I like this photo of Claire (https://twitter.com/theuniverse) and me a lot. Dreaming and smiling ;)

Just stumbled over it while looking for a few photos for the partners. Thanks again Florian for taking the photos!

I just tweeted this:

I can’t get my @apogeedigital Duet 2 USB to work with the latest @Skype version. On none of my Macs. Anyone having an idea? It used to work back in the past and I only updated Skype and not the Duet 2 or its software/firmware. Thanks for help!

This morning – actually yesterday morning – I was setting up a podcast recording for my twumble podcast with Bastian Allgeier. I used to use an USB mic for that, but recently got a new Sure SM 7B and am selling my Rhode USB Podcaster (I’ll write about this later). I connected my Duet 2, opened Skype and picked the Duet USB in the audio preferences of Skype. No input signal …

I recorded the conversation with Bastian using another input device for Skype and locally recorded my own track with Quicktime (since I could not record anything with Audition when using Skype – but that is another story).

After our conversation, I spent a lot of time searching the Web, tried everything, I could think of, but I did not find a solution. A few hours back I have written the Apogee support, as well as I posted a question in the Skype support forums.

Now the Apogee support got back to me with the following, very simple answer:

Skype is considered a 1 input, 2 output software in terms of audio. This means that you would only get signal from input 1 on Duet. Do you have your microphone attached to input 1, or input 2 on Duet? When you have Duet selected as the audio input within Skype's audio preferences menu, and your microphone attached to input 1, do you see signal on Skype's meters?

Doooohhhh … this really is the only thing I did not try to do. I connected my Duet to all my macs, but always had the mic connected to the second input. Now, that I connected it to the first one, it works.

This did cost me a lot of time today and maybe this post saves another person a bit of time, when finding it, while searching the Web for a solution.

Many thanks to the support of Apogee though!

I did not use my Kindle a lot up to now, but with my move out of my office (my daughter wanted my studio) down to the ground floor, I do not have as much space for my books and decided to only really buy pretty physical books and anything tutorial or tech related, I am trying to get digitally.

I recently purchased an e-book in the ePUB format and sent it to my Kindle e-mail, just to find out, that Kindle does not like the ePUB version of a book. I quickly checked, what’s there to convert e-books and stumbled over Calibre. Downloaded the software for my Mac (also available for Windows 32bit, Windows 64bit and Linux), installed it and it directly worked perfectly.

Thanks Calibre!

Sunset in the Eifel. Staying in a hunting lodge somewhere in the nowhere in the middle of a forest.

Meeting a lovely group of people in Berlin. Not even at the event I am at. Hey Joschi, Tantek and David.

My good friend Eva-Lotta Lamm is organising two workshops in London on May 31st and June 1st. They are titled “Sketching Interfaces” and “Sketching for Visual Thinking & Sketchnoting”. If that sounds like anything for you, I can highly recommend checking the long description, as I know you’ll have a good day with Eva-Lotta.

Read workshop description.

As usual I will write a longer wrap-up post at the beyond tellerrand blog shortly, but I am absolutely overwhelmed by the lovely, friendly and kind words for beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf. Thanks so much!

Thanks also for the lovely presents I got at beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf to Jens Meiert, Tomas Caspers, Anke Mehlert, Chris Heilmann, Stefan Baumgartner, Andreas Nebiker, Justin Avery, dina Amin, Jared Tarbell and Vic Lee (I hope I did not forget anyone). Anke (and Chris) even did the 2016 Düsseldorf design in a 90x90cm Lego piece! And look at this gorgeous print by Vic Lee. No words.

BTW: I also like single malt whisky ;)

A little while ago I sat down with Gilles Vauvarin, who asked me, if I’d be up for an interview about running my event. We met in Bastian Allgeier’s Slack channels for Kirby Next, as Gilles uses Kirby to run his website. It was lovely chatting with Gilles and I hope you like us talking about event planning, reasons for starting an event in the first place and dealing with problems.

Read: Marc Thiele – beyond tellerrand

I really like how easy it gets with Braille Neue to ready Braille. Especially for sighted people. I mean yes, the idea to combine Braille with a typeface is not new, but I somehow like the aesthetics of this approach and that it is not only planned to be for latin alphabets, but also for Japanese fonts.

I remembered this gem in my basement a while ago and always wanted to shoot it for @purveyors_of_packaging as I love their packaging shots and encourage you to follow them. Now I simply shot it with my phone. Got this fishing equipment many, many years ago from my uncle (RIP), when I was twelve or so. Still working, still beautiful.

Links for Purveyors of Packaging

• Website
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Facebook