Alexander 6, V74.

 Monday. Do I have to explain it? I don't think so.
I had a plan to spend this day calmly in my office and work on my Ayvarith project little bit, adding words to the dictionary and fixing some entries...etc. But, destiny had other plans for me. I received a phone call telling me to come and get my car from the garage! Can you believe it?! After being in the garage since April 18th, it is released just now. Of course, I thought this is just some good news. So I thought, with my childish dreams.
I'm going to state the events in a sequence, to be easier to be understood:

1. Took off to the leasing company to get my car.
2. A damage founded in the exchange car and they asked me to bring papers to repair the car.
3. Went to the nearest police station to get the paper, the officer said I must go to my area's police station.
4. Went all the way to my area's police station and in between the paper work I lost like an hour of my time.
5. Got the paper, got back to the leasing company.
6. In the company I had to wait for more than one hour (or two) to get someone to get the car for me.
7. The battery was dead (and I don't know how they moved it), so one more 30 minutes or one hour of waiting.
8. Here I am.

Away from all of that, there has been some delay in my shipment for the Manfrotto head. My friend says it is normal now for DHL to have such delays.

Sick of all the stress, so I'm going to stop talking about it now. Beside my typical work in preparing some fish samples this morning, I took some time to write some words, call it poetry, lyrics, or whatever. I made two pieces, one for a contest the other one was cooking in my mind for some time. The first was called Lady of Glass Shoes, and the second is Be Animal. I just got a word about the first poem now, that I couldn't get into the contest, because the contest was about short stories and not poems (duh?). The second poem was done minutes before writing this. It is how I feel about me being a human being in a fussy messy world around me. So.. let's be animals...

Still digging into those images from Ireland, and I saw one image that I didn't notice before and even forgot about completely.

This image was composed using Exposure Fusion and not into HDR. The HDR tone-mapping proved difficult and produced many artifacts and erratic pixels in the image. All of this because of the movement of the image. The picture was taken on boat on the way to Inchagoill island, and hence, it was so shaky and the main subject in the middle was displaced in great amount from the center point. The exposure fusion at this point solved it all and eliminated the problem with the displacement, and also, produced the bluish hue of the image that was not very to get in tone-mapping the HDR version. Is it nice to have such great tools? Morever, Exposure Fusion option is not like a magic wand, since it already failed to eliminate some of the shaky images in my collection, but still it is nice to see such results at hand at this point.

Time to submit all of this fuss here and get ready to leave back home. I need a good damn sleep...
__________

1753. the next morning arrived with its glory
1754. and the birds awakened Alexander and his Cadid
1755. the two looked at each other and around them
1756. the fresh breeze of air made them forget the pains
1757. Alexander gave the Cadid some food again for breakfast
1758. and he decided to explore the valley and its trees
1759. to make food for himself from these plants
1760. he wandered with his Cadid to different parts
1761. until he noticed no tree had a shadow at day
1762. just like the people of this weird world or most of them
1763. except of one tree that had a moving shadow
1764. he wandered in the valley to check other trees
1765. but it was only that tree that had a shadow
1766. he approached the tree with his Cadid slowly
1767. as soon as they arrived beside the tree of shadow
1768. the branches started to catch the clothes of Alexander
1769. so rapidly, he escaped from it and ran away
1770. while the Cadid kept on barking and howling
1771. the thoughts raced in Alexander's mind about it
1772. then he said to himself: if people have no shadows,
1773. and get shadows when they do evil in their lives,
1774. how come this tree has a shadow of its own?
1775. could it be that someone transformed into a tree?
1776. but Alexander could not find a final answer

Alexander 6, V30.

Again and again. Issues with this damn connection like every morning. I'm connecting now to a wireless network that is sittled in the building next to us, and my ethernet cable is not working at all. Even the signal from that building is low, so I'm expecting problems soon. This is a nice way to say 'good morning' to me by this working place. I can't even understand how did I wake up in the first place.
Still struggling with my Guest Room Panorama here. This time, I played around and around with the 8-bit images trying to fix something suitable panorama to make as a template. I also tried another software, Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited.

 

Although many people talk about this software and about its strong algorithm in stitching, but I rarely use it and, unfortunately, I rarely find it useful for me. It has an option to produce a QTVR (those 360 panoramas that you can move around in). Maybe I shall try to make panoramas by PTGui and use this software to make the adequate effects. As why it is not so useful for me, here you go, some of the reasons:

1. Does not support HDR files (although there is a menu for HDR in the program itself but can't find out how it functions). [It does]

2. Unlike PTGui, I can't find my way through the program. It has some buttons and that's it for me. Tried to experiment with it but I couldn't learn much out of it. So mysterious.

3. Unlike PTGui as well, it's full automatic (even with some extra options to control images in a panorama).

4. Some buttons there, just don't have the pop-up comment to make you understand what it does. I ended pushing buttons all the way trying to find their effects to learn, and yet I couldn't see any effect, and still I don't know what they do at all!

5. Some options are not as easy as PTGui like panning or rotating, but it has zooming in and out which PTGui does not have in the display window after stitching a model.

Well, maybe you might say I should read tutorials before working with the software, but let's be serious, does any read them before working with a software unless later? I found out (and still learning more) from PTGui and still I didn't read much of its help file (except for few times when I wanted to know the definition of some projections and the meaning of some terms, yet I was using them already). Anyway, Autodesk Stitcher is one of the recommended programs (along with others) that were mentioned in Harald Woeste's book, Mastering Digital Panoramic Photography.

 

And so far, I'm not giving up with it. I will have to try more in some way. It might come in handy when working with 8- or 16-bit images, but unfortunately it doesn't open HDR images, and hence, it's on the side at the moment. If you ask me, I think $329.99 is a bit too much for the software.

Back to the panorama, and after trying out Autodesk's software, I couldn't do much, so I'm back to PTGui trying more tricks from the bag here and there and changing some values. I did something but I couldn't check up with the results since I had to fall asleep indeed! This time I changed what's called, the pitch. In panorama softwares usually (and also in other softwares that stretch and morph the images I guess), there are 3 variables that can be controlled to change the orientation of the image: a) Yew, b) Pitch, c) Roll. I laughed when I read these 3 terms in the first time really, but then I understood they are more like a coordinates system; just like (X,Y,Z) or (R,Theta, Phi) [yeah, that's spherical coordinates system]. At least this is how I imagine it to make things easy for my brain. We physicists got weird trends and fashions, trust me.

However, Yew is supposedly to control the panning from left to right and so on. It can be done manually with click and drag by the mouse, but you can also make this precise without any handshake that might shake the panorama up and down by just inserting some number (degrees) in the dialogue box specified for this.

Pitch, which is the value I changed, controls the curving of the panorama. I can also think of it as dragging the panorama up and down as well. I did this and I found out that more lines are connected easily at the bottom of the image and hence, the broken lines in the rugs were fixed to some extent!

Left to say, Roll, is the value or degrees to rotate the panorama around its center. All these three values can be also edited for any single image in the panorama as well, but this is a far reach for me since I got blinded already when I worked with control points alone!

The panorama above now, is not the final product and as you can see this yellowish or goldish hue is just a result of fat tone-mapping by Photomatix to reduce the HDR and make some images to build my template upon. Upon that configuration, the optimization process rendered and yielded 'Good'. For this, I saved the template (and the panorama image as well) and I apply it directly to the list of HDR images without doing any oprimizations. Unfortunately, the stitching process took a long time as usual and I was already preparing to go to bed. The red (supposedly) rug is stretched at the bottom and the tripod legs aren't cloned out, but it is not important for the time being since it is just an example here. I'm not bothered much by the stretched red rug, which I think can be easily cropped from the bottom. This curve emphasizes the idea I had in my mind before, that the spherical projection (or sometimes called Equirectilinear) is not the best way to represent this particular panorama yet. I think a Little Planet (Stereographic projection) would be fit more. I shall try this later. An idea I'm thinking of right now as well is, to apply the Transverse Equirectilinear projection. As I understand it, it is a spherical projection but it works on the images or starts to stitch the images in a flipped position, like 90 degrees. Sounds logical to me, if the normal spherical projection works for normal landscape orientation of images, then the transverse version might work perfectly for the portrait images, like in my case.

As it is usual with every Monday, the day does not come without any surprises (except of few times when the bad surprised were delayed to the next day). I was asked to watch over a group of students in their exam, and it was tricky and hard to go through out the situation and refuse. I could barely bear myself as a student and now I have to watch over them and see if they are cheating or not... ugh. Add to that now, there is a plan that I might have to go out and "collect" some data from somewhere accompanied by some people that I don't know really... great. Seems it is just another one long week...

__________

697. Alexander then asked: is it a treasure that I am seeking?
698. and Utéfah answered: what you are seeking is greater than a treasure,
699. but this man's head made tricks on his soul,
700. and he imagined that you are after the gold and silver,
701. I read some papers from Ázilis, the blessed,
702. and I know what to do next and where to go,
703. but first we must find the Charnagút
704. then Alexander said: but I lost it, maybe to the groove,
705. I cannot seem to find any trace of it after the fight
706. and Utéfah replied: call upon it by the name of God,
707. and kneel down on your knees to show the respect,
708. verily the Charnagút will come back to your hand
709. thus Alexander slowly bent down on his knees
710. and shouted with his voice like a roaring lion
711. "by the name of God, I call upon you O Charnagút"
712. it was but moments and the sword raised up in the air
713. and slowly went into the palm of Alexander
714. then Alexander turned around to Utéfah with a smile
715. and this he said: verily there are lot of tricks that you have O Utéfah,
716. was all of that mentioned in the papers of the blessed Ázilis?
717. and Utéfah replied: yes O good king, he kept these papers away from others,
718. thus when I saw them separated I knew they are special,
719. so then I read them and they were written with Yabjadítah
720. just like Ázilis taught us all how to write it and read it

Bét Harrá...

Been some days away from work and away from most of the activities in my life and for the day of Ashura (which I took a single day leave for yesterday), but today, which happens to be a Monday (yes, a Monday) is a day that should not be considered in a life time. For some reason, I did not hear the alarm and thus, naturally, woke up late at 7:15! Moved out in a hurry and I joined the road's carnival! Almost around 45 (or more than 30 minutes a bit, I really lost my track of time), just to reach my work place, with all that pain in my feet! Now after arrival, I need to find something to eat!
Lot of people mix up between the term "Ashura" and the month of Moharram (first month in the islamic calendar). Thus, just to elaborate a bit about it: Moharram is the first month of the islamic calendar, and Ashura is the term used for the 10th day of Moharram ONLY. It is the day mostly remembered for the Battle of Karbala, where the grandson of the Prophet was massacred with his companions and his household, and the women of his household were taken like prisoners of war. Some people call this month "Ashura" which is wrong.

During the last few days I was busy with scanning some old photos that belonged to mom's collection and most of them were in black and white. I didn't finish though but I finished the majority. I just realized how beautiful mom is. I think by now, I want a girl that looks like her, in everything! I had a problem though after scanning that huge amount in TIFF format; I can't covert them back to JPG. Should've scanned them in JPG in the first place but I was thinking of some "compressing" that might make some data loss here. I hope there is some way around this problem! There is no way I'm going to scan 47GB back again in JPG! Never!
I discovered also that if I scanned the negative form (those negatives from the analog camera exactly as they are), I would be able to flip and inverse the colors back and I would have the original image just by scanning the negative! But, this is not a complete experiment... I need to do further investigation because flipping the colors produces a very bright image which needs some corrections in color to make it normal looking. Let's see what we can do later on!

It had been some days now without snapping anything, and mainly because I'm concerned about the dirty spots that I get in my images. It is clear that I need sensor cleaning. So much to spend on for now and just remembered some promises I made for some people, to lend them some money. I guess I have to rely back on my visa for a while, again. I might try to go to Canon's headquarter for services, and ask them to clean the sensor, but I just hope that doesn't take a day or two, because I'm totally out of mood for such a task.

I was doing some surfing the other day and I've discovered that I might indeed have what's called "ADHD" or the (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). I don't know if it is that bad, although according to some "screening" test (that should not be taken seriously), I do have some of this ADHD. Maybe this is obvious in my lack of patience specially when it comes to focusing on doing a task for a long time.

The yield for today is 3 verses, reaching line #2232. Can't wait to finish all of this! However, the word for today is "bét harrá" [Ankh: beyt hurWa] as you can see, which stands for "sail" (of a ship). The literal meaning is "house of air" and it points out to the mission of the sail of collecting the air to push the ship. Beside this word, I had to make out a word for "sail" as a verb, which I modelled after the word "sea" and became (baħam) [Ankh: buxuM]. Notice that the word for "sea" is (bħím) [Ankh: bxyM]. Also, the noun form of "sail" was modelled after "sea" and became (baħámah) [Ankh: buxamuH].
I can't imagine the amount of words that I've made up so far by translating this last part of the story of Alexander, and that makes me think of the hard work needed to put them down in the dictionary!
Please, shoot me...

Ąart^alí...

Two days passed in my life and they were the most sarcastic I would say. Yet, they went on fine. I took Tuesday off since I wanted to avoid the traffic jam, and since it is a one day off, I had to make the request for this leave one day before, that is Monday. Directly after doing this request on the system, I discovered that the streets were amost empty and no jam at all! The roads were better than normal days even! So I recognized the fact that people (most of them) actually requested 2 days off before the event and thus, not much was happening in the streets. However, although I could cancel this request, I decided to go on and take one day off.
Yet, the pranks did not stop. I was playing with myself some silly games. I was planning to go to Miskan island on Tuesday morning (and first I have to go to Failaka by ferry), but then with hesitation I decided to cancel. Later in the day I realized it is Tuesday already and no ferry is going to Failaka! Ah well, nothing was lost, but I had to sit around and laugh at myself for some time.


I went on a shooting course on Monday taking pics from around the labs and trying to make panoramic views out of the labs for the website that we are trying to enhance for the center. Yet, I faced many problems later on when I reached home and tried to stitch the pictures together. I discovered many mistakes that I do when I take panoramic shots under the light of the new information that I get from reading a book about panoramic photography, yet, I cannot avoid such mistakes because of the financial limitation already. For the time being, I'm planning to order a "dedicated flash" and filters, yet, I have to wait still.

The labs corridor in CRER

The image above is a panoramic stitch for the labs corridor in my work place. It was shot as HDR then reduced by tone mapping of course. I made many mistakes here, specifically I think I shouldn't have make the shoot in portrait position, but it should have been in landscape orientation, and hence it would be easy to cut on the edges of the composition later on. The weird thing is also that, in the lower part, the composition seems OK and balanced and centered, yet the top portion of the ceiling seems tilted a bit. I wanted to try more methods for stitching, but anyway, I thought it is better to shoot the corridor again and in lanscape orientation this time. For this reason, I made a run again today, and some work is waiting for me back home.


Because of some of this pressure and walking around with my camera, I didn't have the time (and power) to translate more than 2 verses as usual. One of the words made today is the title, "Ąart^alí" [Ankh: AurQpulY]. Ąart^alí, means "naked" and the verb is "Ąart^al" [Ankh: AurQpul] (to be naked or get naked). In fact this word is not completely made up since it is exactly the Aramaic (Syriac) root of the same word.
Along with writing so fast with the translation, I noticed that I've been deforming some of the letter for the purpose of speed writing, and that sparked in me the idea of a "curvatic" Ayvarith script other than the one that I already made before, which I called "Magdúb Yúdiþ" (hand script). This one keeps the separated letters and do not join them, yet it has curvatic appearance, and different already from the shapes that I already made in the former version of the hand script.






A new set of images had been accepted by Canstockphoto. I love this website.

Monday, 13th.

As the main title says... Monday 13th. One of the most brilliant days of my life. Why? 'Cos I hate Mondays and I hate the number 13. People just don't believe me about this, but it just happens to be so... it is my experiment that proves so. I'm writing these words just some minutes before leaving my work place, since I couldn't type them earlier because of the damned connection problem that made me out of the internet here for more than 45 minutes.

Just as I planned to give my full interest today to write more in the story I'm writing now, I had to leave the office for a while because some interviews were to be made in the meeting room which is the same as my office's place. Group of techno guys came in and spend all the day there and yet no progress they made with the device they brought, so they wasted some hours of my valuable time. Then, I get back to the office and I see that nothing is working with the connection here. I couldn't even update or write the story and I couldn't even work on the translation because I need the online dictionary to help me with some words as well. This day was a complete disaster.

I have to push myself more to do some work at home with the story of Alexander. I have ideas for other stories racing through my mind but I'm afraid to start any. I'm spreading myself thin already. I must finish this thing first. I have an upcoming upheaval of work related to the page of Ayvarith since GeoCities is closing down. Damn just to remember how many accounts I had in their system makes me really really melancholic! I have to download all at once!

Well, what can I say about this day. Just I was telling my partner in the lab this morning, I hate Mondays and I hate number 13 and she laughed and did not believe it. I hope now she will consider now. I didn't fast today 'cos I didn't have my night meal yesterday... so it's like an open day for me... maybe this is the only one good thing about this Monday... that I didn't fast preparing myself for the tiresome time that I would pass through later in day.

I'm looking seriously for more handwriting analysis from sites here and there. I'm comparing prices and asking questions but no answers yet. I wanna take a deep look into myself though. Sometimes such things can make you think deeply about the potentials that you might be carrying on without knowing them, and once known to you, you might be able to open the gates for a new career that you might get happy with.

As for me for the time being, I'm going to worry about the upcoming appointment for my ear and the catastrohpic event of removing the clinic from the medical center in my area. I have to go to some hospital now which I do really hate. I might consider going to a private clinic though.

Gosh, I'm waiting for this day to finish as soon as possible... with peace.

An Awful Discovery...

I just discovered that I made a big mistake in the numbering in my writing for the 6th part of Alexander's story. One of the verses, #15, has missing 3 missing lines in between 353-356. The story goes well, in fact the lines are not missing but I should say the numbering is a mess. In that sense, the whole story is shorter than 3000 lines, and more like 2997 lines! I kept the numbers as they are so as not to lose the track of the story when I translate.

Monday, as always, my very bad-lucky day. I had to be interrupted several times and couldn't complete one simple conversation on MSN. While a gentleman got into my office seeking some job like if I was a manager and he had hard time understanding that I'm not responsible for any jobs but he has to check the main adminstrative office. Then, tata! Just after he left, my connection is down and never up again til this very moment of writing this. I love this day, NOT.

I went for my appointment today in the early morning as well and boy how I loved the clinic, I was number 1 then I discovered I'm 2, then discovered I have to register a number so I got number 4. Then on the queue, they had to let in number 5 before me. Don't you love living in this country? Amazing. The doctor checked my ear and said that I have fungi in it. She cleaned some but said that I must use some ear drops for ten days! Boy, wasn't that ugly when she cleaned my ear and stuff showed off, and then she used the sucking vacuum and took off a chunk of what was inside. I got 2 medicines now, one as anti-mycotic (for fungi in my right ear) and another drop to be used 5 days before my appointment in my left ear to soften the wax I believe. Life is hard just by living in it, isn't it?

Man, I can't wait til the night of this day pass over... I hate Mondays...

Busy Busy Busy

It was one hard day at work... running here and there (and yesterday was as well) and checking with the latest updates and news at work.

I hate Mondays, but not because they are the first day of work, 'cos they aren't here, but most of problems happen in this day. I had a plan to help my friend by making a contact to someone and pray for some hope that I would get a feedback, but since it is Monday, the person I need to talk to was not there. Also, while I was driving my car today and listening to the Superstation RKFM, I heard DJ Linda propose a question in some contest, and she mentioned a website, I really wanted to answer that question but I couldn't follow her with the website and google did not help either. Monday!

While I was googling though, I found out that many people hated the superstation RKFM and some hated Linda herself... I wonder why is that? I mean, well, to me I'm not a radio fan, and not a fan of Superstation as well, since they play lot of music that just don't meet my mental needs, but I would say such bad things or express my anger in that hideous way all over the blogs! Would I? I hate when they play rock music and rap in the early hours of the morning when people are just waking up and need something soothing to let them smile by early morning while they go to hell... OPS sorry, to work. After all, I see that Linda is doing her best... I don't know her personally, but I think she's funny at sometimes.

I still feel some guilt after leaving the little kitty on the grass jut before the Marina Crescent in front of the seashore facade... the looks in the mother's eyes, that stopped to be available all the time in our yard, were like talking to me and say "where did you take my son?" I hate this feeling, but then I reckon back and convince myself that I would feel worse, if he died in front of me without being able to do anything to protect him.

Ironically and amazingly today amid the busy ups and downs at work, I was sparked with a thought of a poem and I typed it down. I submitted the poem as a contest entry for the Bite-Size contest in www.writing.com. I called it "With The Voice of The Silence" and it is a short dedication to all the deaf friends I knew online so far.

I Hate Mondays...

Although Monday is not the first of working days, but I hate it so much... even before they change the old system for the weekend. Most of problems occur in this day.
The amazing thing is, someone called me and said that I have to pay 20KD for the Traffic Department for an accident I made in 2007. No one was hurt in the accident and nothing in the street was damaged except of my car, and yet I have to pay 20KD. The thing is, they called me on Monday and my accident was also on Monday.
We have a fuss around the campus where I work because of some visitors from highschools for the open day. And it all happens on Mondays.
I was planning to go to buy some gifts for my nieces but my colleague said he want to leave at 10 or so to do some stuff outside, again, it is Monday.

Still writing the story of Alexander and I reached line 480, which makes it as 20 verses with 24 lines in each verse. The journey of Alexander continues to Beten Yamta nomads to the north, to seek some knowledge of an old saying about the Ayvars.
Will I reach the 1000-line limit?

Guess what smart action I did today?
I bought a new DVD-RW and I found out that I don't have a DVD RW writer in my laptop!
Yes.... Welcome Monday...