Amazing picture

OK, I can take no credit for this at all, it is blatently stolen from another part of the internet, although I can no longer find the original. I just thought it was way funny.

I wish that penguins could really be trained to do this. I think that zoo attendance would skyrocket.

Looking at the morning sunshine.

I thought this was kind of an interesting picture. This was a bright sunny morning and Liam was playing with an empty bottle, but I liked the way that he was all lit up.

My most exciting news is that I won an honorable mention in the HP Photo Contest for July. A little while ago I put up the photo of the castle/monastary in Bebenhausen and this won a prize. So I get the world wide fame of an HP internal contest, and they give me a new digital camera. Of course, I already have a better camera, so I am pretty sure this prize will be popping up on ebay fairly quickly.

Cruel parents of the 70s

OK, check this out... family photo from around 1978 or so. Check ouy how my parents dressed me in the 70's... in the last few years the 70's made a style comeback, but I have not yet seen anyone wearing the orange and brown with plaid super suit that I gor back then.

For an added bonus of style, check out the also brown and orange couch of glory. Accentuated with the brown, orange, and green cushions. As I recall, the carpet was also brown.

Dave Crawford Enjoying a cookie

Here is Dave Crawford in Vanier Residence, 1992, enjoying a lovely chocolate chip cookie.

Smilin' Gord Smith

Gord told me I should put a picture of him on my page. This is the best one I could find.

Cow on a hill

Moooo moo moo moo moo. Moo moo moo. Moo moo moo moo moo, moo moo moo moo.

Moo: moo moo moo moo moo moo, moo moo moo.

Moofully moo.

Breitach Gorge

This is the view from a bridge going accross the top of the Breitach gorge. It was a pretty neat place to visit, we walked all along the bottom and then climbed up to the top for the trip back again. This is now the 3rd gorge I have visited over here. I would rate this one second, with the best one being the giant one in France that you can ride a canoe and swim in. The two in Germany were just narrow, shallow rivers at the bottom. Interesting to look at, but not much to do.  

Nice Decor

The holiday apartment we stayed in last week is owned by the Catholic Church. Claudia's mother works for the church (her boss is the Bishop in Ausgsburg, ha!) and they have these places available to rent for a quite low cost. It looks very nice from the outside, but once you venture through the doors, you are swept back in time to 1970 or so.

This Lamp may be the crowning acheivement of decoration technology. By day, it resembled a sheep on a stick, but by night.... glowing sheep on a stick.

The furnishings are clearly original, in a few more years, this will be like a museum. I dearly wish I had taken some more photos of the apartment and not spent so much time on the mountains. Oh well, I can rest assured that if we go back there, the furniture will be waiting.

 

19th of July, ugh

Today is the anniversary of my Dad's death... kind of a sad day for me, this is about the nicest photo of him I have on my computer.
I was digging through all my older pictures lately and I went through the process of scanning in every picture I physically have over here. That covers most of University and some oldler ones as well. I think it is a very good thing that digital cameras were not so well developed back in the early 90s or I think that I would have a LOT more photos of people that they would not so much want to remember. Starting with this exciting group of men:

ahhhh 1992.

Ski Springen

One of the interesting things I did last week was visit the Ski Jumping stadium in Oberstdorf. This was about a 15 min walk from where we were staying, but then again I think everything in Oberstdorf is about a 15 minute walk from everything else.

As always, you can click on the picture to see it slightly larger...

There are 5 jumps of varying sizes, sadly the elevator was broken, so we had to walk up to the top...
The stairs were long and steep, and only went to the top of the seats in the landing area. Then we had to walk up a sort of steep dirt and gravel path to the base of the actual ski jump tower.


This is looking down on the stadium from about half way up, you can see the whole town behind.


This is the tallest jump taken from the very end of the ramp. Thankfully, the elevator on this tower was working so we did not have to walk up another 60m of stairs or whatever the actual height was. I forget.


And then the last image is looking down the ski jump from the top. This is what those fools see just before the big moment. I know now without question that this is not a sport for me.

Back at work

Ok, so I have returned to the wonderful office of HP after my week off. however, I have seen a lot nicer things up in the mountains the past week.

Weather was great, 30+ every day and we got to go on a very nice hike. From the bottom to the top and back down again, accross 4 peaks. 3000 feet verticle difference and the total time was about 6 hours. Big fun.

Here is Oberstdorf, where we stayed. This pic is from about 1/10 of the way up the mountain overlooking the town.

one week of vacation

Well, this is the last update until I come back from my week long trip to the Mountains. I will be staying in Oberstdorf:

Oberstdorf web Page

Hopefully the weather will be full of sunshine, moderate but comfortable heat and a happy baby that does not cry once. That would be the best.

Hopefully I will be able to post some nice pictures of us galumphing around the mountains. I have already filled up my ipod with driving to the mountains music. Nothing special, it is just that the radio sucks here.

The morning after

So, the party is over. The stinking italians won and we are all sad here.

It was the most boring game I have seen so far, I was just happy when the thing ended. The italians are absolutely dull to watch, maybe that is why they try to spice things up with all their comedy pratfalls.

Now I suppose I am cheering for France. Lets hope that my endorsement is not the kiss of death for this team.

 

Semi Finals today

Well, it is only 5.5 hours until the semi final against italy. Germany had one of their better players banned for the match for punching an Argentinian the other day. I think they should have thanked him, the Argentinian team were a bunch of loser cry babies. Germany should not have to suffer for thier poor sportsmanship, if a bunch of greasy girl-haired players were in my face, I would have probably punched them too.

Of course, now they have to face another team of greasy girl-haired divers with italy. If Germany wins, I predict my office will have a lot of people coming in to the office lates, with headaches tomorrow.

Oh, that is my beer mug.

 

summer weather

Here is proof that on occasion, the sun actually shines in Germany. Look how happy we can all be when it is not raining.

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.