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[Nov. 11th, 2009|05:46 pm] |
New t-shirt from Diesel Sweeties.
Saw the lovely ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) halcyon_shift, doccy and mitchy this morning, for the first time in... mumble too many years and there was even ice-cream.
In other news from today, Waltham Cross is still a shithole. Just in case you were wondering.
And while I'm on: Dragon Age: Origins is NOT the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate 2, or Neverwinter Nights, or any of the other great rpg games. It's Mass Effect again, with all the same flaws but in a fantasy setting. Too few npcs, too linear a plot, no way to go solo or form an entirely evil party. It's nice, but it's not BG2.
Games developers: make a new BG2 that isn't as unrelentingly shit as NWN 2. You will make a truckload of money. |
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[Sep. 17th, 2009|11:37 pm] |
London at night:
More cities viewed from space here. Interestingly, everywhere is orange except for Japan, which is blue-green.
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In other news, flickr group joy: "Meerkats in purple hats playing the piano".
"This group is all about celebrating the wide artistic talent and diverse range of creativity that is evident on flickr. We want to see all the best that the photographers on this site have to offer.
There are only 2 simple rules:
1. No porn.
2. The photo must be of a meerkat in a purple hat playing the piano.
REJECTION APPEALS:
If you submit a photo and it is rejected you may post it into the Rejection Appeals thread and receive feedback on why exactly it didn't quite fit the group.
In 99.9% of cases it will probably be that the photo is not of a meerkat in a purple hat playing the piano."
They're absolutely serious. There are only 13 photos, by different people, all ACTUALLY OF meerkats in purple hats playing the piano. I love it.
In this thread they argue about whether a particular photo really qualifies, since on magnification it appears that it could in fact be of a Platypus playing the harpsichord.
There is also a regular competition. The most recent is to provide a photo of a Meerkat in a purple hat playing the piano accompanied by a Hungarian on the kazoo.
"Would a meercat in a purple hat playing the piano qualify for this contest if it weren't accompanied by a Hungarian, but was playing Franz Liszt (albeit poorly?)"
"I am glad you have asked that as it's a very good point and so we can clarify this straight away and prevent any confusion.
If there were no actual Hungarian present but the creature was playing Franz Liszt then the Meerkat itself would also have to have the kazu in its mouth and sound a note upon it within each bar of music.
It would also have to submit the details of two independent witnesses (both with clean driving licenses) that could personally vouch for the quality of hand stitching in the meerkat's trousers." |
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[Sep. 11th, 2009|11:42 am] |
Is anyone else on "We Heart It"? It's a page which lets you collect images from the whole internet to keep in a collection. It's supposed to be a favourites page of pictures you love.
Works well, and if you have Firefox or Safari you can grab a bookmarking tool which lets you add any image from an outside page with one click. You can also just browse the site and add from other people's lists.
It's still starting out (and the owners seem a little shocked by the popularity and growth of the page) so there are rough edges - the tagging system is awful and you can't edit/delete tags yet, and if you accidentally click on the "report" button at the top of every picture it marks it permanently as "unsafe" (adult content) which can't be undone. Yet. But it's an inspiring collection of images.
Mine is here:
http://weheartit.com/Steveb |
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[Jul. 27th, 2009|02:25 pm] |
Most of you will know how much I love Lou O'Bedlam's photography. I sang his praises a while ago on this LJ (over here, in fact).
He takes AMAZING photos of people (and has many of them up on flickr, such as this one and this one.)
He's an expert at polaroid in particular, and uses sunlight far more than most people dare to - his shots are often dripping in a late-afternoon American honey haze. And he has a lot of friends who are extremely easy on the eyes.
Well, last time I went into raptures about this man's talent (probably just after seeing this), the insanely generous veronikos went and bought me not one but BOTH of Lou's books! (Book subtitle: "Portraits of Pretty People"). I couldn't remotely afford them, and what you get is:
"the book, an original Polaroid, a story handwritten into the book, a 6x6 print and, last but not least, a laser-engraved Polaroid as a receipt".
There is indeed a unique original polaroid on the first page of each book, and the story of it handwritten on the page by Lou. (The 6x6 is only for the second book, but mine is of Morgan, so I am ridiculously happy). The books are limited edition and the postage alone is too expensive for me right now.
In short, veronikos is a fantastically generous individual and everyone should acknowledge this :) I never thought I'd be able to own these, and I'm still going into bouncy photo-glee just flicking through them.
Thank you so much veronikos! |
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[Jul. 14th, 2009|12:54 am] |
This photo seems to be causing a fuss. I thought it was bland. Eh. Anyway, here's a photo of me that finally looks something like me, and doesn't have killer red-eye.
Edit: Riiight. That really wasn't why I posted this, but it's all good :)
Edit: You're all mad. |
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[Jul. 10th, 2009|09:24 am] |
A storm over the school my parents run in Serbia! |
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[Mar. 28th, 2009|12:04 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | art, fic, geek, good link eh?, groovy, hopeless idealist, movies, only on the net, pics, poetry, shiny!, tv, vids | ] |
...is a fandom charity site. It has 280 people signed up to make things for YOU. These range from writing fic, making vids or graphics, to knitting - even an entire medieval-style dress. They've signed up, and as of a few minutes ago the site is live. So get on there and start bidding! |
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[Feb. 10th, 2009|10:01 pm] |
And, since I'm posting a lot today:
The Darling life: Photography by Laura Taylor.
Flickr is a dangerous thing, it keeps showing me awesomely talented people who are ten years younger than me. Bah. I love what she does with light, and how the focal point of the next photo could be anywhere... (scroll the slider bar on the right to see her portfolio page, there's other pages on that site too). |
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[Jan. 30th, 2009|10:08 am] |
Since all my posts seem to be on the subject recently:
Photograph meme (via anw):
1. Ask me to take pictures of any aspect of my life you're curious about.
2. I'll snap the pictures and post them in future posts.
Won’t be until Monday though, because I’m off to a Masquerade Ball. As you do, of a weekend. |
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[Jan. 29th, 2009|03:53 pm] |
There seem to be some folks on here who know things about cameras.
The whole flickr revisit has prodded me to do something which I’d been thinking about anyway, and that’s buy new kit. As well as a nice 35mm, I’ve got a cheap digital 5MP, and I need several things it doesn’t have.
I need:
a) Zoom, for the love of God, lots of zoom!
b) Some anti-shake, because I do love to push it
c) Faster reaction time than the 3 seconds or so it currently thinks is acceptable
d) Digital not film, to cut developing costs and for convenience
e) Just better capabilities than my christmas-issue supermarket 5MP piece of crap.
In other words, I want a digital SLR.
…A really, really cheap one.
Entry-level SLRs go down to about £350, and a lot of them aren’t bad at all. Most of the reviews seem to make a big fuss about the Pentax k-m and its replacement in terms of performance (although the kit lens is nothing special, the tech quality is high and it shows). Many even rate it above the equivalent-priced Canon and Nikon.
Anyone got experience with low-end DSLRs? I’ll probably be concentrating on portraits and everyday initially (until I can afford a macro lens anyway, because that’ll be like crack). I need advice on makes and where to buy from, bearing in mind that money is, er, non-existent. Don’t mind going for much older models if the quality is still there and there’ll be enough compatible lenses for a while to come.
As I say, a brief wander into flickr has confirmed that my preferred subject type is, well, the ladies.
And macro shots of raindrops on holly leaves.
And I loves me Bokeh.
So I’m really after something that will do an awful lot of auto-selecting for me, even though I’m likely to be playing with light and extremes quite a bit, but which can produce very sharp, intense-colour images at close-medium range. No need for professional quality, because the hand pressing the button is the equivalent of a mouth-breathing 8 year-old and wouldn’t know how to get the most from it anyway, but high-performance for the price bracket would be nice.
Anyone? :) |
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[Jan. 27th, 2009|10:14 am] |
Never let it be said that I jump into things too quickly, or get excitable about something and then go off it later. No, that never happens. With that in mind…
I’m hooked on flickr, big time. I knew a lot of my friends treated photography semi-seriously, and had seen a lot by alasdair (see electricana) and marysiak in particular, but it turns out loads more of them are just talented at this too.
Some things are immediately obvious.
1) I need to take some proper new photos, because all my old good ones are on film not digital.
2) I have an approximately-camera-shaped piece of shit, when what I actually need is a camera.
3) New kit would however need to do most things for me automatically, because I have no skills in this area.
4) I like portraits of people. Which is a clever way of saying I like beautiful pictures of pretty girls. This is not a shock.
5) Second place is nature photos. This is also not a shock.
So, I am now walking around with Camera-head on, looking at every mundane scene in town as a potential shot, and wondering why Ware is so unrelentingly dull and depressing. Shall have to get out to the river at lunchtime and try for some wildlife pics.
In the meantime, check out my favourites. (You’ll need to sign in and turn safemode off, or most of them probably won’t show up. They’re… mostly… worksafe, but it’s people’s default setting for many of the sets.) Short list at the moment, will probably double by tonight :) |
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[Jan. 26th, 2009|07:40 pm] |
Okay, so I gave up any pretence of wanting spare time in the near future and signed up to Flickr. And yes, I then spent 40 mins finding old Katie West photos I liked from years ago.
Now I just need lots of awesome people to send me their flickr streams to look at, and anyone else's they recommend.
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Edit four hours later: Yep, that took about as long as I expected. Dammit. |
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[Jan. 26th, 2009|10:07 am] |
My brother being awesome again.
Sharing desktops at the moment involves one person seeing the shared screen but not being able to control the pointer, etc.
Until now... co-operative desktop sharing, includes video.
Also, from drjon via matgb:
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[Nov. 25th, 2008|10:58 am] |
London's Atlas Gallery has an exhibition called FULL MOON (pics behind link), Michael Light's selection of 900 images "from NASA'S library of over 32,000 pictures from the Apollo and Gemini missions".
They're in higher resolution than ever before, and include "Aldrin's boot print", "Earthrise seen for the first time by human eyes" and basically a treasure trove for Moon fans. |
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