on the 13th of february RISCSW employees had an icehockey match against the FAW employees in the icehockey-arena in linz. most of my co-workers have had only two, or three hours on skates some days before the match. this was all the training they had. and i have to say, they really were fighting very brave! unfortunately they lost - i think the final score was five for FAW and three for RISCSW. still i think all of them had real fun, no tooth or blood was spilled on the ice rink. a really fair and nice game, i guess some would call it "boring". icehockey match RISCSW vs. FAW in linz i bought a second-hand wacom "graphire 1" tablet on eBay, i think around october 2006 for about 25EUR (incl. p&p). i kept it unused until 25th of november, when i started to do my first digital drawing. at first drawing with the tablet was pretty odd, but i soon got used to it, and after several hours of drawing, i became acquainted with it. i soon had an idea of what to draw and started with a sketch. several hours later my first drawing was done - yippieh! unfortunately it actually was several hours too late, as i wanted it to be finished by valentine's day, but i missed it - i finished seven days later. nonetheless, zombiequeen was very happy about it, and i think she really liked it (she said she wanted a printed version of it, to frame it and hang it up on the wall). all in all it took me 33 hours in a total of 13 sessions. i used gimp v2.2.13, and the original size is 3466x4000 pixels (WxH). the file itself takes up 36MB of hard disk space, the opened image (in it's final, cleaned up version) has 14 layers and allocates 485MB of virtual memory. though the drawing has several flaws, i'm pretty happy the way it turned out. i hope you like it too. there's a "making of" site, showing the outcome of each session. i already have an idea for the next drawing, let's see when i will start to draw again. since it's summer, i prefer being outside, rather than drawing in my room... the "making of" falling in love coming up next in the "wrapping up the past:"-series: pics of klaudia and esprit, and another photo-safari with michele through linz.

from the 26th to the 28th of january i paid a visit to my brother's new house in graz. he and his wife have moved in only a few month before, and i had been there before only once, but at that time it was a construction site. so i was pretty curious about how it turned out. and i think it turned out pretty well. or, at least i liked it very much. the pics i took are not much of the house itself, but rather from a walk we took because of the fine weather (it was winter, and snow was all over the place, but it was rather warm this day, and there was loads of sunshine). so, here are the pics. images from the visit to my brother in graz on the 30th of january some co-workers and me have been to the IT'n'T 2007 trade fair in vienna. well, the trade fair had - as every year, i guess - not really much to offer, but it was big fun - as every year too. this year, again, there were some very lovely women giving away various things, from cupcakes to apples (no, i mean the healthy, not the crappy stuff!) - actually the real high-light at this trade fair. see some of them and other strange stuff at the link (and pics) below. some visual impressions from the ITnT 2007 in vienna coming up next in the "wrapping up the past:"-series: pics of an icehockey game of my co-workers and my first digital drawing with my wacom "graphire 1" tablet.

on 10th of january i brought my cam with me to the office. this day there was a very beautiful sunset, so i was really lucky. since this was in winter, the sun set at about 18:30. additionally it was very cloudy this day, and the sun lit the bottom side of the clouds. so, to summarize it, this was the perfect day for taking pics. and here are two of the entire series, which you can have a look at at the link below. both images from the hagenberg photo session two weeks later zombiequeen and i drove to wiener neudorf, which is close to vienna (such as gumpoldskirchen, both are located in lower austria). again, i had my camera with me to take pictures of pvnc's two lovely cats. pvnc went to ireland for one year in february and had to leave her cats in austria, so she wanted to have at least some pictures of her two cats she can take with her. since i love taking pics, and i love cats even more, this was pure fun for me. i think the cats also enjoyed it, at least they were not shy at all and even did some great posing. so, here are the pictures of sheila and simba. both images from the photo session with pvnc's cats coming up next in the "wrapping up the past:"-series: pics of graz and a visit to the ITnT.