Speed Gambling II…

I'm typing this in a very short time so I guess it will be a short post. Many things are going on and big part of that is vexing me, but some good things are happening (or happened actually by last week) when I posted my Arabic post about high speed photography in my Arabic blog.
I was not going to type anything here for this week and call it off, but I'm gathering my power (and mood) to do so. The whole week was busy and amazingly annoying with many things caused mainly by people not being able to regulate their timing and don't really know the value of time. I thought I was guilty of that myself but with this passing week, I guess I'm far way too wrong to judge myself like that. Anyway, among these tasks that I had to do, I had some time to process the last bits of my dice images which I've started 2 weeks ago, and also had the chance to filter some and even tag them (put information on these images) in order to upload them to stock websites. And there were strange events there but I will recount them later. Let's see first the Phase 2 of dice photography here.

Stroke-Stroke-Stroke

As I've posted the week before last, I was working on some high speed shooting for dice falling into water, and I've been fluctuating between the macro lens (100mm) and my trusty 50mm. However, the bulk of the work later on continued to be with 50mm since it was easier to deal with mistakes with this lens, while the macro 100mm lens needed precision (lot of it) to throw the dice exactly in place, in the viewing field of the lens.

Picasso's Dream

However, with 50mm lens, I do get the privilege of cropping the image and place the dice almost where I want in the frame. The drawback though is that the details in the water movement is not quite clear at times. Nonetheless, interesting shapes can be produced at this level. However, after some time, I thought why not speeding up the flash strokes instead of the shutter speed? In other words, what or how it would look like if I used the stroboscopic (multi) flash option? Which I did, and the results were pretty interesting here.

ارتطام (Collision)

I've started as usual with 100mm macro lens but soon I've changed to 50mm again. I realized right away that to get some nice images somehow similar to the high speed shots i can do this work alone by using regular shutter speed (far slower than the sync speed even) and simply go around that by using the stroboscopic function of the speedlite. Unless, of course, having a multiple occurrence of the object is not the aim, then the typical HSS methodology is the thing to go for, even though some shots I've made with the stroboscopic mode do look similar to HSS, as in the case of Three and Two Threes below.

Three and Two Threes

I'm guessing here that to get a closer look to HSS and eliminate multiple images is to quicken the shutter speed a bit. In the speedlite's manual, there is actually an equation to calculate the appropriate shutter speed required for a combination of flash frequency and the number of flashes. However, I've actually played around with these numbers and if there is one thing I've learned in this experiment is the fact that one should not lose oneself to the technicality and just do it. Things are not supposed to be perfect and things are not supposed to be taken with a single shot only; So, there must be a trial and error and experimenting. Calculating things can be useful as a rough estimation but NEVER decides what the end result should be nor the final outlooks.
Also, one more thing I've discovered here is the fact that increasing the number of strokes is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes having 5 or 10 strokes of flash in a single exposure is just about enough to record the movement in a clear way, while too many strokes can or might stabilize the object more or even congest the scene.

Dice Race

Another thing I've learned, the hard way, is to keep cleaning the lens after each drop of the object! As you can see in Dice Race, there are some octagonal flares caused by some water droplets on the polarizer filter over the lens. I was able to crop it out in some images but the majority persisted and it was not easy to remove them, and the best I could do to some is to reduce their "weight" in the image by cropping, and sometimes eliminating them by adjusting the curve and contrast.

Now at this level, I think I'm done with the dice experiment and I do have some ideas to further experiment with other objects and ideas. Anyway, I've taken the time to fill in the information for these images which I've prepared to upload to the stocks (31 in total). To do so, I've prepared a list of keywords and 2 descriptions to use (one for HSS shots and one for stroboscopic ones), while changing the name of the images only. It was a long process to edit these info with every image in Photoshop and I'm not aware of any software that does the work in an easier manner. However, I've uploaded the files to my main outlets: Canstockphoto, Dreamstime, 123RF, Mostphotos.
The weird story here comes from Canstockphotos. If you click the stream at the end of this post to get into my gallery (at the moment of typing and posting this blog post) you might notice 2 images being accepted ONLY. The rest were rejected for "inappropriate keywords". This took me by surprise because the keywords are the same for all images, so why accepting two of the series and rejecting the rest? This is something beyond my "intelligence". The other thing is that they don't specify really the keyword(s) that caused the problem so it is like a gambling game to adjust and re-upload and wait and so on. Thus, I've decided to delete all my images and leave only these 2 which were accepted for reasons I don't understand yet. Meanwhile, the whole collection of 31 images is available on my Mostphotos (they don't review images), which is a relief. Now, it is just a matter of time and waiting for Dreamstime and 123RF to either accept or reject. They usually take a long time; Sometimes, pretty damn long time…

Heizung…

Supposedly it should have been a quiet and an easy-going summer. Well, I was wrong. Things are going with speed, specifically after the announcement of some Expo for which our group was invited; and it is of a classy type as well. Photos must be chosen carefully. Beside this fact, I've been busy running errands to complete my Visa request to Malta. Quite pressed in time here and I've changed the plans already. Seems that I'm going to divide my was-to-be long vacation into portions of smaller ones to save days and also because of reservations problems in the chosen time. Hence, I'm going to have first a 3-day long leave (followed by a weekend holiday) for my travel to Oman with the group. Then after, I'm going to have to wait till 27^th. I got a nice offer for staying in between this time and up till October 7^th.
This Visa specifically is somehow weird for me to do, as it is a Schengen Area (Malta is a member in the Schengen). No online application, no fees, but a health insurance (!) and I have to fill it on papers. Needless to say that I had to go through a maze just to find the location of the embassy itself! (before this time, in 2010, the Visa request was attained via the Austrian embassy here). As of this moment of writing this blog post, tickets are purchased already via Turkish Airlines (Türkçe Hava Yılları), and I've taken a personal shot for the application. I'm left with the insurance and officially booking the place and, ahem, filling the Visa form!

Expo

Now back to our Expo story. As I said, we received a special invitation and hence the photo pick and sorting is a delicate matter. As of writing these words, the sorting meeting is not yet held, so probably the results will be available by next week's post. Meanwhile, I had to press myself a bit and try hard on fixing some photos and looking for those which I didn't bring to a sorting or filtering meeting before. There is one troublesome issue though: size.
Issues with size require a special crop and I do think that it is better to be done without interpolation; meaning: cropping to the required size without keeping the DPI resolution fixed. Keeping the DPI fixed will create extra pixels to compensate for the lost pixels in between. More to come about that below.

Yggdrasil

Some of the images underwent a critical fix, like Yggdrasil. This panorama was shot back in April in Al-Hamra mall and there were many projections made out of this one. However, one of the most dramatic projections of those was the one used in Yggdrasil. Previously, the panorama was deemed interesting if not for the group of people on the lower left corner which broke the symmetry. I decided to crop out this portion of the panorama ending up removing the whole ground; ironically, no one made a comment about the traces of cloning out the tripod on the ground!

Spider

The final look of the panorama became more as an abstract. Because of the colors tones and the severe chromatic aberrations on edges (mainly because of the high amount of stretch by the projection style), I've decided to change the image totally to B&W to get rid of all that hassle.
Most of the images to be sorted out are panoramas except for one single shot. I wouldn't list all the fixes that were involved with all of them, but let's hope some of them get a pass. The noise level is humongous and that lowers my expectations!

Finale

Printed and Varnished

Here it is finally, one of my favorite shots; printed and varnished! Well, I didn't print it in the original size, otherwise it should be around the size of A4 (210mm x 297mm). I've enlarged the image (keeping the DPI flexible here and not fixed) to the size of, around, A2 (420mm × 594mm). I wished I could enlarge it even further, but I feared the flaws. Keeping the DPI (dots per inch) flexible and not fixed, means that the size of the dots composing the image is changed, while keeping the DPI fixed means that the image had to be interpolated (i.e. follow a specific algorithm) to predict or generate the new dots (or pixels) which would fall in between separated dots (because of the enlargement). Notice that DPI is precisely a measure for the displayed dots on monitor, and for the printing process the resolution that must be used is PPI (point per inch), but eventually despite the difference in their concepts, the two are proportional; changing one will definitely change the other. Beside, controlling the PPI for a printer does require a special RIP (Raster Image Processor).
Changing the size from around A4 to A2 reduced the resolution or the DPI from 300dpi to around 160dpi. Doing the calculations this seemed a fair resolution to view the image from a distance of one meter or so. The print seems clean after all, and the contrast was increased by the varnish. The sepia tone seem to be vibrant even more after the varnish (was much closer to white without the varnish). All what is required now is to deliver this humble print as a gift to the celebrity! I'm not sure how to find him (and surprise him) but I will try to do this ASAP (adding to the burden on my back for this summer!).

Now with all that fuss going on about the vacation and the Expo, it feels like events are taking place in few days from now and not by the end of September (the Expo is in August though). Some are saying the situation is dangerous with all the crazy situation world wide. Well, I will be crazy myself (if I'm not already) if I stayed here without a change in scenery. It is astonishing how your bitter memories turn out to be the sweetest after all. It is time to be isolate, again…

i dTús (In the beginning)…

Well, I'll try to wrap up this quick. This is my first blog post after coming back from Ireland and so much to be done still to get back to my normal rhythm. I still have problems with sleeping pattern - well, I always do, but this time it is far more an upset pattern. I have some chores planned which must be done in the morning time, and because of that I'm kind of paralyzed and unable to do them; because I prefer to sleep.

In the meantime, I've been working with a slow pace through some of the images and panoramas. For the time being, I'm doing just flat versions of those panoramas, and later I will twist them around and make QTVRs out of them too. I'm now living a dilemma too, as I've downloaded some games that I need to play as soon as possible, before heading back to work in November! On the other hand, I do need to work on the photos I've taken in Ireland. Many things to do to spend the rest of the vacation with, but unfortunately my body is not helping.

Work Arbeit Obair

I'm preparing now to send a group of images from my trip already through email, as I usually do. However, these images were done during my stay in Ireland and most of them were posted here in this blog, in posts I've written during my stay. Most of them are in B&W as well. I do need some time now to organize the email and send it over.
Meanwhile, I've been working randomly somewhat with the new photos, and depending solely on strikes of inspiration. Taking a photo on location, even in a place like the Irish countryside, is not the epitome of inspiration still. For me at least. A lot of inspiration and work is to be done later in processing.

Áit an Leipreacháin (Place of the Leprechaun) - IR
Canon EF 15mm fisheye, f/8, 3.3min, ISO400.

Cosán na Síoga
(The Fairies' Path)
Canon EF 15mm, f/8,
6min, ISO500.

Here we have an example in the image above. Áit an Leipreacháin is an infrared shot taken in the gardens of Ashford castle in Cong, Co. Mayo. What was really inspirational to me is the composition and the geometry of the path, but it takes another dimension in processing, specially that it is an infrared shot, which makes the image float; i.e. no right or wrong about how colors are perceived. This fact, encouraged me to add my own touch further outside the environment of the RAW file, by adding some glamor and motion blur to have the image resemble what I presume as "mystical". With this, I can state that inspiration is not just one instance. One thing can attract you on location, but the completion of the story is when you edit it yourself (i.e. develop the negative). Yes, I know this approach might be quite a contradiction to the purists' views, but this is how my mind work; it is a split mind.

Sunken
Canon EF 50mm, f/9,
25^-1sec. ISO200.

In the case of infrared shots things might be afloat because of the nature of the shot itself, as infrared is no "real color" after all and sometimes you get the freedom of twisting the tones to your liking. In regular shots, on the other hand, the attack would be even fiercer and the opposition is stronger with any editing you might have to do (by purists that is). In images like Sunken, thanks to be given first to the polarizer here which made it possible to eliminate the top two tires (tyres). This image was shot in brackets to merge as HDR. However, one single exposure was enough to get most of the details out of it (remember to work in ProPhoto to get the maximal limits from the histogram). With this, there was something missing. Contrast. But I've increased contrast already, and nothing was interesting about the image still. What I admired on location was the composition (talk about abstract and contemplative approach), but this is not helping here with a dull image and apparently converting to B&W was not a choice. The way to do this was to increase the saturation instead and create a contrast of colors and not tones. The colors were there, they just needed a push in saturation. The result was a contrast between two complimentary colors: blue and yellow.
There are a lot of images done so far, and each one has a story of that sort. That's why my progress is slow for the time being; because I do talk to myself when processing each image.

As for panoramas, I've done a number of them and all in flat format so far. Later, I'd be doing the rest of the tricks on them and the QTVRs. The nadir point for some of these panoramas were easy to fix, but I did prefer cutting them out along with the tripod head in order to fix my own label later when I do the QTVRs. This would be better to show information about the scene for the viewer, I believe.

One of the best so far, in my opinion that is, is the panorama taken from the front of Kylemore Abbey (on October 8^th). It had some problems, but the centralization of the configuration on location paid well. And despite the fact that people were filling the place, I didn't have much problems in aligning the images, fixing vertical lines (by adjusting the pitch value in PTGui), and keeping the panorama tidy without any trace for any humanoids!

Mainistir na Coille Móire (Kylmore Abbey)

There was a minor fix to be done though, which is my shadow in the panorama. It was a simple cloning process and could have been done in the origin slide before stitching; but I was so much excited about this panorama specifically that I've decided to stitch first! I think a planet projection for this panorama specifically would be a great render!

The Waterfront (IR)

One of the painstaking processes with these panoramas is finding the control point specially in a panorama that combines outdoors, and infrared. Because infrared filters with uncoverted cameras (i.e. adjusted for IR reception) make the exposures pretty long even in a sunny day. The result is a blank sky almost even if it was a cloudy day. For this reason and after days of trying out my luck with The Waterfront (IR) I had to neglect the idea of adding the top and bottom rows of this panorama and get satisfaction with only the basic mid row. Story did not end at this actually, as some stitching errors remained and, later, much work was needed in Photoshop to add contrast with dodge and burn. It would be a shame to leave this panorama without any work; I've spent around one hour or more under the rain working on it on location! However, the weirdest of panoramas is still to come...

An Taobh Istigh an Waterfront
(Inside the Waterfront)

The weirdest of problems occurred with a panorama taken inside the Waterfront. It was apparent from the beginning that I surely need a model for control points (made from JPG files) in order to apply it to the HDR slides and make HDR panorama. However, to my surprise, the JPG panorama itself was a mess and the computer could not stitch it properly. It was one meatloaf of images! After some work on analyzing the mistakes (and using the "mask" option for the first time for me), it appears that the patterned carpet had a great say in this mess, where the computer merged 2 far and unrelated images on the basis of the pattern in the carpet!
Things began to become easier when I used the "crop" tool in PTGui itself to restrict the generation of control points on the mid zone of each image. In the final result there was still some work to be done to correct some broken lines, but this is a daily soup by now!

I'm now in a dilemma and thinking which of these panoramas I must print and send as a gift to my host, Mary Welsh. Probably I shouldn't decide by now until I work on all panoramas from the Waterfront.

Finale

Medieval Etiquette

Now, my sole burden and work in real life is to get back to the humdrum of the daily life in Kuwait, with all its nerves burning. When I go out in a vacation like this and come back, it usually feels lonelier deep inside, and estranged somewhat - like I see the things for the first time; needless to say the mood swings that hit with every encountered problem. Probably that's why I do feel Ireland to be a second home? One thing I do miss from here is the food actually! Not say the food is bad there, but I can't eat meat outside. Anyway for the reasons mentioned before, as soon as I arrived, I did deliberately drive into some jams trying to get my engine greased and ready to work. This is beside my chores.
Probably you've noticed that I'm using Irish to entitle my images this time (which is a practice I've been following for some time). This actually awakened in me the love for the Irish language (Gaeilge) again, after stopping teaching myself for years. Now, things are easier I presume; the language is wide spread and many people know about it and the resources are available. Probably I should give it a try once more.
Wish I can do the same with matters of the heart though…

Alexander 6, V8.

It is one busy day, and full of dust. The weather was nice in the morning, but suddenly after a visit from my director who asked me to get the "air sampler" out to collect a sample of air in "such" weather, I suddenly stopped and looked through the window, and voila! A yellow planet was there! The time was almot 9 a.m. even (and not exactly 9).
After some trials again with my tortaloza (my beloved turtle, going to call it tortaloza from now on), and my watch with my rings. Not so much to be mentioned really, but I did, somehow, make up some sparkles on the surface, but yet I had to use the flash head as well. I made 2 images different in DOF and tried to combine them with Exposure Fusion option in Photomatix, but the result was not what I did expect. The image was a bit of what I call "dreamy effect," where you have some blurred fog like texture over the original image (and with some sparkles as well). Anyway, I discovered that the shallow DOF for the two images can be combined together in Photoshop by stocking and blending (not an option for CS2 users);

 

Two images of different depths combined by "blending" as "stock" in Photoshop CS4.

As you can see, in the first image the ring was sharp and the turtle is blurred at the back (it gives a sense of a distance) and the opposite is on the right image, although the ring might not seem so clear whether it is blurred or not. However, with Photoshop and not by exposure fusion, I made a new image with both objects sharp.

I felt that Photomatix's EF option is not what I need, so I found, as mentioned in some site, that there is a freeware named EnfuseGUI. It is a software based on a command-line program made before. "GUI" stands for "Graphical User Interface," which is the type of softwares I do like the best. However, the software got a glitch and crash every time I drag and drop some files in it (or maybe it is because I was using RAW files rather than JPG or TIF?). There is no "add" or "open" buttons in this software, and the only method is to drag and drop. I think I shall try again today and see if this problem is related to the files being RAW or not. I have to convert the files first.

The software has many options that I've never heard of in Photomatix; many sliders and check-boxes here and there and something about maps or the type of map. The map here, as I believe, is the map created from one file in order to measure the weight of each pixel (usually done by doing a Threshold effect in the memory, i.e. not seen in front of you on the monitor but merely something calculated and data collected for usage by the CPU). I could be using Photoshop less now, but I think this is for good.

__________

169. a man got closer to Alexander and started
170. and the story of his folk he went to tell
171. "we are from far away lands there near you,
172. in greenish mounts just before Caqobia,
173. we are the Shepherds, and I am Ikilis,
174. every year at a time like this,
175. we come to this spot with sheep to pasture
176. and the volcano god Kadmún won't allow us,
177. until we pray for him and slay some sheep
178. and if we did not do that, all our fortune will be gone"
179. Alexander boiled with rage but kept silent
180. and talked slowly to Ikilis the shepherd
181. "dear Ikilis, what kind of god is that,
182. who has no mercy for his followers?
183. and what kind of god is that,
184. who cannot make other people worship him?
185. or what kind of god is that,
186. who asks for fortunes of others?"
187. Ikilis thought about it for a moment
188. then asked Alexander: what do you mean O good king?
189. Alexander smiled to know that the man is able to think
190. then Alexander said: no gods on this Earth,
191. except of God who is every where,
192. and that Kadmún is certainly a demon of tricks

Alexander 6, V6.

It is such a busy day I have today. Too many things to do from the morning, and I have to get out of my work earlier than usual to get back home and wait for some guys to fix the pipes and such things around. For this reason, I'm posting this earlier, since I know I won't do it at all when I get back home.
I didn't make out new images, but I was hoping to make a successful trial with a coffee cup, after having some nice turkish coffee. My aim was to re-produce the image of the inner walls of the cup, but unfortunately, the experiment wasn't successful enough. I still have the images though and I might try something else. I think it would be easier if I used a concave mirror at the bottom of the cup to reflect all sides at once.
I leave you now with Verse 6 of Alexander VI;

__________
121. and the hero stayed there for three days
122. and you can hear the mumble of hermits
123. worshipping and praising while working
124. and the Tell was producing lights from their torches
125. then in the morning of the fourth day he left
126. amid the tears of his lovers of hermits
127. and to the Three Sisters Lake he went
128. to get some water for his travel
129. and while he was taking the water up
130. he smelled something sharp and awful
131. and noticed from far away to the north
132. the smokes of Fulkan Muttere
133. while some people appeared from afar
134. bending and worshipping the volcano
135. he ran to them with amazement
136. then stood in front of them
137. trying to make them stop what they are doing
138. and they almost wanted to kill him
139. when one man of them yelled with anger
140. "are you trying to kill our sheep O fool?!"
141. then Alexander looked around him slowly
142. but no sheep he saw and did not understand a thing
143. then he throw dust upon them to stop them
144. but they tied him and made him a prisoner

Busy and Lazy

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

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

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


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

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

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

... And also my full room view:

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

Busy Day...

A busy day. Couldn't do much translation work today, opposite to last Thursday when I finished 4 verses. A record for me for the time being!

I couldn't take a nap in the office as I usually do, because I HAD to sort out some applications for applicants to choose an adequate secretary, or as they like to call themselves now, an administrative organizer. I really don't care much about it, all what I need is someone that can speak English to communicate with my colleague here. To me, I lost a valuable time. Could've used this time for translating some lines. I did one paper already but I have a headache now and I can't do more for the time being.

I've been driving down town to get some stuff for my work place with the "pitty cash." I was amazed that they announce in the forecast on the radio that the dust is clearing off and giving way, while I was driving and can barely see for 100m in front of me! Hilarious! And tomorrow I have another round.

I had to spend some time also to chat with an old friend over the MSN. A french friend. It was somehow a short chat and she had to leave but I let out some burden from my chest. I feel mountains lying over this chest. This morning I got myself 2 notes, one is the usual one that I use for my diary, and the other is a black one... to pin down some... blackish deeds I've done. I might release some pressure from this chest. I didn't tell my MSN friend about all of that but... I might do as well later on.

Losing concentration and the mood for everything... specially work.

I'm working on completing the story that I started which is supposedly to be a mysterious one... ah well... needs lot of work. So, I'm seeking the help of google for some tips.

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.