Oh my stars. One Billion-Pixel Mosaic of the Galactic Center Region

~ Jordan Smith

What can change a live-style? What should change a live-style? What is a live-style? And if how, how should be a life-style designed?

All that are just a couple of questions I asked my self over the past month over and over again. Mostly inspired by great movies or books like ‘My Blueberry Nights’, ‘Into the Wild’ or ‘Seven Pounds’ — just to name a few, there are much more I watched.

I will be writing a series of posts on this topic, cause I think there is plenty to write about and that is part of the reason for me to write this down. I wrote earlier that I write this blog mainly for me to practice my english as well as for me to think about stuff and to try to express the thoughts I think which does not mean that I would not appreciate some comments.

I try to express — and maybe clear for me — the thoughts about life a little bit, even though I do not consider this series to be finished sometime near. The topic is a topic which changes over time. It changes with the situations I or you life in, with the people around me or you and every other factor which is changeable around you and me. That also means that the series may be out of date very soon — or at least some posts of it.

I try to keep everything organized and link the whole series up here to keep a point to of start.

1. LSC: My Style of Life (2009-10-30)
2. LSC: Where is the Problem about my Lifestyle (2009-11-13)
3. LSC: Possibilities of Change (2009-12-29)
4. LSC: Actual Changes (2010-03-16)

This is one of the greatest collections of HDR Photography I ever found out there in the internet.

HDR images can be taken with any camera that allows over (or under) exposure of a photo. For example, even a few mobile phones are capable of doing this nowadays!

~ Peter Sawyer

But I have to mention one of the awesomest HDR-Photographers as well “Stuck in Custom“! He does a really great job and uploading one HDR nearly every single day.

I always liked to get to know other’s desks. Which sometimes is a bit hard — not everybody wants to tell about his desk — and most of the time it was way to time consuming. Now no more, since Shawn Blanc started a series of posts featuring Sweet Mac Setups at his site. They give a quick look into the desk of a person, the use he takes from it, why the desk is the way it is and some pictures.

… the long and glorious tradition of posts for those whom wish to geek out over people’s workspace, software, and hardware

~Shawn Blanc

If you like desks, like I do, be sure to take a look: http://shawnblanc.net/sweet-mac-setups/

Most often, I do not write posts like this but sometimes they are the best to let people know what goes on in the life of the person behind the text. Here in Germany — Bavaria — the summer vacation is over at 15th of September — which is today. That means that I have to go back to school. This year the school I am going to attend is the BOS which here in Germany is called the ‘BerufsOberSchule’ — a dictionary translation to english would be ‘upper vocational school’. The goal is to graduate with a ‘vocational baccalaureate diploma’ or ‘technical diploma’ which would allow me to attend college afterwards.

My main thoughts about that school are that it will be hard sometimes and most likely I need to let my passions and business go a little slow for the next month. I know for sure that I do not stop everything completely but some.

All in all, I will stay here, I will go on with the two posts per week and I will go on with training my passions. For everybody who is going to school, attending college or starts anything else new this school year, have fun doing it and I wish you all the best!

What about a diary? Many think diary’s are for young girls and maybe elder people? Wrong! I think thats completely wrong! I write a diary and that is what keeps me on memorizing everything. Now I want to tell you why and especially how I write my diary.

First: I do not write full text at least most of the time not. I write short notes like bullet point lists, but with a little more text. That keeps the diary writing short and organized.

Second: I do not write daily. Maybe it would be better if I did for the coming reasons but I don not cause of the time. I sometimes forget it and sometimes there are just not enough important things to write.

Third: My reasons for writing a diary. Mainly it is so that I reflect on what I did the last days and most important I try to focus on the things which made me happy. The things I can smile about if I think about it. Things which are worth remembering! Bad thoughts are everywhere out there they are in the news, in the streets and in magazines. The great things are most of the time little but much more important to us! Thats why I most of the time take notes of the great things and just sometimes about the bad — it is necessary to also keep the bad notes but do not focus on them!

Fourth: One last point: With this I can remember or look up when something crucial happened — like the death of Michael Jackson — so that I can tell my children when that was (if I ever will need to tell them that).

Thats pretty much it. Focus on the good, reflect and write it down.

I have been on vacation for 2 weeks in Greece — which have been awesome to chill out, think about some stuff and get a little skinny at the beach. But one more thing I experienced was the grace of not having a constant connection to the internet.

Normally at my desk I connect to the wifi and have internet access almost every day and all day long — excluding the connection problems my ISP sometimes has. With this punctual connection I was able to focus on things I never knew I could get so much productivity out of, like writing posts or editing pictures.

I already was pretty good at disconnecting from sources of distraction before I experienced this, by closing instant messaging, twitter and mail clients but this need to walk somewhere to gain internet access made it even clearer. And it is not as easy as easy to just open the application to gain access but you need to walk somewhere and spend the time compressed, get back and again have no internet.

I do not call not having a constant internet connection good. I think it really is needed sometimes — like with web-development I almost every time use forums or other sources to get information about how to get rid of a problem — but it really is unnecessary other times.

I think I will try to clear my mind about this and maybe I will start to disconnect my macbook completely from the wifi in the future if I need to get some — no internet required — work done.