amdavidson

Small Town Germany

posted on 2010-03-31 - amd.im/rLVJ

This week and part of last I have spent in a very small town in Germany.

I grew up in a different small town in California, and in some ways it reminds me of home, but at the same time, it is ever so different.

The hotel’s sign and front yard

The hotel I am staying in has somewhere around 10 rooms. Mine is on the 3rd floor, right next to the owners’ apartment. It’s my understanding that all the employees of the hotel are family, and it appears that all, or nearly all, of them live there. Because the guy who checks you in also cooks you dinner, and the lady that brings you coffee also hooks up your internet (more on this later), it has a bed and breakfast feel.

The first night I stayed in this hotel, I arrived rather late after having driven all the way from Frankfurt, both GPS-less and hopelessly lost. I panicked to see that all the lights were off and the door locked. After spending a few minutes wondering who to call to resolve this (I had not made the reservation myself), I noticed that there was an intercom somewhat near the door. I rang it and was told in heavily accented english that “[I] must be Mr. Davidson, and that my key was inside on the chair and I could let myself in”. Sure enough, they unlocked the front door and my key was sitting on a chair with a hand written note with my name and room number.

A couple nights ago, I think I was the only guest staying in the hotel. I’m told this is commonplace during weekends as most people only come to visit the few companies here and leave for larger cities on the weekend when they are not working. I followed suit and went to Stuttgart for the day (see my earlier museum posts).

When I returned I found that again, the lights were off and the owners nowhere to be seen. This was another inconvenience but not because I couldn’t get in (I now had my key) but because I was planning to eat at the hotel and I needed the lady to log my room onto the internet, a daily process that seems horrifically antiquated but provides a reasonably fast internet connection.

Fortunately, I had a remedy for the food. Earlier in the day I had asked for recommendations of good places to eat from one of the vendor’s employees and he gave me the name and address of a restaurant not far from the hotel. I plugged the info into the GPS of my new rental car and got there with no trouble. I was surprised to see that the restaurant was being run out of what appeared to be the living room of a man’s substantial home. I walked in and was again the only person in sight, besides the owner/waiter/cook. He was a nice gentleman who spoke excellent English (again fortuitous because I could not read the menu). He told me that his ‘deer medallions’ were excellent and that I should order those. They were, in fact, quite good as were his ‘black forest noodles’.

The internet was resolved in a different way. I took the early evening of the innkeepers as a hint and laid down with a book early.

Mercedes Benz Museum

posted on 2010-03-30 - amd.im/AI2a

Not to leave a minute to waste in Deutschland I also visited the Mercedes-Benz museum on their factory campus not far from Porsche in Stuttgart.

I am not a rabid fan of Mercedes. I respect some of their early work, but don't really get the same thrill out of their later stuff. That might change in my septuagenerian years of life as it seems to do for many.

The museum was fun and interesting some of the cars were neat to see such as the world's first motorcycle and a wonderful wedge-shaped, rotary concept car but all in all it was much less appealing to me than the Porsche museum.

If you have some extra time, or are a big fan of Daimler-Benz it's worth a couple hours. But do not spend any amount of euros on their simulator. You do not get to drive the cars and it is a very poor simulation of much of anything.

Porsche Factory Museum

posted on 2010-03-29 - amd.im/gHx9

This weekend I also visited the Porsche Museum at their factory campus in Stuttgart. It is somewhere I have wanted to visit for years, but never really imagined I would go to.

It was a great sight. Unlike most museums the cars were not cordoned off with ropes and glass, a great deal of them were just sitting on the floor with people milling about. Some were elevated slightly, but it felt as though that was more for you to be able to easily see them rather than to separate them from you.

I also greatly appreciated that while the cars were clearly shined up for museum duty, many of them were not truly restored, with dings and cracks in the paint from years of use as drivers. Something that all cars such as these should experience.

If you ever find yourself in Stuttgart (or anywhere near it) visit this automotive mecca.

Burg Hohenzollern

posted on 2010-03-27 - amd.im/2wsd

I visited Burg Hohenzollern on my day off today, thank goodness for Germany and their stern reluctance to work on weekends.

One of the guys at the vendor sent me a list of things to do and one of them was to check out the Hohenzollern castle. I figured it sounded as good as any idea, being that I was in a country with castles, and I generally cannot say that.

It was a fairly quick drive from the hotel, down some fairly pretty Germany side roads through small villages and farmland. I could already see the castle up high up on a hill when I was still 10km away according to the GPS in my car.

I was too cheap to pay for a guided tour in German that I couldn't understand, but wandering the grounds was nice. It was smaller than I expect it to be, but it was still pretty big for a family home, even if it was for the Kings of Prussia. I posted some other photos of it that you can check out as well.

Sunset over Lake Geneva

posted on 2010-03-25 - amd.im/kCuc

Sunset over Lake Geneva

I got into Lausanne last night for a one night stay to visit a vendor. I drove here from Zurich and found the drive to be quite beautiful.

That being said, Lausanne was no disappointment even after the beautiful drive down here. I had a few free hours in the evening so I took a walk down to Lake Geneva and took this sunset shot while down there. You can see a few others as well.

Motocross Practice as a Honeymoon Warm-up

posted on 2010-03-22 - amd.im/6Ngc

I don’t know how many people have heard, but we’re planning on doing a motorcycle tour of some of the temples around Angkor Wat while in Cambodia during the honeymoon. That all sounds fine and good until one realizes that I have never ridden anything faster than a 150cc scooter and Naomi has never driven anything with a clutch, much less a motorcycle. With that in mind we set off to Livermore with David and his family and a dirt bike borrowed from a 13 year old girl.

After some prep and a few minutes of lessons from David, Naomi took off first. Well… “took off” might be a little strong, she did not exactly launch out of the gate, but after a few laps around an empty parking lot she was really moving and by the end of the day she was getting a micro-second or two of airtime off the jumps on the beginner track!

It was my turn next and I think I fared fairly well. Definitely somewhere between a toddler and Ricky Carmichael. Tanya also took a spin on the bike and did great save for one incident.

All in all we had a great time. Even the girls had fun, though were not all that interested in the motorcycles.

Thanks to David for the instructions and gear and sourcing the bike and thanks to Alex for taking a bunch of the photos while we were tooling around with the bike.

Search Field Text Without a Submit Button

posted on 2010-03-19 - amd.im/uowy

If you are trying to implement a search field in your website but do not plan on having a submit button (relying on the user to click enter), you're going to want to put instructions somewhere.

Here's how I handled it.

In my case, I decided to populate the box it self with the words "Type and press enter to search".

<input type="text" name="q" value="Type and press enter to search." id="searchfield" />

Unfortunately, this left the user with the task of manually deleting the text in the box before searching. Adding a tiny bit of javascript to your HTML element will automatically remove the text when the user clicks on it and if the user doesn't enter anything it will add the text back when the user clicks away.

<input type="text" name="q" value="Type and press enter to search." id="searchfield" 
  onfocus="if ( this.value=='Type and press enter to search.' ) { this.value = ''; }"
  onblur="if ( this.value=='' ) { this.value = 'Type and press enter to search.'; }" />

Hopefully it works for you all, I have only tested it in Firefox and Safari on a Mac.

Montana De Oro HDR

posted on 2010-03-11 - amd.im/PD5E

Took this HDR last weekend in Montana De Oro state park.

I'm definitely no tonemapping / HDR expert yet but I thought it was interesting enough to post.

Black Horse Swill

posted on 2010-03-08 - amd.im/eFri

Naomi and I took a nice trip down to San Luis Obispo this weekend for our engagement photos and took some time to visit all of our old spots. I took this shot of Naomi on our first morning there as she was enjoying some of Black Horse’s finest espresso-laden beverages.

We had a great time and our photographer was a lot of fun. The weather was generally wonderful, except for rain during the 2 hours of our engagement shoot. Fortunately it was expected and we were prepared, and I think the photos are going to turn out well regardless. I’ll try to get one or two posted once I get my hands on them.