the last few days went quite well. ran 3.6km on thursday, rest day on friday, ran 3.6km again on saturday and did a short run today of 2.6km. I’ve resurrected my cycling gps and am now using it as a running gps and pulse tracker—it actually works quite well. especially as i can set up the interval workouts on the computer and transfer them over. means i don’t have to keep looking at my watch.

i spent most of yesterday on the achensee in the sun, teaching two kids to sail. today i was on lifeguard duty at the baggersee here in innsbruck. fantastically hot weather, a very uneventful day, but with 15hrs sun-time, i managed to get a decent tan.

summary of the first two weeks

i’m starting to feel a lot fitter than i was. starting to run isn’t quite as easy as i thought it might be, but i’m enjoying it. the three week program i’m following seems to fit my pace really well, so i’ll be sticking with it.

weight check: lost 2-3kg so far
waist check: i fit into some shorts i couldn’t get into three weeks ago, so i’ll count that as positive.
well-being check: i’m starting to feel fitter and healthier. food intake is down, physical activity is increasing and the physiotherapy is doing wonders for my back and shoulders.

all in all, a good two weeks. only 50 more to go…

i wasn’t feeling totally fit yesterday, so it ended up being another sick day. was probably better that way, as i had a couple of mild dizzy spells every now and then during the day.

today, however, was a totally different day. i felt a lot better, so i managed to get back in the swing of things. didn’t cycle to work today, as it was raining and i really don’t want to catch a cold less than 2 weeks before a diving holiday.

physiotherapy went very well, had a load of mobilization exercises for my shoulder which is getting a lot better. early evening, i headed into the fitness studio (again, because it was raining) and tried my legs on a treadmill.

i deviated slightly from the 3 week running plan, which i wanted to restart again this week. did 3′ run, 1′ walk, then 5x 2′ run, 1′ walk and then 3′ walk to cool down. in total 2.6km (according to the treadmill), but i felt good all the way through.

well, this one’s easy. i got sick on thursday night and have been recovering since. :/ woke up at about 3:30am friday morning with a massive shivering attack, took 3 quilts and full clothing to warm me up. checked my temperature, which was rather low (35.5ºC), when i woke up, it had a mild fever (38.8ºC). however, now on monday, that’s all passed after a seriously lazy weekend. we went for a walk in kühtai yesterday – nice place, lots of fresh air.

plans for this week are to restart my running program from the beginning…

today’s run was really good. 5x 2′ run, 1′ walk followed by 5x 1′ run, 1′ walk. i felt really good after the 10th running interval and could probably have run another 2 or 3 intervals. the muscle aches in my legs have more or less disappeared. my weather timing seemed perfect as well – it started to rain as i was cycling home. looking at google earth, i managed to run 500m more than the first two times, so that makes a grand total of 3.5km.

cycled to work in the pouring rain, shortly after i got to work, it stopped raining and i had a dry trip home. go figure…

summary: 3.5km running, 15km cycling. good day.

rest day today. so only cycled to work and back. physiotherapy as well again – my back, shoulders and neck hurt. on the way back from work it was tipping it down, my rain jacket and trousers aren’t watertight anymore, so i got a bit wet. soaked comes closer, actually…

this evening, the wasserrettung had a training exercise and i learnt how to drive a motor-boat on the inn. driving on a river is a lot different than the RIB i’m used to on the lake. really enjoyed it though.

summary: 11km of cycling (took the longer route home), and painful physiotherapy massages.

physiotherapy was painful today. trigger point massage in my trapezius and scalene muscles. there was a massive lump in my scalene muscles, i now have what looks like a hickey from the pressure points.

cycled to work and back, as well as to the starting point of my run on the inn-promenade, in total about 15km. running went slightly better than yesterday; at least, i didn’t start to cramp up in my calves like yesterday. 3km of running in 10 batches of 1 minute running, 1 minute walking. like yesterday, it was probably at the limit of what i can manage right now.

not too sure about the back stretching exercises – i couldn’t feel any stretching at all. i’ll review them tomorrow with the physiotherapist.

a fairly recent picture of me

i’ve decided to start a personal 365 project. for the better part of july i was on sick-leave due to a fitness related issue. more accurately a lack of fitness issue. the neurologist and the orthopedic surgeon disagreed on what it was exactly – either thoracic outlet syndrome or an irritation of the C8 nerve plexus.

regardless of what it was, i’m seriously unfit and have been for almost 10 years. so i’ve decided it’s time to sort myself out. so, this is the start of my year of getting fit. i’ve set myself the following personal goals, which i think i can achieve by the end of this 365 project:

• run 10km
• swim 100 lengths (2.5km)
• cycle 100km (on a more or less flat stretch)
• 2′30″ static apnea
• 50m dynamic apnea with fins
• get my weight down to 85kg

so, what am i doing in order to achieve these goals? first step is sorting out my shoulders and neck – i’ve been referred to a physiotherapist. i managed to injure my supraspinatus tendon sometime earlier this year and my right shoulder is severely limited in its movement. most of my other muscles and joints seem to have limited range of motion, something which can be improved with regular exercise and stretching.

the next step is to get to a basic modicum of fitness; for me, the best way to do this is cycling, jogging and swimming. i dug around on the interwebz and found what looks like a sensible program to start running over the course of 3 weeks. while i was browsing around for that, i also found a set of 22 stretching exercises which i’m going to be working on as well.

i also bought an old bike for bumbling around town today – with mud-flaps so i can cycle to work every day, regardless of weather. the problem with my road bike is that there are no mud-flaps, and i refuse to put any on – it’s still a piece of sport equipment, and shouldn’t be a regular daily city transport… so, that’s step two of my plan – cycling to work every day to support my developing running habit.

regarding swimming, the wasserrettung (life-saving association) is currently on summer break, so there’s no regular training at the moment, but that starts again at the beginning of september. by then i should be fit enough to hack 1.5hrs of training – at the end of this training year, i couldn’t. apnea diving training starts again at the beginning of september, i’m sure that as my fitness gets better, my underwater times will go up again as well.

by putting all of this up here on my blog, i’m sticking my neck out a bit – if i fail, then the failure is public. so, i’m keeping my fingers crossed and will be doing my best to achieve my goals. daily or bi-daily reports will follow, except in periods of [forced] internet abstinence.

daily report, day #1

started day 1 of my running program. 10 times 1 minute running, 1 minute walking. in total about 2km in 20 minutes. it was just right to start out with, i probably couldn’t have managed more than that. i cycled there and back to warm up and cool down, in total 4km. stretched everything except for the back exercises. now my quads hurt, but i feel good about starting this project.

[edit 10/8/10: checked again in google earth, it was 3km running]

this film is just amazing. i got goosebumps when he jumped. great piece of work by both the diver and the cameraperson.

i basically just put a flash behind eva, blasting at the white wall and a flash in a reflective umbrella in front. so not quite zack’s setup, but the closest i could approximate in our living room. i didn’t quite get the lighting ratios right, so i had to add a touch of fill slider in lightroom, next time i’ll know better… but see for yourself:

Eva on white

as you can see on some pics, i had banding/sync issues with the cactus triggers. i’m going to have to see if that can be corrected.

Benni invited us round to his place last night to celebrate him turning older than he’s ever been before. here’s some pictures of the evening:

Benni's Birthday, 12/3/10

Benni turns 23. :)

flash gallery

alternatively, here’s a flash gallery:

quick update: eva and i have moved and are more or less finished with the move. flo & ursi came for dinner last night and brought some flowers with them. i love the way the colours just pop against the black background of our *massive* windows.

more tulip pictures on my flickr page.

what a weekend. police band concert on friday evening, playing and emceeing is very hard work. went down really well and was an enjoyable evening.

skiing on saturday at the stubaier gletscher (pictures to follow). “junge solisten am podium” by the innStrumenti chamber orchestra was the evening’s entertainment on saturday.

sunday was a lazy day, spent most of the afternoon playing around with the latest, greatest version of lilypond. the evening was spent at a concert by the kammerchor walther von der vogelweide, conducted by claudio büchler, also the conductor of the uni orchestra.

this was quickly done in the improvised kitchen studio before dinner:

fruit and veg, originally uploaded by tiamak.

the tomatoes and the garlic in the basket have been surprising me every day with the simple colours, so i decided to knock together a quick studio in the kitchen. a large cardboard back-wall made from a weetabix box, lit by an overpowered sb-900, another sb-900 with a dome diffuser off to the right, kindly held by eva. not perfect, but not too shabby for a job knocked together in 3 minutes…

the picture at the top was taken during a short break from transcribing music. the sun hit the glasses just right on my laptop case, and luckily i had my camera sat next to me.

gabi , originally uploaded by tiamak.

i had to setup a really quick portrait for the conductor of our band this afternoon. as he was slightly pressed for time, i asked gabi to jump in as a quick lighting model. and got this shot, which i’m quite happy with.

while i was trying to work out how to do portraits yesterday evening, i got this nice shot of eva:

eva, originally uploaded by tiamak.

next time, i’ll try not to cut off the side of her hair.

and here’s the 2 portraits of our conductor:

Stefan Laube

Stefan Laube

fantastic program selection and very well played. mr. fritzsch conducted everything by heart, which is a fairly amazing feat if you take a look at the score to the alpensinfone. all in all, it was a very impressive concert and i’m looking forward to future concerts conducted by mr. fritzsch.

second stop of the evening (after grabbing a pizza) was the ambient art lounge, organised by harry triendl. the concept is intriguing, it’s basically a semi-organised jam-session for electronic music. i think the most interesting part of this concept is that ambient music is generally created in a studio and heavily tweaked and refined. getting a group of people together with a set of rules (my favourite: tolerable volume. ) can result in chaos, or as shown yesterday, in some very enjoyable ambient music.

we caught the tail-end of an art installation by urbeil consisting of soundscapes supporting a critical text dealing with the andreas hofer cult and emancipation. (a different form of dealing with andreas hofer’s historical image can be found in an earlier posting).

the idea behind the jam session, as far as i can tell, is that everyone is allowed to bring their equipment and set up before the session starts. everyone gets piped into the master mix and can take part however they want. this singer laid vocals over the soundscapes being created by the guitarists on stage. sounded cool, but the lighting also made for quite cool photo-opps.

pictures

nikon d90, 50mm f/1.8 and 24mm f/2.8 primes running at ISO 1600 in manual mode. i love these two lenses for low-light photography. i had a flash with me, but decided not to use it, as i wasn’t sure what the etiquette was. pictures were post-processed in DxO to get rid of the noise, slightly adjust the black point and improve the contrast (which is already good straight out of the camera). i’m fairly happy with the results, even though one or two pictures could do with some slightly different enhancements.

here’s the slideshow:

alternatively a standard HTML album:

Ambient Art Lounge #16

Ambient Art Lounge #16 at the Live-stage Innsbruck.
Official Page

overview of the barricade

spineless chairs

chair hinges

close-up of the barricade

close-up of the barricade

more information about the protest can be found on the sowimax blog.

montmartre lane

this picture just screams “timeless paris” for me. i like it.

here are some other of the favourites:

paris in the rain

place des abbesses metro station

the famous gargoyle on notre dame

still sorting the others out. but more will follow…

well, the last photo blog-post was from the landesfestumzug. since then, i’ve had the chance to photograph some tame wildlife, sports action, concerts, candids and some sailing.

IFI staff day, 24/09/2009

we had an IFI staff day towards the end of september. it was an organized trip with an action-packed morning, good lunch, followed by a lazy afternoon with huskies and birds of prey and a bbq to round it all off. here are some pictures:

IFI Staff Day — Hochseilgarten Kramsach

Fun and games and lots of adrenalin at the high-rope course in Kramsach.

IFI Staff Day — Husky-Ranch Angerberg

Relaxing afternoon with huskies.

IFI Staff Day — Birds of Prey

Impressive demonstration of owls and eagls.

IFI Staff Day — Archery Session

Playing with bows and arrows before a BBQ at the high-rope course to round off the day.

surprise class regatta, YKA; 26-27/09/2009

the YKA hosted a surprise class regatta at the end of september. i sailed with andi on graffiti again (the same skipper i sailed with on the lago di garda at the end of august). we won the regatta, which put andi in the overall winning spot for the austrian class association.

saturday was windy-ish, on sunday we spent most of the day hanging around waiting for wind. when it did turn up, it was flukey and turned and died down just before the only race for the day was about to be started. gave me a chance to get some pictures while out on the water though:

Surprise Regatta, 27/09/09

Regatta for the Austrian Surprise class hosted at the YKA, 26-27/09/2009.

Weltfest at the Treibhaus, 02/10/2009

emir, a good friend and great percussionist, volunteers at the integrationsbüro here in innsbruck. they organize a large “world festival” every year; this year, emir asked me to join the photography team of 4 photographers to photo-document the event. we basically spent the evening enjoying the festival and taking bucketloads of pictures. i really enjoyed the evening, and hope to be invited back again next year. here are all the pictures:

Weltfest 2009, 2/10/2009

I was asked to take pictures at the Weltfest in the Treibhaus.

a separate post will follow soon with the pick of my favourites and a bit on equipment and workflow.

hintersee, nr mittersill; 14/08/2009

this one’s been on the backburner now for a long while. when eva and i were tripping back and forth between tyrol and salzburg for two weeks this summer, we also detoured to one of my most favourite locations in the mountains – the hintersee near mittersill. this is a tiny little mountain lake created by an earthquake 800 years or so ago and a fantastically picturesque location. there are some very nice landscape pictures and a couple of quirky ones of eva here:

Hintersee, 14/8/2009

Short walk at the Hintersee near Mittersill with Eva.

that concludes the looooooooong backlog post. to quote the master of available light, joe mcnally, “more tk…”

this is just too fitting for what’s currently happening at university. no further comments needed.

there was much criticism before the celebrations—andreas hofer is considered by some as an extremist and terrorist. more recently, there was a terrorist movement in south tyrol aiming to “reunite” trentino and south tyrol with austria. the south tyrolean “Schützen” (translates loosely as riflemen—they’re voluntary groups of traditional riflemen who see it as their job to uphold traditional values, whatever they may be) especially support reunification and the political left-wing consider them extreme right-wing. as the tyrolean (both south and north) schützen made the main body of the parade, some politicians and media claimed that the whole parade was a celebration of right-wing ethos.

as an active participant in the parade yesterday (as a musician), my feeling was that there was a political undercurrent to the parade and of course, some people, albeit a small minority, took the political element to extremes. however, the general feeling of the whole event was a celebration of tyrolean tradition.

according to the organizers, there were 26,000 participants; police reports state there were over 70,000 spectators. the weather was perfect, and the centre of innsbruck was packed with people. the whole spectacle lasted about 5 hours. anyone watching the event in town or on TV definitely saw a lot more than we did. we met at 10:15 in the tivoli football stadium where the organizers staged about 10,000 of the participants. this is a panorama of some of the participants waiting in the stadium:

10,000 people, maybe more…

the parade was supposed to start at 11:00, for some reason, the organizers had forgotten that politicians like to talk, so it didn’t start until 12:00… this meant that we had a lot of time to waste in the stadium; some people spent the time drinking:

Beer carrier

others sleeping:

Sleeping trombonist

the staging had been calculated to the minute and the stadium slowly emptied:

Lonesome musician

what the austrian army (who’d calculated they could get the whole parade finished by 14:00) hadn’t considered was that sorting out 10,000 non-military personnel would take longer than expected. the parade also didn’t move through town as quickly as anticipated, so we didn’t leave the stadium until 13:50. we had to march for about 20 minutes to actually reach the official starting point of the parade. marching through town with all of the spectators cheering was quite an experience.

pictures

i didn’t have a chance to take pictures while we were marching, but i did manage to get a load of character pictures of people in our band while we were waiting in the stadium. we have some fantastic faces:

Andreas Kiechl

Catharina Moritz

Clemens UnsinnLord Nonsense himself…

Cornelia Senoner

here’s the whole album:

Landesfestumzug Innsbruck, 20/09/2009

Speckbacher Stadtmusik at the Landesfestumzug in Innsbruck.

erntedankfest

the bus picked us up in kufstein, where it wasn’t quite raining. the bus trip, was as always, good fun:

Norbert

Wattenmit einem Tennisschläger

stefan, our tubist, did a great job of running us out to vienna in pouring rain. his driving skills were put to a serious test in vienna when the gps nav system sent him through a series of extremely narrow and winding little lanes. it was an impressive show of skill.

Stefan

Sauwetter

thankfully, hannes wasn’t allowed to drive (note the beer can and the funky hat):

Hannesals Busfahrer

numerous stops along the way:

Mondsee

Pinkelpause

we finally got to vienna and quickly got changed in the hostel (student accommodation) we were staying in. the heldenplatz in vienna is ideally located for a big festival, between the imperial palace:

Marketenderinnenvor der Hofburg

and the viennese town hall (in the background):

Mario

the concert on saturday evening didn’t go too well—the combination of numerous beers and a long bus trip took their toll on some musicians. this is the only picture of the concert itself:

Arminbei "Evergreens"

afterwards, we cleared our stuff back into the bus and went looking for fun and drinks after an impromptu photo-shoot-out in front of the imperial palace:

Ende vom Konzert

Güntervor der Hofburg (und Geli)

sunday morning, everyone was up bright and early and not too hungover, which was surprising. we caught the tram into the centre of town, günter & i amused some of the passengers by getting 19 tickets out of a coin-operated machine using the change the girls had taken through selling schnapps the evening before. the concert on sunday was a lot better than saturday, there are even pictures, thanks to our friendly sound engineer benjamin whom i gave my camera to:

Unterm Konzert

PosaunenSimon, Michael, Günter

there was even a friendly rat who decided to help us out by conducting:

Die Sendung mit der Maus

after the concert, we grabbed a bite to eat and left for home. numerous stops were needed along the way:

Markus

we eventually got home in the early evening after a seriously enjoyable weekend in vienna. a big thankyou to günter, michael & mario for all the organizational work and a big round of applause for stefan for the fantastic drive.

pictures

travelling with bands always give great opportunities for pictures. this weekend was no exception.

if i had to pick five favourite pics from last weekend, it would probably be these ones (in no particular order):

Vorbereitungen

Evavor der Hofburg

Mario

Bianca

Biancaund ihr Spiegelbild

here’s the whole album, all 98 pics:

Conradler in Wien, 12-13/09/09

Trip to the Austrian Bauernbund Harvest festival with the Conradler (www.conradler.com). Serious fun and games and two concerts as well.

world war II memorial:

WW 2 Memorial

washington monument:

Washington Monument

reflecting pool:

Reflecting Pool

lincoln memorial:

Abraham Lincoln

korea memorial:

Freedom is not free

capitol:

Capitol

one of the films i had broke, so the pictures of the vietnam memorial didn’t really come out. i was a bit annoyed at that, but it’s a reason to go back again.

pictures

the pictures were taken with a nikon F80 on Ilford FP4 film. most of them were taken with a nikkor 24mm f/2.8 with a red filter. most of the pictures have only been slightly cropped to get rid of some white borders from the development process. some were straightened.

Washington DC, December 2006

saturday afternoon, we went to ebbs for coffee and cake. the place we went to (i can’t remember the name) has an amazing view of the inn valley around kufstein:

Little chapel

View southtowards Kufstein

on sunday, i had a surprise call from my mother that she was in kufstein. so, after breakfast, off for coffee. i knocked down the saturation on this picture in camera, trying to emulate the washed out colours of canons:

Caroleat Müllers Café

in the afternoon, we went for a walk up the thierberg in fantastic weather. it was signposted as 35 minutes, but it only took us about 20. would have been quicker if i hadn’t stopped every now and then to snap:

Cross

Stairs

the view from the top of the watchtower is fairly amazing:

The 2 KaisersZahmer Kaiser & Wilder Kaiser

there’s also a small little chapel as part of a hermitage. all in all, it was a fairly busy but relaxing weekend.

pictures

13 pictures from the weekend. nothing spectacular, but i’m slowly getting the hang of getting things right first time in camera.

Kufstein, 5-6/09/09

Weekend in Kufstein with Eva.

saw this bike at the station in innsbruck this morning. i thought the idea was quite cool, appealing to everyone’s human nature to not steal a catholic vicar’s bike. however, the photo doesn’t show the lock on the rear wheel of the bike…