Late Night Assembly

Why are these trade shows always last minute events?
Every time we work until late at night at our booth to get our software up and running the way we like to show it. This RSNA was no exception. Well, to be honest, although it's very exhausting I like the thrill and the need to get things done.
And now I know why my exhibitor batch says "24 hours access"

On a short break during the setup night I shot this pic of a part of the Chicago skyline.
I havent't seen anything from the town yet except the exhibition center and the hotel but the first impression is very cool.

The first day of the RSNA was a good one. I gave a lot of demos and got nice feedback for our software. My feet and my back hurt and there are still 4 more days to go. In half an hour I'll go with a few colleagues to a place called "House of Blues" to have dinner and to listen to live music.

Tie Break

Tomorrow I start to a one week business trip to Chicago. A big radiology trade show called RSNA is ready to launch. Standing around wearing a tie at the company booth, giving demos of our software and pretending to be smart will be my jobs until Thursday. Afterwards I'll have at least one day off for sightseeing in Chicago.
Maybe I can post a few Chicago impressions out of my hotel room but from a realistic point of view you can't expect my next posting until Monday, Dec. 04th.

And now I really have to pack my stuff.

Bulb Checking

Do you know the bulb checker tools in super markets? To avoid buying a damaged light bulb you simply plug the new one into the tool and if it's working a light flashes or you hear a squeaking noise. A noise sounding like *maeeeh*
Wouldn't it be cool to have a life bulb checker, too? Whenever you are unsure about a situation you could use your life bulb checker and listen for the *maeeeh* sound.
Well, after thinking about it I came to the conclusion that I don't want such a thing. Although life is cheating on me some times I love the unpredictable aspect of it. Life would be turned into deep boredom.

*maeeeh*

Fractions

If you see only a fraction of a person, you are not able to determine whether he/she is waiting or talking or dreaming or crying or laughing.
Most of the times it would be sufficient to just change the point of view to get clarity. But that can be damn difficult but I try to improve.

PS: I'm struggling with enduring problems with my Blog provider. Almost every day this week I was not able to post. So if you don't read news from me it's not because I'm dead but because of stupid technical problems.

City Ruins

I found a “new” ruin building in the middle of downtown Nuremberg during a nightly walk. Unbelievable.
Although all entrances seemed to be locked I hope to find a secret door on my next exploration tour. I was only able to put my camera through a gap for shooting a photo of one room full with garbage. Wonderful. This place is far to interesting to be ignored.
Dunno why I hadn’t seen the empty building before. At least it teaches me that treasures are hidden everywhere.

Pressure

One of the first things you do after changing the tires of you car is to check the air pressure. For some reason it’s always too low. Why is it that things loose pressure whenever not in use?
I experience the same on me. Luckily one can simply drive by the next gasoline station and refill.

Chistmas Armament

Yesterday I noted that the armament of the cities for Christmas is in its final state. The illumination in the streets is already assembled. Although it’s not illuminated before Dec. 1st one knows that there is no escape.
OK, you’re right, even I like it.

PS: This week I wrote posting No. 300. A lot of moments are already stored in this blog.

Useless Things Competition

Today the area around our office was very crowded. The reason was that a supermarket had a factory outlet sale of very cheap things.
I forced some of my colleagues to go there during our lunch break and to make a "Useless Things Competition". The winner would be the person buying the most useless thing. It was great fun to observe the stuff there searching for obsolete objects because almost everything seemed to useless. It's crazy to see how ridiculous most things are if you look at them from such a perpective.
I found a "Soap Bubble Sword" for making giant bubbles, my co-workers bought mini blow-dryers, horoscope stones, a finger scooter and a glass stone thing.
Afterwards we had a kind of commitee for finding the winner.
My bubble sword was way to useful (therefore I lost) and we sent giant bubbles from the 2nd floor down to the road forcing the cars to brake (at least a little bit). I can't remember the last time I made soap bubbles.
DMX won the competition with a stupid glass ball because we had no idea what it was for.
I wonder whether all the folks at the sale bought their stuff for similar reasons - I hope so because otherwise my outlook for mankind would be very dark.


The Competitors


The Winner

Shower Songs

Do you sing when you take a shower? I think most people do - and so do I. No idea why there’s a connection between showers and singing.
I doesn’t sound like Robbie Williams and my variety of shower songs is not very broad. I always sing the same two or three songs over and over again - actually I sing only parts of the songs because I’m not that familiar with the lyrics. I believe that singing during taking a shower has to sound awful. Otherwise something would be completely wrong.
One of my very few shower songs is “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. I guess my shower booth hates the song like hell because it has to stand it at least once a week.

It’s especially funny to sing after switching the handle to ice cold water.

Today I thought about taping one of my Jetplane Shower Experiences.
I did and you can [download] and listen to my live recording as MP3. Believe it or not, the water at the end was freaking cold.

One of my favorite versions of the song is from Chantal Kreviazuk - I like it although it’s from the terrible movie “Armageddon”. If you insist on a contrast program to my live recording you can listen to Chantal on YouTube.com

Hole

Too small to fall inside but big enough to expect a hidden world down there.

Toast and Leaves and Rock’n’Roll

Yesterday I went to a concert of the german band Knorkator. They play a kind of Metal, the lead singer uses a high-pitched voice like the guys from the Bee Gees and their lyrics are very funny but also very politically incorrect. Sounds strange? You’re damned right.
This time the very tattoed singer dragged a big sack to the stage during the concert. It was full with toast bread and the band used it for throwing it into the audience. The public accepted the proclamation of war and fired the bread back to the stage. All of a sudden the air in the hall was full with flying toast and both the audience and the guys on stage had great fun - although I have to admit that throwing toast was not important for the current song.
Later on they destroyed their organ by hitting it with an iron bar. Finally they brought some more big sacks with autumn leaves and the war with the audience continued.
I liked the mixture of energetic music and nonsense a lot. The bottom of the stage looked like after the detonation of a bomb. All was covered with toast, leaves and pieces of the organ. It seemed like a wonder to me that the singer didn’t get hurt because he performed almost naked and bare-footed.
Stupidly I was not able to take a lot of photos because I smashed my small camera during jumping around like a maniac. Shit, but it was worth it - almost.

Ilias

I had a great evening at the theatre. Well, actually it was not the real theatre in Nuremberg but a small blue cubicle called “Bluebox” in front of it. It only has seats for approximately 40 people.
It was not a play that was shown. A single actor appeared, sat down on a red chair and told the ancient story of the Ilias by Homer. You know, the story behind the awful movie “Troy” with Brad Pitt.
First I was a little bit reluctant because I expected a reading of the old book. But it was very funny. The guy told the story without a book or script in a very agile way with a lot of jokes, deviations and own thoughts. I learned that the war of troy was mostly about anger and sex. Weird.
I wish I had had this guy back in school as teacher for history.

Kindergarten Bag

Some early memories are really deeply archived in my head. Mostly they are memories of very unimportant moments or events of my childhood. Yesterday one of those early memories flashed back to the foreground of my head.
It was early morning and we were on our short walk to the office in Berlin.
Under a tree I saw a small red leather bag. Thrown away or lost? I stopped my colleagues and shot this photo.
What’s so special about that bag? Well, it reminded me on the bag I had as a child for the Kindergarten. It hung around my neck every day and was the storage for my sandwich. OK, mine was brown and a little bit smaller but had the same structured surface.
The strange thing is that I still exactly know where I was when I got this bag. It was the summer of 1975 and I was five years old. My father inflated the little swimming pool for me. It stood under my favorite climbing apple tree beside the pile of sand I used for playing with my little Matchbox cars.
The next day was supposed to be my first day in Kindergarten and I was more than excited. A little girl called Sabine from the neighbourhood joined the Kindergarten with me and their parents bought us sandwich bags.
If I close my eyes I can see the man from Sabine’s family appearing in our garden saying that he has my brand new Kindergarten bag for me. I know exactly were he stood and were I was.
The bag still had the scent of leather and I was the proudest little boy in the whole village for the next moments.

Why is it that I can remember this relatively minor moment of my childhood in such detail on the one hand and on the other hand constantly forgetting what to buy for lunch or whom to call back?




By the way: I have no idea what happened to my Kindergarten bag. Hopefully I lost it somewhere and some stranger got reminded of his own childhood by seeing it lying under an tree.

Platform Sides

On some subway stations you can exit the train on both sides. One side usually leads to the exit, the other door is the right one if you want to catch the train in the opposite direction.
If you are travelling on your own, it’s easy. You are the one to decide what is the right door for you. But if you have company and you doesn’t sync with the other person it might happen that you exit on the left side and your company on the right side. As soon as the train is gone you realize that now there’s a gap between you. Too wide to jump. Too bad.
You can wait for the next train and use it as a bridge to the other side or you can exit and walk all the way to the opposite entrance. The first option means you have to wait, the second one might be exhausting.
But first of all both of you have to make sure who is on the wrong side of the platform.

PS: Because of a business trip there won’t be a new posting until Friday.

Wet Elephant

There’s this little yellow elephant. I use it as a pillow because for some reason my normal pillow leaves my bed almost every night.
Today it was the elephant’s turn to visit my washing machine. Afterwards I hung it onto my clotheshorse that stands in a shared basement room.
I thought for some seconds and decided to remove it and dry the lovely animal not in the public room but in my apartment. I like my neighbours but some things have to kept as a secret. Fluffy yellow elephants living together with single men are definitely one of those things.

Blogtopsites - 78

I‘m really excited. A few minutes ago I noticed that my Blog is in the Top 100 Photo Blogs on http://www.blogtopsites.com/photoblog/. A few months ago I listed my Blog there and added that little blue graphic to the navigation bar on the right side of my site. Usually the little white area at the left hand side of the graphic is just white. As soon as a Blog is ranked 99 or higher the graphic displays a little number.
This week I’m rank 78 out of 1119 Photo Blogs. I know that’s just a temporarily thing and tomorrow the little number will be gone again. But there was at least that one day in November with 78.

Is kind of weird to notice that people I don’t even know click to my photos.

I want to thank all friends that visit my little site frequently. It’s great to share thoughts with you. You know who you are.


How does the ranking work according to Blogtopsites?
“Ranking of pages is done according to the number of unique visits each blog receives every week. Advanced anti-cheating measures are undertaken along with manual checking to ensure no cheating occurs.”

Turntables

Yesterday, while watching a DJ at work it came to my mind that DJing has a lot of things in common with life in general. Well, actually I’d wish that some DJ techniques would work for my life, too.
The task of the DJ is to create an continuous groove. No pauses, no breaks, no dissonances.
He has to be able to listen to the current song and in parallel to the track he wants to play next.
I think it’s damn difficult in normal life to listen to the current and to the next chapter in parallel. It’s even more challenging to make the transition between two phases of life smooth and to not loose the groove.
Probably it’s necessary that sometimes there is no smooth transition but a harsh break. Otherwise you would’t notice that you reached the next chapter of your life.
Actually it can be more than enough to enjoy the single tracks and don’t care about the transition phase.
But what to do if there’s no appropriate next track? Well, then you have to play a completely different style - or pause for a while and relish the silence.

Narrowness

Situations were you think you can’t even breathe. The walls around you seem to crush you. You need more space but only the directions up and down exist for you. Into the bargain it’s not you who decides about the direction but some person above.
Sounds frightening?
Well, could be. But what if you decided to enter the narrow place without being forced to? What if you wanted to climb down because some valuable is expected down there?
Stupidly most of the times it’s difficult to come to the “treasures” in life. But sometimes you achieve it and the feeling when you are back on the surface is really awesome.

Just in case you’re wondering what the hell I’m doing here: I was geocaching and the cache box was on the bottom of that very very narrow chimney.

Up-Side-Down-Boxes

Imagine a box for storing stuff. Potatoes, coins, emtpy cans or just the falling rain.
Sometimes one decides to turn the box up-side-down to stop the box being filled without intention.
I think we have some mental boxes for collecting moments. You can just use the blue box for collecting lucky moments. All you have to do is to place it in the right corner of your mind. You’ll forget about it within minutes but if you come back to the box after a few days I’m pretty sure that you’ll find the memories of some happy moments in it.
Well, stupidly the ugly moments tend to gather in those boxes, too. Far too often this leads me to turn my box up-side-down. I’m safe from bad thoughts then but I also miss the good ones. I’ll try to take the risk more often and place the blue box out in the open field to catch as much as possible.

City Games, Part II

It’s great to see people doing things with absolute passion. It doesn’t matter whether it’s about driving a Formula One car, painting the Sistine Chapel or sharing Fantasy trading cards on some sidewalk in Nuremberg. I observed the three guys for a while from the other side of the street. They were absolutely dedicated to their stuff and didn’t notice me. Later on the guys told me that some of their most valuable cards ain't even unwrapped. Don’t know what the last this was I did with a similar passion.

City Games

Not the perfect season for playing games.

Illumination

I sat on a small wall at the river Isar in Munich. The sun already disappeared. Suddenly there was this strange humming sound like the one in old movies when the mad professor switches on his electric engine the first time. I turned around and saw that the dark wall wasn’t dark any longer. It was an old wooden door with very bright light behind it. The rays of light shot out beneath the planks into the darkness of the autumn eve and for me it looked like an UFO parked in an stable near Area 51 started its engine.