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It’s good to have a plan.

Posted on Oktober 3, 2010 by Lukas Hermann

Okay, this Sun­day will mark a very big spot in the (young his­tory) of my per­sonal site and espe­cially this blog. From now on, I will start to pub­lish arti­cles on a very reg­u­lar base.

I like shar­ing. To share some­thing is the most self­less action I can think of. Addi­tion­ally shar­ing helps peo­ple to get pop­u­lar, to show the world their ideas and also to get crit­ics and responses that make them going on with their work.

In the past, I thought a lot about how to share my ideas and finally found it via this web­site, which is curated only by me and with which I can do what­ever comes to my mind. But shar­ing stuff I find on the web is cer­tainly more dif­fi­cult. I tried sev­eral things like Twit­ter, social book­mark­ing, side­blogs and much more. But all these setups did not work good for me.

So I started devel­op­ing my wishes how to share effi­ciently. And I decided to make list posts. Now, lots of peo­ple among you may think: Uhh, list posts are bor­ing, not new or what ever. And you know, that might be true. But for me, they are the kind of posts, that fit my amount of spare time, my week and my brows­ing behavior.

So from now on there will be link posts. One for every day in the week from Mon­day to Fri­day. And this is what they will contain:

  • Every Mon­day I will present to you one dig­i­tal font, which makes my head swirl.
  • Tues­day will be the day of music. Music means a lot to me and I want you to take part in my jour­ney of bitrates, exper­i­ments with sound and instruments.
  • Wednes­day, the cen­ter of the week is reserved for all kinds of links, jour­nal­is­tic texts, web apps and more I adore.
  • My work at Beau­ti­ful Pix­els made me falling in love with nicely crated pix­els and that is what every Thurs­day is for. All kinds of dig­i­tal images, art and con­cepts will be included.
  • And last but cer­tainly not least, every Fri­day con­fronts you with mov­ing images. Video, movies, trail­ers and ads: The video link posts will fea­ture them all

So, this is what my blog will be about from now. It will show you my taste of all things dig­i­tal and web-concerned. And if there is some time left, the week­ends are the place for in-depth reviews of dig­i­tal media, thoughts about cur­rent affairs and much more. So keep on track­ing this site, it will def­i­nitely be worth it!

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New Yorker’s Archive — Heaven on Earth (2)

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Lukas Hermann

The New Yorker Mag­a­zine pro­vides an archive of old arti­cles for free read here. So far, so pretty!

But even bet­ter is the read­ing list sec­tion Award Win­ners which presents all pub­li­ca­tions, from essays over pro­files to fic­tion sto­ries, which have won National Awards in the last time. This is a huge resources pro­vid­ing just the best jour­nal­is­tic achieve­ments from one of the best news­pa­pers in the world — con­densed and preper­ated just for you.

Just awe­some.

Some of my cur­rent favorites are the essay “My Father’s Brain” and the photo gallery “Ser­vice”

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The Comeback of Print

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Lukas Hermann

Print header1

I love dis­cus­sions with­out a topic which is worth talk­ing about, they are funny to track because they never end. To me, the best exam­ple of such dis­cus­sions is the fight “dig­i­tal vs ana­logue read­ing”, “Print vs. Web”. Because each time I read another arti­cle about the deci­sion between pix­els and paper I ask myself “Why do peo­ple argue about a fight between two philoso­phies that are both deeply inte­grated in human life and which are that different?”

Every­body who owns a com­puter of any kind reads arti­cles on the web — and every­body owns books and prob­a­bly even more mag­a­zines. You see: Print is not dead and will not die — there is even greater demand for it. And read­ing eBooks and arti­cles on the web will increase as well. And you know what, it goes even fur­ther — the web is the rea­son for a huge come­back of print, not its death.

The so-called fight “web ver­sus print” is com­pletely non­sens to me because it is not the fight between equal and com­pa­ra­ble con­tent. Peo­ple like you and me most of the time read arti­cles on the web to get quick, cur­rent infor­ma­tion with short-time value — and buy books and mag­a­zines to get exclu­sive mate­r­ial which is avail­able for­ever and pro­vides a long com­sump­tion time and last­ing enter­tain­ment. This exclu­sive feel­ing of buy­ing well done print as an arti­cle of great per­son­al­ity and value in it has got no com­pa­ra­ble oppo­site on the web.

The only excep­tion to this the­ory are eBooks. eBooks are really fill­ing up the gap between exclu­sive but expen­sive print on the one side and (most of the time) free web con­tent on the other side — obvi­ously in aid of the web. But to me the only rea­son to buy eBooks is their lower price. And although they are that cheap, the effect of eBooks on the printed media con­sump­tion is not that big as you could pos­si­bly think by read­ing through those ear­lier men­tioned arti­cles on the web. To give you a con­crete exam­ple: While Amazon.com had a huge increase of eBooks sales dur­ing the last months, the sales of printed media rose up as well. This is just one exam­ple to prove that print is not going to die — the magic of a freshly printed book has not lost its effect on human beings.

So in my opin­ion, web and print shall just live peace­ful side by side and let each other have their advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. Com­bine them and you will be even hap­pier. Stop search­ing for the one per­fect medium to trans­port infor­ma­tion — it does not exist and will not come in the future.

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  1. Header pho­tog­ra­phy by volen (deviantArt) ↩
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Heaven on Earth (1)

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Lukas Hermann

I just need to buy a mag­a­zine like Clas­sic Rock or Rolling Stone, go through the reviews of new LPs and CDs and star them on Spo­tify. And after 10 min­utes of read­ing through the best new releases and search­ing them on Spo­tify, I am done with my music for the next 2 weeks of work and relaxing.

I love the interwebs!

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An ode to… Jack White

Posted on August 14, 2010 by Lukas Hermann

Jack White during a performance with

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He has become my first real idol. Music has always played a huge role in my (at this point quite short) life. But Jack White was the one who trans­formed my life into being really addicted to music and play­ing instruments.

He is one of the best gui­tarists in his­tory and his way of life suits per­fect into my image of a per­fect musi­cian. The fact, that he is doing his thing because he believes in music, wants to res­cue the Rock ‘N Roll and the blues was so inspir­ing to me. He is one of the most hon­est peo­ple in the busi­ness, never stops expand­ing his tech­niques. He was the one expos­ing me to blues and blues-rock music for the first time and his atti­tude stopped my illu­sion, that there are cer­tain things in life that are impossible.

Because he is just 34 but is the owner of a very pros­per­ous label and is singer, song­writer, gui­tarist, pianist and drum­mer — ful­fill­ing these roles in three dif­fer­ent bands which have dif­fer­ent aspects in there music. But he serves this all.

Con­cern­ing the music he makes, “The White Stripes” are def­i­nitely the band, which impresses me the most — every time I hear one of their songs. There is so much dynam­ics and pas­sion in this music, that it makes you for­get, that there are just two peo­ple per­form­ing that stuff.

He has (until now) done things other peo­ple could not even achieve in a whole life — that is really impress­ing. And all he needed to get to his rep­u­ta­tion was a cer­tain atti­tude: Never stop believ­ing — noth­ing is impos­si­ble. Seems a cool way of liv­ing to me. And is really successful.

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  1. Photo taken from Wiki­me­dia Com­mons — Shot by Kris Krug ↩
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10 Songs for the pretentious guitarist

Posted on Juli 31, 2010 by Lukas Hermann

Ram­ble On by Led Zeppelin:

This song is a per­fect exam­ple for what dynam­ics can do with music. The acoustic gui­tar changes to nat­ural dis­tor­tion in the refrain which cre­ates a com­plete new part with a dif­fer­ent atmosphere.

Man must dance by Johnossi:

Two men are able to achieve this com­plex groove. This is done with per­fect fin­ger­style gui­tar and per­fectly chooses percussion.

Com­ing back to life by Pink Floyd:

David Gilmour is the mas­ter of ambi­ent, atmos­pheric gui­tar. The intro of this song is nearly the best exam­ple for the abil­ity of a gui­tar to get the lis­tener in a spe­cial mood.

Jimi Hen­drix — Pur­ple Haze:

Nearly every song writ­ten by Jimi is remark­able. But Pur­ple Haze is so full of power and a per­fect exam­ple how to use Fuzz dis­tor­tion to get a unique sound.

Guns’N’Roses — Par­adise City:

Slash is a gui­tarist that denies any spe­cial tech­nique like fret tap­ping and prefers clean and dis­torted sounds. Par­adise City is his song to show this.

Van Halen — Eruption:

This solo is prob­a­bly the best ever pro­duced. Eddie Van Halen shows up his var­i­ous tech­niques com­bined with really impos­si­ble velocity.

The White Stripes — Blue Orchid

The sound you will hear is achieved with just two instru­ments. The White Stripes are the best way to show up what peo­ple can do with musi­cal nihilism.

Cream — Sun­shine of your Love:

Sin­gle notes make up Creams most rec­og­niz­able riff. And Clap­tons solos are just stunning.

The Racon­teurs — Con­sol­ers of the Lonely:

Blues­rock is not dead. And with this song The Racon­teurs define the genre quite new. Stun­ning rhythm with more than three changes in veloc­ity are com­bined with really cool, effected singing.

RHCP — Under the Bridge:

Frus­ciantes break­through. Under the Bridge is a song that every acoustic gui­tarist should learn. Play­ing it teaches you nearly every­thing about both fin­ger­style and rhythm guitar.

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