Emanata is a great new app to discover indie comics and emerging artists. From today, your ol’ man is among those visual storytellers featured in the app – this, looking at all the others drawings, is a great honor.
Frederique will come every two weeks to Emanata. I have to admit, I’m really excited about working with this new format.
Get the app from the iTunes.
…fixing a Leica C-Lux-1 camera’s misplaced lenses!
Some say, the easiest way to make money is not spending it. According to this, I’ve just earned 250 EUR, cash: that’s what this friend’s camera (which I shamelessly broke) was worth.
Before… and after!
What made a guy who knows next to nothing about cameras, to actually try to repair one?
First, I was sure that I will replace the precious object with one with similar specs, so I already considered the money as a loss. Furthermore, according to the service, the camera was beyond repair – so trying couldn’t do any more harm.
Second, whereas I know less about repairing cameras, I know quite a lot about photography – and in this case, the lenses seemed to be in one piece. Based on the sounds, the engine was not broken either, so there was a slight chance that the pieces are just misplaced.
And last: I love doing things like these.
With all that, it wasn’t an easy job. For starters, it took me a week to buy the proper screwdriver set. So I’m actually a hero here.
And also: it takes quite a camera to survive a drop like that. So if you ever think about buying a Leica (or in general – to spend some extra money a premium product), I can just say one thing:
go for it.
It might be as stupid as it sounds: I’ve changed my Twitter username. From now on, find me at @wimagguc (or @wimagguchu, for Hungarian conversations).
The change might seem to be reckless move, but I actually wanted to do it for a long time now. I first registered on Twitter with my favourite nickname – and the name of this blog -, which, as it comes with no surprise, was not registered by anyone yet. Interacting with more and more people I realised that I use two languages with two rather distinguishable circles. To separate these, I ended up opening the @wmguk account for English discussions – and left @wimagguc with the Hungarian ones.
Over the years the former account became the more used and more important one, and for the “brand identity” I finally decided to swap the two using the vacation silence. For now, it makes me happy: it’s the same name for the blog, my Twitter and e-mail account. Nice and consistent. Order, there must be.
Back from holidays; after the week (and a long weekend) when I drove 300 kilometers a day, spent 20 hours on average in all cities visited and slept in a different bed every night, I can say: batteries are charged.
It’s hard to fit in yet – whenever I close my eyes, the road seems moving fast. The 100+ unanswered e-mails and the 5000+ RSS flood is over though, and apart from knowing nothing about the Olympics, it feels like being back in the world again.
Some finishing thoughts:
1. Holidays are for disconnecting from the world. Even if you plan to tweet and blog, if you are switched off, it won’t work. (And it shouldn’t.)
2. When driving in Czech, ignore all the signs of the road and leave everything to the GPS. We actually have reached the end of a road in a forest, following the Prague signs.
3. If holidays feel more tiring than daily work, it still can work out as a switch off. Perhaps it comes down to the mindset of time out, I don’t know. It just works.
As it turns out, writing on a holiday is a no-go. So that’s it for now guys and see you next week.
The first time I drew Frederique was about ten years ago, and since then, my preferred drawing technique didn’t change much: on paper, with ink or a black rollerball pen. As a disaster, I didn’t have access to a scanner the night the first episode should have been released, therefore I was forced to rethink my options – and I fired up the iPad.
From the first touch to the last: drawing on iPad, correcting vectors and finalizing graphics
There were of course plenty of other options: I could have reused my old drawings, or chose a more familiar digital tool like Photoshop or Illustrator. I wanted to go for something handmade though, and drawing with fingertips is quite similar to using a real pen – just that it has a built-in cheat, the option to correct the lines later. (But yeah, isn’t the eraser made for the same thing?)
This wasn’t the first time I used the iPad to do drawings though. I had a few goes with tons of apps, both raster- and vector-based. Because I wanted to have the comics in color, I went for the vector-based option, using neu.Notes+ (currently for 0.99$). This is a brilliant little app with great drawing tools and with a killer feature: it exports PDF files to Dropbox which can be directly fed into Illustrator from there – so that everything I draw with my fingers can be later edited with a professional tool that I use on a daily basis.
Tools optimized for touchscreens (neu.Notes) and trackpads (Illustrator)
Even with the already known tools, I’ve spent about 8 hours on the first episode: drawing, redrawing, checking on the computer, redrawing and finalizing the vectors on the iPad (unfortunately at this time, the PDF files cannot be transferred back), correcting the vectors in Illustrator, coloring, adding shadows and more details, and exporting the whole lot from Photoshop.
Since then I made ten episodes and some more images, practiced the finger-drawing and optimized the workflow a lot – now I’m down to around 4 hours per episode, which is about pen-and-ink-time. And there’s something even better to this process. Thanks to the vector-based graphics, I have a lot more options open: maybe one day we will see all these characters filled with life – and dancing in a cartoon.
Tracking runs and other sports is great fun, even if it means carrying another device. I got addicted to more data about my runs sometime last Summer, and tried half a dozen of apps since then. Now that the last update broke ‘My Tracks’ on my phone, it was time to look for a new one.
To look for a tracking app on Google Play is not easy though. There are hundreds of them out there, almost indistinguishable from each other and to make matters worse, I already have some preferences. They should be small, easy to use, easy to set up – and especially, don’t need any kind of registration or whatsoever. In fact, the less features the app has, the more I should like it: display the position on a map, measure time and speed – that’s all one can need.
I can’t really say why I did download Nike’s running app then. You have to register on nike.com before the first use. I don’t want to share anything on my Facebook wall. The app is huge. (16 MB, really? Will it do my runs for me?) And it’s not made by some nice indie developers on an island, but Nike, a giant. Yet, I did download it and tried it just now.
And I loved it!
The registration is annoying. I don’t even know what a calorie is, but it keeps showing me how many less of those I have. It always wants to share my embarrassing results with my friends and followers. But there is something to it that I really liked.
Great graphics, for starters. And while I’m not at all interested in calories, I really do like how it is displayed, together with the longest distance, fastest run etc -it’s just great to look at those screens. The whole lot is perfectly made and has some spirit, some unique touch to it. And the best thing is: I can’t wait for the next time to use it.
This app is a brilliant lifestyle product. Nothing less.
These are the best times for smartphone users: the choice on the market is beyond imagination, operating system vendors go crazy with their innovations and device manufacturers break their legs to deliver the newest updates for the devices. Or are they? I quickly collected some data about software updates to figure whether Apple, Google or Microsoft spoils their users the most.
Android, Windows, iOS – stunning looking UIs
Windows (Microsoft)
It’s certainly not Microsoft that has the happiest users nowadays: according to recent news, regardless of the fact that the Nokia Lumia phones are only 1.5 years old, they won’t be updated to Windows 8 – ever. And if this is not enough, there is an even bitterer pill to take: the apps written for the new OS won’t run on the “old” devices.
Microsoft has a good enough excuse for this, as they rewrote Windows from ground zero. It’s hardly satisfactory for the users though, especially those who bought the devices just now: they feel like Microsoft owns them at least an apology for knowing this all along – but deciding to be silent about it.
Android (Google)
If Windows users are unhappy, it’s because they have never waited for an Android update. Although Google is rolling out updates in a pace no one has seen before, hardware manufacturers are unable to keep up with them. The main reason for rolling out their own versions is that they want to differentiate their products on the market; for HTC for example, Sense is still a strong selling point.
Cold comfort it is for the ones with an abandoned device – some of which never actually had an up-to-date operating system. The Understatement blog has a list of the devices and their software updates from last year, and the picture probably even worsened since: only around 10% of current devices updated to even Ice Cream Sandwich yet, the one before Android version – which came out end of last year.
iOS (Apple)
For now it seems that iPhone users are the luckiest of them all, as Apple still sells the iPhone 3GS, a device that came out three years ago. Compared to Android or Windows phones, it might be true: even those ancient phones will be able to be updated to iOS 6, Apple’s new operating system introduced last month.
The future is not so bright though: while the operating system and the new UI shine is coming to all devices, some features will be missing on some older iPhones. According to the iOS 6 teaser page – among others – turn-by-turn navigation, Siri, FaceTime will be available only on iPhone 4S – and so it will be exclusive to the latest devices. The iPhone 3GS seemingly leaves out of almost everything.
Well, having the new Maps app is still better than nothing.
With all that, based on the updates only, if I would buy a new phone now I would consider offers in this order:
1. Android (Nexus devices only)
2. iPhone
3. Android devices from other manufacturers
4. Windows 8 phones
Another rainy afternoon spent inside, I decided to a make pizza – including the dough -, on my own. (And the Sun came out in the end!)
one shouldn’t take gastrophotos with a phone…
Being into healthy food and cooking to some extent, making my own pizza dough is something I wanted to do for a long time now. It’s cool. It’s tough. It’s a man’s job.
And it’s not that hard either. Following Jamie Oliver’s recipe – being unlucky with the video pages which were down at the time -, I managed to do everything in about 75 minutes. That includes cleaning the table in the beginning and cutting up the slices in the end, so I probably will do this again – and encourage everyone to try it once. As for me, the next step will be the Chinese boutsa from scratch.
Served with Syrah from Sicily. Bliss!
One usual weekend program for Berlin is to sit around in Görlitzer Park, drink beers and have talks with friends while enjoying the Summer breeze. There is a huge crater somewhere in the middle where we used to settle – it is a nice spot covered with grass, but it’s quite a mystery as well: how did it get there? Was it really a bomb during the wars as other Berlin expats say?
Traces from the past: office building of the Görlitzer Bahnhof railway station
Because today it’s raining cats and dogs out there and we don’t have the option to go out anyway, I finally had the time to do my research on the topic. Who knows? Maybe I can end those rumors completely, or, if there was a bomb, I can tell when and where it actually went off.
Well, the story starts with Görlitzer Park being a railway station before.
Gleisplan from 1925 and Google Maps from 2012
The railway career of the now park and seasonal football stadium started in 1867, and lasted until 1951 – when all the trains going through West-Berlin from here were departing from Osktreuz instead. Although according to maps, the station was already demolished by 1954, it actually remained relatively undisturbed for ten more years, until the Wall has been built up and all the hopes for a reconstruction were gone. (More about the history on Wikipedia.)
The station in 1879, 1946, and people collecting wood in 1975, to use for heating their homes.
Images by © Landesbildstelle Berlin
Berliners are famous of reusing whatever they can – and traces of the railway station can still be found all over the park: some goods sheds and office buildings are used until this day, and there is a swimming bath built on the site of the former station. The old railway bridge offers a foot path to cross the Landwehrkanal and walk to Treptow.
I wanted to know about the crater though, and at this point it could have been a service pit as well as something made by the rumored bomb. The Wikipedia article mentioned the Görlitzer Tunnel that was opened to the public in 1910 – an underpass, connecting Oppelner Strasse and Liegnitzer Strasse. Suits well: it’s right where the crater is – was it maybe bombed?
The Görlitzer Tunnel in 1989 and the crater in 2012 (archive photo from the German WikiPedia)
The photo above shows the tunnel in 1989 in a rather good state, and according to the article the tunnel remained in use until the early 90s. When the area has been developed into the Görlitzer Park of today though, as soon as pedestrians had public access to the park, the tunnel became redundant – and later that decade it has been destroyed, creating the mysterious crater.
No bombs from the World War involved.
Sources of information used in this post, that were not directly linked (yet): 3D models of the station, Senate Department for Urban Development