august 28th, 2010 at 7:16 +0000 by felix.
when installing a new ubuntu, i had essentially two programs which were replaced by alternatives i had trouble with – amarok1 was replaced by amarok2, and gqview was replaced by geeqie. compared to amarok2 pretty much not working at all, geeqie is working, though partially not as expected. the worst part of it is getting confused with directories. assume you store your photos in a more complex directory structure, say
photos/
photos/canada/
photos/finland/
photos/germany/
photos/germany/2010-04-23
photos/germany/2010-05-01
photos/germany/2010-06-02
photos/switzerland/
now you go into the photos/germany/2010-05-01/ directory, look at some pictures, and decide to go one directory up. as expected, the current marked directory is 2010-05-01. so, when you go another directory up, you’d except the current marked directory to be germany. but well, as opposed to any sane program (such as gqview), geeqie selects the first in the list. this is really, really annoying, and i have no idea who implemented something like this…
anyway, i just found a forum post describing how to install gqview and make sure ubuntu won’t automatically update to geeqie for you… in case this annoys you as well, follow the instructions :)
tags: geeqie, gqview, ranting, ubuntu.
posted in computer, daily life | no comments »
august 27th, 2010 at 7:03 +0000 by felix.
tags: calgary, canada, moon, night, photos, telephoto lens.
posted in photos | no comments »
august 16th, 2010 at 22:57 +0000 by felix.
i upgraded to a new ubuntu a week ago, after buying a new harddisk. this resulted in getting amarok2 instead of amarok1, which i was used to. and it was a complete failure. it ignored my music, didn’t show anything in the collection, and some tries to change this didn’t do anything. well. so i decided to try out exaile. this worked well, until i noticed that changing to the desktop exaile was running on took up to five seconds. i don’t know why. but this is clearly inacceptable, this should take way less than one second. so i started looking around. i tried rhythmbox, the standard gnome player, but it didn’t really managed to read my music collection. then, i tried xmms2 and various frontends. so far, i didn’t really found a frontend which convinced me. but at least the backend is working fine. maybe i should start hacking my own frontend together, to do exactly what i want it to do.
it is not exactly satisfactory, but for the moment, i think i’ll stay with xmms2. at least it works fine so far, accepts my music collection, and has no strange hickups.
tags: amarok, exaile, music, music players, ranting, software, xmms2.
posted in computer, daily life, music | four comments »
august 15th, 2010 at 9:50 +0000 by felix.
while watching tng, i noticed fireworks out in the sky, for the chinatown 100 fireworks grand celebration. (there will be some more fireworks soon, due to a fireworks festival.) i grabbed my camera as well as my tripod, and started taking pictures.
fireworks.
here are some impressions from the fireworks. shot with iso 6400.
some night shots.
when the fireworks were over, i played around a bit more. here are two nice shots.
tags: calgary, canada, chinatown 100 fireworks grand celebration, firework, night, photos, telephoto lens, tripod.
posted in daily life, photos | no comments »
august 15th, 2010 at 5:29 +0000 by felix.
star trek – the next generation. memories: old memories, and good memories. i used to watch that when i was a kid. probably the most influental science fiction series for me. i also read a huge amount of tng books, before later starting to read also a lot of star wars books. unfortunately, except the movie appearances of the tng crew, i haven’t seen any of the series for a long, long time. until a few days ago, when i noticed all seasons sitting in the dvd shelf. well, guess what i’m doing now. :) i guess that will keep me busy for some time…
one thing which is funny is that before, i always saw star trek movies and series in german, and never in english. which makes a huge difference, the voices are completely different, most notably the one of captain picard, played by patrick stewart. in most of the series and the movies, he was dubbed by rolf schult. the combination patrick stewart/rolf schult also appeared in the x-men movies, and everytime i hear and see it i have to think of captain picard… and now, i’m watching the series in english, i see patrick stewart playing captain picard… and it sounds so alien to hear his real voice. well. after a few seasons, i guess i will have adjusted.
tags: calgary, canada, captain picard, series, star trek, the next generation.
posted in daily life, movies | one comment »
august 9th, 2010 at 17:51 +0000 by felix.
for the third time, i visited calgary’s zoo on this weekend. this time, i bought an annual pass, so i will go there a few more times this year. this is a very good opportunity to try out my new toy, a 400 mm telephoto lens.
red panda.
i began by visiting the red panda, watching him for quite a while.
siberian tiger.
after that, i went over to the siberian tigers.
black swan.
on some pond, a few black swans were floating.
snow leopard.
elephant.
an elephant, bathing himself with sand.
giraffe.
lion.
the lions were pretty sleepy. but at some point, one lion got up and walked around a bit.
grizzly bear.
the grizzly bear was sleepy as well, and so was the black bear which was more brown than black. but i got a nice paw shot
wulf.
the last times i was at the zoo, the wulfs were rather sleepy. but this time, they were running around, playing, having fun. so i took the chance to take some pictures.
mountain goat.
miscellaneous.
some random impressions.
tags: black swan, calgary, canada, elephant, giraffe, grizzly bear, lion, mountain goat, photos, red panda, siberian tiger, snow leopard, telephoto lens, wulf, zoo.
posted in daily life, photos | no comments »
july 29th, 2010 at 22:04 +0000 by felix.
tags: bastei, dresden, germany, photos, sächsische schweiz.
posted in photos, traveling | no comments »
july 28th, 2010 at 17:03 +0000 by felix.
as once announced, i worked on spielwiese‘s gallery system. it is now featured by a c++ backend which generates the galleries as well as the thumbnails (if they aren’t already there), both in grayscale and color! so far, the galleries are shown as before (with some exceptions, mostly in the beginning of the blog though), but on every page you can find a clickable text in the footer, on the very bottom of the page, called “change colors!”: this toggles the thumbnails between grayscale and colors! unfortunately, this currently does not remembers the value (by setting a cookie), so if you reload the page everything will be grayscale again. but the most important part, namely the backend, is there! and maybe it will remember the state before the end of this day :)
tags: colors, gallery, photos, spielwiese.
posted in computer, www | two comments »
july 27th, 2010 at 11:58 +0000 by felix.
last week, i was attending the ants ix, which was held in nancy this time (two years ago, it was in banff). this year i also presented a poster. here are some impressions from the city:
a very interesting thing are the trams in nancy. they use one rail instead of two, and work even without it. sounds better then it is, though, if you read this. (the tram in the direction of loria was broken, so we had to use a bus… the nice thing is, the busses in nancy have several screens to show information – but fail to show things like the route, the destination, the time, the next stops, or any other useful information. there is also nothing announced via speakers, so you really have to know where you are, where you are going, and constantly watch out to catch the names of the stops, and better know some of the stops before your stop…)
tags: ants, conference, france, nancy, photos, telephoto lens.
posted in photos, traveling | no comments »
july 16th, 2010 at 15:25 +0000 by felix.
on my way back from berggießhübel, i visited pirna a bit, where i found the monumentum of the grey busses, reminding of the aktion t4 by the nazis in order to murder mentally ill and otherwise handicapped people. this monumentum exists in two copies, one of them being stationary and one moving. the one in pirna is the moving one. here are a few picturs:
tags: germany, monumentum of the grey busses, photos, pirna.
posted in daily life, photos | no comments »
