Halloween Again

I still remember writing last year's post about our halloween pumpkin as if it was a few days ago. Time flies, I guess...

Anyway, this year's pumpkin is a friendly one, although despite what Pia says, I still think he looks kind of sad if you look at his eyes.

We managed to use a bump in the pumpkin as his nose :)

Finished XBox 360 Controller Mods

We've finally reassembled Pia's controller. It was a bit more complicated than mine, since the painted trigger buttons didn't fit as perfectly as the stock ones. But it did fit, and it still works perfectly. Here's a picture of both controllers:

If you're wondering about the lights around the home button, the gradient you see in the picture is just due to the angle. When you look at it from the front, the color is uniform.

PS: If you haven't already, check out the two videos I made while modding the controllers:

• Painting the Controller (final steps)
• LED Mod Tutorial

XBox 360 Controller LED Mod Tutorial

To complete the gamepad mod I talked about last week, I've also changed the color of the LED ring around the "home" button. This time, I prepared the camera beforehand and made a short tutorial on how to do it:

Painting my Gamepad

Pia and I recently bought a couple of gamepads to play casual games on the PC. Painting them seemed like a fun weekend project. I didn't get all of it, but at least I got the final steps on video. I hope you like it:

On Vacation

With my Bachelor's thesis, all exams and other projects done, I got some time off work and went on vacation with Pia, my parents and my sister. So far, not much has happened, but that's also part the idea of taking a vacation: being able to waste some time instead of constantly checking the watch.

Pia and I left last Saturday at 5:15am from Munich. After a supposedly 17-hour long trip, which ended up taking 23 hours due to massive traffic jams in France, we arrived at Denia. I guess our biological clock worked too well, because at 9:00am we were up again, and even though we were extremely tired, we decided to tag along with my family to the nearby Alicante.

After taking a walk through the city and eating something at a restaurant near the pier, we went up to the Santa Bárbara castle to check out the view:

I also used the opportunity provided by the beautiful views from the castle to do a short photo shooting session featuring Pia:


... and my sister managed to take this picture when we weren't actually posing for a shot:

Finished my Bachelor's Thesis

Finally! It's done! I just got my bachelor's thesis printed, which hopefully means that I'll have some more time on my hands. If you'd like to know, here's some very short info on what I've been doing all this time:



By the way, I might try to do some more video-log entries to get some practice. I was thinking of doing a series of short vlogs during my trip to Japan next Spring, since the whole "I'll just film now and cut it later"-idea I had last time didn't work out so well due to the large amount of material. Having to put a video together on the same day might stop me from filming too much irrelevant stuff...

Not Doing Regular Posts For a While

When I started the Bi-Weekly Photo section, my main concern was finding time to write. I didn't think I was going to run out of pictures to post. I was actually hoping that, once I'd finished the lab course last month, I would have a lot more time on my hands and could go out and take pictures. I was wrong. I already missed last "By-Weekly Photo", and I still haven't got any more interesting material... While I'm not as busy as last month, I've still got a lot to do, so for the time being (might be the entire semester), I'm going to stop posting regularly.

I hope to be able to post every once in a while, though. On the bright side, my brother wants to get his car over to Germany, so I might even have another road trip from Spain to Germany coming soon.

In the meantime, here's a sight we had been waiting for here in Munich:

Spring's finally back. We can stop complaining about how cold it is. Sure, in about two weeks everybody's going to be complaining about how hot it is, but hey, right now the weather's great!

No Bi-Weekly Photo tomorrow...

These past few weeks I have been really busy and didn't have time to go out and take pictures, which means that I don't have anything I would rank as a "By-Weekly Photo". Instead, here's the main thing i've been doing these last 3 weeks for 60+ hours/week:

I've been programming Lego robots in a lab course at my university. Before anyone jums into conclusions, the task was about software engineering (we weren't playing with legos all day): we were split up into teams and had to create a robot that played a slightly modified version of Scotland Yard with/against the other teams' robots on the map you can see in the picture. In order to keep up and finish in time for our deadlines we had to stay between 10 and 12 hours every day, with some teams even pulling all-nighters... I'm actually happy it's over, even though it was an interesting experience and, if you filter out the stress, quite fun.

Bi-Weekly Photo: Garching Forschungszentrum

On the day of my last exam this semester I took my camera along to take a couple of pictures of the campus while there was still a bit of snow left.

The first one is right behind the faculty for mechanical engineering. This is not what it looks like while there are still lectures, it's usually quite lively, since its right in front of the faculty's cafeteria and on the way to the parking lot.

The second one is a picture of my faculty, computer science and mathematics. The trees arranged in a triangle and the binary counter lanterns in the foreground are a nice decoration which fits both the faculty and the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, which is just outside the picture's field of view to the left.

Tutorial: DIY Quick-Release Neck Strap

Ok, it's not much of a tutorial. The pictures explain most of the process.

My parents gave me a hand strap for the camera for my birthday. It's a great way to carry the camera around ready to shoot some pictures without worrying about dropping it. It does not replace the neck strap though; if you're taking a long walk and don't want to put the camera away you need it. But if you just want to take the camera out, take a couple pictures and put it back in the bag, the neck strap can be annoying, specially if you're carrying a small bag. It gets in the way and you have to fold it every time.
Removing it every time is not ideal either without a quick-release mechanism, which brings us to this post's topic: How to build your own quick release for a standard neck strap.

I gathered some ideas from other blogs and sites, but they mostly suggested buying commercial (highly overpriced) quick release systems. One suggested using key rings and carabiners, which are metallic and can scratch the camera. Nevertheless, that was what I had in mind when I went to the harware store, but looking at the stock, I found a hopefully better solution: Strong cable binders and the fasteners you can see in the pictures below (I have no idea what those are called...). It's all made of plastic, yet strong enough to hold the weight of the camera.

I attached the fasteners to the camera using cable binders, which fit perfectly through the cameras loops. I used two binders on each side for additional safety. I Also decided to use the female connector on the camera because it was a bit smaller and looked better, leaving the male on the neck strap.
If you're building this, make sure you dont pull the cable binders too tight. I had to cut one off and use a new one because of that. Pull slowly and try to leave both binders at the same lenght to distribute the weight evenly. The fasteners should be a bit loose to avoid needless strain on them. If they're too tight, moving them might wear them off faster.

I then attached the neck strap to the male connectors the same way it was attached to the camera. Here's the finished quick-release neck strap:

Some info:

• Required time: 5 minutes (not including the time it takes buying the fasteners and cable binders)
• Cost: 3€ for the fasteners, which you can probably get cheaper online, plus whatever 4 cable binders cost (0.01€ each maybe?)

 [Update (2014-03-08)]: You may also find the new quick-release safety leash add-on I wrote useful

Bi-Weekly Photo: Snapshots in the Snow

After the birthday party last Tuesday, Pia and I were waiting for the train and I pulled out my camera. I like natural-looking night shots, without using a flash, so the 50mm prime lens came in handy. At an aperture of 1.4 it made it quite difficult to focus, but provided more than enough light to take some very nice shots.

There was a thick layer of fresh snow on the ground acting as a large and very diffuse reflector. On the other hand, Pia's umbrella blocked any direct light and provided a blue background, which is supposed to be a good choice when taking portraits. Combined with the warm color of the street lamp on the platform, it led to a very soft and pleasing lighting.

Birthday!

My birthday was on Monday. Due to the exams the celebrations were cut a bit short, but Pia found some time to bake a cake:

We celebrated a day later with some friends at a bar, where they gave me a collective present: I get to jump off a plane! I've really wanted to try skydiving for some time now, but the high prices always threw me back. Pia had been planning this for quite a long time and managed to get lots of friends to chip in to make it possible. Thank you all! I love it!

Bi-Weekly Photo: Segovia

Today's picture shows my hometown Segovia as seen from Valverde del Majano, where my grandfather lives (to be specific, it was taken from here). It's a bit hazy, and the shot is a bit wide (it was taken with my 18-135mm lens at maximum zoom), but it shows all the important details pretty well.

The tower in the middle belongs to the cathedral, and to the left you can see south-western side of the Alcazar.

Todays Bi-Weekly Photo...

... will be delayed a bit. I did not have time to write one. I'll post it this afternoon.

Bi-Weekly Photo: Experimenting With Long Exposure

One of the things I wanted to try when I bought the camera was long exposure shots, but I didn't try it until last December. I suppose I was too lazy to get out after dark to take some pictures alone. Fortunately, Pia saw a short clip about light painting on TV and wanted to do it herself, and since here in Munich "after dark" means at 4:30 PM during the winter, it was more like an afternoon walk.

In case you don't know what light painting is: if you have a scene with very little light or simulate that using a filter, you can capture that scene nontheless with a long exposure shot, where the shutter remains open for a long time period, "gathering" more light. If you take a strong light source and move it around the scene, that light source is "burned" into the image at every point it passes through, leaving a trail. This can be used to "draw" some interesting forms on your image.

We went to the park looking for a spot without too much artificial lighting and found this:

This was a rather quick shot (81s according to the Metadata), which is why the startrails are so short. It turned out to be one of the best shots, however. I still have a lot to learn about photography...

Here's one light-painted by Pia. I didn't manage to draw anything good...

PS: Yes, the white, red and purple spots on the image are hot pixels on my camera's sensor... It was the first time I used the sensor for long periods of time. I suppose it got a little hotter than usually, revealing the otherwise less obvious hot pixels.

Bi-Weekly Photo: Sunset in Segovia

This is one of my favorite pictures. I snapped it in the summer while taking a walk around Segovia (Spain), and I love it on my desktop's background.

PS: I won't have much time to write during the next few weeks. Exams are coming up...