Purple Haze

I stole the lightbox info from here and the photographing smoke info from here

Here's my ligthbox setup for smoke:

I've got a desk lamp and a slaved flash on the outside and a stick of vanilla incense with a black foam board background on the inside. People my not believe me, but I'm certain that the flavor matters :)

I think there are a couple of changes that I need to make though

- I really need much better light. the flash on the right is ok, but the lamp is pathetic. Stronger light would really help the smoke stand out more and would let my play around more with settings on the camera - especially faster shutter speeds

- I think I probably should have cut up the box lengthwise. The thing is that I'm getting a little more of the background in focus than I'd like. Part of that is because I'm not using a light sucking black fabric or something, but I think more length would really take the background way out of my focus area.Maybe I can bring the incense out a little further...

Ok, so I shot a couple quick ones so we could play with the photoshop side of this thing. The smoke is so finicky, and it moves so fast that I usually take a lot of shots to get one or two that have a couple of interesting parts. Click your lens onto manual focus and move the lens around to find the eddies. Don't worry too much if it seems you're getting a lot out of focus.

Here's a I got shot out right off the card:

Interesting but we can do better. I'll bring it into photoshop and crop it up to isolate the lower right hand corner.

The most fun is fixing the levels (Ctrl-L)

First click on the little eyedropper with black ink. That'll tell photoshop that you are going to select what you want to be the blackest of the black in your image. I would chose the little section marked 2 in the image. Then click the eyedropper with white ink and select the part of your image that you want to be the whitest of white - I picked the part marked #3, but it would probably be better to choose the part under "Click" in the photo up there. Play around with this a lot and you'll get a lot of fun possibilities.

That'll give you something like this image which has a nice black background (although I'd like it a little more black in the upper right), and a really fun near-oversaturation in the curls down on the lower right :


Which is fun, but we can make it more fun. I accidentally shot this with an ISO of 400, so it's noisy. I'll do a little smart blur to even it out a bit.

The color is easy. Just go to the color balance (Ctrl-B) and fiddle with the bars until you dig it. I thought the green worked well



The other thing you can do is color invert the image (Ctrl-I) before (or after) you fiddle with the color balance. That gave me a fun purple


Then you save it and pop it up on flickr and your 365 blog and it's your daily photo and a how-to walkthrough!

Like I said, I'm still not happy with a lot of the process and I think this can be made a lot better. So give it a shot and tell me how you make your smoke cool!

Rhymes With Orange

Ok, I stole the lightbox how-to from here, but here's the rest:

backlit orange

Step 1:

Cut a hole in the box.
(har har har)

Honestly, I cut three holes in the box, put paper towels over the holes to diffuse the light I'll be adding. For the backlighting, I hung another sheet of paper towel on the inside of the back of the box. All I did then was aim all the lights at the background so the light would bounce and hit the back of the clementine.









I carved up the thing so there was a slice sticking up, but it would still stand up.


















I took a really quick shot with my non-macro lens and this is what it ended up looking like. It's blurry and it ain't nearly as good as the earlier one, but you get the idea. My clementines are starting to get a little ragged too. I think I need to finish 'em off.


Next post will be the smoke walkthrough

Something Tells Me It's all Happening at the Zoo

Nothing truly exciting today, just meetings and such, but yesterday, ah yesterday.

I had decided to dive into adventure and brave the long long trip to the nearby (in a relative sense) zoo! See, I have a lot of trouble with zoos in general. I love the animals, but the cages really bother me. I've been to some really sad zoos, too. The problem is that I've also been to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. That place rocks. Rocks a lot. They had the funding to actually put things together pretty well with enough room for everyone and no weird concrete-ish display areas.

Back at Old U, there was a small zoo, but they were pretty well funded and did an ok job making the living areas pretty livable. Alas, Urban Sprawl City's zoo is... well, I should say that it's not awful. In fact it's good, really. They're trying to build a lot of new areas and add room for the critters, but still, I guess I've been spoiled for zoos.

The one thing that absolutely kills me is seeing the animals, usually the big cats, pacing back and forth mindlessly in a really small enclosure, and this zoo had nothing like that. Really it wasn't bad.

Anyway, the end result is that I practically lived on buses and at bus stops for most of the day, but had a great time at the zoo while I was there. Yea zoo!

Here's pictures. Most of them are pretty average and a lot of the beasties were hiding as usual, but I really liked the tortoise. He (She?) is very cool.

Also, I'm going to put together a how-to post on the smoke pictures because a few people asked. I'll try to get that together soon. It'll be a good excuse to shoot some more smoke and try to figure out what I'm doing wrong with the background :)

Have Fun Storming the Castle

Just in case you happen to have time that needs, umm... wasting... I present to you the most insidious evil little strategy game I've seen in a long time.

Desktop Tower Defense - Try the easy setting first

Heigh Ho the Paper is Gone!

That nasty piece of trash that I took an incomplete on last fall has been turned in! It was utter crap and too short and fundamentally flawed, but...

IT'S DONE.

I just hit send on the email a few seconds ago. Poof! Gone!

I feel like I need to take a shower to wash the bad off of me, but I think I'll settle for planning a photo outing tomorrow. Or a shopping outing. I do need a new lamp or two...

The really dangerous thing is that even though I really didn't like that paper, in finishing it, I started to get more and more excited about my next project. I was going to really start research today, but they kicked me out of the library. Closed early. Hmmph. Let's hope the enthusiasm holds.

Oh, and just a side note to a favorite commenter - I don't think anyone wants to see the road rash :) Do you?

81/365 March 26

Very tired so I just tested the lightbox with my point and shoot. With my DSLR. How very meta. I need to get a white backcloth too.

Whoopsie - wrong blog. Oh, well. I'll leave it cause it's funny

Lightboxen

Scrivener asked about the homemade lightbox I made for the smoke pictures. I got the ideas here (lightbox) and here (smoke). So here's what I've got:



It's basically just a cardboard box with windows cut out on the sides and top. I draped paper towel over the windows to act as a diffuser until I can get something a little better (tracing paper? sheet?). Inside on the back and bottom are chucks of black foamboard. Then there's a lamp on the left and an old slave flash on the right in addition to the diffused hotshoe flash on the camera itself.

The setup didn't work that well actually though. I think with a little tweaking it'll get better. The main problem was that there still wasn't as much light as I would have liked for the smoke. The on-camera flash was also too direct, even with my bounce diffuser. I think the answer is to get a shop lamp, or something like that - something with a little more umph than my little desk lamp.

As for the smoke itself, I used incense sticks poked into the cardboard. Camera settings were ISO100, 1/250 and my best ones came out at about f11 or f14, but I'm sure that could be changed a lot.

Finally I popped it into Photoshop and fiddled with the colors. Fair warning - clean your glass. every tiny little dust speck will show up :)

Anyway, if you aren't checking out my photo365 or flickr pages, here's some incense smoke!

Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma'am

First off, if you've ever seen a James Bond movie, or played that old Spy Hunter game, you know that oil slicks are a great way to get rid of cars that are following you. I also submit that it works quite well for bikes.

I'm a good bike rider. I've commuted by bike for about 7 years now, and well, everyone has their bad days, right? Anyway - here's the oil slick I hit:



I went into the curb and onto the ground and got some nice road rash for my trouble. Nobody else involved, nothing bad, but still a great way to put a damper on the day.

Also, my Nano died. I've been threatening to leave the iCult, so maybe this is my chance. My laptop in the pannier bag survived though, so that's good.

Bluebooks, Pens and NBC Suits

• Early morning test?
  
• check
• Too many people crammed into the lecture hall? I know all these people didn't come to the lectures
• check
• unexpectedly warm weather leading to sweaty sticky atmosphere
• check
• Dude behind me who seriously needed about a bottle and a half of Bean-o before coming to class?
• Oh, dear lord, check.

Seriously, my eyes were watering. I don't even know what was in my bluebook.

shudder...

If One Used A Calender, Perhaps...

It's a funny thing when one thinks that one has a big exam tomorrow at 8am, only to find out it's actually Friday at 8am. If, for example, one is in the middle of a nasty cram session, one might lose a lot of the anxious enthusiasm for studying.

One might, anyway.

And I Decided

That one big link dump is better than two little link dumps, and rather than bring that one up I decided to post mine here.

1. Another, even more insidious game
1. Also, for Jayish - a Kaboom! clone. Do you still have an old Atari paddle?
2. Top 15 most unintentionally funny panels in old comic books
3. Another silly get to know yourself quiz - pick the photo that you feel best represents the word they give you.
4. Make your own cheap light box! I may just try this one out :)

It May Not Seem Like It, But,

I am working.

But here's a game to play.

Connect the squares. They grow each time you click on them (a maximum of three times). Once they are connected, they can't grow. You can't click on twice in a row.

There was another one, but I lost the link.

Notes From The Underground. But Aboveground.

I'm still completely unenthusiastic about the paper I need to finish up in the next couple of days, but here's the fun thing - I'm getting really excited about another paper that I'm starting to put together. I don't want to jinx it, but it's a nice big juicy topic that no one has really gotten in to yet. I'm still looking around to see if there are any hidden monographs out there that have already done it, but I think the topic will be mine all mine!

Also, as a good recorder of random items, I report to you the graffiti on today's library cell which focuses on the dangers of Mary J:

1. 4/20!!!!!!!!
2. 4:20!!!!!
3. Fucking potheads
   
4. Albert, Mary J is the Satan (unclear - crossed out) devil's smoke. All of smokers will burn in Hell w/ rapists, murderers and Hitler.
1. Yaright.
2. Thank you for your advice, Mrs. Doubtfire
3. How in hell do you equate pot smokers w/ rapists & Hitler?
4. Be careful with pot kids, it's very dangerous because it's so subtle. It can get out of control and ruin you
1. How?
5. Shut up!
1. Turn around!
6. Hello!
7. I love you deformed lips.
8. Shut up and get back to work.
   

Dude. Seriously.

Notes to/regarding freaky guy who moved into the library cell behind me:

1. General library etiquette frowns on yelling out "Holy Fuck! Why isn't this working?"
2. Either you are just banging randomly on your keyboard or you type faster than humans should be able to type.
3. That weird grunting sound you make with every third breath or so is uber creepy
   
4. Answering your phone in the library is rude and all, but understandable. However, it's especially bad when I can hear your end and her end of the conversation. Also, she seemed quite ticked. You're in trouble.
   

Ricola!

Right now I'm in the middle of an Apline stack of grading. It's interesting because the class that I'm TAing right now is so different from what I've generally taught in the past in content and methods too. As an example, I used to grade fairly long papers every few weeks and maybe a blue book test at the end. Now I'm grading homework assignments and quizzes and tests and all sorts of things every single frickin' day it seems, including some assignments that are incredibly subjective.

The subjective assignments are very difficult for me. If it's a paper or an exam, I can generally get a good grasp on whether or not the student understands the material or not, but with these, well, I'm going more on how I feel that they did. They're group projects too, so there are students who I know are good and competant but got dragged down by a less-than-stellar partner or two. There are also a couple students that I'm pretty suspicious of, but they didn't really do much, so I'm not sure how to evaluate them. As a student I really dislike those kind of assignments, and I have to say that I like them even less as a grader.

I will say that there are a couple of students who are really making me feel very good about this class. It's been like this every class I guess, but it's just because I'm looking at the gradebook right now, it comes to mind. I can see the grades of one particular student slowly, steadily move up and up. She was convinced that this class was just too complicated for her. Not so, I said, not so. A little while ago, she said she may just change her major.

Vile Vile Flickr

Time was up so I had to switch over to the Yahoo! login. I haven't used a Yahoo! account for anything but their damnable music player in years. Of course that ID wasn't an anonymous one, so I have to get another one (the price I pay for being famous beyond my means in real life). "Overread" wasn't available, naturally. So I went for 'cordialhermit.' I wanted 'socaiablehermit' which was how my old landlord used to describe me. It fits pretty well, too.

So, anyway, I'm now a cordial hermit. at Yahoo! Feh. I think I'm developing an online multiple personality syndrome. I think this'll make my 4th or 5th idenity online. That can't be healthy. On a related note, the university wants me to remember a new password for another vital online entity. I'm seriously beyond the overload point for passwords. I've got so many I'm at the point where I'll need to write the less commonly used ones down. And that defeats the purpose of passwords! Well, kinda.

Anyway. I hope you ate pie yesterday.

Happy Pi Day!

I just wanted to wish you all a very happy pi day! Everyone should eat some pie today! Unfortunately, I haven't eaten any pie. I did eat an apple however. And... you can put apples in pies... Alternately, you can spend a few minutes reciting pi. I guess that'll work, too. Not nearly as tasty though. And I ain't doing that.

I'm happy to note that one of my students actually wore a pi shirt today. How cool is that?

By the way, if you don't know why today is pi day, just look at the date :)

It's also White Day - which is the day that all guys get their gal some chocolate. Valentine's the other way around, dontcha know?

Crosstown Traffic

Part of getting myself out of the funk I'm in is going to be a new push to start blogging more. So, here we go.

This may take a bit before I remember how to do all this, but I'll try.

First a note to the bus driver who tried to run me off the road and then opened his passenger door in the middle of the road (and a stop light) to tell me off:

Sir, while I respectfully admit that it is recommended that a bicycle not be ridden in the middle of the road when there is a lane open to the left, the lane to my left was a right turn only lane, and I didn't want to get in the way of people turning right. While you might have had a solid argument, when I said that I believed bicycles had the same right to the road as cars (and perhaps buses as well), I think that there was probably a better answer than to shout out, "well not in front of me they don't!" and keep as tight to the right side of the lane while passing me.

Feh. I actually feel a bit chastised because I went to check the law when I got back home only to find out that I wasn't entirely in the right. As near as I can tell, I was legally in the clear (and riding safely, I might add), but the law recommends that bikes only stray from the curb when making left turns and when avoiding unsafe road conditions. So I guess keeping out of the way of right turn only traffic isn't on their list.

Still. He could have been more polite.

Wow, that was a longish post on nearly nothing at all. fun.

Also, apropos of nothing, it will be very clear to those that survived my lyrics quizzes of many moons ago that my music taste changes only glacially, and I am loathe to admit the value of any music that is new to me. That being said, I have started listening to some Decemberists on the recommendation of the good Dr. Scrivner. For some reason I have also stumbled on the wacky joy of the Ditty Bops (Wishful thinking and Sister Kate are particularly fun). The Fratellis' Chelsea Dagger and Flathead were quite fun until I realized that one of them turned up on an Apple ad. They have been since downgraded to merely fun (but I still listen to them heaps).

Wow. Long post. Maybe I can still do this.

Hmm, Oh! You're Still Here?

Warning: Whining and self-absorbed blather ahead.

It's kinda funny that now the the photo365 blog is going gangbusters, my normal blog dries up.

Actually there's a little more to it than that. I've said this before, but I guess I still haven't gotten into a healthy pattern here at Urban Sprawl U. I'm still struggling with my motivation, and I guess I'm trying to figure out what in the world I'm doing here. The people around me all seem to have really nice conctrete plans about where they're going and how they're going to get there. There're all over writing grant proposals and sending off papers to journals and conferances, and well... I'm not.

I know that these are common anxieties to face after moving and for people looking into a long slog through the PhD process, but that doesn't really make it easier. And if I'm honest, I can see a little bit of it in the other gradfolk around me too.

The other problem is that I had to cut back on my running becauase of the tweaked knee so I wasn't able to run the marathon, so now I feel like a big slug with no energy at all.

This week I'm going to be turning in a paper to turn an incomplete into a complete from the fall, and frankly it's nowhere near my best work. I had an interesting topic, but let the professor lead me on to one of the professor's pet ideas and it really didn't work that well. Rather than tossing out the bad and workign on the good I've spent too much time trying to keep it all in there to please the prof. All that extra time is just going to end up as a couple of paragraphs in the intro talking about how the pet ideas might frame the argument. Ugh. It'll be good to just get that paper out of my head.

Spring break is going to be a very needed thing. But why am I more excited about maybe being able to get out and take fun pictures than being able to put together some good research time?

As a side note - one of my good friends from Old U called and told me that not only is her day job going super well, but she's also just hooked a super-sweet internship at the Smithsonian! Rock on! She has a social life and is dating, and she's got a career working. I really am very happy for her, but jeeze... Maybe I should have taken the MA and gone to DC too - seems to have worked well for her.

Things I Don't Care To See

And yet I saw and heard them today:

• Going to get a bit o' caffeine this morning, what to my wandering (wondering?) eyes should appear, but a man kneeling and bent over on the ground as if in prayer. With his pants around his ankles. full moon. And lets say charitably that he hadn't... washed... much recently. By the time I got out of the store, there was a man talking to him, telling him that the cops were on the way and he might think is wise to skedaddle. The pious gentleman screeched, "I can pray here! I've got every right to pray here!" As I left, the gentleman was prostrating himself again and pulling his pants down further. It was also pretty cold.
• I grabbed lunch on the way to class, and had a few minutes, so I sat down to eat near a couple of young men talking to an much older woman. My first thought was that it was probably a prof talking to a couple of undergrads - cool. I love that. That wasn't it. the woman became very agitated and started in on the men, making it quite clear to them that being Jewish wasn't going to do them a lick of good when they were in hell, because that's absolutely where they were going and only by accepting Jesus as their personal saviour... I have to admit I tuned out after that. By the time I finished my lunch and headed off to class, she had accosted a few other students in the area. She avoided me. It's not that I'm not grateful, but I wonder why?
  

Now I'm home and it's not late at all, but I just feel so exhausted. Everyone I know is sick or getting sick out just getting better. I don't feel sick at all just very very tired. Perhaps this is my body's warning to take it easy. So I'm going to curl up with a book and some tea, and rest. Maybe sleep. Who knows.