I went to a computer store called DiTech today, across the city. Instead of getting a new phone, I decided to use my N770 more often, and for that it needed much more memory, so I got it a 2 GB memory card. 7€ for it wasn’t to bad, considering that the first memory card I bought was a 128MB Smart Media card that cost me over 70€. Half of the 2 gig card is already full of music (from last.fm), other half is reserved for photos, podcast and videos.

In the evening I went to the city, soccer again, Croatia played against Poland in Klagenfurt (not so interesting), and Austria played against Germany in Vienna for the semi finals. Long story short, we lost (how unexpected) and so the European championship 2008 is over for us.  It will get very boring now in the city.  Today’s photo is a bit delayed, blame KWentin for not sending it to me fast enough.

Update: KWentin send me some photos.

After quite some time, the “Day Star”, also known as sun, finally showed up again. It was still way to cold for June, but better the the last day. I still think about the winter cloths, but less then during the last days.

To celebrate the nice weather, I went cycling with a friend, short trip near to Keutschach, for some photos and other stuff. Nice to cycle with the sun shining for once.

The weather stayed nice, even in the evening, so we went to the city, seeing how many fans got attracted by the nice weather too. It wasn’t as crowed at it sure will be tomorrow, but still nice. Took quite some photos, see flckr for them.

2nd big soccer game in Klagenfurt, Germany was playing against Croatia in town, and in Vienna Austria against Poland. Christian and Kwentin (with some of his Couchsurfers) already said they will come to the city too, so I wasn’t alone there. The city was full today, 1 hour before the game even started, the had to close the fanzone in the center, to many people.

Instead, we went to the fairgrounds, but even there were a lot of people celebrating. Anyway, we found a nice place and watched the game (and took photos), with just a light drizzle from above. In the first halftime, we went to the Claddagh, for a nicer place to watch the game. Sadly, they still havn’t got a good signal on the TV there. But better then standing around outside.

Quite surprising, Croatia beat Germany quite well, and with that motivation, Austria started their game. They played extremely well, but somehow they never managed the get the ball in the goal. 3 times they had a near perfect chance to score a goal, but never got it in. Instead, we got one. But in the last minute (literally), we finally got it in and with a 1:1, we still have a change to get into the semi finals. And its our first game for ages we havn’t lost.

With that result, Germany beaten, Croatia the group winner and Austria finally scoring a goal, the city went crazy (in a good way), everyone was doing party. Just the music was starting to get “strange”. Photos come tomorrow, just to damn tired to edit them now.

Happy panoramaic day to you all. Had a quite nice one myself. First was some small VT project in the Lakeside-Park, sort of an carinthian ThinkTank.  We made a short tour around it, and thru some offices, for a press conference in a few days. Quite fun. And I also got good ideas for my gigapixel project.

After that, I went into the city once more, but didn’t expect a lot of people there. We don’t have that many people from spain or russia here. But at least I had no problems walking around. I could even take a pano

Click on the sphere to view the flash pano, enjoy.

The weather improves from day today, but still we get our share of rain every day. And somehow, lucky as I am, I always get into it. But at least I managed to find some cover in time.

I didn’t stay the whole evening in the city, just took the Bessa with ISO 100 film today. Only been in the city for the France - Romania game, hardly any fans in there, newspaper started to call this a (G)Host-City.  Its not that bad, but still, I expected a bit more. Thats why I didn’t bother to grab something faster from home and start watch the other game today.

Instead, I started to develope the films from the last days, both worked out excellent, looks I start to get to know my films and developers by now :). Because I got no ethanol to dry the film yet, they needed quite long to dry, so no scanning today. But tomorrow.

Today was the first day were we had actuall games here in town. Also the first day, Austria played. This time I took not only the OM-2 to the city, but also packed my digital stuff, so I have some photos to show right after the trip.

Weather started not to good, but it went quite well during the evening. Not hot and sunny, but close to it. Because germany also had their first game today, and even in town, we had a lot more people from germany and poland (they played both in Klagenfurt) in town. Much more from yesterday.

First game was austria against Croatia, quite a few fans from Austria there, but hardly some from Croatia. We got a goal right in the first minutes, after a penalty. We fight quite well, but sadly we couldn’t score a goal outselfs.

2nd game of the night was the local match between germany and poland. Both had a lot of fans here, and besides some minor issues, all of them got along quite well. Germany won 2:0, and when the game was over, police started to show up. They were expectiong a lot more problems judging from their equipment. But after they got  3-4  of those idiots out, the situation seamed to be well under control.

Todays flickr photos can be seen here

So, after weeks of preparation, the EM 2008 started. The weather was quite mixed today, sunshine and rain and then sunshine again and then rain again. Luckily, the rain parts where rather short, and when it rained, it was mostly a very light rain, you hardly got wet from it.

We went to the city around 4pm, 2 hours before the first game would even start. I met up with Christian, he was the only one that would come with me today, also I had a nice 50/1,4 lens for him to try out, and he enjoys using so I guess he will take it.

I was around with the OM-2 + 24/2,8 again,  good combo when going around in a crowd of people, with not much place to step back.  We walked around during the first game, then it started to rain again.,  We made  a short break at the Irish pub. Bit later we visited Georg in his flat, Thomas, Chris and many others were there already.

After some funny talk up there, we decided to go home around 10pm, with  short break on the main fan square,  for some more night photos. And btw photos, I forgot the battery for the Olympus 790 at home, so all photos here today where taken by Christian. All his photos can be found on flickr.

Rain. Showers. Thunder and lighting. That’s pretty much what the forecast said for today. And as usually, nothing of that happened. Even the sun came out, just for a short moment, but still. It wasn’t as hot as some days ago when the sky was clear blue, but also it was dry and no water from above. Great weather to go out and take photos.

I met up with Gervin in the city, he wanted to order some stuff and also ha d a film for developing. For shooting, I went with the OM-2 + 24/2,8, he took a bit more and used his F3 with 8mm Peleng, 17-35 and 60-300.  I took the OM-2 for 2 reasons, one was that it has a nice 24mm lens that let me get close, 2nd I wanted to test it because of the metering issue.

Never seen that much police in the city, on every corner there were a group of 6 standing around. Other corners had even more. Right now I guess we have more police then fan wandering around, makes the city the safest place ever. Lets see if that’s true tomorrow too, when the first game starts.

Today had everything, heavy rain, cloudy skies and from time to time even blue sky and sun. Strange weather. Sure will wetten up the tracks and fan grounds for the EM fan boys :). Lets see if it will end in a mud-wrestling competition too.

In one of those short nice-weather-break I decided to go on Gigapixel-Pano hunt. As Issac requested it, it should be something soccer related. Unsure about the weather, I didn’t want to go up the church tower in the city, so I went to the new stadium instead.

Quite a lot of police and security was around there, still noone asked what the hell I do there. Taking the photos worked quite well, sadly I didn’t put that much attention on it, so quite a few pixels left and right were wasted. And I need a bit more height next time. Megapixel count is around 750MP, not bad, but still 250MP short of my goal. Maybe next time.

Right now, the pano is still uploading, will post it in tomorrows entry. When you can’t wait, check here

I had ameeting with some friends from university today, since the class is over we had do diskuss who write what part of the paper we now have to hand in. Everyone got a piece of it to write, my part looks not to hard. Guess I was lucky

After university, I went to the city, wanted to check out how far they have come with the instalations for the EM. Looks all quite impressive, I had the Bessa with me and took quite a few photos. Right in the middle of the city I saw someone else taking photos too. The chief of Carinthia and the Mayor of the town where both posing for photos, hands full of flags and with tiny flags painted on their face. Next newspaper (Kärntner Woche, I think) will be fun to read.

Passing further thru the city, flags were everywhere. REALY everywhere. And who didn’t had a nice flag put up whatever they got their hands on. Luckily so far, I havn’t seen any small kids up there.

Also, the experiment from the lake is done. Quite a lot of erros due the wind, but I think I will take a lot more of them now.