After the first semester of studying Electrical Engineering is officially over I’m back in my hometown Klagenfurt.

Today I had a toboggan-trip (dt. rodeln) on Magdalensberg and I had to shoot the great sentiment on the top.

A few weeks ago, I ordered a canvas by pixum and I’m going to write some lines about it:

With pixum (works in cooperation with the biggest European fotofinisher CeWe Color) I had very good experiences with printing photobooks before. I compared the printing quality of some books with one I ordered at HappyFoto (an Austrian company) and I think that the HappyFoto-books can’t hold a candle to pixum. The photos are not that sharp as they are printed by pixum. But I tried something new: a canvas with the dimension 60×40 cm (cost factor: about 50 Euro and with an extra of 5 Euro for the delivery to Austria – if you’re one of the newletter-members of pixum you will often get a bonus up to 15 Euro).

So I ordered a canvas of one of my sunset-pictures whose colour gradients are really hard to print, so I thought it would be a nice shot to test the printing quality of the canvas. So here is the shot as I sent it to pixum (via Internet):

Since it will be unfair to compare the quality of the canvas only with a monitor, I compared it furthermore with the photobook. But have a look on your own (raws scanned in by a photo-scanner):

Here is the output of the canvas, on the right site you can see the linen-structure:

The left one is out of the photo-book, the right one is the original photo, as you can see above:

With the manifacturing quality I was satisfied. It could be better, but for the beginning, canvas are new in their product line it’s quite o.k.:

So all in all I think that the quality is quite good, but the price must decrease for the smaller formats (the biggest format there is 160×90 cm by now). First of all I was a little bit shocked, because pixum sent the canvas with a registered letter and not as a parcel.

I’m studying electrical engineering for 2 weeks now and it’s harder than I thought that it would be. Espacially mathematics and physics consume a lot of time.

My lectures (Vorlesungen) are:

In Deutsch: Grundlagen der Elektrotechnik (VO…Vorlesung, UE…Uebung), Mathematik A (VO, UE), Technik und Ethik (VO), Physik (VO, UE), Chemie (VO) und Einführung in die Informatik (VO, UE).

In English: Basics of electrical engineering,  mathematics, technics and ethics, physics, chemistry and computer science.

I am going upload a few pictures of my daily routine  in a few weeks (I have to get my cam Canon A710 from Klagenfurt firstly). But I’ve got one shot so far (it looks like the prison of Graz-Karlau, but it’s inside the TU):

Today I (I also met nomenestomen) visited the Alpenhighlandgames 2008 in Schloß Hallegg in Wölfnitz.

The funny games (in German):

- Bama schmeißn (Weitwerfen von Bäumen, Tageshöchstweite etwa 12,5 m)

- Bierle zupfn (0,5 l-Krug möglichst schnell austrinken, Bestzeit etwa 3,2 s)

- Eia wixn (ein rohes Ei unbeschadet möglichst weit werfen, bester Wurf etwa 46 m)

- Heihigl lafn (Hürdenlauf)

- Strick ziagn (Tauziehen)

Some impressions:

On 6th of August I returned from my trip to Iceland.

Here some photos:

http://picasaweb.google.de/christophprokop/Islandreise

I will write some more about this and some other trips in a few weeks in an own page.

Aaaahhhhh…………..

Today was my last working day as a ‘Zivi’. So I’ve more or less successfully fullfilled my alternative civilian service at Red Cross in Klagenfurt (9 months).

Here some statistical data of the time as a real ambulance officer (9 months minus 2 months of education):

I’ve been working about 1448 h in this 7 months. I’ve got 55 KTW-services (for moving sick persons, I’m the co-driver), 49 BKTW-services (it’s a service for people who can go, I’m the driver), 1 BT-service (for people who are sitting in a wheelchair – it’s nearly the same as KTW, I’m the co-driver), 4 RTW-services (for emergencies, I’m the co-driver), 2 ambulance services and now I’m going to enjoy 12 holidays.

Some impressions shot with my mobile-phone:

The theoretical education in Cap Wörth:

A ski-accident on 10th of January 2008:

We got an emergency to a disabled person on the ski piste in Bodental (RTW Ferlach). But the person was injured so bad that Alpin1 (from Patergassen) had to hospitalise the casualty to LKH Klagenfurt. But it was quite funny to cruise on the ski piste.

A car-accident (KTW; Keutschacher Straße Höhe Keutschach) on 2nd of July 08:

We were on the way back from Plescherken/Keutschach and we came accidentally to a head-on collision of a car and a bus (the bus tried to outran a tractor). The police was already in situ and the fire brigade arrived a few minutes later. About 10 minutes later, the rescue helicopter C11 arrived and touched down on the street. While we were doing our best, the fire brigade demounted the car to get the incarcerated casualty out of the car. The C11-crew hospitalised the disabled person to the UKH in Klagenfurt.