Rock Climbing on the Moon

I just wanted to find out if it was possible to rock climb on the moon, because… reasons.

In Google Earth, it’s possible to switch to the moon, and the resolution of the 3D maps is not bad at all. But I couldn’t find any mountain which is steep enough, so I tried to google.

I found a measurement by NASA, for the south pole at this Link. the steepness of the moons terrain seems to peak out at 30°, which is certainly not enough to do serious rock climbing. The only possibility there is most likely bouldering, which this Apollo-Astronaut is about to attempt:

On key advantage in bouldering on the moon is the ability to do really high boulders and survive most falls without any harm because of the low gravity of about 16.6% of earth.

But there are much more interesting activities to do on the moon:

1. Pole vault (no mat needed / more than 30 meters possible)
2. Long jump
3. Sandboarding (not sure if it will work properly)
4. Rallye (think about the jumps)
5. Moto-Cross (just bring your own oxygen for the engine and you’re good to go)
6. Drag racing (make sure to bring enough friction)
7. Long-throw
8. Long distance hikes (A good hiker does 30km / day, which means to circumnavigate the moon, about 1 year is needed. A good companion is needed! Don’t expect to find any civilization along your path)
9. Ball sports are not advised

P.S.: just found a Harvard Article about future sports on the moon.

 

HowTo: Batch resize and rename your photos using Freeware (Irfanview)

Over the years I’ve perfected my way to resize my JPEGs to send them via mail or upload them to a cloud.

• Download and install Irfanview (irfanview.com)
  • Choose a 64-bit Version if possible
• Open Irfanview and choose File –> Batch Conversion / Rename

File – Batch Conversion

 

• Now the setup screen is displayed
  • Add the photos to “input files” by looking for the folder in the directories and selecting them individually or by CTRL+A for all.
  • You can convert , rename or both.
  • In Output format, set to JPEG and for quality I usually use something between 50-80 for small filesize and good quality.
  • Also check the box for the advanced options to resize, I’ll explain that in the next picture
  • When renaming, set the Name pattern.
    • e.g. Image### sets it to Image001, Image002…
  • The Output directory is usually the current look in directory.

Batch converison setup windows

• Advanced options
  • Here you can set all kinds of things, this make Irfanview batch processing so powerful
  • Resize
    • Usually I resize to the long side, because that way portrait format images are also correct.
    • Preserve aspect ratio
    • use resample function (better quality)
    • Mostly I also check “Don’t enlarge smaller images”
    • Sharpening when resizing images to smaller sizes is also advised. A value between 2-4 is good here for most cases.

Advanced option for resize

Now hit “Start Batch” and your photos should be found with a much smaller filesize in you selected output folder.

 

Irfanview also supports the display RAW files with a plugin which can be found on the website, but it’s using only the small Preview Image saved with the RAW file, so it’s not advised to use the batch processing with RAW files.

I hope I could help some people with this tutorial. If you have any advice what to improve, just leave a comment

Motorcycle Trip Austria-Pyrenees 2015

In last years summer I decided to take a big motorcycle tour. The initial goal was to go to gibraltar and back in 4 weeks. Somehow in only went to the pyrenees in a week with too much driving and too less relaxation and social contacts.
But maybe i just wanted to be alone at that time, I don’t know.

Day 1
Started at 09:14 from home. Autobahn form Wörgl to after Innsbruck. Crossed Kühtai and saw the devastation the bad weather two weeks ago has caused there.

Kühtai

Fuelup in Landeck. Drive through Graubünden / Switzerland.

Graubünden

Heading to St. Moritz, but left the road in Susch to Ride the Flüelapass. Bad weather when driving down. Took shelter from the hailstorm with a german guy, an swiss “knieschleifer” local and an Italian couple.

It stopped to hail after half an hour, but the local told us “according to the satellite pictures, it isn’t gonna get better”, so I went on. Next: Oberalppass to enter the Gotthardmassiv. Then the famous Gotthardpass. I actually took the “tremolo” on my way down with the engine shut off.

Gotthardpass

Then I bought some bread, joghurt, beer, cheese, ham for 15 francs. Switzerland is fucking expensive.

15€ evening dinner

Camped at the bottom of Nufenenpass, where and old Italian guy approached me and tried to talk. The speech barrier was a problem, but he was friendly and told me about his son, who is my age or something.

Tentlife

Day 2
Rode the Passo della Novena, nice one!

Nufenenpass

Then I had to drive 120km in an boring swiss rhone-valley in wallis. Finally entered the Mont Blanc area with impressive mountain giants and glaciers which nearly reach to the ground of Chamonix. Then I rode down to Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, where the climate was entirely different and much hotter. But after ½ Hour I was riding the next col, which offered a marvelous view with its light blue reservoir lake named lac du roselend.

Lac du roselend

Then, Cormet de Roselend to Bourg Saint Maurice.

There the bad weather came closer. After driving through Val d’ Isere hell broke loose. It began to hail and visibility was near zero. But I didn’t really want to stop above 2500m. So I took the 2770m Col de l’ Iseran and nearly froze to a block of ice on the way down.

Thankfully I could couchsurf at a nice madame in Aussois. A dry bed is heaven after a hailstorm.

Day 3
Modane-Vallois. Very nice ride up Col du Galibier and an impressive view to the 4000m+ mountains.

A lot of Byciclists. Then I raced some local, one with socia up the Col d’ Izoard, but I nearly could’nt keep up with their Gixxers. Next: The highest driveable point of the alps, Col de la Bonnette 2802m.

On my way to Nice I encountered another Col de Lombard, which wasn’t on my route to the coast, but I decided to ride it anyway. Raced 3 italian ducatistis up top. One of them fell back at the beginning, the other two couldn’t shake me off. This was certainly the most fun ride of the whole route.

On the way down Nokia Here tried to route me on an 20km gravel piste, which would have been nice with an enduro. Continued on Grande Route de Alpes and really nice curvy rallye monte carlo roads for 50km appear.

Supermoto area deluxe

Nearly ran out of fuel. Then I saw the saw the sea for the first time. Drove through Monaco, nice, then slept at a plage west of cannes. Traffic is tiring.

“Okay” sleeping place

Day 4
Picked up a new rear tire in Montepellier. The mechanic there told me that my chain set is gonna last for 1000km more, we will see. Decided to go to Andorra anyway. Metzeler Z8 drives nicely. Route 20 to Andorra is really nice and curvy with like racetrack asphalt.

Ride into the sunset on a curvy road, throttle up and leave all the red backlights behind, you don’t need them anymore.

Nearly out of fuel again and the BC card wouldn’t work.

So I asked some nearby locals to help me out, helpful people! Drove until 22:30.

1 hour to go to Andorra. Found a nice campsite in the woods.

 

Day 5
Drave through Andorra, the saddle routing there was very crowded with cages. From there I went to Sort/Spain. Then I took a small backcountry road which led me to a small lake called “Estany de Montcartes”. I was forced to leave the Pyrenees because my chain needed adjusting again and again and I didn’t want to let it change in spain/france. I went by the Panta d’ Escales and jumped in naked.

Hit the road to Montrejear. Then I went the fastest route home hopefully without breaking the chain.

One really nice experience was the thunderstorm somewhere in the middle of france. I wanted to get home so I decided to hit it. Put on raingear, some nice music (truckfighters & colour haze) and onto to the highway for 300km.

Still have got this moment burned into my mind: “In the middle of the thunderstorm, lightnting everywhere and strong winds, listening to Desert Cruiser.”

Drove through france til 3am, then I got tired and put up my tent.

Day 6
Got stung by an insect at Bodensee then entered Austria and arrived at home at 09:30pm.

Total: 5 Days / 3800 KM.

There are quite some things I would make different now:

1. Make sure the motorcycle is in better condition (new tires, good chain)
2. Less kilometers/day (Dr. Kilometers can’t always heal)
3. Stay in hostels to meet people
4. Maybe have a friend or partner to join

Colour Haze lyrics pictures

I just created some Colour Haze lyrics motivational posters by taking some Vietnam pictures, overlaying album designs and adding the texts.

Greatest band on earth:)

 

Link with 2000 height pics: Pics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Riding a motorbike through Vietnam

Riding a motorbike through Vietnam isn’t the easiest way to travel through the country, but it certainly is the most fun and adventurous way. But there are some things you should be careful of:

1. In Vietnam you wont get a bike bigger than 150cc, because they are expensive there. But a normal 125cc has got enough punch for the roads there.
2. Speedlimits are 40 in the cities and 60 on rural roads. But in the cities you won’t reach the 40 most of the time anyway.
3. Try to rent/buy a reliable bike, maybe semiautomatic if you want to go to the mountains. It’s no problem to drive, even if you have only driven automatics so far.
4. Fuel is cheap at about 16000 Dong / 0.60 € per liter and gas stations are easy to find.
5. If you need a mechanic, they are on the side of the road nearly everywhere, just don’t get ripped off and discuss the price beforehand.

We did the following procedure for renting the bikes. I searched for a motorbike rental company on the internet and made sure the reviews were good. We found Tigit Motorbikes in Saigon and their approach was very professional.

We bought the bikes for 1000$/bike and they bought it back for 800$/bike after two weeks. This isn’t the cheapest approach, but the bikes were of good quality, the contact was easy and we could send the bikes back from Dalat via an agent. (additional 800000 Dong / 30€ for the train)

Try to keep away from the main highways, they are no fun. The AH1 is the biggest road which runs from Ho-Chi-Minh City to Hanoi and it is no fun to be there in the night / heavy rain, or both. The roads marked in orange in Google Maps are only for cars.

The Hay Van Tunnel between Danang and Hue is also closed for bikes, but the Pass is much more beautiful and swift to drive anyway.

Vietnamese people are carrying everything on their bikes, so don’t be amazed if you see them carrying up to five pigs or 20 chicken.

We didn’t think it was too dangerous to drive in Vietnam, all the drivers are paying attention to each other in cities and speeds are not too high most of the time.

Motorbike wooden ferryboat, because the bridge was in construction:).

So if you plan on riding a bike in Vietnam, just do it, it’s helluva lot of fun.

Entering the national park after dalat, curvy road with racetrack-asphalt!

This guy got everything he needs for his job on the bike.

 

Abandoned waterpark in Hue, Vietnam

On our Vietnam holiday one of my goals was to find this abandoned waterpark in hue. After accidently stopping by a monastery with our scooters, we finally found it. It’s a huge area with a lake, which is mostly dried out now. About a year ago there were still crocodiles in some of the lakes, but the were reportedly saved.

#Abondoned arena…

…with watershows.

All the electronics are still in the park.

Someone left a diary there, sadly it’s vietnamese.

Nazi car in vietnam

The rusted dragon in the center of the park.

Now heading to the intestines of the dragon, interesting structures everywhere.

The cows have their fun in their own waterpark now.

Nice #graffiti in the dragon.

#Minions

Everything has this rotten charme.

Tried to walk down, but the plastic is already quite brittle.

Nice place to relax, watching nature at taking back whats hers.

Overgrown waterslides

Would you slide?

#Fun, fun, fun

We weren’t alone in the park, but not too many backpackers where there, about 10-20 people distributed in the whole area. Some locals we’re sleeping in the dragon. There were also some people selling water and softdrinks near the dragon, but they didn’t seem to make good business.

All the pics were taken with a Sony 6000 + Samyang 12mm 2.0

 

If you want to go there by yourself, this is the location:

Art is never finished, only abandoned.
Leonard da Vinci

Pieces of a machine

Here we are.
Pieces of a machine, grown by society and streamlined by fear.

We are defending our lands, trying to keep the strangers out, but we send them weapons and fight them from remote locations. We buy their land and water supplies.

And after all that we wonder why there is filth leaking into our dreamland, why there are things happening right here, right now. Things, which we think are wrong, which don’t belong here.

But nobody tries to solve the problems at their core, more defense and more security in trade for freedom seems to be the answer. They think they know.

Nobody seems to know. We’re all just tumbleweed blown by thewind through unknown land, everyone just looking back on his random path through the desert, feeling good about it.

Set us free

Memories

Why does it go by so fast although you think it’s too slow?

Why is one day so long and a month goes by in a moment?

 

It is a strange thing how we seem to romaticize everthing good that has happened in the past and the bad things hurt like knife stabs even years after. The emotions in memories are just so fucking exaggerated.
When thinking about skiing in summer, I nearly get an orgasm, and when thinking about motorbiking in winter, it’s the same thing. But when you’re actually doing it, Ohooo, it’s soso most of the time.

A gooey life this is, but it’s a good one, at least when looking at it afterwards.

Go on, don’t slow  down too much and live your dreams, your memories will thank you!

Recommended SciFi Books: The Martian by Andy Weir

On the second of october the filmization of “The Martian” by Andy Weir starts in cinemas.

It’s a book about a human mars mission which goes wrong and leaves Mark Watney on mars without communication and no vehicle to return to earth. I`ve enjoyed it very much, It’s quite technically written and you learn a lot by reading it.

It’s also got the numb feeling of being stranded without hope which I like!

But why Matt Damon as an actor? Whyyyy?
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Pears were outstripped by bananas in 1960

I just tried some things in Google Ngram Viewer, which counts words in book and displays them in a graph.

Apparently Bananas grew more popular in 1960 than pears due to globalization:)

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Banana%2CPear&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CBanana%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CPear%3B%2Cc0

Try some words and send me the results, I will post them if they are interesting.