Photos from my most recent San Francisco trip

Tonight I finally managed to upload about three dozen photos from my most recent trip to San Francisco in October to catch up with friends and attend the OLPC SF Community Summit 2012 and Sugarcamp++.    

Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge on our morning commute (foggy)

Bhaktapur photos now on Flickr

On Sunday I went to Bhaktapur, the third city here in the Kathmandu Valley (besides Kathmandu and Patan). While the trip back and forth was amazingly bumpy and slow it was well worth it as the city is absolutely stunning! So while I’m quite happy with some of the photos I took they simply don’t come close to doing the squares and streets there justice.

Anyway, you can find a selection of photos in the Bhaktapur album and for the lazy ones I’m including two panorama shots that I’m particularly fond of:

180° Panorama of Bhaktapur's Durbar Square

Panorama of Bhaktapur's Taumadhi Tole square

Impressions from Durbar Square, Patan

I’ve just finished uploading a small best of selection from the photos I took while hanging out at Durbar Square in Patan [Google Maps] on Saturday. Hope you like them!

My Nepal 2009 album on Flickr.

First photos going up on Flickr…

I just uploaded a handful of photos that I took this morning to my new Nepal 2009 album on Flickr. So far the album is limited to some initial impressions from home and work but I hope to go out and get some touristy shots (especially at the gorgeous Durbar Square in Patan) over the weekend.

Random late-night thoughts and photos

I got a fair amount of BBQ'ing, beer drinking and work done since I got back from Boston so it really comes as no surprise that time is flying by again. As ever so often I meant to post some blog updates on the weekend but I really didn't manage to get it done. However I'm proud to report that I looked through the photos I took during my 4h walk through Boston last Tuesday. Plus I actually uploaded them to Flickr already. (Both things which I still haven't managed to get done for the photos from my NYC trip a couple of weeks ago.) Anyway, head over to my Boston set on Flickr for some impressions of the city.


Now let's see how much blogging I get done this week...

Random photos I took this week.

On my way to work. (I didn't see the "Obama" sign behind me until now when uploaded the photo.) We ordered some coffe for the office this week. Here's my share which should keep me going for a while.

Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC. This is the place where I'm working 9 to 5 - Monday to Friday - April to June 2008.

After the S&T meeting last night we still went for some pitchers and food near the World Bank where cars were being towed in preparations for a summit that's taking place this weekend. The crowd in the pub we were sitting in certainly enjoyed the show.

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the prettiest of them all?

Going down, down, into the ground. At Metro station Dupont Circle.

All of this is being posted while I sit in the yard behind our house. It's a beautiful day indeed:-)

And now I'm off to our neighborhood's movie'n'beer night.

Thoughts on Flickr Video

In case you've missed it:

If you’re a pro member, you can now share videos up to 90 glorious seconds in your photostream. ["Video on Flickr"]

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and ask:

Who needs Flickr Video? [me, now]

Or less provocative:

Who needs Flickr Video when there's blip.tv, revver.com, YouTube and a million other video-sharing websites? [me, a minute later]

Just like there'll always only be one Digg with and one Slashdot with a million also-rans following them I don't believe that the world really needs another video-sharing platform. Really, what incentive is there for posting a video-clip on Flickr Video instead of any of the other websites that I've mentioned above? Maybe because the 90 second limit is so alluring as someone suggested in a comment:

...the 90 seconds is akin to the Twitter 140 character limit (perhaps). Look at it as a chance to be concise and powerful.

Yeah, right...

Flickr Video is Yahoo's attempt to catch up with Google's YouTube by hitchhiking on the popularity of the photo-sharing website and its strong community.

In my opinion this will go down in history as:

Too little, too late. [me, 3 minutes later]

Washington @ Flickr

I forgot to mention that I've also created a Washington set on my Flickr account which I'll try to update regularly with some of the photos that I take around here...

Made For Each Other: Zonbu & Flickrvision

Apart from watching all the videos I mentioned before I spent most of my afternoon and evening using the Zonbu system to see what it performs like in several usage scenarios. While testing various websites and online-services I remembered Flickrvision and decided to give it a shot. Flickrvision is basically a mash-up that overlays photos that people are uploading on Flickr on a Google Maps representation of the world. (There's also a 3D view of the globe but I don't really like it that much.)


The cool thing about the Zonbu system is that it allows me to run applications and services like this one on my 2nd CRT monitor (see the photo below) without having to put up with any fan-noise, real power-consumption (~10W) or having to worry about configuration or anything. You just hook up the Zonbu to your monitor and peripherals, hit the power-button and you're done!


I think I'm going to be using the Zonbu for more of these single-task situations, whether it's listening to web-radio, following a couple of RSS feeds or maybe just displaying my own holiday photos. (Even though I'm not sure whether seeing your holiday photos out of the corner of your eye allows for any productivity to happen!)

ChristophD goes Flickr!!

I know, I know, for someone who spends as much time online as I do I'm very late to the game... But I finally went ahead and got myself a Flickr account, hooray! As a trial I uploaded 25 photos from my weekend-trip to Paris in mid-July which you can find here. I have also added a small "my photos on flickr" badge to the right-hand navigation menu for easy access to my photos in the future.

I hope to be uploading many more photos from some of my recent trips (Peru/Bolivia, Taiwan, Berlin, Barcelona, Granada) and some random shots over the coming weeks. But first I have to sort through the 3609 photos that I took on the TransSib these past 4 1/2 weeks... ;-)