I am Matze

My first photo exhibition

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In early 2022, I joined a newly founded nature photography group in Nürnberg. We meet monthly and occasionally embark on photo excursions together. Over time, the desire came up to showcase our photos to spread the fascination for nature.

After 1½ years of work, the big day had come: The opening of our photo exhibition. About 50 people came to the vernissage to see the pictures, listen to the speeches, eat pretzels and drink sparkling wine.

Alpine ibex in Bavaria

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most memorable experiences I’ve had this year was a hike to the Benediktenwand, where I encountered a remarkable creature: the Alpine ibex. Join me on this adventure as I share my journey, the beauty of the Benediktenwand, and the wonderful encounter with these magnificent animals.

Over the past few years, my family has developed a tradition of going hiking a few days together once a year. This september, we were out and about in the Karwendel. Since we had a great time there, my mum and I decided to stay in the alpine region for longer. We did some research and found out that the slopes of the Benediktenwand offered a good chance for spotting Alpine ibex. As neither of us had ever seen a wild Alpine ibex in our lives, we decided to go there.

Uncommon geese in Munich's English Garden

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Last weekend we went on a city trip to Munich. Among other things, we explored the city center, enjoyed the view from one of the towers of the Frauenkirche (‘Cathedral of Our Dear Lady’), walked through the grounds of the Olympic Park, and marveled at the exhibits in the Pinakothek der Moderne (‘Pinakothek of the Modern’).

One of our most memorable experiences was going to see a play at the Residenztheater with two of our friends from Munich. With them we also visited the gardens of Nymphenburg Castle and the Natural History Museum.

Visit to the forest of the fire salamander

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

On our annual company hike in the autumn of this year we spotted three fire salamanders. These cool creatures are known for their vibrant yellow (sometimes orange) and black coloration, which serves as a warning to predators of their toxic skin. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, but it sparked my interest in these cool looking creatures. When I told my mother about this sighting, she told me that she knew an area where I could find even more of them.

Trip to Heligoland

Sat, 11 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Heligoland is a small German archipelago in the North Sea consisting of two islands: the main island (1km²) and the Düne (dune) (0.7km²). When I first heard about the wildlife of Heligoland, I knew I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

So, this summer I went there for a four day trip. We boarded the Halunder Jet in Hamburg in the morning and 3½ hours later we arrived at Heligoland. The boat trip itself was an experience: The catamaran’s top speed is 35kn (~65km/h), at which it travels most of the 170km distance. That day we had a rough sea with an average wave height of 2½ meters. You had to hold on tight when you left your seat to walk around the ship. When Heligoland appeared on the horizon, I went to the upper outside deck to get a better view. A big wave of spray caught me, so I later left the ship half wet.

Black swan near Dechsendorf

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Last year I spotted a black swan flying by together with a group ordinary mute swans. At that time I wrongly assumed it to be a common mute swan with melanism.

My first sighting of a black swan

It took a whole year until I saw another black swan at the Großer Bischofsweiher. This time, however, I searched the web and realized my fallacy: Black swans (Cygnus atratus) are a separate species and not native to Germany, but some abandoned and/or feral individuals or small groups of them can be sighted in Europe.

Use Lombok's @CustomLog for logging in Liferay

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Lombok is a excellent Java library that helps to greatly reduce boilerplate code. If you do not know Lombok yet, check out their website and have a look at their detailed documentation which has many examples.

One neat feature of Lombok are the various @Log annotations, for example @Log4j2 to make the usage of Apache’s log4j 2 more easy:

@Log4j2
public class LogExample {
  
  public static void main(String... args) {
    log.info("Let us start!");
  }
}

Unfortunately, there is no @Log variant for Liferay’s log mechanism. However, with Lombok’s new @CustomLog (introduced in version 1.18.10) we can handle that in a pleasing manner.

Photography short tips: Reduce shake blur

Sun, 22 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I often find myself in the situation of making a picture with a low shutter speed while the camera is attached to a tripod. Pressing the shutter-release button shakes the camera (at least this is true for my smaller, lightweight tripod). That way, motion blur can be introduced in the image. That is specifically a problem in macro work, where not only the rotational shake blurs the image but the translational shake too.

Display dependency updates in Maven

Tue, 10 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

When developing software, it is a good practice to always use the newest version of all dependencies. That way we benefit from the latest bug and security fixes. But looking frequently for updates manually would be an annoying task.

At least for projects build with Maven there is a quite handy, build-in solution. Run the following command in a shell located at your projects root folder:

mvn versions:display-dependency-updates

This will produce output similar to this one here:

Excursion to the butterflies in Großenohe (Franconia)

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Today I took part at an excursion to the small and lovely village Großenohe in the heart of Franconian Switzerland. The field trip was arranged by the Erlanger location group of the LBV, a bavarian nature conservation NGO.

After an interesting general introduction about butterflies and the species we could expect to see, we walked to the first observation area.

Here, we stood in front of a hillside covered with calcareous grassland. A big variety of butterflies and other insects flew from flower to flower. With the help of our tour guide and a butterfly field guide, we could identify most of them. Amongst others, we saw the following butterflies:

Host Google webfonts yourself

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

All the resources that are needed for this website are self-hosted. That way, there is no chance that others (like google or facebook) can track you. The problem is that most webdevelopers don’t care (and there are other reasons why you maybe don’t want to self-host some resources). In consequence, most templates, tutorials, examples etc. make use of CDNs, like code.jquery.com or fonts.google.com.

Most of the time, it is quite easy to self-host those resources. In case of jQuery, you can simply download the .js file and put it on your webserver. If you want to self host one of googles webfonts, it is more complicated than that. Here is how I am doing it since I discovered the neat tool google-webfonts-helper:

Font Awesome in Hugo

Sun, 13 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Here is a simple way to use Font Awesome in Hugo, the popular open-source static site generator.

1. Get Font Awesome ¶

Go to Font Awesome’s GitHub page and grab the newest release .zip file (fontawesome-free-X.Y.Z.zip).

2. Include Font Awesome in your project ¶

In this ZIP file go to the folder fontawesome-free-X.Y.Z/svg-with-js/js/. Here is the file fontawesome-all.js, put this in your project’s static folder.

3. Add custom shortcode ¶

Now we will add a custom shortcode to hugo to make using Font Awesome easier: Create a folder shortcodes in your project’s layout folder if it does not already exist. Then create a new file with the name fa.html. The content of the file should be the following:

Darktable: Larger GUI

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’m using Darktable on a WQHD display (2560 × 1440 pixel). For my taste the GUI elements are a bit to small on such highresolution monitors. It’s getting even wore if you use a 4K screen.

Fortunately a simple commandline parameter will fix the problem:

--conf screen_dpi_overwrite=120

This will scale the sice of all GUI elements with a factor of 1.2 (at least on my Windows system). Instead of 120, you can use even higher values which will result in a higher scale.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I am a professional software engineer and a passionate photographer . I’m living in Franconia/Germany and finished my Master’s Degree (M. Sc.) in Computer Science at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in 2018.

I gained my first programming experience as a teenager by writing my own small computer games in Java. At that time, I also discovered my interest in photo editing software and the technology behind it. For my seminar paper at the end of school (W-Seminar), I wrote a basic one myself. I have also always been a curious news reader and like to stay on track about technological developments. Throughout my studies, as I professionalized my skills, computer science never stopped being also a hobby of me.

Gallery

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have a passion for macro and wildlife photography. Being in nature, watching the small scaled world inspires me and is a lovely distraction from the stress of everyday life. Getting to know the manifold fauna with all its different approaches to survival is a fascinating, never ending discovery tour for me.

More recently, I also became interested in bird photography. I enjoy the process of getting to know and learning to identify (by sight and voice) the various feathered species surrounding me.

I'm a software engineer.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a young, yet experienced software engineer who finished his master’s degree in computer science in 2018. Since that year I work for HMG Systems Engineering to develop innovative healthcare software that helps patients to get the best fitting drug at the proper dosage based on their individual genetic properties.

I’m also a big supporter of free/open source software and always made my personal code publicly available if I considered it to be helpful to others. You can see some of my projects and code contributions here and on GitHub .