News from Lizy

This is from yesterday after work (between about 1700 to 1900 CEST), and what I wrote in Wikiloops about the song is this:

“Fell in love with this beautiful piece from Phil and from SilverOne at first hearing, so I decided to add a bit of a bottom end with my fretless to it. Also doubled the main melody. Thanks for this cool jam my friends, that was fun! smile Hope you like it…”

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-188673.php

So thanks to Filo974 and to SilverOne for the incredible music, and thanks to you for listening. Hope you liked it as much as I did when playing onto it.

As always, thanks for reading, and for listening. Come and join us at Wikiloops to make some more nice music.

Some impressions from an early Sunday morning walk, end of April, 2020

I woke up early this morning, and seeing the nice and beautiful sunlight being still at a low angle, I grabbed my camera with a 20mm fixed focal length lens on it, and went for a walk.

I mostly followed our small creek which flows through the North of our small village, we call that creek “Gundbach”. So here are some of the photos I took along the way:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820129263/
Gundbach, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820984457/
Gundbach, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820675431/
Gundbachwiesen, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820676351/
Gundbach, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820677346/
Gundbach, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820678251/
Neue Brücke, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

I crossed the creek via this newly built bridge to take a slightly alternative route back, not through the wood but more through the village:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820679101/
Sportplatz, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820679626/
Feuerwehr, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

After passing the football fields and the local voluntary firefighters’ building, I went around one of our Kindergärten which has very nice and artful graffitis on its back walls:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820135473/
Graffiti, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820990662/
Graffiti, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820681766/
Graffiti, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

And like in the sports arenas, the staff is missing their kids – here they say so:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820992307/
Wir vermissen Euch alle sehr!, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

And one of the last photos I took on my walk was one of a really beautiful tree in front of the local cemetery:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49820683361/
Friedhof, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

I hope you liked that short virtual walk together with me. As always, thank you for reading, and for viewing.

A little something that we need…

I was just congratulating another fellow Wikiloops musician for another one of his nice template tracks when I saw this little box beside his track:

And when clicking that blue hyperlink in it, it took me to the Wikiloops Knowledge base where this is explained in a bit more detailed way:

So yes, besides really contributing to the project as a whole (and as such, to us all), this what’s asked here is cost-free and still means a lot to some of us – so please if you like something, give the musicians kind of a nod, and a thumbs up. Kindness doesn’t cost you anything else than that 🙂

And if you can, then please support Wikiloops. It’s all which some of us have in these times of being locked to our homes…

Thank you 🙂

Yes, you may

Richard just made this nice poster for us all to share with you:

So that should explain it, hm? So head over to Wikiloops and become a member to download some music or to even join us in creating some, which would be awesome.

Very much looking forward to hearing *you* in there!

And stay safe and healthy 🙂 As always, thanks for viewing and for reading.

詩 – (Shī) Vol. 1 & 2

Yesterday I published two new albums on Wikiloops:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49695907743/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49696443481/

And while a click on these images will lead you to Flickr where the images are hosted, you can find links to the albums in my widgets as always.

Each of these two albums contain 13 songs sung by Shi, and the last 5 on the second album weren’t published on other ones before, so these are new.

Thanks to Shi and to all the musicians, and thanks to Wikiloops as well. Hope you like these.

The Gimp has some incredible fonts

I was looking for some free kanji-like vector graphics to make an album cover with just using one Chinese character, namely 詩.

Copied one out of a Youtube video, but then I stopped and thought “hmmm, cannot do this, at least not without asking…” – so I asked.

To just have something to do I decided to make a template for Wikiloops album cover images (size 465×456) in The Gimp, and once inside that program I looked into the fonts, and bingo! – there was everything (and more) which I wanted and needed for my next project. Have a look:

The Chinese character 詩 which means ‘poetry’ and also ‘song’ in English, size 220px

Awesome, isn’t it? Who knew that I had all the vector graphics I needed! So I wrote another email to the friendly calligrapher on Youtube and told him/them that he/they could ignore my last message, but feel free to be invited to Wikiloops in case they also make music like we do… oh, and their character was in simplified Chinese, while this one here is traditional.

I’m happy. Best things in life are free…

And as always, thanks for reading.

My first day of the second week of homeoffice

I made photos, one shortly after I began to work at home, the other shortly after finishing work. Looks like this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49690604728/
Homeoffice week two, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
7e4_3232164-tuna-feierabend
Tuna the cat at closing time (Feierabend), Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

Thanks for viewing.

What to do in times of a pandemia

Well I can hardly give any tips of what best to do in a “lockdown” kind of situation, when you can’t or at least shouldn’t really leave the house. I can only tell you what we’re doing:

  • we went shopping of Friday after my work already, so we were through with that early on. It also helps if you enter the supermarkets as a single person, not with a whole family. Better for the distances we should keep…
  • reading is always good – my current favourite fiction author is Haruki Murakami as you might know if you’re reading this blog once in a while
  • listening to music and/or watching TV is what I’ll guess what most people would do, and of course we’re also doing that. Long running series like “Doctor Who” are good tips if you like that
  • If you’re a computer geek, get involved into some free and open source project – write some code or documentation, or share some tips via an own blog or Youtube or whatever
  • We’re the lucky ones, at least Zuleikha and me – we play instruments. Plus we are both members of Wikiloops where you can play with other musicians from all around the globe for free if you like. All you need is some way to get your instrument or voice into a computer, which is usually done with some kind of audio interface – see here for some examples. And Wikiloops just lifted its time restrictions, so even as a new user you can now start down- and uploading at once, without having to wait (or to pay).
  • If you are creative in another field – I consider myself a portrait photographer for instance – then do this at home as well. Take photos of your family, or in case you’re alone, take self portraits. There’s always something new to learn, and if it’s only about lighting.

Other than that I haven’t done much this weekend, in fact I wasn’t even out of the house except to feed the birds:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49686205298/
Bird food, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

As I’ve read, the rate of new infections with SARS-CV2 aka the Corona virus is slowing down here in Germany. So maybe (and hopefully) it helps if everyone is staying at home or at least keeping a safe distance. And while it’s still way too early to speak of or to hope for a trend, we can still carry on and wait this out, shall we?

Be safe. Stay healthy. And thank you for reading.

Working from home

I’m sitting at our dining room table with my notebook from work, preparing for the last day of the first week of working at home. Still a bit early (as usual), so I’ve turned on the Wikiloops One World Radio, which looks like this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49678947387/

As you can probably see you don’t have to have an account or being logged in to listen to this, so go and have a listen if you like – it’s nice and it’s free.

I was productive this week, without having all of the colleagues around me, so as I thought (or knew) I can concentrate on work much better in silence and in solitude – but it’s still something else, this. Unreal somehow, the thought that this might go on for weeks or even months.

And holidays? Hm. Strange thought.

Ok, off to work right now. Take care, be safe, and stay healthy everyone. Thanks for reading.

Improvised “home office”

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49665041151/
Improvised “home office” – I’m one of the lucky ones who can work from home…

Thanks for viewing. And stay safe and healthy.