This is just to prove that I'm still alive ...

I've been playing around with my camera this week.
Adjusting a new panoramic head to compensate for parallax distortion.
Of course once I think I have the settings, the weather turns to rain.
There was a short break this afternoon.



I think I might have the settings!

I'm still playing around with the compositing on this one, but you can take a look anyway, if you care to ...

There is no such thing as an accident in Switzerland.
A car 'accident' is a criminal offence!

For this reason - after a round of hydroplaning on the motorway - I am spending the month of September without a driving license.

I can highly recommend hydroplaning or aquaplaning, as it is called here. It is fun! It is an amazing feeling to feel the wheels of the car lift off the ground and to have the vehicle float around as if it were weightless ...
... just don't try it in three lanes of heavy traffic - do so at an abandoned airfield or a race track.
Luckily no-one was hurt!

So now I'm spending the month at home and getting used to public transport.
I've still not quite got used to the fact that I can't go out when I want to, but that it makes more sense to go out when a train is due.
And staying out late at night is expensive; a taxi-kilometer cost CHF 2.50.
That makes CHF 45 for the ride home!
Either that - or hitch hike.

The closest railway station is two kilometers away. It's downhill all the way and I can do it in ten minutes, thanks two a public path across one of the meadows en route.

Yesterday evening, just after dark, I decided to take a ride to St.Gallen and meet some friends. I left a little late and was worried I wouldn't make the train. I trotted down the hill in the dark and was relieved when I found the gap in the fence and the steps leading down into the meadow with a few minutes to spare.

Stumbling down the uneven steps, something brought me to a dead halt.
Out of the corner of my eye, I had caught a glimpse of something in the dark.
I strained my eyes and stared into the darkness to see what it was I had seen.
The farmer had obviously moved his cows. He had strung up an electric fence!

What should I do?
Turn back up the steps, go the long way round, miss my train?
This was a public footpath, you can't just rig up an electric fence across it ...
I followed the fence cautiously. Staring at it directly was of no use, in the dark I could only see it out of the corner of my eye.
After what seemed an age, I found what I was looking for. A plastic grip, allowing you to unhook a section of the fence and pass through it without electrocuting yourself!
Hard to do in the dark, even though I've done it numerous times in daylight.

With the fence hooked up again, I stumbled down and across the meadow, trying to imagine where the other half of the fence would be.
My calculations were correct . I found the other plastic grip with surprisingly little trouble, passed through the fence and was just in time to board my train - my hair standing on end!

An electrifying experience!

I'm on holiday at the moment, which means I don't get up before seven in the morning ...

With the weather as nice as it is, at the moment, I'm beginning to wonder what I am missing!
When I got up yesterday, I looked out of my office window to see my very own clouds passing through the trees.
Of course, I just had to photograph the scene ...

You may view a larger version of the image here!

Strangely I was having problems with my computer yesterday (my backup software had decided to delete instead of preserve!), so I didn't look at yesterdays pictures until this morning.

Drop by tomorrow - I might even have todays pictures ready for you!

What did you do with your weekend?
I wanted to offer you a new panorama or two.
As it turned out, I did something entirely different ...

Adobe recently decided to update their so-called Creative Suite.
The thing that bugged me was not the price (believe me; extortionate), but the fact that they have thrown out GoLive - the software I've used to build web sites with for the past few years - and replaced it with Dreamweaver, which they acquired from Macromedia in their last take over.

Well o.k. I'm always ready to learn something new and Adobe states that GoLive sites can be opened in Dreamweaver.
So I opened my 'other' site, wich was due to be brought up to date any way.
I shan't complain about the fact that everything in DW is different - of course it is!
Some things I like, some things will take some getting used to.
What Adobe didn't tell us, though, is that if you convert a site and then add rollovers (those images or buttons that alter their appearance when you move your mouse over them) to pages that already contained rollovers, all rollovers cease to function ...

As 90% of my pages use rollovers 90% of my web site no longer worked!
Thank you Adobe!
I enjoyed rebuilding my web site this weekend.
And just for your information I used GoLive to do it.
I'll try your new software when I'm in a better mood!

For those of you who are interested in the results, the site now looks like this.
It has grown a few more panoramas.

I went to a party on Friday evening.
After the party everyone landed at a dance-hall - that is to say, a discotheque for twenty-one-year-olds and over.
Just as I was getting into the swing of things, they shut down for the day ...
... well, it was getting on for breakfast time anyway, so I dropped into an all-night-restaurant for something to eat, before they closed too.

There was a group of six young people sat at the next table and they spoke a strange mixture of languages - three of them spoke in Italian and four of them in what I presumed to be Yugoslavian (yes, you counted correctly - one young lady was fluent in both languages!) and when everyone was supposed to understand everything, they used Swiss-German!
Yes - more of those bloody foreigners!

We finished eating at the same time and stood up to leave.
I just beat them to the door.
I went to cross the road, when a hand grabbed my arm. I was just about to scream 'Don't mug me, I'm a foreigner too!' when a female voice said:
"Shall I help you across the road?"
I looked at the tall blonde woman in surprise - it was the one that had been speaking Italian, Yugoslavian and German.
I hoped she was joking, but wasn't about to have her let go of my arm, so I said:
"Yes, that would be kind of you."
She walked me across the road, but when we got to the other side she did not let go of me.
It was obvious we were going in the same direction and I wasn't about to protest about having an attractive young lady on my arm ...
... even if she could easily be my daughter.

We started talking and I asked her where she was heading. She told me where and I mentioned that we had, more or less, the same destination. She mentioned that her car was just round the corner and asked if she could drop me off at mine.
When I told her I wasn't motorised at the moment, she offered to drive me home!

On our drive home, I learned that she was a 'second-generation-foreigner'. She was born in Switzerland, her mother being Italian and her father Yugoslavian. We had a very pleasant conversation and I was a little disappointed that we reached our destination so quickly.
It was nice to learn that she was one of those 'other' foreigners, who won't resort to crime or violence until a later date.
I hope I bump into her again before either of us does ...