My New Camera

Recently I bought this Camera. It is a Nikon D50, the low end DSLR from Nikon. I have to say, this has made my picture taking experience about a million times more fun. Not that there was anything wrong with my point and shoot digital camera, it is just so much better now.

1) The autofocus is almost instant, you can actually take pictures of things that move around, like babies.
2) The time from pressing the button to capturing the image is 0.2 seconds, wayyyyy faster than any P+S
3) You can use continuous shooting of 2.5 FPS, so taking pictures of moving things is fun too.
4) changeable lenses, so you have all the flexibility of a traditional SLR.

All in all, I cannot recommend a DSLR enough. They do cost more, but I cheaped out by buying a factory refurb from Nikon via the internet. It came out cheaper than my first HP camera....

VERY complete Review of the Nikon D50

Oh, and tonight is Germany-Argentina in the world cup quarter finals. keep your pretzels crossed.

Cute Liam

Liam sitting at the table, looking like a nice boy. This is just before he refuses to eat anything we give him. He would rather throw it on the floor and yell, then be placed on the floor himself so he can eat down there. Apparently the floor imparts some sort of magical garnish to the food.

 

Rockstar in the family?

Wow, two posts in one day...

My brother-in -law (Ryan) has a brother who is in an indie band that are embarking on a 60 date tour, including Toronto (Lee's Palace) on Sept 13, and Montreal.

The Evangelicals Home Page
Good review of The Evangelicals in the Ottawa Sun

If he makes it big, Ryan and I want to be in his gold chain wearing posse that gets to go on stage at awards shows.

The Magic of Photoshop

Here is a fine example of how Photoshop can fix the weather conditions... The first picture pretty accurately shows what I was looking at when we visited Bebenhausen last week. The second is the image after I tweaked the levels brightness and contrast.

I am an absolute Photoshop non-expert, and with about 10 minutes work I think I made a much more attractive picture. Although, I think I may have blown out the saturation in the colours a little too much... I always seem to make things too colourful. Maybe because I wish I lived in a cartoon.

 

Trachtenmode

Here is a traditional Black Forest outfit. I took my mother to Bad Wildbad, a very nice spa town in the Black Forest yesterday. The weather of course, was crap. It has been 30+ degrees every day until we go to the nice town, then it is 16 and drizzling. Stupid German weather.

We also went to a "barefoot park" where you walk a 60 minute course in bare feet, walking on various sand, rocks, water and obstacles. It is supposed to be very healthy. I thought it was funny. I think that will be the next post.

Shopping during the world cup

I was pretty tempted to go into this store today and ask them if they had any soccer balls. Sadly, I did not. given the German sense of humour, they probably would have just straight faced directed me to the sporting goods department.

This store had 5 more windows just like this, but I could not get them all in the photo.

More visiting

Typical, nice day, nice setting, smiling mummy, smiling grandmother, baby stuffing face with banana and looking angry. Babies never do what you want, when you want it. It would be easier if they were more like robots.

It is still super hot 30+ here, so it is hard to do all that much outside. The little man is only good for a couple of hours sitting in his buggy, then he wants to crawl around and play. It is also a bit hot for him in the sunlight and of course, when you tell him to stay in the shade, he just says "bweah"

Quite a pleasent visit with Grandma so far, of course she is loving every minute of baby fun and he is happy to have more bodies around the house to say "bweah" to. It is a little easier for Claudia and I to have one more pair of eyes on him. He is getting fast and gets into everything in the apartment.

Visiting Bebenhausen

This is at the "new building" of a castle/monastary that we went to visit yesterday. The new building was done in 1523. The old Building was in 1107. This is just 9km from our house, it is pretty odd when the new building is older than the settlement of Canada.

It was mega hot again yesterday and this is one of the closest nice places to take my mother for a visit. If we want to go somewhere with Liam, we are essentially limited to trips no greater than three hours from start to finish. Any longer and he just becomes a bored angry man.

This is yet another photo I took with my lovely new camera. I am 100% satisfied with the good folks at Nikon. Not that my HP camera was bad, but my new one is just much much nicer in every way possible. Take that HP.

First Birthday

Happy First Birthday to Liam the wonderbaby.

This horse was actually a baptism gift from Claudia's sister a while ago, but now he is finally big enough to sit on it.

Not much else to say... we gave Liam some gifts... he threw them on the floor and then played wiht a box. My mother arrived yesterday, so it was nice for her to be here for the big day. It has become super hot now, over 30 degrees for the third day running. Nice to get some summer after the misery that Germany has offered for the last 3 years or so.

World Cup Mania

Here are some of my colleagues on Friday. They actually worked all day dressed like this, I saw them around the office a few times. Lucky for them that Germany actually managed a win against Costa Rica...

People are really excited about the world cup, and so far it has all been good natured fun. No riots as far as the TV is reporting anyway.

New feature

Ok, I just changed the "Comments" feature on the blog so that anyone can comment, not just registered users.

I welcome any and all comments, but please be nice.

The big day

Well, I think that all of Germany is collectively holding thier breath today as the world cup begins. The opening game is in 6 hours and is Germany vs Costa Rica. I am going to go way out on a limb and predict a 2-0 win for Germany. Although, a loss would mean some REALLY great newspaper headlines tommorrow.

I played inline hockey last night for the first time this summer. It is really different to ice hockey, mainly because I am not a goalie for inline. I am far and away the worst inline hockey player on the team, but it is all just for fun. I managed to score a goal last night and have one go off the post. We play inline with no goalies, but with the tiny nets. Summer time is waaaaay too hot to wear full goalie equipment in a large unventilated arena.

I did not have any photos of soccer to put up, so here is one of a store in Herrenberg. It is at least typically German looking. Maybe next post I will have some pictures of Germans weeping in their beer.

One day to go

Well, it is one day until the world cup begins here in Germany. This is a picture of a toy from a Kinder Egg, a magnetic soccer player. There are about 30 differen ones, but this is the Rhino that I have. He is set up on the cupboard between my work neighbour and myself, where we can have impromptu matches. The other player is a tiger.

I was unable to get tickets to a match of the real WC, which was a bit of a letdown. They had a lotto system here to see who could buy them and I did not get selected. In the second round of ticketing, I could have either bought tickets for a Stuttgart based game for 100 Euro each, or to a game in Leipzig for 40 Euro each. Since Leipzig would cost me another 60 bucks in train fare, I opted to not buy any... I will just have to suffer with TV.

I am still not sure who to cheer for. Germany is my adoptive home, so I suppose I would like them to do well, but I think they will not do much better than the second round. I think I will cheer for Spain, since I recently had a very nice trip to Barcelona.

 

Wonder hat

I have to say, that it is truly a great regret of mine that I did not purchase this "jaws"hat when I had the chance. I often look back fondly on this picture and think about what could have been. Although, I think that it was stupidly expensive for a novelty hat.