Life, Music & The Rest

I am so proud of myself. I just went running, for the first time in a long time.

I haven’t done any serious exercise in about a year and a half. In 2011 I worked hard to lose weight, and I lost about 15 kilos. Then our move from Celle got in the way, and my stepper broke. Now I got about ten of those back, and I have been thinking for quite a while now that I have to get back in shape. The other day I was on the phone and I had to get downstairs (one floor down) to check something, all the while talking. When I came back up I was panting as if I’d been running a marathon. So, I really have to get moving again.

This morning I woke up at 20 after 5. I started to think about exercising again, and then I was thinking, I should start shopping for a new stepper, and then I was thinking about the money, and then I thought, well, I don’t absolutely have to spend money on equipment, I just could go running. Maybe I’ll start that. And, then, quite unexpectedly, I found myself getting up at 5:30 thinking, what’s wrong with now? I realized I have been making excuses for not exercising for a really long time.

This is what it looks like where I started to run… Good thing it was still dark.

Now I just need to hope I can keep it up. I changed my alarm from 6 a.m. to 5 a.m., so tomorrow is gonna be the real test.

A few days ago, somebody in my circles on Google+ posted a link to this article by a female blogger I had not heard of before. She tells the story of how she and her friend attended an Open Source event and were harassed because of the way they dressed and how they were hurting the Geek Feminist movement. It’s well worth a read, go ahead.

While this attitude is probably stronger in geek culture and IT than it is anywhere else, the story she tells is also symptomatic for a larger problem in every kind of feminism. The only way any feminist movement can be a success is if you win the majority of women to the cause. But what these people are doing is counterproductive. If you tell women they can’t enjoy being female, let alone show they enjoy being female, you will not win the majority. On the contrary. You will put most women off. If you, the feminists, tell me that in order to get true equality we have to try and be more like men, then I say that’s the kind of equality you can keep, thank you very much.

After messing around with MyPaint for a bit I finally had the first real success, something that I’m actually proud to show off

That was based on a photograph of my grandparents’ old dog, that my parents later took over, when my grandparents became to old to handle him. It’s not perfectly true to the original, but I’m not sure it should be.

I’m actually quite proud of the result, because, as I already pointed out, I haven’t done any serious artwork in about 15 years. Even back then I hardly ever did anything in color; mostly I did pencil drawings.

This one is… well, unfortunately only about 99 percent MyPaint. I did some touching up in Gimp, because it was a little bit too light. But hey. Nothing’s perfect. And I don’t really see this as cheating, since the work was already done on the computer anyway

I woke up around 3:30 this morning and found myself wide awake with not a chance of going back to sleep anytime soon. So, since the sky was clear, I decided to finally do what I’ve been threatening to do for years, which is getting into night time photography.

Over the past few years I have seen so many great pictures shot at night with available light, and every time I saw a new one I thought, this is something I really like to try, but somehow I never got around to it. This morning I finally took the opportunity. When I realized that the night was clear I got dressed, grabbed my camera and tripod and headed down to the Salzhemmendorf church, which seemed like a good location to try this out. First of all, it’s not very far, and second of all, I like the castle-y look of it. It really fits this type of picture.

The result is far from what I’m hoping to get at some point, but I learned a few lessons. The most important one: Damn, we’re moving fast… No, seriously. The star movement is amazing. Brings to mind Monty Python:

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour
That’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power

– Monty Python, “The Galaxy Song” from the movie “The Meaning of Life”

According to Wikipedia, it’s quite close.

So, what I really learned from this is that Read more…

Here’s a song that Alan Graham wrote for his daughter and recorded for her birthday. This makes me wanna cry… great tune!

As promised, here are some videos with my old guitar and the new strings, the 13s that I put on yesterday. Sounds great…

The first one was even without the finger picks. Unbelievable how loud it suddenly is. Also, I tuned it down half a step; it’s now in E flat, so I’m actually in F sharp on this song since I didn’t put the capo on. That gives the guitar even more power. Of course, it also means I will have to play a lot of songs with the capo on the first fret now, but for this song it actually fits. It’s way more relaxed, the way this song should be sung.

“The Last Thing On My Mind” by Tom Paxton

Here’s another one, country strumming this time, also without a pick.

“You Are My Sunshine”

Trying out some new strings on my Washburn. I changed them in hope that I would finally like my guitar again. I thought I would after I put the Silk & Steel strings on, but that didn’t last; first of all, I couldn’t really play it with a pick or my metal finger picks anymore, and second of all, the fret noise I had been complaining about for a while was still there. Now that seems gone, and it also sounds great.

Other guitar players will probably hate me though… they’re 13s 8) .
Which, of course, is the reason I wanted to try them in the first place. I wanted to know if that would solve the noise problem, and it did. Before I changed them I played Alan‘s Martin with the 13s for a bit to make sure I can actually play them, and I didn’t notice anything. I mean, of course I did, but it didn’t really make it more difficult. He thought it was a good idea, too; he said, it makes it a much better guitar. I think he’s right; it has a lot more power this way.

As an added bonus, no one else will want to play it now . (Well, except for Alan, of course; he’s been using that size forever on his Martin.)

I’ll post a video as soon as I have time to make one.

Books are magic.

Right now, I’m about one-third through Tad Williams‘ “Memory, Sorrow and Thorn — To Green Angel Tower: Siege”. I read this series two or three times in the German translation, now for the first time I’m reading in English. The last time I read them was quite a while ago, and I forgot how great they are. I just oredered part IV today.

I remember, when I held the English copy of “The Dragonbone Chair” in my hands for the first time a few weeks ago, it was like Christmas come early. It really is one of the greatest fantasy stories of all time, and it’s even better in English (no surprise there, I’m not exactly a fan of translations and only read them if the book was originally written in a language other than German or English.) The author’s language in the books is very poetic.

Anyway, there’s something about a great story well told that’s just… well, magic. How you get to know the characters as if they were real and you’d met them, and how you come to care for each and everyone of them… when the book ends it’s like having to say farewell to old friends. The one book I have read more times than I can count (as a matter of fact, I stopped counting after I read it for the 27^th time) is The Lord Of The Rings, and there were times, when after finishing the last page I would turn the book around and start over.

There are other books that captured me with the same kind of magic (although none of them quite as strong as Tolkien’s books): Ralf Isau‘s Neschan trilogy, the Avalon books by Marion Zimmer Bradley, even the Harry Potter books; just to name a few. I don’t know what it is about books, but there is so much life in them that that sometimes it’s hard to believe they are just made-up stories.

If you don’t read, you won’t understand. If you do, there’s no explanation necessary.

I just installed the Beta1 of Ubuntu 12.04 in a virtual machine because I’m soooooo curious. Also, I spent about an hour on the internet trying to find out how to configure the buttons on my Wacom Intous3 tablet. And yes, there is a connection between those two seemingly unrelated statements

Since I just started to work with MyPaint, I’m using the tablet a lot more than I used to since I closed my business. I thought it would be nice to have those buttons (and the strips) available, so googled… and found nothing, at least nothing that worked with the 3.x kernel. Then I noticed that there is a “Wacom tablets” entry in the Gnome control center. Unfortunately, no tablet button configuration options are available:

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So, out of curiosity I activated the tablet in my virtual machine with Ubuntu 12.04, and behold! there’s an option to “Map Buttons”…

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Sadly, though…

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There isn’t anything to configure there, the button list, which I’m assuming should be there, is empty No right click options to add them, either, and I couldn’t figure out yet what the problem could be. Whatever it is, I hope this will get fixed by the time 12.04 gets released. It’s going to be really useful.

I used to be quite good at drawing, but I haven’t done any serious artwork in over a decade. I’ve been threatening to get back into it for quite a while now — since we moved, in fact — but somehow I never got around to it. I tried a few times but ended up only wasting paper, and I lost patience rather quickly. It was so frustrating to look at the stuff that I used to do 15 years ago and then realizing I can’t do it anymore because I’m totally out of practice.

Then I discovered MyPaint, a digital drawing software to be used with a graphic tablet. I only started to work with it, but I can tell already that it’s pretty amazing. First of all, it’s really simple. You select a color and a brush and you’re ready to go. No complicated software to learn first, unlike with Gimp, Inkscape or Blender (all really great programs, don’t get me wrong, but it takes a lot more time to learn how to use them.) You can work with layers, which is great and definitely something you can’t do on paper. And you can select a background. Other than that, there isn’t that much to it — and that’s one aspect I really like about it. I appreciate a piece of software that does one thing and does it well.

The other thing that’s great about it is the selection of brushes that come pre-installed or can be downloaded from the official website. It allows you to cover pretty much every style available outside of the computer. If you’re into drawing at all, I definitely recommend to check it out. It’s FOSS (Free and Open Source) and available for Linux, Windows and Mac.

Also, be sure to check out the Gallery at deviantART. Not only does it show the capabilities of MyPaint, it’s also a showcase for art from some highly talented people. All I can say is, I hope one day I’ll be among them