Year: 2015

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The Tools and Toys 2015 list

The staff over at Tools and Toys just posted their list of some favourite things they’ve found or bought in 2015. Some of that stuff is expensive, but it’s still a worthwhile read. And at the bottom of their article, I’ve found their test of Mitchie’s 20mm/1.7 Panasonic lens which I have on one of my cameras since a while. Took this one of our cat today using it:

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Tuna the cat – full, nice, and warm

In fact what they tested is the version 2 of the Panasonic Lumix 20mm/1.7 lens, and they also have tests of some other lenses we have, like the Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4, and the Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8.

This end of the year period is always the time when lots of people make such lists, and LensRentals is no exception. Their list of most rented and highest rated new stuff is even a bit more on the expensive side, since many people just rent what they can’t afford (or don’t need so often that buying the stuff would calculate right).

Hoping that this might be useful for someone, as always, thanks for reading.

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Tuna the cat, sceptical

Took this today with my compact flash on the camera, but turned back- and upwards with using the table cloth as a reflector. Tuna looked sceptical – maybe she knew that I would underexpose it by about one and a half stop?

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Tuna the cat, sceptical

Thanks for viewing.

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The stories we tell ourselves

I’ve been reading a lot lately – well, ‘a lot’ is clearly overstated, but at least I’m reading books again. Real books, no virtual electronic files, because like pictures need to be hung onto walls, books have to be printed and bound.

It all started with a movie tho, and the one which touched me most this (almost passed) year was the Wachowskis’ Cloud Atlas. I found it totally fascinating that they managed to portrait the characters and the general idea (which is based on Nietzsche’s eternal return) so clearly and precisely in only a few hours. This deep introduction into a story’s characters is nowadays far more easy for long-running series like Lost, and even in the past good and long stories like Treasure Island, or even David Balfour needed long movies in 4 or more parts. Cloud Atlas (the movie) manages that in 172 minutes.

But I was starting about books, and instead of reading Cloud Atlas (the book), I decided to start with the first of David Mitchell’s novels, Ghostwritten (German book title is Chaos).

No, I won’t describe it here, but what a book it is! A chain of short stories which all are connected like in chaos theory (where a butterfly’s wings can produce a storm elsewhere). Highly recommended.

And from yesterday to today I was reading Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Woods (German book title is Naokos Lächeln).

And while I also won’t write much about it here, it’s some coming-of-age story like Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, together with a good amount of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and a good part of Franz Kafka in it. A bit sad, but also highly recommended.

So – repetitions if you like to describe these stories that way. But aren’t all the stories we tell each others repetitions of the same old themes, re-written to explain them to the next generations? These stories, told and re-told from generation to generation are maybe as old as mankind itself (and Tom Hanks shows that very well in the beginning and end of Cloud Atlas (the movie)).

So if you have some spare time at this year’s end, go and have a look at some photos. Real photos hung onto real walls. And lose yourself into them – seeing them online isn’t the same! Or get a good book, and read and lose yourself in that.

The ones mentioned here are good. Life’s too short for bad ones.

Thanks for reading.

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Pictures from paradise

My colleague Arno and his wife are on Ko Samui, and our colleague Nabil is on Phuket. Some ten days ago, Arno sent a picture which he took with his phone, writing that he doesn’t really want to come back…

Reminded me of our last time in Malaysia, which is five years ago already. Well, paradise, yes, maybe. For us. But first and foremost, it’s hot. You’re sweating without doing much:

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Zuleikha, Malaysia 2010

So after noon, you sometimes just sit around, feeding keropok to the cats:

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The kids – here are some of our relatives – play and pose, but even under the trees in some other kampung further North, it’s hot – and at night, you’ll get eaten up by mosquitoes:

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Finally, here are two portraits I made during that holiday (I’ve shown them before). The first one is of Comel who is now married and has a baby boy herself:

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Comel, July 2010

And the second one is of her brother, who sadly isn’t amongst us anymore:

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Mohammed Haniff, July 2010

So is Malaysia, or is Thailand paradise? Like I wrote above: Well, paradise, yes, maybe. For us. But that is only because first these people – relatives or not – will do everything they can to make it paradise for you, and second we’re ignoring most of their problems.

Have to go back there soon…

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How cool…

The discussion about Thunderbird doesn’t stop (no comments about that because I can’t come up with some positive stuff about it). For the “what if?” scenario (in case we would lose Thunderbird and also Icedove), I was reading about Claws – some friends are using that one since years.

Loved this part from its manual:

“What Claws Mail is not

Claws Mail is not a full-featured Personal Information Manager like Evolution or Outlook, although external plugins provide these functionalities. Claws Mail will not let you write and send HTML emails or other kind of annoyances, hence it may not be the software you need in some business environments.”

Hahaha. Sounds like a perfect tool for the job. Or does your favourite wrench also try to make coffee? 😉

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– and back to the old layout

Hmmm. These headlines in Twenty Sixteen are really bold. Plus it wastes lots of space. So for the moment I’m back to Twenty Fifteen.

Update from Thursday morning, December 10th, 2015:

– using a theme called Origin for the moment. Love its simplicity; let’s see how it goes, and if I still like it after a while.

A search input is missing here, so if I want to recall what I wrote about something or someone (like for instance Youn Sun Nah), that content will be hard to find. Found the search, which you can add as a widget like usual. But And this one sure looks good, even on different devices. Check here (also for your own webpage/blog).

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A “featured” image

Never tried this until now, so I decided to have a look at blog posts with a “featured” image.

The one you see here is one of myself, but it is not a “selfie”. It was taken by Mélanie Gomez in February, two days before my birthday. She used her Nikon D800 camera and one of my studio strobes (and grey background) to make this.

Merçi encore, chère Mélanie!

Of course I had to take some of her as well. Here’s one I took using my E-PL5 with the 45mm lens, also with studio strobes:

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Mélanie Gomez, February 2015

Thanks for viewing.