A gardener’s design
As the weather got better and spring finally arrived, I decided to test my design capabilities in the garden. The aim was to build a bed for my mother’s herbs. I had seen snail like constructions before but those were finished goods and rather expensive. I came up with one myself. All that is needed is
- a spade
- a rollboarder (height 30cm, length 250cm, ca. 15€)
- potting soil
All you do is dig a hole with a diameter of 60cm. It should be uneven, i.e. deeper at one side to get the difference in height. The single panels of the rollboarder are connected with a wire but as you can see, there’s enough flexibility to bend it as is needed. The remaining holes at the sides are filled with the digging which may also be used to increase the height difference. Once you’re done, fill the whole thing with potting soil et voilá! 
The white flower is a sutera diffusus (also bacopa and in German Schneeflöckchen). It had to go already just because it got too big and occupied the herb’s space… In exchange, more herbs moved in.
Microsoft is far behind – as always
My project of the recent past has been the redesign of the website of my new employer Carstens Medizinelektronik from Göttingen. The basis is one of the most simple and standard WordPress themes out there. The site may well be enhanced later. Anyway, the gradient that can be seen in the navigation is inserted with the -linear-gradient CSS3 property. When I constructed the webpage, I only looked at it in Mozilla Firefox. Yesterday, I realised that it would be a good idea to check the website in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Well, I guess you know that the gradient is not displayed there. Why? Because Microsoft sucks. They don’t maintain their browser very well. CSS3 is out there for quite a while already, at least a year… If you want to please those poor souls out there who still don’t know that Firefox is the browser to use, you need to insert some extra code into your CSS-file:
background: -ms-linear-gradient(#color1, #color2);
That will do the trick but only, ONLY in Internet Explorer 10. It comes with Windows 8 and uses the new interface. A Windows Vista/7 adapted version is in the making but as you will guess, a release date is unknown. Give it up for Microsoft! For now, it’s a good idea to also include this line of code. It is all familiar and self-explanatory I reckon. 
background: #color; /* Show a solid color for older browsers */
Song for a grey November day
I don’t publish songs very often. I’m not a great guitar player and my voice and breathing definitely need a lot more practice. However, the above recording is fairly decent I think. If only I knew why the microphone makes my voice sound like I’m lisping…
The song is my very simplified approach of William Fitzsimmons’ “From the water”. He is of course a much better guitar player and his voice is just incredible. I did my best anyway and I think it’s a good response to the winter depression that kicks in about this time every year. I’m glad that this is a problem that doesn’t affect me – at least not as much as other people. So, the song goes out to those who suffer yet again…
Testing the Tamron AF 70-300mm 4-5.6 Di SP VC USD
For my birthday, I got myself the Tamron AF 70-300mm 4-5.6 Di SP VC USD. I missed the opportunity to take pictures of objects that are far away. Especially birds were tough motives since I had to get really close – well actually that close that they would flee. Also, I always wanted to take pictures with a huge moon in the background. My standard lens only covers 18-105mm though. It was impossible to fill an image with the moon or a bird. The new lens is quite an improvement even though I’d need even more focal distance for screen filling pictures. The Tamron lens is the best entry level telephoto lens however. It begins where most standard lenses end (70mm) and ends at 300mm. It comes with a built in vibration compensation that is supposed to compensate shaking and helps you to avoid blur. Here are two rather random shots that I took on a bright day in Kassel. I can’t exactly tell how far I was away but it must have been about 100 metres in the first case and 50 metres in the second case. Both objects were not moving (quite obviously). Good victims for first shots…
Here’s one attempt to take a picture of a bird. Ok, it’s a duck and they usually don’t rush off when you get closer. Anyway, the sharpness is great and the bokeh Continue reading →
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