New Heights...

What a mix of a week. Slow and fast, but nevertheless, I'm happy it's over already. To me at least since it's the last day here and the beginning of a weekend by tomorrow. Started out the week with a drama when the AC stopped working suddenly and the weather was humid, at a time I was already planning to do some experimenting with my camera on the roof. Anyway, after fixing the AC and after having a shower in sweat (then a shower with real water), everything got back to normal. Literally speaking, on Monday, July 11th, I did NOT sleep at all, and even went to work the very early morning without sleeping prior to that (I was awake since 7 p.m. the Sunday before). Could not sleep until the next day, Tuesday, at around 2 a.m..
I got some story here to tell, but before I go on talking about it I got to announce that I got a new tripod now (headless) and I think I've should have had this long time ago. It fits my VR-head perfectly giving more stability and on the other hand I can fit a previously-purchased tripod head (or panning head) separately. This pan head has one handle to rotate around making it easier (and faster) to handle rather than using two controls for panning sideways and vertically. I couldn't find this brand on the net or on B&H, but it's called Fancier, followed by some model number.
Just as a little review, the tripod is extremely useful for my work specially when it comes to panoramas, and it extends to some lengths longer than my previous tripods (only matched maybe by my monopod). The camera can fixed on the central column of the tripod either way (up and down). The weight is not an issue, but I have to say it is a bit heavier than my previous aluminum tripod. The legs can be stretched out to low levels as well (giving me some ideas now).
Now to the bad points: It doesn't have a handle to carry around. To carry it around I'd have to put it in its case. It does not have a lock around the central column to hold the 3 legs firmly, making sliding legs a possibility.
I've measured the full length of the tripod extended, with central column completely stretched, and having my VR-head above that, it gives out a length of around 204cm (~ 6.69 ft), and that inspired me for a little thing to do, as I will explain later. Now let's start the little story...

1. Chapter One: Idiocy:

Yes; Idiocy. I admit (but maybe you need to look in the mirror in case you are laughing now, ahem). Early this week, I was going on and on trying to figure out a way to extract a vertical panorama out of a full panorama, which I did successfully, with delicate calculations and procedures. To explain this, I might need to draw a little diagram.

Panorama Plan

Instead of using the slide numbers that I usually get after converting to HDR images for the panorama stitching, I'm using simply numbers for angles. The outer circle is for the horizon or 0 degrees tilt, and the inner circle is for 45 degrees upward tilt. There is no need to use a downward 45 degrees tilt when we talk about vertical panoramas, but maybe in certain occasions it might add some depth by putting more of the background. The middle point "Z" here means the Zenith of the panorama. I will be using the notion "^" for angles on the inner circle.

Now, an example to work with. The first target to work with was the Ardeaglais, as I explained in the previous post last week. This vertical panorama followed with the same plan, but as a comparison I will put it here again...

Suas agus Síos (up and down)

To make out this panorama, I've started with frontal angles first [12,1,2] and start from there going upward [12^,1^,2^]. At the zenith, I realized one slide from the zenith won't be enough, so I must take others on the side, i.e. [10^,4^]. Now, the hard part, which had to be done outside in Photoshop then plugging in the results into PTGui. The coming part includes the slides at angles [8,7,6] at 0 and 45 tilts (notice that I keep the order from left to right). I had to rotate these slides upside down to mimic the view of upside down (duh!) because simply, I couldn't change the rotation of these slides within PTGui without affecting the whole stitching process. The stitch was successful, to some degree, and the image was there online.

Later on, I thought that this is not enough. The vertical panorama was too thin to my eyes. So I decided to include more width, and that is by taking angles 11 and 3, and also 9 and 5. This inclusion meant I had to include more from angles 10 and 4, and other work related to flip the images of the lower side and... wait a minute! huh! How come I didn't see this coming...

The Hanging Dominican
more width added.

2. Chapter Two: Spark of Light:

In case you wonder why I named the last chapter "Idiocy" and didn't know why yet, well, here it is! After working with the above panorama, The Hanging Dominican,  I realized that I'm practically... using the full set of the panorama! Should I flip some and keep some? Is it really easier than I thought? It's really amazing how we lose our conscious when we concentrate about details of procedures and forget about the whole picture or concept! The whole procedure of flipping images before stitch, picking the proper slides, and all the fuss in the memory because of that - all of that could have been avoided by a simple touch. Changing the pitch parameter for the spherical panorama and point it upward to the roof! As simple as that! The width of the panorama can be controlled then later on by cropping in Photoshop after all.

Monkish Design
full spherical panorama with changing pitch orientation

3. Chapter Three: Complicated Simplicity:

Now, this is something related to panoramas but it's not related to the previous points before. I explained above some aspects of my new tripod and I had plans to try it out on the roof. I thought such good height that this tripod can provide for me would be a good start to see how it works with a simple panorama from above. I had to climb on the highest point on the house and from there spread out my tools. My aim was a simple panorama; a 360, i.e. one horizontal line.

Homeland Summer

Despite its simplicity, the stitching took me hours to fix, and I'm still not satisfied with the results. Technically, the process of taking the panorama took me less than 5 minutes, literally. To take this panorama, I used a method that I've read about before but never used it, which uses metering for highlights and shadows of the scene with a fixed aperture (f-number) and then take the shutter speeds that you get from metering, and work in Manual mode, fixing the shutter speed to something in between the two shutter speeds (of the highlights and of the shadows). This way would make a coherent exposure across the whole set, but it didn't work quite well probably because I'm in the open sun (and I don't want to talk about the heat).

For some reasons unknown to me, there was always break in lines even in this simple panorama, and optimization would fix this but with some weird stretching lines (caused by distorting some images to fit some areas down there). The biggest problem was one of the slides didn't have control points to stitch with others, and fixing my own control point did make the situation worse. I tried to optimize the exposure in hope that would fix the control points problem (exposure might be a factor for not recognizing some points or pixels on adjacent images, sometimes), but that didn't work out. There was some crop in some of the slides, but it was not much of a big deal (one to three pixels I believe) so this reason was rolled out.

Finally and just to get the process going on, I gave up stitching in HDR. I simply tone-mapped the whole set, and stitched from there. The set was stitched nicely without any loss in control points! Since I'm satisfied with the colors already, I thought it's not needed to save the control points and stitch back in HDR to tone-map again. No need for this. There were some broken lines and optimization saved the work, but with some stretching in the lower portion (can be apparent even after cropping it in the image above). Left now with problems of noise and grain pixels which were hard to remove without losing some details. I still don't understand why such problems occurred in such a simple panorama as this one...

My books arrived now and I can "waste" some of my time reading. Three books they are:

 

 

Of the three, the Night Photography book is the one that captures my interest the most. Did I mention that I have an artificial language to look after?...

Tuxunharrá...

A new dizzy morning. I was barely able to get up and drive this morning and go to work. Hope the end of the day comes fast; it is the last day of the week and work time better fly away from my mind quickly.

Today, I put the end of the second chapter of my story, Blackened Image. I was going to type further, but I thought it is better to end it at this much, with a count of 12012 words. That would be around 17 pages. I really don't know if this is too little for a chapter or too much for a chapter, but in scientific books, a simple chapter is difinitely more than 17 pages! Well, I think this is mainly because of the images and diagrams used in illustrations. I'm going to spend some time now to spell-check the chapter (not by reading it again of course!), and I think the first chapter needs it as well.

On the other hand, sadly enough, 2 of my photos were not accepted in www.canstockphoto.com. The first one was the one of the dome in Kuwait University campus, claiming that it is a copyrighted material, and thus could not be accepted without a release. The other photo was for the little bush with the dramatic effect, claiming that it is underexposed. If the art of the image is to make it underexposed, then what can I do to get it accepted?! I might consider submitting the original photo this time, with some addition in saturation. More photos are on the queue and I hope no more problems for the near future!

Of the words that I made up today while making a translation for the "daily verse," there are 2 words that I liked. Why? I don't know! They are:
1. tuxunharrá [toXonQhurWa], meaning: fog. The word itself is in fact a combination of 2 other words. I use this method a lot now as I made plenty of words in such a way to make a fast solution for new words without the need to generate new ones from solid background. But I'm afraid to use it a lot. However, the 2 words are: tuxun [toXoN] (smoke) + harrá [hurQa] (air), so the total meaning would be in the sense of: aerial smoke.
2. h'aztún [xuzQtwN], meaning: particle.

Some extra words are derived from these two:
a. katuxunharrá [kutoXonQhurWa]. Literally it means: like fog, or simply: foggy. An adjective in English, but in Ayvarith it is a little phrase (prefix + word).
b. h'aztúní [xuzQtwnY]. An adjective meaning: particle-like, or so small in some sentences.
c. dia,-t'ániþ h'aztúní [diApaniT xuzQtwnY]. This is my favorite one. It means "Particle Physics." The word "physics" is a combination of a prefix and a word (dia,: science + t'ániþ: nature), so literally it is "science of nature." The word "science" here is even an abbreviation of a larger word: dia,déa, [diAQdeyA]. You can think of the prefix (dia,) as the (-logy) suffix in English.

Flipping through some of the grammar pages, I found out some repetitive and a systematic mistake that I used to make. I put down a note to fix that later WHEN I'm going to build the page again somewhere else.
Although I devised a handwriting cursive form for the Ayvarith script, yet I can't say I'm so fast in adapting it, but I'm using my own developed fast rhythm writing, which is composed of separate letters, but each letter is more cursive than the calligraphic version (which is used for the image above). There are shapes as well that are not listed in this font, but I use them almost permenantly with my handwriting, and most of them are for end-of-word shapes. The changing in the shape of the letter at the end of the word can be used as well as an indicator for a word's end specially in places where spaces are not much available or the words are compressed together. Pardon me for now, I have no power to make a new font for such shapes!

Blackened Image

After being absent yesterday, I tried my best to come early today, as usual, although I've slept almost like none hours. Today, I decided not to bring the big envelope where I keep the papers for Alexander's story and its translation. By this, I'm trying to dedicate more time for my story. Things been slow... so damn slow. I decided to stop fasting for the time being, trying to get more of my energy re-collected hoping that it would help me in the process of writing.

Nightmares of car accidents had been chasing me all the week, and today was no exception. Even though with such dreams, I don't like driving "more safely" at all! Today even was an extra exception, when suddenly I felt the rage inside of me and kept on pushing the accelerator to the max, and if it wasn't for the speed cameras I wouldn't have used the brakes at all. Although it is usual for me to be mad like that in the early hours of the morning because of the stinky drivers I meet daily, but today it was something else that I couldn't understand... a rage like for no reason... or maybe it is a direct effect for my bad sleeping habit. I think I'm going insane soon if I didn't go on vacation soon. The diarrhea is another story as well. I think it is connected to my sleeping. I think my digestive system is not working well because it doesn't take the break it needs while I'm sleeping. I feel just so weak! Well... I'm weak already...

I think I had put the final touch for the first chapter of the story right now. The name I settled for right is "Blackened Image," but yet, this is subject to change later on. Then I think I shall name the first chapter as "The End Begins..." where the "end" here denotes death itself. I don't know yet if what I wrote is long or short, but I think I will write more to it later on when it comes to reviewing again and again. Writing is indeed not an easy task at all... this is a word from a beginner like me.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to work on a new poem... I got the title which was inspired out of nothing... yet, I can't tell what the topic of the poem would be! The title is settled for "Over The Dandelion."

I can foresee some hard days coming work-wise. My colleague is announced to be in a 60 days leave without any notification. In fact, there is a notification. The notification arrived by post from the admins office today, announcing that my colleague is indeed on a leave starting from 18th of July. If she is supposed to be on a leave (automatically) and not attending work, then how she's supposed to be reading the post? Would it be delivered to her house? Come on... this is Kuwait. Talk about Stupidity and it comes right away to your door! :)
The consequences of such matter is that, I have to handle the matters in the center alone. The most behated part in all of this is, answering phones and dealing with papers which she took the burden of. As for me, it was OK for me to go under this sun to any desired destination (almost), but I just hate answering the phone. I think I have some kind of a phobia against it, specially after the many trials that I passed regarding my hearing abilities. Ah well... life goes on... .

I got happy news today! The DHL service called me to re-collect my passport back from the Irish embassy. Can't wait to get back home and see it. I have to pay something like KD20.800 as fees for the Cash-On-Delivery service, but who cares now. I'm almost done with everything. All what I need to do for now I guess, is pack and get prepared for some tiny details. It's going to be a tiresome trip just to reach Dublin. I think I have to book some tickets as well from now, to take a plane from Dublin to Galway, or might as well do it whenever I arrive into Dublin by the Metro. The return of the passport now is not necessarily an indication that I was accepted a Visa, but I don't think I'm going to be refused one!

Twirl...

Working on the sketch of the manuscript still with no idea of what to do or what to put down. I didn't start sketching the object yet, but merely the ornamentations that are to be on the sides. I chose to depict a scene from chapter 3 (The bulughmans), first and second verses. The first verse is supposedly showing the image of Alexander crossing the land of day and night, while the second depicts him meeting the Bulughman nomads. This is the idea for now, and of course I had to add the Ayvarith text, and all should be handwritten. Add to that, I did not start writing down the translation of the last chapter. It is just so exhausting, simply by being at work!

On the other hand, I'm trying to squeeze my brain for more words for poetry. I had a nice period last week of flowing words into my mind. This week seems dull. Some emotional matters are shaky at the moment leaving me in a dilemma of what to do next. This might be reason for the busy mind and the inability to write more poetry.

I picked the little kitty to the vet and kept it there. Hopefully I'm going to get it by tomorrow if possible, and I hope he's going to be OK and walking again. I think I have to build some sort of a house (maybe from a hard-paper box) and keep it cool somehow away from the sun heat, for him and for his mother as well.

Maybe I don't know or understand how animals talk or think, but I could see clearly the sadness on the cat's face for taking away her kitty, specially that she was not around when I picked him up. She doesn't say much in the yard now and mostly outside, probably looking after him. I hope she feels OK when I bring him tomorrow... if everything went alright.

My ears are aching, most probably because of using the headphone at work all the time and listening to the Irish music out loud. I hate to go to the doctor to check for this. Today, I forcefully stopped using the headphones and listening to music at work. I hope it gets OK soon that way, or else, I have to check the doc.