I wanted to try using a tilt/shift lens for a long time. I don’t particularly love the miniature effect, but I really like what Gregory Heisler is doing to the focal plane by tilting and I thought shifting would be great for architecture. So the other day I grabbed an old 50mm f/1.9, a body cap, black molton and a heated paper clip. I used the paper clip to cut the body cap open and the glue (obviously) to glue it all together.
To be honest, I was a bit stumped when, after my first test shots, I realised that I had also created a macro lens by considerably increasing the focal length. Thus, this now is my tilt-shit-lens.
With roaring, rumbling and growling yesterday’s thunderstorm evidently scared away the last fragile remains of summer. It left behind a few white clouds over the Gerhard-Hanappi-Stadion which as well will soon cease to be.
My friend and colleague Doc Babel not only taught me rudimentary Spanish, he and his wife also provided me with a home in Munich during the last few years, which made many things easier than they easily could have been.
And now that it’s their turn to look for a new home, they pack some aluminum boxes bound for South America and thought that some decent head shots would make their new start easier. I was of course more than happy to provide that part of their luggage.... READ MORE
Old time friends Nic and Marcel (a.k.a. Kawentel of Kawentel&Lombeck and Carl of Club Carl) took the overnight to Vienna from Amsterdam and Osnabrück for my birthday.
Second time Hochschwab, second time no summit. This time better pictures, though.
In late May, I started in Präbichl and, through considerable amounts of snow, made my way up to the Sonnschienhütte where I had the dorm all to myself. Unfortunately, I had my eyes at the wrong place at the wrong time and so I fell and injured my finger. Thus, instead of summiting the Hochschwab the next day, I went down to Tragöß (via Grüner See) – and straight into hospital where the trip ended with an »Eintrittsaufforderung«. Luckily nothing serious came to light in Koje 1, but damn you Hochschwab, next time I do want a summit. Please.
Die Künstlerinnen und Künstler standen kurz vor dem unfreiwilligen Auszug aus Ihren Wohnungen und Studios in der Wiener Cumberlandstraße, als Marianne Vlaschits und Mirjam Schweiger “$chwanger” Schweiger mich am 4. Juli 2014 in ihre Ateliers einluden. Zu den Bildern…
Following Robert Seale’s advice, I was looking for a solution to batch rename photo files. After my last shoot I used digikam and while the results were as desired, it took a second or more per image, which I thought a bit long. After not finding a different suitable solution I asked the question on unix.stackexchange and was overwhelmed by two people’s in-depth answers. I learned a lot from both mikserv and Gilles and in the end settled with Gilles’ suggestion. I take zero credit for the solution, I don’t even understand parts of what is going on, but I amended it a little bit nonetheless and thought the extended version might help someone.*
Preliminaries
What I get when I come home is file names looking like this: _DSC1234.NEF. What I wanted instead was
date-shot in YYYYMMDD-format plus
a descriptive shoot-name plus
image-number
looking like this: 20140708_WeddingAdamAndEve_0001.NEF
There are a few issues with this:
ad 1. Date Shot: sometimes I can only copy and rename the files a few days after shooting, so the date should reflect the date the picture was taken, not the date it was copied. Getting date-shot from the file itself is difficult as there is no birth time recorded. The closest is mtime which is the time the file’s content has last been modified. However, creation date is stored in image file’s EXIF data.
ad 2: Name of Shoot: Ideally I wanted this to be a variable I could set as a parameter when calling the script.
ad 3. Number of Image: This should reflect the age of the image with the oldest one having the lowest number. The problem is that cameras usually restart numbering at 0000 once they hit 9999. So images n-9999 can potentially be older than 0000-n. I needed a solution that would cater for this special case.
The code
# original solution by @Gilles (http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/141138/)
# set base path and navigate to "basepath + parameter 1"
BASEPATH='/media/data/photo/';
cd $BASEPATH$1
# add "EXIF creation time" as prefix to original file names
exiv2 mv -r %Y%m%d-%H%M%S:basename: *.NEF
# Now we have files with names like 20140630-235958_DSC1234.NEF.
# final rename
i=10000
for x in *.NEF; do
i=$((i+1))
mv "$x" "${x%-*}_$2-${i#1}_Copyright-Jan-Soehlke.NEF"
done
Walkthrough
Line 4: Here we set our base path. We choose the highest directory ever useed to store pictures.
Line 5: Navigate to base path + parameter 1. If our script is called rename and the pictures are in /media/data/photo/weddings/adam+eve, then we call the script through
./rename weddings/adam+eve
Line 8: In a first iteration we add EXIF-creation time as a prefix to the original file names. We use exiv2 for this operation. -r is for rename and we use YYYYMMDD-hhmmss, which is %Y%m%d-%H%M%S in strftime(3), plus :basename: to keep the original filename after the time stamp.
Through creation time as a prefix we now sort files by age, even if the files would sort differently by name. This could happen if during a shoot we reach 9999 and the camera’s counter continues at 0000 or if we shot with two different cameras.
By also retaining the original file name for now, we make sure that in case there are multiple files with the same time stamp, they still have individual names. EXIF time’s finest unit is a second, so if we fire bursts of images (Nikon’s D4s for example shoots at 11 frames/second), we have multiple files with the same creation date and thus potentially 11 files with the same name.
Line 12: The counter variable i counts from 10000 and is used with the leading 1 digit stripped; this is a trick to get the leading zeros so that all counter values have the same number. If you want more (or less) than four digits, set i accordingly.
Line 15: ${x%-*} removes everything that follows the - character, in our case it is hours, minutes and seconds as well as the original filename. ${i#1} writes the new four digit file number.
$2 provides a second variable, which we use for the shoot name. In this case we want it to be WeddingAdamAndEve, so we call the script through
./rename weddings/adam+eve WeddingAdamAndEve
Finally, I added _Copyright-Jan-Soehlke. It not only reminds someone who downloads the file that it is indeed copyrighted, it also helps with SEO as my name is automatically associated with each image I upload.
Possible Problems
a) The original file names already have a - in place. In this case change the - in line 8 to something different (like _) and use the same character in the ${x%-*}-part in line 15 (in this case ${x%_*}, otherwise the script will not work as intended.
b) A burst of images reaches across the 9999/0000-mark. These specific files will not be in order after renaming – but they weren’t in order in the first place, so I have no idea how to tackle this rare scenario other than by setting your camera’s counter to reset to 0000 after each formatting.
c) Your files do not contain EXIF data. In this case see mikeserv’s solution which uses a different angle of attack and is thoroughly and well explained.
___________________________
* Stackexchange uses the CC-BY-SA license, so all the code in this example is naturally also CC-BY-SA.
Last year in March I shot a portrait of Marianne Vlaschits for »Project 12 pt. II«, so we thought we’d do another one for the first anniversary. My original plan was to recreate her neon-pictures from the Blue Crystal Fire-series (see here), but what can I say? I completely and utterly failed. From white cardboard and stuff lying around on location I built what I deemed to be perfect neon light replacements, yet the effect was completely different at best and not at all visible most of the time.
Once again I learned that photography sometimes is like cooking: when you want to try something exciting for the first time, don’t do it in the presence of important guests. But I also learned that in Marianne’s presence, failing means that in the end it still is going to be an awesome afternoon resulting in pictures we both like – good to work with a professional. And just like Beckett writes: »Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.«
I am also happy about the three derivative works that came from the shoot: a portrait of the photographer by Marianne (seen in pictures 4 + 5); a Feiyue »Vlaschits Edition« by me (from slipping on paint) and »Painting the Artist« by Hyo Lee.
And despite my clumsiness (that not only led to Feiyue »Vlaschits« but also saw a falling SB 800 just miss Marianne’s head), the Comme des Garçons-robe Marianne’s neighbour and fashion designer Thomas van der Jeught gave us in his infinite trust stayed clean.
Next Monday (23.6.2014) at the Archiv für Gegenwart (Mühlfeldgasse 5, 1020 Wien) you have the opportunity to see Marianne Vlaschits – who by the way is also responsible for the highly acclaimed cover art of Hercules and Love Affair’s latest album The Feast of the Broken Heart.
I recently had an issue with a newspaper using one of my images without permission (see here). When I tried to determine how much I could/should charge, I discovered a few lists and thanks to Manuela Schwendener, who sent several more yesterday, I now have these for future reference:
Several weeks ago I learned that Austrian newspaper Niederösterreichische Nachrichten without permission had printed a portrait I took of painter Christian Bazant-Hegemark – my first real copyright infringement case.
I pondered and wondered what to do – since I did not yet start a formal business as a photographer, I did not know whether or not I could just bill them – and if so: how much? Also, I feared the conundrum that would possibly result from it regarding my taxes: billing would once again give me a »world income«, additionally complicating matters by being employed as a researcher in Germany plus effectively becoming a self employed photographer in Austria. I figured I needed a lawyer, yet despite soon learning that the Rechtsanwaltskammer is offering free first advice, I did not find (= make) the time going there.
Then I read »Would You Die For The Photo?« by Chase Jarvis (warning: graphic images), it led me to war photographer James Nachtwey’s talk at TED where he mentions working with Médecins Sans Frontières. Their work and courage impress me a lot. I also remembered that whenever a corporation uses a Tom Waits song for advertising, he sues them to then donate all the money he receives.
I thought I should try the same thing (if on a much smaller scale) and posted a registered letter a week ago, requesting a donation of EUR 150,– to MSF in my name. And voilà, today I receive this:
According to MSF, 150 EUR buy food for 15 malnourished children for two weeks or treatment for 300 children with pneumonia or 6 weeks basic medical services for 400 refugees. Donations can be made here.
In March »Office« was the topic for our second portrait. We went scouting at Caritas Mall »Carla« (first three images). Thanks to the generosity of the employees there, we obtained permission to shoot there during the hour before they opened the doors to the masses.
Three days later, we showed up with enthusiasm, a general idea of what to shoot, loads of gear and little time. Once more: »don’t let good light ruin your picture«. When there is no time, one really only has two options: either everything needs to be checked and nailed down before the shoot or one has to KISS (keep it simple, stupid). Otherwise much of the positive energy is eaten by all the wrong things (an SB800 under a vow of silence for instance). Consequently, we picked a test shot as the final picture from when we were both still relaxed and hadn’t set up the light.
Ian Ruhter made his own camera – by mounting a lens to the rear end of a truck. What impressed me most is how, despite the scale of his instrument, it is so little about the gear and so much about the process. Everybody is excited to be part of the shoot and thus his alchemy reaches far beyond the outdated collodion-process.
This video introduces him:
Here you can see him work at his »American Dream« series:
In this clip about Madison (who was born weighing only 800g) he also uses his »time machine« for film:
In January I went to Hanover. While my wife attended a conference, I took care of our daughter and walked around quite a bit, morning to night. I grew up in the area and always thought of Hanover as by far the ugliest potato in the bag of post-war architecture – Max Goldt once claimed that »every German city had something of Hanover«. The city suffered a lot from bombings and after the war people quickly rebuilt it, aesthetics clearly towards the end on the list of their priorities. Yet, this time I was surprised to discover some really pretty areas, both pre- and post-war. Here are a couple of b/w shots of pretty Hanover by night:
Last Wednesday the »Long Shadow of Chernobyl« exhibition opened at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. During several visits to Chernobyl, National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig documented the people, the remains of the plant and life in the exclusion zone (see a short video here and more content here).
Thanks to the generosity of NHM’s communication department, I was lucky enough to receive an invitation for the opening function/book presentation last Tuesday. Apart from recommending to go and see the exhibition (until September) I took away some food for thought from the opening talks.
Constructive Overlapping
Christian Köberl, the museum’s director, explained how the Natural History Museum – an institution that is widely associated with stuffed animals and a vast collection of rocks – came to host an exhibition covering a problem that is clearly man-made. He linked it to two other exhibitions currently on display: Trading in Death – the Final Mass Extinction? has the commercial interest and its impact on nature as a common denominator. Experiment Life – Gabonionta overlaps as it shows the oldest complex life forms known to man, which share the time and the place (Gabon, 2.1 billion years ago) of a highly above average activity in natural nuclear chain reactions similar to the counterparts in man-made reactors nowadays. Whether there is a causal link to the advent of the first complex, colonial organisms is unclear but interesting.
The museum can shape the context and thus shape perception. By putting three different, seemingly unrelated temporal exhibitions on at the same time, a very constructive overlapping is created – interferences come into being simply through putting three seemingly unrelated things next to each other.
The power of a book
Lois Lammerhuber (of the book’s publisher Edition Lammerhuber) recounted the media reception. Despite the lack of a Chernobyl jubilee, all the important news outlets had already covered the publication and exhibition. When he asked German state TV, who filmed for two hours in the exhibition, why they were doing it, they answered: »Weil ein Buch erscheint« (»because a book is being published«, where the German »erscheinen« can both refer to an »appearance« as well as an »epiphany«). Lammerhuber was visibly impressed by how he, in letting a book appear, can force something onto the agenda of a world that would otherwise not have taken notice at that point in time.
As the two preconditions he identified Ludwig’s willingness to commit to such a long term project and his capability to make something visible.
Making a difference
Gerd Ludwig gave a few insights into the way he works. Even though the subject of his images is suffering and destruction, the are aesthetically pleasing. Aesthetics to him is the grammar of photography.
He views the fact that he does not have to work under a tight time constraint as his biggest privilege because it means that he can talk first and then take the pictures. The trust he establishes through the conversations greatly helps reduce the momentary amplification of suffering he inevitably causes by taking a picture.
He finished by telling a story from Sicily: one night an enormous number of starfish were washed ashore. In the morning, when the sun rose, they started to dry out and die. The children of the village noticed and started carrying them back to the water. An older man from the village stood and watched and said: »you can’t save them all, your enterprise is futile – the little you can do doesn’t make a difference«. One child, holding up a single starfish, replied: »And yet for this one, it does make a difference«. Ludwig wants to be this child always.
Access to our World
Finally, the section chief Michael P. Franz closed the circle Christian Koeberl established by opening the exhibition with a Gottfried Boehm quote: an image, he says, pre-formulates the access to our world.
Through a few very lucky coincidences I received a Thinkpad x200s a few days ago and set it up with Crunchbang which must have been the most straightforward os-installation ever. Two Three Four things though:
Rawtherapee
A slightly outdated version is in debian’s repositories, but if you want a newer one, go to »Kbyte’s Hideout«. Download .deb package and dpkg -i rawtherapee_<xxx>.deb
If there are unsolved dependencies: apt-get install -f and then dpkg -i rawtherapee_<xxx>.deb
Picasa
Well.
It still is the most straightforward programme I know for editing, simple retouches and exporting smaller sizes. I’m not happy with wine, I’m not happy with a google tool, but I cannot and cannot find an alternative (see here). Hence:
before following the webupd8 tutorial I needed
apt-get install libwine-cms:i386
After installation, use
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Google/Picasa3 && wine Picasa3.exe
to launch it.
If you would then create a script called »picasa« somewhere, say in ~/scripts containing the following:
#!/bin/bash
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Google/Picasa3 &amp;&amp; wine Picasa3.exe
exit 0
Picasa can then be launched from command-line with a simple »picasa« after a final
sudo ln -s ~/scripts/picasa /usr/bin/picasa
Clock
To change the format from Hour:Minute open ~/.config/tint2/tint2rc and consult strftime-man to change to your liking.
Change Key Bindings
Keyboard shortcuts can be changed in ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml
After saving, go to Openbox menu > Preferences > Openbox Config > Reconfigure. (Thanks, MysteryMember)
A few days ago I finally made it into the Postsparkasse (Otto Wagner finished the Savings Bank in 1906). The main hall has both a glass floor and a glass ceiling and the light really is breathtaking.
After almost eight years using (and helping develop) Polypager, a very versatile and friendly content management system, and after three years of having Zenphoto manage my pictures, I finally decided I had to retire both and move to a different system altogether: a single one for text and images that would also treat my mobile visitors better (a third of my total traffic).
Polypager’s strength clearly was in handling the database – it has foreign key capability and without the faintest complaint, Polly will display any mysql-database it is being fed. However, it was never built with serving images as a central part in mind. There is a gallery plugin in place, but my desires soon surpassed the capabilities.
Zenphoto in turn is fantastic in handling text and images (and video by the way, which surprisingly posed the biggest hurdle in wordpress – the other was 301, but in the end Tony McCreath’s redirect generator helped). The problem with zenphoto is more an aesthetic one as the available skins are limited and don’t really meet my expectations. The one I hacked together unfortunately »grew organically« over the years until recently it gracefully started falling apart.
Thus, today I make the move to WordPress and while I am at ease parting from Zenphoto, leaving Polly behind really hurts. So, thanks Nic for developing it and having me aboard, because in the process, I learned many a thing about distinguishing sensible feature requests from the other ones, about version management using svn and git, and also, in 2008, about how it feels to be at the receiving end of a proper hack.
The (rather late) October portrait for »Project 12« was taken in January and finally edited only a few days ago. It is of Julia, who is not only a close friend, proper hiking buddy and HR professional but – and this points to the root of the lag – godmother to my daughter, who was born in November. Julia recently moved into a new flat and redecorated it, so we decided it was an suitable setting.
On new year’s eve she at one point donned a turban, looked stunning and someone took with a camera phone – and as we had the gear in place anyway we thought it was worth recreating the opportunity. At the end of our 5 hour session we were both pretty happy but also pretty knackered (and one of us still needed a haircut – desperately).
Finally the German Bundestag made a move and eleven years and three governments after the United Nation Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) was signed by Germany, it can now finally be ratified. Until now it had only been illegal to buy the vote of a member of parliament, other forms of corrupting them were fair game, which made it impossible for Germany to ratify the UNCAC – and put the country in very shady company:
World map with United Nations Convention against Corruption ratifiers in green and signatories in orange (as of Feb 2014). Source: en.wikipedia.org – CC BY-SA 3.0
As the vote was paired with that one the considerable raise the MPs allowed themselves, I have the impression it somehow did not receive that much media coverage:
Transparency International has some details and they also explain, why the law still has a very narrow definition of bribery (in English)
In 2014 »Project 12« gets a slightly different spin and is now »Project 12R«. The plan is to take 12 pictures of Rosina. Starting in February, we shoot one photo a month that derives its theme from the events of her preceding weeks.
The first installment involved a poster for a party that was stuck onto many distribution boxes. We narrowed it down to two location options that were close to each other: one spacious and quiet, the other at a busy tram stop in the middle of an equally busy crossroads. We decided to opt against comfort and for better looks, which unfortunately meant I had to shoot from the tracks with trains rattling in from three different directions by the minute. Thus, I was constantly shifting my light and tripod and Daniel, who was kind enough to act as assistant, not only patiently braved wind and coldness but in addition held on to the contraption for the black background with cars whooshing past very close by – thanks a lot Daniel!
In September I photographed my friend Rosina for »Project 12«. It was a new experience in a couple of senses:
First of all, Rosina is a designer by profession and it was as interesting as instructive to take a picture of someone who is both meticulous and knowledgeable when it comes to composition, colours, set design and furniture. I enjoyed it tremendously as it allowed me to concentrate on the lighting.
Secondly, it was the first time I shot tethered, which meant we continuously discussed all changes, thus the final images really feel like a joint effort.
And finally (probably also a result from second), the approach was very methodical. Usually I move around quite a bit while shooting, but this time we first looked for a frame that worked, then nailed the tripod to the floor. Then moved furniture in and out, tried a bunch of clothes to match the environment etc. So in the end, we settled with just two shots: her favourite (first) and mine (second).
I spent New Year’s Eve with magician, architect and fellow photographer Sven Wuttej. Going through his images from the last day at Wien Südbahnhof reminded me of the pictures I took of the monumental old landmark when I still lived right across the road from the train station. Somehow I quite liked the architecture, and was hence rather sad to see it go. So here are a couple of images from the transition of the hood: »Wien Süd« to »Quartier Belvedere«.
The first few pictures, where the train station (if already partly demolished) is still busy are from August 2009. The ones of the gutted building I took in February 2010 and the last two, where nothing remains of the old glory, are from September 2010 (you can see the very last one with just a flat stretch of sand where the station once was in full size).
Terence Eden has an article on the »Nascar Proposal«. The proposal that politicians should wear logos of who paid them in order to make lobbyism more transparent is not new, but Terence has gathered a couple of links to interesting resources and also makes an interesting suggestion: Sure, the probability that we turn politicians into real human Nascars is very low, but we have the potential of open data that could easily be coupled with some programming and a little graphic design skills. The resulting visualidation could at least make it very easy to understand the at times very complex linkages of politics and private sector.
My ubuntu 12.04 computer cannot see my Android 4.1.2 phone, instead I must install go-mtpfs and control it via command line. Thankfully, Andrew over at webupd8 provides all the necessary tools (all credit goes to him, for long version see there):
When I last photographed my friend Theresa, she had just secured her first job after graduation. A year later, the resourceful health and safety professional sticks to the good advice my friend Rob once expressed: the best time looking for a job is when you have one.
Since a picture is mandatory for almost all job applications in Austria, we put my spacious living room to good use one last time before I had to move out and shot some formal portraits. Luckily there’s also one to sneak into »Project 12«. This, that and the relocation got into the way, so it took me way too long before I managed to get round to editing (and seeing the barber).
My good friend and physiotherapist Valentin Rosegger is about to open his own practice and asked me to provide some visuals.
I gladly obliged, because in the past I received countless hours of Valentin’s skilled treatment and profound advice. Creating the images for his information material was a great way to repay the services (and I could also sneak in my – late – August portrait for »Project 12«).
If you are looking for a thorough physiotherapist, I really recommend him. He is setting up shop at Lindengasse 27 in 1070 Vienna and offers very work-compatible times. For an appointment dial +43 699 17161420.
Big thanks to Valentin Rosegger’s colleague Julian Gullner, who played the patient in a manner that can only be described as patiently. It involved holding a very strenuous position for a very long time (see above), neither minding Valentin (»straighten the back Julian, involve the abs a little more«) nor me (»great, stay just like this, only a few more shots, almost done«).
Since the beginning of the year Anke, who teaches German Literature at Vienna University, and me tried to put an idea for a portrait into practice, which for this, that and the other reason never quite happened.
So there was a vacancy in »project 12« since at least the beginning of 2013 – when, by the end of May, somehow several things just fell into place: a friend of ours gave Anke a bunch of hefty peonies in a colour she absolutely adored and that coincidentally also matched a dress in her wardrobe.
Furthermore, I had just bought her a used mini trampolin (after I had a go it unfortunately is now defunct) that coincidentally matched her urge to jump with joy after a streak of successful undertakings. And lastly, I had just thought up a contraption for a home grown diy beauty dish which I really wanted to try. And so it went and I am extremely happy about my wife finally being part of my project, too.
To escape the heat, we recently took refuge to the old family cabin in the German forests. We started by a brief stay in Munich and concluded with a huge cake in Ratisbon.
Gregg Fields from Harvard’s Lab writes on the prosecution of Goldman Sachs’ Fabrice Tourre. When the housing bubble burst, many lost a lot and few earned obscenely much through a security called ABACUS 2007-AC1 which Tourre helped engineer. At the time, he was a mere foot soldier and senior management had to and did approve everything. Fields asks, why the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) keeps going after the little fish and lets their fishmasters get of the hook rather easily.
An unrelated article over at Techdirt asks what happened to Obamas election campaign promise to protect whistlblowers. The interesting bit from Obama’s ethics agenda read
=&0=&: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process. change.gov: Ethics Agenda
Funny, innit?
There is evidence that about 90 percent of all new drugs approved by the FDA over the past 30 years are little or no more effective for patients than existing drugs.
Every week, about 2400 excess deaths occur in the United States among people taking properly prescribed drugs to be healthier.
Prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death.
There is systematic, quantitative evidence that since the industry started making large contributions to the FDA for reviewing its drugs, the FDA has sped up the review process with the result that drugs approved are significantly more likely to cause serious harm, hospitalizations, and deaths.
In February this year, I met up with author Karin Peschka (whose story »Watschenmann« recently won the Wartholz-Literaturpreis) to discuss a portrait. We agreed to wait for spring and in mid May I took the Lilo to Eferding, where we were lucky enough to experience some of the rare sunny moments this year. After a lovely family lunch in a beautiful garden, we went over to the former family run restaurant and explored the house from top to bottom.
The building’s arresting atmosphere provided photographic opportunities galore, so we tried to realise a few, starting in the attic, working our way down through the kitchen into the basement and back up into the »green room« (where I also took the May-portrait for »Project 12«).
I recently got my hands on a shiny eee-PC for surprisingly little money. As I am travelling a fair bit at the moment, the opportunity was more than welcome. Now, mobility comes at a price and the price is called »multiple instances of files«. When the files in question are your PhD, it has the potential for a fantastic nightmare. Most people use dropbox to tackle this, but for one reason and another, I neither want to use that, nor ubuntu one. I have owncloud [see here], and after resolving some issues, the sync client works, but I still would like to keep more data in tune then I could possibly channel through my shared hosting plan. Unison (via ssh) seems the way to go.
One issue: normally your device gets an IP address automatically from your router. Unison settings depend on the IP address (for ssh connection), so if the IP address changes, Unison gets confused. Thus, we want a static IP address on the remote machine. Johnathan Hobson’s »Networking Tips and Tricks« are a good start. The settings that finally worked for me I got via chili555’s post on ubuntuforums. Using Netman’s GUI, I set:
Method: Manual
Address: 192.168.0.9
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers: 8.8.8.8, 192.168.0.1
Search domains: –
I understand little, but what I do understand is this:
»address« needs to be outside the router’s scope. Mine is configured to start at 10, so I picked 9.
»gateway« simply seems to be the router’s ip-address
»DNS-Servers«: no clue why 8.8.8.8, the other again seems to be router’s ip address
You can easily determine the router’s ip-address and the scope for auto DHCP from the router’s admin interface.
The library of the Viennese Arbeiterkammer (Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour) is quiet, well stocked, has a sensible policy on water in the reading room and comes with a garden, so on most days this is where I work – and so does Mirko. He is an architect and writes his Ph.D. on Peter Eisenman and Rem Kohlhaas (which is a a funny coincidence because I am writing on Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas). Most of the time we share the better parts of our days and in the past year we went from being just library-buddies to being lunch-buddies, too.
A while back I had made a mental note about a lovely spot in the Arbeiterkammer lobby/waiting area and had hoped I could use it for a portrait one day. With the extraordinary architecture (by NMPB-Architekten) surrounding it, what better subject could there be than an architect who even happens to spend most of his working hours in that very building? So for my April portrait for Project 12 I am grateful that, despite his super busy week, Mirko was willing to sit in the gorgeous sunset light for me.
I am also very grateful to Roman Berka of the Arbeiterkammer Directorate, as he didn’t hesitate for a second when I asked for permission to shoot at that wonderful place. A big thank you also to the porter for his relaxed attitude during the shooting.
Certain people keep saying that apparently asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission. Not only was the opposite true here but while asking for permission, I also learned something: Mr Berka told me that Barbara Kruger’s »Questions« was due to be taken down at the beginning of May. This meant that a) I wasn’t going to run into unexpected construction work and b) I could do the shooting when the opportunity was still there to incorporate one of her pieces which is a very apt motto for every Ph.D. student: »Is work ever done?«
Talking to Christian about creativity, inspiration, style, artistic language (and Austrian unincorporated association law) made me remember I still had shots from his studio sitting on my hard drive. palette
At the moment, medical practitioners in Germany can only be corrupt when employed by someone else. As long as they practice on their own, German law to date knows no way of finding them corrupt – even if pharmaceutical companies give something in exchange for the practioniners prescribing certain medication.
Re-reading Light – Science and Magic and coming through the glass department, I thought I’d give bright field and dark field a try. I picked non-coloured bottles with different contents (brownish, clear, air) and am quite pleased with the bright field result. Dark field was an utter fail due to several reasons, two being a) lack of proper dark material and b) bottles having stuff on them like labels and print and me being unable to remedy that.
So here’s my Austrian-Scottish-Swedish bright field trinity:
A week or so ago Christian Bazant-Hegemark said he had an idea for a picture involving himself, a children’s trike and one of his paintings. Was I interested in helping him shoot it? Of course I was – he is very easy in front of my camera and I knew it was going to be fun.
He wanted to combine a photo of himself with a painting he is currently working on. The painting shows a boy on a children’s tricycle and my job was to place Christian so that his position would resemble the trike-boy’s as much as possible and at the same time keep the background relatively easy to edit out.
In the words of Douglas Reynholm: I am no Truman Capote when it comes to Photoshop and I am excited about what Christian is going to do with it, but what I pictured while shooting was something like this:
It goes without saying that Christian riding an imaginary tricycle whilst resting his feet on a broom and sitting on a bar stool that was itself placed on a table was also calling for a more serious portrait.
When I am out and about I usually don’t take the DSLR but use an old Fuji Finepix. It accompanied me to the summit of quite a few mountains, to the beaches of several seas and preserved the memory of the odd pique-nique, too. The wear is starting to show and it is nor ever was perfect, but as the second worst pictures are the ones never taken, she’ll do. The worst are of course the ones taken and then lost because some Northumbrian bog-pixie steals the camera (which was the fate of the Samsung I used before, hence this one is kept on a leash).
I wanted to try a light-tentish setup for a while and thought the battered old piece would make an appropriate subject – and it also gave me a chance to practice with my old 100mm ƒ/2.8 that unfortunately lacks the autofocus.
Ich muß […] bekennen […] / daß die übermäßige Zeitungs-Begierde / eine dermaßen schädliche Kranckheit sey / welche durch ihren Mißbrauch dem gemeinen Wesen viel Schaden bringet. […] Es ist nichts gewöhnlicheres / als daß die Bauren in der Schencke ein Collegium curiosum über die ordentlichen Post-Zeitungen halten / und durch den capabelesten aus ihrem Mittel selbige buchstabiren lassen / wenn man sie aber hernach […] fragen solte / was sie daraus verstanden / so würde es in nichts anders bestehen / als daß es weit rathsamer vor sie gewesen wäre / sie hätten […] mit dem Holtz-Axt an einem guten Eich Baume auf den Hieb gefochten / als daß sie die edele Zeit mit solchen Dingen verderben.
Philip Balthasar Sinold, gen. von Schütz. In »Das Curieuse Caffee-Haus zu Venedig« (1698).
If you use Kile as LaTeX editor and if you find yourself typing the same code all over again – like a specific table environment, or a slide environment in beamer or whatever, why not create your own user tag and assign a custom shortcut? You can even decide where the cursor should be placed and what should happen in case text is selected while pressing your shortcut.
Shortly before Christmas I visited Alex, who is a metalworker. He kindly paused building a motorcycle to turn my old cymbal boom stand into a light stand. I took the opportunity to take some welding and grinding pictures of him, his friend Lippo and his little apprentice.
At this occasion I also completed my »Project 12«: Alex is my final portrait for 2012 (with Lippo adding a nice touch through sending some flying sparks up and down the room).
Motherboard has an insightful article on the history and future of Diaspora (an open source, distributed alternative to Facebook). The article is very long and alongside the Diaspora-narrative there are several other issues it focuses on. One of them deals with data mining, which – with Facebook as a regular dinner table subject – is touched upon frequently around here.
The argument I hear most often when it comes to privacy issues is »I can’t see how this bit of information could possibly be vital or interesting to a third party«. The thing with data mining is of course the three-letter-word above »argument« lacks: now.
Sooner or later someone might (or might not) come along who can see a relevance, even long after the information is in the open. And often it is not the data in itself that turns out to be explosive, but a new way in which it is connected to other harmless data. Or a new place it’s brought to.
Here’s one fun example from the Diaspora-article:
Last week, the Financial Times reported that a newly uncovered deal between Facebook and the data firm Datalogix allows the site to track whether ads seen on Facebook lead users to buy those products in stores, which is highly attractive intelligence for advertisers. (Datalogix does this by buying consumer loyalty data from retailers, and tracks in-store purchases by matching email addresses in its database to email accounts used to set up Facebook profiles, along with other account registration information.)
The future implications of the email address mix-and-match is not fully clear yet (although for a start I think it’s of nobody’s business what I buy where). But there are other examples where the consequences are very clear. For instance someone disclosed his credit card number to both Apple and Amazon. Ultimately this led to the destruction of his digital life – email account takeover, twitter account takeover, phone wiped clean, computers wiped clean: proudly brought to you by small-scale data mining with a pinch of social engineering thrown in:
Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information — a partial credit card number — that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification.
And finally, my historian-friend’s favourite – and at the same time the most ghastly – data mining example of them all is how the 1933 census in Germany was later used to organise the deportation of Jews:
But Jews could not hide from millions of punch cards thudding through Hollerith machines, comparing names across generations, address changes across regions, family trees and personal data across unending registries. It did not matter that the required forms or questionnaires were filled in by leaking pens and barely sharpened pencils, only that they were later tabulated and sorted by IBM’s precision technology.
Update 4 Aug 2013: I recently learned about the Rosa Liste (pink list). This list was kept by the German empire and subsequently the Republic of Weimar to monitor male homosexuals. In 1933 the list fell into the hands of the new government which used it to go straight from monitor to murder. Case in Point: you never know what the meaning of any given datum is going to be in the future.
Since 12.04 my thinkpad (T60) regularly shuts down due to heat. I don’t like it and I am afraid of damage – to hard drives or to the system.
The problem is described in many places and many different fixes, remedies and work arounds exist. Most of them lack proper documentation, so I am reluctant to try them. Even thinkfan, which is quite popular, scares me more than it helps.
Here is a collection of relevant information I found:
Wall Street’s Corruption Currents turns two on Wednesday. As a way of celebration, they nominated the top 10 corruption related jail sentences. The winners are:
