Archiv der Kategorie: Blog
Cactus Desktop No 1
so..for the next few weeks I’ll upload a new one (or sometimes more than one) every week. We start with the ones that are nearly unchanged and will end up with some that have been victim to some special effects…you’ll see
Cactus
A new album has been added to the gallery. My Mom’s cactus is in full bloom again and I managed to take some shots early this morning before I went to work. There will be more to come…hopefully
Just so that you get an impression…
Cold Mirrors – by CJ Lines
Do you like books that make you leave the light on during night, make you shudder and are hard to put aside? Then here’s what you need to get:
A friend of mine is publishing his second book. It’s a collection of short stories that are able to make watch your back in the evening. CJ is a young, talented author from the UK who published his first book „Filth Kiss“ back in 2007 via Hadesgate. His short stories have been more than once awarded and so it was absolutely overdue that a collection of those should be published in one book.
I, personally, absolutely love his short stories. I already read them in the customs area, waiting for vinyl declaration from USA. At the emergency room, waiting for the doc. At my way to work by train or bus. They always managed to bind me totally into the story itself and made it hard to stop reading.
His way of writing reminds me very much on the old stories Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft published ages ago and so far I haven’t found any other author in the present tense who gave me the same thrill. His stories are a must have.
Good news: The pre-order has started and you can get your copy here Pre-order has started now at: pre-order Cold Mirrors
Don’t hesitate!
Flower Wallpaper
As I’m using this already for a while now and have experienced it as quite nice on my desk….here are two new wallpapers with the flower splashed issue…just click on the image for the full size and save to your desktop
In bloom
As yesterday was mother’s day I took a drive to my parent’s garden to have coffee with them and my Mom asked me to take some pictures of her flowers at the moment. So those are the one I liked most
iSplash
I just downloaded a new little program / app from the app store called iSplash. It’s pretty much obvious what it does if you just look at this picture. It was originally shot in Savannah, Georgia, USA and was colored. The modification iSplash offers takes about 30 seconds. You can choose wether you want to take the colored picture and add grey parts or the other way around.
The colored parts are chosen like in Photoshop with a brush that can be changed size-wise and with that brush you just scroll over the areas you want to be colored. Pretty easy (this one took like 10 seconds) and the picture can be saved afterwards.
Nice tool if you like this effect and don’t want to bother with Photoshop.
Jupiter Jones, Batschkapp, Frankfurt, 07th April 2011
First concert for this year took place yesterday evening in the Batschkapp in Frankfurt. After a really long time a German band again. Jupiter Jones, supported by My Glorious (Austria).
The support band entered the stage at nine pm and they way they started sounded very promising. The first 30 seconds were from the direction like Rage Against the Machine and I was like „wow….this is going to be awesome!“ It turned out that I was mislead by the impressive start. All songs of My Glorious seem to be longer than 5 minutes and they all start off quite awesome with a lot of pressure and then there comes a absolutely boring and slow bridge, followed by a good verse and again a boring chorus. I was really disappointed after the first song and more or less pissed after the third as it became obvious that all songs would turn out the same way. What a pity, because if they could stick to the pressure from the beginning of their songs they could be really great!
I must admit that I left the hall again until the support act was finished. Enough to hear them from outside, no need to stay inside as it was really warm (sold out) and tight in there. So I returned after the support (and they played like 40 min) was finished and finally at 22.00 pm or round about Jupiter Jones entered the stage. I hadn’t seen them live so far, except for the singer, who was on stage with Hot Water Music in Trier and had proved to be really good live.
The whole show was a good mix from all the songs, sure with a focus on the new record (which is absolutely normal and fine for me) and the interaction with the audience was really good. Great live performance and the ability to keep the contact with the audience isn’t really that common, especially for German bands and so the Jupiter Jones show turned out to be really awesome. Fun and a perfect start for the live shows 2011.
I probably would go for another concert as they do a major tour in October, but buying the tickets has to wait until the dates of the Revival Tour from Chuck Ragan have been set as this has priority one and afterwards I hope I get the chance to see them in October in Mainz again.
Rise Against – Endgame
Another release with high expectations from my side was Endgame, the new album of Rise Against. No idea why, but so far I always needed a bit longer to get into releases from Rise Against. This time I fell in love with it pretty fast. The difference this time was that I directly took it with me into my car for the way to work and it worked perfectly. Especially the opening track is perfect for highway driving and so I already began to love it after two or three days.
The album has 12 tracks and for anybody giving it a try I can recommend : Architects, Satellite (first single), Midnight Hands, Broken Mirrors, This Is Letting Go, which are all pretty easy to adopt. A really good and rocking album and I’m quite sure it will still be one of my favourites for 2011 when this year is over, even with strong releases like the first Emergency Room record still coming.
On the first glance surprisingly was the fact that the track that is responsible for the album title is the last one on the record and not the first (which seems to be quite normal). It’s not that Endgame wouldn’t have made a good start for the record, even though for me, personally, Architects is the better song, but I guess that Endgame was placed at the end of the records just because of the name of the song.
Tracklist:
- Architects
- Help Is On The Way
- Make It Stop
- Disparity By Design
- Satellite
- Midnight Hands
- Survivor Guilt
- Broken Mirrors
- Wait For Me
- A Gentlemen’s Coup
- This Is Letting Go
- Endgame
Carnival
Today it’s Carnival Monday in Germany. There will be plenty of processions everywhere and while I will have a perfect way to work , the way back home will be terrible.
I must admit I’m not at all into Carnival even though I grew up in an area where most of the people are absolutely freaking out during that season. Not me. Don’t get me wrong, some of the speeches are really good and very political but that’s not really the point for me.
When I think of Carnival I always get the following points into my head:
1. Carnival seems to be a reason or possibility to get drunk or at least most of the people going there use it only for that purpose. I don’t need a official reason to get drunk. If I’d feel the need to I’d just do it. I don’t see the sense in having a special time in the year where I drink lot’s of alcohol and nearly end up in the emergency room.
2. At Carnival people colour their hair, dress up in a uncommon way and they feel absolutely happy with this. It’s normal for them at that time. But most of those pepple are absolutely conservative during the rest of the year. If they’d ever meet a person with blue hair, tattoos or piercings outside that time they either change the side of the boardwalk or look in a different direction thinking things like „how can he dye his blue!“ „how can she have a tattoo in the neck“. But during Carnival time they find it absolutely normal to walk around with blue hair. It’s like once in the year they are allowed to be someone they really wanna be. This is very sad. I mean if one of this guys wants to dye his hair green or walk around in destroyed jeans and needs to wait the whole year until its Carnival only because he’s to narrow-minded to do what he wants to during the rest of the year, then I really feel pity. I’d rather spend my time with people who have their hair blue, red, green the whole year and stick to who they are.
It’s just that I don’t need Carnival to be who I wanna be. Maybe that’s the reason I absolutely don’t have the wish to go there.
BUT : I’ll be affected on my way home anyways as a lot of those who are on their way home from Carnival Procession will suddenly jump into the middle of the street beeing to drunk to realise it at all…..so Helau to all you guys and be careful on your way home tonight. Alcohol and funny clothes don’t protect you from getting hit by a car!!