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)

Photos from Dresden and Paris

Travel-wise these past few months have been very dull around here. Since my return from Madrid at the beginning of July I spent the entire so-called summer in Upper Austria and Vienna. Now in the first half of September I finally had a chance to travel a bit as I attended the DeLFI 2011 conference in Dresden, Germany where I presented a paper about OLPC before heading to Paris, France to attend Sugar Camp #2, a 3-day gathering of OLPC and Sugar volunteers.

In Dresden I really only had one evening and half an afternoon to wander around the city so there weren’t many opportunities to take photos. As a result the corresponding Flickr album is really quite thin.

Frauenkirche in the dusk

In Paris I had more time to snap photos (album), first of all to document and share what was going on at Sugar Camp #2 and secondly because I stayed an extra day to be able to visit some places where I hadn’t been on my three prior trips to the city. One place which was very high on my agenda was Père Lachaise cemetery where famous people such as Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and many others are buried.

Jim Morrison's grave at Père Lachaise cemetery

This was also the first time that I exclusively relied on my Nexus S Android smartphone to take photos. Even though I actually had the small Canon IXUS 100IS in my back bag the convenience of quickly being able to share the photos was a major advantage of the Nexus S. I have to say I was also pleasantly surprised by the quality of the images. The IXUS 100IS would have certainly been able to take better shots under difficult conditions but overall the quality of the phone camera photos are really good enough.

Photos from Spain

My five months here in Madrid are quickly coming to an end – I will fly back to Vienna on Thursday evening – so I thought this is a good time to briefly mention the photos I took on my various trips here in Spain. As always I’ve uploaded them to my Flickr account and the individual albums available there are:

• Alcalá de Henares
• Barcelona
• Bullfight
• Madrid
• Salamanca
• Sevilla and Cordoba

My favorite view of Sevilla’s Plaza de España

Sharing photos from Peru in 2000, 2005 and 2010

While wandering around around Trujillo earlier this week I stumbled across the store where I had some photos developed during the 11 months when I lived in the city. This made me think about how the act of sharing photos from my stays in Peru has changed over the past 10 years.

It was the year 2000 and digital cameras - let alone mobile phones with digital cameras – were still unheard of. In order to be able to give my family in Austria a better idea of how the environment I was living in looked at I took photos of my room, my house, my host-family, my school, the city center, etc. I then went to the store mentioned earlier, handed in my film-roll and then came back a day later to pick up the photos. I then wrote a short explanatory sentence on each photo and went to the post-office sending the letter off to Europe. I think it took two or three weeks before the letter arrived and another few days before I saw the e-mail from my mother saying that so.

Fast forward to 2005 when I went back to South America to travel through Peru and Bolivia for five weeks. By that time (and after weeks of research!) I was the very proud owner of a Kodak DX7590 digital camera and two 256MB SD cards. Being trigger-happy I filled up the cards within a few days and for a moment I was at a loss about what to do next. Luckily I wasn’t the first traveler in that situation so Internet cafés had started offering burning photos from memory cards to CD for a little fee. Being worried about losing my photos in case my back bag was stolen I actually got two CDs with copies of each SD card. I ended up carrying one set of CDs on me at all times with the second set being stored at the hostels I was staying in. As I was keen to share the photos with family and friends I spent more than one afternoon sitting in an Internet café, complaining about the upload speed (or lack thereof) and hoping that my e-mails with the photos attached would actually make it across the Internet.

Now in 2010 things have again changed. Instead of my Kodak DX7590 (which unfortunately has shown considerable signs of age after having been a trusted travel companion across Taiwan, China, Mongolia, Russia, USA, Nepal and Europe) I relied on a Canon IXUS 100 IS. In some ways that move meant giving up flexibility in terms of being able to adjust photo settings. On the other hand it gives me more flexibility due to the fact that the camera is so small that I have it on me at all times. And as the saying goes: the best camera is the one you have on you. Equipped with multiple 8GB SD cards and my laptop storage wasn’t going to be a problem either.

In terms of photo sharing I started using Flickr two or three years ago and have been quite happy with it. In particular it has helped me keep up some discipline when it comes to going through my photos, finding the “best of” from each series and also keeping track of what each photo shows since 100_7704.JPG isn’t a particularly useful photo title. I subsequently also mention photo uploads on Twitter and highlight some of them here on the blog.

For my current OLPC News South America Road Trip our publisher Wayan also hooked up the @olpcnews twitter-feed to my Flickr account. This means that every upload photo that I tag with olpc is automatically mentioned on the @olpcnews feed and subsequently also re-tweeted on Wayan’s twitter feed. As a result many of my photos tagged with olpc receive upwards of 150 views with some of them even getting more than 300 views.

What a difference 10 years make, right?

I can only imagine what things will be like the next time I’m back in Peru (hopefully in less than 5 years). Already this time ‘round I could have done the whole geo-tagged, real-time upload thing if my mobile phone wasn’t three years old.

One thing I expect to see in the future are mash-ups that can automatically superimpose relevant information on the photos (e.g. details about the city a photo was taken in) or put photos in useful correlation (e.g. showing photos of the same square or church which I or others took five years earlier).

Oh, and of course the cameras / phones / retinal implants these photos will be taken with will all have >25 MegaPixels, yet still come with crappy lenses and optics…. ;-)

More photos from Peru

Thanks to the relatively good Internet connectivity at my friend’s house here in Chiclayo I was finally able to upload several dozen photos that I took in Peru over the past week or so. You can see some of my favorites below and find the whole Peru album here.

Laguna

Playing soccer with a view

Using Record to take photos is very popular

Typical street vendor in Huaraz

/me, my XO and a llama

First photos from Peru

Due to the lackluster Internet connection in my current hostel in Huaraz I hadn’t really had a chance to upload photos from my first week here in Peru. But tonight - with a couple of hours to spare between an early dinner and going out for drinks - I sat down and started the process. Of course this is turning out to be even slower than I had expected (current upload speed is 9.2KB/s) so let’s see just how far I get before I run out of patience…

For now I’ll leave you with this photo with a view of the Cordillera Blanca mountain range:

Update: Yippie, 100% complete! Head over to the Peru album on Flickr for some impressions of Lima and Huaraz.

Photos from Paraguay

I’m making use of the surprisingly fast Internet access in my hostel here in Lima to finally upload some photos from the past two weeks which I spent in Paraguay.

To say that I had a great time there would be quite the understatement. With outstanding company, a very dynamic olpc project run by ParaguayEduca, multiple interesting school-visits, a long-awaited hands-on with OLPC’s XO-1.5 HS laptop, and an amazing weekend trip to the waterfalls at Iguazu and the Itaipu dam my time in Paraguay was packed with awesome experiences.

From a touristic point of view the Iguazu and Itaipu trip will very likely be the highlight of this year’s travels. As always the photos can’t do these places justice and it’s also hard to describe them in words. The one thing I can say is that the waterfalls at Iguazu are one of the most impressive natural sights I’ve ever seen (right up there with the Gobi desert!). The massive human artifact that is the Itaipu dam on the other hand also left quite an impression on me.

Iguazu waterfalls

 Itaipu dam

Apart from that weekend I spent most of my time at ParaguayEduca’s office, talking to people there and working on olpcnews articles. Additionally I went to Caacupé a couple of times to visit some of the schools there which are part of ParaguayEduca’s 4000 XO pilot project. Needless to say I had a great time observing how the teachers and students use their XOs, especially when they were as much into it as this pupil:

Hard at work

Click on the links for more photos from Paraguay and the Iguazu / Itaipu trip.

Impressions from the olpc realness summit

At the end of May I participated in the olpc realness summit which the fine folks from Waveplace had organized. Reading my corresponding announcement on olpcnews it’s not hard to see that I was excited about that event, and not just because it took place in the Caribbean;-)

“To say that I'm excited about this gathering of people would be quite the understatement. In fact this summit will likely turn out to be the single most interesting and exciting week since I first got involved with One Laptop per Child 3 years ago!”

To say that the days I spent on St. John were awesome would also be an understatement. On the one hand it was great to meet lots of very awesome and inspiring people and hear about their work. On the other hand I also had the chance to spend 1 1/2 hours each day at Gifft Hill School where some of the girls from Columbus School for Girls, led by Christine Murakami and Dana Paine, were teaching a group of students eToys. I loved being in that room every day to work with the pupils and also ended up giving some short introductory lessons on various aspects of Sugar.

 Gifft Hill School pupils

Anyway, I finally got around to look at the photos I took on St. John and upload a bunch of them to the olpc realness summit 2010 album on Flickr. At the same time I’ve also started following up on some of the ideas discussed during the summit and I hope to see some progress made in that area over the coming weeks.

Maho Bay Panorama

More photos from Uruguay

I arrived in Paraguay’s capital Asunción last night and given that it is a Sunday I decided to go for some relaxing here at Casa de Innocenti (a.k.a. Beertarium). Among other things I spent some time looking at the photos I took over the past few days and uploaded several dozen of them to the Uruguay album. I always have a hard time choosing favorites but the ones below are some of nicer ones in my opinion.

Lunch is served

 

Awesome store front

 

Pupils in 3rd grade

  

Perfect light

Another sunset

Photos from a weekend in Piriápolis

My weekend was spent hanging out in Piriápolis – a popular coastal town east of Montevideo - with my Uruguayan hosts Pablo & Micaela and Mark from Holland. It’s safe to say that the grand majority of the time was dedicated to purchasing, preparing and eating asado.

When we didn’t eat we mostly talked about OLPC, went for walks (where we talked about OLPC), read (mostly about OLPC stuff), and wrote (about OLPC related topics).

Can you see the pattern? Do I really need to explicitly say that a weekend focused on sharing asado and thoughts about OLPC with great company was amazing? :-)

Anyway, I just uploaded a bunch of photos from this weekend to Flickr and you can find them all here. In case you want to see the full Uurguay album then this is the link to click on.

Parrilla

eXpO fotos in Montevideo

Yesterday I went to see a photo exhibition here in Montevideo. That alone wouldn’t really be blog-worthy but what was special about this exhibition is that all the photos had been taken by Uruguayan pupils on their XOs (remember that in Uruguay every pupil who goes to a public primary school – about 400,000 – has received an XO as part of Plan Ceibal). I wrote up a quick, and photo-heavy, story with my impressions for olpcnews so I’d suggest you check out the article for more information and photos.

First photos from Montevideo

After spending the majority of the day catching up on news, e-mails and arranging a bunch of meetings for the coming days I went out to wander around Montevideo for a bit. Unfortunately the light wasn't too good for taking photos however I think the ones I uploaded to the Uruguay set do give a decent first impression of what things look like around here.

House on Av. 18 de Julio

olpcnews South America road trip

Yes, I'm back on the road doing some traveling!! This time 'round I even have a name for my trip: the olpcnews South America road trip. While I'm not going to go into all the details here - this is what this olpcnews article is for - I'm going to be traveling through Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru for the next 6 weeks to visit the OLPC projects in these countries. So while my focus will very much be on documenting my findings and impressions over on olpcnews I'll use this blog for posting my more personal and non-olpc ramblings.

For now I'm going to leave with you with a photo of Palacio Salvo here in Montevideo but rest assured that I'll be adding plenty of photos to my Flickr account over the coming days and weeks...

330° panorama from the OLE Nepal offices

Admittedly I’ve been quite obsessed with panorama photos lately mainly thanks to Microsoft Research's awesome Image Composite Editor. So today I took my camera to work and sneaked up on the roof in the morning while everyone else was in a meeting;-)

I have to say that I’m really quite happy with the resulting 330° panorama! I’ve included a small version of it below but admittedly it doesn’t really do the whole scene justice so I’d recommend you to look at the full-size (8770 x 1180 pixel, 3MB) shot for an impression of the environment around our office.

On a related side-note I took two more photos today which worked out quite well thanks to the awesome late-afternoon / early-evening light:

View from the office

The hill across the Ring Road at 6PM

Hope you like ‘em!

Kathmandu photos

After being here for almost 8 weeks I finally managed to spend an afternoon exploring the greater area around Kathmandu’s Durbar Square. Until today my exposure of Kathmandu had been mostly limited to Thamel which happens to be the part of town were many restaurants, bars and most of Kathmandu’s night-life can be found. Anyway, today I had a great time wandering through the city with Daniel and Vikki, hanging out on Durbar Square, climbing up the Bhimsen Tower, enjoying delicious lunch at a tiny Korean restaurant and dinner at OR2K and – I’ve never been more surprised – actually finding a quiet street in Kathmandu. To cut a long story short: I had a great day!

Not surprisingly I took a ridiculous amount of photos and I now spent the past 3 hours going through them, picking the best ones and subsequently tagging and uploading them to the Kathmandu album on Flickr.

New York City in Photos

I recently stumbled across a great ongoing series of photographic impressions of New York City by Austrian radio station FM4’s Christian Lehner. It’s quite possibly the most interesting photo series I’ve seen in quite awhile and really makes me want to go back to visit New York again.

Who’s That Guy

Here’s a list of all the collections published so far:

• #1: Coney Island (my favorite!)
• #2: Singing In The Rain
• #3: Friends
• #4: Hippie Traces
• #5: Crash, Boom, Bang
• #6: Ein Strand names NYC

(Do note that while the introductory text is in German the photos all have accompanying English titles, plus the images really do speak for themselves.)

You can find a list of other articles by Christian Lehner here.

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

Photos from Hash Run 1607

I just uploaded some photos from this weekend’s awesome but seriously exhausting (well, at least when you’re not feeling too great to begin with) Hash Run 1607. You can find the photos here.

Next weekend I hope to bring my video camera along which could make for a nice YouTube video:-)

More photos on Flickr

I’ve just added a bunch of photos taken this weekend to the Nepal 2009 collection on Flickr.

The first set are some impressions from Run 1606 of the Himalayan Hash House Harriers (“a drinking club with a running problem” – see the corresponding Wikipedia entry for more information on the Hash House Harriers).

I’ve also added some more photos of Patan which I took during a nice 3 hour walk through the city earlier today. You can find them in the Patan set I started 2 weeks ago.

1st school visit

Today I visited two schools in the greater Kathmandu area where OLE Nepal has distributed a total of ~180 XO-1 laptops. You can expect a full report over the coming days and for now I’m leaving you with this photo.