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Rest in peace, Tuna

Oh man – it’s so hard to write this…

On Saturday, March 13th, 2021 at 10:30am, our little furry friend of 11 years passed away.

Tuna (which was the name Zuleikha gave her) chose us as her family, not vice versa. She must have “belonged” to someone else before since she had a flea collar when in July of 2010 I took the first photo of her sitting on our fence like this:

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A cat with no name (yet), Mörfelden-Walldorf 2010

About three months later she came in, ate, slept, and stayed pretty much forever. Until that Saturday 2 weeks ago.

I have countless photos and also some videos of her, some of which are in an album on Flickr, so go there if you want to see them. For here, and for now, I’ll only show you our “Easter Greeting” photo from last year:

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Easter greetings to all cats and humans, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

And the one which is still my background wallpaper on this Debian Linux machine on which I’m currently typing this, and also the company’s work notebook which runs Red Hat Linux. It’s Tuna on a hot day on our veranda, taken with my 25mm lens wide open:

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Tuna enjoying 28 degrees, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

We buried her last Wednesday at an animal cemetery in Frankfurt Rödelheim, which is the closest to us with a distance of about 20km.

I’ll add a photo of the grave when it has a surrounding like the others.

Don’t know what else to say except that I’m deeply grateful for the 11 wonderful years that she’s spent with us. Thank you my little friend, and rest in peace…

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Today, 16 years ago…

… in a hospital in Bremen, Zuleikha was born. Don’t know if I can show you her picture (haven’t asked yet), but here are her birthday calendar, and our cat, both in black & white and with a simulated Kodak Tri-X film:

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Birthday calendar, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Tuna the cat on ZUleikha’s birthday, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

As always, thanks for viewing.

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Me on film, photographer: Zuleikha

Just got back some black & white film and prints, and here’s a scan of one of these postcard-sized prints. Zuleikha was so friendly to take my picture using my Olympus OM-2N camera and one of my studio strobes:

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Wolfgang, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
photographer: Zuleikha
using Agfa APX 100 b&w film, and one of my studio strobes
scan from a postcard-sized (10x15cm) lab print

As always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

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Another new camera

Mitchie got the new Pixel 4a 5G phone, so I was willing to buy for one shilling – her “old” and “normal” Pixel 4a. Which basically means that for the first time in my entire life I’m now the owner of a current smart phone (the iPhone doesn’t count since that belongs to my employers).

I had to test the camera of course, so here’s the obligatory cat picture, in the phone’s ‘portrait’ mode:

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Tuna the cat, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
shot with the Google Pixel 4a phone in ‘portrait’ mode

Not too bad what you can get out of these devices – both this Pixel 4a and the iPhone SE – without any further processing even. Without any doubt this is good enough to use it for blog posts such as this one, even if these pictures can’t reach the quality from a real camera with their much bigger sensors like the µ43rds ones I have…

But ok, fun anyway in a device millions of people carry around their daily lives anyway. No wonder the camera industry is struggling, and only the best of the best survive in that field.

I only got that phone yesterday evening but like it already.

As always, thanks for reading and for viewing.

Edit, in the evening of the same day:

Here’s another photo of her, this time taken with my Olympus camera and a 45mm lens, with using a studio strobe bounced over the ceiling:

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Tuna the cat, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
studio strobe, bounced

Again, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Second edit, from Sunday evening:

And here’s another photo of Tuna who jumped our bench, ready to steal whatever she might have found. That was in almost no light at all, the only light source was from the kitchen – and I took the photo from my computer using the same 45mm lens and camera as in the previous one. Converted it to black & white, and toned the greys more brownish as usual:

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Tuna the cat, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

Again, thanks for viewing.

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A photo of Tuna, and one of me…

On Saturday I took a photo of Tuna, our cat who was on the heated floor in front of the TV set:

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Tuna the cat on the heated floor, lit by a TV set,
Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

I cropped that one into a 16:10 format.

And yesterday I’ve got my own photo taken, together with my upright bass and the bow:

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Wolfgang, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
photographer: Mitchie Suadi-Lonien

As always, thanks for viewing, and/or reading.

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Bowing and plucking for the microphone

Tried the sound of my new strings on my new (used) instrument yesterday – and Zuleikha took some photos of that:

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Wolfgang bowing his upright bass, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Wolfgang playing his upright bass, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

The first one of these photos is also on my Wikiloops profile in case you’re interested (but the music I played isn’t uploaded there yet).

As always, thanks for viewing.

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Tuna & me, working from home…

Mitchie was kind enough to take a picture of Tuna and of me, while working from home today:

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We’re working from home, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
photographer: Hamidah Suadi-Lonien

As always, 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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Deer and nutria

Just back from a short trip to Mönchbruch where I took a few photos. Here are two of them:

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Deer, Mönchbruch 2020
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Nutria, Mönchbruch 2020

As always, thanks for reading and viewing.