In addition to a full Revival Tour Show, there were also Hot Water Music, Alkaline Trio, Nikola Sarcevic, City Radio, Atlas Losing Grip, Cobra Skulls. It was sold out, so crowded and so hot and standing for some good 10 hours under these conditions was exhausting but the festival was so much fun.

At one point, even double bass player Joe Ginsberg got the stage for himself and played “Pointing West” with Chuck Ragan helping out on the harmonica. Awesome!

What I didn’t like at the festival: Tom Gabel (of Against Me!) – I don’t know if I was just missing Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon but I didn’t get warm with Tom’s music. Nikola Sarcevic sounded better on the record than live, maybe I just didn’t notice before how cheap and cheesy some of his songs were. Atlas Losing Grip – when I first heard them I thought that they sound like Ignite. Unfortunately, they are not Ignite. And lastly, Alkaline Trio. They are just not a good live band I think. When I saw them a couple of years ago in Vienna, they went on stage, played their songs without any talking or interaction with the audience and left the stage exactly 60 minutes later without so much as an encore. It ruined the band and music for me, couldn’t listen to them for forever. Dan Andriano on the other hand impressed me during the Revival Tour show in Vienna so I kinda forgave ‘em. The Stuttgart show was a bit better, probably with all the musicians around the festival interacting with the different bands and even the Red City Radio singer having to help Skiba out because he forgot the lyrics. But still, not impressive or even satisfying. Maybe Matt Skiba really is a nice guy, but so far I’m under the impression that he must be a jerk.

Fortunately, Hot Water Music made up for it by killing it. Looking forward to the new album “Exister” and the Vienna show in June.

The next day I wandered around Stuttgart and made a couple of photos but due to my back and feet hurting from the day before I spent more time drinking coffee and reading in the park. Which was really relaxing. The day after I took the train to Munich to visit friends. The day after Munich I went home with a short stop for a meal and a stroll around Salzburg with another old friend. Perfect weather, great mini-vacation. Here are the photos:

Related posts:

1. Monta @ Rockhouse
2. munich, innsbruck, salzburg, ikea and my funny car
3. Berlin again? Berlin again!

Related posts:

1. vienna photos on tumblr.
2. Hamburg in instagram pics.
3. Switzerland, France, 77th international motor-show

Cinemagraphs are still photographs in which a minor and repeated movement occurs.

Exactly what I said. Here are a few cinemagraphy examples.

Last night I made a first proof-of-concept just to get a sense on how it would work. Today, I went for a walk at Schönbrunn Palace because it was a beautiful and warm day. I packed my digital camera for the first time in over half a year – even on trips to Naples or Hamburg I only used my iPhone for photos. While walking around and thinking of scenes that could be turned into a cinemagraph I had a mental checklist of the restrictions that you have to operate within:

• Use a tripod or align the frames during post-processing.
• You have to think in terms of loops. Can you put the image back to it’s starting position? This means that nothing is allowed to move in the part that you want to cut out. Even minor movements mean a lot of post-processing, which I really, really wanted to avoid.
• When not using video as a source but your camera: What is the amount of photos your camera can shoot in burst-mode? My Sony DSC-TX7 can do 10 images in a row, shot within a second. This was my technical limitation when thinking within loops. This will show already in the first image in a very subtle way: the bottom left yellow sign is not making the full rotation it usually makes but rather is slowly returning after just a couple of frames.
• Do you start with the movement immediately or within x-seconds of the animation? Is the animation itself a continuous loop or does it reset and you use intervals?
• Using videos as a source means a much higher frames per second rate – but that also means more time is required for post-production and the file size will grow accordingly.

That is why I limited myself to minor scenes, subtle changes that work within 10 frames or less.

Here are my approaches in chronological order:

1. Night scene:

Note that apart from the obvious light there is also movement in the lower left corner – something I wrote about earlier.

2. Removing a lens cap:

This was basically the first test at Schönbrunn Palace. Also, this shows the most important part about how I achieved a loop: build up the frames till the end then play them backwards, this way it’s guaranteed that you can go back to the beginning and it is still looking ok.

3. Hair, the most subtle of all:

There are better examples on this out there but I wanted to give it a try. This was actually a byproduct because Werner was moving his head and this was what I wanted to capture but it didn’t work out. So I used the wind in the hair.

4. Leaning in

This is actually a two-part cinemagraph: leaning in and out again. This is necessary to finish the loop.

5. The jump

It’s very small in this photo but it’s very obvious. By the way: I’m really not a fan of those “jump in front of something”-touristy photos, but that’s just my opinion.

6. The kiss.

The big finale and the last image I took today before leaving Schönbrunn.

To conclude

Cinemagraphy is a very interesting concept and a new challenge in doing photography or animation. There are a lot of possibilities and it’s easy to overdo it. You really have to pick your battles to not use it for every image, but there are plenty of good examples.

By the way: there appears to be an iPhone App called “Cinemagr.am” but from what I saw on tumblr the results are horrible, so I’m not even linking to the app or the examples.

Related posts:

1. barcamp vienna
2. Wiener Zentralfriedhof.
3. vienna photos on tumblr.

Prior to going to Hamburg I asked my buddy Lars if he would be up for a drink once I’m there and he was nice enough to offer me a place to sleep for the weekend, thanks again! After he gave me his address I saw how close he actually was to the conference location, a mere five minute walk. On the other hand: he lives directly on the famous Reeperbahn, right accross Davidwache. Which also means that at night it’s not only loud but also.. err… “crowded” in front of his doorstep. On the other hand it’s also a really short walk and you’re close to the pier (Landungsbrücken) and from then also very close to the Hafencity.

On Saturday I spent the day walking, some good nine hours of walking all over Hamburg. It’s smaller than I remembered, not sure why I even used public transport when I was there in 2009. I’m not sure you can really count it, but that was the third time I was in Hamburg now, only, the second time I was there was just for one meeting (!) and back. Aka the longest day.

Sunday we went for brunch and than had a little walk and I took some more photos before heading back to the airport. This marked the first time I used mobile check-in. When I went to the baggage drop-off the lady at the counter needed my phone to scan the code. When that didn’t work she gave me back my phone and I saw that a different mail was on the display – she had accidentally deleted my mail with the QR-code. While I was about to restore the mail from the trash, she printed my boarding card and I went through security.

Eventually I boarded and it looked like I was the only one using mobile check-in. Curiously enough I got around the scanners and everything without as much as needing any form of ID. Safety first, right? … (if you’re curious: I only noticed those details because Lars had already told me about that before).

Long story short, here are the photos, which can also be viewed on my instagram stream under the username @thekwentin (kwentin was already taken..).

Related posts:

1. the longest day..
2. Hamburg.
3. Venice.

about ifttt:
basically, ifttt can take your accounts from various plattforms such as facebook, google reader, dropbox, instagram and many, many more and use the interfaces of those tools to automate certain tasks for you. the best way to describe this is a simple task that I have activated:

now everytime I read something noteworthy on Google Reader, which I use a lot, or something that I can’t read in full detail immediately, I star those items and get the link into my Dropbox. better yet, I also get a pdf of the site, thanks to the recipe someone else created. I tried using ReadItLater a while ago and didn’t like it at all. but with ifttt I found a great way that doesn’t much change my workflow.

there are hundreds of recipes on the page but it’s almost as easy to create your own recipe as using someone elses. for every service there are a couple of triggers and actions available that can be combined. get an email everytime you’re tagged on facebook? sure, why not, even though it’s a facebook standard feature. but how about automatically changing your twitter profile pic as soon as you change your facebook profile? another task I activated is to save every photo I upload to instagram or facebook automatically into my dropbox. it is clear from the amount of recipes on ifttt that there many people using the service to not only automate processes but backup data they publish.

a similar tool

if you use Dropbox a lot, there’s also Dropbox Automator that offers a few similar tasks centered around Dropbox but I have never used it. on the other hand, Dropbox Automator is made in Austria.

Ninja Blocks

there is a Kickstarter project out there looking for backers called Ninja Blocks which also looks rather promising: it combines social tools with hardware, taking it to the next level. automatically post to twitter when movement is detected? play a song when the room temperature changes? and a couple more, check it out. and it will be Open Hardware.

I will have to use these tools in the long run but I’m pretty sure they will make it a little easier to track various plattforms and automate certain processes.

Premise
A lot has happened this year, but in order to fully recount – and in order to fully understand – the events, I have to start at least with events in 2010. Although things were in motion that started way, way earlier, but that would take a lifetime to recount. Anyhow, I have been working my last job for some five years and wasn’t quite happy anymore. At the same time, even more people left Klagenfurt or Carinthia to leave for somewhere else. A process that has been going on in Carinthia for many, many years now and I always knew I want to leave too. Rather sooner than later to be honest but I wanted to finish evening school, I wanted to have a plan. Eventually, when I finished school in March 2010 and… things… happened. I started scheming. I knew I didn’t want to quit short notice. I knew I wanted to do a road-trip through the USA. I knew I didn’t want to do that in winter. I knew I needed more time to prepare instead of jumping right into it. So I worked on a timeline (please facebook, don’t sue me) and marked a few milestones. Only, I didn’t call them milestones, I called them “fuck-yeah” moments as everyone, who followed my facebook updates, can confirm. The first of these moments was obviously to quit my job in 2010, the next was the last day of work.

2011
There were four months in between those milestones because of the agreement I made with my employer. This gave me an advantage and it was better for them too, as we were able to find a successor and had more time training her. January 25^th was my last day of work.

After I gave up my apartment and gave away my furniture it was time to move back in with my parents for a little while, only to leave to do some travelling shortly after. Together with my buddy Richard, we went to Sweden and Denmark and then in March did a three month road-trip across the United States of America, some good 20.000 kilometers.

Then, end of June, my friend Chris in Vienna called me, confirming that( /when, long story..) he’s going to quit his job. A job that I was very interested in getting.

In September I already moved to Vienna, renting a room in a shared-flat for two months before, on November 1^st 2011, moving in together with my buddy Werner (@wranner) in a big place in Vienna’s fifth district, a great area to live in. We call our geeky place KWERNTEN (= kwentin + Werner + Kärnten) and even have a secret facebook group for it.

KWERNTEN is a mere seven minute walk from what would later become my office because on December 1^st I officially started my job at the Austrian National Tourist Office in their Digital Media Strategies team. Meaning I am still working in an area that involves both tourism and technology. To top it off I’m working in a great team and I’m sure I will learn a whole lot working there. I feel so lucky and grateful and I’m so happy about how this worked out. I’m super excited about this opportunity as it’s definitely a big challenge, too!

I seriously can’t believe how fast that year went by and how much stuff happened this year. There were so many people I met and had the pleasure of spending time with on my travels and back home and now in Vienna. I can’t possibly name all of you guys because I’d be afraid I’d forget someone but thanks to everyone for making 2011 what it was.

Zen // Vienna // Music
So as I was already stating on facebook, The Plan™ worked out as planned and I couldn’t be happier about what a year this was, it completely blew my mind. I’m confident, that 2012 will be very exciting, too, although probably in a different way. Going to Vienna was the right thing to do. As tempting as going somewhere completely different where you’d have to really start over is, moving to a city you know a bit but still have to get to know closer has it’s advantages too. I’m happy about moving to a city where I already have friends. A city, where staying home at night is a choice. A city where I can go to concerts instead of having to travel far away to see shows.

Speaking of music, 2011 has been a great year for concerts, too. I saw DISPATCH in Berkeley, California, in June, which was really amazing, despite the huge amount of hippies with their bongs in the audience. I saw THE REVIVAL TOUR show, one of the most awesome shows I’ve ever seen, featuring the likes of Chuck Ragan of Hot Water Music, Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem, Dave Hause of The Loved Ones, Dan Andriano of Alkaline Trio, Joe Ginsberg and Jon Gaunt. A bit later I saw SCORPIOS (Joey Cape, Tony Sly, Jon Snodgrass and Brian Wahlstrom – not to be confused with the Scorpions!) and Friska Viljor and Flogging Molly. I finally saw Frank Turner again and already got myself a few more tickets to shows next year, including seeing Bruce Springsteen.

2012
I don’t know about my plans for 2012, my goal now is to focus on my new job and save up some money for a change. But whatever happens, I’ll probably keep you posted.

Related posts:

1. Hellowien.
2. Berlin
3. Wiener Zentralfriedhof.

so a few weeks ago I started to collect my Vienna photos and those from Werner on a tumblr blog called http://randomvienna.tumblr.com

today’s latest entry:

anyhow I’ve got around 50 entries so far and new ones will be added every now and then. I also started to ask a few folks from the “Instagramer Vienna” community if I’m allowed to reblog some of their Vienna photos, hopefully I’ll get some positive feedback to be able to fill the tumblr queue right up :)

if you want to contribute or want to have your photos on the blog just let me know your username or where to find them or submit them yourself :)

Related posts:

1. Wiener Zentralfriedhof.
2. barcamp vienna
3. Coldplay.

It will still take a few weeks, probably until December, before I can say what I will be doing for a living now, so stay tuned :)

I am living in a temporary place now, a shared flat with only one flatmate and my “landlord” is only here once a week Saturdays. From November I will move into a shared flat with Werner. Most probably in the 5th district as we already have a place we could have, going to look at it in a few days, but from what I know and saw it should be fine!

Related posts:

1. 2011. or as i call it: best year ever.
2. people are… funny
3. barcamp vienna

Pretty cool stuff.

And yes, by the way, I am back from the States – you can read all about it, each blog post with photos and the statistics of such a 20.500 kilometer trip on my travel blog “around the states in 89 days“. It was a great adventure and I’d have to thank more people than I can think of, but each and everyone we met was awesome and the trip wouldn’t have been the same without those people, be it couchsurfers or “regular” folks ;)

fuck yeah.

Related posts:

1. messing with my car
2. Berlin
3. Interrail 2009.