yeah I just found out how I can synchronize my blogspot account with my facebook account. Now I can annoy even more people with my stupid photo posts :)

picture on the left is a testshot from my flat too my neighbours (thanks kim for not cleaning you balcony) flat. To optimize my manual focus technique.
Only minor post processing involed to increase contrast and saturation.



me and natasha at her birthday party. Trying to look her in the eyes and serving her a cuba libre... The picture in the back is one of her awesome paintings!

today I discovered a website which finally explained a very nice feature in eclipse.

which saved me about 1 week to locate my current bug and to fix it. Ok I located it, to fix it is another question. At least I can do some math again and actually write some "smart" code instead of stupid gui programming or writing utilities.

i just wished I discovered this features years ago...
http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t19825.html

the picture is a red devil and my favorite target for flash fotographie right now. As we can see I have this ugly shadow behind the fish, so I need something to lighten it up. I can't bounce the flash and I cant use a diffuser, because of the glas.
But I discovered If I use my bike light and put it with a diffuser on top of the tank and a direct flash I get some decent results. Another flash or light on the right would be helpfull to remove or at least lighten the shadow. 

its amaizing how much space we have in our flat after I sold my 2 boards and sail and mast...

...and to actually get it out of our flat we had to move it over the balcony. So it was the right way todo.

anyway from a part of the money I just ordered a filter and a flash and from the other part I put away in savings for a vacation.

so what did I got,

77mm circular polarizer and SB-600 flash to learn the basics of using a flash and which can be later used as a slave flash If I ever think I need more than one.

I also made some nice 15 x 10 Inch prints from two pictures and autsch, you see the mistakes I do...

basically I sharpen my pictures to much. 

it only took me 8 month to finally understand my camera. Today I discovered a new button ( you also could say I finally understand what todo with it ) The AE/AF lock button which basically does nothing than:

- lock the autofocus
- lock the autoexposure
- does one of both combined with the shutter









after playing with this for about 30 minutes I configured my cam so that:

AE/AF button - locks the focus
Shutter half pressed - locks the exposure in case you use P/A/S mode
Shutter pressed - takes the pictures

this allows me to move my focus point arround in a picture and to take n pictures with the same exposure and focus. Or if I don't press the AE/AF button the camera keeps focussing, but does not change the exposure. I never know why should I use this. But for action shots it's quite helpfull to always have the same exposure. Ok you can set this using the manual mode. But why should you make your live harder than it is anyway?

the nice thing about focus lock is that I don't need the one feature of the D80, the 11 Focus fields, you can simulate it/finetune it with the focus lock. It just won't refocus, which is a problem with moving objects. For example if you have 5 focus field (left,right,top,bottom,middle) and you want to have the object focussed in the top left corner. You can focuss it using the middle field, lock the focus and than move the camera so that your object of interesst is in focus at the part where you want to have it. Another way would to use manual focus in the first place, but I never can really see when the image is sharp and when it's not 100% sharp.

...the problems with glasses. I really should get some contacts, which reminds me to go to the eye doctor to test my health insurance...

the more I think about it the more I'm happy that I resisted and did not sold my D50 and upgraded to the D80. I also figured out how to simulate graduated neural density filters in gimp using several exposures of the same picture. Which saved me some more money. So I only will get a circular polarizer, once I can force me to pay 100$ for a stupid 77mm filter... 

good by surfstuff,

after I did'nt used it more than 4 times this year I finally bit the bullet and try to sell it for a good price. So it doesn't block the room anymore and stops collecting dust. It kinda hurts, cause it was a dream to have my own surfstuff, but it makes no sense to keep it and it looses from month to month more value...

so lets see what I can get for my rig and boards :(

after I used picassaweb for a couple of weeks now and I'm quite happy with them, they wanna start to charge me money, cause I have to many pictures on it. It is arround 25$ a year for 6 GB picture place and not that much. It's just for 25$ a year I also can get a pbase.com which is way nice and provides more features and a nice search function.

example I can search for pictures taken with a camera and a specific lens to compare my quality with the quality of other people. Means I can learn something how to improve my pictures and whats possible with my stuff. Which leads to not spending so much money on gear and improve my technique in the first place. ( it's amazing what kind of pictures some people shoot with stuff that has very bad rattings, like 2 of my lenses).


...i think I make the switch next month and get a trial account for testing... 

statistics, don't we love them all?

I finally decided to work a little bit with the statistic programm R again, and thought what could I analyse. So I decided to analyse which focal length I use the most with my D50 and was quite surprised by the result.

But first where to get the data from? In modern time like today your camera saves tons of informations in the jpeg files, so called EXIF informations.

what todo to get these data?

1. write a small script in python which reads the exif informations from all you files on the harddisk

2. stores this result in a txt file as matrix

3. start R import the data and do some statistics

After I saw this result it pointed me that my future plans to buy lenses are quite easy,

arround 300 mm prism lens -> not affordable
arround 100 mm prism lens for macro -> affordable from sigma with 2.8

and I'm still dreaming from a ultra wide angle for landscape fotographie, maybe in a year...

( proud of me that I refused the offer to sell my camera to a friend and get a D80! Just saved 500$...) 

after I did some more reading on several filtersystem I discovered that 2 out of 3 lenses have a great problem with filters. The lens barrel rotates and so the complete filter would rotate too and drop on the ground.
The second problem is that I need to use 4x4/4x6 filters instead of P size filter. I can mount the P size filter, but I can see the corner of the filters on the pictures.

This means, I tripple the money which I need to spend. At least I found out that a circular polarizer should be the highest priority and also the most expensive.

and later if money permits:

- graduated neural density 0.9 soft
- graduated neural density 0.9 hard
- graduated neural density 0.6 reverse
- neural density 4 stop
- graduated neural density 0.6 soft
- graduated neural density 0.6 hard

at least you can order sets of filter from adorama.com, which saves you some money and I don't need any warming/cooling filters. Cause I can do this in gimp.

also everybody recommends to stay away from cokin filter, cause they have a magenta color cast. So they recommend hitech, lee, singray.

further there is also the third possibility, you can simulate the effect in gimp and photoshop with multiple exposures. So I only need to buy a polarizer. I will try this for the beginning and save some money until I decide what todo with it.

what a nice saturday, after I got my car running in the morning ( prob. leak in the servo system, but after I fill it up its working quite well). I got an upgrade for my bbq, a 20 Gallon propan tank. Background for this is that I never can find the special cadrigdes need and after a year the bigger tank repays for it self. The initial cost was 75$ including needed connection hose and one filling is 10$. Compared to the small gas cadrigdes I used sofar, which contain one pound of gas and cost 4$ this is way cheaper.

Anyway later this day I fixed lindsay's bike and helped my new neighbour with her bike. The evening I finished with a mini bbq and reading some articles over filter systems.

Oh my new neighbours stopped by and provided me with some cake, because I borrowed them my plunger... 

after I payed last month 60$ for a Neural Density filter I figured out that this kind of filter system won't work for me. An example is in the left picture.
The picture itself is pretty nice, except for the shade arround the corners. This is due the screw one filter. The second problem is that the screw on filter are incredible expensive.
I want to have a couple of basic filters:

1. nd filters 4,6,8
2. graduated nd filter 4,6,8
3. circular polarizer
4. uv filter
5. haze filter

the reason for this filters is you barley can emulate this effect in photoshop. Cause the reduce the ammount/change polarisation of light. Once you took the image, you can't do anything about the light anymore.

The good thing of digital cameras is, you can simulate with photoshop. The best example are diffuser or changing color temperature.

The thread filter have all one big disadvantage, one filter cost 50 - 150$ depending on the type. I'm not going to pay so much money for some stupid filters. After I ask "dr google" I found a cheaper solution, cokin/quantary slide on filter. A set with 6 nd/graduated filter cost 100$ and I only have to buy 3 adapter rings to fit all my lenses. So in total it cost me 170$. For everything I want.

this means I will sell my thread filter collection and buy for the money I get a cokin system, once its in stock again.

another problem is my tripod I bought in january for 25$ with my camera. It's incredible instable and really difficult to adjust. So over short or long I will look at another tripod with a better head. I originally bought this to getting started, but never thougt I use it alot. Boy I was wrong.
As soon as I grab my 300mm zoom, I can't do anything without a tripod. ( the pictures are incredible unsharp). With the tripod there atleast sometimes sharp.

this are all 100% crops at maximum range of my 70 - 300mm 150$ zoom lens. The zoom is always very soft after 280mm, but I prefer to spend 1500$ on a nice trip to hawai next year instead of spending this kind of money on a 200 - 400 mm VR or 800$ on a 15 - 200 mm VR which I would love to have.

It's considered the best lens on the market, and covers more or less the range i have with my 3 lenses. The major disadvantage is it only works with DSLR's with a cropped sensor and not with full frame sensors, which will be affordable in the next 10 years for people like me. So I will stick with my current lenses for the next couple of years.

review of sharpness with a 25$ tripod and a 150$ zoom

somehow lucky shot with a tripod of a pair of ugly birds, somehow sharp
(300mm, f/5.6, 1/640s)






unlucky shot with a tripod of a joshua tree at sunset
(300mm, f/8, 1/13s)

sadly I did'nt see it on the preview, so I could try it again. Main problem in this case is the tripod, cause at 1/13s its just to shaky. It could be improved with the remote, but I lost my somewhere in the park and oredered already a new. Lucky me it's only a 10$ thing.





lucky shot without a tripod of a jackrabbit
(300mm, f/5.6, 1/1000s)

it was arround 1 pm and I had more than enough light to work with








so what next:

I would love todo something with flash, but I'm affraid to invest that kind of money.

1. 360$ for one flash (SB-800) to get started
2. 60$ for a SC-17 TTL flash cable to detach the flash from the camera
3. 200$ for a second flash(SB-600) for advanced lighting
4. 20$ for a color filter set for each flash

the main problem, I can only use nikon flashes with the D50 or risking frying the electronics of the cam. It's a common problem with the cheap sunpak flashes. And somehow this seems to be to expensive.

Another idea to work on landscape fotographie, my preffered pictures

1. 180$ for a Nikon DR6 Viewfinder, which allows me to actually use the viewfinder for pictures against the sky
2. 100$ for a set of graduated filters
3. 200$ for a flash(SB-600) to bring some light into the foreground and fill out shadows
4. 50$ for some lights to lightpaint

i think I will go for some filters and improve my technique before I invest so much money.

this morning I randomly discovered one of the coolest thing ever:

Lensbaby 3G - Bend • Lock • Fine Focus

and after a look of a couple of shots I really love the idea to play with this system a little bit. Ok before I have to learn a lot about fotographie, cause I have todo everything by myself, but it's never wrong to learn something...

a short review about this system (older version): review 

After I worked with java straight for 6 year, i finally could convince myself to learn another programming language. The background was that I had to write so many bash scripts in the last weeks, that I think bash scripting is not the best way.

so I was looking for a language which has following features:

1. plattform independent
2. interpreter based
3. fast
4. good community
5. good documentation
6. has support for objects

so I decided to try python and I love this. It's so much easier to use than bash, more powerfull than bash and can be integrated into java and other way arround.

to try some advanced features with python I decided to use it for a small project. Basically transforming the pubchem database (arround 7 Million xml documents/ 250GB) into a script to import it into a sql database.

this morning I decided to visit the historical airfield next too temecula. And they have a nice collection of aircrafts from WW-I until the desert storm. This is also the big drawback of this museum. Instead of covering one topic, they try to cover all and it just becomes to much and you can't enjoy it anymore.

The planes are mostly outside and wingless. What means they are dusty and sometimes not a very nice view.

pictures

after a long time waiting my new lens finally arrived with my first filter ( except for uv's). And like always they send me the wrong stuff...

so now I have a ND 4x instead of an ordered ND 6x so I will order another ND later.

anyway, my new lens is a tokina 19 - 35 mm ( on D50 equals 28.5 - 52.5 mm). I got it for 125$ so it was a good deal and I prob. will sell it as soon as I finally manage to find a reason to buy the tokina 12 - 24 mm. I just don't like the idea to spend 500$ on a stupid lens. Lucky me this lens is always out of stock and never available.

But why I bough the other tokina in the first place? Basically I just want to have the possibility to shot landscape pictures when I'm going into the mohave desert on sunday and monday.

testshots 

finally, google introduced web albums. This means I can upload all my pictures to websites to annoy innocent visitors with them.

album 

yeah "my cluster" is working again.

now its time to get the current bugfixes into my sourceforge project

bbcs

my second "private" project is to get xen on my workstation and laptop to create a small personal cluster in case all the other clusters are backed or down like last weekend. Now I just need to figure out how to install the sun grid engine under linux or write a new 'at' based implementation for my cluster project with a minimal scheduler.

currently I'm trying to figure out how to get nice shots at nigth time.

my main problems are just, its so dark, you barley see anything in the viewfinder and I always have to be on my knees because of this strange angle. I think I finally will get an adapter for this in january.

its just such an insane ammount of money for a simple adapter and there are no off brands available sofar

At least I hope my neural density filter and the step up adapter arrive in time for my trip downsouth.


...we fill see... 

after we bought a bike for my girlfriend we needed a place to store them somewhere and they are a little bit to expensive to keep them outside...

so we decided to buy a rack to hang the bikes next to the wall. As you can see in the picture.

I'm just still kinda unsure if this thing will hold the weigt of two bikes, specially with our super stable paper walls...

top: 2006 fuji roubaix pro (gert)
bootom: 2006 swinn fastback (Lindsay)

the best thing was that the shop, where we bought the rack and the bikes gave me 100$ extra reabate for my bike because they had it on sale this day. So I ended up paying 1099 instead of 1399 for my bike.

...but sofar I had to invest 500$ in compounds like shoes, pedals, helmet etc.

only thing missing now is a bike rack for the car to get the backs down south for some rides during our vacation in two weeks. 

who would belive it, the software which we are developing since a couple of years runs on smartphones, like my htc wizard.

setupx & binbase

it finally happend we have our flat and making progress with cleaning it and moving stuff in.

we also did the main mistake when you got a new flat...

...we went to ikea and got the standard stuff

- fondue set
- wok
- chair
- thousands small things...

anway it starts to look nice and over short or long we want to replace the fouton with a nice couch. This should be arround january. 

the first servers are back up and running and working unexspected well under xen.

basicly we have on server with 2 cpu and 4 gb ram and running:

• oracle server
• mysql server
• mysql server and apache for monitoring using cacti of the network
  

the load is fine sofar and we are migrating now our other boxes to xen too to make the management and the backup of complete servers easier.

idea:

• pdc, ldap
• cvs
• devel oracle server
• production jboss
• devel jboss

it should take only 2 days as soon as i figure out where I store all the data from the pdc.

the bitch is dead,

the bitch in this case is a server called venus and decided 2 days ago to stop working. Sadly this is my database server containning our production database...

so it was time to find out if the backups are working. After 8h I finally had a temporaery database server up and running with a minimal loss of data ( arround 300 samples, are calculating right now again).


now I planned to create a new server using:

- gentoo as base system
- xen for virtualisation
- lvm for storage management
- redhat/centos enterprise linux as virtual machine for the oracle database
- minimal gentoo as virtual machine for the application server

the final plan is to migrate all my server to xen with an atttached nas to allow the migration of servers without any downtime.

whats up and running on my wizard

• bluetooth headset motorola HS820
• synchronisation over bluetooth
• synchronisation over usb
• skype - headset not working yet and its kinda slow
  
• email
• gmail synchronisation over pop3
• outlook synchronisation using active sync
• gprs works but took forever to disable it, cause trys all 5 minutes to connect to the internet
• wireless lan works fine, got it to work in a/b/g with a registery hack
• voice dial works over bluetooth and freehand also
  

impression sofar

• once you are able to kill all background tasks its fast, but slows down when you have more than 5 programms open
• never ever go into the windows folder and say sort by type, 20 minutes later it was finally done...
• phone works quite well
• active sync needed to be update to avoid that outlook crashed, version 4.2 is ok
  
• the bluetooth stack is a little big buggy, sometimes hard to get the synchronisation to work
• battery live is ok, 24h bluetooth on and still 50% left
  

one of my new toys. The cingular 8125 also known as t-mobile mda ( think the german model is mda III ) is quite nice and the speed is ok. Just the display is like always way to small. The size is ok sofar. Could be a little thinner. But in this case I would'nt have the keyboard, which is the nicest part.

The synchronisation works with the x60 and I'm working on the synchronisation over bluetooth right now. Suprisingly my headset connects with both of the toyes easily, but sofar I'm not able to get it running with the phone. 

the daily joke appeared again.

I finally received my new laptop and it's damn nice. Only that the order was wrong again.

- they delivered 2 more batteries than I ordered and they don't fit at all...
- they delivered only 1 GB of ram insted of the ordered 2 GB

why is it so difficult to get an order once right .

anywa sofar I'm really satisfied.

- very light
- display is very bright, the first time I actually work with a display where I reduce the intensity
- battery liftime is arround 4h with wifi and bluetooth on
- pretty fast, gotta test how it performs under java
- that you need the docking station for a second battery/hd or a cdrom kinda sucks, but when did I ever need a cdrom anyway
- it has a sd slot, so perfect for my camera

right now I look at smart phones and found one thats nearly perfect

the mda from t-mobile/cingular for 249$ before taxes. so in total with activation fee and so it should be arround 300$. The size is ok, little bit larger than a motorola razor.

the main question is do I need it or does it another phone too?

basicly any phone thats not a flip phone cost arround 100$ and you can call and play mp3's with it.

The mda can more and has nearly the same size.

- full pda
- plays mp3
- extension via mini sd card -> gotta sell my sd card and switch over to mini sd in case I buy it ( i think I go shopping soon)
- can use wifi to browse the internet ( and automatical receive my emails all 45 minutes)
- i can write programms for it what makes it really interessting to maintain my servers
- with its full sized keayboard i can work over ssh, what makes it really sweet

mhm I think about it, ist only 150$ difference to a normal phhone. (I also could spend this 125$ on a short trip with my girl...)

we will see... I have 600$ left for this month and the half is already gone.

I also came to the conclusion that I don't need a heart rate monitor and a cadence monitor. I could ride my bike quite well with out it at the weekend...

i hate computer/cellphones/programming/databases right now

since 30 days I got every damn day another problem:

- laptop dies
- wrong parts get delivered
- phone died
- all server died at work after a power failure
- database drives me crazy with the stupid 32bit limitations
- barley any storage space and figthing for every byte here
- eclipses crashes all 5 minutes for no special reason

at least I made a nice 60km bike tour on sunday and went to bed at 3 pm, cause i was so tired. It was supposed to be a nap, but i slept until 2 am ( maybe I should have slept from saturday to sunday more than one hour...) and now I'm sitting at work because there are samples what need to be calculated by this afternoon. So no rafting for me :( (ok I wasn't sure if I go anyway, but thats not the point)

so we will see what comes next. Now I'm in the hussle to find a new phone...

smartphone or normal phone. I want basicly

- mpg3 player
- wifi
- pda
- sd slot

for not more than 300$ and for a model not older than 6 Month.

the only thing that has the features are:

palm treo 700p except for wifi
mda except for sd slot ( what should I do with mini sd, I want one standard)

at least my laptop is supposed to come today...

an crazy idea...

my girlfirends birthday is at the 21st of setptember and she decided to celebrate in San Diego Area. Now I had the idea to go there by bike and drive back by car. Basicly riding down the route 1 should'nt be to bad.

Its about 500 miles. So I need to cover 50 miles a day, which should be doable. I will make a test ride this weekend from davis -> winters -> berryessa to see how well I can handle mountains. This is basicly a distance of 70 miles and should be doable in close to 4 hours for an untrained person like me.

6 more days until I get my new laptop, I can't wait. Without it I can barley do anything,

- no pictures cause can't edit them
- no internet at home
- no email at home
- can't work at home (writing documentation and papers)

but a couple of days I already recieved my battery for my new toy...
and yester day two more batteries...

laptop = 0
battery = 3

so we see what our ordering system else got wrong. I don't get it whenever I order something over this system I get the wrong stuff like

- dell server for database purpose = no scsi adapter and cable
- storage server = wrong network cards
- nas = suprisingly no mistake
- workstation = wrong harddisks
- minimacs = wrong fire wire wires

so 1 out of 5, damn thats sad...

oh by the way new project: BinBase Cluster System

its time for the next tour, now I nearly have everything what I need

• spare tubes
• bottles
• bottle holder
• helmet, maybe its as good as its expensive, at least its very light, anyway you have only one head
• two jerseys and pants which demonstrate very well how skinny i am, damn it
• a small saddle bag to put all the stuff in

and I'm only missing

• lights
• second bottle holder

time to get some soon...

after I was enjoying my bike for one week and still did'nt received my repair kit from the shop. ( never order online when you can go to the shop itself in 30 minutes...) I decided lets try to make a bike tour and if something happens, you have a phone and lindsay was ok to pick me up.

After I got 6km my water was empty and I was damn down from the temperature here. We had 113 Fahrenheit ( 45C) in the shade.

It was maybe not the smartest to drive down the road to woodland. Where no shade is at all.

I give it another try tommorrow. Cause the road was nice and I could maintan an average speed of 27 km/h over 10km.

The goal is to be in berryessa at end of september with the bike.

after I went the last time to lake berryessa and looked at all these guys riding there bikes down the mountains and up again I decided maybe its time that I finally doing something for me and my body and start biking again. Problem you need a bike.

I was thinking how to afford this, cause like always I have many dreams and can't afford to buy everything like:

• nice stereo system
• a surfboard with 140 liters
• a bike
• a new car
• vacation

as we can see thats its quite a nice list. So I was thinking what makes the most sense, I would love to buy a surfboard, but for a matter of fact I can't afford to go more then 2/3 times a month surfing and my board what I just bought (115 liters) is nice, but its barley windy enough, So I delayed this another year.

• A stereo system, is not really neccessaery and I already spend way to much time in the flat...
• vacation, yeah nice, but on the other hand I'm in california and there is much left where I can go, specially arround davis/tahoe/yosemite
• A new car, very nice but my car works and drives me everywhere and gas gets more and more expensive. So for the next 6 Month it should be fine, once I fix the left bearing and my airconditioner (fan broken)
• A bike, its actually the only thing where I can save money, can do something with my girlfriend arround davis (once I fixed here bike, or we get her a new one). And if I ride it everyday to work, I would save arround 150$ a month.

Finally I decided a nice bike ( should last over 5 years, so no walmarkt stuff) would be great. Problem what kind and how do I get one in my size.

There a basicly 5 kindes of bikes out there

• road bike
• mountain bike
• city bike/cruiser
• bmx
• hybrid (mix between road bike and city bike)

Because I want a daily driver I can't get a

• bmx (way to small and I'm not into this making crazy tricks)
  
• mountin bike (when do I get into the mountains offroading and way to heavy)
• hybrid (I don't like 50/50 things and they look ugly)

So we are left with cruisers (cheap,slow,heavy arround 500$) and roadbikes (expensive,fast,light to medium weight, starts at 700$)

Cause I like it fast and my dad always talked me into getting light things (like shoes and so) I decided to get a roadbike and my banking account hates me for this.

After I reasearched in the web for a couple of days and came to this list:

• minimum shimano 105 shifiting system, better ultegra
• click pedall system instead of strapes
• shoes
• helmet
• computer
• lights
  
• combination of carbon and aluminium frame
• the softes saddle possible
• under 10 kg
• changeable cranks
• at least 60 cm frame size ( I'm between 60 and 63)

During the shopping I talked to another salesperson, and he offered me a membership in a bike club, what means I get on everything I buy in this shob 10% of for 20$ a year. A second later I accepted and have now a club card with enough money on it to reach my magic goal to afford this bike...

what I got ( got an end of summer deal after long fighting with the salesperson) :

• combination of ultegra and 105 shifting system
• forte clicks, looks pedals where to expensive, forte a based on the look design
  
• shimano shoes
• carbon fork
• Aluminum Frame with Carbon Seat Stays
• 8.53 kg heavy
• simple computer, not wounderfull does the job
• a bottle and a holders
  

after I was able to setup the clicks and figured out how to get out them again ( I'm glad I practiced where somebody could hold me) I went 5 miles and stopped at the next shop and got:

• a lock, cause kinda sucks if you need to go somewhere like a store to grab some foot
  
• some shorts, my butt hurts and I was way to warm in the pants I had one

whats still missing are:

• a trikot, cause you sweat terrible in the shirt I use right now
• a helmet, top priority, will buy it in the next week or as soon as I go into the mountains. I wanted to buy one at the shop, but could'nt get a fitting one.
  
• a larger crank once I get used to this bike, cause the front crank is a little bit to small for me. I will by it in a couple of month, once I reach the maximum and are in good enough condition to actually use it
• lights, I'm not going to buy some, cause the tires are so thin, if you miss one hole in the street you need a new tire. So no biking in the dark
• i need a permit to ride this bike on campus, what I refuse to buy, cause I'm not putting an ugly sticker on my bike
• a small wais bag, cause this stupid pants have no pockets for keys and so
• a second bottle holder with a bottle for obvious reason
• an ipod nano with wrist holder so I can enjoy music during the ride
• a stand to put the bike into the flat
• a couple of spare tubes in case of a flat tire
• contacts, cause with my glasses its kinda anoying to bike in this racing position
  

I think I will get this over the next couple of month and finally try to save some money. For vacations next year.

...now my girlfriend only needs a bike so we can make tours...

after nearly 2 years in the usa there are two things which are just wounderfull for gadget fans.

1. netflix

a service which sends you as many dvd's as you want for 14.99 a month.

2. gamefly

a service which sends you as many games as you want for 14.99 a month.

now people tend to argue with me, but I prefer to own the game, so I always can play it over and over again. Sure if you this kind of player it makes sense, but in my case I play a game once and than grab another one.
The average game has 10 - 20 hours of playtime, means I need 2 - 3 weeks to play this game and than get a new one. The other thing with console games is, they are series and every year cames the next part and the older parts dust in the shelf... 

a small story about what can happen to you in the us during sitting at venice beach.

Oldtimer to the left was swinging his flag with the indian on top and was also selling some stuff.
As we can see he looks not very wealthy so now we try to figure out what could have happen.


After he was sitting there a while, a cop come by with his bicyle. And talked to oldtimer. After a short while he called for backup. So oldtimer stepped to the left and start swinging his flag like hes mad and shouted something nobody could understand. The cop was just next to him and did nothing. 15 minutes later backup arrived.
Now we had 1 oldtimer, 1 bicycle cop, 2 suvs with 3 other cops. I guess they tried to much his age to make it fair for him.

The 4 cops now cuffed him and searched him. They discovered a pipe and called for reinforcements... 10 Minutes later 2 other cops arrived. And moved him into the suv and moved his stuff into it too.





Finally the local band tried to support oldtimer and started singing a song.

Jonny Cash - Folsom Prison.

what we still can't figure out, what did oldtimer wrong in the first place, but we needed 6 officers to arrest him. Truely a scarry oldtimer.

After I went the last weekend to venice beach california I had the possibilty to take some nice shots of a couple of bikes.

I think everybody heard about the famous muscle beach and the street performance at venice. Its kinda overrated, the muscle beach is really disappointing and the performance, is not really so impressive. I was only impressed by 6 breakdancers, who put a damn nice show up.

I also have to admit that its not true that there are many rich, famous, good looking people at venice beach. Honestly, the most should change into clothes thats hides there body, and not show so much. Its like always, fat american laying on the beach. But they are defnitly rich...

what else to say about venice, you can buy stuff, you can spend a lot of money for food. Parking is expensive, arround 25$ for a day. And it's crouded.

nothing is so important like a good breakfast.

so lets make a classic tri-tip sandwich.

Sandwich:

2 - 3 lb tri-tip
baguettes
salad
onions
...

Dry Rub:

salt
pepper
thyme
chayene pepper

Sauce:

bbq sauce
coconut milk

Recipe:

take the spieces and mix them. Mix the cocnut milk with the bbg sauce to taste. Afterwards remove unneccessaery fat from the tri-tip and rub it with the spieces.
Let it rest for 2 hours at room temperature. Preheat the oven to 350F and roast the tri-tip for 70 minutes. Brush it from time to time from both sides with the sauce. When the meat is medium done turn on the broiler for 5 minutes each side. To give it a nice sizzeling crust. Than take it out of the oven and let it settle for at least 20 minutes! This is important, so that the meat can collect its juices and don't dry out when we cut it.

Slice the meat in the thinnest slices possible. A slicer would be prefered, but you can do it with any sharp none setteratted knife in your kittchen.

now build your sandwich and enjoy!

the last weeks in california,

at first my parents visited me and toured a little around and discovered vacaville...

A little bit later they produly showed me what nice stuf they got there and how cheap it all is. It reminded me a little when my girlfriend was in berlin and discovered how "cute" shoes you can buy at deichman ( cheap ass shoe store in germany )

anyway I'm glad my parents had fun and so we drove a little bit arround with them to sonoma county, lake berryessa, san francisco ( we joined them there for a couple of hours only) .

Shortly before they left, I got me a new toy, called Xbox360. I'm kinda suprised about myself to spend money on such a toy, cause I always preferred a pc. But after playing with it for nearly 2 weeks I really have to admit: It just do the job...

so a short review:

graphics: wounderfull in HD mode, kinda weak in SD
noise: this thing is very noise so you need to set 8 - 10 Feet away or turn the tv very loud
games: I just got oblivion, and I love it
demos: its very nice that you can download demos for free, so I tried a couple of games sofar.
online: battlefield 2 online is just a hell of fun. But still unsure if I gonna pay 60$ for it
media extender: I didnt had a windows media center available, so I just used the windows vista demo and its way to slow to navigate with it. Sofar I need to find somebody who has a mediatester to see if its worth the 100$ to stream movies and dvd from harddisk. 

after the bbq was done on saturday we were relaxing in the sun and got a nice visitor. A 6 feet long boa was moving arround in our front yard.

Ok as we all now pythons and boas don't live in california in free nature. It was my neighbours boa enjoying a little bit this nice weather before she had to go back in her tank in the inside.
And my neighbours was watching the snake and asked us if it would be ok to let her in the grass for a couple of minutes, so she could clean the tank.
At least it gave me the possibility to make a couple of nice pictures.

It's summer again, that means time to bbq. The problem with bbq's is you need a grill. So I had a little gas chrill last year, but somebody decided to steal it... Anyway I saw saturday morning this awesome weather and decided time to get a grill. Now the big question gas/electric/charcoil what to buy.

Electric is no choice, to dry, not portabel. And we all no a gril has to be portable to get it to the beach. So charcoil has the best taste, but the disadvantage of exensive preheating and lots of ash. So I went with a gasgrill. Its fast, its clean and somewhat portable. Obviously gas grills are the most expensive grills out there. They start at 25$ for something what you cant call grill and go up to 5000$ what I would call insane.

So it should be:
- portable
- from a good brand for replacement parts and propan supply
- under 200$
- large enough for a couple of burgers and crabs

mean it's sounds like a weber Q series and the small ine is just to tiny and the big one ( preffered by me) way to expensive ( 360$ or so ). So I decided to go with the medium one ( Q200 ) which was still somewhat portable ( 18 kg ) and has enough space for all what you can think of. The price of 179$ is close enough to my limited and with some propan, tools, food... we hit 300$ in total for the weekend.

A first test:

- crab legs -> jummy
- jumbo prawns -> jummy
- shrimps -> chewy, go for prawns next time.
- steak -> tasty
- corn -> tasty
- spare ribs -> to fat, I stick with my oven ribs
- turkey burgers by my own recipy -> perfect
- trout -> perfect
- calamary steak -> i don't like calamari, awefull....

result: me laying lazy and round in the sun for the rest of the day.

Now the burger recipy for 4 Burgers:

- 30g butter choped in small pieces
- 1 clove garlic chopped
- 1/4 onion finley chopped
- 1 cup vermouth
- salt + fresh pepper
- 1 Pound ground turkey
- 1/2 wet bun, ripped in little pieces

mix the ingredients in a bow for a couple of minutes and make 4 pattys out of this. Put these on the grill for 5 minutes each side. Now grab some buns, cheese, onions, lettuce and build you burger.