Awesome Decks - Five Mile Scarecrow

My second ever longboard had to be something special and extravagant (just as my bass guitars, tell me if you want to see them). Also, I wanted to have a top-mounted deck as I was sick of the beginners-friendly feeling of the NinetySixty BooBam. And I aimed for a update on the graphic as well, you understand once you've seen the BooBam. Then I saw Scarecrow.

Top-mounted - check.

Extravagant - Look at this concave and the nose and tail, CHECK.

Nice graphic - Love the colors and the motive, check.

I added Paris trucks in red and matched the wheels and the bearings as well - but I am now looking for a better exchange bearing because the old ones really suck. Although I messed it up a little by having to much of a stress on the style, I really love how it feels on the street. As I have to go downhill pretty much everywhere I go, I really appreciate how the pockets lock your feet in and you can easily keep a little swing to your driving. But I don't really reach any top speeds, although it is actually going down a hill - the rough ground and the fact that it's still in Germany's rather flat northern area don't make for a fast track. Also, the W-concave really keep the weight down and gives just the right flex for me. You might have some issues at first getting along with the bulge, especially under your front-foot toes, but it becomes really important in judging the optimal position of your feet once you've found it. And the price of $160 makes it a really nice deal for a very special board.

Structure in Your Work

Whether you're in school, at university or in your job - no success without structure in your work. Managing your schedule and your documents is essential for keeping up with everything. These are my top tips for when your system is at its limits.

Change your system. I tend to create rather complicated and strict schemes for my work. But they aren't perfect, never. So whenever I get tired of one scheme I rip it into peaces and build a new one from scratch. This is a great motivation to keep everything organized.

Clean up. This seems to be a bit odd but it helps. You wouldn't believe how much junk you collect over the time - unnecessary stuff in your flat and loads of paper you don't even need anymore. As soon as you get rid of all the old documents you have to focus on less and you don't get distracted from the things that are currently important.

Get digital. Over the last two years of school I got together with some of the geeks and built a group on Google Drive so that we could use more than our own thoughts. Also your mobile is much easier to carry around than hundreds of documents and easier to organize. Worksheets and forms can be scanned and added to your library and also you don't have to share everything if you don't want to.


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Alien Post - Snapseed

If you are on Instagram you know how hard it is to get a badly shot picture right so you won't embarrass yourself in front of you followers. The Android and iOS app Snapseed is a super easy and free way to edit your shots for Instagram or any other pictures taken with your DSLR and in-phone camera. You have more possibilities than with the in-app Instagram editor and also the modifiers are better, both usability and performance wise.



You can decide how far you want to go: from basics like brightness and saturation or getting the framing right to rather arty features like center focus and HDR scape. However, it is super intuitive and every time you try out a new modifier you get an overlay with all important information for controlling it.

You don't always have to bring big changes to the colors, sometimes you might want to make it look like it wasn't even edited at all. But some pictures just scream for a make over.

Or maybe the are some spots in the pic that are too dark. Just use the selective adjust to boost these spots and dark alleys become fun and colorful.

So if you want to edit your shots on the go or just don't want to spend money on Photoshop or an professional app, this is perfect for you. Sometimes I even sit there for one hour or more to get the picture to where I think it's finished. You don't even have to know what you want, just tweak it 'till you like it and spread it out to the internet.


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Getting Inspired By Strangers

People are inspirational. How they dress, how they talk and what they do might give you a hint at an awesome idea at any time. So what is the perfect plan if you want to create new content and get work done? Getting out of your flat.

Doesn't matter if you're just heading out into the nature or getting down at a awesome place with an awesome view and awesome vibes getting your head heated up by ideas en masse. Or check in to a cozy coffee shop, get yourself a nice drink of your choice and get out your MacBook - or any other device that you work on.

What I want to say is that you need to get comfortable in your temporary workplace to get creative. This in combination with some nice people to watch are a super boost to your workflow.


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Struggling with your motivation

Especially as the days grow shorter, you wake up in the dark and it's dark again as you come back home you might easily slip into a feeling that makes your work, life and all the things you like seem not to be worth the effort. My experience is that you will definitely loose at least one day in this hole until you can do anything against it. This one day you should just spend on Netflix or YouTube because that's the only stuff that you'll get done.

So the next day you should just start off with a good run and a nice glass of milk, smoothie or milk. If you get the morning right, everything that follows will stand in a better light. So things you could perfectly do are:

• Searching for new places to get your work and other tasks done
• Putting the structures of your workflow, online space and data management to a test
• Cleaning up your workplace, desktop and phone
• Searching for inspiration online and in real life

How do you tackle a lack of motivation?

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Changes are chances

"Damn, you've changed" is mostly used in a accusing way. But why are so many people afraid of changes? A change is always a way to improve yourself, even if they might seem bad at first. You can still improve by dealing with it in a way that builds up on your general management skills and experience. So if you get yourself so far that you don't bother about a change that was bad at first, that's an improvement, isn't it?

So changes are chances to improve yourself. But what if it simply doesn't work out for you? Then maybe this change got you out of a hole in which you were stuck and that stopped you from deesperately improving the situation itself. So do you now have an idea of what would be perfect and even better than before? This is your chance improve the thing within the process of changing.

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Train Blues

Look into a person's eye. What do you see? Sorrow. Exhaustion. Boredom. At least that's what I see right now. I stopped smiling. I get home and close the door to my room. Lie down and recover from the day's horror. These people hurt me. I feel terrible standing right in the middle of them. But why do the feelings of random people even affect me? In fact it would be quite unhealthy to stay in this state of letting all this impact on you for too long. So is this why people just live alongside each other: There is just to much bad mood that would probably kill you if you let it have an influence on you. But this can't be the right way, not the best. Nothing big today.

My first very own camera - Nikon D5200

So I finally made it to get my own camera. Finally I can film while I am on the board, take the camera where ever I want and don't have to worry about people being paranoid about their pictures when they are moved from the memory card to a hard drive.

May I introduce: The Nikon D5200. As you might have read in the news section I bought it mostly because of the filming perks like 60 FPS shooting and exposure adjusting. The only other difference to the D5100 I used so far is that I now use the auto focus system of the lower upper-class D7100.

Also I love the updated interface. The graphics showing the exposure settings don't only tell you the current settings, but also give a relation to the overall spectrum of each of the settings by a visual feedback in the outer circles. By linking your most often used settings to the "My Menu", Nikon frees you of searching the currently important item in all of the different menus.

The kit I ordered comes with the AF-S DX 3,5-5,6 / 18-55mm VR II G lense. In addition to the camera itself there will follow a decent bag (currently I am aiming for the Case Logic SLRC-205) and a standard tripod. However, I will try to get as much out of the camera as possible with these so far rather limited possibilities.

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Hamburg Longboard Spots - Slalom and Speed

Today's spot is a lot shorter but I guess you could say it's a double-spot. It consists of two runs: One is a bit longer and keeps you on a continuous but shallow slope. The other one is just a short downhill track of about 100 meters. I actually had to mark the downhill bit by hand as it is no official way.

So we took some empty glass bottles from home with us to put them up as pylons. Some might say that was a little risky because the bottles might brake when I go around them to close and blah. Well, one did brake but only at the top so nothing too bad. People have done dumber things than that and still there are enough of them alive to go on with dumb shit. So let's go.


You actually drop in with quite some speed to get along the flat bit in the middle. Also there is a little crack just 50 meters after the start but that isn't any real problem. We didn't use all the space we had because we were to lazy to get so many bottles although we actually placed the crate on top of one of the boards. And as there were cars coming it would've been way too much work to get so many bottles out of the way and back into place afterwards. It took quite some time to figure out a setup for the pylons that isn't too hard but not boring either. Once we got it right there were cars trying to get along that street.

Actually we decided that the second built was enough and shortly got over to the downhill bit. Unfortunately we didn't get any good shots of that because of shadow and the wrong lens and stuff. Not my best work.

However, Wednesday I will give you some information on my camera and Saturday we're going to visit a place that you  might know from the morning bike ride. 'Till then, keep exploring and save your spots.

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Oops, I did it again - Morning Bike Rides

Storm it! Once again I got caught up getting ready for a bike ride instead of going to bed when arrived at home at six in the morning. This really get close to a bad habit as these hours decide whether your day will be awesome or terrible.

The obvious thing about going to bed at that time is that you won't wake up until noon. That might be part of a lifestyle for some people but I do not like that anymore as it destroys your biorhythm and leaves you with half of the day gone.

On the other side you might have a problem when you're inexperienced with staying up more than 18 hours at once. Because if you decide to stay up throughout the morning you'll have to keep it going until the following evening. What is just as bad as missing the first half of the day? Missing the second half. Or even most of the next night as well.

But once you are about to get out of your cycle or if it is already out of control, it is the best possibility to bring it back with one -- for your body terribly shocking -- night and day with out sleep. Because when you go to bed at the time you actually need to you will actually sleep. At least if you didn't use caffeine or anything alike to stay awake, they might actually get you into trouble in terms of sleep.

Boarding in the rain

Longboarding is so much fun as long as the sun shines or at least the floor is dry because rain is the natural enemy of every longboarder. Your griptape gets wet and dirty, your legs get sprinkled and your trucks and bearings don't like the water either.

Although you might actually stay on otherwise perfect skating-ground it is the equivalent to a bike or a car on wet grass and mud. Your wheels are a lot harder to turn and you have to be careful where to ride and step in case you want to use your shoes before the next day as the water gets whirled up onto your shoes and takes every little chunk of sand with it. Also you should be aware that you'll probably need a dry place outside for the board not to drop the water onto the floor inside (mostly a problem when living with your parents). You will need to clean up your board your shoes and your legs after the wheels spread the mud in little drops.
On the photo it luckily was only a short ride to the bus stop so it wasn't all that bad but only because I had luck with the bus arriving just then.

Why Longboarding? (2/3)

Hope Monday's post helped you :)

So now that you remember what your longboard is, how it's shaped and how it behaves under your weight (no offense) you should try to catch the spirit of longboarding. The feeling of the street melting under your feet, catching you up in waves to throw you forth and back ever so gently.

Never forget: It's no race, no contest. It's about the feeling you get standing on the board. Do you feel save or are you afraid to tip over? Do you want more or is it just enough? Tell me what you think while you're riding your very own waves!

Why Longboard? (1/3)

Longboarding.

Downhill, cruising, carving, freeride, dancing.

So many possibilities all made from simply a piece of wood and wheels. Of course, nowadays longboards are more than that. Bamboo, Canadian maple, glass fiber. Trucks, bearings, wheels. Many options to play with that piece of wood.

But you should watch out not to get lost. Longboading isn't all 'bout racing or having better parts than the guy or girl right next to you. If you're stuck in that loop of "bigger, better, faster" just take your board outside to a place you two have never been before and lay down on it and feel the edges and bends, the flex and the ground below your wheels.