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