Archive for the 'general' Category

First stop: Munich

Published on January 5, 2010 in general. 0 Comments

Getting to Munich takes a good 6 hours under normal circumstances.
We had no normal circumstances. It was snowing, it was cold, and it was the last day of the holidays for many parts of the country… so the trip took 10:30 hours, which puts our average speed at something like 75 km/h. Not that satisfying, but as you can see from the picture, we were still in a good mood after arrival!
Had great dinner that day and a good nights sleep. Yesterday I went to Munich's center to do some shopping while Gwendy was at work. Found the most unbelievably crammed, narrow and downright stupidly planned underground parking ever. Survived it without damage to the car somehow. The day was beautiful – not too cold, sunny all over… so I took some halfway nice pics with the big camera, but the upload will have to wait until I am back at decent bandwith.
In the evening we went to two cool bars ("die Bank" and "Ksar") and finished the day with a "le Üwe" at the 'Bergwolf". If you know what that is, you know we had a good time ;-)

Today I drove over to Augsburg to visit Brandi. She already gave me a thorough tour of the city – I had totally forgotten that Augsburg is the town of the Fuggers! On a sidenote – I bought a book that I THOUGHT was about Consulting. Well, it is. But the German "Beratung" has, as the english equivalent, a very broad meaning…. the book is about counseling people with personal issues, not about management consulting. But hey, it was discounted, and one can always broaden the horizon, right?!

Now we're off to grab some mexican food, and then we'll hit the bowling alley. Tomorrow: Frankfurt!

Starting a trip round Germany

Published on January 3, 2010 in general. 1 Comment


Start of the trip, originally uploaded by floho.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, long time no see, etc.!

In a few minutes I’m starting a week-long trip throughout Germany to visit some of my dearest friends. First stop: Munich. I plan on blogging some pictures from every location.

Cool twist #1: I’m taking my new car (Bizzie, she’s called), which is sweeeet!
Cool twist #2: For the long trip to Munich, I’m taking Gwen, so it’s gonna be fun from the getgo. Also, she lives there, and I’m visiting her, so it makes some good sense.
Cool twist #3: Instead of delayed christmas presents, I’ll be taking some cool photos of everyone I visit. Which they don’t know yet. The car is stuffed with all my photo equipment, and It’ll be fun for sure!

Now off we go – come and ride along!

big moon

Published on February 16, 2009 in general. 0 Comments


big moon, originally uploaded by floho.

It is time to get back to blogging and open floho.com up again.
After so many months of not writing anything here, it was really difficult to decide what to say… the amateur’s form of writers’ block, I suppose.
Luckily, this picture gives me a short story to tell that might even convey some sort of meaning.

I took this picture in the early morning hours of January 11th. Although I had heard before that there was a grand photo opportunity of the moon coming up – it being the closest to earth for a long time – it had not crossed my mind to really act on it. As luck has it, I had a nightmare that night, and thus woke up really early. Before going back to sleep, I walked around in my room, and saw the big moon. I mean… the BIG moon. It was incredibly present in the sky, and brighter than I could have imagined. So I scratched my head and decided to take that opportunity right there and then. On came some clothes, the tele-zoom on my camera, the tripod on the balcony and the camera on top. as I started shooting away, switching hands in operating the trigger and warming the other one up – it was bloody cold – my next idea was to take an HDR to capture the whole beauty of the moon as it was. An HDR requires shots being taken at different exposures (I spare you the details), so I set the camera for it, pulled all screws tight on the tripod and took those exposure rows to then later put them together into one, hopefully pretty, picture.

The next day, I opened up the images on the computer and tried to combine them for that HDR I planned to create. What did I find? Bollocks. The head of the tripod must have slowly sagged under the weight of the camera – the position of the moon was shifting between the three images. So I cursed and went to the tripod – not to give the metal a good beating, although I felt like it, but would have lost – but to see what my error had been. I couldn’t find it. All screws were still in position, and no tugging and pushing could move the camera position.

This is when it dawned on my. There had been nothing wrong with the setup. The camera had not moved. The moon had, or rather: I had, because the world kept turning while I took those pictures.

Some things you cannot control. Sometimes, doing everything you can does not change things the slightest bit. That’s nothing to be bitter about – it is something to learn from.

So what did I do? I forgot about the HDR idea, looked at all pictures I had taken, and selected my favorite. The one you are seeing here. And now, it is not only a picture of the big moon anymore – it is the symbol of a little lesson that it taught me.

just because it is true does not mean it is easy.

Published on September 4, 2008 in general. 0 Comments
Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

(from the “Sunscreen Speech“)

It was off by a day and a few hours, but these lyrics are ringing in my head constantly right now. I guess I won’t be posting much in the next days, weeks, months, who knows.

Peaceful state of mind

Published on May 29, 2008 in general. 0 Comments


IMGP0772, originally uploaded by floho.

This little budda has been watching me sleep in my hotel this week – I could swear he gave me peace of mind.
After sunny days in Berlin and finishing my current project, I am off to Garmisch Patenkirchen, from where we’ll conquer the Zugspitze tomorrow for an all-day Meeting. I am SO looking forward to this, hopefully the weather is good – I sure brought my camera :-)