Lœwenstein Castle

As the weather is fine at the moment (and my bike is broken again), it is hiking time. Slowly it becomes difficult to find unmapped terrain, as openstreetmap.org meanwhile does not only attract car drivers but also hikers and (mountain) bikers. In the region where I grew up a lot of medieval castles can be found, and I visited them all. Time to resurrect the hobby of my youth as long there are still trails missing in the woods.

The first trip was near a homestead called Gimbelhof. Leaving the car there, it was easy to visit the Lœwenstein (see the above picture), the Hohenbourg (next picture) and the Wegelnburg. The latter one is sited in germany, which means you will cross the french german border near the source Maidenbrunnen, a spring.

Hohenbourg 1

Hohenbourg 2

This seems to be the main entrance, nicely decorated:

Hohenbourg Entrance

Nearby there’s another castle called Fleckenstein:

The Fleckenstein as seen from Hohenbourg

This is the Wegelnburg after passing the border. I find it quite interesting that they used relatively small rocks to build their residences upon:

Wegelnburg

Yesterday I visited the Blumenstein and the Wasigenstein castles. Due to the trees, you cannot see much of the Blumenstein castle:

Approaching Blumenstein from Uphill

I guess this stair is not as old as the castle, but a later addition. Unlike this one, the original stairs often show steps which are very different in size and shape:

Medieval stair inside Blumenstein

Thousands of lizards are populating the ruins nowadays:

A dinosaur on Blumenstein

This pine found it cool to grow on top of the ruins, enjoying the marvellous view over the valley:

A pine on top of Blumenstein castle

This last picture of Blumenstein shows how most of those castles are built. A languet on a hill got truncated to create a fosse. The rock then was uncovered from earth and the buildings put on top of it. As they only had hammers and chisels, the whole process must have been painful and surely took ages:

Leaving Blumenstein

Wasigenstein is built on top of a notched rock, and two castles have been built upon, Gross Wasigenstein and Klein Wasigenstein. The first one is hillside:

Approaching Gross Wasigenstein

Here’s the rather impressive fosse they built by dismantling the rock:

Fosse of Gross Wasigenstein

They also built a basin on the ground. Nowadays the water hosts frogs, newts and other animals:

Newts in a basin near Gross Wasigenstein

That’s the top of Gross Wasigenstein. It’s a really quiet place, so it was time to enjoy a little sunbath:

On top of Gross Wasigenstein

Klein Wasigenstein is much smaller:

Klein Wasigenstein ahead

Here are two doors inside it. I wonder if those are still romanesque or already gothic. In my opinion it’s in between. Big romanesque walls, but more elegant doors and staircases:

Doors inside Klein Wasigenstein

Here it is again, the alsacien castle lizard. I think it is endemic, as I only have seen them there :) :

An inhabitant of Klein Wasigenstein

This picture provides an impression of the tightness of such a medieval castle. Thus they tried to use any square inch:

Leaving Klein Wasigenstein

From the opposite side it is possible to see the two castles on the split rock:

The Wasigenstein castles as seen from the opposite sited hill

Here’s the last one for today, the Frœnsbourg. I’ve never seen such a bug before. A medieval remain, I guess :) . Anyway, the N900’s macro mode did a very good gob:

Bug near Frœnsbourg

The Frœnsbourg is a very narrow one. The rock partly only provides a thickness of about 6 to 8 feet:

On top of the Frœnsbourg

Here’s a picture showing it from bottom up:

Frœnsbourg bottom up

The various remains of workmanship shed a little light on the former usage of the castle. I guess that there have been a lot of wooden booths and buildings around the rock:

Frœnsbourg caves

I really enjoyed the trips. The N900 is a perfect general purpose companion. The weather was nice, and other hikers used several languages like english, french or the local german dialect of the french people who live nearby.

Quelques Guis

Aujourd’hui j’ai éte en Alsace, pour cartographier quelques chemins au bord du Rhin.

The cold and dark winter months finally are over. At the Rhine, the temperature was about 22°C today. A warm and sunny day combined with a light northern wind. A perfect day to open the biking season.

Assuming the sun was not that strong yet I decided to avoid the woods and better cycle in direct sunlight. According to my mirror, this was a big fault. Red Hat is a Linux distributor, and Red Head is a Linux user :) .

I crossed the Rhine using the ferry near Neuburg and went down to Seltz. There was an almost 50 year old ferry until 2005, crossing the Rhine to Plittersdorf. It was a special construction, which was powered by the water flowing down the Rhine. In 2005, it has been rammed by a ship and never been restored. First there were rumors that there will be no replacement, as there is a bridge nearby, connecting Wintersdorf and Beinheim. The more I was surprised that there is some ongoing work to build a new construction:

New ferry construction between Plittersdorf and Seltz

From an economical POV, the ferry is unnecessary. Nevertheless, it helps to bring french and german people together. If you think that this is useless, consider that the german and french inhabitants share a long history, including many wars. Both Germany and France are the main protagonists of the european union, and germany pays a huge amount of money to make it a success. The new ferry will mainly be used by pedestrian and biking tourists – which is a good thing to cultivate friendships and to visit cultural events on both sides of the Rhine.

The delta of the Sauer a bit upwards is a quite interesting ecosystem. Here are two photos of the last segment of the Sauer, before it enters the Rhine (which can be seen in the background of the first image):

La Sauer entering the Rhine

This photo shows the other side of the bridge near Munchhausen:

La Sauer arriving in Munchhausen

All kinds of birds are busy copulating and nest building. Detect two storks in the image below:

Two storks building their nest

I mapped several tracks accompanying the Rhine, to make the osm data more complete. Those are not important for routing, but at OSM we are proud of the level of detail we can provide.

I really enjoyed the trip. It’s been a while since I’ve last been there, and due to a bug in the code of my very own software I wasn’t able to map all details. Seems I need a further trip to collect the missing data :) .

Nokia N900, Smartphone with Maemo 5 operating system

I did it. SCNR.

I never owned a cell phone. I never needed wanted one. At least not for private purposes. Admittedly there were occasions when it was useful to have one available. But there were enough reasons not to buy one.

I rarely use a telephone. At the office? Of course. I couldn’t do my job without it. At home? There’s electronic mail, there’s instant messaging, there’s IRC, there are mailing lists, there are (hmpf) bulletin boards. Phone? Well, it is useful once a decade when I call some relatives.

Due to the fact that I rarely need a phone, a hand set was way too expensive. SMS also is rather expensive compared to the ridiculously wee small amount of data that gets transmitted. Plus most phones I’ve seen are rather ugly, the user interface design seldom is well engineered and the branding of the operators does the rest.

The iPhone was very close. A well done piece of hardware, plus both an excellent operating system and user interface. But is’t a closed ecosystem, making it hard to write your own software for the device. I’m a technician. My understanding of such a device is that it at first is a computer. And a computer is a machine which I want to do what I want it to. At least when I bought the hardware.

I use an N810 for some time now. I used it as a PDA, but mainly for mapping purposes. It only provides WIFI, but no cellular connectivity. The advantage of the device is its almost complete openness. It’s powered by a Debian like Linux system called Maemo. Nokia built several tools, software and infrastructure around the device, open for anyone. The perfect companion for a software developer.

Consider such a machine which coincidentally provides the additional capability of cellular connectivity. A completely open mobile Linux computer, where you can use any networking software as if you were sitting in front of your desktop computer. Some call this ubiquitous computing.

This is it. The N900. I did it. I bought one.

This winter was a cold one, and there was enough (though not much) snow for winter sport activities at the black forest. Currently it’s melting, which is due to spring, not global warming :) .

Daylight saving time starts next sunday, so I hope I can reopen the biking season. There are two obstacles, though: the weather forecast and the fact that my office hours tend to regularly extend beyond 7PM.

During the cold weeks, I did some mapping trips in the nearby woods which I didn’t blog about. Time to post some pics of the trips :) .

More postings will follow. But the frequency will surely be less than before.

Some Lichen

No posting for more than one week? Isn’t there anything interesting to write about? There is, but the release of interiorcad keeps me busy.

Due to the lack of daylight in my spare time, I decided for a short hiking trip last sunday, though it was a rather rainy day. I had good luck: The rain stopped as I reached on-site and it began raining again just as I reached the car after the trip.

Being a pedestrian allows to map small paths and the course of streams in the Bienwald, so I did:

There are a lot of fungi nowadays, so here’s last sunday’s picture catch:

Trumpet bells

Plain white

Some overexposure

Wee small ones - are those fungi?

Just back from the barber's

Grand majestic

Small white one - difficult to catch without overexposure

Small ones on wood, collecting raindrops

Juicy ones on wood

A puffball

Small one on wood (overexposure again)

The pics are not public domain. If you want to use one of them, do not hesitate to drop me a line.

Michael Wollny and Tamar Halperin at the Tollhaus

I never payed attention to Wollny’s music, but I was quite impressed by his playing. The compositions have been absolutely uncommon and thus very exhilarant. It is impossible to describe what style of music it was. Wollny clearly dominated the concert, both in terms of playing as well as volume. He used the complete dynamics range of the grand with great virtuosity, so Halperin had no chance to beat him with her Harpsicord – it’s not a dynamic instrument, and its sound is less brilliant and pervasive than the sound of the grand piano.

The second set was played by the Ulf Wakenius Quartet. This was the more traditional part of the concert:

Ulf Wakenius Quartet

Ulf Wakenius and Youn Sun Nah played some tunes as a duo in the third set. She’s an excellent singer and is capable of using various timbres:

Ulf Wakenius and Youn Sun Nah

I was impressed again, and left the concert in a very content mood. Great to have spent the 26€ “in advance”.

Hint: The images of this posting are not public domain. If you want to use any of them, please drop me a line.

Klangwelten Klangspirale

I just attended a concert of Klangwelten (“sound worlds”) at the Tollhaus. Klangwelten is a world music combo with some long time musicians and some musicians changing every year.

The propellerhead is Rüdiger Oppermann:

Klangwelten - Jürgen Oppermann

This year’s musicians include:

• Jemmy Bluestein & Rachel Eddie (USA): Fiddle, Banjo, Vocals
• Jørgen W. Lang (Europe, Ostfriesland) Bariton-Cister, Guitars, Low Whistles, Vocals
• Rüdiger Oppermann (Europe): Celtic Harp, Koncept, Arrangements.
• Lao Khaen Duo (Laos): Kaen, Pi, Vocals
• Ali Yildirim & Yasar Zafer Keskin (Turkey: Kemençe Duo)
• Jatinder Thakur (India): Tablas

Besides the fact that the concert did last to short (2 hours for 20€), it really was a great show.

The harp playing of Rüdiger Oppermann impressed me. He really got interesting sounds out of the instrument. Sometimes it more sounded like a guitar than a harp. Interesting style. OTOH, he did some magic with some hidden electronics. There have been bass tones which sounded to phat for a harp alone (though I heard similar stuff from Vollenweider, too).

Jatinder Thakur on the tablas was an eye catcher in his traditional clothing:

Klangwelten - Jatinder Thakur

Jemmy Bluestein & Rachel Eddie played fiddle, banjo and added some vocals. Not exactly my taste, but great playing anyway:

Klangwelten - Jemmy Bluestein & Rachel Eddie

Mr. Keskin played the kementche, and he did it with virtuosity. I usually thought that the instrument is held on the knees or something like this, but he was capable of holding it freeley in his left hand while still moving the bow with his right hand. Impressive indeed. If you have a chance to see him, grab it:

Klangwelten - Keskin

And here, finally, more or less the outsiders. Two elderly guys from laos, the country which was bombed by the americans by far more bombs than germany and japan during WW2. Over 70 years old, they played two instruments. The first one was an (IMO horrible) mouth organ:

Klangwelten - mouth organ Khaen

Additionally they played a very interesting instrument, the Pi. Listening to their playing on this instrument immediately reminded me of my Korg Z1 synth. I need to get a similar sound out of it »real soon now™«:

Klangwelten - Laos - Pi

Thanks guys for coming to germany. This was an excellent inspiration.

All in all, an excellent concert. I really enjoyed it, though I was a bit tired due to a hard working day (the release of interiorcad 2010 keeps me busy).

Fire (pic by wikimedia commons, public domain)

Last night I noticed that the usual phat biannual cold has arrived, so I only had little sleep. As a consequence, I have been in the office a bit earlier today, which immediately led to the »The ones that come earlier are allowed to go a bit later« phenomenon :) .

I usually tend not to save myself in terms of not going to the office just due to a cold. You are just too proud to admit that you have been taken ill, and you don’t want to burden your colleagues with an extra portion of work, especially if it is release time. This regularly results in being ill for several weeks – that’s the price you pay for not taking a couple of days and curing yourself. On the other hand, it just doesn’t matter whether you are sitting in front of your computers at home or in the office. And the plain air on the way to and from the office is just healthy, isn’t it :) ?

Anyway, the summer is finally over. It’s about 10°C on my balcony at 11PM, while the forecast predicts 3-5°C during the night. Being sited on the upper rhine plain, Karlsruhe has a very friendly climate, at least compared to the rest of germany. We rarely see snow, and during the summer, it’s often damn humid.

I have fired up the heating, doing the yearly pressure check and refilling it with some water. The valves of the radiators usually hang a bit, so you need to play with some tools to make them do their job. Not a big deal, it only lasts a couple of minutes. All are up and running now, and I switched the heating off as I will go to bed real soon now™.

ZKM - Media Museum

This weekend, the ZKM (center for arts and media technology) in Karlsruhe celebrated its 20th birthday. Both museums, the media museum and the museum of contemporary art, granted free access to the exhibitions. A great occasion for a cloudy sunday afternoon visit.

ZKM - Museum of contemporary art