Here I Go...

In Few hours from now... I will be heading to Ireland, via Istanbul, Turkey. I pray it is an easy going trip and the airports that I have to land in won't be busy and crowded. I made the online check-in and from the first glance at the seats available... it seems like the airplane is empty and I'm traveling alone in the economy class! There was some registered seats before I come in, but they all seem to be for the plane security. I heard they hide themselves as citizens! Anyway, let's hope my stuff won't go on missing or anything.

After waiting in Istanbul for 4 hours, I will fly then to Dublin and there I have to take the railway to Galway and there I'm going to take some taxi or anything to the place where I intend to stay. My estimation is that I'm going to reach the place by the evening. The thing is, I have to call my place and check the availability of my room because I'm arriving 2 days before the assigned booking. They told me it should go OK anyway since not much are having a vacation at this time of the year! Let's see.

Fáilte Romhat go Éirinn!

Busy and Lazy

Been some time since I typed something in here. Since the last Thursday at work, all what I was thinking of is to get some sleep sleep sleep. I'm reflecting back on my life now as I see so much time was spent without typing a single poem, or writing some lines in my story or doing translation. All what I was thinking of is my vacation.
I will fly to Ireland on the beginning of next Tuesday, 29th of September. I'm so nervous since it is my first travel to be done alone. I'm planning to have my kit with me (tripod and camera) and that makes me a bit nervous about the security procedures... it is like a curse now to be an Arab and going any where else other than the Middle East, I believe. I'm so lazy doing my suit case as I don't really know what to take exactly, but for sure I'm going to take mostly heavy clothes, as I was told the weather will be cold there (I think they don't have a fall season there but winter directly after summer!). The suit case is lying there on my lazyboy open and waiting to be finalized. I got my laptop ready in my backpack... need to do things here and there. My sleeping habit now is a curse... I just don't have a fixed number of hours to sleep or to wake up... and I get frequent headaches on my right side just above the eye.

Despite all of this mess, I felt some urge to go around and do some experiments with my camera here and there. The most annoying thing is that, I figured out you almost have no where to take photos for in Kuwait. Wherever you go, you're going to face a cop or some security guys asking you for some permission to take photos. I was almost going to have a fight with two security guys when they asked me for permission just to take a photo of some corridor near Sharg mall. I managed however to snap other photos before this happens in some nitch that overlooked the marina in Sharg mall:

The image is actually composed of several shots and stitched together to form a panoramic view (small one though). The time was noon (around 2 p.m.) and the sun was almost striking in my direction but since I shot in RAW format I was able to change the WhiteBalance later on (and it was a tideous work) and combine the image and the panoramic view later on again (each angle contains 3 shots for HDR composition later), thus I tried to make the image cooler a bit:


After shooting this view, I went shooting single shots (but 3 exposures each) and changing several focusing modes, but seriously, I don't find much difference in any of them. After all of that I just had to work on one and changed its WB to form a vivid image:

And just for fun, and alone in my room, I worked on some of the old RAW files that I took some time ago for the cats in the house, and of course it was not an HDR or anything, but for fun purposes, it was a good time-killer:

I planned then to do a little experiment. I fixed the tripod on the small ladder in my room and went on capturing several images at several angles for my room in an upper level. It was worthy, and I decided then to do a 360 panorama of my room. But it was hard to do the 360 panorama with my old camera. I think you'd need a special camera or at least a wide-angle lens to take photos with and stitch later on to get more stable images and then covert them into a 3D environment just like in www.photojpl.com. However, the results were not so bad after all:

... And also my full room view:

For the time being, I just packed the camera and the tripod and I'm trying to hold my horses a bit and get prepared to travel. For the time being I'm coping with some stupidity on AIM networks, which some times helps me indeed to laugh a bit. A piece of advice: do not give a farmer, a PC. I've been awake for more than 12 hours now as I'm typing this, and I wish if I can remain awake to go and buy a CF-memory card, but I guess my eyes cannot bear much for the time being. I wish if I can make it!
This could be my last entry before going to Ireland, and I don't know if I will be posting any comments here when I'm there.

Thursday Is Here!!!!!!

I just can't believe it is my last day at work before the BIG vacation! Also the last working day during Ramadhan! I feel so hyper that I wanna do everything today! Specially sleeping!!!

Been snapping around some places lately, and I got that panoramic shot that I was planning from last week; The Sharg Market Panoramic View.

7 sections with 3 shots in each for HDr composition, totaling 21 RAW images to do this. I hope the colors are OK though, despite the fact that some areas remained extremely bright. I tried to fix these areas by moving the "shadow and highlights" curve up and down but not much could be revealed. Anyway, they are small areas.

The other work which was tiredsome as well since I was not shooting in straight line but instead in several directions and I made mistakes again and again (forgetting to zoom out with my lens and setting the camera too close to the object);

it is a walk way that was built as... a walkway... why I don't know actually since people can walk here or there! Anyway, they had the money to do it after all. This is a panoramic composition as well, by the way. The shots are taken on 3 main levels and in 3 different angles for each level, and then composed using spherical panorama. Cylindrical panorama was somehow good as far as I remember, but the Auto option in which Photoshop takes the lead in deciding what coordinates to use was disastrous (for the first time I do see that in fact!). I still I have some remains in my camera that I didn't download, so I might go one and check it out to see if I can do some other compositions with them.

I had an idea in the current time to chase after old houses all around Kuwait... specially those that they say they're haunted or something. In Failaka island, such type of houses are every where in fact because of the post-war effects.

Now it is the time to check after some of the essential things before traveling, like my visa, and my clothes! I'm so nervous about it, yet I need it so badly... so so badly...

So Damn Slow...

This week is a disastrous one. It is almost the end of Ramadhan there, but this week just won't pass away easily. Problems in sleeping and so... barely can be at work, and if I did I would sleep there for 2+ hours. Today, I didn't go at all. Planning to sign it as a casual holiday... my last casual day for this year. If people whom I know would be kind enough to do the fingerprint thing I would be relieved by now, but oh well... you can't get everything you like... but surely you can hate whatever you don't like, right?
The bad thing about all of that, it is affecting the progress with my own projects, which I deem more important that my work itself.

Last week I went on doing some photography near a mall, namely Soug Sharg, where lies another marina. My aim was to take a panoramic shot for the whole mall from the back of the marina, but alas, my trials went wrong when I disocvered that I didn't focus correctly. I didn't discover that til later when the images were downloaded, because I was taking off my glasses, and I thought the blurry image was only because of my eyes! However, I'm planning to take other photos some other time, hopefully this weekend, if I can.

I think it is useless to try to sleep and wake up earlier. I better stay awake all night if I can and go to work then. At least I might be able to check for attendance and then sleep in the office, again.
My departure to Éire is getting closer. I'm still thinking if I was ready or not. Mainly going to pack mostly winter clothes, for sure!

Double Star...

Don't I deserve a double star?! Of course I do! I spent 2 days (yesterday and today) working 2 verses at once with my own translation!!!
I reached line #912 so far, and today had a large amount of words to be made up or some corrections in the dictionry to be noted down. I'm happy today for several reasons:
1. It's Thursday.
2. Boosted my work load safely!
3. Got a new cooling fan for my laptop!
4. Dedicated more time to write more for my story, Blackened Image.

On the other hand, I'm not so happy with the latest pictures I snapped for the new born kitten. I'm not good with using the flash yet.

Tonight, will be the night of the 21st of Ramadhan, when the anniversary of the martyrdom of imam Ali, prophet Muhammed's cousin, takes place. I have to admit that I do not attend any gatherings (as usual), but showing respect is a must.
I don't know if I was going out tonight or not as it is the last day in the week, but I didn't go out for 3 weeks now, except of course for some photography small trips, which I might do as well tonight.

My departure to Ireland is getting closer. I have to think fast of what to prepare though. It's my first time to travel alone!

Active...

I was on the verge of not going to work today, for real. Although I heard the alarm ringing like eternally, I was not able to raise up. The lazyboy (which I made as my bed for the time being) is so relaxing as it seems that it makes me unable to raise up even with my little sleeping time as I used to. The good thing about it is that I don't have back pain like I usually do every morning. I guess it is the time to move back to my bed, which I made as one big table with all clothes and books on it!

After translating today's verse (reaching line #816), I made a simple calculation to see where I stop right now... and wish if I didn't! That makes me translating the 34th verse today, and 91 verses are left to do! So working with such pace I think I need like 3 months to do this! Oh no! Hopefully I will have better chances after Ramadhan fasting since I'll be handling my Dr Pepper and some coffee. Don't talk to me about health problems, please! But I need also to break the routine during this month... somehow if only I can get myself sober somehow. The climate at home seems not helping or pushing me to write, while at work, despite the fact that I don't feel like I want to come, still I am able to write down the translation and type down the story I'm writing in writing.com. I wouldn't think of going out and do this elsewhere since it's simply hard. I would need the laptop where I go, and peeky and nosy people are always there. Needless to say, the noise and maybe the traffic jam to reach the place even.

Mr Magoo.

I was lucky today that I slept one more hour before the regular timing that I've been into for one week or two now. Still though I'm drowsy but not as much to knock me down on the couch I guess. Thus, I decided to pick up my translation stuff with me today and work on a verse (or a two if possible).

I sent some emails containing the latest images I've taken and processed, as I am getting ready as well to make a back-up of the existing files now which are close to 4GB. In the meantime, I started as well to do some HDR experiments back again on some of the old photos that I've taken since I learnt some new methods now and some new aspects for doing this. As a result I got a new shape for the previously done image:

And, I'm willing to add more hopefully, as I was working yesterday with what I called previously as "The Twisted Tower." Unfortunately, I need model release (signed authorization) to submit such image to stock sites. Despite the fact that such image was taken in a panoramic shot and the real size is supposed to be somehow more than 2 meters long, but I had to reduce the size to the regular 2600px height (regular for some stock sites) to suppress somewhat the level of grain noise (and worked later with Neat Image noise reduction capabilities).

Cat food, cat food, cat food... it is exhausting my budget a bit, and now with 3 new kitten born in the house, I don't know if what I have already is enough. They are a good subject for photography, but I couldn't get much of a nice picture yesterday. The new kitten, unlike the ones before, get scared easily and go on hiding whenever they see me out.
When I got back to my work place with my purchase, you know who was following me with his eyes! Don't you know? Yep, Mr Magoo.

Seems submitting photos to fotolia is really a waste of time...

Drowsy...

Back to the rhythm of the week. I really don't know how did I reach work with such closed eyes, but I do remember that I was driving with 170 kmph. I arrived to work bringing nothing of the usual stuff with me from home, namely, the envelope which I use to put Alexander's story in. Hopefully, I'm going to concentrate my power on writing something for the other story though...

Been working last night (literally speaking, I should say till today's dawn) on fixing the panoramic shots that I had last Friday. I made it out and had to play around with the colors even after the formation of the HDR image (which is supposed to give nice colors from the beginning when converted to 16-bit and fixed with Local Adaptation's histogram). The image, as some said, is nice in general, but I didn't like the dark areas of the stress, and the high red saturation in the image in some areas. Tried to fix some exposures and saturation but that did not work out greatly:

You might notice the red beams on the far left. These are the "laser-beam" effect that I talked about last time, when cars passed me by and the camera was still in "shuttering" mode. Looks like if Flash, the superhero, was just passing by this way.

I'm starting to use the PNG format for my images upload since it is the only way to put the images on the net with 16-bit format. I'm not sure though whether the format is converted automatically when I upload the images, but I hope nothing is changed. The JPG images can be saved only in 8-bit format, thus making less number of shades for each channel in the RGB system.

It was one heavy nap I had in the office today. Although I woke up to type this but I can hardly concentrate without tilting the image in my eyes. I have to do something with this drowsiness.

Floating...

An adventure, but not with cops this time, but with my own PC. As I worked out the images that I snapped for the yachts in the marina, I combined 10 HDR images and saved them as TIFF under 32-bit. Looking back at the sizes of the images I made, each one was around 383MB! So, just imagine the process to make those as single panoramic shot. I ran the panoramic tool for the 10 images and went to bed, and I don't know how long did it take to make the full image. The full image was almost 2 meters wide, but I had to crop it a bit from the right to remove unwanted color of the sky, which after turning into 16-bit became yellowish while the main hue was blue. The final image was a 8-bit JPG that was 160cm wide and around 30 cm tall (click thumbnail):

The second image is a separate snap for the same location.
Finally, here comes the picture that almost got my neck:

Many pictures from that location were taken before the arrival of the cop, but I guess this is the best I could get. The top of the trees is blurred because of the movement by the wind, and that was my mistake to shoot in a Av mood instead of M or Tv. I have anyway to try again with composing HDRs despite the bad composition and the blur, who knows what you might get!

Tomorrow I shall be back to work, so I might rhyme myself back with working in Alexander's story translation and writing something for my other story. My mood did not help in the past week at all to do anything, leaving me exhausted most of the time.

Busted...

Despite the fact that I was tired and stayed awake for more than 12 hours, yet I couldn't sleep more than 4 hours. I had the urge to go on photoshooting just one hour before the sunrise. I didn't have any plan of what to snap, so I just went on into the streets hoping to find something, and then voila! I did find it.
It was a sloping down road, surrounded by trees (people who know the place, it is the branching road from 5th ring road into the Maghrib Highway). After taking shots, aiming at some panoramic view, I was surprised by a police patrol who stopped by to ask me about what I was doing. I was questioned just because I was standing in a straight line with some building called the "control tower" which has some controls for electricity and water I think. He said that I would be considered like a terrorist who is getting some information (well he said that indirectly). Anyway, I was lucky that I got the photos I wanted for a panorama shot before his arrival. Now after looking at the pictures and processing them I found out that I made a mistake that I didn't shoot with high shutter speed instead. There were few cars passing by, but the main blur was from the moving trees because of the somewhat tough wind that was there. The funny thing is, while shooting, some cars passed by and the shutter was still closed, and that created some funny noise in the images but it doesn't bother me at all. I called it the "Laser-beams effect." You see only red lines in the middle with no car showing! Hopefully I would post some of this here later when I settle on some good shot.
After moving from that place, after being annoyed with that cop, I decided to go to the seashore, but not my usual spot, but to some mall. The Marina Mall Crescent. There is a marina (sea port) with yachts there, so I tried my luck to shoot there as well and made it for a panoramic sequence. I need to do a lot with those files, specilaly that they are in RAW (CR2) format and not in JPG, which makes it even sensitive somehow and not directly to be dealt with as JPG files. They say RAW files are better for HDR composition.
That's all with my life for the time being after a dull and tiresome week, and a boring weekend as usual! Ta da!

Driver of The Week...

An idle day for my personal projects, and so was yesterday in fact. But on the other hand, I was so busy with my other stuff... family.
My sister got an appointment for a tiny surgery in the ear (kind of cosmetic). As the Dr said, the appointment was set for 8 O'clock in the morning, so I had to go all the way to my work place in the morning and do that silly stuff with fingerprint thingy and then go to the clinic. She was picked from her room for the surgery at 12:00 p.m. . Yep, 4 complete hours of waiting. I had to drive back to my work just to fingerprint again then get back to her, to see that she did not finish the surgery yet. To keep a long story short... we finally got back home at almost 9:30 p.m. or 10:00 p.m., meaning that I've spent one complete day without being bored but instead getting screwed going around with my car. Thank God my car was not crushed when I was going there by the morning when I accidentally went over a speed bump driving 80 kmh (49.71 mph). I almost felt the tar of the street with my own feet from the car's inside!
Now, all what I have to do is to wait for the hardest part of the week to pass and I'm going to have some nice weekend ahead... Thursday. I have to go to some "court" place (if this is what they call it, I can't really recall). According to my relative, it's all simple, but knowing my luck with authorities, I can't say much but let's hope the day will pass easily.

Croí gan Chroí

I don't know why I did this one... but it might explain my mental status at the moment...