Alexander 6, V94.

Been a quiet day relatively, beside the annoyances from the construction workers outside and the dirty janitor on the other side. Sort of unusual for a Monday I'd say.
My stuff are stuck with the DHL still since yesterday with "clearance delay" message all the time. I think the suckers who inspect the books try to flip every page in it to see if there is anything offending or something and try to go around it. Such "unusual" delay happened when I ordered my previous st of books from Rockynook as well, and the books remained 4 days for clearance!

I've finished, finally, the proof-reading of Alexander 6, hoping that I didn't skip anything by mistake. I guess it is the time now to work on the website seriously, and also to record the reciting of the story in Ayvarith. Along with that comes the re-formulation of the text to adapt to my new transliteration standard, but I won't rush on that. It feels weird though that I'm not doing much in my office today! Thus, I grabbed my Irish Ghosts book and started to read some, after stopping for quite some time now. After that I started to read my Geology facts book. I'm thinking now of something to do for tomorrow to pass the day in the office, since I won't do any sample preparation until Thursday maybe.

This space pushed me a bit to write something. I called it One Thousand Words. Just for a moment now, and after reading it again, I really can't realize how I did write it or what I was thinking of. I guess it is just the magic of the pen and the brain working together without sensing it at all.
Now, photography wise, still no ideas, although I was supposed to ask my director for some suggestions about the last room or lab that we need to make as a QTVR, beside the other two done before.

The Gamma Lab

The Anti-Compton Lab

__________
2233. then an idea occurred to Alexander immediately
2234. and he thought that teaching the people is better
2235. thus he suggested to them to look for metals in waters
2236. and bring all they can find before him to see it
2237. so the farmers went on to do the task for Alexander
2238. and they brought a huge amount of metals from the rivers
2239. thus Alexander was amazed for so much iron and copper
2240. and wondered how those people drink the waters
2241. yet he remembered that it is not like his world now
2242. and everything weird can be done in this Uhir Daynur
2243. then he ordered the men who can work with metals
2244. to work with iron and copper and mix them together
2245. then he made them make a powder from the alloy
2246. then he ordered the men who work with clay
2247. to mix the powder with the clay paste
2248. then they made up bricks out of the clay
2249. thus when everything was ready to be done
2250. he ordered them to start making a wall around the valley
2251. and advised them to do it quietly during night time
2252. thus the days passed while the men work at night only
2253. until the wall of bricks surrounded the valley
2254. while all the beasts were in the center of the valley
2255. and Alexander worked with them with his own hands
2256. and his work was the double of any man of them 

Alexander 6, V88.

I would say it is fair enough to say, it was an awesome weekend. Not for any gift or present or any good events happening in it, but merely because I slept for 12 hours! Yes! Twelve hours! I rarely do such a thing but it is true and it is indeed there! I could do it!

Anyway, back to business. Despite this 12 hours of sleep kind of wasted my time that I've planned to spend in front of my PC working on some issues, but anyway it was a nice venture. During this weekend I worked on the 2 panoramas that left for me; the office, and the gamma lab.
The first to be mangled with was the office panorama. The main challenge here was that I've shot myself in several positions (with the help of the timer in the camera of course), and my aim was to make a QTVR out of it. Unfortunately, I had to give up this dream for many issues that I've encountered while stitching and I've discovered that I made many mistakes in the location itself!

Me, Myself and I

The mistakes I've done here were sort of many, but in brief, I was not careful when I moved in the scene and caused some chairs to move here and there, which later on proved fatal for the stitching process. Also, I discovered that in my middle picture on the sofa, the original shot did not include my right feet on the ground! Hence it was impossible to recover this at all, and I was not in mood for Photoshop tricks really. For this and that, I've decided to put down the idea of a spherical panorama with this trial, for the time being. I don't know if there will be a second time. The theme and colors of the tone-mapped image here is to give some drama or action to the boring lighting conditions in the office. Some people told me it looks nice, so I hope.

The second panorama to deal with then was the Gamma Lab. In fact it was already finished with some days ago but I didn't work on fixing the image an removing the unwanted bottom (tripod legs) till yesterday. There are some noisy part of the image which were not related to the noise of the camera itself, but because these slides were dark, and I think it was a mistake from my side, when I was not careful to track down the exposure reading. Finally, I fixed it and made into a QTVR, which I hope it makes everyone happy to look at!

The Gamma Lab, at CRER, Kuniv.

However, the resolution of the QTVR was put down to 80% to reduce the size as usual. They usually say 80% quality is good enough, specially for such a small window.

Now after all this work with several panoramas, it is time to take a look a bit at what I got earlier that day (after shooting these panoramas). They were several single shots that I need to examine closely and decide whether to upload them into stock sites or not. The snaps are taken from the front space of my working place, for some pile of bricks that they dumped there (and causing some annoyances for me when I park my car!).

Good news arrived today. The DHL called and told me that my passport had arrived. It is due delivery at 3 p.m., but I know these guys will deliver it earlier when I'm not at home, as usual. I've just forgot what's my application number so I can check online about the status of my visa request. I just hope it got accepted and everything is right.

I've decided today to place an order as well. This time an order on Amazon. I thought it is better to get everything at once instead of placing everything separately. This time I had to some research of my own about what kind of monopod do I need. I just figured that a monopod is more practical than a tripod, but the real challenge is, is it possible to do a panorama with it?
After many look-ups and checking, I've decided that I might need this specific one:

 

Benro MA-96M8

There were many good monopods out there, with several specifications that can fit any purpose almost. But I picked this one specifically for several reasons:

1. It has suppostive legs to turn it into a mini-tripod.
2. The maximum height is around 173 cm, around mine.
3. The maximum load it can take is around 20kg, and this is exactly what I need. Why? Because I'm planning to try it out with my VR head.
4. Relatively, cheaper.

There were even some monopods made by Manfrotto, same brand as my VR head, but they were sometimes almost double the price of this one. Now, I'm quite sure that I will have problems when I decide to try this out with my VR head (weighs 2kg), but I'm up to it and will see if I can overcome this problem by some trick. The problem here is that, no real reviews for this monopod were available, not in Amazon nor in BH websites. Thus, I had to rely heavily on reviews made by customers for another, somehow similar, tripod.

Benro MA-91M8

This tripod is almost the same, but different in weight, and height and the maximum load it can take (18kg). The height is 163 cm and that's shorter than my built, so I preferred to go to the longest one. I was hesitant first because when it is folded, it might not fit in my backpack whenever I want to move here or there, but anyway, it is an easy stick to carry on. The real challenge is to make it work with the VR head. The reviewers, however, decided that it is a great tool, but with shaky base when it comes to a tripod, and here you go with your expected problems!

The work with VR head and a monopod would be awesome indeed. I had many hard time erasing and fixing the images with Photoshop after taking my panoramas with a tripod. The three legs and the panning handle gave me a great deal of hard work in Photoshop to remove, and not completely in a good way. A monopod would ease the problems, considerably!

Finally, I do need a tripod for easy snapping without the need for my usual heavy tripod wherever I go!

Along with the tripod I placed as well 2 books in the same order, and decided to let the other books wait for the time being now!

 

Now, it had been some days that I didn't write anything in my notes, and it makes me a bit annoyed. I don't want to stop writing ever. I must get myself busy, either behind the camera, or on a piece of paper, or of course gaming around! I've changed my working time starting from today, for I found out it is really useless to stay here till 2:30 p.m.. That's way too much for such a place I would say. Thus, my time has changed from 7:30 to 2:30, to 7:00 up to 2:00. That's why I have to plan to write my blog earlier than I used to before, maybe. I'm sort of used to blog while at work more than at home!

Now, it's time to wait for the events to come along...

__________

2089. Alexander sat down on the grass and was tired
2090. and asked Aramramátáníth: am I allowed to ask?
2091. Aramramátáníth replied: go ahead O warrior of goodness
2092. and Alexander asked his first question
2093. "who are you?"
2094. and the mother of nature replied: I am Aramramátáníth,
2095. I am whom God made to guard the health of the land,
2096. I am the guardian of farms and valleys, meadows and hills
2097. then Alexander asked his second question
2098. "what are you?"
2099. and she replied: I am the Light beyond the sight,
2100. I am the voice of conscious inside everyone's heart,
2101. I am the breeze, I am the wind, I am the storm
2102. then Alexander asked his third question
2103. "what is Mikanazzar?"
2104. and she replied: my fierce enemy on Uhir Daynur,
2105. the bringer of sickness where it goes and comes,
2106. he is the damned one, who seeks not the Mercy
2107. then Alexander asked his fourth question
2108. "why you did not heal the tree yourself?"
2109. and she replied: I was not commanded to do so,
2110. and to heal it, we needed a brave heart,
2111. and to fight Mikanazzar in it, that is dangerous,
2112. thus we were ordered to wait for you, and teach Kaliván

Alexander 6, V85.

 It's here! I can't believe it! The lab(s) that intimidated me for very long time are finally here stitched like a piece of cake! HAHA!

Well, for the time being only one is ready and the work is still going on on the other. The one made ready for today is the Anti-Compton lab. This lab is a small narrow space with one big device occupying one of the walls and closets occupying the other walls. I tell you, while shooting this, I had a hard time rotating my body with the camera.

Now the main work was to clear the bottom edge of the panorama itself, or the nadir area. The Nadir was a hard task to do and finally I decided not to add it. I'm trying at the current time to learn now to add simply a white space with the title of the image and my name at the bottom. It sounds easy really but still, I can't figure it out. Rather, I've duplicated the panorama layer and simply flipped it vertically and pulled it down to be in the place of the current nadir. It gave out some wonderful shapes though!




Now it's the time to attack the 2 remaining panoramas; the gamma lab and the office. Anyway, the first one is finished with only some color adjusting is needed, almost, while the other one needs a heavy work which I just don't know how to start with, mainly because it contains a moving object, added for a purpose. Me.

Now with a VR head, I get even more possibilities to snap places that I thought would never be possible to catch at all! Specially those nasty narrow places and/or those with checkered pattern, like the anti-compton above or the gamma lab. I think I'm lucky that my fisheye lens doesn't require much adjustments for its rotation axis on the VR head, because the default, initial, conditions for setting up the VR head are valid from the beginning. Just make the front of your lens meet up the base of the VR head (above it) and here you go. I need to work more to get my hands used to it. Doing things fast is always something I seek. It's bad, but in a country like this, where everyone with a camera is considered a paparazzi and not allowed to go into many places, I have to learn how to snap quick and accurate as much as possible, even if it was a shoot for HDR. Things might not be different with panoramic shooting. I've already worked on fast-rhymed panoramas specially when I went to Ireland, when I snapped some places and I was afraid that I was bugging other tourists who were waiting for me to get the hell out of the place, or me being afraid that they would come in and ruin what I was doing! In a fast-rhymed panorama, I used to work with my simple tripod alone with no VR head and all the fuss, or in many times, simply using my head and rotating my body with the camera. Back in Ireland I had some control over my camera and I kind of gained some stability with my body, but coming back to Kuwait ruined all of that!
__________
2017. Alexander remained for three days in bed
2018. he could barely move inside the small house
2019. and he felt well after that and got out of the house
2020. then he paid a visit with Kaliván to the tree
2021. and he asked Kaliván: why this tree is so important?
2022. we could have cut her down from the beginning!
2023. and Kaliván answered: this tree bears the holy seeds,
2024. it is what keeps this valley alive as it is now,
2025. and if it dies out, then no green you shall see here
2026. then Alexander asked: but now it is without branches,
2027. how it will give the holy seeds without branches?
2028. then Kaliván answered: here comes your part O hero,
2029. Aramramátáníth said you will heal the Jawsamályá again,
2030. and it will give fruit just like before and be always green
2031. then Alexander wondered: why me? Aram... couldn't heal it?
2032. Kaliván answered with eyes to the sky: you cannot say it yet?
2033. she ordered me to tell you that, but I do not know why,
2034. although I am sure she has the power to heal the tree,
2035. but yet she told me to ask you to try your luck with it!
2036. Alexander wondered about this argument
2037. and then started to think how to balance Jawsamályá
2038. the tree looked poor and pale without any branches
2039. thus Alexander thought of restoring its branches back
2040. so he ordered Kaliván and his Cadid to collect branches

Alexander 6, V84.

 I've determined to break the spell of Mondays this Monday, but I'm not sure I'm succeeding with this or not! So far, not much annoyances!
I've finally signed for my leave, for 33 days (including holidays and weekends, which will be added back to my leave's account later on). It shall start from September 26th till October 28th. I will be back to Kuwait, hopefully after spending the vacation in Ireland then, by the 16th, and hence I would have 12 free days to spend around here before starting to work by November. Just like the last year. It was a real mess to ask for this leave because of the stupidity hovering over this place; some people do it by paper and some people (like me) must do it electronically in this damned system. Last year, when I signed for such leave from work, they dropped down the salaries of 3 months in advance into my account, and that made me some troubles in some aspects. All the fuss was to make sure that I get my salary regularly as it should be. I really don't know who makes such stupid laws!!! Be sure if I knew him or her, I'm going to assassin them.

Spent my day yesterday downloading the pictures of the panoramas taken from the labs and my office. Also, I took several free images from the outside of my building which is now like a battle field with all the reconstruction work going on and all the bricks been thrown away and made into piles and hills in front of my work place! The total number of images exceeded 300!
Coming to measure it:

• Each row needs 12 angular shots.
• Usually, 3 vertical angles needed.
• Not always but count it in, one zenith and one nadir shot, total 2 (and can be 4).
• We have here 3 rooms.
• Going to shoot into HDR, means we need exposure bracketing, and that means 3 shots in each angle.
• Total: 12x3x3(HDR) + (2x3) = 114 shots. For one room. All 3 rooms then are 114 x 3 = 342 shots.

Adding also those tiny shots I took from the outside which I can't remember how many, then I would say it easily exceeded 350 shots. All in RAW format (to allow me for more manipulations before merging into HDR, specially when it comes to the White Balance factor). Because of this, a 8GB CF memory card is essential!

The process of stitching was fair and went smoothly, even for the narrow lab or what we call here the "anti-compton" lab, after a device of this time. The main work now is to enhance the zenith and the nadir, which are naturally, almost always hard to stitch. In fact in the 2 labs panoramas, I've taken the nadir but I decided not to put it on the stitching process. The best thing to do probably is to clean the nadir BEFORE the stitch. I find cleaning AFTER the stitching process is over is a bit hard to do because of the wide are and the stretching that occurs naturally for the bottom of the image (because of the spherical projection of course). Usually what you see in QTVRs is that the artists put or fix some sort of a label including the name of the artist and the location and/or the date of creation. Maybe I should do this and spare myself the headache, even though I don't know how, still.
So far though, I got 2 tiny problems. The first was that in shots taken at a lower angle (pointing the camera downward that is), parts of the tripod shown up and hence, we have to do some cleaning and cloning job here. The second one is some weird artifacts occured in the Gamma Lab panorama, and they looked very much like parallax errors, but some inspection into that revealed to me that for some reason (and maybe it is even my own mistake when the shoot was on), some slices of the panorama were having a lower range of exposure (i.e. darker) from the other slices surrounding it, thus when the computer blends in together all the slices and trying to find a suitable blend, you get smudges that would look like more like breaks or like some ink plots. To fix this problem I opened those slices individually, and opened some adjacent slices for comparison, I then raised the exposure value for these dark slices to match the adjacent slice, as much as possible. The process was "fine" but issued some noise that I need to smooth out later on, after tone-mapping.
There were also some weird noise not related to the problem above, appeared as some pink spots on some various areas. This problem occured mainly after tone-mapping, but hopefully it is easy to eliminate.

Can't wait to leave this office and get back to work on these panoramas. The real challenge now is the office panorama, in which I included myself in. A moving object in a panorama shoot is not a sweet topic, at all!
__________
1993. Alexander felt a headache and looked around hime
1994. he recognized that he is in a small house made of wood
1995. then he looked at Kaliván and said: where am I?
1996. Kaliván replied: in my humble house O hero!
1997. then Alexander asked: what happened?
1998. Kaliván then went on telling the story
1999. "you made the Mikanazzar fly away from the tree,
2000. and when it got angry it attacked you with rage,
2001. thus it passed through your heart and body,
2002. and took some of your power and made you weak,
2003. and you fell down and fainted with no power to move,
2004. thus Aramramátáníth chased after Mikanazzar,
2005. and she banished him out of the valley for now,
2006. then she endowed you with some power to heal,
2007. you will need some time to rest for now,
2008. she ordered me to take you home and care for you,
2009. until you become sound again, she shall talk to you,
2010. Oh! what a great honor is that to have her talk to you!
2011. you must be someone special O good king!"
2012. with a little headache Alexander asked Kaliván
2013. "you brought me to your home? how that is possible?"
2014. and Kaliván answered him with a laughter
2015. "thank your Cadid, he is a loyal servant for you,
2016. I released his chains and he helped me"

Alexander 6, V68.

New week begins with new problems on the photography field. I got some back pains today out of sudden so I'm feeling a bit awkward and not feeling like working at all.
I spent the weekend however mangling with those pictures that I didn't touch so far (or maybe touched but re-touched them now) from Ireland, and while doing so, I was going all over the new pictures of the lab that I've recently captured last Thursday. The work was not all smooth and still not done perfectly. Many breakages and I think the parallax error played a major role here because of the narrow space of the lab itself and that many objects scattering around which makes it hard to stitch. Just at this moment while typing this, I've thought of converting all files into a tone-mapped JPG (the usual) and using the SmartBlend plugin in PTGui to try to minimize the effects of the parallax. SmartBlend plugin is supposedly a new (relatively) feature that comes in a plugin form and can be added to PTGui to help on overcoming the parallax error, but unfortunately, doesn't work though for big size images and/or the HDR files.
Just now and because of all these problems with stitching, I'm thinking seriously of getting myself a VR head whatever the costs are. I wish also to have it as soon as possible before going to Ireland!

I had to go out for a little while today to get an international calling cards to reserve my place in the B&B by phone for September! I hate it when it becomes so much complicated like that... I was supposed to call back on Thursday and now because of my sluggishness, I have to wait until tomorrow, since Sunday is an official holiday (duh!).

The work with the new words suddenly stopped now and I need some grease to move on with it. A weird feeling came over me making me for days now, making me checking some reggae and rap songs all over. I know, it's not weird at all for some people but for someone who is not fond of these styles, it sounds a bit weird!

As for now, I shall leave you with "some" pictures from Ireland...

__________
1609. in the morning the wife prepared the food
1610. and the old man woke Alexander up
1611. because of the tiresome times he had, it was not easy
1612. and the two gathered around the morning table
1613. while the old man was so excited to tell Alexander
1614. but he knew it is out of manners to talk before eating
1615. thus he just said: I have news for you, now be my guest
1616. both of them ate until their stomaches were full
1617. when the old man spoke with excitement to Alexander
1618. and this he said: from the books I got tips about you
1619. thus Alexander raised an eyebrow and said: me?
1620. the old man said: yes, you and only you,
1621. you are the old to look for the secret of life,
1622. and the one that will come from above then be raised,
1623. it is all mentioned here in the old books that i gained,
1624. they all talk about the red haired hero of the Charnagút
1625. then Alexander asked: and what is the Charnagút?
1626. Biryári answered: it is the key to the wisdom,
1627. I understand it opens something, but I could not know it,
1628. something that keeps a secret, the secret of wisdom,
1629. and as the books say, from above he comes, then he shall go,
1630. and I might have an idea about your next way to go!
1631. Alexander asked with excitement: and where to now?!
1632. Biryári said: The Ring Mountains and Peace Valley

Alexander 6, V62

I don't know where to begin here, but it wasn't the most pleasant weekend I've ever had. No going out on Thursday, and Friday was OK, until I got a sudden attack from a severe diarrhea in what seems to be a food poisoning. For the first time now I wish if this day just ends and I go to work as healthy as before.

Spent almost 3 days working on excessive control points in PTGui, trying to fix the old panorama of the gamma lab, but seemed impossible to be done. Things get even worse by adding more points! Hence, I satisfied myself with a simple cylindrical QTVR instead.



At the current time I'm just so weak and barely can move whereabouts. I hope this all finishes soon.

__________
1465. by the fence Alexander stood and peeked
1466. he gazed through the windows and around him
1467. he could not find anything or anyone around
1468. thus he started to yell and say "anyone home?"
1469. no answered echoed back at him
1470. and he thought for a moment about what to do
1471. then he noticed a strange movement from the beast
1472. he was trying to untie the ropes on his hands
1473. thus he put his other hand on his Charnagút
1474. and when the creature saw this it calmed down
1475. and to the floor, it knelt down and looked up
1476. while a shout from his behind occurred to Alexander
1477. and the shout said: hey you! what are you doing!
1478. Alexander turned around to see an old man
1479. so old that his beard reached near his knees
1480. suddenly the man stopped and gazed upon Alexander
1481. Alexander looked at him and raised his eyebrows
1482. and the old man said: O God of Heavens! How!
1483. Alexander gazed around him and said: how what?
1484. the old man said in a stuttering voice: who are you?
1485. you did indeed catch your own beast?
1486. you did indeed captivated your own Cadid?!
1487. but Alexander did not understand a word
1488. and gazed upon his captivated beast

Alexander 6, V61.

One of those days that you just wanna sit at home and never go to work, just like that. And that's exactly what I did. In fact, I had a reason for this. Thanks to all the chatterers that kept me awake until a late hour of the night and I couldn't find time to sleep. I slept for 2 hours only then went to work and made my fingerprint and came back home to try to nap again. It wasn't a successful nap anyway and I kept waking up now and then, but after all, I didn't stay in the office and its boring atmosphere and had some rest for now. The uncool thing is that I have to go back just to fingerprint, as simple as that, and come back home again. Unfortunately, I didn't see some trustworthy people around to give them my own fingerprint to do the job for me.

Beside chatting, I was actually and mainly busy with something else. I didn't stay up too late just for a chat! I spent the time working on that new set of images that I shot for the Gamma Lab again. This time, I spent an excessive time putting more control points and taking the advantage of assigning "horizontal" and "vertical" lines in PTGui. It is an option that let's you specify two points in 2 adjacent images as being a straight line, either a vertical or a horizontal one. The result was awesome, and not only the main features were close to err-less, but even the checkered tiling came almost unique!

The Gamma Lab, from the second shoot.

The bad news here is that, the zenith image from the previous session did not fit here. Because of this problem, I'm working right now as I'm typing this on the previous session, which had the zenith in good proportions, and this time I'm putting a heavy load on control points assignments. If things went bad and could not be fixed like this one, then I would have to force myself to be satisfied with a simple cylindrical QTVR.

The above image was first manipulated in Photoshop before final tone-mapping in Photomatix. The only edition in Photoshop was to level down the exposure for the fluorescent lamps and make the rods obvious as much as possible while keeping the exposure as it is for the rest of the image. Of course, a simple Exposure Layer is all what we needed here with some strokes of the brush on the Mask of the layer. There is one point that I didn't pay much attention to actually in the two shoots, and that is my reflection on the glass of the cabinets, but I suppose it is not a hard deal to clean it up.

Since today is a restful day, and since my papers are in the office and didn't bring them back home with me yesterday, so I could not (and I doubt I would) work with the new words list.

Deciding where to go in a vacation, and alone, is a hard decision indeed...

__________
1441. the creature looked at Alexander with one eye
1442. while it was eating from Alexander's hands
1443. Alexander did see its fangs clearly from his mouth
1444. and he thought what kind of beast is this?
1445. after feeding the creature, Alexander asked him a many
1446. but no answer he got from the thing but only moans
1447. then the hero tore a piece of cloth from his clothes
1448. and tied it to the eye of the beast and covered it
1449. the beast showed something that seemed like a smile
1450. Alexander then released the beast from the tree
1451. but he kept the legs and hands tied together
1452. and he held the tip of the rope and walked
1453. because he wanted to know what is thing with his face
1454. and because he did not trust that thing, he tied him like that
1455. they walked to the north in the thick forest for days
1456. until the two of them reached a small hut in the middle
1457. with some smokes coming out from its chimney
1458. thus Alexander knew someone is inside
1459. and he knew he reached his final destination in here
1460. where the woodsman Biryári lives
1461. thus he approached with his new slave
1462. so slow watching out for dangers that might come
1463. while smelling a good smell of food
1464. until they reached the fence of the yard

Alexander 6, V60.

First thing first. How am I typing this, I don't know. Three hours of sleep only before coming to work, or might be four in an optimistic view. I think this day won't pass without a nap in the office after all.
I've been awake late trying to fix the panorama taken yesterday for the gamma lab (again), which is composed of two rows of images, and forgot to take the zenith for that one. The results primarily are fine so far, and the optimization in PTGui gives good results although the stitch go erratic afterward. There are some problems with the door, the long bench and little bit for the top of the closets.

Previous panorama for the gamma lab in Little-Planet projection, 

taken in two rows but not in HDR mode. The lines here seem to be fitting more with less errors.

The process is still not finished however, and I'm trying to fix it step by step by adding control points at the places where stitching errors occur, and specially control points defined as "vertical" or "horizontal" lines, to let PTGui know where to fit things. As for the flooring and tiles, I would give hope from now with this one already, because by experience, I don't think there is any use in wasting time on fixing the alignments of these lines. The more lines you have, the harder to stitch them together. I'm abit concerned now with the main features in the panorama, like the bench and the closets. When in little-planet projection it is always easy to see how lines fit together easily with not much of a stitching error (but they might occur). I think the more you grab your panorama to the center, the lesser the errors would be, and that what makes the LP projection type awesome for the eye and unique, but unfortunately, in case you want to make up a QTVR, this is not useful at all. You do need a flat spherical panorama.

The process went as: a) add control points in places of error, b) align the images again in PTGui; it's an automatic process done with a click, c) do optimization and try to get it to a "good" level, d) check everything is OK in the preview window, e) stitch a small sized one, f) check it out to see if everything fits. Sometimes, step (b) would not be a good option to do after adding control points, and it happened to me one time when, after adding control points, I clicked align and the whole thing got screwed up in some unreasonable manner! I don't know why this happened, but thank God there is an "Undo" option. I love the Undo option!

The main problem in PTGui preview window, or might be the thing that cannot be done with the available abilities at the current time, is that in the case of an HDR panorama, the preview window cannot blend your images together and give you a flat view of the panorama. All what you would see is slices overlapping that are not so good for the eyes' view and for judging the quality. Thus, you must stitch and view the result elsewhere, and for this purpose I do a small-sized stitch and view in Photomatix (I don't want to run Photoshop to eat up some of my memory!).

The final result until this moment is OK so far. The door had been almost fixed, with a little nudge here and there that might be easy to clone out and the bench is fixed completely. Will see afterward, if the zenith from a previous session, would fit more.

The "pinning" down of the new words are going smoothly, despite the fuss. There are remarks that I've wrote down and I wouldn't know what is going on until I organize these words alphabetically and add them to the dictionary. I don't want to organize now since it's all will be like a tiresome task to do now and then. I doubt there had been some repeated words, as I stated yesterday, but that would show only later. Shaky.

I'm waiting here with all my patience to get out of this "jail" and head back home and take some rest, that is if I didn't fall down sleeping already after posting this...

__________
1417. the morning arrived with its light to the forest
1418. Alexander woke up and hurried to check the shadow
1419. he traced a line of blood on the ground slowly
1420. until he reached the body of a black thing near a tree
1421. he saw two horns on the top of his head
1422. while the thing was asleep and looking down
1423. Alexander approached slowly to see the black thing
1424. then he gasped and held his breath with surprise
1425. because he just saw his face on another body
1426. he stood without feeling anything with his senses
1427. and when he got his mind back he started to think
1428. what creature is this that takes his image in black?
1429. and while he was thinking, the creature woke up
1430. and started to groan and moan like an animal
1431. Alexander asked: who are you? what are you?
1432. but the creature kept on moaning and groaning
1433. thus Alexander realized that such thing is not a man
1434. but he could not understand how he had his face
1435. and since the creature was injured in the eyes
1436. and he was moaning from the pains
1437. Alexander's heart could not stand the situation
1438. thus, Alexander got some food out for the creature
1439. and fed the thing with his own hands
1440. while the creature was tied to a tree

Alexander 6, V59.

A Monday. Full stop.
I decided to take my camera set today to re-shoot the lab in another way today. This time, I decided to make it only two rows. The two rows go around in increments of 30 degrees. For the top row, the camera is elevated at 30 degrees (with 0 degrees on the top of the vertical line dividing the dial), while the lower row is on -30 degrees. The are in the middle which was taken solely in the previous time will be shared in between the rows, the bottom of the upper row, and the top of the lower row. I was thinking, maybe too much details is not so good for the computer to overlap images and assign control points, or in other words, the software gets confused for the number of details and hence things go nasty afterwards. I shall give this a try instead of the previous trial that drove me nuts. In my haste, I've forgot to take a zenith snap, but I think I will try to take the zenith from the previous trial. It might work.
I was almost going into a disaster when the battery was exhausted and needed to be changed while working on the top row of images. Hence, after finishing, I've changed, as careful as it can be, the batteries. I've found out that the other batteries were exhausted as well! I've forgot to recharge them the last time! Here comes my Monday. I've already started with a disaster when I came to work and forgot all the keys in the other car, but Gracefully, the keeper was around to open the doors for me. My life is going into a real mess and I just can't hold the brakes.

Still studying my options for my vacation right now and I'm afraid that I'm running out of time for the time being! The visa procedures would need at least one month to be processed (if done with no mistakes). I have to prepare everything and reserve everything, then get the tickets, and then prepare for the visa. A long procedure that I do ask myself if I really am into all of this. One second I'm up to it, the other I'm just down and not willing to do anything.

 As for today, I've started with enlisting the words in the usual format that I usually use for the dictionary, preparing them to be added later on to the HTML dictionary. The process in the beginning was not as easy as I thought, specially with some technical awkward moments with the software. I'm using the OpenOffice Writer now, and forgetting about all the fuss in the Microsoft Word. It's free! It needs some work on some aspects, but never the less, you would give up some options for a free complete set of softwares that run parallel to the Microsoft stuff, like Word or Excel or even PowerPoint. However, I'm preparing myself for more difficulties soon, as there might be some words that are duplicated (i.e. one English word with same meaning having 2 Ayvarith words). Such things happen all the time. Just for fun, I post here the words enlisted in the first page of the new words of the dictionary (who knows, I might add more later on here...) - Remember, words between the square brackets [...] are the pronunciation. The exact Ayvarith text won't appear if you don't have the Ayvarith font installed.

Company: muRwTa [mağúþá] (n.f.), (commercial) SQgwrzakixiT [šgúrzákiħiþ] (n.f.).

Accompany: muyuR [mayağ] (v.).

Companion: muRQlaN [mağlán] (n.m.f.).

Capital: (city) ramQmuAyriT [rámmaąíriþ] OR ramWAyriT [rámmaąíriþ] (n.f.).

Khanate: XanwtiyaTa [xánútiyáþá] (n.f.).

Tower: burQgul [bargal] (n.m.).

Castle: qiculQxiyaTa [qicalħiyáþá] (n.f.).

Meditate: AuSQvuM [ąašvam] (v.).

Meditation: AuSQvamuH [ąašvámah] (n.m.).

Golden: DuhurY [ðaharí] (adj.).

add: harsh: (touching) guSwb [gašúb] (adj.).

Own: muduA [madaą] (v.).

Owner: madwA [mádúą] (n.m.f.).

fix: supply: n.m.

Guest: quyQfa [qayfá] (n.m.f.).

Hospitality: quyafiT [qayáfiþ] (n.f.).

Real: (true) xugyC [ħagíc] (adj.), (not imaginary) muXQwwN [maxwún] (adj.).

Reality: muXwniT [maxúniþ] (n.f.).

Really: bumuXQwwN! [ba-maxwún!] (exp.).

Respect: xubWyM [ħabbím] (n.m.), to ~ xubuM [ħabam] (v.).

Respectively: bunuzaruH [ba-nazárah] (exp.).

add: order: (scheme) nuzaruH [nazárah] (n.m.).

fix: order: system

Fall: suful [safal] (v.).

add: welcome: (exp.) boqQliya [buqliyá]

Bind: ausur [asar] (v.)

Bound: aaswr [ásúr] (n.m.).

Serve: xulus [ħalas] (v.).

Servant: xalws [ħálús] (n.m.f.).

Server: xulys [ħalís] (n.m.).

Safe: SalwM [šálúm] (adj.).

Safety: SQlamiT [šlámiþ] (n.f.).

Hurt: RulQbuM [ğalbam] (v.).

Mortal: auduM nujwr [adam najúr] (adj.).

Immortal: ma munQjwr [má manjúr] (adj.).

Grow: gudux [gadaħ] (v.).

Grown-up: gudyx [gadíħ] (adj.).

_________
1393. something held the neck of Alexander tightly from his back
1394. the press was so tight on the hero's neck and he could not breath
1395. while Alexander held the thing and tried to resist
1396. the shouts of Alexander filled the forest with echo
1397. while the black thing shouted in same manner
1398. and the saliva of the shadow dropped on Alexander
1399. Alexander tried hard to turn his face and look at that thing
1400. but the force on his neck was so fierce and did not move
1401. and Alexander bent his body up and stretched his legs
1402. then used his legs against the face of the shadow
1403. the shadow fell down screaming out loud
1404. and covered his eye with his own hands
1405. but Alexander could not see a thing of his shape
1406. because it was dark but only with the moons' lights
1407. the shadow got up to run away from Alexander
1408. but in a fast move the hero captured his legs
1409. and with a rope he had in his sack he tightened him
1410. and to a tree he had him tightened and unable to move
1411. thus Alexander relaxed and closed his eyes calmly
1412. and decided to check the identity of this shadow later
1413. while the shadow was moaning from the pain
1414. and had no power to move at all after this kick
1415. because it was directly into his eyes
1416. and he might not see again from now on

Alexander 6, V56.

Well well, what do you know! It feels just great to come to work one morning and never have to go to your backpack or whatever and pick out some file with lots of A4 papers and start working on transliteration! Phew!

I have a busy day awaiting for me since I have to fix something in this car. My car is still not finished since maybe 18th of April! It's almost a month for a silly accident to be repaired! I can't believe it. I discovered today also that the car license itself is expired since 2008! I'm really not into troubles more than this now so I have to get the car to someone to do this for me because, simply, I hate the car check-up guys and all the stupidity and tyranny that hover in that place. Want an example of how life goes among the stupid people in Kuwait? Here you go. Just go and check out those guys who check your car and give you some REASONABLE reasons for refusing your papers. Please note the sarcasm here.
Anyway, Just came now from the garage after some nice tour to buy spare parts from Honda, and the smart guy there gave me 2 belts of the same type while I said one belt from each type. So I paid extra for nothing almost but anyway, I don't care anymore. I just want to finish this as soon as possible. My throat feels like a piece of wood with all the thirst I'm suffering now, but well, this is what fasting is about. To challenge your own self. So, I'm not going to break my fast until my life is threatened or so!

On the other hand, I had my trials again and again with Gamma Lab panorama and I've decided to become, a bit of sensible let's say. This time, I've tone-mapped (again) all the images (but with other parameters than the previous time when I made my template), and then stitched it. The stitching went on for the middle panel and the upper panel only, and I've neglected the lower panel because it was a cause of many problems in control points assignments. Hence, I have to put on something down there later on. I went on fixing the new panorama now after being given a green light for his highness Mr Optimizer with a grade of "good", but good here does not mean no stitching errors. The stitching errors still there and worked on some of them already but not to a good degree actually. Then I realized that if this is going to be on a website in a window that sizes almost like 400x300 (like the ones I put here), then maybe I should really get down to that and fix the errors later in that size. I guess no need to take the pain all over and then minimize the thing, I would call this a little bit of perfectionism, which I do have in my blood, ugh, from time to time.
Anyway, here you go with a non-processed QTVR. Give it time to load please, the size of the file is 2.5MB and I tried my best to minimize it to a good degree!





As you will notice, the ceiling needs lot of work! While the bottom, or nadir, is to be filled with something, but I'm not sure how to do so. It would look easy if the projection was of Little-Planet type, but here we have none of that. I'll see to that, even if I have to put on a reflection like in Failaka's QTVR. A narrow space with lot of crossed lines is like a hell for me to do. I hate such places!

After this hard day, all what I'm thinking of is... relax... if I can!


__________
1321. after the food and after washing their hands
1322. the smith and his guest sat down for a serious talk
1323. and this Shdáyur did say: O good king of Caqobia,
1324. verily your story is weird and strange to me,
1325. but I never knew there are worlds other than this,
1326. neither I did know there are other tongues,
1327. and this Charnagút really looks weird and fierce,
1328. but I am not a man of literature or wisdom,
1329. but I might know someone who can help out
1330. thus Alexander asked rapidly: who?
1331. and the smith answered: there is one friend of mine,
1332. a woodsman that lives out of this village,
1333. but sometimes he comes here to sell his goods,
1334. if you are willing to seek some knowledge,
1335. he might be the good one for your task,
1336. he lived amongst lot of creatures and peoples,
1337. and he can read and write for good as well,
1338. just go out of this village to the north,
1339. and seek a man called Biryári,
1340. and tell him you are from my side
1341. Alexander then asked Shdáyur the smith
1342. "with Birbuár, we moved so fast through the lands,
1343. I did not know such thing is possible in your world,
1344. how can I do so?"

Alexander 6, V52.

 The headache is blowing my head off for today, and despite that, I've been driving here and there to do some stuff with my sister's car. But by the early morning and jut by arriving to my office, I've got my camera out and started to scan the gamma lab with my fisheye lens. I hope this one gives better results than the previous trial and adding to that, the shoot was run for HDR.
Although I was planning to cover 3 rooms, but it is not a good idea to shoot all in one day. The work load then would push me down I guess. I'll finish this one first.

On the other hand, I'm looking forward now for a free HTML editor after losing my FrontPage with the format. I don't want to get back to that software and I'm trying to build all the essential things that I need on freewares as much as possible. For the time being, my eyes settled on PageBreeze 4.0c, so I might go with it. I'll download that when I get back home.

As for now... I have to post this and leave this place maybe, or take a nap till it is time to get out in time!
__________
1225. Birbuár left Alexander to his fate at this moment
1226. he hugged and told him: we might meet once again,
1227. but you hero be careful with Shdáyur, the smith,
1228. he remembers your face and he has a bad temper
1229. and Alexander replied back: yes, I will,
1230. and you take care of yourself Birbuár,
1231. and always be good, for goodness never troubles anyone
1232. then after a hug and a hand shake, the companions got separated
1233. Alexander then roamed into the village between the walls
1234. watching carefully the coming and going people
1235. and from behind a wall in a narrow street
1236. he watched over the smith going out from his house
1237. so he followed him slowly until he got into his smithy
1238. then when Shdáyur got in, Alexander slipped through the door
1239. then he closed the door behind and Shdáyur was surprised
1240. Shdáyur took some time to recognize the face in the beginning
1241. for the shop was dark and not enough lighting was going in
1242. and just when Alexander thought Shdáyur was calm and smiled
1243. he found himself facing the huge hammer of the smith
1244. and while the smith was shouting and running to Alexander
1245. Alexander drew his Charnagút in his face
1246. thus the raging bull calmed down and stopped
1247. and he looked at Alexander with angry eyes
1248. thus Alexander said: calm down, I will not hurt any one

Alexander 6, V41.

Welcome to Kuwait, where everys possible and impossible in the same time! I just discovered a new equation that I might go over and study it for my M.Sc. thesis. "Student Allowance" means, also, "Employee Reward". Yes. After having some amount of money in my bank account days before the actual date for my salary, I went on trying to investigate about the source of such money. If the money is not reported and, well, not rightfully awarded in the first place, some legal consequences might follow as why I did not report it. Hence, I had to go over and investigate the source. I spent most of my day yesteday (after fixing some stuff in the car) calling the beloved admins, but none answered except of one who advised me to go and ask someone else. Thus, today, I decided to go myself to their offices and ask and found out that this money is actually the employees' annual reward but the bank enlists the amount under the name "Student Allowance". Perfect.
Away from the fuss of the admins and back to my world where everything is not as pretty as it appears! I spent most of my day yesterday struggling with my RAMs limitations and eventually I had to compromise more so I minimized the panorama I talked about yesterday more than before. I was ablem finally, to tone-map it but eventually, more problems occured as well.
The black area in the bottom is supposed to be filled with sand (since I didn't take a good nadir point). But then I changed my mind for filling it up with a texture that might not look the same as the original, and thus I decided to make a water reflection effect. There are many tutorials on doing this effect but maybe the most realistic one I could get was this beautiful one here. As a consequence of the previous tutorial, I've discovered as well that some effects in Photoshop do not work even in 8-bit, if the ratios of the image are not adequate enough to do so. I had a problem with the displacement filter because it goes disabled whenever I stretched the 2 sides of the reflection layer to 400%. So I lowered this down to 200%. Everything went fine but then again I had the RAMs problem again and again but I managed to lower down the values till I got it right. Although I didn't like the strength of the effect (I would liked it to be more than this) but well, I have no choice here at all. Anyway, I made my QTVR later on with PTGui, and made 2 versions; small and big. And here you go:

I called it "A Walk on The Moon"

It looks though like you are standing in a wet spot or a lake while taking this photo! The difference here is that, it is completely 360 panorama where you can look at any direction. The horizon is fixed properly and not like my first trial with a cylindrical form of QTVR, when it was bulged up making the viewer like peeking from a fisheye lens! I think I can see now that the proper ratio for a good spherical panorama would be 2:1 (WxH), or in other words, the width must be twice the height. This consideration might enable me to make some tricks on less fortunate panoramas and try to make them, somehow, spherical ones. Like my house cylindrical panorama before!


This panorama though, might suffer from the lack of zenith more than a nadir. I remember I've took a shot for the zenith, but I did not align it because I couldn't realize how to do it back then, and hence, the regular cylindrical panorama was enough for me! Some plans are still in my head concerning the Gamma Lab here that I might consider re-shooting it, but this time, the shoot must be in HDR and I shall try to make it into QTVR. Somehow, this is a plan for the future and not now. I have stuff to do other than this currently.

Gamma Lab, CRER

As for now, I need to work more on my transliteration and book reading that I left for long time now! But finally I retained some thoughts and wrote something yesterday and published it on writing.com already. I called it, Father.

__________

961. Alexander held the hand of Birbuár firmly
962. and asked him to come in with him
963. but Birbuár refused to go in and stepped back
964. and this he said: they did not like me when I was alive,
965. and now who is going to respect me when I am a Shágí?
966. I will cause you more troubles if I went with you
967. but Alexander replied: I will not go inside,
968. and I will never help you with your body,
969. until you come with me into your own village
970. and tell me by the way, what is your village's name?
971. and Birbuár replied: its name is Táhús,
972. and there to the north of it lies the Táhús river,
973. it is the river I wanted you to do things with it before,
974. but if it is a must to go with you as you requested,
975. then I ask from you to protect me from the people
976. and Alexander asked: and where does your body lie?
977. is it still under the ruins of your house?
978. then Birbuár made a long sigh and said: yes
979. then the two of them took careful steps
980. and both of them got inside the village from the gate
981. they looked left and right but people were busy
982. some of them in the markets and some were craftsmen
983. they walked beside the walls of the buildings
984. when suddenly a small stone struck the head of Alexander

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