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.