very curious how the travel-agency will handle my complaint and whether the airline is able and willing to change the booking to, all other variables being equal, frankfurt. — since my last blog, i have made a step towards movabletype: i bought webspace with all-inkl.com! so, i will surprise the interested visitor on www.traumdieb.com (which is still empty as i am writing this) with my first tryouts in mt shortly. i haven’t made up my mind yet how i will go on with this domain here, but my blog will definitely move to traumdieb.com. i am simply too much pissed by blogger and haloscan. new designs are already in the pipeline, but need thematic round-up, so to say. also, my photopages will have some decent rennovation (and an update, of course) as soon as i get accquainted with php and sql. besides, for those being interested in the dialect of my home village, i have put lots of work into mein-burgsolms.de lately, so check it out if you like. stay awake!

this is the 5th attempt within 24 hours to post something! it really drives me nuts to see what you can’t see right now, which are the the completely screwed up posts from the last weeks. i can’t wait to finally buy my allinkl.com webspace to get ready for movabletype. man, i hate when things i rely on do not work! — yesterday, i got reloaded – matrically reloaded, if you know what i mean. although i have read some pretty bad criticism and reviews, jan, alex and me went to see the movie anyways. well, now i think i should write something like a personal opinion on the matrix reloaded. oddly enough, i seem to not have a clear opinion! of course, the movie has its strong sides, no doubt. it is absolutely amazing how today’s special effects add value to a movie. but on the other hand, i believe that one should not compensate bad storyboard with special effects solely. without question, the cast is phantastic and well suited (the ladies may forgive me, but monica belluci and carrie-anne moss simply rock!). nevertheless, for all the girls out there favouring neo: man, look at him! this preacher’s coat and the ugly sunglasses look absolutely gay! anyways, regarding the plot i would say that the original fascination of the matrix-story and philosophy is completely gone in this movie, but rather, it is trying to carry the story further. i am not sure whether this succeeded in any way, since i did not completely get the story this time. what is absolutely certain, is the accumulation and consolidation of episodes from other action-packed cineastic events. we clearly identified „inspiring input“ from blade I, starwars, superman, spiderman, speed and leon. now, all fine, but as neo raises his arm with his fist upfront to fly through the skies, you really wanna puke. nevertheless, all in all, it is a good movie to be watched in theatre – you will have a good time during the 150 minutes. especially, when paying only 5 euro on cinema day! whether you actually go see it or not, make sure you watch the gaytrix. — the weather really pisses me off! it has been raining, stormy or simply shitty outside for days! right now, it looks as if this will never end. doom’s day. people, i really hate getting depressed by weather. sure, this kind of weather is perfect for working on a thesis, but absolutely counterproductive when starting one, since you need to have at least a positive attitude when thinking of spending hours and hours behind your desk and getting rectangled eyes. but what do i do instead? -play postal 2! i couldn’t believe it would actually run on my antique machine, but it does! gee, this is a game just right for the mood i am into! „it’s not guns that kill people, it’s me“ – i know, politically incorrect to the max, but hey, i still know what the difference between my left mouse-button and a real trigger is, alright? that’s what counts. these morons shooting people in schools or public places haven’t played too many of these games, but rather have access to weapons, that’s the problem. put away all private firearms and the problem is solved…

first and most important: i passed finance! now i can only hope that i don’t become a victim of post-publication changes. at maastricht university, everything is possible, you know?! i cannot put in words how relieved i am! this burden is off me, and that makes me really happy. the other nice thing is that i also passed my exam for information management, which together with the good finance-news means that i am done with maastricht, except for the thesis which i will start to start with in the next days (depending on my enthusiasm). — currently, i am making my first migration attempts: away from blogger and towards movabletype. i have tried installing the mother of all content management systems on a test-account from all-inkl.com, which is very likely to become my new webhosting provider in the very near future. i might switch to them just because i am no more willing to pay the high prices at 1&1, although i have no complaints about their current service whatsoever. but i would need to pay 25 euros a month for the features and tools i would need for movabletype and that’s definately not worth it. with php, my image-galleries and structure of content will reach a completely new dimension. at least this is what webmaster martin is aiming at ;). so, my friends, i will keep you posted, awright?

Hey people out there! I appreciate the fact that you are eager to read about what I did in the last 15 days (gosh, 15 days without an update! Damn!), but I am afraid I have to disappoint you. Current loading time of my weblog simply drives me nuts! Either it is Blogger slowing everything down or Enetation – to find out about that I just got myself a new commenting provider which is said to be much faster than Enetation. I will install it in the upcoming days – we will see how fast this can be accomplished, viewing back to the Enetation installation days…. Anyways, this is the reason why I will not update unless this issue has been solved. Please be patient. Thx.

Well, well… Here we are back again with the new page! Incredible: You hook yourself up in front of your computer, you stare into Dreamweaver and Fireworks and suddenly it is 6 hours later while you have managed to do your homepage-reboot half-way. People, this is fantastic! I did this page in less than 48 hours (except for some sleep). My thanks belong to Kilian and Mathieu for putting cool sites on the web many people can learn (and steal) from, and my personal art-director Alice for disagreeing with some of my creative output… I am now testing my Blogger-enabled webfront, but up til now, I think it works out fine. Due to many complaints I received and the negative experiences I myself had with my old page I have decided to make it compatible for more screen-resolutions, even including 640×480 (not encouraging people to acutally use that – it looks really shitty, but it works though!). — 2morrow Germany will play again… Ticket or semi-finals? We will see… My guess for the final is Korea – Turkey :) — What have I left to say? -N-joy my pages, browse around and leave me a post in my guestbook! Comments and critics are welcome, but are subject to individual evaluation ;)