Not a real wapi? like on most other parts, but if you manage to guess this one you’re really good (I couldn’t).

The screenshot (!) above is from a very interesting collection online – The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860 – 1960 (found via the Window to Mombasa blog, thx!).

(spoiler link)

view on parts of the Alte Speicherstadt

I’ve lived in Hamburg from 10/1975 till 01/1976 and 07/1983 till 10/1983 so I wouldn’t really call it “my home” even though my passport says something else. Lakini – if “home is where your heart is”, then maybe Hamburg qualifies for being one of those places.

The area of the HafenCity used to be part of the free trade zone and has now been changed into an area with offices, hotels, shops, official buildings and residential areas. The building on the right is Elbe Philharmonic Hall, a music hall that once used to be an old warehouse. Pretty impressive.

The top floor of this new building to the right will cost about 8.5 million €.

8.5 million € that will enable you to have a view on the city like this one:

So you take a boat like this one…

…from here…

..and start the trip!

Another view on the Elbe Philarmonic Hall…

… and the city centre from the port…

… as well as the new HafenCity.

Wait, what’s that in the middle?

Oh, it’s an aeroboat. When was the last time you’ve seen one live?

The AIDAcara, a German cruise ship. A friend of mine recently booked a tour on one of these AIDA cruise ships and met his (current, I think :-) girlfriend there. Obviously, a good place for meeting singles.

The Cap San Diego, a former general cargo ship that now serves as a museum. It probably is a testimony to the origin of the port’s main business which was L.C.L.

You also get to see some older dockyards.

View on the St. Pauli Landungsbrücken.

This actually is one of the best photos as it shows some protest against Germany and an energy company that recently messed up things on nuclear power plant further down the river. These building on (Hamburg) Hafenstraße are 0w3nd by squatters since 1981.

These people seem to have the funds for such buildings. Amazing. It actually reminds me of the Chinese restaurant in Amsterdam…

Some of these cranes in the background are imported (as one piece!) from China. The red buoy (a lateral buoy) is an indicator for the left edge of the channel

You can actually spend a nice & warm summer evening on such a beach.

(or do some skinny-dip :-)

The Airbus factory next to the Mühlenberger Loch. @Dave @czed – pls feel free to comment on this. Afaik, it used to be a harbour for aeroboats during WW2 and 1/5 of the area have recently been converted into factory groundy by EADS for the construction of the Airbus A380.

Blankenese, a suburban (beautiful & expensive) quarter in the western part of Hamburg.

These two light houses are leading lights that have to be in one vertical line (see below). Once you see them in line, you know you’re in the center of fairway.

Container ships

An destroyed quay wall, probably from a bomb during WW2. A few metres further down we came across this sign which indicates that it’s rather old and the WW2 theory is correct. Maybe someone knows the story behind this?

Two cargo ships that have been put out of service for the time being due to the global recession.

Some airplane parts (Airbus?) ready for shipment.

Roman Arkayevish Abramovich‘ new luxury yacht, the M/Y Eclipse. This is the most impressive luxury yacht I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if anyone really needs to have such a huge boat, but it sure looks great! Built by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg.

You really get to see a lot of Hamburg from the river / port alone, and it is very interesting to see how much the City actually celebrates it’s port to a point where they are actually spending a lot of money on rebuilding old quarters. It’s a proud city and the port is a very good example to show where Hamburg wins over Bremen – another city in the North with similar interests & heritage. We’ll be back for more one day….

This snapshot of digitalis purpurea was today taken in a forest next to a Roman fort near Frankfurt – with the 5mpx CMOS camera on my 2y old Nokia N95 mobile phone.

It may not be the best photo, but it clearly shows what’s already possible with a decent camera phone.

X6-60MD mouse compared to the wireless desktop mouse

Attaching the mouse to the netbook actually adds a lot of convience to the system – the keyboard and tiny (yet brilliant) screen, however, aren’t that comfortable to work on. The keyboard on this 8,9″ netbook has the same size as the one on 7″ netbooks – next step would have been a 10,2″ netbook though which again adds another 0,3 kg. So this combination will have to do fo the moment. Connecting the netbook to a UMTS phone is a matter of seconds, so it really is a perfect NETbook – even on the road.

I’ve btw stayed with WinXP on this netbook (instead of EasyPeasy 1.0 or eeeUbuntu Standard) because of the special function keys that just work perfectly well with WinXP. Resizing the screen resolution to a compressed 1024×768 (instead of the normal 1024×600) is a matter of one key press. This may of course also be possible with a tuned Ubuntu, but again: not as easy as with XP and I just don’t have the time these days to figure it out. Besides, some of my fav. apps only work with XP and not under (the Windows emulator) Wine.

Sooo….blogging from the netbook (I am currently writing this post on the eee 901) is ok, but due to the keyboard not as convenient as it should be. You’ll quickly end up using 3-4 fingers only. :-(

Someone from Asia also needs to explain to me one day why there’s so much plastic involved in the packaging of such gadgets. A simple cardboard box would have done as well! At least this one could be opened easily and didnt require the scissors. Stupid.

Another thing to note about A4tech products is that their drivers are much better than the Logitech software package which bricked my desktop system the other day.

Oh, and it’s really amazing how long the battery lasts on this netbook. @E-Nyce: the wear-out level is down to 93% on this used battery/netbook, which is still ok I think.

Once my 15,4″ notebook (= desktop PC with an external 22″ monitor and external keyboard/mouse) retires (hopefully not too soon), I’ll probably go for a 12,2″ or 13″ notebook from either HP, IBM or Samsung and also make sure that it has a bright enough screen (= not as pale as the one on my 15,4″ notebook).

AOB:

Took this snapshot earlier this week right here in Frankfurt am Main because it reminded me of Taipeh 101.

I am now officially registered as a resident of Frankfurt/M. It may not be the best city to live in, but it has Germany’s biggest airport and is located in the middle of Germany which means I can reach Hamburg or Bremen (in the North) and Munich or Freiburg (in the South) in 3-4h only. Strategically convenient.

The main entrance door to the Deutsche Post branch office at Frankfurt railway station.

There’s a fire safety regulation in German law which says that such doors have to open to the outside so that in case of emergency, the panic crowd may escape without any obstacles.

Despite of this regulation and although most doors in shops and offices are designed to this standard, many customers stil PUSH the door to the inside until they realize it opens by pulling the handle. There even is a sticker that says ZIEHEN (= pull).

Always reminds me of Gary Larson’s “School for the Gifted“.

Our future is in Africa

An election poster for the upcoming elections in the Federal State of Hessen. Instead of the usual mugshots of fugly politicians, these guys came up with the image of a tractor, OPEL logo, the Transrapid, a nuclear power plant and some messages that are supposed to attract floating voters.

While I think that Europe and Africa should team up and support each other, the “Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität” (BüSo) is in fact a very small right wing party with quite extreme ideologies. Germany, Europe, the world may indeed need to rethink what really matters – but voters should also inform themselves about the political parties and understand the real message behind such propaganda + how they are being lured into the world of extremists.

Their candidate talks about the “Africanisation” of Germany – e.g. how living standards have deteriorated over the years, similar to many African states (sic!) – and how the German economy nowadays relies on products from the outside.

While most parties actually suck and have similar concepts, it’s still much better to have a working democracy instead of fashists from the US who try to undermine Europe. Somehow similar to what Declan Ganley does in Ireland, but on another level.

paper world

Paris Hilton on the cover of “intelligent life“, a lifestyle magazin by The Economist.

Are you bored enough to read or at least page through any lifestyle magazine these days IF instead there’s something else called internet?

And two more questions on the traditional media (e.g. print):

a) How often do you, as a reader of this blog, read printed lifestyle magazines? And where? Do you buy them?

b) From my perspective as an internet geek (or “internetty”, as a colleague called it one day): where do you read, hear, see the general news? Do you read a (daily) newspaper on a regular basis and supplement this with some extra magazines? Or have you completely moved your news-addiction to the onlinesphere?

Am asking because I think that it’s especially the older generation that still prefers print editions + have been wondering on how this impacts on society in general.

E71, N95, EcoDrive

left: usb port, right microSD port

“water damage inidicator” (white sticker that turns permanently red if e.g. dropped into a bowl of water…happened to two friends of mine who missed a call for that special reason while having a nature’s call ;-)

Some more images are available on the flickr set!

I really have to keep on telling myself not to verschlimmbessern any approved system. Just because a modification is possible, the “hack” often isn’t better.

Case in point: When I recently *upgraded* the original silver cover on my Nokia N95-1 to a black Made-in-China cover, I also switched to a new (and fake) camera lens cover – which apparently comes with a very low-quality plastic lens. The original lens cover isn’t that much better, but it still is. Guess it comes with a polarization filter. So today I’ve switched back to the old lens cover et voilá, macro mode has improved to the old sharpness. Sweet!

macro mode with fake lens cover:

macro mode with original lens cover:

My colleague #rob is in Palestine during this week and sent me this pic today.

Robert is from Berlin and used to stupid walls.

Some years ago, I think it was in 2000, I traded in an older Nikon F2 with a 50mm lens into a Nikon F70 – both being single-lens reflex cameras. I went for the Nikon range because a) i wanted to use some older lenses we had acquired in Japan during the 1980s and b) I’d first gone for a Canon model but didnt like its weight. There’s a much better grip on the F70 and with a decent 28-105mm lens, it wasn’t as top-heavy as the Canon.

a Nikon F3 with an MD-4 motor-drive, some lenses, filters & bags

Needless to say that my F70 is still almost in mint condition – contrary to Cgzed or CG, I am too lazy for carrying such a huge camera around with me. I guess I’ll keep it for a very very very long time now…

Then came the digital age and my first digital camera was a Casio QV-100 I had managed to obtain for a relatively low price in 1998. Picture wise it came close to what low-budget webcams are capable of doing these days (or even worse) although it came with a CCD chip (instead of a CMOS chip). Battery consumption on this machine was horrible and just one day it went into early retirement. Although I couldnt get it back to life, I had managed to still sell it on eBay. Nice!

Casio QV-100 with data caboools

Next cam that followed was another low budget solution: Mustek gSmart Mini – which only advantage was the limited size. And you could use it as a webcam, which was pretty cool – back then. This little cam was later on inherited to a member of my extended family.

I think the best part about these cams came when I disassembled them – similar to what this guy did.

Years passed on and nothing happened. Then, during winter 2003, digital cameras started to flood the market. Mama Xmas gave me the hint that I’d have the choice between a bigger bed and a better camera. “You decide what you want, JKE”, she said. “I’ll help you kununua a bigger bed, or you’ll save it and get a camera”. Hmm. A bigged bed? What for? My bed was already 90cm wide and 200cm long – what would I need a bigged bed for? Don’t you know that nerds often sleep alone? …Well, I ended up going for a better camera (and later on inherited a bigger bed from my bro-in-law ;-) => Sanyo Xacti J1, 3Mpx with an internal lens which provides a 2cm macro mode . Awesome!

Sanyo Xacti J1 (not my hand)

The Sanyo J1 is still in use and I’ve often thought about buying a better point&shoot cam, maybe a 7,1*mpx “low-budget” (aka beginners) cam with some more features. Or rather go for a Nikon D40(x)? Of course, Hash will argue that the D50 is a much better deal, but then: unless you have a family and a baby buggy to carry around, there’s no way for me to carry a bulky camera around with me. PLUS: i am way too broke to seriously think about buying just another camera.

There are so many good cameras out there and so many talented photographers. Ok, maybe some of these ppl photoshop their results before uploading them to Flickr & Ipernity, but still: with todays advanced cameras, you basically only require some decent light and the right angle to take a picture. Of course it makes sense to invest into proper equipment, but if you’re as lazy & broke as I am, something like the autofocus 5mpx cam (based on a CMOS sensor) in my Nokia N95 will have to do. Also, it competes with other 3,2mpx cameraphones (N73, SE K800i) and is a real progress to what I had used before, and especially in Kenya: my Nokia 6230(i), which came with a nice & quick CMOS chip. Alas, if you need to take a quick pic without much ado, the Nokia 6230i is still the best cameraphone for that purpose. In fact, it was more fun taking snapshots with my 6230i than it is right now with the N95. But then – I am using the N95 as a real camera substitute, and not for snapshots only.

I’ve now lived with the N95 and its cam for the last 1,2,3….9 months and have taken most of my photos with this cameraphone. Why? Because it’s just around when I need it. Simple.

…and this picture is even geotagged!

I am not such a good photographer and so I actually don’t even have to worry about better equipment (as i does NOT depend on the right equipment + i’d be happy if i could get rid of the inherited F3 equipment above which has only been kept due to sentimental reasons + the bad market situation), but my aim right now is to see what’s possible with a relatively bad camera / good cameraphone. What kind of picture quality is this cameraphone capable of?

For a start, check out this Nokia N95 user group on flickr.

*there was this discussion on the net the other day where some camera testers argued the best mpx resolution/chip size was achieved at the 5-7mpx range – can’t find the relevant link though…

What’s this?