Animals!

Yeah, I like taking pictures of animals, especially birds. Here in Vienna, there's been a veritable invasion and revolution in the avian fauna, in that the usual crows were replaced and intermingled with dun crows. Their offspring are even fertile, so it's hard to tell if one crow is an actual dun crow, or a crossbreed. My lack of experience in that field does not help, either.

True to form, I'll start out with something boring. Since in the Palace park of Schoenbrunn, most animals are wildly overfed by tourists, they hardly even take notice of the presence of humans. This one just kept on scrounging food while I was roughly 1 m (or 1 yard) away. Behold my tolerance for non-metric measurements!



Well, mallards are not exactly exciting, either. Lethargic until some tourist or other throws them some crumbs, or what have you. Or until they get in a girl fight. These three ladies (there were no males, none at all. Perhaps summer resort?) looked at me as if wanting to say "Well now, what do you want, young man?". They did not really seem indignant about my photographing them, however.

Girl fight! Check it out!
I wonder if that'll get me more hits...

So, it's a toss-up between these three pictures as far as my personal favourites go.











There was a gaggle of dun crows, and they usually remind me of businessmen, bustling around, having discussions over pickings…
They also have meetings in high places. I tell you, they are taking over.


That's it for today, I'll do some more rummaging and taking pictures (talismere said she wanted detail pictures of architecture... We'll have to see about that, won't we).

What I forgot to say: All the pictures I took are free to use, as long as you give me credit... Not that I can imagine people wanting to use them. Cheers!

So!

It's been over a month, time to put more boring things in here. I'm currently in Vienna (nicest city in the world, I might add), clearing up some personal stuff. This did not keep me from taking pictures, luckily. So I'll write little here, and let the pictures do the talking.

Basically, it's pictures of Vienna (houses and sights), and specifically picures of the Museum of Military History, where they had two whole days of pre-WW2 demonstration shootings (with gunpowder, obviously...). Gotta love re-enactors. Well, here goes!













This is Schoenbrunn Palace, the Austrian imperial summer residence. It's situated farther away from the city's center.


















This is the Gloriette, and below it, the Neptune fountain, situated in Schoenbrunn Palace's parks.














This is the Hofburg, with the Heldenplatz in front of it, the 'Heroe's Square', in a rough translation.


Okay, enough sightseeing. Here come the guns.





Soo... this is a mortar. I don't know the exact grenade size, but it was something around 25-30 cm (or 10-12") in diameter, which is already pretty damn large. It was pretty loud, too, even at some distance.



























A minstrel group, with dancer. Although definitely not my cup of tea, the music was nice.














This is a so-called 'Haufen', where Pikeneers and Musketeers fight together against both cavalry and infantry. They had a snarling sergeant-major to boot, too!


So, that's it for now, I have more pictures stored, but I'm not in the mood to select any more now ^_^



P.S.: blogger's playing Old Harry with the layout, I'll have to work around that.

Shameful, isn't it...

Well, hello there!

Even though having lived amongst and with computers for the far greater part of my life, I've only now come to write a blog (having been spurred on to do it by a friend of mine, for purely selfless reasons, I am sure). What you might find here will possibly include (but won't be limited to) the following:

• Robotics
• Engineering in general
• the state of the world, as perceived by me
• my surroundings

For starters, here's my alma mater, the place I hope to escape from in a few weeks' time. That's right, I'm almost finished here! So there probably won't be many more pics of Winterthur. We'll see.

The school, the University of Applied Sciences Zurich, is the oldest of its kind in Switzerland, shaping engineers (mostly construction) well before the ETH Zurich did. Being very close to that university, it's somewhat the 'next stop' for people who don't make it there.

This is the main (and oldest) building of the entire campus. You can tell its age, especially during winter, because the ground level classrooms never attain a temperature close to anything like comfort.








It's not as bad as it sounds, really. I enjoyed studying here, made a few friends along the way.

This is the old armory of Winterthur. It once almost burned down, I was told, and was re-built to the original image. Its construction is traditional for this region, called 'Fachwerkbau' in German, I guess the approximate translation would be 'half-timbered' in English.

This picture was taken facing east, in the general direction of St. Gallen. The road is therefore aptly named 'St. Galler Straße', just after the pedestrian crossing.



Well, that's all for now, folks. Thanks for reading! More to come.