Bavaria, By Mara L.

Copyright 2008 Jens Haas - www.jenshaas.com

Jens invited me back, what a novelty! After so-and-so many coffees in Manhattan, and summers where Jens would drop in at my various places of sojourn in Italy, I seem to have made it into the tiny circle of people he allows into his life. Not that he invited me home. We met up at a beer garden in Bavaria (it goes without saying, near the Alps – he is still photographing his Mountain Project). And we shared one of the foods that, I admit, Italy cannot offer: a huge Bavarian “Brezl.” This is a heavenly snack, rather unlike its Manhattan sibling, the so-called pretzel (for reasons unknown to me usually offered in half-burnt condition). The crisp and light Bavarian version is to be enjoyed outside, sitting under trees. While I tend to think that summer means beach, this certainly is an option!

What Typewriter Do You Use – Part 10

Copyright 2008 Jens Haas - www.jenshaas.com

Given that screen estate is always limited, “lightbox” viewer applications are a very economic way to show image galleries, flash movies, and the like. I believe I’ve tried all the better viewers (named GreyBox, Slimbox, Thickbox, iBox…), and ended up using Shadowbox. Unlike some others, this one is very flexible, and the code is clean and fully standards compliant – heureka! Still, I am not sure yet if I find “popup” boxes in general, and those that come in the disguise of a “lightbox” in particular, too gadgety to show my work. I did my best to make the presentation less distracting, which is one of the reasons why I now use white throughout my site. Examples for how I used the viewer are here (image galleries) and here (flash movies).

If I don’t like the result in a couple of weeks, I’ll write new code from the ground up for my entire site, only using html, php, and css. After years of Flash and JavaScript, that should feel like a cleansing ritual!

(P.S.: These foreign traffic cones from yesterday – no Photoshop, they looked exactly like this.)