Nicole and I are going to leave New Zealand on October 23rd. We’ve been travelling and living in NZ for four years and we feel like having a change and see family and old friends again.
We will be travelling through South-East Asia for a couple of months before returning to Düsseldorf, Germany some time early next year.
We have had the most amazing four years here and we are definitely going to miss New Zealand.
As the Mac turns 30, I realised that I’ve been using Macs for 10 years myself now.
“The Switch” started in 2003 — during the end of my apprenticeship — when a colleague regularly brought his personal 12-inch PowerBook G4 to the office. It caught my attention, and I spend quite a bit of time learning about his computer. He was happy to tell me all about it — and Apple in general, too.
I ended up buying this very PowerBook from him at the beginning of 2004. I’ve been using Macs ever since, and I haven’t looked back.
The Mac and Mac OS X felt like the sweet spot to me. It seemed to be like a merger of the good bits of Windows and Linux with an extra dose of taste, logic and fun on top. Over the years, I’ve owned 3 Macs:
I’ve used three more Macs given to me at my workplace: a 2009 21.5-inch iMac, a 2009 (or 2010) MacBook Pro 15-inch, and a 2011 MacBook Air 13-inch.
All the Macs I’ve used have been fantastic machines. And they just keep getting better with every generation.
So, happy birthday, Mac!
If you hadn’t been created, I’d be using a different computer and I wouldn’t even miss you.
I broke my arm last Sunday afternoon. It was a – I believe – pretty unspectacular bike accident. But I fell really unfortunate and now I have a semi-complicated fracture right above the elbow joint.
I’m going to have surgery tomorrow (Wednesday) and will be in the hospital for a few more days. Then weeks of rehabilitation. Sucks a little :-(.
I’m still at the hospital until the beginning of next week. But the surgery was successful without any complications and the doctors said the arm will be fully functional again in about two months. That’s good news for me.
Just Married!
Verliebt, verlobt, verheiratet.
Das Ganze geschah am 20.09.2014.
Alle Fotos von Fotokunst Freitag.
53/365: Not much happening today. Feeling pretty sick from a cold. Spent the day mostly sleeping, reading and playing Alto’s Adventure.
We’re very excited to be visiting New Zealand for the next 6 weeks. It’ll be a mix of work and travel. And I will finally get to meet the Rankers crew.
If you’d like to follow our locations, I’ve just added a little feature to my homepage, where you can see our latest location update. But I will make a few posts here, too, I’m sure.
Yihaa! Touch down in Auckland, New Zealand. Feels great being back. And it also still feels very familiar. We love to here the NZ accent all over the place again. :-) And summer feels great, too!
This photo was taken yesterday afternoon, going out for a drink and dinner. We didn’t want to go to bed too early. Although that was much needed. After approx. 48 hours without a bed, we pretty much passed out immediately after we returned to our accommodation at around 8:30pm.
Now it’s the next morning and we slept really well!
(Sorry for the interruption to all these black and white film photos. ;-) )
While out in the city today shopping with my daughter, I got unsolicited parenting advice. Apparently I was allowing something they would’ve never allowed. That person basically told me I’m a bad parent. I was flabbergasted. And offended.
What’s wrong with people? How rude can you be? I overheard one comment in the past, and also heard from friends complaining about similar experiences. This was the first time I got into an argument with someone. I have the suspicion it won’t be the last time.
We currently live close to the local library. It’s a great institution to have nearby. Not only can we conveniently rent out books, magazines and other media for us adults, we can regularly get Zoe new children’s books for free and return them once she loses interest. She currently loves books, so this is very handy.
I love books, too. Mainly photo books. And today I bought not rented: during our visit Zoe let me browse their current “For Sale”-shelves for like two minutes and I was able to pick a few that interested me. After learning about the price, I bought them all. It was €10 altogether. I probably would have paid this for the Magnum book alone.
I’m very happy about these very affordable finds, but I’m worried I have photo book tsundoku or BAS: Book Acquisition Syndrome.
Yesterday I visited the Webworker NRW Meetup in Düsseldorf. I used to visit their meet ups regularly, but haven’t been to a single one in recent years. Simply because I wasn’t here all that much.
Last evening was about Vue.js. I haven’t worked with any of the three currently most popular (or shall I say hyped?) JavaScript frameworks – React, Angular and Vue – so this was a good opportunity to start learning about them.
The Meetup itself has grown quite a bit. When I went the last time, it was still held at Garage Bilk with maybe up to 30-35 visitors maximum. The venue is now at Sipgate and there were around 130 people. The new home is great: their staff welcomes you, flawless technical setup and free snack and drinks.
So, I drank a little, I ate a little, met Stefan, and learned about Vue.js. Successful outing.
Didn’t manage to finish the article I originally intended to publish. Instead, I spent too much time today on some custom map tiles implementation for an app. But it’s Friday night. I should start fresh on Monday.
I think I’ll now have a beer and develop the two rolls of 120 film from December I have still lying around.
Beer empty. Films developed.
I was a little bit nervous this time: Because I had rated the HP5s at EI 3200 – a 3-stop push – and I have only done that once before a couple of years back. But the negatives came out looking really good!
While pouring and waiting and agitating I listened to Rick Rubin.
Spent most of the day with dad clearing out our cellar and his old stockroom and driving all the things to various recycling facilities.
Things finally had to go.
I don’t think I am required to do any additional sports this week.
And the highlight of my day was returning home: I’m currently rarely gone for an entire day, which is probably why Zoe was so happy to see me again. She gave me the biggest and longest hug I’ve received from her ever. Best thing in the world! :-)
While I am speaking of Zoe: she is so much fun at the moment! She’s walking and running, she’s talking (sort of, in her toddler way), she’s dancing, she’s cuddly, she understands a lot of what we say, she’s curious, and – to our great delight – she started giving out kisses, too. 😍