15.08.08

Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children

I was aware of the fact that Salman Rushdie was under a Fatwa for his book “The Satanic Verses”, but I didn't know what kind of books he writes; I assumed his books to be non-fictional.

Well, while passing through Heathrow, I grabbed “Midnight's Children” on impulse, and I have been hooked very quickly. Rushdie writes in a way that mixes realism and magical or fantastical story elements. “Midnight's Children” features a gripping story that follows the history of India both on a national and personal level over the course of three generations. Rushdie is a master story-steller. I've already ordered two more of Rushdie's books...

Check it out at Amazon.

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01.08.08

Stephen Covey reversed

On CultivateGreatness, I found an interesting Artikel that highlights the 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People. Nice.

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21.05.08

Schwäbisches Architekturlabor

Der Spiegel berichtet über Avantgarde-Achitektur in Stuttgart. Bei allem Stolz auf die hier vorhandene Architekturvielfalt: Ganz so unrecht hat der Spiegel nicht, wenn er von einem „Labor“ redet...

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06.11.06

Ban Comic Sans

In a recent MacEssentials article, Karl A. Bihlmeier strongly expresses his dislike of the Comic Sans font (in German). Some commentors added a few nice typography hints, including a link to the Lexicon of Typography (in German).

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12.09.06

Editing pictures on the command line

While working on the pictures shot by various guests at my sister's wedding, I discovered two tools that helped me tremendously dealing with several problems I encountered: dcraw lets you mass convert the RAW formats of various cameras into JPEGs (or other formats). Obviously, for individual special shots it is nicer to use a RAW tool to achieve the best conversion results, but if you need to convert many files, this one is really helpful. EXIF tool lets you edit the EXIF data of a file or copy the EXIF data from one file to another (!) - for example, from a RAW file to the JPEG file created by dcraw. This helped with time-shifting the images where people forgot to set their camera's date and time.

Both tools operate on the command line. For Mac OS X, there's an alternative program that allows for shifting the time stamps that integrates itself directly into the Finder. I'd have to search for the home page of that one first, though.

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29.06.06

Worldcup impressions

A colleague sent me this fascinating aerial view of the Stuttgart Schlossplatz -- I don't know where it comes from. There's a large collection of pictures from the world cup on Flickr. And the FAZ newspaper has a nice collection of blog articles of world cup visitors (in German) from all over the world.

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28.06.06

A small part of history

I happened to read the Wikipedia entry on the Lenné triangle (German only) and found an interesting article on a small piece of Berlin history I've never heard about before - even though all that only happened 18 years ago. Fascinating!

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No more cheap pesto

Michael added a new recipe to his collection: Pesto alla Genovese (sorry, German only). I'll have to try that one soon. And the hint about cooking a potato with the noodles is useful as well. Thanks, Michael!

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08.01.06

Shopping cart coins

When shopping, I always manage to spend my last one euro coin just before I need it for a shopping cart. It happened again yesterday… but I still had a few coins from my trip to England and found that the British 10p coins are a perfect fit for the carts at Kaufland and Aldi. And the good thing is – I won't be able to spend it…

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22.06.05

Find your home on Google Maps using GPS

Google Maps has started to provide more detailled satellite fotos for locations all over the world. Even some German cities can be “visited” this way.

Unfortunately, for many locations there are no maps and descriptions. Many cities can be found via the name (query for "Stuttgart, Germany", for example). But using GPS, it is possible to find locations very precisely. Using Multimap.com, you can search for street addresses in most European countries. (Try the links at GeoURL if you live outside Europe or the US.) Some examples:

Of course, there are other big cities like Beijing, Jerusalem (unfortunately in low resolution only), Melbourne, Madrid or even Baghdad. And London , there are even maps (click on “Map”).

If you find interesting examples, post them as a link here or enter them at Interesting Google Satellite Maps.

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