danyo

I got my new camera (D80) with the lense of my choice last friday and am so happy with it.

which one?

I don’t even know if I should go with Canon or Nikon. Both sound like good choices. I am eyeing the Canon 30D, the Nikon D80 and the 350d also known as Rebel XT in North America. The latter would have the advantage that I could buy one nice lense for the price difference of the camera like the EF 28-135mm/3.5-5.6 IS USM or an IS tele. Any input?

Finally! My webpage has a new face. It can be found here

Now I need to fix the few remaining glitches and oh ya – browser compatibility. Right now it only works as intended in Firefox and Safari.

The new Vantage starts at $110,000 and is thus almost 50% cheaper than the DB9. It looks similar but has a V8 instead of the V12 and I think it does not have such a nice cockpit (had to add a picture to this..!)

I only have about half an hour per day to think about and redesign how I want my webpage to look like. I am quite fond of the results so far and I hope I can transfer it from my ps sketch to xhtml and css in less than a week. And then maybe another week to implement all the functionality in Rails.

After half a dozen design went straight to the garbage bin, this one looks most promising so far and I am too tired and too biased to think about it anymore so I am going to try get some sleep.
I really really want to update my website soonish! The old design is blaeh..

Apparently, I am an ENFJ (whatever that means). And now I am reading what I am supposed to be…

But I’ve learned how to go down either side, do some consecutive turns and not fall that often anymore.

Posting the annual list has made me thinking about what are my alltime favourites. So here by categories (since in my opinion you can’t really compare movies from too different categories):

Best Danish movies (they are a category by themselves..)

1. In Kina spiser de hunde (In China they eat dogs)
2. De Grønne slagtere (The green butchers)
3. Blinkende Lygter (Flickering Lights)

Life & Love

1. American Beauty
2. Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain
3. Forrest Gump (not sure about that one – I equally liked Love actually)

Best Dogma Movie

1. Festen (The Celebration)
2. Dancer in the Dark (Although it is not 100% a Dogma movie it fits quite well in this category)
3. Mifune

The most epic

1. Braveheart
2. Starship Troopers
3. The Lord of the Rings

Comedy

1. Life of Brian
2. Shrek 1 & 2
3. Kung Fu Hustle

Best trashy action

1. Minority Report
2. 5th Element
3. Matrix

Best crime stories

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Ronin
3. Curdled

Best Mafia movies (they need to get their own category!)

1. The Godfather 2
2. The Godfather 1
3. Goodfellas

Best Animated

1. Princess Mononoke
2. The Last Unicorn
3. Prince of Egypt (Spirited Away should have this place but Prince of Egypt has these catchy songs)

Best Comic Adaptions

1. Batman Begins
2. Sin City
3. Hellboy

Horror & Suspense

1. Alien
2. Angel Heart
3. Event Horizon

If I can come up with 10 movies being released in 2005 that is.

1. Batman begins – Absolutely great movie that makes up for all the post-Tim-Burton-diseasters.
2. Sin City – Gory yet well made, another great comic adaption
3. Kingdom of Heaven – Even though critics say it lacks historical accuracy, I found it surprisingly exact and liked that it did not glorify christianity for its crusades.
4. Serenity – If you have seen the show Firefly this movie is twice as good
5. 40 year old virgin – Had low expectations and thought it is “yet another American Pie”, but it has actually some substance and is funny
6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – They’re all above average movies and this one is my personal favourite so far
7. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Not as good as you might expect from a Tim Burton. However quite unique.
8. Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit – Unfortunately not as good (or should I say British) as the short movies but still a funny film
9. Robots – By far not as good as Shrek but still quite entertaining and well made
10. Constantine – If you want a Stigmataesque movie, this would be the one you want to watch

• March of the penguins – It IS a neat documentary but I’ve seen better
• Aeon Flux – I liked it…
• Madagascar – Didn’t like the protagonists but this is worth watching if only for the penguins (“This sucks!”) and Monkeys.

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – meh
2. Chronicles of Narnia – Beginning with lots of potential and very weak 3/4 rest

• Corpse Bride
• Jarhead
• Broken Flowers
• Fantastic Four
• History of violence
• Lord of War
• Walk the line

2005 was not a good movie year and unfortunately I did not see many independent movies (you hear less about them in Canada than in Europe). Also I’ve seen quite some good movies in 2005 that were originally released in 2004 and therefor won’t count for this list like Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle or the outrageous Dodgeball.

When I tell people to do so I just earn yet another “is this some kind of European joke” look.
I am greatly amused by many things when people here just shrug and don’t know why. Buuuut they laugh their asses off watching bad sitcoms and bad comedy. shrugs

I have all my studio equipment in Germany. So my hands are tied right now. However, if I would love the movie’s storyboard, I would do this even for free.
At university we had one course where we had to do music videos and our team of three also made the song. I don’t quite remember if we were coming up with the song or with the video first but the cutting the video and timing the sound to it was great fun (although many many hours and days of work). And we borrowed a pretty huge (and expansive) camera for that cause. Hey maybe I should change that goal in “make an independent film and its soundtrack”?!

I have the seinfeldian pre-restaurant-meal appetite. I would not participate in one of these “Eat all of our pancakes on the menu and get everything free” offers. But that is because I am not that big pancake fan. I would definitely do it for Döner! Oh how do I crave thee…

They make such nice blades. My first contact with swords was at the age of 6 when I started learning Kung Fu. Ever since I have a relationship to swords. Raven Armoury makes good quality swords for a reasonable price. And if I’d be rich I’d get a custom sword.

that goal could be completed all too soon.

I started snowboarding today. Yay! We went out for almost six hours and I start to think that this could have been a bit too much. My legs are achy and I feel very exhausted. The hot bath afterwards was really neccessary. Then the car drove over my goggles and broke them – bah, maybe I can fix them later. BUT
even though it was a long day of falling on my bum (yes!) and wild-looking stunts, I managed to drive on the edges most of the time. I feel somewhat comfortable with going down zic zacs without turning. And I even managed to do two real turns without falling. I think I did not too shabby for the first day. I am not too happy about the equipment. The wristguards hurt more than then I thought. I can see that they are protecting my wrist from keeping my hand bending too far. And the clothes were just too warm.
Maybe I can go again tomorrow?!

I played on my neighbour’s Grand today. The keys were very stiff and you needed to have strong fingers to play fast passages. Then again it was hard to differentiate the intonation. The piano was not very forgiving about that. I also had a crowd gathered around me and even though there were just a dozen of people it made me feel uncomfortable. Mainly because I could barely remember any songs completely. It was like “okay, let’s start this piece and see how far I can make it”. The harder I tried to remember, the fewer the chance that I actually did. Heck, I used to play in front of hundreds of people and feeling comfortable. It makes a whole difference whether you’re prepared or not.
I need a piano for myself so I can start practicing again.

I can work from wherever I want to and I am free to work at 3am if I feel I need or want to do things during the day. Now that I became shareholder is extra incentive and gives me the feeling that I have the future in my own hands again.

Unfortunately, when I decided on that goal I did not realize that there were not many German speaking human beings in my approximate Canadian surrounding. Those two that do do suffer and of course anyone who mistakenly phones me from Germany (especially these illguided ones who mistook the time shift from Europe to America by several hours)
I think I might have to let go off this goal soon.

I don’t know why I enjoy doing this so much. It’s nice to have a fresh start. With new functions in mind, I can add those easier to a new design than stretching an old one – even if that old one would be flexible.
So this is a screenshot of what I was working on last night. It is just a very basic concept but you’ll get the idea. I need to find and decide on some colours. Recently I have been designing webpages first in photoshop before writing down the html/css. I found this approach to be very efficient once you work organized and keep everything named and in folders.