dark - darker - the dark knight

Just finished watching the new batman trailer. You can watch the original one on the official website and the new leaked one on youtube. I must have watched it like 5 times in a row and I still can't stop watching it.


There was this actor called Heath Ledger. He died last year of some kind of medicine / drug overdose in a hotel room. And I thought at the time - too bad, another one of these young actors incapable of dealing with their successes. I remember my ex-girlfriend watching a movie called "10 things I hate about you" like 13 times within 3 weeks a couple of years earlier and telling me all about how cool that movie was - this alone made me want to not watch it. But in the end I watched it and it was pretty cool. Then there was this other movie called "A knight's tale" which I absolutely loved. A perfect combination of a love story, rock music, some heroic scenes of fighting and humor. Heath Ledger was also in that one. He was also nominated for an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, married to Jen from Dawson's creek and divorced later. He knew the Olson twins. The whole thing was so bizarre and so Hollywood.

His second last role was Joker in the new batman movie - which was totally ignored by me until I saw the trailer. I know this has been done before, but not this dark. Not this graphic. Just listening to the trailer without the mind-blowing images is great.
Heath Ledger is simply great - and I am sooooo looking forward to watching the whole movie in the cinema - hopefully in a fully air-conditioned one with THX this summer. All I have to do is move to a city where there is one ...

And I also hope I won't be watching this one with somebody who gets embarrassed when I cheer at the end of the trailer just like the guys watching it in the youtube video.

PS: I know I am hopeless and I JUST DON'T CARE :-)

say NO to pie and YES to paella

just when you thought the British would be silent during the European Cup in June ...

free ride

I am going to Vienna tomorrow for the weekend so it is time for a quick review of the last couple of days.


I spent the weekend taking pictures attending a photography course on the basics as a follow-up to the portraits course I attended a while ago. We went through the basics on Friday night (aperture, shutter speed, focal length, ISO) and then talked about a couple of affects we can do. Similar to the last course I had one of those mind-blowing experiences when they explained how to use my camera - another RTFM classic - I could have read the manual instead of spending 83 Euros on the course but this was much more fun. The course was a lots of fun as usual - despite the constant rainfall the whole Saturday. We shot raindrops, ghosts, bridges and ghost trains. And much more. You can look at all the pics here.


Saturday night we had another party in our flat - to celebrate Estelle and my 29th Birthday - it was her first and my not first... And I got more presents!!!

Also I am happy to report that not only have I completely rearranged my room but had a little experiment with my camera and a small Sideshow Bob figure.


Last but not least a small tip on how to earn a couple of Euros when travelling. I wanted to buy a ticket for the underground but the machine decided to take my money but keep the ticket. I ended up buying a ticket with my cash card after loosing €1.10 this way. The friendly ladies gave me back my €1.10 without any proof that the above happened on Hauptwache. All I had to give them was the registration number of the machine and when it happened. No identification asked. Good to know ...

PS: I am currently reading this book. It is pretty amazing so I have to read it slowly. I got the idea of reading it after watching this presentation by Al Gore

oscar is sick

somehow this video is funny and sad at the same time. just to put things into perspective ...

kater ist nicht gleich kater

I went jogging yesterday. I did a 4 km circle around the Eiserner Steg on both sides of the river and spent the evening at home as I was too lazy to go to the sneak preview afterwards.
Of course my legs hurt like hell today. Of course I went jogging again. Of course it didn't help. There is an old saying that goes something like "the best way getting rid of a hangover is to continue drinking". Obviously this does only work with hangover, but not the pain after an extreme jogging exercise...

Anyways, we had nice Lebanese food at the diversity Stammtisch near Bockenheim. Much better than McDonalds of course - I am only comparing so that I can have a reference to this video...

the running man

I just found this video on MC HAMMER's blog (yes, he has one - haha) - I need more of this!!!

don't look at me!!!

I am finished with cleaning the kitchen. Today I successfully made "Pulpo De Gallega". But it wasn't easy. I bought a pulpo yesterday at HIT after basically bumping into it and thought - let's give it a try ...

So I asked the guy at the fish counter if the octopus was ready for cooking and after a confirming YES I was ready to go. I picked up the ingredients after having found a recipe on the internet. This was yesterday. We were playing wii at Jack's place yesterday night and so today afternoon was Pulpo time.

I opened the package and wanted to start when I discovered, the octopus was actually looking back at me!!!! I thought it was ready to be cooked and so but it actually had the head and everything!!! I mean it was cleaned and so on but those eyes!!!! And so I began cutting off the legs and I had to hold the head and it was the size of a lemon and hard and slimy to it didn't feel nice. But I managed. And so 4 hours later and with a little help from my friends we had a wonderful dinner. I have to remember to fill up the kitchen with things like potatoes for next time so when I invite a couple of friends over for dinner they don't have to bring and cook half the dishes...

cool

maybe I will get one of those in the end ...

preparation preparation preparation

it is the second evening of walking through the city with my camera trying to capture the luminale and at the same time trying to improve my photography skills. After yesterday's lesson which focused on how to keep my camera dry in pouring rain, todays lesson is called "preparation preparation preparation". Therefore I compiled a list of things to do before going out to the city the next time to take pictures. Some of them are obvious (you would think ...)

1.) bring a towel
2.) bring a small flashlight
3.) check lens settings - especially if the "automatic focus" is properly selected
4.) check all other settings of the camera. Especially the sensitivity settings and the ISO level
5.) charge all batteries

Points 1 and 2 were the learnings of Wednesday evening. Point 3 became obvious to me after 2 hours of taking pictures and then checking the results for a change. Point 4 about 15 minutes later when asking myself why the pictures are so dark when taking them with manual settings. Point 5 joined the others on the list about an hour later while reshooting all the pictures taken earlier with proper settings.

Nevertheless I am happy with the results.

for Alba

I don't get it ...

bad joke

my April 1st joke didn't really work out the way it was planned. I guess my blog should be more alive in order to shock people by not blogging any more ... Still Alba and Petero - got you!!!

32!

It was fantastic to have brunch at my place for my birthday. We were 20 people and it turned out to be pretty fantastic - it was a very happy day and as I am writing these lines, I am listening to some music on my new AKG K141 STUDIO headphones. Thanks everybody!!!

blog no more

After seeing another disturbing movie at the sneak yesterday I have decided to go on an internet diet and stop blogging. Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!