Frozen Tarn
Every now and then, a mapping trip is not as successful as intended. And so was today’s. Here’s some C code describing my feelings :) :
Some code
Archive for the ‘Pictures’ Category
When it not is your (mapping) day
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
The State of the Snow
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
Hiking Trail in the Bienwald
As Daisy had even reached the Upper Rhine Plain, we had some snow for a couple of days. I used the occasion for three nice hiking trips in the Bienwald, mapping grade 4 and 5 tracks, hiking paths and, last but not least, the stream Heilbach and some drains alimenting it:
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Mapping the Ottertal, Part II
Monday, December 28th, 2009
Ottertal Fungi
Due to the annual Xmas family meeting I had the occasion to do some further mapping of the lovely Ottertal. Unfortunately my camera failed after I had taken four pictures, but that’s better than nothing :) .
Mapping rivers in the woods ++
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
Brown and brown
Though it was a cloudy (and rainy) day, I needed some compensation for the many extra office hours of the last week. During the winter months, I try to map hiking paths and rivers in the Bienwald, which I cannot map by bike during summer:
Mapping rivers in the woods
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
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.
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Mapping the Ottertal
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
Fungi of the Ottertal - 1
Yesterday we celebrated the 60th birthday of my mother at the village where I grew up. A nice occasion to meet family members and other people I haven’t seen for a very long time.
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Great Concert at the Tollhaus
Sunday, November 8th, 2009I’m just back from a concert at the Tollhaus. There have been three sets. The first one has been performed by Michael Wollny and Tamar Halperin:
Michael Wollny and Tamar Halperin at the Tollhaus
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Fresh fungi catch – mapping hiking trails in autumn
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
Puffball
Though it was cloudy at noon, it was a good decision to do some outdoor mapping. I grabbed some hiking trails around Langenberg. Here’s today’s tour:
Fixing a broken Blumax GPS mouse
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
Blumax Fixed
Recently my GPS mouse got bricked. Thanks to a hint of a friend, who sent me some IRC log, I was able to fix it easily.
The return of the Fungi
Sunday, September 27th, 2009
White Puffball
Under best late summer weather conditions I’ve again visited the black forest to map some ways and paths between Seibelseckle and Hinterlangenbach. That’s today’s route:
Unoriented Mapper attacked by Ladybugs!
Monday, September 21st, 2009
A Hoverfly watching me and the bugs
Today I was tricked by my own lazyness. I have two batteries for the N810. Each of them usually lasts for up to 4 hours while being mapping. I am used to charge them immediately when I return from a mapping tour. Seems I messed it up after the last tour. As the first one was drained, I put the second one into the device – and it immediately complained that the battery was low!
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Black Forest mapping between Seibelseckle and Hinterlangenbach
Monday, September 7th, 2009It’s just good luck to live in Karlsruhe, as it is just about 80km/40min by car to get to some typical locations (like the infamous Mummelsee :) .
Day by day, more black forest tracks are being mapped by OSM addicts, but there are still a lot of gaps to fill and refinements are always possible. This weekend I have chosen the area between Seibelseckle and Hinterlangenbach.
Yesterday it began raining while being in the woods. The forecast and some webcam pics fooled me, so there was not much “outcome” concerning geo data. Today, however, it was a wonderful sunny late summer day, even allowing for some nice pictures. Here’s the area:
The track of the recently purchased WBT-201 bluetooth GPS receiver and logger IMO is again not as accurate as it could (respectively should) be. Unfortunately, I left my GPSMap at home, otherwiese I could compare the tracks. I am at least disappointed with its bluetooth reliability. Maemo Mapper often reports that it is looking for a GPS fix. The current position often is far away from the already existing objects, and if you go a way twice, the two tracks often are far apart.
But I’ll better put the typical krautish :) whining aside. So here’s the final drumroll, announcing some of the usual pics.
I really like moss closeups. It just looks a bit unnatural while it is the opposite:
Moss closeup
Even more, though not shot properly:
Moss closeup 2
I’m not the biggest fan of spiders, but I am not a chicken as many other people. I grew up in a rural area, thus being used to all kind of animals:
Spider in Moss
And finally a nice one. I managed to take a closeup of a grasshopper. Unfortunately, I could not remove the grass in front of the lens, as the grasshopper would have escaped:
Grasshopper
The above pictures are not public domain. The copyright is still owned by me, and copying is hereby not allowed except you got my written consent.
Fauna and Flora pics collected while mapping the Black Forest
Monday, August 31st, 2009
Pic of the Wildsee as seen from the hill above it
On my last holiday I mapped some missing trails and paths in the Black Forest, between Seibelseckle and Ruhestein:
Three times I have been asked by other tourists how to get to destination X. Three times I could answer the questions using openstreetmaps on the Nokia N810, and three times I gave away the german language flyers.
I’m still disappointed by the tracks that the WBT-201 records. The accuracy is horrible, and the bluetooth connection goes down frequently, though the devices are just a couple of millimeters apart.
Besides that, I took some pictures.
Here’s some dead wood, which was perforated by some “furniture beetles”:
Totholz
At the “Wildsee” (see the topmost image) I found those fungi:
Pilze am Wildsee
Here’s some shot of a woodland strawberry:
Walderdbeere
Besides fungi, I find lichen very interesting. Found on trees, those usually indicate a very good quality of the air:
Flechten
And finally, here’s the absolute highlight of the today’s tour – a viper:
Kreuzotter
The pictures of this posting are not public domain. If you are interested to reuse them, please drop me a line.
Mapping Hiking Trails of the Black Forest
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
Black Forest Hiking Trail
Under perfect late-summer weather conditions it was a joy to track some hiking trails of the black forest. The API has been down for maintenance this weekend, so I could not use osm2go for live editing. Instead I used some home-grown software to record (annotated) waypoints while being out. The API meanwhile is up and running again, so bringing the stuff into the database was done in a couple of minutes back home.
New toy: The WBT-201 aka G-Rays 2 GPS receiver and logger
Friday, August 14th, 2009
WBT-201/G-Rays 2
As my previous GPSr surprisingly died, I needed a replacement. As I lost a track on my N810 every now and then, I decided to go for a receiver which also can do logging. Less surprisingly I bought a WBT-201 aka G-Rays 2 GPS receiver. Some other mappers use it, and I had the occasion to use and test it about one year ago. The size of the device is just the size of a match box, so it fits easily into any of your pockets.
New mixing console arrived
Thursday, July 30th, 2009After my Behringer mixing console died I needed a replacement. I wanted to avoid a fully featured mixing console, as I do not need most of its features. Instead, I was looking for a small firewire breakout box with many (at least 16) line and mic inputs. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any device fulfilling my needs. So I ended again with a fully featured 16 (or 24, if you count the aux return ins) channel mixer with built in USB 2.0 and Firewire interface, the Phonic Helix Board 24 Universal PHHB24U. It is likely that it can be run in Firewire mode using Linux thanks to the FFADO project. It is, however, unlikely that the USB mode will work. I do not care much about the latter one, as I prefer firewire anyway. And BTW: It’s my first firewire device ever. So welcome to the defloration of my notebook:
PHHB24U Front Panel
Pictures of the black forest – summer edition
Monday, July 6th, 2009
Flagellants
Being at the black forest on a sunny day in July allowed to take some nice pictures. Unfortunately, I got trapped by a habit of myself. I usually keep images on the camera until I did the next backup of my hard drives. This time I left all my crete holiday pics on it, so the camera complained about the lack of disk space after taking a couple of pictures. It was not possible to delete the old pictures, as I renamed the default folder to something like DCIM-Backup, and the camera was not capable to access it. Mea maxissima culpa.
Even more panorama pics of Crete
Monday, June 15th, 2009I have updated the panorama picture of the pass of ambelos and added two more panoramas of the Lassithi plateau to the posting. If that’s not yet enough for you, I have some more panoramas.
“I like greek-ish food”
Sunday, June 14th, 2009I love spending my holidays on greek islands for several reasons. One of them is the excellent traditional food. I appreciate the simplicity and taste of the fresh meat, fish and vegetables. It tastes completely different than the food at greek restaurants in germany. It’s not that the latter ones do a bad job. It’s just the fact that the taste differs.
As tourists, we do wrong anyway. If greek people go to the restaurant, they tend to be a lot of people participating. So a lot of different dishes are put on the table, providing a rich variety of food. As tourists, we often are two people who just order two main dishes and that’s it. So the meals look a bit poor, just providing, for example, some meat and potatoes on the plate. Well, not exactly. If you have good luck, the operator of the restaurant also has a garden where she grows some vegetables. If so, also the main dishes will show some fresh vegetables like tomatoes, paprika, onions and olives.
So here are some pics to wet your appetite. The greeks are masters in preparing very tasty starters. Here’s the “Various Appetizers Plate” of the Mirtos Hotel’s restaurant (which was accompanied by an excellent dark, sweet red wine):
Various Appetizers in Hotel Mirtos
The Lassithi Plateau on Crete (Updated)
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009The Lassithi plateau is an interesting geoformation. It’s almost a circlar area, completely circumvented by some mountains, up to 2148m in hight like the Δίκτη (Dikti). The plateau itself is about 800m above the sea level. There are only a few passes to enter it. One is the pass of Ambelos, where I took a panorama picture showing (from left to right) the Lassithi plateau south, the pass with some ruins of its windmills and then the sea north of it:
Panorama of the pass of ambelos