Alexander 6, V27.

Trying to keep my camera busy (as well as my computer) but unfortunately that did not work for today's post. Anyway, I've made an experiment and waiting to get out of my workplace just to continue working on it back home. This time, I made a 360 panorama of the guest room at home. Relatively the take was easy, but stitching so far had proved to be harder than I thought, and with using a fisheye lens!

The last time I made a panorama of the yard in my house, I was actually using the fisheye lens in a landscape (normal) position,

but this time and in order to take a wide range vertically, I went on catching the whole thing in portrait position in a circle of 360 degrees. I know that I don't have a VR head, but I think in other situations this would be much easier than what it looks now. I made a template from the original RAW files (2 of them from each group of bracketed exposures), and yet none of them sounds that good for the stitch. For this matter now, I've posponed my idea of buying Panorado for the time being, and I really want to get this right. The general view sounds fine, but it will require some load of work with the cloning tool in Photoshop to fix some stitching errors in some corners. Could it be that the Spherical projection is not a good one for this image? Or the whole thing is really related to the parallax error? Although, from what I see on location, the parallax should not be a problem... not a heavy one at least. Been in worse conditions before, like taking a panorama of that small chamber back in Ireland:

The chamber of the small tower in Aughnanure Castle field.

This chamber was so hard for many things; a) small space I could barely rotate around myself, b) working in AF mode (autofocus) was hard and even harder to switch to manual mode to sharpen the image, because I couldn't look at the viewfinder of the camera all the time, c) the curvatic ceiling caused many erratic results when stitched in PTGui.

In the guest room panorama, the shot was run on 3 rows on different angles running around in a circle. The first row, as usual, was the middle one, or the basic one if I should say. This time I couldn't really follow the dial on the tripod head so, I merely followed the overlapping rule of the focus points inside the viewfinder. Later on, however, I managed to rotate the camera in segments of 30 degrees.The light outdoors, which showed through the windows, was dark as the night was falling. I was hoping to make it brighter really, and hence I should have done it in daytime before the dusk, but my busy schedule and home improvments tasks around the house left me exhausted and could not do a thing until few minutes before dusk, and after that the night tends to fall quickly. I wouldn't be able to race the night fall with such sluggish movements like that ones I do behind the camera! I'm trying my best to work faster, and neater, if I ever could.

A piece of advice people. Go on and download the latest OpenOffice. It is free, and sometimes when Microsoft screws you up with Word or Excel applications, the OpenOffice can be the solution for you. I can't say it is the best, as there are some options in Word or Excelt for example that cannot be found in OpenOffice, but also vice versa is true. I had for days now tried to do a simple formula in Excel and I thought I was doing something wrong when suddenly I did the same thing in OpenOffice Calc (the equivalent for Excel) and ta-da! It's all done and with a blink of an eye! Get IT! I think there are also some add-ons provided by various users to do some jobs, but I didn't try any really.

__________

625. then one night came and the moon was full
626. and with harsh winds blowing the moon became red
627. and the dust was reddish and smelled like metal
628. thus Alexander knew he was in the spot indeed
629. but what more to do if he could not know a thing
630. then he remembered the gesture of Ázilis to Charnagút
631. thus Alexander raised the sword up high and looked
632. to understand the meaning of all what is happening
633. then he noticed a ray of red light striking down on the sword
634. like how a magnet stone attracts the iron pieces
635. then he moved the sword left and right, up and down
636. but the ray goes wherever the sword goes
637. and the hero remembered the words of Ázilis
638. thus he sat down and waited with a hard breath
639. and the dust almost went into his lungs and eyes
640. then he pointed the sword to the ground
641. and he rested his hands over its pommel
642. and the sword went easily into the ground
643. like how a sharp knife cuts into the meat
644. and the land started to shake violently
645. so violent that would crush houses to the depth of Earth
646. and the Earth cracked like a piece of wood under an ax
647. while Alexander jumped to one side in a fast move
648. while the Earth kept on tearing apart from North to South

Alexander 6, V26.

After working on typing the whole thing yesterday, now, and thanks for the auto-save option in Blogger, I've lost everything by a wrong keystroke that deleted my whole post. All of that was to set on an Amazon Associates account. My aim is not to get money via Amazon really, as I barely find people to read this blog anyway, but it would be helpful to have the search bar on the right and just put the image directly into the blog editor instead of opening a new window for this task. Well, I can use images of lens as well!
Here I go writing up what was deleted, or some of it as much as I can remember.

I brought the camera to my work place yesterday as I wanted to take some pictures of a device, to put it up with the text I'm writing for a friend about radiation measuring devices and such, but by almost the end of the day and before 30 minutes of going out from the work place, I felt the urge to snap some images for the building I work in, again. But this time, I was to use the 15mm Fisheye lens, and it proved very helpful, or should I say extremely helpful!

The old panorama that I made for this building was, well, awkward if I should say in many aspect, but yet lot of people liked it and it was given to the German Ambassador as a gift! Yet, I've found out some stitching mistakes that I didn't notice before at all in that old panorama, and people barely notice that before of the relatively small size of the image.

The old panorama for my work place. Check the larger version by clicking on the image and notice the first pillar from the left (top part) and the first square on the roof on the right side of the building (from the left). These were stitching errors. Also The front of the building is taken off a bit, and the vertical lines are not supposedly, vertical, and that made removing the building on the far right a difficult task. The image itself is also somehow, too much elongated I presume.

In this old panorama, which I assembled by my EF-S 18-55mm lens. Almost, as far as I remember, I needed 20 angles or more to take up for the whole building in 2 rows, and that was in portrait position as well. 

EF-S 18-55mm

 Now with my Fisheye everything had changed, and even in the stitching process. It took only 5 angles in portrait position to take up for the whole building, and in stitching process there was a bit more creativity and guess what? The optimization in PTGui itself was more friendly to my necessities and showed "Very Good" sign even!

By the stitching process, I worked out 2 versions for the new panorama. The first one was keeping a straight look to the building and giving a sense of spaceous surrounding, while the truth is, actually, I barely had a stand in front of the building because of all the junk behind me. Not only that, but also, any slight movement or change in position was to block my view, and hence, the camera as well.

Rectangular and straight new panorama.

 There had been a problem in stitching as well but they were not as serious as the previous one. It is the same square on the roof that keep on breaking... I wonder if he has something against me or so!
Anyway, the good part is that the vertical lines are kept vertical and still, and the building part on the far right was removed. The bad story here is that, and because of the stretching to make the panorama straight, the 2 green pillars on the far left were stretched as well, giving unpleasant look, but maybe in a small size they do well? The reason for this is that, as I think, because I was not standing exactly in the middle point of the building but rather in front of the door (which is not exactly in the middle) and that makes these pillars far away and hence more curved originally (vanishing point concept?), which makes them stretch in a hard way when straightened. This is one point to bear in mind next time - Always try to take a middle point in such cases.
The sun glare was also stretched along with the image here, making bigger than the original spots. But that I think is left for the viewer, maybe some of them think the glare is nice while others like the image to be glare-less. 


The second case or version of the same panorama and the same collection of images of course, was to keep the fisheye look as the old one but this time, we have a more elegant look, and compact space with vertical lines being vertical indeed and removing the bits of that annoying building on the right;

Fisheye look panorama.

The fisheye look is my favorite for wide buildings if I should say, and specially when the horizontal lines are curved, but the vertical lines are kept straight.
Personally, I underetimated the importance of keeping the vertical lines as vertical when taking photos of buildings. This was one of the tips that I've learned in Adrian Schulz's book, "Architecture Photography".

 

I did wonder all the time what is the importance of keeping the vertical lines as vertical, and why shouldn't we have more like, fanciful looks for the buildings in photographs or so, but seems elegance has its own ways. I do now prefer to try hard to keep my vertical lines vertical indeed, whenever possible.

The new panoramas were all prepared in HDR and then tone-mapped in Photomatix (seriously, I don't the time to play around with manual tone-mapping now). The looks on the web is not really what I did see on my monitor when I was preparing these images, because I was using the ProPhoto color space (gamut). For people who do not know, it might be useful to read the Wikipedia article here. It is a color space founded by Kodak. You can think of the "color space" or "gamut" as to be, "how much colors I'm allowed to use in here?". The original panoramas had this turquoise look and splashes of green and blue intermixed, but I think it all goes back to sRGB color space (standard RGB) when the pictures are uploaded. I don't have much experience on what is allowed where when it comes to color spaces, but a ProPhoto color space is something huge and I think it gives more freedom when it comes to color picking and creative venturing. In fact, many stock sites advise the uploaders to make sure that their images are in sRGB format, because it is the most common, but I do hope a change comes on the way, because such colors are amazing. We would end up having the same problems of preparing and adjusting the colors from RGB to CMYK just before the final print comes out. It is a non-pleasant experience according to what I've done so far.

By coincidence, and as I was roaming the net looking for stuff to fill my junk yard with, I came across a software that seems it would fit my needs when it comes to viewing HDR files (Radiance and OpenEXR). It's called Panorado, and although the name looks it is specific for panoramic purposes, but in the description it mentions that it can view the HDR and EXR files, and this is my main aim. It has nice features mentioned as well, like viewing a panorama in 360 degrees, but of course I didn't try it so far, so I cannot tell. However, my main purpose would be to view HDR files (Radiance or OpenEXR) without the need of opening up Photoshop to do so. It costs $29.95. I think it is fair enough with multi-tasker of a program!

Now all what you've read so far was actually the product that I wrote mostly yesterday to be posted today, so now imagine I'm re-typing all of that now. When I had the time to do that? Well, after coming from the garage. I really discovered there is a new meaning for the word "Garage" actually by this visit to that place. "Garage" can also mean "torture". Supposedly the weather is still spring and I felt my brain cooked in the sun waiting in that queue line for more than one hour, just to get my brakes in merely 10 minutes. Very nice.

Recently, I've been feeling a bit sorry after reading the latest entry in Jonathan Boakes' Blog, about selling a cottage. This cottage was part of one of the most brilliant games I've ever played, which was designed mainly by Jonathan himself of course - The Lost Crown: A Ghosthunting Adventure.

 The cottage in the game itself gives a calm atmosphere (in daytime scenes!), and when I see it now in real in photographs, I still keep on that opinion about it. The situation reminded me somehow of Failaka island and how it became such a deserted place by now, although it has some potential of being a resort or anything, along with the other islands like Miskan (which is said to have still a lighthouse built by the British soldiers back in 1918).

Some deserted places in Failaka island, which was greatly depopulated during/after the war in 1990.

Although I hope to see some life come to such places, but I also do not wish to see it condensed like a city. I always hold the belief that an island, should remain an island; some isolate place away from the troubles in the city.

__________
601. while the men of Beten Yamta went to Ázúf
602. Alexander remained in his place preparing for his journey
603. and the last memories of Ázilis sparked his mind
604. then he remembered how Ázilis pointed to Charnagút
605. and he was wondering for the reasons of this point
606. but Ázilis did not say anything about Charnagút
607. although he was pointing to it during his speech
608. Alexander knew there is something hidden and some secrets
609. all might be clear when he reaches the appointed lands
610. just before the next full moon of Shaieb
611. then the hero went out of the tribe place to the desert
612. and to the south he traveled away for days
613. all the way he was feeling someone is following him
614. between the dunes and the mounts and hills
615. but he never noticed anyone, and thought its only an imagination
616. for the heat of the desert can make false images to the minds
617. some days the hero spent in the desert passing through ruins
618. and wondering where the promised land could be
619. until he reached the coasts of the Great Lake
620. the largest lake in Daynur and in the middle of lands
621. and Alexander walked along its western coast going south
622. without any rest either in day or night time
623. because the night of the full moon is approaching
624. and he must be in between the two waters

Alexander 6, V25.

Relatively a quiet day... something that happens on Mondays? Weird, isn't it?
But that does not mean without any worries. My car brakes worry me somehow for the sounds they produce and I shall have to pick to the leasing garage. I just hope they do it in one day as usual and not leave the car there... I have no one to pick me up then!

Nothing much today, out of the regular that is. I have lot of typing to do; my transliteration and some text for a friend.
Just a song that I liked so much for long time ago and still...



__________
577. but Ázilis could not complete his words
578. and suddenly he closed the eyes and put down the hands
579. and his muscles got relaxed and stretched out
580. and no sound of breath could be heard from him again
581. then Alexander, the king, kissed the forehead of the old man
582. and let loose his tears upon the face of the old man
583. then Alexander went out of the tent and called Utéfah
584. but he did not notice who was at the back of the tent
585. then Utéfah arrived and Alexander told him about Ázilis
586. and the tribe made a huge funeral for their wise man
587. because of him, the tribe gained many respect and wisdom
588. and he turned the tribe from the harsh nomadic life
589. to the literate tribe that it is now
590. and everyone wished the blessings for his soul
591. and they memorized his old days and his smile
592. and before his burial they opened his Will
593. and there they found out his last words about his burial
594. where he wanted to be not buried in the ground
595. but his body shall be enclosed into a hard wooden chest
596. and thrown to the wide ocean of the north
597. that is to the sea of Ázúf
598. and all his books and writings shall go to Utéfah
599. thus the tribe worked on the last wish of Ázilis
600. and they marched with his tomb to the sea of Ázúf

Alexander 6, V24.

It was a calm weekend relatively, but full of dust. We had a bit of rains in the beginning at noon time on Friday, yet, the same day at night time, the dust attacked! It was so hard to see at all, and my black car is now, literally, white. Or should I say, yellow!

I've been working in the weekend on fixing the panorama of the house yard in several ways. Although I've made a template before from a "simple" set of images of the same scene but it did not quite work on the HDR panorama that I was attending to stitch. There had been several mistakes. Maybe if I didn't use the regular angular displacement in the tripod head, it would have been much worse than this.

Original stitch made by the first images in the groups of three

The original packs actually contained some mistake in taking the photographs, specially for the top part of the gate (or entry door in the middle here). The group was darker than the other when it was combined into HDR. I think I've forgot to fix the shutter speed to some proper timing and measure the exposure (because I was shooting in Manual mode, I had to measure the exposure and make sure the bracketing goes into -2,0,+2 at every angle and fixing the shutter speed accordingly). However, this original stitch was not without mistakes as well but they were not as much as the other trials with the HDR panorama. The optimization in PTGui seems to work always against me, and what seems "not bad" in calculations, sounds "good" to me!

Anyway, I thought of doing another template or another set of control points to help me in stitching the HDR panorama here, and this time I used the brighter set of images in the groups of 3 images (from bracketing exposures). After saving the template and applying it again to my HDR panorama (and without using the optimization option) I got somehow a fine panorama which needed some fixes at some points specially at the gate of entry. In the previous versions or trials, there were errors in the pillars, the ground and the gate, but later most of these points were fixed, except of the gate of entry and maybe the white door.

A simple trial to tone-map the panorama manually did not yield much impression actually, and it was hard to do (for me), thus I decided directly, to be tone-mapped by Photomatix. Finally I got 2 versions, one which I would like to call "normal" and the other I would call "dramatic";

Normal looking (to some extent), tone-mapped in Photomatix.

Dramatic version. Tone-mapped by Photomatix.

I was trying to give the image a sense of antiquity, something that comes from the golden era of the Roman empire and the gardens that usually found in the houses of that time. Thus, I worked on giving some dusty and vivid hard contrasts.

The weird thing is how the ground looks to be inclined to one direction rather than the other. Could it be that the original design is so? I just don't know! Generally speaking now, I think I can say that working with my fisheye lens would be fun!

Meanwhile, I've been looking through the net for some software to view OpenEXR files, without the need to run Photoshop every time I need to check the image. So far, all the programs that I've encountered were for Mac OS, and I barely found one simple program (that does it exactly as I want) to view .HDR files only. It is an old program and free (you can get it from here), and it comes handy when I just want to view the panoramas in a quick glance just to check if they contain any dramatic errors before stitching them into a bigger format. Thus, every time I work, I must stich first in .HDR format (sometimes called Radiance format), and then, if everything goes well, I would stitch the larger size, in OpenEXR format directly.

With this and that, and with some games I have to play already, I'm not having enough time to read the books I got from Ireland so far. As for Ireland, the mind is still busy with thoughts of going back there this year, but I'm not sure about the expenses that I can bear so far...

__________
553. Ázilis then looked at the huge man beside Alexander
554. and said with a weak voice: Utéfah, leave us alone please
555. thus Utéfah without arguing left the tent
556. and Alexander felt that it is a secret of secrets
557. then Ázilis continued his talk to Alexander
556. "listen to me O good king of Caqobia,
557. you are chosen to know the secret of life,
558. and no one is supposed to know this except of you,
559. it is a promise from my father, from my grandfather, from his father,
560. those who lived the lives of shepherds and nomads,
561. who knew the ways of the stars and heavens,
562. and those who met the real Ayvars of antiquity,
563. it is but one king that owns the lands of far and near,
564. shall know the secret of secrets and why we are here,
565. a secret that was taken by the Ayvars to the deepest of lands,
566. because no living on the surface was to understand,
567. watch out O dear good king for the next full moon,
568. and when its time is due you must be out of here,
569. you must be out where the shaking lands are,
570. somewhere in between the Ghutans and Fulkan Muttere,
571. and in between the Hermits and the two waters,
572. and just before the mounts to the south of the Great Lake,
573. walk and walk until the moon becomes reddish from dust,
574. and almost you will not be able to breathe,
575. just then, sit and wait and be patient,
576. and wait for the lands to shake and..."

Alexander 6, V23.

One of the most terrible 2 days just passed away and here I am. I couldn't post anything yesterday for the bad condition I had with my headache... apparently my head hates me so much!
Yesterday was also the supposed day of the visit of the German Ambassador to our work place and after only 4 hours from his visit, I received an email message from the Public Relation as a notice or some news item about his visit with pictures, and of course no pictures from the center were presented there.
The headache that took over my right side of the head left me for my own business later on after taking some pain killers finally, two times, on Wednesday; that is yesterday. I didn't go to work because of it, and as I said before I was not there when the ambassador was here. It made me idle a bit and I had some sort of weird feelings... pardon, I don't mean this is the first time I get some weird feelings, but well, it was like connected to the headache somehow. Feeling yourself living alone and can barely see people, or you do things and then think "why did I do this or that?".

Amid my meditation in the house yard (if I can call it so) I thought of trying out my new lens, the EF 15mm Fisheye lens. It made me discover some stuff that I didn't think of before unfortunately, but well, I can say it is doing a nice job already.

The work is still going on with this one, and here you can see only a regular version. I tried to fix the exposure range perfectly in between +/-2, but maybe I missed in one or two angles. The other thing here is that I tried my best to rotate the tripod head at a fixed rate of 50 degrees for each angle. The result was 20 something shots for each row (3 rows of them at different azimuthal angles). So, I can say it is far much lesser than the usual work. I feel that even my work with 50 degrees can be expanded to something like 60 degrees, thus making the number of angles I have to shoot at lesser.

My fisheye lens (picture from BH website)

First of all, it was a bit awkward to work with a lens with a fixed focal length, and hence, without any zooming in and out, but well, as a friend of mine said (and who taught me everything I know about photography) told me that lenses with fixed focal lengths, in general, tend to give better results and sharper images. I think for a first glance, yes, it is true.
However, there are some things that I didn't think about before buying this, but I'm not regretting anyway since I think it is a very nice lens already. The lens is from EF series (not EF-S), and that means it is dedicated for a fullframe camera. The specifications say that it would show you a FoV of 180 degrees. It is not said (as you can see in the BH website link below the image) whether this is a horizontal FoV or a diagonal. Some websites reviewing the same lens mentioned that it is a diagonal. However, I think this FoV is indeed 180 degrees ONLY with a fullframe camera, and not with a camera like mine with a sensor of some crop factor (crop factor: a factor of cropping related to the original 35mm film size). In other words, part of the image that the lens collects only, falls upon the small sensor of my camera, and hence my camera cannot take the whole FoV literally. Well, the only shame in this is that I won't be able to do nice skydomes maybe. Nevertheless, the lens is also good for a close-up photography and doing some effects as well.

While I was working on the cleaning kit, which I didn't find any manual on how to use it but it should be simple (later on I found out the instructions leaflet was here in the office), I noticed that when I put the sensor loupe (some lens with bright LEDs to lighten up the sensor for cleaning) that they make nice patters when I put that on the lens. I tried hardly to get a pic of this, but it was so hard since I have to put the camera vertically above the loup and lens combination. After all, I think I managed somehow, although I'm not sure it is that good;

I use the loupe also to find out if there are any fingerprints on the lens surface, as they are hard to see in regular light. The image was taken with the fisheye lens as well, but here I already gave up my chances with the tripod because of the complicated settings that I need (and some levers in the tripod do not move adequately).
Apparently, I'm lucky to be alive now to write down all of this rubbish for you people. I almost got myself killed in the lab after some device was blown up because of the vacuum pressure. The sound was extreme, I'm looking at it now and laughing... for real...

The Freeze-Drying Machine that blew off today

Right, I have to get to write some papers now, and than God it is Thursday (TGIT).

__________
529. then Alexander asked Ázilis about his words
530. then Ázilis replied: you should know O good king,
531. there are things in this life that destiny had decided,
532. I've roamed the lands to gather the wisdom,
533. and for a look into the stars I knew days will come,
534. when a young king of faith shall come to me for guidance,
535. thus I spent sixty of my years waiting for the promise,
536. and here it is I see it come true,
537. go ahead O good king and ask your questions,
538. verily my days are numbered in this life
539. then Alexander put his palm on Ázilis' forehead
540. and said with a low voice: Ázilis, O good old man,
541. verily you have faced many a troubles for this wisdom,
542. and verily God will reward you in the afterlife,
543. and may sooner or later we become your companions there,
544. but tell me O wise one, about one saying in the old papers,
545. the papers of your ancestors when you were a shepherd,
546. one saying that might resolve my problems forever,
547. "when the full moon over Daynur,
548. becomes reddish in its light and hue,
549. then watch the shake of Uhir Daynur,
550. it is then you will have the Ayvar bless"
551. and Alexander went silent and looked into the eyes
552. while Ázilis smiled a yellowish smile of sickness

Alexander 6, V22.

Oh... my... GOD!
If there is a word to describe such a traffic, that would be simply "Kuwait City". More than three hours doing chores here and there out of work. In fact, they were like 2 chores only but they just took so damn long to be done. My first chore was to print out 2 images as a gift for the German Ambassador for his awaited visit tomorrow. The second chore was to go to DHL and pick up my shipment finally! 10 minutes, more or less, I had to wait in the traffic in the traffic light without moving one inch! Well, to be honest, I moved 3 inches maybe during that time...
One of the things that almost made me fly off the handle is that beggar who roams the front of the DHL facility. Like she is aiming exactly at me... and of course her face was covered like most of the beggars. She started to call me while I was doing my papers and payment, which made me yell at her to stop nagging. I prepared some money for her already, but when I left the place, she was gone. Don't think of me as a harsh person please, but some people here make out begging as a craft.

My current state of mind is just... not here, to say the least. The visit of the ambassador is roaming around my head and it really pisses me off. I'm still not sure of myself if I want to attend the ceremony or not. I might be here in college, but would rather be some where else other than my office. For the time being, today is going to be a busy day for me; Showering, shaving and trimming and preparing some good suit to wear.

MY FISHEYE LENS... HERE I COME!!!!!!!!!

__________
505. and the shock took over Alexander
506. and begged the man to show him Ázilis as soon as possible
507. so the man agreed to Alexander's request
508. and they moved among the tents of the tribe
509. until they reached a green tent that scented like herbs
510. and Alexander wondered about the smell
511. thus the man answered: these are the scents of herbs,
512. your man had been taking a lot of medicines,
513. yet we are not sure he will survive
514. then both of them asked for permission to go inside
515. and a weak voice from inside said something
516. then they moved inside and the old man was lying on the ground
517. almost dead with thin body and bones showing outside
518. and both of them approached closer and sat beside his body
519. and the huge man started to talk with a tongue
520. some tongue that Alexander did not understand
521. then the old man gazed upon Alexander carefully
522. and said with a weak voice with a perfect Caqobian
523. "you are the king?" the old man asked Alexander
524. and Alexander replied "yes, I was the king..."
525. but the old man said: a good king, is always a king
526. and then Alexander smiled and asked: and you are Ázilis?
527. the old man said amid the coughs: truly I am and this day is promised
528. and once again the words made a race of thoughts for Alexander

Alexander 6, V21.

A sort of a busy day. Working in the lab a bit and opening the labs myself since the janitors are in strike as I heard. To tell the truth, I'm happy for that. One day without looking at the janitor! Woho!
In order to help my friend, I went on roaming the place first thing I came here, before even connecting my laptop to the net as usual or anything. I got my camera bag and connected the camera already before going into the building and carried the bag just if it was a normal student's bag or case. I went over the ground floor, then up to the first floor into some classes to take pics. Well, despite the fact that I didn't take the tripod with me, but I couldn't resist the urge to take panoramas standing up with a shaky hands, and hence, the aperture size was to be maximum (f-number is low). I think it was f4.5. Not only this will give me a faster shutter speed and compensate for my hand shake, but also it would be better for a faster job on location. Without any doubt, the shoot was run for HDR. If HDR compositing was not feasable because of some shake, at least I would be able to pick up a suitable one from the different 3 exposures. When HDR is made up, that would be extremely fine, since I can control the contrast and the light level in various areas, or even just hit the Photomatix and give out some magic.
I made out some experiments with the pictures taken yesterday from here, and I was just AMAZED for the level of noise and spots on the images when I started to tone-map! The cleaning kit and the whole shipment in the DHL arrived, but is not released yet as per writing this. I hope it wouldn't reach my Judgement Day to see the shipment released!

I've suggested to my director that we might print out something as a gift for the German ambassador. Although I feel a bit awkward and not in mood for any public show off or any formal meetings, but I felt the urge to do this. Don't ask me why, but it is something kicking from the inside and tells me to do something. The choice fell maybe between 2 images; our building, or a picture of our biggest lab...

Printing out these should be done the right way now. Converting to CMYK, correcting the color shifts and then print. It's not going to be an easy task to compensate for the loss of some colors I would say. I heard that correcting the colors under CMYK is a hard task indeed. I shall experiment with that soon as I go back home, and this time I have to do it on my own expense as well, and no time for any excuses or delays. The visit is scheduled for next Wednesday, and it is Monday here already. I would wish if I would think of days coming so fast like this when it comes to my weekend plans!

__________
481. Alexander asked the huge man in a hurry
482. "Ayvar! you know them? where they are?"
483. the man smiled slowly and calmly then said
484. "O good king, we are verily said to be their children,
485. but I do not know anything about their places,
486. and I do not know if they existed even,
487. but for long time, other tribes used to call us like that,
488. children of the Ayvar, and who speaks almost like us,
489. are called the ayvaric children of the deserts,
490. I apology if my knowledge is not what you are seeking!"
491. then Alexander remembered why he came here in the beginning
492. and said to the huge man: I came here to see a man of wisdom
493. and the huge man answered: this is verily not me I suppose!
494. we are the children of the desert take care of days when they come
495. but we worry not about the upcoming future!
496. then Alexander said: the man I am seeking is named Ázilis
497. do you happen to know him O good man?
498. the huge man was surprised and said in a slow speech
499. "Yes O good king, he is our wise man and our guide,
500. but it might be hard to speak to him at the moment,
501. or you might not be able to talk to him so soon"
502. Alexander asked in a questioning tone thereafter
503. "Why is it so O good man?"
504. and the huge man replied: because he is dying

Alexander 6, V20.

It is a tiresome morning indeed. I had to run with my camera here and there just with my arrival to the work place, in order to finish some stuff for my friend before the arrival of my colleagues and, the security people. Maybe I have to do some extra later on, if my friend requires so!

Been trying to find a suitable location to dump my files for the Ayvarith website as a beginning, but none was there. Angelfire and Tripod were not available for free as it seems (both under Lycos). Homestead had some good choices, unfortunately it is not completely free. I did that some days ago, and I shall continue later. There are some websites that I really cannot tell if they are good or anything, since I didn't hear of them and, some of them seem a bit awkward just by looking at the website address! I need somewhere, with no less than 15 MB space, for the time being. After all, I think I've settled on Fortunecity, it has a free service and it offers 1GB! Too good to be true to me!! But well, We'll see what will be going later. Right now, I'm doing nothing, just will dump the files whenever I'm having some time for this.
Afterall, I think I'm going to design the whole thing again and maybe do some sounds clips again, hoping that they become clearer than the other versions before that required the RealPlayer.

I think I've underestimated the abilities of Photomatix. Last Thursday I was out with a friend by night, and I liked the view of that restaurant by night, and when no one was around, except of few cars of course belonging to the night bats like my friend and myself. It was funny though how we tried to set up and shoot; we went around the parking lot that was far away a bit in circles around just to find a nice spot. Finally, we got that spot but with the tree in front, but it was OK to me, since other angles were worse, far worse, than this one.

 Our favorite icecream place

I had to sit at the back just behind my friend and turn off the lights of the car, just like spies snapping photos of their prey! It was a hard shoot; no tripod and no stable hands, plus to that that I had to use my telephoto. As a rule, if you have a telephoto and worked on a zoom, then any simple shake to your hand will be apparent in the shoot later on, and needless to say that even the mirror inside the camera (which clicks up when you press the button) do shake the camera a bit. That's why there is an option in these cameras to "lock up the mirror".
Hence, you can imagine how it went while I was sitting in the backseat trying to snap the building with that telephoto. I tried to sit in many different ways just to stabilize my hands without using the tripod, yet my trials failed. At least, I got 2 shots of different exposures that were fine.
Back home when I downloaded the images, I decided to try out the 3 main shots, with the brightest being the shakiest (since it is the brightest which means a longer time for the shutter to close and open again, i.e. more shake). With Photomatix, it was almost like magic; most of the shake is gone. Some noise would be apparent in a 100% close up look for sure, and I think this is even obvious in what so-called, "stable shot". But this time, the shaky part is indeed like almost gone with no trace. Could it be that, somehow, the exposure information are extracted from the RAW file and fixed up to the general image without having to adapt the features of the image itself? I wonder. Afterwards, cleaning and contrast boosting was done, as usual.

By coincidence, I found out that my poem, O Shannon, was published in www.writing.com in some newsletter sent to other users for St Patrick day. I received a message in the websites internal email system about a review made by a reader. Judging from the rank (a number beside the nickname of the user) I can say it was a high ranked user. They liked the poem and told me it was in the newsletter, which I usually delete. How embarassing. He forwarded the newsletter back to me and found it under "Editor's Pick" column. I think being published in a newsletter is awesome, somehow it means like your poems are read by "high ranked" people, i.e. those who make out these newsletters in the website itself! The funny thing is, although it is about something Irish, but the newsletter was about Romance and Love. Is memorizing the childhood considered something romantic? I really don't know, but anyway, it got published that way!

Still in Ireland and its stories, I've finished the first book from a list of books that I got from Ireland last October. The Irish Ghosts book, by John Dunne.

The cover of the book I have is different by the way. Now, after unpacking the other books and some of them were just TOO much to read, I realized here that I have another ghosts book, this time by Geddes & Grosset. I don't know why I bought two already, but well, this should be fun I guess... I hope! This one looks fatter in contents, and maybe that's why I did take it in the first place! There are books on Irish music and Irish dancing (or a story of the Irish dancing) and a book about the Irish myth. This last one is a tough one to read. SO FAT.

__________
457. the hero got ready for a hand combat
458. then he tried to view clearly the face
459. and he found out it was but a human like all
460. while the stranger approached with a smile
461. and from under his cloak he grasped something
462. then said with a harsh slow voice like a nomad
463. in a weak Caqobian tongue
464. "is this what you are looking for?"
465. and the stranger showed the Charnagút
466. then the stranger continued the speech
467. while Alexander was checking his dear Charnagút
468. "you suffered so much from the desert,
469. and fever attacked you like locusts on green leaves,
470. then you fainted near our place"
471. and Alexander praised God for His grace and said
472. "thank you O generous one, but you speak Caqobian,
473. how did you know I am a Caqobian?"
474. and the huge man laughed and said with a smile
475. "you think we do not know the Charnagút?
476. the sword of just that was once for Pilippánút,
477. the fair king of Caqobia, who protected us long ago,
478. and this tongue is spoken around by the literate
479. along side with other ayvaric tongues of other tribes"
480. then Alexander forgot his pains when he heard of the Ayvar

Alexander 6, V19.

It's Thursday! Can you believe it! WEEKEND!


It was a disappointment really. Staying on the roof yeterday before sunset until it was all over and no sign for the promised crescent. Seems the agenda's notes was dedicated more to people with astronomical interests. I do have that interest but I'm just not so deep in it. Professionals got their telescopes I guess. Or maybe, the roof is not a good place amid all that fogged like view. However, I did take some photographs of the sun in its setting with my 55-200mm lens.
What I did was that, I took 3 shots every few minutes totaling 3 shots on 3 times (that is 9 images). With the help of Photomatix, I batch-processed the set, resulting in 3 OpenEXR images. Then with Photoshop I combined the 3 altogether in one image resulting in something like cartoons... a moving sun. Tone-mapping made in 2 ways, the usual; Manual and by Photomatix.

Photomatix Version

Manual Tone-mapping

The noise in the images are really, really, REALLY driving me mad. I still can't recognize whether they are from the lens, or the sensor. But it does seem that the telephone has more of that noise rather than the regular lens (18-55mm). 

The Photomatix version seems nicer to me, despite the noise and spots, but after all I had to add extra adjustment layers for other purposes. The manual tone-mapping produced some effect like a silhouette, but I was surprised then that when I added some adjustment layers to fix the hue of the image that some banding occured. I saved the image that way anyway. I'm not interested in fixing it for now. But this experience made me think of possible shots in the future, for the sun or moon, or for any other movement to snap.

I've been working as well with a photo of my eyes, and I produced 2 images from the same RAW file. I'm not sure they are good for stock sites but I'm going to try my luck anyway.

I called them the "beast eyes" or simple, The Beast. The two images are not produced by bracketed exposures (although originally, I did it for that purpose to compose an HDR later on). I felt like working with the brightest image on that sequence of 3 images. Of course the image you see here is a result of extensive editing, otherwise it would sound more like a dull image, wouldn't it? I'm thinking of submitting the latter for the stocks, but I think my chances are somehow less than 50%, since stock sites deal with the noise or grains as a form of noise always, and not an expressive style. I've tried it already with the images of me giving different facial expressions. Canstockphoto accepted them, while Bigstockphotos refused them for the grains.

Well, not much had been done to the transliteration today. Let's see the fuss next week with the visit of the Ambassador!
__________
433. then the hero prepared for his long journey
434. he took food and water and the blessings from the shepherds
435. and went on to the north over the deserts
436. where he encountered many ruins
437. many castles and many wells of no use
438. just left for the sands to be eaten
439. just like Qafra or even worse
440. and some days passed away until water became scarce
441. then the hero glanced from afar some signs of living
442. amid the sand storm he was trying to view clearly
443. but his power did not help him stand up against the wind
444. and with the heat of his body he had to give up
445. and he closed his eyes and fainted
446. he did not feel a thing until he opened his eyes
447. to find himself in a tent which the wind played by
448. and no one beside him except of a bowl of water
449. he almost wanted to drink that water
450. his throat was sore and felt like thorns
451. but he couldn't drink the water in the bowl
452. for it smelled strong and made him dizzy
453. and while he was gazing around trying to understand
454. when suddenly the tent ripped open
455. and a huge built man-like creature got inside
456. but the hero did not find his sword to grasp

Alexander 6, V18.

After a sickening day, I really can't imagine myself back home yesterday and STAYING awake until almost 12 a.m.. Jams, jams, jams, they were every where! After heading back home I had a gush of blood going out from my nose for some time, and I think it's all related to the high blood pressure.
 According to the agenda, where some astronomical data are given, there is supposedly a nice view in the sky for the crescent pointing upward (i.e. like a U), and Venus should be to the south of it. The observation takes place at the time of the setting of the sun, thus, it is a job for a super "fat" hero like me to go up to the roof again today. Let's hope this day passes with easiness and I can get back home with a sound mind and muscles. I will try to catch the scene with my simple telephoto (55-200mm).

I have some screwing up at work. The German ambassador is visiting us, and you can imagine all the type of fuss that will go around by next week. Also, in such a day I think no more transliteration work would be suitable at all. I have to get into one of my suits as well. I think my life shall be paralyzed. Not that it bears much important things as I go almost through the same routine every day, but the fact that I have to be formal and bear the consequences of every movement possible in front of the guests is just an idea that I can't bear within my "small" mind. I would prefer if they told me "please bring your camera to snap the ambassador," I think that would be a much greater idea. Needless to say also, how much security procedures will go on. My office is a mess here (just like any bachelor guy), and that should be soon fixed before their coming next Wednesday. One of my professors will be there as well and he knows that I used to learn some German, I just hope he won't press on me with that topic, as I've forgot a lot of my German language skills really!

Today, I thought of another change to the way I transliterate the Ayvarith text, and this time, it has nothing to do with the letters or phonemes, but with the way I should write down the prepositions (some of them). I've noticed myself that I tend to write some prepositions, when connected to small words, that I use the hyphens "-" or I just stick it to the word as one thing (like how it appears in the Ayvarith text itself).
going through it, and of course lot of the texts that I've made awould require such fix, but all might come later anyway as it is not a big issue for the time being. I made out a certain rule that I will try to follow for the next period of transliterating.
The rule is that, when the word, the transliterated word, is less than 4 letters in length, then the preposition before this word (in case of any) shall be sticked without a hyphen and become like one word, with keeping the letter that signified the beginning of the word capital. Example for that would be like this:
1. Because of: (old) li-kay, (new) liKay.
2. In something: (old) ba-mší, (new) baMší.
3. Like (similar to) him: (old) ka-hú, (new) kaHú.
4. Why: (old) li-maz, (new) liMaz.

Some exclusions are there, like "and" (vi) which is not a preposition in fact but I was thinking seriously about it because it is also a short prefix that come before words in Ayvarith. However, I shall leave it as it is. Some other prepositions are not to be touched, like "on" (ąél) and "to" (él). They are already separate in Ayvarith and no need to stick them already. The first goal was, when the hyphen was added, is that when a person reads the Ayvarith text and its transliteration, a reader would understand that this is a preposition and not part of the word. Now and in order to occupy less space, it is better to remove the hyphens a bit I presume, except for "and" which will remain as it is.

Trying to keep busy with something, I pickd my camera downstairs and I tried to catch something. Nothing was good or better than trying to find a suitable eye and a suitable position. In fact it was so hard to do this with my 18-55mm lens, but well, it did some nice job after all I guess. I took a self picture for my own eyes and in FEB (Flash Exposure Bracketing), and I snapped my sister's as well in the same way. I can't probably post her eye's image here (I didn't get her permission) but well, I can post mine I suppose.

The image here had been tone-mapped in a hasty manner of course, but I like the "were-wolf" look to it. At home, however, I'm still working on more of a "regular" version of the image (i.e. RAW image file editing). With no tone-mapping. Might post it here later on.

I think I'm going to kill one of the janitors...

Happy St Patrick Day

Lá Pádraig Shona Duit

***

_________
409. Ikilis thought for some moments and then said
410. "in the old papers that my ancestors kept,
411. there is one line I do remember clearly,
412. it was a weird line but it could be useful to you"
413. and the hero asked about the line like a hungry man
414. and Ikilis replied: "when the full moon over Daynur,
415. becomes reddish in its light and hue,
416. then watch the shake of Uhir Daynur,
417. it is then you will have the Ayvar bless"
418. Ikilis went silent and Alexander as well
419. then Alexander watched the setting sun in the horizon
420. and looked back at Ikilis and said: any ideas?
421. thus Ikilis replied: maybe I have one idea but not very useful,
422. if you are able to set a journey to the east,
423. where the nomads of Beten Yamta live,
424. just between the two waters of middle Daynur,
425. an old friend of mine lived there for a long time,
426. but I cannot say he is alive still,
427. he was a wise man more than myself,
428. and he joined the nomads to study them,
429. go there and ask for Ázilis if you will
430. and the speech of Ikilis was over
431. and the hero prepared for the next journey
432. between the two waters, to Beten Yamta

Alexander 6, V17.

Today, I decided to make a major leap in the way I transliterate Ayvarith text (i.e. putting the pronunciation into Latin letters). This change will affect the speed of my work in typing it (I use OpenOffice V3.1 currently), and also, it will help somehow with some places where some underline options are not available, like here in this blog text box. I will have to bear this in mind the next time I set my own homepage again for Ayvarith.

They are mainly 2 specific changes for the transliteration of (Fricative-Pharyngeal-Unvoiced) [IPA] which represents the Arabic equivalent of "ح". The other change was for (Plosive-Alveolar-Unvoiced, Pharyngealized), which represents the Arabic equivalent of "ط". Before this time, I used to put them as underlined-H, and underlined-T, respectively. But now, I do prefer to use "ħ" and "ŧ" respectively. Although the second symbol was assigned previously for the sound of (Plosive-Retroflex-Unvoiced), which I like to call sometimes the "Indian T," but now I think I will assign the underlined version for this sound instead. The Indian-T sound has a symbol in Ayvarith, but I deem it as some voice used for foreign words that are not of original Ayvaric roots. Of course it is a conlang, but I do make up the words in a specific patterns related to Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. Foreign words here are meant to be words that are adapted directly from the other languages and embedded directly into the Ayvarith context, like "Electron" for example which was transliterated into "iliçŧarú" (the underlined letters here are pasted not typed directly into this box, that's why they show up here but I can't type it!) - before this time. Such letters are not used much, thus I think it is better to use the underline for such voices and letters rather than a unique separate letter. I better reserve such unique letters for the Ayvarith itself. The whole system of transliteration seems to be changed right now.

Today, I played a lovely prank for fun... on myself of course and nothing else. I had to go to the DHL facility twice to give my shipment to Ireland of printed photographs. The first time I went I just discovered that I don't have the address paper with me, thus I had to drive back to my work place and get the paper and back again to the DHL. A LOVELY trip in the streets of Kuwait. I don't want to talk about how many accidents I was going to do. The place sucks really, I just wonder what kind of engineer that designed such a place. In the meantime, I hope the shipment is delivered peacefully to the Waterfront owner with no delays or any bad events along the way, like the previous shipment (the one that got broken on the way). I was disappointed a little though because there were no special offers for shipments to Ireland, regarding it is the month of St Patrick day. I've seen special discounts for the national days of Australia, Morocco, Egypt and some others, but I didn't see anything for Ireland. I wonder though, do they reckon that this country exists!?

I finally got an email about my shipment, and it was finally processed by this morning and given to the UPS. I paid extra money just to have a fast delivery to my US mailbox and then what? I got a delay in the process itself. Ah well. Let's see how much I'm going to pay now for the delivery of these items (providing no problems with the stupid customs office, or inspection).

__________
385. O dear king, they say those Ayvars live for a thousand
386. and never die until one of them get a thousand kid
387. the pious of them is better than an angel
388. and the devilish of them is worse than a devil
389. they posses the knowledge of all the languages
390. and they inhabited the Earth long before us humans
391. from their knowledge, all sciences come out
392. and from their prayers you can hear the wind's whistle
393. in every full moon and on the tenth of Ráfi
394. they know the meaning of time and how it started
395. and they know the meaning of wisdom
396. then when Ikilis finished his speech about Ayvars
397. Alexander asked him: they are not human beings?
398. and Ikilis replied back: yes they are, but were here before us,
399. O hero, you have been to many lands and battles,
400. do you believe indeed such legends of old?
401. then Alexander looked with an affirmative look and said
402. "you do not know what is awaiting,
403. and be sure I did not  come here by my own,
404. so tell me O good man, anything you know in your legends,
405. about the way where they live, or how to find them?
406. I roamed the lands and dreams did not stop,
407. I have to find them even if it was my death,
408. there are secrets that I should know"

Alexander 6, V16.

My sleeping time had been screwed again. With my powerless efforts to stay awake till 9 p.m. yesterday all failed and I finally fell down at around 6:30 p.m., and thus, here I am, awake since 1:30 a.m. . It's not all bad actually, the only thing I'm concerned about is being here in my work and staying awake for a long time. I might end the day with having a short leave and never come back to do the damn fingerprint scanning.
I spent the night until the rise of dawn working on photos and fixing them according to specific sizes and made them ready to be printed out, and later shall be sent to Ireland. It's going to be costly; around 9 images on A4 size, 2 on A2 size and one on A0 size. The last one is the Aughnanure Castle disk. I'm not experienced with the printing process though, and I might see them getting darker since these printers usually use the CMYK system and images tend to be darker. Just thinking about it now, maybe I should've done and prepared everything in CMYK? Blah!

Later

In order to put some meaning into my life, I've went to the barber to fix this hair then to the printing shop (not a press but a printing shop). The previous damned barber made a fuss out of my hair that I think he was a gardener before being a barber. This is the first time I see some barber who, literally, pulls the hair instead of cutting it! I've promised the guy in the printing shop to come after the prayer's time. I hate to go out at this time but well, I can't wait all that time over there... I'm an honest worker and they need me in my work place :) (said who?). Moreover, I've told the guy to enlighten the images a bit since they are going to be darker if they are printing in CMYK. Although I'm afraid of the consequences of not supervising it myself, but let's say I have the faith to lead me through. If an image is so dark, darker than usual, well, I'm going to have to send it that way after all. And may they forgive me!
I reached the lines of 1500s in my transliteration. Transliteration sounds easier of course than translating before, but still, I can't do more than 2 pages (verses) per day. I tend to finish these 2 verses and enjoy my time for the rest of the day as much as I can, or, do other obligations related to my work here. I want to progress more with Ayvarith, and to start a new webpage, but since my time working on Ayvarith is only in my work place (which means I work on it 5 days only, and in the daytime), everything is actually slow. After the transliteration I have to think of building a new webpage and also I need to add new words to the dictionary before that. My time in the morning is devoted to Ayvarith, otherwise it is devoted to photography and gaming. I remember my old days though, when I started with Ayvarith like 3 or 4 years ago, when I used to work on it day and night. Well, back then, I didn't have a Canon in my hands! :)

Well, I'm posting this earlier than before, since I have to leave the office in almost one hour from now. I leave you with Alexander for now...

__________
361. then Alexander asked Ikilis the shepherd
362. about the reasons behind his laughter
363. thus Ikilis answered with a smile on the face
364. "O great king, one of the justice and might,
365. we heard a lot about the Ayvars from ancestors,
366. but we always take them as some legends,
367. some legends, that elders tell their children about,
368. but to see a mighty man like you take the risk,
369. going here and there in search for them,
370. I cannot say but that such a thing is amazing,
371. and I never thought of before or saw before!"
372. then Alexander took a moment to think then said
373. "did you not meet the hermit on the southern Tells?
374. he claimed that he is the grandson of the Ayvars!"
378. and Ikilis answered directly: you mean Náwi?
379. he is merely but an old man hallucinating I suppose!
380. then Alexander asked Ikilis to tell him something about them
381. and then Ikilis started to tell some of the legends he heard
382. and he said: many things are told about the Ayvars,
383. so much that you need days to know it all at once,
384. but I shall tell you what I have in my mind right now