Anyone can take a picture of a street sign, but it takes talent to make this regular, every day thing worth a photo.
Anyone can take a black and white picture of their grandpa, but without a lot of practise you’ll never be able to capture that magic instant, that has allowed so many great photographers to create the most magnificent portrait shots.
At the centre is the content and the 99% around it are the how, the art of the photo. Angle, lighting, perspective, colours and so on.

The content, though, is not simply what lays behind the lens but what the artists sees. These 99% are how he expresses his ideas. He makes the picture happen. Some objects aren’t as photogenic as others and require more patience and concentration in order to get a good shot. It’s not just about clicking a shutter button but seeing the potential of a unique scene, sometimes only lasting the split of a second.
The artist doesn’t take a photo, he makes it.

It’s the photographer who makes the great photograph, not his camera. Sometimes, a state of the art DSRL can be beaten by a smartphone. It’s not by applying a vintage filter that you’ll create an eternal piece of art. Even the ability to remove wrinkles in Photoshop doesn’t matter. Artsy over-edited Instagram snapshots of fruit are getting annoying. The essential bit is to create. This can be as little as a cup of coffee sitting on a beautiful table cloth. Such a simple mise-en-scène can produce finer photos than a sunset.

Photography isn’t really about anything else than yourself and your ability to see through a lens. The rest is inspiration and transpiration.

Thorben was visiting, from Germany. I thought it would be immeasurably more enjoyable to reside in central London rather than next to the furthest station on the Tube network. Uxbridge is not an area to show your friends, especially not if you plan on showing off a little bit.

So I got the keys to my friend’s place, she’s on holiday, I’m grateful and am now seriously considering moving here. All it needed to terminally steer me away from accepting Uxbridge as a home was five days in the cultural centre.

Being in Camden is what I had imagined living in London would be like before I moved to England last September. Being woken up by sunshine and traffic noise, getting a fancy breakfast for £16, visiting expositions on sliced animals, walking around hipster restaurants and pubs and meeting people from all over the world. In only one week in central London I’ve felt more enjoyment than after months and months of monotone Uxbridge.

Camden town is only two tube stops away from my temporary residence. If you’ve never been, you’re missing out. As you step out of the station, setting foot in the swarming streets, you’re immediately indulged by the mess. An endless array of shops and indians advertising their restaurants takes over your perception. It takes about half a minute until you realise there’s more than noise. Oh, there is a bridge and there is a river and there is the sky and there are cars and tourists, so many tourists. After you’ve got yourself together again you can start walking around but need vigilance and focus as you’re heading forward. Shopkeepers are buzzing around you like bees, convincing you that their rubber GameBoy imitation iPhone case is worth £10 and after a minute of paltering you get it for £4.

If there’s one thing you learn after an afternoon at the market it’s to say no. It’s impossible to stop at a shop for more than three seconds without getting the retailer’s attention, but then again I doubt it’s within human capacity to ignore Justin Bieber Beats headphones, LED fake Zippo lighters, glow in the dark shirts, Hello Kitty sex toys or vintage Coca Cola ads.

The best thing about Camden are the stables. The concentration of chinese restaurants is incredible and can be found nowhere else in the world. I’ve counted 50 and only stopped because I was distracted by this guy trying to convince me of buying a Rolex imitation. Somewhere hidden between band shirts and noodle stands are stairs leading to more shops underground. Following a long corridor of boutiques instead of walls leads you to the english student’s dream place. At the end of the hallway is a tiny café with half a dozen tables, an italian piano player singing ballads and young couples holding hands. The corner is enclosed by innumerable bookshelves holding old classics, comics and titles visibly having being passed on for generations and generations. The place smells like history and coffee.

Leaving the markets is like returning to the normal, dull world. The rest of London seems boring compared to the brouhaha at the stables and returning to a life in Uxbridge is unthinkable now, but sadly inevitable.

I was about a quarter through The Hunger Games when I arrived. My friend decided we should watch the movie. She had finished the book and kept comparing both and flattered herself by spotting inconsistencies. After she had pointed out all the omissions from the book I decided to throw popcorn at her.

We then walked around a little and I bought a pair of shoes.

At the end of the afternoon, I went to see my friend Chris from uni. He was still on his way back from Mill Hall so his mom opened the door. This led to some awkward but amusing smalltalk. We talked about their fish, called Fish, because there was only one fish, why bother naming it? Fish a very old, fat and lazy goldfish, but the colour has worn off, so now it’s silver. Fish is older than my brother. My friend’s mom also pointed out that the holes in the carpet came from their bulimic rabbit, which is now dead. It probably ate too much carpet. I learnt that the rabbit used to happily crawl behind the TV set and eat the cables. I forgot to ask for the rabbit’s name. Then I made a .gif of the fish.

After what seemed like an eternity, Chris arrived and we went out. I had to introduce myself to new people. This is always a bit complicated since I can’t answer “Where are you from?” that easily. I wore a Vespa jacket that night and was able to disguise myself as italian and also passed as swedish. I speak neither. This guy asked me to listen him talk about his tunisian cousin in broken french. He probably woke up with a headache.

I have decided to post more personal stuff. There’s no point in publishing essays when there is clearly no audience. I have just checked my RSS subscription counter, there are 19 of you. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for your interest and will not abuse of this privilege. Yes, it’s an honour to entertain you.

However, I have to confess that I feel like a pastor who missed the memo that today’s mass was cancelled but gives his speech anyway. Just as Twitter is more fun when there’s feedback from followers, blogging can become monotone without responses. I don’t expect comments, but a click on “like” will do the job. And even if it’s just knowing that there’s a level of curiosity out there for a bloke with a mishmash of nationalities, studying a topic he doesn’t enjoy and is constantly complaining, I’m happy. Dear reader, thank you.

On that note, I’m writing to inform you that I will blog a little more personal content.

Arriving at uni last september introduced my flatmates and me to a pest. A person with no respect whatsoever for other people’s lives and belongings. We have had a wave of food thefts just before Christmas and are now witnessing similar childish shenanigans. Two weeks ago, my frying pan went missing, a friend’s pan has turned up in the glass trash bin, I found my cheese drowned in a sticky and liquid substance, the level of ketchup bottles mysteriously sinks and frozen pizzas disappear. Of course, none of this has been recorded on camera, a shame for a nation under CCTV.

We have filed formal complaints and feel like the victims of a humorless David Thorne. There have been thoughts about acts of revenge, but these ideas were quickly crumpled. Sometimes it is best to just stand above the problem, not to level with it. Unfortunately ignoring the troll didn’t help much, we still get blocked up sinks, a flooded floor and caramelised coke on the cookers. Fighting “le mal par le mal” only works for depressed french poets and the fire brigade. We won’t strike back, but luckily the holidays are approaching and the bollocks will soon stop.

I have now applied for Industrial Design, a 4-year course, and will be staying at Brunel. I’ve found a house to live in with a couple of friends, at about five minutes away from the campus. I will be leaving the student accommodation. Good bye, Mill Hall.

There are hundreds of sites to watch TV shows online, one worse than the other. The user is made miserable, the quality is depressing, the need to close pop-up ads becomes painstakingly distressing after the 100th time and the only perk is that after 72 minutes comes relief.

I know enough people whose understanding of watching TV shows online is defined by scam like megaupload, videobb, and so on. To play the newest episode of their favourite show they will first open a site collecting episode links from various sources, then look for a source with a high enough rating, after that they will probably have to go back and forth a couple of times to find a reliable and functioning stream to play the video. The horror isn’t over now though, the user still has to click away at least two ads, maybe enter a captcha, mute a video ad half way through the show, ignore the pop-ups. In addition to all these drawbacks, the video quality is crap, the sound awful, the playback rough. But at least it’s free, right?

I am past the age of feeling a need to be rebellious against the media industry, of avoiding to pay for their products at any cost and later complaining about the show. After about 20 episodes of HIMYM, House and The Simpsons on various online video sites I’ve had enough. I needed an alternative. I couldn’t stand the lack of attention put into these sites. Yes, these sites are in a legal grey area, but then again you can get HD TV shows from Piratebay.

Lucky for me Netflix now works in the United Kingdom and I’ve been subscribed since day 1, about two months ago. For the price of a student lunch I get unlimited access to all their movies and TV shows and there’s an iPhone app too! The video starts playing immediately and automatically switches from HD to SD depending on the network to guarantee a fluid playback. Me gusta!

The problem is, though, that Netflix currently only works in the US, Canada and the UK. It’s not that we, the “download generation”, aren’t willing to pay for content, it’s more that there isn’t any option. Sure, we could buy everything on iTunes and pay three times the DVD retail price, but that isn’t really a solution either. Blame the studios. The main issue lays with the TV executives who still fear the internet, who will wait a year between airing and DVD release. The broadcasting industry is killing itself with conformity.

Netflix isn’t a new service, it won’t convert the megaupload evangelists and it won’t affect anyone outside its three countries. But with its extension to the UK a first step is made, just as Spotify recently became available in Germany, gaining a huge amount of praise and new users. Services like Netflix and Spotify both facilitate user experience and present the content in a lovely package. They reduce illegal download and crappy streaming and bring some money to the studios. Not much, but it’s far better than nothing.

There have always been pirates and there will always be outlaws but easy beats free and with age comes maturity. The downloading youngsters will chasten themselves from their shitty video sites and soon appreciate decent, immediate playback for the price of two Frappuccinos a month.

This article is both a little rant about esoteric media students and a refreshment of the position Polemie should occupy: create subjects of debate.

The worst part of his text are the 95% between the first and last sentence. In some sense, his metaphor of the battery can be adopted to the “power” in a lifetime, but he fails to understand the complexity of the human body and in what ways it differs from a technological state-of-the-art storage of protons and electrons. Of course it’s possible to compare a battery to a body just as it’s possible to compare watches to fruit flies, it’s just inappropriate.
He compares the abstractum “life” to the concrete image of a battery.

Fred’s main argument is that by slowing down the pace of your life by half, you’ll live twice as long. This works for a battery, something with a limited charge and a controllable output. The body’s “battery” is more of a generator though and its needed power varies from application to application. We can cut down on some activities, approach stuff slower, but we can’t divide the energy we use by a simple flick of a switch.

He’s talking about enjoying every aspect of life and uses fast food and alcohol as examples. I don’t mean to be a fun-nazi here, but every time I go to Burger King, I feel somewhat bad about myself afterwards. Unhealthy food isn’t my conception of “living your life”, quite the opposite actually. I feel at the epitome of happiness just before the shower after a long jog, when a band plays my favourite song at a concert or during a plane’s takeoff.

Perhaps the perception of pleasure differs strongly between the south of Germany and the outskirts of London, but I find eating a salad more enjoyable than hanging my head over the toilet.

I get what he’s meaning to say though. If you don’t care about yourself, it’ll probably have some effect on your health. That’s been proven, but the extent of this degradation cannot be defined by a plain ratio, and it certainly doesn’t need an eloquent multi-linguist to figure this out. And it’s true, a vast proportion of students enjoy a semi-conscious state on a night out. Perhaps, we should change our general idea of fun for something more sustainable.

On the other hand he suggests that by living without dissipation, alcohol and by maintaining a balanced diet, you’ll live longer. He calls this lifestyle boring.
Now, this is where it actually get’s interesting. It’s undoubtedly not a very exiting way of living, but who calls you boring? People your age. Those who get drunk on a regular basis, who play video games instead of enjoying outside, who will die younger. Who are they to judge?

In his text, he doesn’t put forward any alternative and certainly no answer to the problem which he doesn’t even clearly state. Some of Fred’s articles are truly impressive and reflect his genius in a glorious way, but this one proves that even the greatest creators of polemic sometimes have a day off.

I’ve asked a simple question to a handful of friends and wasn’t surprised by their nonchalant responses. “Why are you on Facebook?” The answers reflected the virtues of the network. Friends want remain in contact, even without text messages or calls and because communication is eased up by the fact that nearly everybody you know had an account. People are on Facebook because people are on Facebook.

Personally I think that it’s a great service for staying in touch with your actual friends, those who matter in your life, especially if they live abroad (most of my friends do) and now that I’m away from the network, I miss seeing what they’re up to. But Facebook’s advantages don’t outweigh the drawbacks and compromises they bring with them. I used to visit Facebook on a daily basis, sometimes even more than that – whenever a notification popped up on my phone, bling, I’d check it out.
More often than not, I did not care much for what I read. I don’t need to know when some aquiantance of a friend comments on a photo I uploaded a year ago.
There’s an unbalance between the ease to stay in touch and the 13-year-olds talking about their pets. I’ve been told to simply delete the annoying ones and keep Facebook for my close friends, or to create a second account just for private stuff, but that doesn’t solve the problem.

The new Timeline feature is beautiful. It’s useful, original, well-designed and even inspirational.
But there’s one vicious catch to it. Timeline intruduced the possibility to create pre-Facebook entries, to document your own birth or the retrieval of your favourite lost toy, accurately to the minute. Beautiful, yes, but would you invite a mere aquaintance to your house and show him your baby-albums over some coffee and cookies? Probably not. The comparison is slightly exagerated, but if you think of it, how many people are you really friends with on Facebook?

You’re probably aware of Facebook’s privacy policies (or the lack thereof) and although I have nothing to hide, I don’t feel comfortable giving them my phone number and the rights to all the pictures I take. This isn’t a sudden realisation. Back in 2008 or something, when the first wave of “everbodies” got an account, I was quite late into the game. A friend actually set up a profile for me and all I had to do was use it. I did take it and remember asking myself “so why do people sign up for this?”.

I didn’t get it back then. Soon though, I moved away and began enjoying the tangibility of my remote friends. Everybody was just a click away. This was probably the best time Facebook has ever had for me. Every now and then, I’d deactivate my account until my anger towards the service calmed down. But this back and forth ended when I finally got a smartphone at the end of 2010. Before that, my computer was my only medium of online communication but I now realised that the smartphone began to evolve into a medium of real-life communication too. Instead of calling someone up, they’d get a wall post, and since everybody carried their facy phone whith them at all times, they’d receive a notification and would reply almost instantly.
Little by little, I began to notice that most communication happened through Facebook. I’d befriend any contact from school and it soon became evident that this wasn’t in fact helping me to connect with the friends in my life as advertised, but was rather drawing out real interaction.

I observed the people at my school, sitting at tables with their laptops, browsing through endless streams of news and pictorial entertainment, the sound of the chat would be a constant reverbation and “hey, check your wall!” made Sentence of the Year.

I was in a dilemma. I felt uncomfortable every time I tapped on the f-icon but was amazed by the handiness of the omnipresent network. It created fast, free and reliable ways of comminucation at the cost of giving up your data, addiction and being a major source of procrastination.

Towards the end of 2011 the majority of my friends had smartphones, allowing free communication through apps more stable and trusted than Facebook’s, and without the distraction. The blue colossus still was a highly-used way of socialisation but its uses were slowly taken over, one-by-one, by other mediums. Twitter, iMessage, WhatsApp, even Email!
Then, at the end of December, I announced my conclusion with Facebook, which pleasantly resulted in more reaction that I’d thought.

A lot of thinking went into the decision of deleting my account. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised how silly it is to make a big deal out of a virtual existence.
The sole reason for me to keep my account, I reasoned, was for my close friends and family members to stay up to date.

I’m glad that I now manage without the countless annoying notifications, the impossibility of timely deleting embarrassing pictures, the fleeting definition of friendship, the stupid mentions in awkward posts, the pathetic statuses in capitals and the ever increasing amount of brand presence occupying the wall instead of witty and personal stories.
I miss the feedback about my activities, the extremely amusing conversations in comments, the silly pictures, the horribly disgusting frapes and even the moments of disappointment when some idiots were taking horoscope quizzes or posted their farmville highscores. It was fun while it lasted but I’m thankful it’s over.

Take my hand, stop stalking your exes and join in on a journey far away from the creator of careless exposure.

I have been complaining about my course more than once, I know. But the beginning of the second semester brought something fantastic, or rather someone. In a new class, Electronic Engineering, John Stonham is lecturing with passion and ingenuity (more on that another time). His lectures are inspiring and taught me something I had wanted to learn a long time ago, but never got around: binary coded decimals.

Let’s start with the basics. There are many number systems. The most common one is our decimal system, from 0 to 9, but it is far from flawless. The problems with it become clear when trying to estimate results. If x≠1 then x can be anything else.
In binary, however, there is 0 and there is 1 and that’s it. This makes applications of the system easy, short and understandable. If x≠1 then x=0. Boom.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the hexadecimal system. You’ve probably already heard of it. The fundamental rule is to begin counting at 0. The prefix hex- means 6. Decimal is 10. Hexadecimal is 16. We, unfortunately, don’t have 16 symbols in the decimal numerical system. Therefore in hexadecimal we use 6 lettres from the alphabet to represent the missing values.

It’s rather straightforward. The “higher” the letter is in the alphabet, the greater its decimal value. A is 10, F is 15. So much for the numbers. How do we determine a colour based on this?

Well, the six-character hexadecimal code represents the hue of red, green and blue, RGB. You’ve heard of that too! If we take #1589FF as an example, the hue of red is 15, green is 89 and blue is FF. If we took the example #DEDEDE for example (grey), the values of red, green and blue would be equal, which would result in a greyscale tone. DE, being quite high in the numerical value table,  would give a light hue of grey.

You probably knew that #FFFFFF gave white and #000000 is black, but could you tell what #FF8800 is? Let’s figure it out. This unknown colour would have high red, medium green and no blue. What has kindergarden taught you? Mixing the primary colours (red, green and blue) gives the secondary colours (cyan, magenta and yellow). Now, if we had a colour palette and physically mixed red and green, we’d have yellow. If we now added more red (our red is FF, almost double the 88-green) we’d have orange, right? Right. #FF8800 is an orange.

So how can #1589FF be estimated without a computer? One may find it quite tricky to keep all the ratios in his head. You may know that a colour hue is measured out of 255. So what if I told you that each pair for red, green and blue have a value out of 255 and that it could easily be calculated by hand. You’d end up with a fraction for your final colour.

This has certainly helped me to understand something about numbers and although I can’t translate the joy I experienced while learning all these things (and more) I do think that this will allow you to quickly estimate a colour based on a hexadecimal code. Just keep in mind that computers aren’t traditional painting machines. Mixing a strong red, green and blue won’t give you white in real life, but rather a brownish tone.

One of my favourite feelings is that of a plane’s takeoff. The accelerating velocity that steadily runs the plane over the runway, the suction from the pressure gradient on the wings lifting tons of steel, pushing this big crowded machine off the ground. 20 seconds of rumble, shaking the metal bird, and then suddenly you’re flying. This instant of weightlessness passes through your body, in the split of a second, you’re as light as a feather and yet weighing tons, held by nothing but nitrogen, oxygen and some particles of carbon dioxide.

Please put your seats into the upright position. We’re taxiing at about 250 km/h, the nose it angled at about 10° and the plane is lifting off, rising up to cruising altitude.