At last, I've edited and uploaded the photos of this year's trip to Utah. Sorry, again no photos from Novell Brainshare (hence the folder name.) ;-)
It is a great idea to lift a speed limit for a wet lane -- and have water filled lane grooves 500 meters afterwards that are so deep that I almost lost control of my car.
Hooray, the Sigma DC 17-70/2.8-4.5 lens arrived yesterday and today I made some test shots. Apparently I've got one of the correctly calibrated lenses. Accurately aligned centering, auto focus is working well -- apart from aparture 2.8 in some situations, which is a limitation of Canon consumer DSLRs and not a fault of the lens (I can reproduce it with a fixed length 28/2.8 Canon lens, BTW.) I'm looking forward making some nice pictures at Anthrocon with the lens.
I'm back from Mephit Minicon 10 at the Freusburg and I had a blast. Excellent weather (except for some rain on Saturday morning), good food, a very friendly youth hostel staff, good organization. What I liked best was the MMC Café -- excellent idea, folks! -- and of course the Big Blue Dance. I went to bed at 4 AM though I would have loved to dance some more, however my knees told me that it wouldn't be a good idea... Before the dance cheetah_spotty and Eisfuchs were the auctioning off some pieces from the art show. Hilarious!
Remember my vacation reports from January? Well, I've got the photographs cleaned-up (f...ing sensor dust!), cropped, scaled and uploaded at last.
I had to buy a pair of hiking poles as a birthday present for my father and Outdoor Heller is closed for two weeks. So I went to the local Jack Wolfskin store. I noticed before that their choice in outdoor equipment is getting less and less, but I learned that they do not have any hiking poles at all anymore. I noticed similar things in the US (at least in Utah), most of these stores have become fashion shops. Fortunately, we have a large choice of department and sports (as in "move your body", not "shoot some critters") stores here in Nürnberg which have outdoor and camping equipment. But nevertheless, the trend is disturbing.
I just bought the flight tickets to Anthrocon. Unfortunately with Air France via CDG as everything else from NUE is terribly expensive, but if they mess up my baggage I'll survive the few days without it...