| on keeping a notebook (heat-moon) |
[Dec. 25th, 2018|04:56 pm]
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"Remember what you have seen, because everything forgotten returns to the circling winds."
Navajo Wind Chant/quoted by Wm. Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways, at the end. |
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| SF |
[May. 11th, 2013|05:02 pm]
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Jason Evanish on San Francisco:It gets cold at 4pm. Neighborhoods define you. Rent is insane. Cost of living overall is sky high. There are crazy and cool things always going on. Costumes are a way of life. Lots of homeless, beggars and crackheads. PBR is the official beverage of San Francisco. An extremely pro-dog city. The Divisadero is the fog line. Palo Alto and Mountain View are farther away than you think. The 3 things you need to know about MUNI. There are tons of amazing views. Startup Central is in SoMa. SF is a super fit city. If you’re a foodie, welcome to heaven. The 3 hour time zone difference is a big deal. Watching sports matters a lot less. Everything is taken to the extreme. You’ll turn into an early adopter even if you weren’t one before. All the best tech startups are at their best here. Working in tech is the norm, not the exception. People love novelty and new experiences. Tons of awesome lies just beyond SF’s borders. Come with an explorer’s attitude. source: "25 Things I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco" |
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| Europe by geography |
[Apr. 21st, 2013|11:07 pm]
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The American view of Europe has mainly to do with history and human culture. Old churches, kings and wars, Napoleon and Hitler, the Reinheitsgebot. How about some geography instead? Let us begin by staring at this map of the watersheds of Europe, in which regions are identified by the rivers that carry their rainfall to the sea.
(To pre-empt possible confusion, yes, it's labeled in German: Donau = Danube, etc.) |
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| Spring! |
[Apr. 19th, 2013|10:14 am]
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The transition to Spring here has been neither gradual nor subtle. On April 9th I woke to snow. Six days later, the parks were packed with Hanoverians in T-shirts tending barbecues and drinking Herrenhäuser. On April 14th the medians of the park were suddenly carpeted with little blue flowers. Today the daffodils bloomed. Yesterday some trees with white flowers exploded into bloom. Today it it's the pink-flowered trees. The green buds on the other trees seem to double in size day by day. Now we have sun and daylight past 9pm. It's a welcome relief from the monotonous gloom that lingered so long. |
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| Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 |
[Apr. 14th, 2013|11:43 pm]
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Searching ebay for new toys, I stumbled on an auction for an old East German lens complete with the adapter to attach it to the micro-four-thirds mount of the Panasonic camera. These things were mass produced in a former decade and, well, aren't really so great optically, so they are available on ebay for very cheap. Other than the retro appeal, the main feature is the big aperture.
 
The sharpness leaves something to be desired, but for retro analog goodness it does deliver. And narrow depth of focus, too: the background is not just defocused but obliterated, swimming with that sought-after bokeh. Hitting a moving target with the aperture fully open using the manual focus is pretty much a lost cause. For targets moving faster than a plant or a coffee mug... f/1.8 might not be the right choice. Which is a pity because moving targets are exactly when you want a faster shutter speed.
 
Here's some guy's page about the lens: http://lewiscollard.com/lenses/pentacon-50mm-f1.8/ |
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| Spring? |
[Apr. 11th, 2013|06:29 pm]
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Birds are chirping - is spring here? Also: longer days! |
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| hydrological fact of the day |
[Mar. 28th, 2013|09:51 pm]
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"Although the headwaters of the Danube are relatively small today, geologically, the Danube is much older than the Rhine, with which its catchment area competes in today's southern Germany. This has a few interesting geological complications. Since the Rhine is the only river rising in the Alps mountains which flows north towards the North Sea, an invisible line beginning at Piz Lunghin divides large parts of southern Germany, which is sometimes referred to as the European Watershed.
Before the last ice age in the Pleistocene, the Rhine started at the southwestern tip of the Black Forest, while the waters from the Alps that today feed the Rhine were carried east by the so-called Urdonau (original Danube). Parts of this ancient river's bed, which was much larger than today's Danube, can still be seen in (now waterless) canyons in today's landscape of the Swabian Alb. After the Upper Rhine valley had been eroded, most waters from the Alps changed their direction and began feeding the Rhine. Today's upper Danube is but a meek reflection of the ancient one.
Since the Swabian Alb is largely shaped of porous limestone, and since the Rhine's level is much lower than the Danube's, today subsurface rivers carry much water from the Danube to the Rhine. On many days in the summer, when the Danube carries little water, it completely oozes away noisily into these underground channels at two locations in the Swabian Alp, which are referred to as the Donauversickerung (Danube Sink). Most of this water resurfaces only 12 km south at the Aachtopf, Germany's wellspring with the highest flow, an average of 8500 liters per second, north of Lake Constance—thus feeding the Rhine. The European Water Divide applies only for those waters that pass beyond this point, and only during the days of the year when the Danube carries enough water to survive the sink holes in the Donauversickerung.
Since such large volumes of underground water erode much of the surrounding limestone, it is estimated that the Danube upper course will one day disappear entirely in favor of the Rhine, an event called stream capture."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube#Geology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube_Sinkhole |
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| today's haul from amazon.de |
[Mar. 21st, 2013|07:07 pm]
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To be honest, I am only a grudging patron of Lonely Planet these days--their guidebooks have gone so mainstream that they can change places as much as they describe them, and any place mentioned in a LP guide will be, by virtue of its publication, no longer "off the beaten path". But I reluctantly admit that they are still pretty much the best for getting your feet on the ground -- I haven't found any better series -- even if they won't usually help those feet leave the backpacker/tourist ghetto.
It's always a delight to find a one-off independent guidebook or travelogue written by someone motivated only by their enthusiasm, personal interest, or unique experience. One such gem is András Török's "Budapest: A Critical Guide," sporadically in print and with an idiosyncratic website at pergolam-budapest.hu. |
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