twenty something hours 27club left

typical case of self fulfilling prophecy imo.

twenty seven was really one of the best years in my life, if not even the most outstanding. doubtless there have been years with maybe more important events or more girls, better parties, ... what ever. but this year just tops it all just by the pure amount of different events passed and the general state of mind.

visiting and working in the us, with stations such as nyc brooklyn, philly, los angeles and las vegas which could fill a book by itself, besides to my daily life in munich with it's single moments and some once-in-a-lifetime line-ups out of town like the legendary sunandbass08 ... implied by the club charter it all had this "live fast, die young" touch, though it seems that i failed some how

on the other side what stays is the experience of "to overcome", deepening more into our selves with every day and night. but right now only twenty something hours before i finally leave the 27club behind me i realize that i still haven't picked a "prophecy" - say picture of myself or what to become next.

FACING west, from California’s shores

things are getting confusing when dreams and memories mix up;
pictures of people never seen before invading places deep inside our hearts

... or was it the other way around?

thinking about it more carefully often leads to wondrous findings;
touching abysses of our own personality, revealing basic mechanisms

FACING west, from California’s shores,

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,

Look off the shores of my Western Sea—the circle almost circled;

For, starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,

From Asia—from the north—from the God, the sage, and the hero,

From the south—from the flowery peninsulas, and the spice islands;

Long having wander’d since—round the earth having wander’d,

Now I face home again—very pleas’d and joyous;

(But where is what I started for, so long ago?

And why is it yet unfound?)

Walt Whitman

beautiful colours to think of

echoes in my head ... hitting my skull from inside
perfectly distributed ... like sand corns
which the wind blows on the beach
while the moonsun shines from behind a cloud
reflected as a swimming blue surrounded eye

... some thoughts have a certain sound ...

and the sand runs though your fingers
again as ever and perfectly as before

:: partly based on
A_Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Man
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Joyce

There is not past, no future;
everything flows in an eternal present

colours of sunandbass

up up n away

after only one and a half weeks in germany i iz flying out again. going to san teodoro (sardinia / italy) for the sunandbass festival tomorrow, together with thomas who got only yesterday on the train.

chillin at the beach, swim, play speedminton or what ever during day time ... dancing whilest enjoying best of drum n bass djs playing everything from deep atmospheric liquid to dark oldschool shizzle at night :D

the only problem is that we've booked ryan air @airport hahn which is a 5h drive from munich... plus another 180km journey with the rental car until we arrive at our hotel. finally on saturday we move with some friends into our appartment for the next week ... it's going to be mental ... teh sick

http://www.sunandbass.net/

holla back ... blogger in draft

about time for an update ... but where to begin?

The beginning. Right. Well, I suppose it all started in the Holodeck. Doesn't it always?

while i was shooting pics on the way to brooklyn, my driver ... hehe ... missed our exit, so first thing we saw was a pretty much crazy area - as rich in colors as in its spectrum of different cultures - which we later realized to be williamsburg. unfortunately i didnt manage to get there after that, but i tried a couple of times and maybe i will give it another go after i finally get into that brooklyn museum the following days. ... by the way i should have read those wiki-pages more carefully in order to avoid closed doors as happened with the later but lets start from the beginning or shortly after we managed to find my place in bedford which is another neightboorhood of brooklyn city known for its many different ethnic districts. jewsish, black, hispanic, polish and probably many more ...

basically i was there only for the weekend but ended up to really like this place, not especially because of the two danish girls, but also because of all the other guys who stayed there. some of them like me only on a short trip, others had already over a year ... some frome france, canada or from LA together with folks from just around the corner ... all combined it had an charm of its own; too bad i was too busy all the time chillin in central park and so spent only the second evening really there ... warming up with the others and later going to the bembe for some saturday night dancehall action ... nice

having the place of another colleague from monday on i still was thinking about staying at bedford for the rest of my vacation. still finally an own restroom plus much more room for myself seemed to outweigh all concerns (even the danish) ... even if i ended up on the wrong side of the george washington bridge, which is fort lee

now i've been driving back to brooklyn for two days, firstly to miss - as already mentioned - the brooklyn museum's opening hours (not starting before wednesdays) and going instead again to the prospect park. this time i also came around it's zoo, the picnic house and later on south side and the big lake. the last part happened when i was already on my way to the next point of interest which was the sea and coney island with its amusement park, alongside brighton beach and the mostly russian community

the second time was only today after i woke up as preferable as always on holidays when the golden ball hit again at its highest - or maybe shortly after that - just to drive to jamaica bay for breakfast. being a bit chilled my first physical encounter with the sea water took only a couple of minutes. also after reading my book for an hour and finishing chapter 4 of the stranger i realized that i've forgotten my lighter and so had to go back to my car and maybe move on to rockaway bay with its wildlife reservoir. after checking in via signing my visitors passport i took some photographs of local birds (the real bird birds ;) while not being allowed to have a cigarette again

anyhow currently im back "home" and calling it a day... chilling out on the couch and watching voyager. my plans for tomorrow are still pretty drafty, maybe i go back to central park and finish my book before going to philly on thursday, lets see ...

... the wormhole is collapsing ...

planning my vacation / first draft toc

some bulletin points for myself to get things done during the next 10 days

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn (2 - 3 days)

(see also http://wikitravel.org/en/New_York_(city)/Brooklyn )

maps: http://www.citimaps.com/brooklyn/maps.html

including

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Brooklyn
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_Park_(Brooklyn)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Slope,_Brooklyn
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Museum
-- ( http://www.brooklynmuseum.org )
- http://www.superherosupplies.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_Beach (1 day)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_Bay (1 day)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coney_Island (1 day)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia (1 day)

the remaining time i try to chill out or do some other funny stuff in manhattan

tbc

nom nom @ wasabi, nyack

since most of my colleagues are leaving the us and flying back to germany tomorrow my boss decided we should go out today to celebrate. the best restaurant around here is definitely the wasabi and i already booked our reservation ftw

looking forward to their green tea martinis and awesome sushi
... mmmmm ... niiice ...

........ i like .....

nom nom nom

check out their website for reservation info

http://www.wasabichi.com

sheep meadow in da zoom

moved for the weekend to mannhattan and stayed at the hilton (53rd n 6th) which is only a couple of blocks away from the central park and just across the street of the museum of modern arts (aka MoMA).

the central location of the hotel was the main reason for this booking, but unfortunatelly the high rates forced me and my colleague nikbin to share a double room. since even that didn't suffice for the costs to be covered by the company (it was still more than our two rooms at our hotel in WCL) we had to pay another 100$ by ourselfes, but this was definitifly worth it and so we got by pretty well.

after doing some sightseeing stuff (4th street -> downtown: china town, little italy, ground zero, battery park) on friday (nikbin was visiting the big apple for the first time and thus was very eager to see everything in detail) we decided to chill out at the central park saturdays.

having stocked up on breakfast supplies we headed straight for the biggest lawn in central park called the sheep meadow which is pretty much compareable to the Schönfeldwiese (lit. "Beautiful meadows") of the Englischer Garten in my beloved hometown.

just as it would have been the case in munich, because of the nice weather the place was full of stressed out new yorkers looking for some recreation from the otherwise noisy and fast-paced city; doing picnic with friends and family, playing frisbee, soccer or other fun games. the only difference was that obviously there was no beer garden around and people couldn't drink their beer from bottles but had to refill it to paper cups first.

i for one was still occupied with breakfast / my venti iced latte and sized the opportunity to get the spirit of the park and it's visitors into focus with my newly acquired zoom lens.



click the following link for my flickr set containing some more of my favorite sheep meadow pictures together with some images taken at the moma the next day when it wasnt that sunny anymore

flickr-set

eee ez

here we go ... my new eee pc has arrived at last :) isn't he a cutie? i didn't give him a name yet, but thinking about it maybe i should call him swift eee in remembrance of my first car (a suzuki swift). another idea would be to call him awesome eee... (like in that south park episode, right) but in the end both names are equally appropriate and i guess i will use them by turns ... see below for a pic of my new found pride and joy (together with another pair of new trainers which would deserve an appreciation post of their own, but thats a different topic so lets move on :)


besides of his goods looks and the unbeatable size this so called sub-notebook excels through it's easy set up and great performance. the internet access was working within minutes and the pre-installed package covers all basic needs. most astonishingly maybe is the resemblance of the linux OS to the windows operation system. even users with no previous experience are enabled to perform all needed settings just as with microsoft ... and what's best i got even a SAP GUI installed, how kewl is that hmmmm :D

to illustrate the user interface i post you some screenshots below


and here's some evidence of the sap gui for teh 1337 ;)

the only open issues are now concerning the keyboard usage and the change of the desktop theme, but im sure ill fix it soonish

finally some technical details from the asus web site:

Operating System	Genuine Windows XP® Home GNU Linux
Display	8.9"
Intel CPU & Chipset	Intel Atom
Wireless Data Network	WLAN: 802.11 n Bluetooth: YES
Memory	1GB (DDR2)
S.S.D. Storage (Solid-State Drive)	SSD 12GB (Genuine Windows® XP Home) SSD 20GB (Linux)
Camera	1.3M Pixel
Audio	Dolby Sound Room Certified Stereo speaker Digital Array Mic
Battery	6 Cells, 4.2 ~ 8 hrs*(Genuine Windows® XP Home) 6 Cells, 4.5 ~6 hrs*(Linux)
Weight	1.1 kg
Infusion	Red, Green, Black, Peony White, Pearl White and Fine Ebony

for the fallen

after a smooth but nevertheless exhausting 7h flight i'm back again in nyc - nyce :)

first thing i did after getting from JFK into town was looking for a retail shop for my long desired ASUS EEE PC 901. unfortunately the only shop (http://www.bhphotovideo.com) having those didn't stock the linux version which comes with some more HD space compared to the XP distribution.

additionally things got worse after i got a 120 $ ticket for wrong parking during my search for another store (and being disappointed at the "best buy") which dropped my mood even more... only after finding the following trainers my state got slowly back into it's happy-mode.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
~ Laurence Binyon

meanwhile i also found a solution for my original problem by ordering my mini notebook directly via amazon.com, eee ez :) on the negative side i still have to wait for monday but at least everything's back on track now so finally i can chill out at the pool

todays wakeboarding event

so for today another "team meeting" was announced and everybody got invited to join the wakeboarding event at the wasserpark aschheim. you might want to check out their website for some impressions on its facilities including beach club, restaurant and beach volleyball court. there is also a climbing garden on the same area.

unfortunately i still haven't packed all my stuff for tomorrows flight to NYC, so most probably i won't be able to join and show off my immense skills ... in order to not disappoint you I'll append some impressions from the last time we were there

for more pics check my colleague peter's flickr ...

Star Trails

The night sky is a beautiful thing no matter where you are..... Look at it and tell me that you do not just forget about every woe you have ever had. Gaze at the starry night and you forget about everything, get lost in the lights, and focus on the night sky. ...
Bob Hiteshew

A friend of mine from DOA pointed me into this awesome technique called 'Star Trails', which is using the rotation of the earth to create circles of stars in the sky when long exposed:

Besides of this picture he linked also an easy how-to:

As our planet Earth rotates around its axis every 24 hours, the star field that we see in our night sky rotates around the polar axis in a complete circle. Of course, in reality the star field is relatively stationary with respect to the Earth (over eons it is not, but in the context of our lifetime it is); it is the Earth that rotates about its own axis. Photographing this phenomenon is exciting and challenging.

In this article learn:

• all the information you need to take successful star trail photos.
• how to take these types of shots in a single exposure.
• techniques where one takes a series of short exposures rather than one long one.
• how to assemble the resulting images in Photoshop or some other application capable of automating this assembly process.

link

where to begin ...

welcome everyone to my new blog,

this time i am posting as kumbedu promoting photography, music and poetry. besides i will leave some general remarks on daily life, drop some funny stuff and see what else happens ...

for my first post i've found some long exposure shots taken in st. petersburg by some guy named Alexey Titarenko (via boingboing.net) which go very nicely with following quote, so let's get started:

There are corridors in the house of our being, leading into the hearts of others, and windows which open into Eternity, and we can hardly tell where our own being ends and another begins, or if there is any end to our being. AE