Watching my mom make cream cake. Click on the black area to start the video.
Category: Photos
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Photowalking into 2018
I started the year with a walk in and around Riehen, Bettingen and Chrischona.
Some snapshots (unedited, pêle-mêle) can be viewed on my Flickr photostream:
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Snapshots of the day
I took part in yesterday’s Basel Photography Meetup. The topic was construction sites. Quite a challenge. And inspiring to see what other photographers see at the same location.
My snaps:
My fave of the day is really for my collection of bicycle content. Velo content for the win:
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Best chiperoni.ch snapshot of 2016?
Another year has passed. And it’s time to look at my photos and select a snapshot per month.
My photo selection skills are influenced by memories, rather than the photo’s quality alone.
The method:
I quickly scan through my photos on a per month basis and select a photo based on number of views, personal taste, or memories or a mixture of all three.History:
See past summaries for 2015 and 2014 and 2013 and 2012 and 2010.January 2016
February 2016
March 2016
April 2016
May 2016
June 2016
July 2016
August 2016
September 2016
October 2016
November 2016
December 2016
Your feedback and comments are highly appreciated.
You can also view the selection in this Flickr album.
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The fast track to DIY images
For all my creative photography friends, here’s an article by Moz on how images boost conversion. And a list of tools.
- Visage https://visage.co/
- Recordit http://recordit.co/
- GIFboom (no link cos the sample photos look like they are intended for a dating site)
- Placeit https://placeit.net/
- Studio http://www.madewithstudio.com/
- SnapChat (errr… really?)
The sample images displayed in the Moz article aren’t very inspiring but the tools look useful.
My toolset? I use Canva and Photoshop at the day job and Pixelmator on my MacBook at home.
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Best snapshot of 2015?
Here is an attempt to find my best snapshot per month for 2015.
January 2015
February 2015
March 2015
April 2015
May 2015
June 2015
July 2015
August 2015
September 2015
October 2015
November 2015
December 2015
The method:
I quickly scanned through my photos on a per month basis and selected a photo based on number of views or memories or both.History:
See past summaries for 2014 and 2013 and 2012 and 2010. -
Reasons to blog
I saw this article today on the benefits of blogging:
“So why should you blog?” https://t.co/sxbWSvtWPI
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) November 1, 2015
- Blogs refine your thoughts
- Blogs reward the creator
- Blogs amplify your humanity
- Blogs connect us to our tribes
- Blogs give introverts a voice
- Blogs reward the “new age” publishers
- Blogs embrace the experimenters
- Blogs accelerate discovery
- Blogs open up a world without borders
I’ve written about the reflective power of writing. E.g. here.
I bet, there were similar articles about writing ever since writing was invented.
It’s quite difficult to carve out a space in our multimedia world to sit down and write and reflect and create. Many times I just feel like I am part of the echo chamber. Not adding any value. Not going deep enough.
One reason to keep your blog going is digital memories.
The weather was beautiful today. Sunny and warm. I tried to capture the day and hold onto the moment with these snapshots.
Walking down the stairs:
Crossing the river Rhein at the Kraftwerk:
This bicycle colour is cool:
Looking down:
Just like in San Francisco, the fog moved in at around 5 pm:
Autumn colours:
I am continuing my Vine experiment. Here’s the new water fountain in Riehen Dorf:
Riehen https://t.co/OIWZPqef3c
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) November 1, 2015
Video isn’t easy. At all. This Coschedule blog post mentions some tools to explore:
- Video Hance (iPhone)
- QuickCast (iPhone)
- ScreenFlow (desktop tool)
Always a good resource, Hubspot lists video ideas to try out for your business.
What tools or apps can you recommend? I’m on Android.
By chance, I learnt that there is an edit function in Vine.
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Autumn colours
Last weekend, I went for a walk on Belchen in the southern Black Forest (1414 m). Not as high and spectacular as the Swiss alps, but still very beautiful.
I nearly forgot to take my camera.
Here are some snapshots:
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Blue light
I like this snapshot of blue light flooding the rest of the room:
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Handheld shapshot taken along the river banks of the Rhein
Here is a handheld shapshot taken along the river banks of the Rhein during dusk yesterday evening:
When I moved to Basel many years ago, some of my conversations went like this:
Nchenga at Chiperoni.ch: I really like Basel. It’s got a lot of cultural events, museums, cinemas for a city of this size. It’s well-connected, has a great public transport system, just the right size, etc.
Swiss counterpart: Basel doesn’t have a lake.
I heard the same comment several times. Until it occurred to me.
Many Swiss cities are located near a lake. Zürich, Geneva, Lausanne, Luzern, Lugano, Locarno. A sizeable city needs a lake. -
Riehen – Brombach – Schopfheim – Haagen – Riehen bicycle tour
I cycled to Schopfheim. An easy tour about 20 km one way. Going I went via Brombach. Coming back I cycled on the other side of the Wiese river via Lörrach-Haagen.
Riehen – Brombach – Steinen – Maulburg – Schopfheim – Haagen – Riehen
There’s one stretch between Steinen and Höllstein where the bicycle route follows the busy main road, B317. Loud and lots of fuel fumes and particulates.
I missed one turn-off between Maulburg and Schopfheim and cycled the path up to Wiechs instead.
Category: easy
Length: about 40 kmSome snapshots:
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I like this Basel snapshot https://flic.kr/p/xZMPbN
“Buvettes” are a big thing in Basel in summer. Their popularity is increasing.
Same as street food trucks.
Photos taken with a Moto G 2nd Gen smartphone. The best camera is the one that is with you.
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Sursee – Schenkon – Sempach – Nottwil – Sursee bicycle tour
Some snapshots from my Lake Sempach bicycle tour on Sunday:
The tour is about 20 kilometers. If you have an all-terrain bicycle, try to follow the path closest to the lake. That’s more enjoyable than the busy road.
I managed to miss the turn-off to Sursee SBB train station. And so I saw Schenkon twice.
Category: easy
Length: 20 km -
Notes and photos from #UXcampch
Some notes and photos from Saturday’s UX camp in Zürich:
Adrian Sameli took us thru the process of building infographics. His tip on tools to use: Excel and Adobe Illustrator. He tried one or two infographic tools but didn’t like them much. In the discussion we looked at d3js.org.
Next, I attended a session on atomic design. Design systems not pages.
Developers need to agree early on with designers on the semantics of the smallest, small and medium building blocks. These then are used in templates to build pages.
Background reading: Atomic design by Brad Frost.
Focus on identifying modules, semantics and adding markup first.
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) May 16, 2015
The discussion after the presentation got straight to the daily challenges. Questions like
- How do you get developers to use the existing pattern? Nobody reads documentation. In an ideal world, developer and designer sit in the same room and discuss the initial elements and define the markup. In real life the UX team may be much smaller than the developer team and might be geographically distributed, etc.
- Is anybody using Pattern Lab in real-life projects? Very few projects get paid to build a pattern library. Pattern Lab is really more for larger projects due to the effort involved. How can this be improved?
Next, I listened to Simone Reichlin talk about the RITE method vs traditional user tests.
About the RITE method http://t.co/MzHAlYCRsI
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) May 16, 2015
Main idea: Often you see some obvious problems in your UX design after your first or second test person. Instead of going thru the whole test with the remaining test participants, change the prototype with your improvement between tests. And then continue testing your changed prototype.
Main requirement: Designer needs to watch the user test. This shortens discussion time afterwards.
Tools used: Sketch and inVision.Don’t change too much. Follow Medlock’s classification.
Want to try RITE? Start with the traditional method first. Only use RITE after you have gained some experience in carrying out user tests.
Prio 1 obvious cause, quick solution, implement the fix and test with the next participant.
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) May 16, 2015
Next:
A very good session by Vincent van der Lubbe on creating space in conversations. And we even got a reference sheet to take home. The hard part is putting this into practise.
Fidel Thomet presented his B.A. project, Flaneur.io. It’s a Chrome extension to capture digital findings in form of text fragments gathered while browsing the web.
We briefly looked at Marian Dörk’s PivotPaths. This podcast by datastori.es was recommended.
Unknown, useless fact about me:
Once upon a time, I had to write a uni term paper on Walter Benjamin and Paris in the 19th Century.My snapshots are on Flickr.
Disclaimer:
All mistakes are my own. Please let me know if I got something really wrong. I’m here to learn. These notes help me to reflect and learn. -
Dashboard
An orange vespa crossed my path this week.
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I went photo-walking today
I hope you like some of the snaps I took today:
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Four Flickr faves for a Chiperoni.ch snapshot
I took this snapshot on Friday evening on my way home from work:
Since then it’s received four Flickr faves.
Hope you like it.
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Embedded Flickr photos not showing in Chrome
I’m seeing some unexpected page views:
Flickr photos embedded in the old way are not showing in Google Chrome on Mac. But they are showing in Safari on the same machine. I disabled all my Chrome extensions except Lastpass, but the photos are still not loading.
This is how they are embedded:
Any ideas why the photos are not showing in Chrome on Mac?
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An umbrella of petals
Snapshot of the day:
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Collecting boring flower snapshots
I’ve added some new flower snapshots to this set.
