patricia lake.

we stayed in some bungalows near to lake patricia. here are some impressions from the lake:

wildlife.

during our stay in jasper, we also encountered some wildlife besides to the wulf and the mountain goats we saw on the trip here:

last weekend, i visited jasper a second time; this time with a couple of coworkers, to have a few days of vacation. last thursday, we drove up the icefields parkway to jasper. here are some impressions from the drive:

i programmed a bit to create a mechanism which feeds the photos to the user without giving direct access to the files; now, all photos are stored outside the range of the web server, and retrieved by a php script. this brings me one step closer to my goal of making parts of this blog really private. before, photos appearing in hidden posts were somewhat public in case you knew their url. now, you can only access these photos if you are logged in and have the rights to see the corresponding post. the current authentication solution is kind of a hack, but it works. if you just use the blog, you will note no difference – except that photos in old posts which your feed reader did not update are broken. i’m sorry for that. google reader, for instance, should update at least the more current posts sooner or later.

last week, we visit the borsberg artificial ruin in pillnitz, dresden. we were lucky, the weather was mostly good, and we managed to return just before a thunderstorm went off. here are some impressions:

in case you’re more interested in the ruin, and understand german, you might want to read this article.

last week, i was in zürich, visiting my phd advisor, as well as my friends there. on friday, the math institute did an excursion to the rheinau abbey. here are some impressions from the abbey (not from inside though, as photographing was forbidden in there) and the walk afterwards at the rhine knee.

during end of may, i attended a conference held in the beautiful city of leuven, belgium. the conference was held at the arenberg castle, located in a beautiful park. here are some impressions:

the arenberg castle and its park.

leuven by night.

these photos are impressions from a city tour we had one night.

leuven by day.

here are some more impressions of leuven taken during the free afternoon.

inspired by a similar activity my girlfriend is doing, i started to create a layout for my homepage. this time, it is less minimalistic from a design point of view, and this time, it features more white than black. i’m not completely satisfied with the header, but i didn’t found a photo in my collection allowing me to make it as i really wanted it.

last weekend, i was in banff. again. this time, i attended a weekend conference at the birs, the alberta number theory days. since it was just a short visit, there wasn’t much time to look around. nonetheless, here are some impressions from the banff centre and its surroundings. note that the lightening conditions weren’t very good as i took the photos in the evening.

the deer was grazing on the banff centre grounds; one sees “wild” animals roaming around there rather often. they tend to pretty much ignore humans, but you shouldn’t feed or touch them. one morning, i could see an elk walking around from my room’s window. i don’t have a photo of it, though.

a few days ago, we happened to be in berlin for a few hours. we did a small touristy tour and visited some famous places. here are some impressions.

railway, power and memory.

we started at the central railway station, crossed the spree and walked up to the german chancellery and the reichstag, and continued to the holocaust memorial.

global stone project.

after that, we continued into the direction of the tiergarten and found the global stone project.

tiergarten, composers and the soviet war memorial.

we continued through the tiergarten, were we saw, among a lot of beautiful nature, a memorial for beethoven, haydn and mozart and the soviet war memorial.

trash.

besides beautiful nature, the tiergarten also features: trash. both “real” trash, as well as intellectual trash (see the bench’s inscriptions).

the memorial church.

our trip ended at the memorial church, which was bombed during the second world war and not rebuild. unfortunately, they build a modern version of the church right next to it, which blocks the view on the old one and, in my opionion, is not exactly beautiful.

it is also possible to enter the ground floor of the ruins of the old church.

here’s a small “tutorial” on how to make a snow angel:

when you’re done, you can try to leave it without damaging it, get yourself photographed in it, or just have fun in it:

believe me, it’s fun :-)