Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Happy new Year

Personal | Thursday, January 1st, 2009

The new year just flipped over and we are now calling it 2009. I wish you all a happy new year, much success and fun in what you do.

I’m looking forward to get this blog rolling this year. Since the relaunch till now just 8 days went by and there are already over 10 subscribers which makes me really proud. Thank you all for you interest, but I would like it even more if you would give me some feedback. I can write on like I do but I would love to get better and that’s where you - the reader - comes in, commenting or sending me some feedback via the contact form would help me to get better.

Let’s see, I hope the new year started awesom and will be even better than the last year.

Thoughts About the last Year

Personal | Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

New Year’s Eve. I wish you all a great day and celebration. What I want to write at this day is for me obvious. I want to write about the past year and tomorrow about the up and coming. But my problem is everybody is writing that. So I’m not going to do that. Reason for that is that I’m going to publish a long post about my story and my path to this blog. In that article the main part will happen in 2008 and I think it’s not needed to feature all that twice.

Even though this year happened pretty much. Some cool people showed that and wrapped the year in photos or news together, some days ago I got this for me quiet heart touching series of posts.

  1. Part 1
  2. Part 2
  3. Part 3

I think this series of pictures shows one thing pretty well. The split between different worlds. Some in which war is the most common and visible thing and some in which people complain about little things. I’m pretty much caught by some relief organizations which are complaining about facts which are absolutely not acceptably but people who could care and help just don’t care about. Or they care but the bureaucracy is to complicated to help where it’s needed and it’s needed fast. I’m not saying nobody cares what happens but I think it could be done much more.

I think we should face the next year with some great plans and this plans shouldn’t be to self centered. There are many people who could help and if it’s just a little help, even a little help can change things.

Even though I wish everybody a great year with great plans. And a little tip which I think everyone knows but I think nobody should forget. If you write your goals down to a paper - even for computer addicted people like me - and pin it to a wall is a great way to remember what you wanted to achieve!

A not so conventional Business-Card

Personal, design | Thursday, December 25th, 2008
Business-Card

Business-Card

If you take a look at my business-card (here) your going to see that it’s pretty empty and that there is not that much information. Normally a business-card contains:

  • the Name of the person who gives the business-card out,
  • the Address,
  • the Phone-Number, Mobile-Phone and maybe Fax
  • the Email-Address
  • and if existing the Domain of the web-site.

At mine you’re searching two of this five pints without success. The fun thing is that persons who I showed the design, - nearly all - have been mentioning why I don’t have the 2 missing parts of my data included into the business-card. The two parts are:

  • the Address
  • and the Phone-Number, Mobile-Phone and Fax
Business-Cards Christoph Spiegl

Business-Cards Christoph Spiegl

The next logical question to ask is why did I do that. Just before I decided to get a own business-card printed, I’m not able to get new business-cards every time just one of the information changes. So one main part was that I don’t want to print new cards just because my mobile-phone number changed, for that reason I decided to just print consistent data which I think is the email and my two web-sites. The other ‘whys’ of my decision have been this 3:

  1. It may change
    I pointed this out before but it’s important enough to be mentioned again. The data I didn’t include could change very fast. OK, the address not but mobile-phone could. The data I decided to print is data I’m hoping to hold for a long time from now on. It’s a great way to get your own concentration focused to some few parts. In my case it’s just my email - cspiegl@cspiegl.com - and my two domains - cspiegl.com and whereischristoph.com. I want to concentrate my stuff at this two pages. And I even have the possibility to change my mind but than I can link the domains up to the new sites.
  2. It’s to personal
    Phone, mobile, fax and address is in my eyes very personal data. I think nobody needs my address in the times of email. The same is for phone, mobile and fax. I’m willing to give you this data if you send me an email and ask for phone or any of the others. But email is my main part of communication and there I can check when ever I want and answer.
  3. The most important is there
    Like I already mentioned, the most important information is included. If you are willing to contact me you find your way, if though the contact page or via the email, is your personal decision. The only problem could appear if you want to call me and don’t have internet and email. But how many people are out here without email and internet? Nearly none. And I have to tell, the people I’m interested in mostly have email and internet.

These 3 reasons are why I decided to get my business-card the way I did and I hope you get the point. If you want, you can download the front and back to print it or do just what ever you want but all in terms of the license.

Please feel free to comment or email me feedback or your own opinion, I’m really interested.

Christmas

Personal | Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

I wish you a merry Christmas or Hanukah or what ever name you give to this celebration. I think it’s a great invention. For some it’s about faith for some it’s just about the gifts to get. Some others like the fact that the family is together and having a great day.
For me, it’s just everything above. You have a silent time around the christmas days in which you can just think about faith, the year, and about the upcoming time, you can get and give gifts - or buy stuff for your self if you want to - and you hopefully have a nice time with your family.
For this years Christmas wishes, I have made a little list:

Rockstar Wordpress Designer (Book)

I’m into Wordpress-Design since about 6 month or so and am not calling me well known about Wordpress-Theming, I can write my own theme and could design others but I’m still at the top, and there’s a long way to get deeper into Wordpress and it’s ability’s. Sadly the book is not released till now.

Rockstar Freelancer (Book)

I hope that I can someday enter the freelancer live-style. Well I think I already did - more the less, but not yet the whole way down. I’m still at school and not working full time - not even half time - as a freelancer - and that’s OK, I still need to learn many things. I hope that’ll change in the future and I’m going to get a living from what I do. This book is one source where I think I can find some great information about Freelance live, just like the blog FreelanceSwitch.com already is. The book’s already released but would be cheaper if it’s bought with the first book caused by the shipping cost.

Apple Aluminum Keyboard

I already own a Apple Keyboard, but it’s the ‘old white wireless’ one and I’m starting to write pretty much and for writing my opinion about this keyboard is not the best. I tried the aluminum for some minutes and was fascinated by the feeling. It’s like writing at my MacBooks internal keyboard which is just amazing. But I want it external for better use in combination with my dual-screen setup. For that reason I wish to have the Aluminum Keyboard - wired that I have a num-block for quick numbers.

That’s what I wish for Christmas as gifts. But I also wish to have a great day. Hopefully no stress and a chill out.

If you want, you can share your thoughts about Christmas or your wish lists with me.
For now I wish everybody a merry Christmas or Hanukah or *insert your feast name here*. I hope you all have a great day.

I’m back

Blogging, Personal | Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008

Finally it’s now exactly the 2008-12-23 at 00:00 AM and I’m back. Read on to see what changed and what’s going to come.

The Blog

Finally, after 50 days I’m back with a new design, improved layout and the structure. Now there is a much less cluttered sidebar and a well positioned Flickr stream - at the top - here at my blog.

Second, i reimported all posts I wrote over the last year since I’m writing this blog. Why I did this? I’ll publish a own post about this in the future, stay tuned.

Third, the place changed a bit. Till yesterday - few seconds ago -, the blog was placed at cspiegl.com/blog now it’s just cspiegl.com that’s cause I think the blog should be the main part and not just one in the background. And the second reason is that the about page is much better placed at whereischristoph.com which brings up the next point.

New About Page

I created a new about page which was inspired by some other pages I discovered over the web, but manly by the one of Michael Mistretta (http://whereismichael.net). It’s a clean easy way to find out where you can find information about me and where I do my stuff for example the link to my flickr stream, twitter profile, my facebook profile and of course to this blog.

KwasK.com and KwasK.de

That wasn’t the last I changed, I also had another page for a long time. The page I’m talking about was KwasK.de for the most time and than about one year ago as I were hitting new areas of the internet, I got KwasK.com. But now after a year of KwasK.com and about 3 years of KwasK.de I thought about the use of the domain and came to an ending, in which this two domains are no more exist. So I simply got rid of the two domains which means that I don’t own them any more. They KwasK.com will stay online and linked till the 24 of January 2009 and KwasK.de will stay online till the 06 of June 2009 and both will have a CLOSING page online for the rest of their lives. So far about KwasK.com, I’ll post more on that soon, especially about the reason why I got rid of this domains.

Business-Card

In the last few month I tried to overwork my complete online brand. But not just the online brand, I also worked at the offline brand. I’m going to post a picture of the card and a down loadable version the day after tomorrow. I’m pretty satisfied by the result and that’s manly cause I thought so long about getting a own business-card and now finally it’s here and great looking. I simply can give it away and not just write my email or homepage address on a crappy paper. If you have a blog and want to contact with people offline for example at a conference or a congress - like the 25c3 where I’m going to be and post in the next few days about - you’re willing to have a business-card in place so that anyone who asks you for your email, you just give them a little card with all information needed. The second reason is if you are a designer, you can instantly show your abilities to the person in front of you - about this I’m also going to post a own post, why I did my business-card the way I did it.

Future?

So, that’s it for now. With this post I start a series of posts which are going to be more in depth information about why I made my decisions the way I made them. So if you’re interested, stay tuned - maybe subscribe to the blog? - and give me some feedback or contact me if you want.

My Activity

Personal | Friday, September 19th, 2008

Hey, it’s Christoph - who else?

I just want to public a little note, which my Twitter followers already know but I’ll want to write a little bit more about it.
I’m for the moment not going to publish in a hire frequency and the new Design and the new Pages will have to wait longer to be published than I first planed to do.

The reasons are this:

  • I have much more todo for school this and the next year
  • I want to spend more time in real live
  • I want to get more into photography

I think this are two good reasons to not think to much about own projects or anything related to that kind of time intensive activity.

That does not mean that I’m going to disappear, it just means that I’m doing a little bit slower.

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I’m back and Wordpress is up to date

Personal | Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Hey guyes, I’m back home. After 2 weeks of georgeous vacation in Greece, and 4000 RAW pictures to review and edit.

And just came back there is an update online. (Wordpress 2.6.2)

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Vacation I’m coming

Personal, Traveling | Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
Vacation Dinner

Image via Fickr, source Kenzoka

So finally I’m done working.
Now I’m heading for vacation in Greece. Like I posted some weeks ago, I’m not going to update much, but taking pictures and stuff like that, updates are coming when I’m back home.

One last little note: My pages will be updated soon (after my vacation) with new designs.

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I take a Break

Personal, Traveling | Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Just a quick information.

First I have to work than I can go on vacation:D

I have vacation now and I’m working for 3 Weeks (2008-08-04 till 2008-08-22), after that I’m 2.5 (2008-08-21 till 2008-09-8) weeks in Greece.
I’ll be online some times (if I have the possibility) but I’m not going to blog over that time - just if something really important comes to my mind.

After that 6 Weeks I’ll be back online blogging more regulary.

the iPhone Germany *UPDATE*

Personal, apple | Friday, July 4th, 2008

The first post at this blog was about this blog and the iPhone release in Germany. Now it’s much the same.
I’m now going to publish the blog again with the hope that I thought enough about what I’m going to do in the future with it, and that I have enough to say:D

The iPhone

For now I decided not to purchase the iPhone.
Maybe you think that this decision is ugly and bad, cause I could purchase it, and the costs are not the problem, but I have thought about the iPhone quiet some time and came to the end that if I buy the iPhone, than I can go online nearly everywhere I want, and that’s the problem!

I’m on the Internet if I’m at home, and the time outside, at the train to school and so on I’m offline and not connected to the internet what means, that I do other things like reading books, thinking about new ideas and sometimes designing on white paper.

Now if I purchase an iPhone I consider my self not to read books, write down new ideas, or designing new web-designs, rather than surfing the web via the iPhone. Thats why I’m not going to buy the iPhone.

Oh, by the way: if I’m not going to buy the iPhone, I think I’m going to buy something else (not as expensive as a new iPhone but something technically)

What do you think about that desicion? I’m really interessted.

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