Ibaraki Temple

So this first one is my attempt at something called 'instagram.' It comes from the effect of taking pictures with crappy cameras in order to get a certain look - often aged or faded. The old cameras people tend to use are lomo (I think they are\were manufactured in Hong Kong) and one of the types of this crappy looking photography is lomography; I might have mentioned it before.

Anyway, this type of photography has its place in the world, as do all the other types. The problem is that people tend to think that this kind of massively washed out look has now replaced the idea of taking a good picture. Instead, you take any old garbage and then put filters (the computational kind) on top (hence instagram, the phone application). This is my attempt at recreating that look without using any nonsense.

All the pictures are directly out of the camera, converted to very low quality .jpg in order to speed the process of putting them on the net. I'll go back and modify them properly at some point.

The next two are my attempt at trying to capture the sunset. The colours are, frankly, wrong. However, I haven't gone back and modified the pictures in any way, so when I do, that'll be the first thing I change. Then again, I see my pictures on a lot of different monitors and they all look different colour wise, so maybe I should just leave them be. I have no way of knowing what a black or red or any other colour will look like once it's been printed. In most countries I think the cheapest way to find out would be to get a monitor calibrator. Here I think the cheapest way would be to take a few test shots down to the printers after a few test shots and simply have them printed out.



The young lady was on her way to her coming of age ceremony. I asked her in broken Japanese if it was okay to take a picture because she was wearing a wonderful kimono. I've seen a few black ones around lately (ones with a base colour of black because they're never all one colour) and it seems to be the latest fashion. If you're spending 5,000 USD on one of these, I would be surprised if anyone would try to keep up with fashions, but they do apparently.

Photographs Incoming

So I took a few pictures of a shrine - this being a fair while ago. Having deliberated long and hard over which ones to include or otherwise, I've decided that I will post three. One is imitating the lomo style that programs like instagram have popularised (to be fair, the 'style,' wasn't invented by them, but it had a very small following before people realised that taking crap photos didn't matter as long as filters were available to them).

The second is shrine related in some way, and the final might be a terrifying picture of my face. If I can bear to post it. I probably won't (hint: it's of me from about 50 metres away, so it blown up to jumbo sized proportions and suffers from both subject matter and quality issues).

They might go up tomorrow.

They might not.

That is all.

Happy New Year!

So last month I played a rugby game in which I got knocked out. Not a rare occurrence you might comment, but it did mean I missed a week of work because as a result (or entirely coincidentally) I caught the flu. A terrible flu that caused fevers and a runny nose that resembled Vitcoria falls. I also had a splitting headache, but I don't know whether to attribute that to the concussion or the flu.

I don't remember the day before the game, the day itself, or the following two or three days. I don't really remember how I got home, or how I even managed to open the door. It's pretty frightening to think of how many hours I will never be able to recall.

On the plus side, for Christmas I got a remote control helicopter, which is an absolute pig to fly. If I ever get good with it, it'll be something of an achievement. Even getting everything set-up is a challenge; as is setting the trim and all that. When flying with freedom in three dimensions, your brain starts to struggle (at least mine does) so I absolutely find myself cycling through each axis, rather than focussing on everything at once (is it flying straight? Is the height okay? Is it veering left or right? Is it flying straight? Is the height okay? Is it veering left or right? Is it flying straight...). It's probably not how professionals think, but damn it's hard!

I also used some money I received to buy a NAS! Finally, all my photographs are once again secure (my previous internal RAID sprung a leak). It took literally days to get the information off the broken internal disks, as they kept dropping the link between the motherboard and themselves.

Oh, and my computer breaking on Christmas Eve didn't help. I HATE COMPUTERS. It broke the day before Christmas. Can you believe it? Well, regardless if you can or can't, I certainly can. I had to get a new motherboard, reformat the boot drive, pray it didn't need a complete overhaul (money is always an issue) and click the go button. Of course even the new motherboard was a pain in the ass, having a fried capacitor and bloody jumpers (of course I lost the jumpers as soon as I saw them) meant I had to bodge the whole thing. I've since replaced it, thank god, BUT I STILL LOST A FRIGGIN' JUMPER. Again. Twice. What in the world possessed ASUS or whoever it is, to include jumpers on their boards. It's pathetic. Last time I checked we had left 1999 far in the past. Grow up, ASUS.

Anyway, after the incredible stress of not being able to phone Mum and Dad over Christmas, it was a pretty uneventful break. I had a lot of spare time so I modelled something in MODO (equivalent to 3dsmax I guess?) and all that's left to do is skin it. I practiced with the helicopter (it's terrifying indoors) and ate a lot of chocolate. I've lost 5 kg's so my training regimen starts again from today.

I took some photographs as well, which you might be able to see above or below. Apart from that, nothing else of note happened that I can recall.

I hope your Christmas wasn't as bummed out as mine.

Bye!