Loving Pandyland atm.

Was a lot of fun trying to match the video with the feel of the song, wanted to do something less obvious and less performance based. Also it's my first full video in Avid Media Composer - I did the MC101 course years back but never did anything with it. So a major learning curve there!

Some comments here about Hipsters, so thought this might go down well (yes it's a spoof of that Battle Royale Hunger Games film)

From Kinect Star Wars, nope, This Isn't The Gay Subtext You Were Looking For:



Srsly have I just fallen through into an alternate Universe? This isn't the reality you were looking for.




It's just too much for my drunk mind.

OK fresh from Planet WTF is this...

Yes it's a game called Muscle March where you succeed through crashing through walls matching rather camp muscle poses.

I doubt you'll see anything stranger than this today, or all week... o.O

While the world was going mad in September 2001, I was walking in the Isle of Skye taking pictures, mostly monochrome...seemed the safest place to be. This is shot of a rather disturbingly shot up PASSING sign on the top of the remote Quirang - well not so remote as it doesn't have a road, but after 5pm there was no traffic, and I decided to walk across it in late afternoon which yes, meant walking at night by the time I got over the top....where there was only sheep (including spookily dead ones - that shot I used for KLF Dead Sheep show is from this walk) and remains of ancient huts for company.

I lost my Smith & Wesson cap up there, too - wearing it ironically, was doing a sort of Unabomber/Crazy Gunman Chic thing which really wouldn't translate in the US and I wince thinking about that now (was trying to prove a point at work, freak them out, punk in a way...) a gust of wind took it off my head and I couldn't find it even though I saw it go. Just vanished....the feeling of place on the top was, odd. Very strange vibes and felt very remote - I mean after 11 years I can still see and feel that place, where people used to live a long time ago.

*Photo geeking alert! - I usually keep photogeeking to my blog Ragged Trousered Photographer but for the last para posting here*

This is scanned on my new 120 glass holder* for the Nikon Coolscan 8000 - one of the problems with the holders that are supplied is they don't always keep the negative completely flat - not usually a problem but with curved or bent negatives that's a real problem as those bits that curve drop out of focus.

I doubt any of you have noticed this, but it bugged the hell out of me that such an expensive scanner couldn't do edge to edge sharpness - which it can now, even with 35mm. The glass holder just has special glass in it that sandwiches the negative flat...less scary than 'wet mounting' which is what it sounds, it's applying a special alcohol based solution with a glass holder which keeps the negative flat in the same way that a piece of paper 'sticks' to the floor when wet. A lot of professionals use wet mounting, but the idea of putting liquids on my negatives and in my scanner, well, I don't really like that.

* What's the holder? Well negatives are held by a large plastic flat cartridge, which keeps the negatives from 35mm upto 120 size in place as the motor moves it around from negative to negative - probably different to scanners people have used, the idea the negative moves rather than the scanner head, rather than the other way round - but in professional scanners that's usually what happens (drum scanners I think also rotate the negative in a drum around the 'slit' where the scanner is). It also means you can batch scan negatives, Upto 3/4 120 negatives, 12 35mm and 6 slides.

It's a wonder of technology, anyway...

And thanks to Jeb 50poundnote for helping me ship it here, the taxes and shipping cost MORE than the holder, and of course you can't get it here, or if you can it's actually more than even $ = £ conversion which is crazy. Or Cray-Cray as the song goes.

Today we celebrate Jesus in His invention of Chocolate. I did have the idea of chocolate crucifixions, but then someone told me that was tasteless...I don't know why, crunchy tasty Jesus on the cross? Sounds very tasty to me...

I mean, if everything else gets Hallmarked and gets 'synergy' and cross-marketing, I dunno why Easter is so special...and why do pagans get all the fun? Eostre must be laughing, well between gorging on large chocolate eggs and bunnies, anyhoos.

The Chocolate Enlightenment for Buddhists was less successful though.


On a more/less serious note, I still think my god cult of puddings, Postres, is a goer. Invented many years ago while in Spain, my thinking goes: Everyone LOVES confectionary or puddings, even those who can't eat them, I think a cult combining confectionary and puddings with religion would be very successful. Hail be to Postres!

Back to your usual (re)programming, yes these are the normal contents of my head. You're welcome.

Needed cheering up (Gorecki's 3rd Symphony...not exactly laugh a minute is it?) so found this, Garfield As Garfield:










Yes I know it's an extension of Garfield Minus Garfield or even better Garfield minus thought bubbles - sad to see that old thread for that full of linkrot. *sigh*

Although this one is up from there....topical in a Prometheus kinda way:




and





Sad that the original thread over at Truth And Beauty is now full of people 'over' the meme and carping about it...I still think it can be funny.

Friday I walked from Walton Bridge to Chertsey before I had to go meet John:



Swans, Chertsey






With a bonus Shepperton ferry Bear...Antipodean I think by the voice *swoon*:



More here: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/sets/72157621713693516/with/7033795081/ have uploaded the complete set with all shots bar the terrible ones over at Picasa, will be also uploading those to Panaramio.

Started the riverwalks (the longstanding project where I walk along the Thames and tributaries, been doing it since 1999) and cliffwalks again for this year...this was taken during the good weather of last week walking from Hampton Court to Walton Bridge there seems to be a lot of rowers on the river - Olympics practice? Or just I'm getting closer to Henley and the traditional home of rowing in the UK. I did Walton to Chertsey yesterday - Shepperton and Chertsey are a strange place, loads of riverside holiday homes with statues, English flags and clocktowers - little England indeed!

The idea of river walks is to photograph the Thames and it's tributaries in sections creating a photographic essay or book...I've done from Chertsey down to Thames Barrier so far following the Thames Path with a little bits after there (Gravesend for instance). Part of the scanning is I want to scan the photos I took of those central sections and east London - which has partly undergone great changes since because of the Olympics and development - and put them online/store them and sort them. There are many more photos I took 1999-2004 than in that set! I redid the Royal Docks, so in some cases I can have a 'layer' of then and now, amazing how in some cases little changes, like Woolwich/Thames Barrier area, and how some areas have very much changed in the last 10 years.

Rather proud of the one above, especially as it was a grab shot and this is a detail of a bigger picture which you can see at the Flickr highlights set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/sets/72157621713693516/with/7029391925/ which contains the 'best of' most of the walks so far since 2004/5. The idea of making a site or book is definitely still on the cards, still thinking about that. Certainly having location data will help with those.






Oh and these are the first DSLR images I've posted that should be properly geotagged, using Geotag Photos Pro app and syncing the camera clock to the GPS/app clock. It works pretty well, as you should see from the newer pictures at the end of the set they should all appear on the Map over at Flickr (or the EXIF should have that info too). Geotag Photos Pro costs a little money and also I prefer to be platform/server independent, I don't like uploading my data to someone else's server to convert to GPX - always thinking 'but what if the server goes down/bust?'. But I tried free apps such Osmand which is a really good Android mapping app, or GPS Logger but the quality wasn't as good, they weren't as accurate or in the case of GPS Logger they logged nothing at all - rather frustrating. Geotag Photos Pro was simple and just worked, and was pretty accurate, only a few jumps courtesy of the US Military (they put errors into the GPS data, it can do down to <1m on the military version, but of course they don't want to give that ability to the 'enemy' so put intentional errors into the consumer version so hence those 10m jumps, frustratingly.).

If you want to see the full set (ie. all photos) in a map type format, try my Picasa set - I tend to keep Flickr for 'best' photos and dump all sets and social stuff onto Picasa....but it's better mapping is also useful.