simon-a.info

Palmenhaus @ Schönbrunn

2026-03-06T18:00:00+01:00

Sadly no hike in February, only a shooting at the Palmenhaus in Schönbrunn. The flower pics were not so successful on Pixelfed, as apparently my followers only eat landscapes, so here the most successful one:

And my favorite:

I was going to make a hike yesterday, but I caught a cold. Hope that I will make it on Sunday. I think it will be another regional trail of the WAB.

And maybe... well I think I cannot write posts here from Florida because I won't take my laptop with me, Pelican is not available for the iPad. But I might post on Pixelfed, editing pics with Affinity Photo for the iPad. I really wonder... is there a way to use Pelican on the iPad?

Buchberg near Neulengbach

2026-02-03T19:00:00+01:00

Only one hike in January, and not really a spectacular one, more like a long walk: a few days ago I travelled to Neulengbach and went up to the Buchbergwarte. Only took a few photos, there was not much to photograph. So this "hike" is better than nothing I guess. Well, the trail was partly icy and I almost fell, but it was very sunny and I am glad that I spent the day outdoors.

Well... I had attached the 17mm/f1.8 to the camera when I started to walk but... somehow I had to change the lens to the 12-45 again. So not much progress in this respect, unfortunately. So all pics of this hike were shot with the 12-45.

One more thing though: I bought the plane ticket to Miami after the last winterwonderland hike and meanwhile I also got the ESTA visum. The only think that's still missing is the travel insurace. But I think I must make one or two more hikes before the journey.

And last but not least: I sent a proposal for a workshop about AgX-Emulsion to the Grazer Linux Tage.

Winterwonderland between Breitenstein and Gloggnitz

2025-12-30T20:00:00+01:00

Exactly one hike this month, but a really awesome one: I can absolutely recommend the WAB regional route L From Kalte Rinne Breiteinstein to Schloss Gloggnitz as a winter hike. It is rather long for a winter hike but actually easy. Lots of meters up- and downhill, but barely noticeable. I was really lucky with the snow. I took lots of winter landscape shots, I have enough photos to upload to Pixelfed for at least one month. Nothing else to say about this I think.

Jánoshegy & Eggenburg

2025-11-27T19:00:00+01:00

On the day before I travelled back from Budapest to Vienna I had slept very well and spontaneously went for another hike in Budapest. From Szépjuhászné I climbed up to the Jánoshegy, then went on to Normafa and then back through the Virágvölgy. It's an ok "metropolitan" hike, not super spectacular. Of course it's really nice on October 31st, but not as nice as the two hikes I had made before. So far I only processed few photos of this hike, that's why I am sharing here one of the very successful ones. Yes, one of them turned out to be the (second) most successful of the entire season, the most successful one is one from Austria. Otherwise, it's a really easy hike and not too long either.

However, I want to shares here another pic from the Danube Bend hike. It was not so successful on Pixelfed but I like it very much.

I think probably this kind of photo is too "complex" for social media, or maybe people don't like the cross.

A few days ago I made a hike from Eggenburg to the so-called "Kogelsteine". It's a really easy "hike". I only had a prime lens with me, the M.Zuiko 17/1.8 II. I just bought this lens because of the cashback. I didn't by a new lens in years I think. I have several prime lenses but I hardly ever use them. I hope it will be different with this one. During the past years, I mostly used the 12-45/4, sometimes the 8-25. So I thought, I want to use my prime lenses more often, this should be the new photography project. However, before I had the 12-45... yea, I remember now, before I had that one I mostly used the 9-18, which did not produce any sunstars... I sold that one when I bought the 8-25. Actually, I should use the 8-25 more often, too. Anyway... I am still unsure about this new "project", I am a bit afraid that I will miss photos because of the missing focal lenghths... recently I had the 12mm with me and thought that it was too wide for most pics - maybe the 17mm will be better? I am curious and a bit anxious...

I dicovered during this hike that my camera's mechanical shutter is probably dying. It hangs after approximately 60 minutes around 0 degrees Celsius. I first noticed this last year I think, but only at the end of the hike after three hours or so, this time it was earlier. However, it looks very much like the photos are a lot sharper when I am using the electronic shutter, it's probably the shutter shock.

I really wonder if my Miami plans will become reality... and maybe the Acores in September?

I think I won't go for many "spectacular" hikes this winter, I already know most places, so I will porbably hike the Stadtwanderwege und the "Rundumadum" trail. Something that's better than nothing. I guess I am not that ambicious any more, or maybe just old(er)?

Hocheck & Danube Bend

2025-10-30T08:00:00+01:00

Since my last post, I made three hikes, all of which during the past two weeks. It's the colorful, photogenic season again... all three hikes were actually easy, no need for putting the camera into the backpack.

The first hike was to the Hocheck from Altenmarkt an der Triesting. This is an easy, but rather long and exhausting hike. I had a proper muscle fever afterwards for a few days. Photography-wise it's highly recommended, the view from the top is really nice, though I haven't edited those photos yet.

This is a view on the way back to Altenmarkt, you can see the Peilstein close to the right edge.

The second hike was from Pilisszentlászló to the Prédikálószék (and back the same way). This is also more like a very long forest walk.

The third hike I made yesterday. I went up to the Julianus observation tower on the Hegyes-tetö from Nagymaros and from there down to Zebegény. This hike is relatively short, as I chose the shortest trails up and down, but quite uphill and downhill, so it's a bit exhausting.

This is the view from the tower:

The colors here might look a bit strange, that's because I edited the photo on the iPad.

I am really looking forward to making more hikes in Hungary. Turns out, this country is actually quite a nice hiking destination, even though it has neither high mountains nor a sea. Hungarian landscapes are not more or less beautiful than Austrian landscapes, but different. The good thing about hiking in Hungary is also that many top destinations and viewpoints are close to the capital, and public transportation is excellent and cheap. E.g., if you want to go top the Prédikálószék, you just need to go to Szendendre and from there with a bus, the whole travelling time is a little more than one hour. And for the second hike, I only needed to travel approximately 40 minutes with the train. So I am indeed planning to continue hiking here in spring.

I have no idea what my next hikes will be. I hope there will be some snow. I guess for now I have enough photos to edit and upload to Pixelfed. Nevertheless I hope there will be at least one hike per month to report about. From now on, it's the "challenging season" because the landscape looks sad and bald. Plus, my followers want photos that match the season.

I also want to mention that I have a new software project. The core is there but I don't know when I will feel like continuing the work.

Thayatalweg & memories of Nürnberg

2025-09-28T15:30:00+02:00

I only made one hike during the past weeks. It should have been two, as always, but when I wanted to make the hike for the first time, I was in the train that collided with a car between Irnfritz and Göpfritz. We had to wait for hours inside the train until the rail replacement service was organized. So of course I missed the bus to Raabs an der Thaya. And there were so many kids, it was so loud... The children hat to carry their suitcases up the ladder. We also heared the helicopter from the train but I (and probably also all the other travellers) only realized how serious the accident was when I read the article in the Presse. So, after we were rescued, I went to Göpfritz with the rail replacement, then I went back to Irnfritz with another rail replacement, and there I took the next train to Vienna, it was early afternoon by then.

The hike I wanted to make was the part of the Thayatalweg from Raabs to Eibenstein. I made the hike exactly one week later. It is a nice hike, but it is not quite easy. Until the Kollmitzgraben it is actually easy, but between Kollmitzgraben and Eibenstein most of the time I had to keep my kamera in my backpack. So during the hike I thought that it was not exactly a good hike for photographers, but when I checked out the photos on the next day, I was satisfied. It was also quite a lonely hike. I only met two or three squirrels, and when I had almost reached Eibenstein, I let a group of three elderly hikers pass. But I did not get sour muscles even though I hadn't really been hiking for months.

This is Ebenstein, seen from the Thaya bridge, close to where I let the group pass:

And this is the Burgruine Kollmitz from inside:

Before this hike, I ran out of photos for Pixelfed and so I went through the photos that I took during the photo walk at LGM2025, and I happened to find quite some nice ones among them. One of them even got more than 100 likes.

I like this one very much but it didn't get many likes:

I want to mention that I am on a diet since July. During my father's illness I lost 2 or 3 kilograms and went down to 51. After his death I gained several kilograms until I was at 55, that was in January or so. During spring I gained another two and so I decided that it was time to stop this. So I am counting the calories and it seems that it works. But I think that it is really important to not have a daily deficit of more than 500 calories (at least for an average women), otherwise you trigger starvation mode and maybe even gain weight even though eating little. If you don't count calories, there is quite a big risk of having too much deficit.

Well, after three months, I am again at 54 kilograms, which is almost my normal weight before my father's illness. My goal is 52. It is absolutely not necessary to starve, but you have to count the calories precisely. I had never been on a diet before and I had never had weight issues until now. But apparently I cannot eat as much as I used to when I was young any more. Apparently I will have to count the calories for the rest of my life.

By the way, don't rely on apps such as Samsung health or Google health - they only show like 1300 calories on a day when I go swimming, so in average 500 calories less than what is appropriate. Big danger of triggering starvation mode! And one more thing: one might think that salads have few calories, but the opposite is the case if you put 2-3 tablespoons of oil into the dressing - a little bread with chicken or turkey breast is better (less calories and more protein).

So I guess that's it for this month.

The Murderer Lake

2025-09-06T18:30:00+02:00

So I am back from the big journey to Transylvania.

I had my hiking shoes with me, but I don't think I really planned to go hiking there because of the bears. Nevertheless I did, spontaneously. I think I put my hiking shoes into my suitcase because we had planned to take part in the pilgrimage to the Perkö on August 20.

On August 13 I spontaneously decided to make a trip to the Murerer Lake/Gyilkostó/Lacul Rosu on the next day. I remembered the hike around the lake from my hiking book and figured it would be too touristy for the bears. I had already made research about (theoretical) public transportation to that destination earlier, so I just picked a random taxi number from the internet and rang up the driver and told him that I was going to arrive at Gyergyószentmikós train station on the next day. The ride with the taxi was not cheap, but together with the train tickets it was more or less a normal price for the journey. Buying the train tickets was a difficult birth though, because the lady at the ticket box only spoke Romanian. But I guess I could have bought the ticket online as well. In theory there is a bus to the lake, but there is not enough time until the return ride, so you have to spend at least one night at the hotel at the lake.

The "hike" itself is nice and easy and short, for the most part it's a walk but at the end right before the viewpoint over the lake it gets a bit steep and rocky. There are a lot of tourists but not as many as in Hallstatt. About three quarters of them are Hungarian, Romanian and German (the Germans are everywhere), and the rest from all over the world like Isreal or Dubai (I actually saw a muslim lady there). Most visitors don't go to the classic viewpoints but just stay at the tourist zone, as you have to walk around the lake to get there.

I must say, I really don't regret that I went there, and I think I have to study that hiking book thoroughly in order to find more destinations that are not dangerous in terms of wild animals.

But I think actual hiking is absolutely impossible in Romania, not only because of the bears, but above all because of the dogs. One day I made a trip to Kézdivásárhely from Kézdialmás with the "train". On the way to the train station I had to pass an uninhabited area at the end of the village and two or thee dogs began to bark so loudly, but luckily they did not come close to me. Form the train I saw several wild dogs at the edge of the fields barking at the train. They were really frightening.

All of the photos that I took at the Gyilkostó are quite popular on Pixelfed. This is the least popular one, but it also has more than 80 likes:

On August 20 we actually went up to the Perkö, but with a taxi. At the end of the religious ceremony my mum fainted, fell and hurt her back and hip, but luckily she didn't break any of her bones. She is still in great pain though.

This is the view from the Perkö, it's a smartphone pic:

For the ride from Budapest to Sepsiszentgyörgy we chose the Corona express, which is really terrible. In the shadow there was 37 degrees celsius, and since there is no air condition, you can imagine how it is like inside the train. The windows need to be open because of the heat and therefore it is also very loud. It is not even possible to watch a movie with headphones. I think the couches are at least 50 years old... Nevertheless it is pretty difficult to get a train ticket, and you have to buy it at least one month in advance.

For the way back to Budapest we chose the plane. I think that's really the only recommended way to travel to or from Romania. However, I requested special assistance three days before the flight for my mum, and didn't get any reaction. I filed the request via email, there is a special email address only for that, because the waiting time on the phone was like two hours. The airline was of course Wizzair, as I think it's the only airline that flies between Brasov and Budapest. And there are no direct flights between Brasov and Vienna (yet?).

Just one more thing: the actual purpose of this journey was not travelling for fun, and it wasn't a photography trip either. Of course we visited my father's grave. And there were also several family meetings, that was quite nice.

Sometimes I wonder... the Széḱely people are so conservative and traditional - how could I end up as a Linux expert? Most of my life, I have spent trying to conform to my gender role. I had planned the perfect female life. But it turned out as an epic failure. Most people have the opposite problem.

My next plans are: autumn around Budapest (as mentioned earlier) and hopefully in March, I will travel to Miami, if I have enough money. Well... I guess the months until spring will pass quickly, nevertheless, I miss the ocean so much...

Thayatalweg & Hohe Wand

2025-08-05T13:00:00+02:00

So finally I fixed my imprint/legal notice. I am now officially a "company".

I think around the middle of July I made the hike From Raabs to Karlstein, it's one of the best parts of the long distance hiking trail Thayatalweg. It's really easy, basically just a long walk. Photography-wise it is very nice, but not super spectacular.

I will only share one photo from this hike here, the nice ones will be in the gallery.

Instead, another pic from the Schwarzachklamm. It did not get so many likes, but I like it very much:

A few days ago, I went up to the Hohe Wand again. From the parking lot I went directly to the Skywalk, then I walked to Bergzendo and then back to the Alpengasthof Postl. After that I first went back on the same way into the direction of the parking lot but took the turnoff to the Waldeggerhaus and from there I directly went to the parking lot. I wanted to see the Ötscherblick, but now I am annoyed because the view from the oservation tower would have been better. I could see the tower from the Waldeggerhaus.

Ok, I think it's worth to mention that I started the project "Static Web Gallery". It's supposed to be like the gallery is now, eventually, but static. I don't know when I will feel like continuing the work.

Nürnberg & Hohe Wand

2025-06-26T18:00:00+02:00

Two days before the start of LGM2025 I made the hike through the Schwarzachklamm. This is really a hike for photographers and families withe children. Easy, no dangers at all and ansolutely photogenic scenery - although, I think it's also the hashtag "germany/deutschland" which is very popular on Fediverse. And the location is also very close to the city, you only need to travel 15 minutes with the train from Nürnberg Hauptbahnhof in order to reach the starting point of the hike.

A few days after LGM I walked the Spalter Hügellandtour, but only half of it and apparently the wrong half. I wanted to see the Massendorfer Schlucht but apparently this trail does not lead through the gorge, you only see a small part of it from very far away. This hike was basically nothing, I mean only being outside in the nature. I guess the other half which leads through Schnittlinger Loch is better. I don't recommend walking the whole thing, half of it is enough for one day.

And last Saturday I finally made it to the Hohe Wand. But I only realized that I made the "wrong" hike at the end of the day. The hike "Auf Wildenauers Spuren" is in the the book "Wiener Hausberge Nord" but it does not lead to the "Skywalk". Nevertheless this is also an awesome hike, but the part between the the Hubertushaus und the Hochkogelhaus is not exactly easy - I definitely had to pack away my camera. Although, on the sign at the Hubertushaus which is showing the way to the Hochkogelhaus there is a warning.

So I definitely have to go up there again, and hopefully that will happen soon. I can really recommend the service "Mit Bahn und Bus zum Naturpark Hohe Wand". It is very cheap and comfortable - the ticket for 9,90 includes the ticket for the bus, the ticket for the Naturpark and a voucher for the Naturpark Shop. However, unfortunately it can happen that a ride is cacelled because not enough people sign up. On Saturday, the weather was really perfect but we were only four, and the driver said that the maximal number of people he ever had was about nine. I really don't know why so few people are using public transportation. I think this possibilty is not advertised properly. Well probably one reason why so few people are using this service is also the fact that the departure for the ride back to Winzendorf is already at 15:30, that's not enough for a hike plus a proper lunch break.

Well... I am still mourning but I am starting to miss the ocean again...

Palfauer Wasserlochklamm & Visegrád

2025-05-21T14:00:00+02:00

On April 30 I went to photograph the Palfauer Wasserlochklamm for the second time and I was really lucky: there was a lot of water in the waterfalls. I also remember the friendly bus driver who drove the bus from Göstling to Palfau and back. I think he might have been a few years older than me. He came a few minutes later each time but arrived on time at the destination. And he didn't take the money for the return ride. On the way back I was quite nervous because I had only two or three minutes for changing the bus in Göstling. But it was no problem, the bus arrived two minutes earlier even though it had departed ten minutes later in Palfau.

And almost two weeks ago I made this hike in Hungary. It's a very nice hike and I can recommend it. But it feels a bit longer and more exhausting than accoring to the description. I am also planning to spend the end of October and the beginning of November in Budapest.

This is the view from the castle:

And this is the view of the castle, from the Zsitvay observation tower:

The next destination is the Schwarzachklamm near Nuremberg.

LGM 2025 workshop files

2025-05-19T11:00:00+02:00

As you might know, I am hosting two workshops at LGM2025 in Nürnberg.

Here are some files that we will work with during the workshops:

https://nc.simon-a.info/index.php/s/CJ45pfwsjBqp4Qt

And the backup link (my webhoster was offline several times during the past weeks):

https://lgm2025.lima-city.at/files/

I have also prepared clean Wordpress installations for the participants of the second workshop:

https://simon-a.info/lgm-workshop/workshop/wp1/

There are 10 clean installations, replace "wp1" in the URL with wp2 to wp10. I will tell you the user name and the password during the workshop.

Rosalia, Koppental & parks in Döbling

2025-04-19T17:00:00+02:00

During the past weeks I was luckier with the hikes than last time. At the end of March, I made the first half of the first part of the WAB (Weitwanderweg am Wiener Alpenbogen), from Katzelsdorf to the Rosalia. A very nice, "normal" hike without any difficulties, highly recommended. There are basically two viewpoints: the observation tower Lanzendorf-Wiesen and the Blickpunkt Rosalia at the Rosalia Chapel. I did not have to put the camera into my backpack at any time. Although the whole first part of the trail ist actually from Wiener Neustadt/Katzelsdorf to Bad Erlach, I recommend stopping at the Viewpoint Rosalia, else I think this hike is too long. There you can catch the bus that takes you to Mattersburg and from there you can go back to Wiener Neustadt and Vienna. The observation tower Lanzendorf-Wiesen is not even mentioned in the descriptions of the trail, but it is indeed the actual highlight of the whole hike.

I am not sure why these two pics were not so popular on Pixelfed. As you can see, there was even a rainbow for about two minutes at the viewpoint Rosalia Chapel. Another pic, seen from the observation tower.

This is one of the first photos that I developed with the new darktable module agx. And I finally switched my whole workflow to the (DCI-)P3 color space, since apparently Pixelfed can finally deal with it.

After that, I made a walk with some photographer friends in the Setagaya Park and the Wertheimstein Park in Döbling, Vienna. The blooming Magnolia trees will be on gallery.simon-a.info soon I hope, but this is a nice spot in the Wertheimstein-Park that did not get many likes/shares either (I don't know why):

And just a few days ago I made the 16th part of the BergeSeenTrail from Hallstatt to Bad Aussee. Also a very easy and highly recommended hike.

So... maybe something about my hiking plans for the next months... I think next weekend I want to go up the Hohe Wand, finally. I have been planning this for years. I think I should buy a ticket soon for the bus from Winzendorf to the Naturparkhaus. I also want to go the the Palfauer Wasserlochklamm again, as long as there is still plenty of water. Besides, I think I will be in Budapest again before I take off to Nürnberg. There I want to make a hike in the region Visegrád, I don't think I will have time for two. I am interested in the viewpoints Zsitvay kilátó and Juliánus kilátó. There is also the OKT-16, but in order to pass the Zsitvay kilátó it is probably best to walk it from Pilisszentlászó to Visegrád, I think it's easy to reach both locations via public transportation. Also on my list is the Thayatalweg, by the way.

Man proposes, God disposes.

Adventure on the Kampalpe & Bisamberg

2025-03-19T17:00:00+01:00

Several weeks ago I went up to the Kampalpe from Spital am Semmering. I wanted to make this hike. If you click on this link, you see the status-note "Geschlossen". That's because I wrote an email to the website. I had to start the hike one hour later, at about 11 a.m., because the train was delayed. Anyway, I went up from the other direction, i.e. from Spital. That was quite exhausting and not so easy. But then, approximately from the Kerschbaumkogel, there was no trail, only fallen and felled trees. And there was quite a bit of snow, too. I think it was already after 3 p.m. I was afraid, I think this was my most frightening hike so far. I saw some forest roads on the map and decided to choose those for the descent, because I thought that climbing down the same way as I went up would be too steep, too dangerous and too long. Eventually I only saw animal footprints in the snow. When I had walked down most of the way, I met a local. I asked him which way I should choose, the trail or the forest road, which was longer but - according to my estimation - safer. He told me that the trail was ok. But it wasn't. Again a lot of fallen trees... I did't see the trail because of the trees and decided to go back again. But then the local came from the other direction and somehow we got down together, straight through the forest, and of course it was also pretty downhill, my clothes became dirty. Yes, that was it.

Only one pic here. The others will be in the gallery. But unfortunately there are not many. The best pic that I took on this hike is probably the view of the snowy Heukuppe from the Kampalpe.

Last week I was too lazy and only "hiked" the Stadtwanderweg 5 to the Bisamberg. This is more like a longer walk. There was not very much to photograph, I guess this trail is much nicer in autumn. But it's an interesting walk because you see a lot of vineyards very old wine cellars, among other things.

So only a short post this month.

À la recherche de la neige perdue

2025-02-12T18:00:00+01:00

I made three hikes during the past weeks. In January I spent almost two weeks in Budapest. I made a hike in Dobogókö, where I visited both famous Danube viewpoints. I chose this trail because I thought that it's easy and that an easy hike is ok for a winter hike. However... it's actually not that easy, also it's at least two kilometers longer than stated on the website. Especially the first part around the Thierring rocks is almost a bit dangerous. I had to put the camera into my backpack there, well and the trail was a bit slippery, because there was a little snow. Otherwise, it's a nice hike, I can recommend it, but of course it's much nicer in the spring or fall. Well... the Zsivány rocks are not that impressive, and very close to them I saw a bore. It was not afraid at all, at least much less than me. Of course there were few hikers... well, although Dobogókö is a very touristy spot in Hungary, it's not very touristy at this time of the year.

You can find more photos in the gallery, these are the least successful ones on Pixelfed. In the second pic, you can see Visegrád in the background, it's tiny and surrounded by the fog.

Back in Vienna, approximately two weeks ago, I made a "hike" in Mönichkirchen, which was actually only a longer walk along the ski slope. I don't recommend it, although it's part of the long distance hiking trail along the Wiener Alpenbogen (WAB). There is not much to photograph. Well... no real snow, only artificial snow, although around 1200 meters above sea level. My followers on Pixelfed are hungry for winter landscapes with snow, but I have none...

And a few days ago I made another hike, which was probably the best one since a long time. It was the trail from Rohr im Gebirge to the Jochart and back. But again, no snow, and if you zoom into the pic, you can see that even on the top of the Schneeberg there is no thick snow cover. The hike itself is marked as easy but it's really not easy. Certainly it's no hike for families with little children. It's not actually dangerous, but the trail is quite steep both uphill and downhill, and therefore exhausting. I got sour muscles. I wanted to make an easy hike, and it was in about as easy as I expected. Anyway, you have to put the camera into your backpack for about three quarters of the hike.

Corrections, Blockheide & Payerbach

2025-01-05T00:00:00+01:00

Before I start writing about my hikes, I want to make two corrections: in my recent review about Kubuntu 24.10, it is stated twice that Debian Stable is the base for Ubuntu. Obviously this is nonsense because Ubuntu is based on Debian Testing, partly even Sid and Experimental. Naturally this was not in my original text but was introduced by the editor, unfortunately. And many other things were changed, too, which is also quite unfortunate. Another mistake was introduced by the editor in my report about LGM 2024, where you can read that the meetings before Covid took place in Europe and Africa. In the original text it was "Europe and the American continent", because it was mostly Europe, several times Canada, once Brasil and I think once the US.

So I think I made two hikes since the last post. The first one was from Payerbach to the Looshaus am Kreuzberg. This is a nice hike, more than half of the trail follows the valley of a creek, with lots of small, mostly artificial waterfalls. However, it's not in the forest or a natural trail but asphalted roadway. And of course it must be much more beautilful when there is snow, which was not the case when I made the hike. So it's definitely an easy hike.

The second hike we made a week ago through the Blockheide near Gmünd in the Waldviertel. This destination is not so famous and advertised, but highly recommended. The huge round rocks covered by moss are quite similar to the rocks in the Naturpark Mühlviertel. Although the hike is sometimes advertised as intermediate, it is definitely easy.

This pic was taken with my smartphone by Mr. H.:

While we were sitting in the train on the way to Gmünd, I tried to explain to him that during our hikes, we both carry the responsabilty for our safety together. He just listened and smiled, I think he did not understand what I was trying to say.

Finally, a pic of my dad in the cemetery of Granada, I took it in February 2009. In the background you can see the Sierra Nevada.

Budapest & the Alhambra

2024-12-12T05:00:00+01:00

I am back from Budapest since a few weeks now. I only made one hike there and I forgot to put back the SD card into my camera so I had to take photos with my smartphone. I went up to the Hárshegy from Hüvösvölgy. Nice and easy hike, not very long either. Mostly an afternoon hike.

I think it is possible to see the parliament building on the second pic.

After I had returned to Vienna, I wanted to go for a hike in Hainfeld, but again, no luck: after 4 kilometers or so, the trail was closed. I took a few photos but I did not post them on Pixelfed yet. This is one of them:

Finally, last week I went up to the Hermannskogel. Again no luck with the Habsburgwarte, because it is only open on weekend, but at this season, it doen't matter anyway. I posted one pic of a frozen leaf that I took during that hike and it was quite successful so I won't post it here.

I think I was quite close to the Habsburgwarte when I took this photo. This hike (Stadtwanderweg 2) is marked as "intermediate" in some books but it is defintely easy. It must be really nice on the last weeked in October.

So not much luck with hiking during the past weeks. Instead, I want to share the nicest memory that I have of my father, without photos. There are some, but I don't know where they are.

I think it was more than 15 years ago, I was in my late twenties and working on my doctoral thesis. I got a scholarship for travelling from the university because I had to study a lot of original paintings abroad. Some of them happend to be in Spain, in Madrid and Granada. I had made some research trips earlier, sometimes alone, sometimes with my mum. I hand planned the journey to Spain for February and my father decided to accompany me. Of course, for my parents, my trips were a great opportunity to travel since they only speak German and some eastern European languages. My father hated the dark winters in Austria and we indeed got a lot of sunshine in Spain, that I remember very well.

For him, it was also the first time he actually flew with an airplane. And I think this was the only time in my life that I visited art museums with him. We went together to the Prado, the Thyssen Museum, the Escoreal and the Capilla Real in Granada. I remember that it was very windy inside the Escoreal and that it's a really huge old masters collection... In Madrdid, I met a curator at the Prado, I think we talked in French, and she warned me of the thieves. But I think I must have been alone in the galleries as well because my father walked around a lot alone in Madrid.

One day, he showed me the important buildings in the city center, because he had seen them before, he talked a lot as always, like a tourist guide, and that was when his wallet was stolen. A bank card, his ID card, a lot of money and our train tickets to Granada were in it. It was pretty difficult and annoying to file charges at the police because the officers only spoke Spanish. Luckily we found a police lady who spoke French, but my French was not extremely good either. Somehow we got the document from the police that was necessary for my dad to be able to enter the airplane, because he only had an ID card and no passport. And we had to buy the tickets to Granada again, because of course I did not cancel my research in Granada because of the theft.

In Granada, we stayed at a hotel that he liked very much. It was not expensive at all but very very nice, with huge beds (my dad was a tall man), and a nice courtyard. Well, and if my dad had not been with me I would not have seen the Alhambra. I was so amazed and enthousiastic about it that I had to study books about it after our return. And I think this journey was also the last time that my father saw the sea. One day, he made a trip to Almeria, Malaga and I think also Gibraltar alone with the bus. I was pretty worried and anxious that he wouldn't be able to come back in time. But he always had his own mind and did what he wanted to do, he was a free person. He said he saw the African coast.

I think he liked this journey very much. He talked a lot about it even years later and often looked through the photos on the computer.

Jauerling, Wienerwald & Türkenschanzpark

2024-11-12T12:00:00+01:00

I made three "hikes" on the last days of October. Last year, autumn was approximately two weeks later than usual, this year a few days earlier. On October 30/31, most trees were already naked. The first hike was only an afternoon hike to the Sophienalpe in Vienna (Stadtwanderweg 8). I think the photos that I took during this hike are the most successful ones on Fediverse, even though the landscape is not so spectacular - but the Wienerwald is always very nice at the end of October. I like to post here the photos that are not so successful on Fediverse, but so far I only posted a few and all of them are quite popular... I think the least successful one is this:

But it will also be among the 10+ shares.

I think the walk at the Türkenschanzpark was even before the hike to the Sophienalpe. I went there with my photographer friends. But those pics also seem to be quite popular, akthough so far I only posted two on Pixelfed.

And on October 30 I finally went up to the Jauerling. I chose the safe part of the Welterbesteig from Maria Laach to the Naturparkhaus and back on the same way. This hike is definitely highly recommended and easy. It's approximately 500 meters uphill and downhill, but there are no (very) steep parts. Landscape-wise, the trail from Mühldorf over the Trenning is probably more spectacular, nevertheless you have the really awesome view at the end without any danger. The part from Maria Laach to the Jauerling seems to be long, especially if you choose the same way back, but it is comfortably walkable in a day, I think I even had to wait almost two hours for the bus.

This pic is very nice but it's actually really not so popular on Pixelfed, it did not get 10 shares:

By the way, there is also a lookout, but walking up to the top is not really worth the effort.

I still have to edit a lot of photos from these hikes and walks... and even the one from Spitz to Mühldorf. I am kind of lazy. Right now I am using ART (Alberto's RawTherapee), I think I will write an article about it. I would like to shoot again, I haven't been hiking for almost two weeks, but the weather is not nice.

Right now I am in Budapest. I discovered that Hungary is actually a good destination for hiking. Hungary has no high mountains or a sea, most people think it is boring for hikers and flat, but that is not the case. Hovever, the problem is the weather right now and the season which is not photogenic at all. I would like to make one or two hikes here, but I am not sure if it will be possible, I don't even know how long I will be here. But I am happy that I have good internet, much better upload speed than at home. I bought a tiny mobile router and put a sim card into it yesterday. First it looked like the sim slot was broken but a kid at Media Markt was able to insert it. Before him, me and two other people tried. That was really annoying...

I think I am turing towards a different kind of landscape photography where the emphasis is on composition and less on spectacular landscapes.

An adventurous hike

2024-10-24T10:45:00+02:00

At the beginning of this month Mr. H. and I went for a hike in the region Wiener Alpen. We wanted to climb up to the Großer Otter. I had suggested that we go to the Wasserlochklamm because at that time there was still a lot of water in the waterfalls, but Mr. H. wanted something that is closer. However, as it turned out, most hikes in that region were still unwalkable because of the damages caused by the flood. Of course I looked in the internet if the trail was closed but found nothing.

We started in Maria Schutz and had difficulties finding the right way in the beginning. In the middle of the forest path there was something like a small dried out river bed, but that was not really dangerous. After almost two hours of climbing uphill we arrived at a fork and realized that the way that we had come up was closed. But unfortunately the way to the Großer Otter was closed as well. We thought a few minutes about what to do and decided to ingore the closure. After about five minutes we arrived at a minor landslide and crossed it carefully. But after another five minutes of walking there was another landslide which was not quite minor. It consisted of intermediate sized rocks and stones and on top of everything was a fallen tree. Mr. H. said that he would like to try to cross the landslide but won't do it if I decide to go back (he doesn't even go hiking alone). I thought about his suggestion for about two minutes but then decided to turn back and so we did.

We basically had no other choice than walking down to Gloggnitz, mostly on a raod that was made for cars. However, I saw on the map that there was a forest way as well and eventually we chose that one. The whole terrain did not look dangerous, however, there were a few fallen trees. I found a huge mushroom and let Mr. H. take a photo of me with it.

Shortly before we reached Gloggnitz there was a fallen tree blocking the way whose trunk was pretty large. Mr. H. had no problems climing over it because he is taller than me. But I needed a few minutes to climb over it. Somehow I managed to do it though. Mr. H. was already like 200 meters ahead of me. And I think just a few meters after that big tree trunk there was another fallen tree. It looked like it was easy to walk around it, but when I was about to step back to the trail I fell. I fell against a standing tree, hurting my chin, my back and my left shoulder. I can still feel the pain a little. Clearly this could have been much worse. I was having difficulties getting up again because I was trapped in some kind of chest, composed of the terrain falling down and the tree. I shouted for help. Mr. H. was instantly there, but he was just standing there for about a minute, obviously not knowing what to do. I told him to take my backpack. After that I was able to get out of the "chest" on my own. My chin was bleeding and I asked him to put a plaster on it because I did not see where the injury was. But I let him convince me that it was better to not put anything on it because none of my plasters had the right size. I think it was just too much for him to choose between the many different plasters.

At this point I want to share an information that you might already have guessed: Mr. H. is autistic. He had told me about his condition in one of his first emails, because when he found this website and read parts of my blog he thought that I was autistic too. Until this hike I thought that his autism was mild but... meanwhile I am wondering: am I safer with or without him? Clearly, if I had been alone, I would't have ignored the closure. A few days later I asked him that we try to keep an eye on each other more during our hikes and to try to help me more when it's necessary. He thanked me, but added that I probably have to tell him more what to do. At the moment I want to continue hiking with him because of our friendship. Some of my friends are upset about me saying and thinking such things, because clearly it's not his fault that he behaves like he does. They say I have no empathy. But maybe I should't risk my safetly because I feel sorry for him?

A few days ago I made the first solo hike after my father's death. Mr. H. had told me that he was ill. I think it was the fifth part of the Welterbesteig Wachau, from Spitz to Mühldorf. It's an easy hike but a bit exhausting. Very nice hike, but I think all parts of the Welterbesteig are highly recommended during this season.

The last two pics I edited on my new laptop. It is a 3000 euro laptop that was on sale, and has a 4K DCI-P3 screen. darktable performance is not optimal even though it has a proper video card as well, clearly because of the highres screen. Not sure if shopping helps overcoming my sadness and grief... All journeys are cancelled for now. Even though I actually bought the laptop for working abroad.

Kaltenbachwildnis & Székely Land

2024-09-30T11:45:00+02:00

So... I am still very sad...

This is my dad's last orchid:

He was buried on September 21st in a small village close to Kronstadt.

I took this photo with my new Galaxy A25 and edited it on my Samsung tablet. I gave the A52 to my mum. The A25 cannot save raw photos. The camera is not so bad, although, if I look at the photos on the computer, they look much worse than on the tablet. They are indeed not very sharp. I mainly used the A25 as camera on this trip to Transylvania.

Before we took off to Romania, I made a hike to the Kaltenbachwildnis with Mr. H. I will not share any pics of the actual Kaltenbachwildnis here since they are pretty popular on Pixelfed, so they will eventually be uploaded to gallery.simon-a.info. Instead, a view of the Traunsee seen from the shore of the lake somewhere between Gmunden and the Kaltenbachwildnis.

The hike itself is very nice. I would classify it as easy to intermediate. I think I did not have to put the camera into my backpack at all, but it's not really very easy.

I also want to share a pic that I took I think two days before my dad's heart stopped to beat. I took it during a photo walk with my friends in Steinhof in Vienna. It's one of my favorite photos but it not the kind of photo that is very popular on social media.

And, last but not least, a photo taken in the Székely Land with the A25:

During this trip, I did not really have time to take photos. It was mainly about the burial and meeting relatives. But I am planning to return there eventually during the next year or so, maybe in June. In addition to taking landscape photos, I want to host workshops/talks about open source photography software in Szentgyörgy, Csíkszereda and Kronstadt, and maybe even Maros and Klausenburg, but I have not yet contacted the institutions that could provide a room and a screen. I am curious about the feedback/interest. I kind of have the feeling that there would be more interest in this subject than in Western Europe, I am not sure why.

Tulbinger Kogel and Perchtoldsdorfer Heide

2024-08-22T18:30:00+02:00

During the past weeks I made two hikes, both of them very close to Vienna.

I went to Tulbinger Kogel with the bus from Mauerbach, then walked up to the Leopold-Figl-Warte and finally went back to Mauerbach. After the walk I even visited my father in the hospital with my aunt. I made this walk alone. Originally I wanted to go with Mr. H. on Sunday, but it was raining on that day and he wasn't available on Saturday.

I did take some interesting photos during this walk, but all-in-all, this viewpoint is not really spectacular. The tower is also quite small. Basically this is the view from the Leopold-Figl-Warte:

Maybe the view to the other side is more interesting in the winter, when there are no leaves on the trees, but in the summer, you can only see the trees. In theory, the Schneeberg should be visibe, among other mountains.

This is one of the more interesting shots that I took on that walk:

A few days ago I made another hike in Perchtoldsdorf, but this time with Mr. H. The hike itself is not so spectacular, it's mostly a walk in the forest, but I think I was kind of in a creative mood. The viewpoint Josefswarte is also very nice, at least much better than the Leopold-Figl-Warte. So this hike is similar to the Rudolfshöhe and I can recommend it. It's very probably even nicer at the end of October.

In June, shortly before my father became ill, I made a walk at the Sankt Marx cemetery in Vienna with two friends. The destination wasn't my idea though. I hesitated to share these photos, because they show a cemetery, but now it doesn't matter any more.

Ten days ago, my father stopped to breathe. He was 86 years old and became the victim of a very rare neurologic disease. He suffered terribly for six weeks. I visited him almost every day in the hospital and tried to spend as much time as possible with him.

We will have to bring his ashes to Transylvania eventually. I hesitated to explore my birth country with the camera for a long time, mostly because of the bears, but now I think it will be one of my long term photography projects. I just had a look at a hiking guide and apparently there are quite a few hikes that are not so dangerous in terms of bears. And public transportation is not so bad either. I think I was in Transylvania for the last time in 2018, shortly before I turned to landscape photography.

I know that my father was far from perfect. But for me, he will always be the man who nailed a small carpet to the floor so he doesn't slip on it.

Rudolfshöhe

2024-07-19T10:00:00+02:00

This month's post is a bit delayed, because at the end of June something bad happened in my life. This incident came as no surprize, I think in my subconscious mind, I felt it coming since at least two years. Actually... it could have happend years ago. Nevertheless it came suddenly and was a terrible shock.

Anyway, for this reason, at the moment I am kind of stuck in Vienna. I don't know how long. I only made one hike since my journey to LGM/France. Mr H. and I went up to the viewpoint Rudolfshöhe from Purkersdorf. The hike itself is short and easy. There are some uphill and downhill parts, but it's still more a walk than a hike. The view from the wooden tower is not super spectacular but actually really nice and definitely better than I expected. I highly recommend this hike/walk especially at the end of October or during the first week of November, when the Wienerwald has the most beautiful colors.

Maybe this is a good thing about this terrible incident, I mean the fact that I am kind of forced to photograph not so spectacular landscapes that are very close to Vienna.

Well... the day before this hike was one of the better ones, and maybe that's why I was able to photograph and edit photos, even though I am full of fear, sadness and pain.

I think this is one of the best shots that I took from the Rudolfshöhe tower, but it won't be on gallery.simon-a.info because it did not get very many likes/shares on pixelfed.social.

You can even see the Schneeberg from this viewpoint, but I'm not sure if this is a good edit:

And another shot from Ploumanac'h/Britanny that is not so popular on Fediverse, even though I personally like it very much:

This recent incident will probably chanage a lot of things in my life. I don't know if I will be able to concentrate on my work/photography during the next months, but for the rest of this year, I am or was planning to write reviews about KDE Neon, Kubuntu and Debian/KDE Plasma 6. But I will definitely not fly to La Palma this year, and after that, I am not sure if I will have enough money for such journeys.

Well, I am grateful that I had a great, though definitely not perfect life without any ups and downs during the past years. But I think they were the best years of my life so far. The Great Director's plans are a mystery...

Depending on the weather and Mr H.'s availability, one of my next hikes will likely be the Tulbinger Kogel or somthing similar. I don't think I want to go hiking alone in the near future.

La mer raciste

2024-06-04T15:00:00+02:00

It was a great journey, even though or maybe because I didn't really choose this destination. I arrived in Rennes I think on May 7 rather late in the evening. On the next day, Tom Techner and I made a trip to Saint Malo. It was low tide and the landscape did't really really look very nice, but the photos turned out quite ok.

After LGM I moved to Morlaix and made two hikes, both of them were part of the Sentier des douaniers. The first one was in Ploumanach and the second one on the Kercoz peninsula. On May 16 in the afternoon I began to sneeze and my nose began to run really terribly. I think I had fever when I was sitting in the plane back to Vienna, although I didn't feel sick during the day, but on the days after my return I did. I had no throat ache though. The plane back to Vienna was delayed by almost 3 hours because of a storm in Schwechat.

Britanny is definitely a higly recommended destination for photographers and nature lovers. I am absolutely satisfied with the photos and I am so happy that I saw the Atlantic again after such a long time! However, if you don't have a driver's licence, you might get problems. In Morlaix, it is necessary to order taxis two days in advance. There is public transportation, but it is not optimal. There are few trains and few buses in France in general I think. If you read in some hiking books that the Maison entre deux rochiers is accessible via public transportation, that's a lie. But I chose the hikes that are accessible via public transportation, and I think there are enough of them for two weeks or so. They might not be the most interesting or important ones though. For instance in the case of Ploumanach, the problem is that the bus that goes to Ploumanach from Lannion leaves rather late and the one that goes back leaves too early. There is enough time for the hike, some normal shots and maybe two long exposures, but not more, no coffe or lunch break. There are very many hikers who walk along the Sentier des douaniers, especially in Ploumanach, and it's indeed a really great and easy hiking trail. Except for Ploumanach, most tourists and hotel guests are French though. The number of tourists is approximately one third of the number of tourists in Vienna and Austria, so I realized that we have really hard core mass tourism here.

In general I have the impression that... there is not much freedom in France these days. Everything seems to be extremely regulated. Name tags are obligatory on your luggage in the trains and there are lots of security people with big dogs especially in the train stations. Obviously people are supposed to be intimidated. If you buy a train ticket from a ticket selling machine, you have to enter your name, your birth date and your phone number. I mean e.g. public transportation is more functional than in Germany, the trains are extremely punctual and reliable, but there are too few of them and I think state funded services, probably also health services and education, not only things like public transportation, are in general reduced to a minimum. I also saw and smelled several heavily drunk men, usually they are young and native white French people. I think the Rasseblement National is not yet officially in the gouvernment, but in reality they are kind of "driving" the "liberal" gouvernment, Macron & co have no other choice than do what they say. The liberals obviously want to prevent that the RN grows even more, but it looks like their plan is failing. I don't like Macron's recent statements about the war, but in France many things seem to work better than elsewhere.

I also witnessed a very interesting scene. On May 17 I was sitting in the train from Rennes to Aeroport CDG. I had to buy the train ticket more than 2 weeks before the ride and I was happy that I got one of the last cheaper second class tickets. Seat reservation is obligatory and most of the time the French seem to be okay with that. I was sitting on a seat next to the corridor, two other women were sitting on the seats opposite of mine. The seat next to me was empty for some time. On the other side of the corridor there were three black women. A man around 40 or so entered the train somewhere before Paris I think and asked me to stand up so he could sit down on the empty seat next to me. Approximately half an hour later another man entered the car, and as it turned out, he was the actual owner of the seat next to me, because he signalized his confusion about the fact that his seat was already accupied. Nevertheless he sat down next to the black women, although the first man was willing to stand up.

I will not write much about LGM here because you can read a report about it in Linux Magazin soon. But I want to mention that there were siginficantly fewer participants than before Covid and that there were no dicussions about "taking down Adobe".

I hope LGM will be in Rennes again eventually. I would like to explore this region more. I was planning to make the hike in Huelgoat, which is easily accessible via public transportation, but there was no time. I also wanted to visit the Impressionist exhibition in the Musée d'Orsay, but with those few trains there is no chance for a spontaneous rainy weather trip.

Actually, I just realized that we also walked a third part of the Sentier des douaniers in Saint Malo.

Kleiner Sonnstein & Puchberg

2024-04-29T17:15:00+02:00

So, according to Matomo the visitors from libregraphicsmeeting.org are coming to this website. That is good!

I made two hikes this month: the first one to the Kleiner Sonnstein at the Traunsee, and the second around Puchberg am Schneeberg. Landscape-wise, both of them are awesome and highly recommnded, but the Sonnstein-hike is not so easy.

On the Sonnstein-hike, Mr. H. was with me again. Well... I think this hike was the most difficult one that we made together and... I was faster uphill, he was faster downhill, as always. So the last 500 meters or so before the summit is really rocky and steep. It's not a via ferrata, and it's not really a vertical wall either but... I think this hike goes more towards difficult. It's probably more difficult/dangerous than a well maintaind and easy via ferrata. When we reached the top, we were wondering: how are we going to go down again? But somehow we made it. The good thing is, and that's why it's not really dangerous: there are a lot of hikers. We went up on a weekday and there were a lot of tourists from everywhere, South America, Israel, and above all from Hessen, because there the childrend still had holidays. But a lot of people who reached the top were complaining that the hike was not really intermediate. There were even people who asked us for help. I knew that it was not easy, I planned this hike for years, but I didn't want to go alone. I actually expected it to be steep and rocky right before the summit but it was a bit more difficult than I had thought. But I don't regret it.

The Kleiner Sonnstein is the highest mountain in this picture (on the right side). The way from the first (lower) summit to the second (higher) summit is ok, it's the part right before the lower summit that is difficult.

The hike in Puchberg is just awesome. I made it last Saturday I think. The beginning, the ascent to the Himberg, is the most difficult part, a bit exhausting, narrow trail and sometimes a bit exposed but nothing serious really. Although you better put your camera into your backpack and just take it out for the viewpoints. Well but it's relatively long, definitely more than 15 kilometers.

I know now that I probably won't give my smartphone to my mother, and use her old one instead. Maybe I will get myself a new one and then give this one to her. Anyway, I did not take any ultrawide lens with me and the only ultrawide that I had with me was my smartphone. Thank God I did not forget to use Open Camera, so I could edit the DNGs. And apparently the first smartphone pic that I uploaded to Pixelfed is quite popular... Or I should always take the small Laowa with me, if I put the 12-45 on the camera. But gaining some experience with DNGs from my smartphone was not bad at all, quality-wise they are better than I expected.

The most spectacular parts of this hike are the beginning and the views of the Schneeberg from the Himberg, and the last third which leads through the rocky valley of the Sierning. But there were not many hikers on this trail, even though the weather was great and it was a Saturday, I am not sure why. A few days before the hike I didn't even know where to go. I studied at least 10 hiking books, but then I chose this hike in Puchberg because it was close and cheap to reach with the ÖBB and not too exhausting. I definitely didn't expect it to be this awesome, it wasn't marked as highly recommended in "Wiener Hausberge Nord", but it's definitely better than the hike to the Steinerner Stadl, which is marked as "top".

Otherwise, there's not much news I guess. A lot of work... and I was a bit anxious because of the strike of the employees of Austrian Airlines... thank God that's over now. Still don't know which operating systems to install on my laptop for LGM.

Well, I have to write it again: I still miss the Canary Islands so much!

And one more thing: if everything goes well, I will host a workshop about vkdt at the Linux Tage in Chemnitz next year.

Why girls don't choose STEM, etc.

2024-04-01T10:00:00+02:00

During the past weeks I have been communicating with Johannes Hanika irregularly. The topic of our emails is mostly vkdt. But sometimes he wirtes one or two scentences about things that are going on in his life. A few weeks ago he happend to mention that he is unhappy about the fact that there are hardly any women among his students (I had asked him if there were many transgirls among his students). I think his colleagues at the univerisity are exclusively male. This made me think.

Clearly, this is mostly a matter of education and idols. I realized an important thing about why I chose to study humanities. Actually I already made this choice when I was 11, or, more precisely, a friend of mine made the choice. In the 2nd grade of middle school, we had to choose between 3 Gymnasium branches: the so called "neusprachliches Gymnasium" with 6 years Latin, the "Realgymnasium" with more STEM, and the "wirtschaftskundliches Realgynasium". If I had gone my very own way, I would have chosen Realgymnasium, I remember that very well, this was my first logical thought. I wasn't particularly interested in STEM, but I was the best in math in my class, and I was wondering: Why learning Latin for 6 years? When I was 11, I was interested in geography, biology, philosophy and things like that. Last but not least, Realgymnasium appeared to be logical, because there were several doctors, pharmacists and a chemistry teacher in our family. But I chose Neusprachlich, because the clique that I was part of chose Neusprachlich. Actually it was my friend Kathi, the leader of the group, who made the choice. All other members of our small clique were bad at math, except me. In 3rd grade we had an awesome Latin teacher who held a PhD in archeology, and of course I was also the best at Latin. At age 12 I had the idea of aiming for a PhD in art history for the first time. Of course, back then, this was still one of several possibilites, but kind of all of them involved humanities. So, that's my story. Probably, my whole life would be completely different, probably easier and more successful, if I had chosen Realgymnasium. Btw, Kathi later chose to study economy which involves a lot of math...

Well, and I want to mention one more thing. I finished the first part of my univerisity studies when I was 20 and I had to wait almost two years for a slot in an Oberseminar. During that time, I passed some exams but also experimented with Linux, that was in the early 2000s. My mum, who has no idea what computer science is, suggested that I switch to computer science. But I didn't think about that because I had finished the first two years with summa cum laude, and because I thought that coding was difficult and not the same as playing around a bit with Linux. So I had no self-confidence with regard to coding. On the contrary to many young men, who do have more self-confidence in this respect but later give up studying computer science.

Btw, approximately 1 of 10 art historical diploma theses is written with Latex, and I heared that other humanists are also using Latex.

OK, that was that, now more about hiking and Mr. H. A few weeks ago we went up to the Große Scheibe from Mürzzuschlag and back down on the same way. This hike is marked as easy in many books and websites but... it is definitely long and exhausting. However, there are indeed no technical difficulties, it's just a good trail 850 meters up and down.

The first pic is the view from the Große Scheibe towards Upper Austria and the Salzkammergut I guess, the second one is the view of the Schneealpee. The first one did not get many likes on Pixelfed and that's why I have decided to share more of the less popular pics here in this blog, because the successful ones are in the gallery anyway. So more "unsuccessful" photos from my previous hike to the Naturpark Mühlviertel:

I am thinking of writing an article about “The charm of early spring and snowless winter landscapes”. This season, early spring is not really a “sexy” season. The trees have no leaves, neither green nor yellow or red, and everything appears to be kind of “dead”. And there is no snow either. So at first sight, this kind of landscape seems to be the most unphotogenic. Yet I think there is something that is fascinating about these landscapes, although it’s clear that they are not the kind of photo that will be very successful on social media. I think they somehow remind me of some works by Egon Schiele, although in general I don’t like Schiele’s art. Of course, Schiele is an extreme example. I am not really sure what this kind of landscape expresses, how one could describe it with words. I think it somehow has to do with the fact that the nature seems to be dead, but isn’t because she will be colorful again. So I think it kind of has to do with hope and good things to come? And maybe… these pictures also express that being sad is part of human/intelligent life. Always being happy is not possible/normal. Also… I think it’s challenging to make a nice picture of a subject that is not actually nice or pretty. And, last but not least, snowless winter landscapes are just the reality of today's word which is heavily impacted by climate change, as my friends on discuss.pixls.us pointed out. A good part of the year looks like that, it's the truth. Why only show the pretty things? It doesn't look so nice but that doesn't mean that we have to be desperate. Of course, this could also be an interesting project for an art exhibition or a research project...

Mr. H.... He found my website and sent me an email last summer or autumn. He asked why I wanted to learn C and suggested to join me on my hikes. He is a Linux guy, actually he has several commits in the kernel, lives in the same district as I, and he is several years younger than I. He emphasized that he only wanted to join if the hike is not difficult but... I guess his definition of "difficult" is different than mine... If the trail is moderately uphill, I walk faster than him. But if it's really uphill/downhill and rocky, he is faster.

Btw, I am playing around with Hyprland and NVK. Unsurprisingly, Hyprland doesn't like the proprientary Nvidia driver. It works, but not flawlessly. That's why I tried NVK with vkdt. It works, but it's not very fast. But I guess it's better than I expected. I am writing this article on Garuda Linux which is on an external SSD and I am thinking of installing Arch or something Arch based on my internal SSD since quite some time now. I wonder whether it's time for that... Anyway, NVK is not in Mesa yet, so on Arch you need vulkan-nouveau-git, and you have to add nouveau.config=NvGspRm=1 to the kernel (6.7 and newer) parameters for Turing and Ampere.

Well... I am preparing my trip to the LGM in France. This is the workshop that I will host. I want to stay a few days longer in Britanny but at the moment I am quite annoyed about the fact that public transportation is really bad there.

The Gelände, the Schwammerling & vkdt

2024-03-02T14:00:00+01:00

So, another month has passed, again!

A few weeks ago I made another hike with Mr. H. We went up to the Geländehütte from Grünbach am Schneeberg and back down to Grünbach on a different trail. This hike is correctly marked as intermediate in the book "Wiener Hausberge Nord". Approximately 1 km before the Geländehütte, the trail gets quite uphill and rocky, and the beginning of the Eselsteig down to Grünbach is similar, so it is definitely necessary to put the camera into the backpack. Otherwise, a very nice hike with some great views.

And a few days ago I made the hike Naturparkweg Mühlviertel in Rechberg. This is also a highly recommended, easy and not too long hike. However, the problem is that you can only get to Rechberg with public transportation on weekdays, and even on weekdays, apparently the trains and buses in Upper Austria have become unreliable. Actually I had to pay 42 Euros for a Taxi because the train from Linz to Perg was delayed by 9 minutes and the bus in Perg did not wait 5 minutes for the train to arrive. Well, that was that.

But Mr. H. did not come with me this time. Either he thinks that he can make himself more interesting if he does not always say yes, even though I think that he loved our first hikes, and actually wanted to come to this one as well. Or he is disappointed because last time we only walked and talked. Or maybe both?

Well, and I guess an important news is that I have several commints in vkdt.

As you can see, the last pic looks a bit different. That's because it was edited with darktable. The others were edited with vkdt.

More memories and two hikes

2024-02-09T10:00:00+01:00

I found more good shots among the old Tenerife photos. This one is quite popular on Pixelfed:

This is one of my personal favorites:

I made two more hikes in January. One of them was this one. A highly recommended hike, especially combined with this. I think I need to go there in summer as well. The view from the Almreserlhaus/Edelweißhütte is very nice...

During the descent I slipped on the ice and fell, and had a bruise on my hip for a few days. But it didn't hurt, it happened very suddenly. The way down was not dangerous at all, actually I think it's possible to go up to the Almreserlhaus by car, but it was icy. Ok, I forgot to mention one important thing: I started in Losenheim/Schneeberg Sesselbahn, climbed up over the Dürre Leiten to the Almreserlhaus/Edelweißhütte and went back to the point of origin over the easy direct way which is the second trail. I think I saw the footprints of a wolf in the snow. There is one short part which is rather uphill and a bit rocky...

Approximately two weeks later, I made another hike close to Wöllersdorf, this time together with a gentleman. The hike is marked as highly recommended in the book "Wiener Hausberge Nord", but I was a bit disappointed. The only more or less interesting thing during that hike was the Steinerner Stadl, which is a cave:

By the way, the last photo was edited with vkdt. I am running out of photos again, I need to go hiking soon, but during the next days I have to work, and after that the weather won't be good I think.

Memories of Tenerife

2024-01-06T10:30:00+01:00

Not much news during the past weeks, not many new thoughts either. But it's time for another post. I only made one hike a few days ago through the Höllental with two friends. I had to look through old photos because I was running out of them, but I discovered quite a few nice pics of my journey to Tenerife in October 2022.

I did not sleep much, but it was such a great journey!

And one pic of my last hike:

However, the snowy hike in the Wienerwald in December produced more nice pics, in my last post I only shared two of them. This is the most popular one on Pixelfed:

Since a few weeks, KDE Plasma is my new desktop environment. Well, actually since a few months, since I installed Bookworm, but I only learned to really love it recently. I also had a quick look at Plasma 6 in KDE Neon Unstable. The most important new "feature" is the fact that it's in Qt6. Color management with Wayland looks awesome at first sight, desktop icons are not oversaturated, but photos in larger color spaces than sRGB are displayed as sRGB. It would be great if this worked properly eventually.

I have this dual graphics laptop from 2019, with an Nvidia Geforce MX250 I think, and Nvidia Prime hybrid mode kind of does not work with it. The battery is almost dead, but I don't like the fan whining all the time. Currently, Kubuntu with Prime Select works best, this can really switch on and off the Nvidia. Bumblebee/Debian 12 is broken, Optimus Manager/Arch is broken. Apparently, EnvyControl does work on Arch and derivatives, but not on Debian 12. The only disadvantage of EnvyControl is the fact that restarting X11 is not enough, you have to completely reboot the system. So that's why Kubuntu works best. I'm a bit excited about Ubuntu 24.04, Mint 22 and KDE Neon.

I bought an external 480GB SSD, currently there are I think 4 partitions on it with 3 different Linux systems. One of them is KDE Neon Unstable. Arch derivatives like Endeavour, Garuda or Manjaro are also very interesting, I am going to install one or two of them today and try to use them as my daily driver. I think Arch (derivatives) are more usable than Debian Testing/Sid. But the broken Optimus-Manager is still in the repo. Manjaro would be sympathetic, the devs are German and Austrian, but apparently it has acquired a "bad reputation" during the past years, and the vkdt appimage does not work on it. I think I have to check if the vkdt issue can be fixed.

I finally updated my publication list.

Servus d*signweek, Python & the first snow

2023-12-08T09:00:00+01:00

Another month has passed and it was a very busy month. I only had time for one hike.

At the end of November I sent a short book/exhibition review to Munich (but the exhibition catalogue was not so short), a few days ago I sent a 25.000 character IT article to Munich, I had Python class the whole month, and I still need to send two IT articles to Munich by mid January. Also, there was a little bit of work with the Delta Chat article that just appeared in c't, but most of the text was written a few months ago. And I had/have to do sports regularly (almost daily) for my blood pressure.

Well... the Python class was more difficult than I expected, in the beginning we were 11 people in the group I think but 2 or 3 people gave it up and did not come to class any more after the first two weeks. I did not give it up but... I am not sure how much I learned. I don't know if it would make sense to sign up for a more expensive beginner class at WIFI with a male teacher. Or should I try to teach Python to myself afterall? Yesterday evening I talked about this with two IT pros at Libre Graphics Vienna and their conclusion was that the teacher was not good. Basically there were about 3 people in the group who had no problems but all of them had a professional backgrould in maths, economy and counting money. So that was the Python class.

And yes, of course, I forgot to mention that on November 25 I hosted a darktable workshop at Servus d*signweek. I think it went well and I am sorry that I only had time for one day at this conference. Servus d*signweek is basically a mini Libre Graphics Meeting on a national or regional level. I met a guy who had been to the Libre Graphics Meeting several times. There were not very many participants but the atmosphere was great. Also, most people were rather young. So Servus d*signweek is a highly recommended event for people interested in art and free software. The current organizer is a very nice Italian guy. Did I even mention this in my previous posts here? Of course, this did not fall from the sky but was planned since September I think. Somehow the organizers found our new Libre Graphics Vienna user group and invited us. I think it is worth mentioning that there were approximately 6 participants at my darktable workshop, none of them had a backgrould in IT but were absolute beginners in photography and raw editing. I kind of wasn't prepared for that and I forgot to mention the advantages of raw editing. Also, there were many international participants at my workshop and the whole conference, so all the talking was in English. In my workshop, there was a young gentleman from Taiwan and onother one from South America. Sadly, there are very few ladies who are interested in darktable. I think there were no ladies at my workshop in Linz and since LGV exists only one lady came to our meetings, that was on the day when I was sick and could not go the meeting.

I will post two more pics that I took on my last autumn hike in the Wachau.

This one was rather successful on Fediverse:

This one, on the other hand did not get many likes and shares but I like it very much, the subject is not very spectacular but the composition is good:

And these shots are from my latest hike near Bad Vöslau:

I don't remember ever having so much snow so early in this region.

Now that softproof is fixed in darktable, I am thinking about printing one of my shots at cyberlab.at or Fotospeed, on Baryta paper or something similar, and framing it with an IKEA frame with a passepartout, in 50 by 70 centimters. That will be a hard choice.

I miss the Canary Islands and the ocean so much! But there is so much work to do and so little money! My travelling plans for next year are: Libre Graphics Meeting in May, maybe one week in Lunz am See in summer and two weeks Canary Islands in October. In early 2025 I want to visit my cousin in Miami. I have never been outside of Europe. I hope that nothing or nobody will mess up my plans. Actually I think in May I will only go to the conference, I won't go hiking/shooting in Britanny, it's too stressful.

Oh yes, I almost forgot: I actually did get a dumb phone, a Nokia 2720 Flip. I am not sure if I should write down my experiences with it here, maybe I will write an article about it for c't or so. But good KaiOS phones are hard to get at the moment. Anyway, I think I like it. Google Maps works, Whatsapp works, Nextcloud calendar works, Nextcould contacts does not work but Google contacts does, and I disabled notifications for emails completely so it does not wake me up at night. Actually I wonder if I could survive with an even dumber phone, like a Nokia 225 4G. Since I have this phone, I noticed that I check my emails less frequently, it may even happen that I don't check them at all when I am meeting friends or family. I think notifications for emails are nonsense.

Wachau, geotagging, dumb phones etc.

2023-11-05T15:00:00+01:00

I made several hikes during the past weeks. Yesterday I walked the Welterbesteig Wachau part 12 from Rossatz to Oberbergern. Easy hike, if not very easy, highly recommended though the landscape is not quite as impressive as around Spitz or Weißenkirchen, or Aggstein. I had to walk some extra kilometers since there is no bus in Oberbergern on Saturday, but the end was one of the most interesting parts of the whole hike. From Oberbergern I went to Unterbergern through the fields and from there to Hundsheim bei Mautern via the so called Römerstraße, which looks like this:

As you can see, it is a trail, or something like an artificial gorge that was cut into the earth very long time ago. And this is probably the best viewpoint of the hike right before the top of the Pemexel:

One week earlier I walked part 3 from Weißenkirchen to Spitz. Also easy, although I walked one part of this hike a few years ago and it seemed quite difficult.

Before that, I made a hike around the Alte Donau with the analog camera, but the film is not digitized yet. And on one of the first days of October, I made a hike at the Untere Lobau, also with the analog camera. It's a really boring landscape, and I only took a few shots, but I am quite pleased with the result.

Well, for this kind of landscape, boring is probably not the right word. I think modest or simple are better. And the result is a more simple, "meditative" kind of photography. I think I should make more hikes in "simple" or flat regions. It's probably not so easy to take good landscape shots in a "boring" environment, but it is easier to concentrate on the essence of landscape photography, the composition. The subject (content, icongraphy) kind of doesn't distract from the aesthetic form. It's the photographer who needs to create the beauty and not nature.

Finally, I tried geotaggig. It works, with both darktable and Digikam, but Digikam is definitely better. If you download the photos from this article and inspect their metadata, you will see that they have GPS and location data. The starting point was Media Library Assistant for Wordpress. I wanted to have the name of the location in the captions. I guess, in the end, I need to finally start managing my photos, if I want to display useful information about them on galerie.simon-a.info. And Digikam is really excellent for that.

I think I want a dumb phone. I recently met a young gentleman who uses an old Nokia phone. But I want a new one with KaiOS. A good one is not so cheap. But I don't know what to do with my Samsung smartwatch. I think in the long run, I will need to get a different watch that can be paired with my tablet. I am really curious about those feature phones. My mum needs a new phone, and we were figuring that I will get a new one for myself and give her the one I am using right now. But now the watch is really a problem... I mean I like the watch. I think the solution can only be that I put a new simcard into the feature phone and test it for some time. How dependent are we of smartphones?

Well, last but not least, I want to mention that I was going to give this article the title "Cold war propaganda". Another young woman I know got breast cancer. But I am too furious and emotional about this right now. Maybe I will write more about it another time.

Fresh air everywhere

2023-10-04T18:00:00+02:00

Not much news during the past weeks. I think almost 4 weeks ago I made a hike on the Rax. I walked down from the Rax to the Höllental through the Großer Kesselgraben. According to this book it's an easy hike, but really it's a hike that has several easy parts. It's hike nr. 24 in the book. Of course, 1250 meters downhill cannot really be easy. The part between Wolfgang-Dirnbacher-Hütte and Gloggnitzer Hütte is quite uphill and a bit dangerous, and the last and very long part from the Gloggnitzer Hütte to the Höllental is downhill, obviously, sometimes rocky, sometimes stony and slippery. My knees hurt when I arrived at the end, but I kind of thought that this was the real thing. I think it was a Sunday, there were very many hikers on the mountain but from the Höllentalaussicht there was almost nobody. Landscape-wise... well... there is certainly more to photograph on the main trails on the Raxalpe. It's ok, but for an alpine hike, it's not super impressive. But I guess it's a normal alpine hike.

This is the Höllentalaussicht:

And this is the Großer Kesselgraben:

On the day when I became ill, I made a walk in the Wasserpark and the Donaupark (Vienna) and after a long time, I took the analog camera with a Kodak Ultramax 400 with me.

This is my favorite:

But this is the most popular shot on pixelfed.social:

This shot got I think more than 60 favs so far but I kind of think that it's not really good.

On the very same day, I got fever. I think I caught the Corona virus two days earlier. I went to a museum, a restaurant and a coffee shop with a friend, but I think I didn't get it from her. She had been sick about a month earlier. On the next day, I went swimming, and I thought that there was too much choride in the water because I had very mild throat ache while I was in the water. I had 39 degrees fever for two days or so, but the real throat ache only started a few days later. That was also a bit strange, because when you get a cold, or the flu, usually it starts with throat ache. Otherwise, it felt like a milder kind of flu. I think about a week after the onset of the illness, I couldn't smell anything and my wisdom tooth hurt. Meanwhile, the tooth calmed itself miraculously and I think I am starting to smell again. I could't imagine that not being able to smell is such a burden and extremely annoying. It's really like a disability. I could stand next to a smoking person without any problems. I didn't smell my own sweat, I did not know if I had to change my clothes. And it was really strange to not smell the food you eat. Clean fresh air everywhere...

I also want to mention that I am working on a new photo website: https://galerie.simon-a.info/. I am using wordpress for it with the Activitypub Plugin, so it is also a Fediverse instance. I am also using the Wordpress Media Library Assistant plugin, which, among other things, makes it possible to display all kinds of metadata like the name of the lens automatically. I think this plugin is not easy to use, but really awesome. In addition, I am using Imagemagick engine. With this plugin, photos that are not in sRGB are displayed and converted correctly. Too bad that there is no Fediverse plugin for Piwigo or Zenphoto.

Well, and last, but not least: I published a new exhibition review.

Lunz, Litschau & Budapest

2023-08-24T15:20:00+02:00

In the beginning of August I spent a week in Lunz am See, but I was kind of unlucky: it was raining almost all of the time and the trail to the Obersee was closed, again. I hope I will be able to make this hike next year. Of course, I did not have the chance to swim in the lake, either, because it was really cold. However, I made one hike on the second day I think. On that day, it was not raining heavily all day, only in the afternoon and the evening. I went up to the Maißzinken which is famous for this view:

When I arrived at the viewpoint on the top of the mountain, a group of probably local hikers was already there. They were having lunch while it was raining. This hike is not exactly short and a bit exhausing but, all-in-all, it is not so difficult/dangerous. The most difficult part is between Rehberg and Seeau on the way back to Lunz, where it might be a bit rocky and downhill. Landscape-wise, it is really nice. Well and, since it was raining most of the time, it was kind of a really relaxing holiday.

About a week later, I made a day-trip to Litschau in the Waldviertel. I made the hike to the Höllgraben. This is a really easy and not too long hike. The landscape does not seem to be that impressive while you are in it, however, the photos turned out to be quite ok, so it is indeed photogenic:

And, last but not least, after several years of break, I photographed the August-20-fireworks in Budapest. This time, I chose f/8 and 6 seconds, and used a variable ND-filter. The photos are ok, nevertheless, I think 6 seconds are too long, 4 seconds are enough. In the beginning I set the filter to ND 8 or so, but towards the end I had to set it much higher to prevent overexposure.

Well, the most important news is probably the fact that I just signed up for a Python class at the Volkshochschule. The idea is to continue with C.

At the moment, I am thinking about spending some time on one of the Canary Islands in December or so. But I don't know yet which island, and I don't know if I will have enough money. Thank God, next year the Libre Graphics Meeting will continue, and I will need money for that, too. La Palma seems to be interesting, but there is no direct flight from Vienna to La Palma. And I am not sure about public transportation on La Palma. Gran Canaria might be an alternative. Lanzarote seems to be the least interesting option, although there is a direct flight to Arrecife.

I hope I will be able to put my plans into action. There was a bit of trouble in my life during the past months...

Feeding blackbirds on 1782 m

2023-07-12T17:45:00+02:00

The lady on the photo is my mother, what she is doing is obvious. As I had planned, we went up to the Schafbergspitze from Sankt Wolfgang im Salzkammergut with the Schafbergbahn. It's probably the most spectacular viewpoint in the Salzkammergut. You can see several lakes from there. We had lunch at the Haus Schafbergspitze, we were lucky that we found an empty table. As soon as the meals were there, several blackbirds gathered around us, three or four. They were very polite and did not take away our food, but I knew that they wanted to be fed. But they did not eat everything that they were offered, I think they like French fries best, but apparently they don't like salad and vegetables. They only visit tables where they see food they like.

This is also a view from the Schafbergspitze, I think this rock is called Spinnerin.

Originally we had planned to go there last week in order to use my ÖBB Vorteilscard Geburtstagsreise, but the weather was not good on that day. Instead we went to Hainburg which is also a very nice destination.

This photo does not actually look so spectacular but the view of the city and the Danube from the Schlossberg is really great. The hike is not quite as mini as described in "Kompass Wanderlust Österreich" though. Anyway, highly recommended, underestimated and definitely one of the best trips/hikes close to Vienna.

Göttweig and the Seegrotte Hinterbrühl are also on the schedule now. But I think I need to spend some real holidays, to relax, at least a week. Lunz would be a possibility, but maybe also Litschau? I think I don't even know what holidays and relaxing are. I am a bit afraid that relaxing could be boring. Do I even know how to relax? Or would it only turn out as another photo hunt? I think I really need to spend more time outside of this city in the countryside, but I still need to finish two projects and there are other obstacles as well...

By the way: I set up Matomo for this website some weeks ago and apparently there are a lot of Mac and iOS users among the visitors, like a third of them, not sure why.

Waterfalls and ÖBB

2023-05-29T00:00:00+02:00

This month I made two trips I think. Right after the big rain, I made a hike in Kuchl/Golling near Salzburg. It was hike nr. 100 in the book "Kompass Wanderlust Österreich". It's a wonderful hike, impressive landscape, there are no technical challenges, but it is rather long and exhausting. I think my stepcouter conted approximately 35.000 steps, but one part of those steps was just in Salzburg Hauptbahnhof running around between the platforms. Anyway, the hike is considerably longer than stated in the book. The first third of the trail is pretty steep.

That day was very exhausting for me, mainly because of the chaos that happened at Salzburg Hauptbahnhof on the way back to Vienna. One train travelling from Munich to Budapest was delayed, and all other ÖBB trains were delayed too because they had to wait for it and then let it pass. Even the first Westbahn after the train from Munich was a bit delayed. Unfortunately I could not take the Westbahn because I already had a ticket for the ÖBB. For a long time it was not clear which was the first train to depart from Salzburg, the schedule kept changing. I did not want to take the first one because I thought that it would be crowded. But in the end I arrived home shortly before midnight. I never experienced something like this with the ÖBB, but I think on the Weststrecke this is not so rare because the trains from Germany are often delayed... Anyway, if you are going to or coming from St. Pölten, Linz or Salzburg, try to take the Westbahn because the ÖBB can be a catastrophe. Well, I arrived home not only exhausted, but also hungry and thirsty. I took a sandwich with me and ate it, I had 1 liter of water and bought 1/2 liter in Salzburg. I wanted to by some snacks from the machine on the platform but it was broken. And there was no restaurant on the train. I did make several short breakes during the hike but really there was no time to sit down at some Gasthaus.

Yesterday I made a hike in the Schneeberg region. I went from the Sebastianfall in Sonnleiten/Puchberg up to the Mamauwiese and back to Sonnleiten. It's a rather short hike, it's technically more challenging than the hike in Golling/Kuchl, but it's ok, so not really dangerous. The first part of the ascent is also quite uphill... After my journey to Corfu I realized that hiking in Austria is quite a bit more dangerous and exhausting than there... The landscape was not far as impressive as in Salzburg, nevertheless I was able to take some nice shots.

These are my plans for the next months: I am not sure yet, but maybe I should try my luck again and go to the Wasserlochklamm in Palfau, maybe there is more water in it now? There was a lot of water in the Golling waterfall, that was a few days after the big rain, but the Sebastianfall looked surprizingly "normal" - so apparently the big water is already gone? Then, in the beginning of July, I want to use my ÖBB Vorteilscard birthday ticket to go up to the Schafberg with my mum. After that, when the water is warm enough in the lakes, I would like to spend a few days either in Lunz am See, or in Großalm near the Langbathseen, but just for relaxing and swimming, with just one photo hike. Or maybe somewhere else, at some other lake. In August, as always, there are the fireworks in Budapest, and I think I also want to photograph the caves in Aggtelek. And I guess that will be it for this year, as far as the bigger photo projects are concerned. I mean in theory I could go to Tenerife again in November or so... but I think I like Greece better. Maybe Santorini, or Zakynthos next spring? Or maybe... it would be nice to photograph Rhodos town, for a change? I almost forgot: I should also go to the Waldviertel again, eventually.

Corfu (addendum)

2023-04-30T18:00:00+02:00

I forgot to mention a few things: every 5th or 10th tree on Corfu has no leaves. I only realized after a few days that those tress won't get any leaves ever: they have dried out and are dead.

Also important: I mostly used the 8-25mm/f4.0 lens, which I possess since a while now but had not really tested before this jourey. It's my most expensive lens and I could only afford it because I "sold" the vendor 3 older lenses. But I think I can say that it's a great lens.

It's pretty macro. This is a tiny flower:

And the bokeh is not bad either. This was also a small poppy:

Oh, this reminds me: before the journey I also made a day trip to Hallstatt, on Easer Monday. The "prey" is already on Pixelfed. During this trip, I also used the 8-25. Just to show that it makes good sunstars as well.

Well and last but not least: this blog now also has an Atom feed.

Corfu

2023-04-30T13:00:00+02:00

So I am back from Corfu since a few days. It was a bit exhausting, but great.

Where should I begin? I actually used my tripod and I also took quite a few good shots with my smartphone. I think this is one of the best photos that I took on this journey - with my phone:

I took it last Wednesday I think, when I was walking to the Byzantine Museum in Corfu Town.

And this is one of the pics that I took with the tripod:

I think I need a smaller tripod that I can always carry with me, and a backpack that has a tripod sling.

Corfu is a wonderful destination. Travellers are not tourists but guests. Maybe that applies to Greece in general. I had been to Greece before, but that was more than 20 years ago.

Corfu Town has a great mediterranean, (south-)european, metropolitan and rural atmosphere at the same time. Probably one cannot experience this during the high tourist season. There are hardly any immigrants, only Greek/local people and mainly Polish, French, German(-speaking) and American tourists. Everything is very original and regional. Though almost every local speaks English, there is/was only one McDonalds that is closed at the moment. There are very few big supermarkets, most of them are tiny, one of the "bigger" markets in the city is e.g. the Ionian Supermarket, which is also rather small and a regional company. On the first day, I wanted to buy some food, I looked for sandwitches. But there are no ready-to-eat sandwitches at the supermarket. Instead, I bought bread and hummus with pepper taste. It was the only thing I knew and turned out to be delicious.

This was a real hiking journey for me. I was hiking almost every day, but mostly not difficult trails. I tried several hikes from the Rother hiking book Corfu.

On the first day, I walked from the New Fortress to Kanoni, which is a very nice hike (trail 20). Although this is a city walk, I recommend hiking shoes.

The Cape Drastis hike is not marked as a "top" hike in the book, but it should be. Easy hike and well marked.

I also walked the Porto Timoni hike, but only partly. I only went down until I reached the best viewpoint, after that I climbed back to Afionas and then I hiked to Arillas, where I took the bus back to Corfu town. The trail down to the viewpoint is rocky and quite uphill/downhill, but not really dangerous.

However, I cannot recommend the Cape Asprokavos hike for photographers, even though it is marked as highly recommended in the book. It is not possible to do the last part of the hike since one part of the beach is flooded. The book mentioned that this is possible, however, I think this is always the case. But even without the last part, this is a rather long and exhausting hike, and the landscape is not as photogenic as in the other hikes. Right before reaching the beach, I took the trail that was marked (as a trail, also in the map), and not the trail that is recommended in the book. This part turned out to be pretty downhill, but it was well secured with ropes. It was enough to give me sour muscles though. So I definitely don't recommend this hike.

I also walked most of the Paleokastritsa - Angelokastro - Agios Georgios Pagon hike, but I skipped the donkey trail from Paleokastritsa to Lakones, since there is a bus that goes directly to Lakones. However, this hike turned out as quite an adventure: 1,5 kilometrs before Agios Georgios Pagon, the trail ended because of a landslide, whose end I did not see, so this was a dead end, and there was no sign, warning or detour along the whole trail. So I had to go back (approximately 300 meters uphill) to Makrades. Luckily, I started the hike very early and there was enough time to catch the bus. But I was kind of prepared to such things, since I did not find any good info about hiking trails on Corfu on the internet. Also, on the way back, I met many other hikers who wanted to go to Agios Georgios Pagon, and I warned them. By the way, this happed on the very same day when I was flying home later in the evening. First I panicked a bit, but soon I realized that there was enough time. Anyway, save the number of the Corfu taxi company in your phone for such events. Else, this is really a great hike and I think I do not regret that I had to walk back.

What is really great about Corfu is the fact that there is a bus even to the tiniest village. However, sometimes you have to get up very early in the morning, because it leaves at 5 or 6 a.m.

One or two funny "events" that I witnessed:

I took this pic at La Grotta in Paleokastritsa. By the way, it was kind of cold the whole time, 18-20 degrees. So those people were two crazy Polish tourists. First, the guy climed up to the rock and jumped, and the woman just followed him without thinking. I think she won't follow him blindly any more, because when she was on the rock, she waited about 10 minutes before she jumped, she probably realized that climbing down was not really an alternative...

An the other story that I already mentioned on Hubzilla: On the third day, I made a day trip to Paxos and Antipaxos with a ship. Among the passangers was a group of American teenagers: even though it was really cold (18 degrees + stormy wind on the sea), they were running around in string bikins and with beer bottles on the ship the whole day. On Antipaxos, they also jumped into the water for a swim, and at the end of the day they were dark red because of the sunburn.

Unfortunately, there was no time for the Pantrokratoras, and the Achilleon and it's park are permanently closed.

Ödensee, Wachau & the Libre Graphics Crisis

2023-04-02T16:00:00+02:00

There is no doubt that the Libre Graphics movement is in some sort of crisis. The last Libre Graphics Meeting was in 2019, the darktable devs are estranged and I cannot make the local darktable users have a second meeting. And there is the darktable telegram group, where apparently mainly users whose mother tougue is not English have their discussions. I think I won't be able to publish articles about open source photography software anytime soon in c't. What is the reason for all of this? Is the situation somehow connected to politics? Or was the whole libre graphics phenomenon a GIMP thing? Clearly, GIMP is too old... I don't want to believe that because for real digital artists it is important to have a flexible "hackable" tools that can be modified, obviously this is more important for visual artists than for writers for example. A writer does not need sophisticated tools. A real artist makes their own tools and does not need pre-defined "fast food" effects from the supermarket. So in the long run our party should be on the winning side.

I think Aurélien Pierre is a bit desperate because he could not make more people use darktable who are less tech affine. Well, one cannot force humans to be happy. Also, we are not living in a dictatorship, but most people are just like sheep. They have no use for freedom.

I am curious what the future will bring, if our new user group will be successful etc.

But in this context I also want to mention that I created a new darktable fork: https://github.com/blitzgneisserin/darktable. The most important thing about it is the fact that a lot of old modules are completely removed and not only deprecated. So old edits cannot be opened with this program. I think I would like to add some presets to diffuse/sharpen but I have not tried to modify it's code yet, although in theory I know how to do that. The graduated filter needs to be rewritten, no idea how to do that, although probably somehow the code of the graduated filter, exposure and the graduated mask need to be combined. Btw, I have removed it too from my fork. Well, I would also have some ideas for simplifying diffuse/sharpen, but I definitely don't know how to do that. Probably someone who knows how to do it will have the same thoughts sooner or later.

Yesterday I made a hike in the Wachau, I climed up to the Josef-Gruber-Warte on the Buschandlwand from Spitz and then went down to Wösendorf. It's a relatively exhausting hike with a lot of elevation difference but there are no technical challenges, it's safe. In hiking guides it's often marked as intermediate but except for the fact that it's a bit exhausting it's actually easy. Only for the last meters before the view point I had to put my camera into my backpack.

I think the Wachau is one of the most beautiful regions of Austria. Even in an unphogtogenic season like right now, when there are no leaves on the trees, there is something magical about her. But even though I had been to this region many times before I think I only realized this yesterday. I think it's no coincidence that in German, the word Wachau is actually female. Maybe the round hills and mountains, and the curves of the Danube correspond to the forms of the female body? Maybe it's kind of the opposite of the Dolomites, for instance. I am no poet and it's really difficult to describe the magic of the Wachau with words but probably real poets have already done that.

Anyway, the hike to the Josef-Gruber-Warte on the Buschandlwand is a highly recommended hike, defintely one of the best hikes in the Wachau.

On the way up to the Warte I also met this little fellow:

First I only heared that something was moving under the leaves and stopped and looked. Then the mouse appeared, came really close and apparently she was not afraid at all. It was like she was expecting me to feed her or maybe she was just curious?

A few weeks ago I wanted to photograph the Ödensee in the Salzkammergut, but the lake was completely white and frozen. I only took very few good shots like this one:

On the way back, I saw the Hallstätter See with the white Dachstein and that was really awesome, although I have no photo of it. But maybe there will still be a chance to take photos of it during the next weeks. I had never seen Hallstatt before in the winter.

Fadensattel, Metalab etc.

2023-03-09T13:00:00+01:00

I am running out of photos, currently I am uploading old pics to pixelfed. I don't know... lot of work and the weather is kind of not ideal. And I have no idea where I should go. Plus, the season is not so good, no snow but no green either.

I went for a hike in the Schneeberg region a few weeks ago.

I climbed up to the Fadensattel from Losenheim. It was a sunstar day obviously, but there was not so much snow.

As I already mentioned on pleroma.s-a.at, exactly one month ago I went to the "Debienna Treff" at the Metalab. There I happened to meet a handsome young man who is also into photography, and we founded the Libre Graphics Vienna libregraphicsvienna.at, a local user group for open source graphics software. It was him who approached me with the idea. The first meeting was a week ago, we were seven people I think and we talked about darktable. I think it was really nice, but several darktable users that I already met did not come. We also have a real darktable dev here in Vienna. Well, and of course we were kind of snow white and the six dwarfs or something like that, although there is at least one more lady in this region.

Well... I must say, from a female perspective, there is the typical darktable user/developer: he is between 30 and 40, 2 meters tall, a professional/former football player (= rich and athletic), has a Ph.D. and is extremely nice. Exceptions confirm the rule. Well, mayble this a little bit exaggerated but suriously: a darktable user is not an average Linux guy, but considerably taller, better looking and nicer.

By the way: RawTherapee users/devs are similar, but they are a bit older and they like to smoke.

Last but not least - another pic from the Semmering hike - my most popular photo on pixelfed so far (more than 150 favs):

Smartwatches, analog photography etc.

2023-01-26T10:00:00+01:00

Finally I have got new photos! Yesterday I went for a hike in Semmering after almost 3 months of "break". It was no sunstar day and the 20-Schilling-Blick was in the fog but instead there was a magical misty white mood.

This time I barely edited the photos and I also used the batch processing features of darktable. I set exposure to +1, sigmoid to 1.5-2.5, activated the lens correction, and added a little bit of sharpening with diffuse/sharpen. To some photos I added a bit of saturation with color balance rgb. And with others I had to pull down a bit the highlights with the tone equalizer.

I wonder why snow makes most people happy. You step from the train and you are in a magical white world...

One or two weeks ago I finally digitized an Ektar film that I shot at the beginning of November in the Kurpark Oberlaa. I am quite pleased with the results.

Converting negatives is difficult but fun. There is something unique about film, even though it has lots of drawbacks compared to digital. I still have quite a few films and honestly I don't really have time to use them. I think they will expire but then I will use them expired. And shooting film is really a lot of work. But it's worth the effort.

I have a smartwatch since almost a year now. I like it. I recently started to track my sleep with it. I would not say that the sleep tracking feature is completely useless but it is very unprecise. However, during the nights after swimming it usually shows siginficatly fewer awake periods. It recognizes that I am asleep very late after longer awake periods, usually I am asleep apporximately 30 minutes earlier. Interestingly it shows that I have fallen back to sleep quite soon after short periods of awakeness. I also think that it shows fewer deep sleep periods than I really have. And very often it thinks that I am asleep even though I know that I am just resting.

The fitness and sport features are very handy though. The watch shows that your results and your fitness are actually impoving if you do sports regularly. When I re-started swimming in spring after the Covid "break", the first time I swam less than 50 lengths in one hour. If I remember correctly, the second time it was approximately 50 lengths. After that, for some months, it was a bit less than 60 lengths. But since autumn it is 60 or more lenths. So 55 lengths was apparently not my physical limit. And every time it's one or two lengths more. Of course there are days when my body is not as strong as on most other days. This is a very interesting phenomenon and I wonder what the reason is. Sleep seems to have little effect on this. In fact there are days when I get little sleep but the results are very good.

So a smartwatch is actually like a coach. Too bad there are no useful open source smartwatches yet. Probably it would be quite easy to tweak the sleep tracker and calibrate it to a person's unique sleeping pattern.

Memories & Sigmoid

2022-12-27T10:00:00+01:00

Another month has passed but not much happened in the meantime that is relevant for this blog. I am digesting some private experience, and there is a lot of work to do, so there was no time for hiking since the end of October. I don't even have hiking plans at the moment but I hope that I will be able to go to the Alps eventually during this winter, at least once.

Yesterday I finally played around with the new Sigmoid scene-to-display tool in darktable, and I find it quite wonderful. I found some more nice capures in the photo series that I took during my hike on the Rax in August.

But as I look back to Tenerife from some temporal distance I must say that it was a great journey. Especially the Teide and the Roques de Garcia are really one of the most extraordinary landscapes in Europe.

By the way, I did set up a virtual Fediverse server with Yunohost, but apparently Pixelfed is broken, and importing account data to is greyed out, so moving accounts is not yet possible. But on the other hand it looks like dansup fixed pixelfed.social.

Time flies!

2022-11-20T17:00:00+01:00

So another month has passed again!

On one of the last days of October I made a hike in the Südburgenland, from Bad Tatzmannsdorf to Stadtschlaining. Nice hike, nothing spectacular, but that time of year is spectacular even with boring landscapes.

I don't know why, there was nothing special about this hike, yet I was able to take so many good photos...

By the way, I have decided to rent a virtual server. The main reason is Fediverse, I want my own Pixelfed and Mastodon instance. I am annoyed because pixelfed.social only shows very few photos from other servers, I don't see the photos of people that I am following. And on mastodon.online I am not seen by many people. I wonder if exporting and re-importing follower lists really works with Pixelfed.

However, I probably won't do that today or tomorrow, I am very busy with articles at the moment... although that might be a topic for an article as well. Besides, I think I need to buy more domain names. But I think I will leave my current email and this website on my old provider's server.

Abstract Expressionism

2022-10-29T18:00:00+02:00

Yesterday I visited the really impressive exhibition "Ways of Freedom - Jackson Pollock to Maria Lassnigg" at the Albertina Modern. The exhibition is remarkable for several reasons. First, there are also works of female artists between 1947 and 1970. Second, the curators are demonstrating that Abstract Expressionism is not something that was born or invented in the US. Rather, there were artists in all parts of the "western" or European world who started to produce paintings in this style, around 1950. In this exhibition, the best examples are probably the Austrian artists who painted abstract expressionist paintings at the same time as Jackson Pollock. There are even works of an abstract expressionist female artist from eastern Europe (Hungary). Post war abstract painting in eastern Europe is only being discovered since a few years because the communists rejected this style and claimed that such artists did not exist in "their" world. But they did, from the very beginning. I think I had never seen orignal Pollocks before this exhibition, but there are quite a few of them in this exhibition. There are some really impressive and expensive loans, also from the US.

But I wonder: real freedom, does that exist? Or is it just an illusion? I think it does not exist today, but maybe it was possible right after WW2 in the western world. Maybe at that time, the Americans were really the good guys. This exhibition makes me really think about... well I am not sure what's better, I really don't know which system is "better". The present capitalist systems has doubtlessly lots of flaws. As far as today is concerned, I have no idea who are the good and the bad guys. But I think the communists were not wrong about everything.

One more thought: abstract painting was not really "modern" or "revolutionary" after WW2. To me it seems to be more like something that was interrupted by the two wars. Makes one wonder about stylistic and cultural "evolution" and "surviving" images...

I am not adding any photos of the exhibition respectively the exhibited works because of copyright issues. Instead, I am sharing some more pics from Tenerife. I think the more time passes the more good photos I find.

A photo from the Barranco del Infierno:

And me on the Pico del Teide:

Tenerife

2022-10-15T15:00:00+02:00

So I returned from Tenerife two days ago.

I had been on research trips for several weeks alone before, but not really on holidays, and the destinations of those earlier trips were usually cities. Although, this was not really planned as holidays either, but as a photography trip. But I think it turned out more like holidays.

But before I start, I want to add one thing to last month's article, where I decribed my mini trip to Lunz am See: I had never really been on holidays in Austria before. But I discovered that Austria is actually an excellent holiday destination. You have great landscapes, clean and comfortable accomodation and excellent food. And last but not least great public transportation. Although, compared to other countries such as Spain, Austria is a bit more expensive, but I think the quality is also a bit better.

Puls, I want to mention two funny but annoying events before resp. at the beginning of my journey:

First: I allowed my mother to track my Android devices through my Google account. Guess what happend: she deleted everything from my phone. I drew the conclusion that this is something like a bug in the find feature of Google/Android: before reset is executed, Google should ask for the password, which I did not tell to my mum. But obviously this is not the case.

Second: in spring a thief stole my wallet and used the contactless payment feature of my bank/credit cards. Of course I reported this to the police and got the money back from the bank. However, the Police caught the thief and on the day when I returned from Lunz, I found a letter in which I was "invited" to the thief's court hearing as a witness. And there was that threatening tone, stating that I have to pay up to EUR 1000 punishment if I don't go to the hearing, unless I have a good reason such as severe illness. Originally, the hearing was scheduled for September 29. At that time, I had already bought the plane ticket and the flight should have been on September 29. Luckily I was able to reschedule the fight for October 1. However, a few days before I few to Tenerife I got an email from one of the lawyers, informing me about the fact that the court hearing was postponed to October 10. So I rang them up and fortunately they told me to send them a copy of the plane ticket go on holidays.

So, what did I do on Tenerife? Of course, above all, I wanted to take photos. There is a lot of marketing for the Canary Islands, and indeed there are some epic landscapes, however, you need to know this: most of the time, you can't really see those landscapes, because there is too much water in the air. So if you really want to see something, you should probably spend there at least several weeks so hopefully there are some days when the view is better.

I spent almost 2 weeks on Tenerife. This was the schedule:

day 1: swimming in the ocean and botanical garden in Puerto de la Cruz
day 2: Los Gigantes and whalewatching
day 3: Pico del Teide
day 4: Loro Parque
day 5: hike from Playa de Martianez to Café Vista Paraiso
day 6: Icod de los Vinos
day 7: Roques de Garcia hike
day 8: Barranco del Infierno
day 9: trip to La Gomera
day 10: swimming and shopping
day 11: Punta del Hidalgo

So I actually climbed up to the Pico del Teide, but really this was just a waste of time, beacuse of the reasons I already mentioned. This was my highest "hike" so far, and going uphill at such an altitude is indeed exhausting. I had very slight muscle pain on the next day. And on the way to the Pico there were a few minutes when I regretted that I signed up for this climb. Really, I don't recommend going up to the Pico, and not even to the end of the cable car. There is much more to see in other parts of the island. I guess I only did this beacause I am a bit ambitious.

I think the most impressive thing during this journey was the Loro Parque. I think it's wonderful what they can teach those sea lions, orcas, dolphins and parrots. The sea lions stood on their hands. I was so busy with watching that I did not manage to take any photos.

The Los Gigantes cliffs were also in the fog. But I cloud take photos of some whale families. There were lots of baby whales. I actually did not see them, although the guide said that there were babies. I just saw that there was something, but the camera saw them better.

On the 5th day I made the hike form the Playa Martianez in Puerto de la Cruz to the Cafe Vista Paraiso. I found the trail in the Rother hiking guide Teneriffa. In the book it's marked as easy, however, the climb from the Playa del Ancon to Vista Paraiso is not for everyone. At the lower end of the climb, the dager sign was put to the side, but at the other and there is a clear sign stating that the trail is dangerous. It's a really nice hike and the view from Vista Paraiso is great but the end is comparable to the Taubenbachklamm.

Those white areas are banana plantations I think, unfortunately they destroy the beauty of the landscape.

The Roques the Garcia and Barranco del Infierno hikes are both highly recommended, but they are also more difficult than stated in the book. The Roques de Garcia hike is not so short and you have to climb approximately 300 meters up and downhill. For me, they are both intermediate hikes, they are a bit but not extremely exhausting and there are no technical difficulties or really dangerous parts.

Two more pics:

La Gomera:

And Punta del Hidalgo:

I have no photo of the Barranco del Infierno yet, but there I had a little "adventure": I took the bus 460 to got there. According to Google Maps and also the local bus station signs the bus was supposed to go into Adeje City Center, but instead, it stopped 3 kilometers after Adje. So I had to walk 3 kilometers uphill to the barranco. And I almost had to run since my time slot was for 10 a.m.

To sum up: I think I took fewer good photos than I had planned. Maybe one really needs more time to become part of the nature and the landscapes. Or maybe just more experience with other kinds of landscapes? Nevertheless I had a great time. My next destinations might be somthing like the Azores or Lanzarote.
Yea, one more thing: I put my tripod into the suitcase but I did not use it - I guess I need a tripod "slave" but I would be too lazy to use it anyway.

Finally: I am wondering how much a bus driver on Tenerife earns. I think they are great guys, they are totally aware of their resposibility because it's really difficult to drive on Tenerife. There are lots of curves and a lot of the driving is extremely up- or downhill. On the contrary to Austria, on Tenerife, the drivers need to wear a mask, and they always remind people of wearing a mask if they see someone without it.

Lunz am See, Arch and Optimus laptops etc.

2022-09-19T15:30:00+02:00

At the end of August I spent four days in Lunz am See. Excellent holiday destination. However, the trail to the Obersee was closed which I knew before I arrived there. On the first day, I made a walk around the lake. Basically, it was raining all day with breaks, nevertheless a lot of people were walking around, even without umbrellas or rain coats. On the second day I made the Lunzer Bahnerlebnis-Wanderweg hike which was not ideal for taking photos. It's long and many parts of the trail are a bit exposed. But of course, if you want to do sport, it's an ideal hike... So I will have to go there again when the trail to the Obersee is open - I heared they won't open it this year probably because lots of trees fell down during a storm. Next time I will also walk up to the Maißzinken.

I took this photo on the Bahnerlegbnis-Wanderweg though:

I had my tripod with me, and I even carried it with me once, but I don't know... apparently I am not a tripod photographer. I hope I will use it more often on Tenerife.

About one week later, I made a trip to Hannover and had a chat with some editors. I must say, the Heise empire is really impressive... it's a modern palace, surrounded by a park, and there are even fountains... But I was told that Heise bought the building from an insurance company. Before I went to Hannover, I had to do something for my mom in Budapest. So on Monday, I went from Vienna to Budapest, on Tuesday back to Vienna, Wednesday Vienna Hannover, and finally Thursday Hannover Vienna. Obviously, I was a bit tired after that.

I am trying to prepare my laptop for Tenerife. I managed to deal with dual graphics on Arch (Garuda Linux and Endeavour OS). I find it works best with the Optimus Manager, however, it's a bit tricky to make it work on Arch and similar systems, especially Garuda since it uses the Zen kernel. In addition to the Optimus Manager - I used the package optimus-manager-git because it works better with Qtile - you also need to install bbswitch. You need the package bbswitch-dkms since only that one is compatible with "exotic" kernels. After you installed both packages, you must edit optimus-manager.conf and replace switching=none with switching=bbswitch.

Finally, another shot from Lunz:

Rax, Google, Raspis usw.

2022-08-24T00:00:00+02:00

I went for two nice hikes during the past weeks. A few weeks ago I made the classic hike on the Rax. From the technical point of view, it's easy, however, there were several parts where I had to put my camera into my backpack. But it's really ok. A bit long though. Unfortunately there was no time for the Höllentalblick. Highly recommend hike, very nice views. This is one of the best captures:

For elderly people or people with little kids I would recommend from the cablecar to the Ottohaus and maybe the Höllentalblick, and then back to the cablecar.

After that I went to Hallstatt and walked around in the Echerntal.

This is also an easy hike.

A few days ago I purged Google from my tablet. It's possible without problems. I am now also using Nextcloud. I replaced Chrome with Bromite and Firefox with Fennec. Onlyoffice and OpenDocument Reader are interesting, too. And Simple Gallery Pro.

I also met a gentleman who knows Linus Torvalds, and he warned me of using use Facebook, Whatsapp, and even Signal. But obviously, my plan to photograph the Budapest fireworks did not work. At least I could capture some butterflies at the zoo.

Last but not least, I am thinking of getting a Raspi. I wonder if it's any good for RawTherapee. I have two unused screens in the cellar but not enough space for another computer.

March-Auen, Bärentrail etc.

2022-07-23T19:00:00+02:00

So I think in the last days of June I made a hike to the March-Auen near Marchegg. Well, as far as I remember, the trouble was that Marchegg and the March-Auen is several kilometers from Marchegg Bahnhof. It's completely flat, there are lots of birds, especially storks, but the landscape is not really interesting. And there are lots of flies and other insects as well. Ok, I remember, this was only an afternoon hike although really it's a day hike... I did not take many photos.

I took both of these pics with the M.Zuiko 12mm f/2.0. Quite a nice bokeh.

And I think after that I did not make any hike for almost a month. A few days ago I went to the Waldviertel and walked the 5th part of the Großer Bärentrail from Rappottenstein to Pretrobruck. It's a really nice hike, the landscape in the Kamp valley is very relaxing and perfect for exhausted nerves. I did take photos in the Kamp valley but they are all broken. I only took the analog camera with me and in the beginning a Velvia was in it. I think Velvia is really terrible. I exposed it as an ISO200 film on purpose because I thought that I could brighten it up while digitizing but that turned out to be a mistake. Obviously, ISO200 was not enough in the forest, and I had to underexpose it even more. The result was... well most of the picures were in general way too dark, almost black, although the shadows had a very strong blue cast, well and the brighter parts of the pictures were almost white. Apparently Velvia has a terrible dynamic range. In addition, it is curved and it is very diffucult to flatten the film. Consequently, reflecions cannot be avoided while digitizing. Provia is also very firm and curved, by the way, but the colors are not so sensitive. This is one of the very few photos from Velvia that are not borken:

When the Velvia was full, I put an Echtachrome into the camera, underexposed and pushed it by 2 stops and those photos turned out to be ok.

I was too lazy to change the lens so I took the macros with the OM Zuiko 21mm f/3.5.

I also want to mention that I got a Samsung tablet as birthday present. I like it, but apparently there are no usable open source photo tools for Android. It is possible to run Linux software on Android with the help of Andronix, but that's not the ultimate solution. However, Photoshop Express and Lightroom mobile made a very good impression. Unfortunately...

Ok, so here is a list of my favorite open source apps for Android:

Open Camera
Delta Chat
Termux
Collabora Office
Jitsi
Signal
Tusky
Firefox
OSMAnd

I tried Krita, but the raw importer does not work and I don't know how to use the clone brush. I am also testing the Simple Mobile Tools.

I reserved a room on Tenerife and of course one of my next shootings will be the fireworks in Budapest.

BergeSeenTrail, shutter shock, etc.

2022-06-16T14:00:00+02:00

So I have been wandering around during the past weeks...

Yesterday I went to Frankenfels and explored the Taubenbachklamm. But it's not worth the risk and the effort. It's a relatively short hike but it's a bit dangerous - although, there is a plate at the beginning and at the end of the trail stating that the trail is only recommended for experienced hikers. Anyway, it's intermediate to difficult. You need to climb uphill at least 250 meters. And there is really nothing to photograph. Afterwards I wanted to see the Nixhöhle, but it was closed. It is open from April to October but it has strange opening hours. I think the Nixhöhle only is enough for a day trip. From the train station to the entrance of the cave you need to walk at least 2-3 kilometers, the last part being easy but quite steep, so it is exhausting, especially in the summer. And I think the cave itself is also quite long.

However, on May 26 I walked one part of the end of the classic BergeSeenTrail and that was a really great day. I walked up to the Grünberg from Gmunden Seebahnhof, and from there I hiked to the Laudachsee and back to the Grünberg. And finally I took the cablecar to go down to Gmunden again. The trail up to the Grünberg is long, steep and exhausting but technically not so diffucult. So it's a good exercise. Of course, before I went down with the cablecar, I visited the Baumwipfelpfad Salzkammergut which is also really awesome.

This is the view from the Baumwipfelpfad:

I also made two hikes in the Nationapark Donauauen, the first one near Orth and der Donau and the second one around Stopfenreuth. They are ok, but they would be nicer if there were more water in the Danube. They are ok afternoon trips.

I took these photos with my new M.Zuiko 12mm f/2.0 near Stopfenreuth:

Since this is a really lightweight lens, the camera does suffer quite a bit from shutter shock. I have this camera since almost two years now and I have been suffering from shutter shock since quite a while now. Unfortunately, I only found out after this shooting that my camera actually has an anti shock setting. My previous camera did not have a hibrid shutter, not even an electronic shutter. However, since yesterday's hike was kind of a flop, I could not really test this setting yet.

Welterbesteig Wachau

2022-05-01T14:30:00+02:00

So far I walked I think four parts of the Welterbesteig Wachau: the first, from Dürnstein to Krems, some years ago with a group; the second, from Hofarnsdorf to Rossatz, about a year ago; the third, from Dürnstein to Weißenkirchen, about two weeks ago; and the third, from Melk to Agssbach Dorf, yesterday. In general, the Welterbesteig hikes are not easy. The most difficult one so far was Hofarnsdorf to Rossatz, which goes up to the Seekopf and the Seekopfwarte. The descent from the Seekopf is quite steep, rocky and a bit dangerous. As far as I remember, Krems to Dürnstein is relatively easy, that's the only part which I walked at the end of October - highly recommended! For the most part, yesterday's hike was easy, too, but about 500-1000 meters of the descent, towards the end of the hike, is quite steep, and there is a part of 3-4 meters which is so steep that I had to move on my butt - clearly there should be a handrail or something like that but there isn't and I'm not sure if walking sticks would help. I mean, it would not be the Welterbesteig if everything were 100% easy. The part from Dürnstein to Weißenkirchen is also quite difficult for various reasons. Technically a bit difficult is the descent to Weißenkirchen, but above all this part is really long - much longer than stated on the website. According to the website, it's 16 km but my phone counted more than 20 km or 36000 steps. But I think there is really no place where you could spend the night between Dürnstein and Schildhütten. Well, I'd definitely recommend to spend a night in Schildhütten, right before Weißenkirchen, because - otherwise it's more than 20 km. But the really great view comes after Schildhütten. As far as taking photos in concerned: there are some really nice viewpoints, but there should be more. For the most part, you don't see the Danube because trees are blocking the view. But if there were no trees, the views would be great. Maybe a drone could be handy for this particular long distance hike. But there should definitely be more lookouts.

This is a photo that I took from the Seekopfwarte, I think:

This is Schloss Schönbüehl, I took it yesterday:

And this is the loop between Dürnstein and Weißenkirchen:

I want to mention two more things.

First, I am trying to build up a community on pixelfed.social. I am uploading one photo per day and it looks like it's a real alternative to Instagram. It is possible to get followers, likes and attention in general. And above all, Pixelfed does not manipulate anything, there is no algorithm, so it looks like it's really the good photographers that get more attention and followers. I think in a few months, I will have enough followers on Pixelfed to leave Instagram, but it will not be easy to leave a community that I built up for several years. I am still uploading photos to Instagram but I am becoming more and more "passive" - I only look into my photostream every few days, so I can't like all of my follower's photos. Apparently there are already quite some interesting photographers on Pixelfed, at least many more than two years ago. For people who just started with photography, I would definitely recommend Pixefed as it is easier to get follwers than on Instagram. Instagram is just wasting time.

Second, I switched to Delta Chat as email client for my smartphone. I think I still need to fix one or two things but all in all, it looks like a really nice piece of software for smartphones.

Well, finally, I will not travel to Luxemburg anytime soon - something unpleasent came up. Instead, I am planning to spend some days in Lunz am See at the end of May or later.

Slavonic emotionality

2022-03-14T10:00:00+01:00

First, an addendum to Bruegel's The return of the herd: The key to the interpretation of the painting is probably the fact that the herd is coming down from the Alm too late: the trees have no leaves. In reality, the Almabtrieb happens much earlier - in October or even at the end of September. Because the Almabtrieb happens too late in the painting, a winter storm is approaching and threatening the herd. I think the subject of the painting was inspired by the antique story Daedalus and Icarus. The story is translated to the reality of the 16th century.

Second, I finally digitized my first slide film. It's a Provia that I push precessed by one stop. I shot it during a really long hike in the Wienerwald I think in December. First I thought that I did not capture any good pictures during that hike, but after I looked through the photos three or four times, I found at least two nice ones:

I think this is really the film look and a really nice color effect that is probably impossible to reproduce digitally. However, lots of captures are broken because I could not remove the reflections on the film. I think I should try again with a polarizer. I also quite like the mood of these shots. It's difficult to describe with words. I edited them with RawTherapee after digitizing. I think I did not do much. I increased saturation a bit and added some local contrast, and probably also used the highlights-shadows-module. It's really nice what one can achieve with the combination of analog and digital techniques. I think my next films will be a Velvia that I will also push process and an Ektachrome that I will cross process.

I made two hikes during the last weeks: first I went to the Wolfsschlucht in Bad Kreuzen and last week to Ramsau am Dachstein. I hiked a short part of the Donausteig from Grein to Bad Kreuzen. The part is really easy, but you should walk it from Grein to Bad Kreuzen and not the other way round like in the hiking books resp. on the Donausteig website. And it's also enough for a day, it's more than 10 kms, the whole hike form Waldhausen to Grein must be way too long for a day. Nice hike.

I did not take many good photos in Ramsau although it was a nice trip. I think the war is affecting my creativity.

Well, I also want to mention that I bought a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 LTE - I don't even know why. Battery life of the 44mm watch is ok - I need to recharge it every 2 or 3 days. I heared that the battery of the 40mm watch only lasts a day. But, what is a bit disappointing is the fact that the LTE watch cannot really exist without a phone: the remote connection between the watch and the phone is disconnected after some time, usually after 2 hours, sometimes even less. I am not sure what the reason is. Maybe it's a bug in the Samsung Wearable app, or maybe it works with the most expensive Galaxy phone which I don't own.

A few days ago bought a refundable plane ticket to Luxemburg.

I wasn't sure about the title of this article: first I was going to choose "irrationality", but I think that is too negative because really it comes form emotionality. One could also say crazyness.

By the way: EndeavourOS with Qtile is really nice.

January update

2022-01-29T23:38:00+01:00

On Monday I went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in order to see the Tizian exhibition. There are some notable loans at the exhibition, however, the painting that I was most impressed by was The Return of the Herd by Bruegel.

There are at least two interesting things about this painting. First, the artist depicted an event that does not exist in his home country: in the Alps, the cows spend the summer on the mountain, the Alm, and in autumn they return to the valley. Bruegel knew about this because he crossed the Alps on his way to Italy, although it is not known where exactly he crossed the Alps.

The second interesting thing is the landscape: as most Old Master's paintings, this work does not show an existing landscape, it's a fantasy landscape. However, it is clearly visible that Bruegel knew how mountains actually look like. I think only a person who paints or photographs landscapes can truely understand how creative it is to invent landscapes. It is difficult enough to depict an existing landscape. Many landscapes on Old Master's paintings remind of existing landscapes somehow but they hardly ever really show existing landscapes. It's a different kind of realism. The Return of the Herd is a very realistic painting in the sense that Bruegel probably acutally saw a similar scene on his journey through the Alps. But he did not see this exact scene. I think the landscape in this painting reminds me of northern Italy. E.g. the landscape in the background of the Rolin Madonna by Jan van Eyck - it was probably inspired by the Oberes Mittelrheintal rather than the Wachau because the Oberes Mittelrheinral is closer to the Netherlands.

On Tuesday I made a hike in the Semmering area. I went up to the Hirschenkogel with the cablecar, from there to the Sonnwendstein and then I walked down to Semmering. The hike is recommended as a winter hike on the official Niederösterreich/Wiener Alpen tourism website. It is marked as easy but... well... it's easy in the sense that it's not rock climbing but quite a few parts of the way down are rather exposed, and, of course, it's pretty steep. Although, well it is mentioned in the description of the hike that one should save the number of the Bergrettung in the cellphone. And it is also quite long for a winter hike. The snow froze on the legs of my trousers. I think I need Gamaschen. But I was able to take some nice pictures.

Anyway, my recommendation: buy a return ticket for the cablecar, go up to the Sonnwendstein and then back to the cablecar on the same trail. There is not much to photograph on the direct way down from the Sonnwendstein to Semmering.

something's wrong

2022-01-29T21:00:00+01:00

there is something wrong. all browsers but Brave show a deprecated version of blog_index.html, a file that actually does not exist any more on the server

November-December update

2022-01-02T10:00:00+01:00

So not much news in November and December. I was working.

In the beginning of December we had some snow. Luckily I was able to do a hike before it melted.

I edited these in vkdt. I took them just outside of Vienna, in the Wienerwald near Breitenfurt.

Well, I guess the biggest news is that during the last lockdown I bought a new cameraphone and so far I don't regret it. It's just a Samsung A52, but the camera seems to be really good. I think with this cameraphone, I am more spontaneous as far as taking photos is concerned. E.g., the day before yesterday, I did not plan a shooting in the city, but I had the phone with me and so I was able to take these captures:

I am planning to make two journeys this year. Maybe in spring I will go to the Eifel/Mullerthal. And in September, hopefully I will be able to fly to Portugal. I have not seen the sea since 2018. But I have not decided yet.

Oh - I almost forgot: I created a Debian spin with the SpectrWM tiling window manager as desktop environment. Actually I created it yesterday and today. It does not include non-free firmware but it should not be a problem to install it offline and add the firmware after the installation. I found out today that I needed to add the package grub-efi for the offline installation to work. It should be functional on amd64 systems that use (U)EFI. Of course, it's based on Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Ah - this is a screenshot of the desktop:

You can start the installer by hitting Windows key + Shift + Enter and then typing "sudo calamares" in xterm. Before the installation you should partition your SSD, that's why gparted is included. Have a look at man spectrwm and /home/user/.spectrwm.conf for the keybindings. After the installation, you need to configure the power manager (xfce4-power-manager) and the screensaver (xscreensaver).

October update

2021-10-31T22:43:00+01:00

So I made the first big journey "after" Corona. I went to Frankfurt and from there to Karlsruhe, Berlin, Neckargemünd and Utrecht. I met two developers and one curator. All people that I met were really nice. It was great. I am full of positive energy. But I also caught a cold. Unfortunately there was not much opportunity to hike and take landscape photos.

And so far I did not have much luck with analog photography either. The first film that I left at a local drugstore was destroyed because of technical issues. And my camera broke after the third film (I got my money back though). On the same day, I pulled a tic out of my belly. Meanwhile, my "new" camera is lying downstairs in the postbox, but the code that should open the box is broken.

I think this is one of my best analog captures so far:

This is digital - took them a few days ago:

And this is in the Neckar valley:

September update

2021-09-30T22:44:00+02:00

During the first days of September, I did two hikes: the first one was in the Waldviertel, the part of the Bärentrail between Arbesbach and Rappottenstein. It's a nice long hike, like really long, approximately 20 km. There are few up- and downhill parts. It's nice but not so photogenic. The Große Kampschlucht is quite short and really difficult to photograph. I did not take many photos.

The second hike I made with my mum on her birthday. We went to the Almsee. We walked form the Seehaus to Habernau on the east shore of the lake, but it is best from the other direction.

Two new articles appeared:

Filmsimulation

Debian 11

I also bought a "new" camera: an Olympus OM 2. My first film is ready and I can fetch it from a local drug store. I shot it at the Schlosspark Laxenburg two weeks ago, it's an Ektar. The second film, a Portra 400, I used at the Schmetterlingshaus in the Burggarten. Another one I used at Heiligenkreuz in the Wienerwald. So I am very curious... and a bit nervous... I did shoot and even develop black and white prints more than 25 years ago. Back then I was still a child and had no idea about films etc.