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詩 – (Shī) Vol. 1 & 2

Yesterday I published two new albums on Wikiloops:

詩 - (Shī) Vol. 1
詩 - (Shī) Vol. 2

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.

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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.

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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:

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Homeoffice week two, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Tuna the cat at closing time (Feierabend), Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

Thanks for viewing.

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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:

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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.

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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:

Screenshot from 2020-03-20 07-56-42

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.

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Almost spring

Coronavirus this, quarantine that, I’m just back from another short Sunday walk, and here are some photos I took on my way:

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Right in front of our door, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020
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At the neighbours’ house, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Look up!, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Our area – not yours, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Bird Island, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Photo session of the collie owners’ club?, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Bird Island, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Aschaffenburger Strasse, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Laubwald, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020

That was a nice walk, and as you can see the weather was also pretty good. As always you can click the images to see larger versions on Flickr where they are hosted – in fact there’s always the full resolution for printing postcards and so on.

Thanks for reading, and for viewing.

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Vitamin

After first remixing this track only for Shi and Russellish (he had some bass samples on it already), I found a nice remix from ivax which he also uploaded as a HD file, so I could add that as another track in my DAW. And then I grabbed my instrument, and out came this:

The list of musicians is now like this:

So as always, thanks to my friends from Wikiloops for all the fun, and thanks to you for listening.

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Take it slow (remix)

Another remix I just made, this time from BigDaddyCee and again from Shi:

As always, thanks to my friends at Wikiloops for all the fun, and thanks to you for listening.

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When the lights go out (remix)

Today after work I remixed one of my all-time favourite tracks on Wikiloops, from hurzel and Shi:

This one still gets me after all these years. A masterpiece from two of the finest musicians I’ve heard.

As always, thanks to my friends for all the fun – and thanks to you for listening.