The mysterious black man (as seen in Porto and Lisboa)

New photo sets of our summer holidays have arrived in the Gallery:

• Portugal: Peniche, Sintra and Lisboa, Aug 2011 (170 pics)
• Portugal: Viana do Castelo, Praia de Mira and Coimbra, Aug 2011 (111 pics)
• Portugal: Porto, Campo do Gerês and Ponte de Lima, Aug 2011 (163 pics)

And finally also the second part of our trip to good old Finland last year:

• Suomi: Parainen and Helsinki, Aug 2010 (58 pics)

Irina Werning: Back to the future - MARITA & COTY IN 1977 & 2010, Bueno

Irina Werning, coming from Buenos Aires, started in 2010 a project that she named “Back to the Future”. After pulling out some old-fashioned photographs from childhood days, which were probably hoped to be better never brought back into the light of the day again, she tried to reenact the exact same setting just now, 30-40 years after the original scene and actor(s) were caught on celluloid. Whilst she is admitting that she might be a bit obsessive in doing so, at least one could say the she succeeded to ultimate perfection. [via de-bug.de]

Irina Werning: Back to the future - CECILE IN 1987 & 2010, France

For those who are more interested in places and eyeing a single photograph, the Flickr photo pool “Looking Into the Past” as also stunning treasures to be revealed. Some brought the actual photograph back to the place where it was originally taken, some other utilized means of digital imaging to match the former with the current scenery. [via spreeblick.com]

Butter better check them out for yourself: “Back to the Future” | “Looking Into the Past”

Serious Game: Inside the Haiti Earthquake (PTV Productions)

Die Produktion war für die Canadian New Media Awards 2010 in den Kategorien “Best Cross-Platform Project” und “Best Web-Based Game” nominiert.

Möchte man das Genre mit Begriffen aus der traditionellen Computerspielewelt bezeichnen, dann treffen es wohl am besten “Adventure” oder “Rollenspiel”, obwohl die eigentlich richtige Kategorie dafür “Serious Game” ist. Die Produzenten selbst wählen lieber die Bezeichnungen “interactive experience” oder “role-playing simulation” [via huffingtonpost.com], da die Assoziationen die man mit einem Computerspiel im eigentlichen Sinne verbindet – wie zum Beispiel Spaß und Unterhaltung – in diesem Fall alles andere als zutreffend sind.

Serious Game: Voyage au bout du charbon / Journey to the End of Coal (Honkytonk Films)

Inspiriert wurde das Projekt von “Voyage au bout du charbon / Journey to the End of Coal”, einer französischen Produktion von Honkytonk Films, in Zusammenarbeit mit Amnesty International und Reporter ohne Grenzen, in welcher interaktiv die Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen chinesischer Kohleminenarbeiter erspielt werden können (mehr Informationen).

Auch wenn das Format “Serious Game” im ersten Moment etwas ungewöhnlich ja nicht sogar inkorrekt/unpassend erscheinen mag, so kann durch die interaktive Mitwirkung des Spielers am Handlungsablauf eine vielleicht noch tiefgründigere und umfassendere Auseinandersetzung mit der eigentlichen Thematik erreicht werden, als es zum Beispiel mit einem klassischen Dokumentarfilm möglich wäre. Mal schauen, welche Themen als nächstes bearbeitet werden.

After 7 years I have finally managed to return to Tampere and Hervanta. Vibrant remembrances have been waiting on virtually every corner of the street. Still missing these good old days …

Suomi: Tampere, Aug 2010 (69 pics)

We spent the second part of our trip in the Eastern part of the beautiful Archipelago Sea. Photos will follow soon …

Austria: Eng, Jul 2010 (64 pics)

For more information: Almdorf Eng.

Manarola, Cinque Terre

Places where we have been are marked in this map:

View Trip to Cinque Terre in a larger map

If you are looking for a very nice, comfortable but still affordable flat in Levanto, we can highly recommend Terrace up in Ridarolo. Beside a great view over the hills and a calm place it is also assured that you will not gain weight while enjoying the Italian cuisine …

As image processing and management software I am using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (meanwhile in version 2.4, still looking for an adequate Open Source alternative).

One thing I like about Lightroom is the easy, fast and integrated way to create web galleries out of your photo collections. What I was missing so far was a way to link back from a certain flash web gallery to my gallery overview and to the main page of my blog.

I found a really useful description for that purpose over at Bluefire Blog, that also has dozens of tips and tricks about how to customize the Lightroom Flash Galleries.

To add a link back to my gallery overview, I could just use the GUI of Lightroom and enter the needed data in the Web-tab as shown in this screenshot.

To use the gallery title to link back to the main page of my blog, I had to manually edit the file group.xml that was located in the subdirectory /resources/mediaGroupData/ of the gallery’s root. There I had to change the tag

<siteTitle>apfelkraut.org</siteTitle>

to

<siteTitle>
<a href="http://www.apfelkraut.org">apfelkraut.org</a>
</siteTitle>

That’s it! Be sure that you test the links in their domain, normally meaning directly on your website. If the modified gallery is used in a domain that is different to the domain you linked to, the links will be underlined and clickable but nothing more will happen. The actual links will not work. This is due to a security feature in recent Adobe Flash implementations. For details about this behaviour and how to change it see this TechNote from Adobe.

Needless to say to a professional web programmer … do not forget to clear your browser’s cache in case you changed something. I’ve heard of people searching for hours for a failure that was only caused by the browser loading an outdated file from its cache …

My gallery is available here. Enjoy!

Für mehr Informationen:

• offizielle Seite
• Der Trommler und Pfeiffer-Blog
• HallooLaHo-Blog
• Eintrag auf de.wikipedia.org
• Eintrag auf en.wikipedia.org

• Saigon and Mekong Delta (164 pics)
• Mui Ne, Hoi An and My Son (160 pics)
• Hanoi, Bai Tu Long Bay and Red River Delta (159 pics)
• Bangkok (50 pics)

Nearly all places where we have been are marked in this map:

View Larger Map

For people going to Viet Nam, we would highly recommend these places to stay:

• Saigon: Guest House California, Tel.: +84 8 38378885, eMail: guesthousecaliforniasaigon at yahoo.com
• Mui Ne: Lucy Resort
• Hoi An: Thanh Binh II Hotel
• Hanoi: Prince II Hotel

We had a great time on trips of these companies, especially because they have been offside of all these tourist trails:

• Cham Island Divers
• Ethnic Travel Viet Nam