Lazy…

OK I admit; I have been lazy in the past week. Well, 2 weeks. That's why no post last week. The temperatures here dropped suddenly with a chilling wind on and off. Truly a bone breaker. Not sure why, but I've been feeling tired and lazy lately to even go out at night in such weather which I like the most. Probably it is the erratic sleeping pattern (which persists even in working days). For this reason, I've been mostly editing and creating new panoramas, besides trying a bit of the new "observations" in the field of panoramas to some of the older panoramas. Moreover, there is one extra observation on the way as well!

An-Mór

I never thought of myself being so interested in such projection style which seemed so boring before like Mercator. The beginning with this projection was (as mentioned in previous posts) was to make a more plausible vertical panoramas because vertical panoramas are "slim" and cropping the sides would do more harm. Mercator was a solution because the vertical perception comes almost in a square ratio (height = width), and occasionally the sidelines make a nice curvature with no need to crop even! However, time had to come to push my views further with an extreme approach.

Ashford Domhanda
(global Ashford)

The beginning was about doing a vertical panorama (again) for Ashford castle in Co. Mayo, but with a twist or a swirl as it was with other panoramas recently. However, this approach didn't work out and I decided to play with the sliders a bit. All to be done was to stretch the viewing window or space to the extreme ends to show the full extent of the Mercator projection rather than compressing it, and the result as you can see in Ashford Domhanda; a global look like those maps which are also made using Mercator projection.

Casadh an tSúgáin
(twisting of the rope)
I was seeking a swirl like this
for Ashford castle panorama.

My personal impression about the implications of such projection style is that it gives sense of grandness, totality, greatness; probably these impression come from the back of my head as I used to see lot of Mercator maps (specially in school times). However, this projection style has one awkward disadvantage, even though a normal result: the stretched and blurred sides and corners. My intentions were to crop these portions out in the beginning, but that would corrupt the overall oval shape of the center, which is to be the main interest. For the time being, I would just call this style as Extreme Mercator. I'm still working on discovering the possibilities here, and specially with old panoramas.
When it comes to old panoramas, I made a trial to do the "twisting" effect again with one of the places I like and taken a panorama from back in 2013: The Arab Organizations Headquarter. Such a place with quite amazing wooden craft and Arabesque and Islamic designs. Anyway, it seems a twist here is not quite that attractive, for various reasons...

El Andaluz Bailando
(the dancing Andalusian)

Generally speaking, the hall is a mess. Despite the fact that it was wide and bears not many obstacles in view, yet it had many reflections, and twisting the panorama that way as in El Andaluz Bailando made some eyes "sore". I sort of came out with a conclusion that to do a twist, the roof of the place must be close and it is better to have the surroundings on the ground arranged in some systematic manner. In the case of El Andaluz Bailando, the roof was too high, and the surroundings on the ground were not giving out a sense of symmetry.

An Solas Sníomhta
(the twisted light)
The twisting effect appears stronger
and more concrete when the roof is at proximity

However, the work was not limited to Mercator, despite being big part of my work lately. The old tunnel projection (the reverse of the planet projection) was a target for some "surreal" editing. It is a surreal projection after all, but I mean here something out of the usual look for such projections. Something off-center.

An Cúinne Geal
(the bright corner)

Frankly, I was aiming at a sweeping movement for the landscape and the house and decided to make the tunnel projection as a starting point. However, things went out of hand a "bit". Why would I restrain myself for centralizing such panoramas anyway? Specially those which do no possess any degree of symmetry anyway! Call me an impressionist, but those curves can do a lot further when moves off the center; Curves = Emotions.
The main problem here is the cropping factor. No, not the sensor's crop factor. Here, the original panorama was 9000x9000 pixels in size (meaning a resolution of 81MP!). However, after some crops to adjust the portions of the panorama and the curves of lines (controlling those with coordinates is hard), the size came down to around 5000x5000 pixels (i.e. 25MP). Such a loss of size. Of course, I can stitch it again with a larger size to crop it back again, but that means more processing power. Imagine this: for a panorama coming down from 81MP to 25MP with such crop, then that means only 30% of the original size is used. If I'm going to do this on the usual size of 8000x8000 (64MP) like most squared panoramas before, then I would need to stitch to somewhere around 213MP in resolution, that would be somewhat around 14500x14500 pixels; this is just to crop it down to the size of 64MP.
Anyway, this is just the beginning, in hope that I would do more observations about this. One of my goals right now is to create something else with panoramas, specifically in a vertical format, but no success so far. All I can say about it right now is, it would be a diagonal panorama!

Geltani Again!

I know, I've been neglecting this project for a really long time and I've totally forgot about doing some representation for Omniglot.com as well.  However, I was working slowly for some time with this project before traveling to Ireland last October and I think I didn't post anything about these "inventions" and additions.
For a beginning, I tried to make a standard set for the "radicals"; those large strokes that contain other glyphs combinations. Usually those radicals are the last letter of the word. I wouldn't say it is a final set, but it is a trial to make it so.

A scan for some of the radicals designed already (from my Geltani notebook). Sorry for the bad quality here; I did barely make it through the technical problems! The asterisk here points to the position of the other glyphs relative to the general (larger) radical glyph.

On the other hand, there had been some tiny approaches to imagine out a general aspect for the grammar, and this was by some trials to form the passives, conditionals and perfectives. Not planning to complicate things here, so the general formula for such phrases would consist of a mix of the verb "to be" in a specific tense, with the original tense marker of the verb itself. This is the idea for now and seems it works (logically!).

Another scan for some grammatical constructions with the verb "to fly" which transliterate as "píj" (pron: peej, with "j" as in "jacket").
The top 2 columns of 4 lines discuss the direct tense (flew, fly, will fly, fly!) on the right column, and the passive form (was flown, be flown, will be flown) plus the modal (should fly) on the left column.
Next line is an example: would have flown, which literally here becomes (fly-will be-was)
Next example: he should have flown, literally here becomes (must-fly be-is)
Last example: would have flown (to...), which literally becomes (... to fly-was be-was)
As seen here in general, it is combination of two tenses of the main verb and the verb "to be"

Beside these forms, it seems that it would be necessary to merge some phonemes or sounds in Geltani when they come successively, like the sounds of "J" (as in Jacket) and "Ch" (as in Church), but I'm not sure yet of this theory right now. I hate to deal with a language like mathematics - this is not the way I learned English (even though it's not perfect anyway!), but it is important to "live" the language and make sense of it. Just get into the flow and only then things would fit into place, and this is what I'm trying to apply myself as I'm going through some Irish lessons online (sadly written and no audio available).
It is funny though how I got into formulating the grammar without even working on representing my work and the script. I've been overwhelmed with many things to do at the spur of the moment which effectively made my mind scattered in all directions.

Finale

Snufkin

The Moomins

Well, I won't be ashamed to say that one of the reasons to be lazy in the past week and this week is the fact that I was busy playing games, and watching cartoons. Old cartoons that is, like The Moomins. Well, I remember this cartoon long time ago (and played in Arabic back then of course and I'm watching this version specifically) and I used to get scared somehow every time it is played because it, simply, looked weird. However, now it gives another feelings when I watch it, specially after knowing that originally this Finnish comic and stories were dedicated to adults with some deep meanings. To me it resembles the simplicity and the life of adventure in simple terms, needless to say the imaginative stories and the countryside framework which fits my mood perfectly. I think my favorite character here is Snufkin. This is the English name of course. I like his role and I think it does have some aspects that I need, crave, or already have. This is not the only cartoon on the list; Golden Cities (or as dubbed in Arabic: Golden Dreams) is next on the queue line. However, I might not start it immediately after The Moomins. I need some time in between to reschedule my priorities!

On the other hand, I've been thinking seriously on having another instagram account for Ayvarith to post some aspects about it since there is no homepage for it yet. Another failure, I know. I have to admit, I do hate building websites! However, this will also mean added pressure, and with the technical problems I do have already with connecting to instagram and posting in it, it is probably better to wait and watch out for the next move. I'm so pressed in time with my photo-processing schemes and duties for the group, as well as my usual daily posts on instagram. In all of this, I'm giving my workplace my back, which I know it does sound dangerous a bit but I can't force myself to respect something that doesn't respect me back.

As I'm typing this, I've received an email informing me that one of my images submitted to HIPA (Hamdan International Photography Award) was qualified after the first round. The image was submitted for the Night Photography category. Meanwhile, my other images for other categories did not pass. The image submitted was Die Kuwaitische Mitternacht, but I had to translate the name into English as per the rules. It is funny that I've submitted my images in a haste just 2 days before the deadline. There was another event I wanted to role into, and also takes place in the UAE, which was an award for achievements done for the Arabic language. My aim was to submit my blog, but I had to back off. I think my blog is relatively new beside the fact that I was not sure of the regulations about electronic contents in that way. I had to let it go for now as I have more important issues to attend to (and ironically one of them is find a topic for my next article for my Arabic blog!).

Die Kuwaitische Mitternacht

Laziness in the meantime comes as an essential part of my life now. I feel that I need it strongly. I just realized that even when I play a game, it comes to me as a "duty" to do and not merely an entertainment to have. I think I've completely lost the definition of "entertainment" in my life…

Scopa!

Ramadhan is here and, even though I've been fasting for a month before, it always seems like it caught me off-guard. I'm not sure really where do things go wrong in my life during Ramadhan, but exhaustion and the lack of time is always hindering me in Ramadhan. Even though I do fast in a month or two before Ramadhan (in the past 3 years) and in conditions harder than in-Ramadhan conditions, yet, it is always in Ramadhan that I do suffer sleeping hardships and the lack of time to do whatever I want. Probably it has to do with the rest of the population around me and their timing as well! Not sure...

Meanwhile, after fixing the AC in the car, the honk went off and fixed a fuse or so for that thing, and the backward sensor is now off. I didn't care much about it but the honk is important to get it fixed! But now, I've decided to drop some amount of money out of my pocket for some good cause: a new PC.

Financially, it is a burden now to have such a PC. The costs were in fact higher than fixing my car's compressor at the agency itself! But well, thinking ahead, in the month of Ramadhan I have to deduct an amount of my total sum for something called Khums (Arabic: fifth), which is due in the middle of Ramadhan. After giving that due amount I don't think I will be in for much spending afterward, thus it is better to finish this plan now at once.
The specifications are put to the extreme somehow (hence the price) and I would need time to settle down with it when I receive it. I'm trying to do a slow move from the old PC to the new one. I'm looking forward to this move, as with the specifications in the new PC I would be able to stitch bigger panoramas and doing HDR panoramas would be just a piece of cake! All what would be left is, inspiration and photography!

Scopa!

Last week, as I was working on the peeling effect with my mug, I had an idea that had been cooking in my mind since then. A shot of myself with Scopa cards; One of my favorite cards games. Too bad I don't play it now as, simply put, I have no one to play with. The first headache to be dealing with is, as always, setting up the configuration. I didn't have a clear vision of what I wanted to do really but one idea in my mind: cards, and me.

Source: B&H

Typically, the headache that got the best out of my time is using the Vello 33' cable. Even though it worked fine when I used to work with the peeling effect with my mug last week, it decided to, simply, not work this time!
Anyway, it seems that somehow I've began to realize the problem (or so I think!). At the end the cable did work and I was able to control the speedlite from the camera. The speedite was situated above my head just like I positioned it before in the peeling experiment. At this moment, I'm thinking that probably the hotshoe of the cable has a tiny alignment problems making the pins of the speedlite not touching the hotshoe properly to be connected, and only when I place the speedlite horizontally (with a lateral arm), the weight of the speedlite would help on nudging the pins in their proper places inside the hotshoe. This is what I think for the time being but I'm not sure yet. Just speculating!

Scopa!
Canon EF 50mm, f/14, 200^-1sec, ISO100.

Now, to some commentary about the images taken. Lot of shots were taken with changing distance and direction of the hair light. Hair light here, of course, points to the speedlite above my head which was fixed with a reflector and a diffuser. It was hard to decide what I really wanted (and now as I write these words, it seems to me that it was better to have a portrait orientation with half face). Anyway, Scopa! above is one image from the set that I liked because of the element of mystery in it. Careful here if you are using some old laptop (with gamma level other than 1.8) that the shadows might be lighter than they really are!

Scopa!!
Canon EF 50mm, f/11, 200^-1sec, ISO100.

There were some shots when I turned my other speedlite (430EXII) on and placed it in various positions in front of my face but probably I didn't like the results as much as I liked Scopa! shot, but Scopa!! probably was the best taken with the addition of 430EXII speedlite. Mental note: more lights, do not mean necessarily a pleasant image. Scopa!! by the way is not taken in portrait, but it became like it after the crop!

There had been an idea of a panorama still cooking but I'm not sure when I shall start with that. It is a panorama indoors, and for this I need to wait for a proper time when I can get the place clear. Also, the problems with my current PC makes me awry about stitching a panorama for the time being, but I might as well use my relatively-new laptop to do this. We shall see about this matter!

Back to Geltani

The progress on the Geltani front is going on but slowly. Specially after a hectic week like this (with some health issues) that mad me dedicate more time to my camera rather than sitting down and think about aspects of Geltani (or any other conlang). The main issue remains here about fixing the syllables and sounds yet I can say that I've developed a temporary transliteration system just to record the major outline, away from concerns about the sounds. The transliteration system would be simply in the form of: X^Y, where "Y" is the driving add-on or sound for "X". Some values for these syllables had been fixed already, for example LX is pronounced Liŋ (and originally the two are derived from a specific arrangement in between Arabic and Latin letters). However, this combination just for the time being might be written as L^x. I guess it is some of the remains of my mathematical mind from old college days still persisting on involving math in matters of conlangs and con-scripts.

Another matter had been going around is the change in the possessive articles which I've developed earlier (a month or two ago?). The articles were completely different than the regular pronouns, but then after some long thought about it I've decided to pull it back and stick to a coherent grammatical structure.
In the beginning of creating this conlang, I had a vent for some Turkic characteristic to put in this conlang; mainly the arrangements of prepositions. In most Turkic languages, prepositions come after the word (and combined with it). Example (from modern Turkish):

Ev ("the" home)

Evde (at "the" home)

Another property I'm borrowing from Turkic languages is the absence of a definitive article (like The in English or like Al in Arabic) and the introduction of an indefinite article. Example (also from modern Turkish):

Ev ("the" home)
Bir Ev (a/one home)

Anyway, back to the preposition which hold the key to the change I had in mind about the possessive articles (my, your...etc). Probably forgot to the mention that also in Turkic languages in general, the possessive articles come at the end of the words as well (in Arabic as well), thus I've decided to go along that line but simplifying the matter meant lengthening the process a bit.

The new idea of possession involves the preposition W', which stands for "for" or "to". The preposition W' (where the " ' " is a simple schwa) is attached to the pronoun after the word to make a possession statement. Better illustrated in some example:

Book: Š^CA^B

I: A^ya

My Book: Š^CA^B A^yaw'

The literal translation of the statement in Geltni for My Book would be [Book I-for]. Notice that in the transliteration process I've combined A^ya and w' as one word, but in logograms, they are not merged together.

The funny part begins actually when I change the position of the preposition. With changing word placement, the (comprehensive) meaning is changed:

Š^CA^B A^yaw' = My Book

A^ya Š^CA^Bw' = I'm for (the) Book  
(well, can be meaningless for the time being but it's not!)

A^yaw' Š^CA^B = For me, (a) book
 (here, a comma is not used in the original Geltani but I suppose it should be understood as such!).

I guess it is somehow ironic how such a small preposition can change the whole meaning of a sentence by placing it in different places. I'm not deeply into Turkic languages, but I wonder if this is the case too for them. After working for some time with Ayvarith (the original conlang for which this blog was created!), I've discovered that some words I've made up did indeed exist with exact or close meaning (and some with completely different meaning), like the word ša, which is an interrogative question beginning in Ayvarith (equal to the Arabic: Hal [هل]), but in Akkadian this word means a conjunctive "who".

Finale

Source: Amazon

I'm on the verge of finishing the last book in my queue. Still, it keeps inspiring me in the field of humanities. What I like about this book is the directionality and practicality. The fields of humanities was somehow frowned upon from my side in college days but probably this is due the educational system we have, but it is welcome when it comes in the form of such book like the The Handbook for Classical Research by David M. Schaps. I have to say I'm skipping the sources section at the end of each chapter because I'm not going deeply into the matter of such studies, but the arguments and the discussions in various fields that Schaps makes in this book provides a journey for the mind into the current world we live in through the gate of his knowledge in Greek and Roman cultures. We differ, in the east, a lot in many aspects from these two cultures but it makes someone like me realize why the west is so different, and/or why what's accepted from one side is not so on the other side. Some things got roots deep into antiquity.
With the end of this book, I'd be in, let's say, hot water. A dilemma. I have no further books to read and I'm not going to order any more soon because of the heavy purchases I've made this month; from which I need some time to recover. Probably I'm going to turn back to my very old language books and try to refresh my memory about some stuff, or maybe I'm going to spend my time at work in front of Wikipedia and amuse myself with various topics. The bad thing here is, playing with Wikipedia is completely random; Start with one topic and you might end up with a completely different field without knowing. I prefer books.
It feels like if my health is deteriorating at the current time. Bleeding nose has been a nocturnal routine in my life now. I'm not sure if this is caused by the high blood pressure or simply some injury inside that caused it all. One thing for sure though: it is giving me more stress. With the coming of Ramadhan and Mom's dialysis schedule, I wonder if I will have the time to look after myself and just go to the clinic to check. I had plans to check for my sight in general and see forward if there are any signs for retinitis pigmentosa but so far, none of these plans is achieved. Talk about living single and lonely, surrounded by people...

Stop!

Another week without much activities with photography, but I've finally got my new notebook for conlangs. I've started pinning notes about basic elements of Geltani for the time being. Along with Geltani, there is a syllabary that I had to develop to write foreign names to Geltani. You can imagine this as being a Japanese writing Katakana along with Kanji. Will discuss that later.

I do have my own plans and pace for my own photography venue. With Mom's schedules taking 3 days from my week for dialysis and also because of my fasting right now for the month of Rajab (which I hope it would continue till the month of Sha'ban and then into Ramadhan), I barely find the power and the time to work with my camera outside or even think of something. Under these circumstances I've decided to abandon the Redbull project. Despite the fact that I've already prepared a plan to take 5 images telling a simple story for a A Day in Kuwait, yet the deadline is on May 20^th and I barely did something. However, there were other reasons that made me neglect this project:

• The deadline is too close as stated above and I don't have enough time with my current responsibilities.
• Some of my plans might require permissions and I'm absolutely in no mood to have a conflict with authorities or any hardships concerning that kind of activities outdoors.
• The conditions of Redbull were not so clear and frankly, I don't feel safe to submit my work to them.
• I had enough from time pressure and contests.

However, just for the fun of it (and who knows I might do these ideas later) I did sketch a plan for the process with 5 images and each image telling some phase in a typical day in Kuwait:

1. Morning: Sunrise; the beginning of a new day in Kuwait. This idea is already reflected in one of the panoramas I've done back in 2011.

   

   Towers of The Rising Sun

2. Traffic Jam: This is the phase of going to work. My plan was to shoot some traffic jam from a pedestrian bridge over some road, but having the problems I had in the past, I think my chances that this would pass safely is like 50% of even less. In periods of traffic jams cops are usually spread over the place and a person with a camera is not a favorable spotting.
3. Busy at Wok: For this phase, I was planning to shoot some office with a busy look (scattered papers, scattered furniture...etc). In fact, thinking about it right now, I might as well use one of my own panoramas which I've done in my own office in my work place including myself in the shoot!

   

   Busy at Work!

4. Evening: This is the period of family and friends visiting and the typical Diwaniyyah I'd say. For this idea, I was planning to do silhouettes by the help of my speedlites and some colored gels to light the background blue (reflecting evening time) while people laughing in the foreground. Might do this later even after abandoning the whole idea of the contest.
5. Night: This particular time I would have used it to reflect the safe atmosphere that we live in despite all of our problems. Initially my idea was to take a shoot of someone sleeping with the Towers of Kuwait in the background, but if this is done in the public, God knows what hurdles I have to put up with, specially with unnecessary people in the scene. I'm not a people's person and not so social, beside that, I might need a special permit to do such a thing in the public. The only alternative here is to do it with props in some studio or a room; yet, that won't have a great impact on the viewer I believe.

It was quite a brainstorming session for me to get out with some of these ideas, but I can't say I'm completely satisfied. Moreover, in the current time, I'm trying to prepare a dinner party if I should say, as a gratitude for friends in the photography group and out of the group as I've promised before - Just a tiny gift for Mom being out of the hospital. It should be on a Saturday, but apparently it won't the coming Saturday as there is no time for any kind of preparations right now.
Meanwhile, I'm looking further for other agencies of stock photos to submit my images to. I've long abandoned Fotolia and Bigstockphotos, while things are going smoothly with Canstockphotos and Mostphotos. One of the targets had been 123RF and Featurepics, but still looking for more outlets. I'm not that optimistic about Dreamstime, but I might try it again just for a change. Here and there, who knows what might come next from such websites.

Geltani Glossa:
As I've mentioned above, I've been working lately with Geltani further more and recording notes and trying to establish some basic elements of the conlang. Plurals, numerals, and many other things are all on papers right now, and when it's all over, I would need to do those digitally somehow but for sure without any fonts. It might be scanning all the way (and I'm having hard time with the scanner already!).

Scan of my notes with some scribbles of Geltani.

There are still though some basic stuff not settled down, like the sound of some driving letters (sorry folks, can't explain this all over again, it's in other posts already!). Some innovations and some regular rhyming must be added to the list to finish this task, I believe. On the scan on the left you can see some of the basic grammatical cases that I've been trying to settle down with. They had been changed from time to time and I think it is now the time to finish it one and for all. The plural is achieved by repeating the last syllable in the word, and drawing a special character for plurals. I'm not quite happy with repeating the last syllable method but this is the best I could think of for the time being. Would there be a change? Maybe!
One thing to be dealing with as well is creating a suitable transliteration system for pronunciation.

Primary Geltani Syllabary

On the other hand, I've sketched a primary syllabary for writing foreign names into Geltani. I say primary because these shapes are still under consideration. The system is like a mix of syllabary and abugida. I didn't want to put on more loads of vowels, thus I've pinned only 3 types of vowels and whenever the vowel is to be long, a marker is added on the syllable, while if the syllable is to be still (i.e. without a vowel) then it is done as in abugida systems; a marker is added below the syllable (as you can see in the scan). If there is a vowel in between (e.g. as "A" in way) then it is approximated to the closest vowel(s).
To make some twist in the whole conlang of Geltani, I've decided to make it sound like Chinese, yet with more sounds and consonants that aren't originally in real Chinese, mainly of Semetic origins like ħ [Arabic: ح], and there is some thought about adding the sound of Ayn [Arabic: ع] as well, but not now.

The complete picture of the grammar and the order sentence is still fuzzy in my brain but for some reason I'm not sure of, I do like the order of the sentence used in Sumerian and Akkadian (notice that those are REAL languages!), which is SOV (subject-object-verb). But I have to see further into this matter after the basics of the writing system are settled.
I've avoided, so far, working on several other conlangs (like Betenic and Bulughman) just to concentrate my efforts. Multi-tasking won't work here I guess, specially with such time schedule in such a mess.


Finale:
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. This is what they say. It seems for the time being that I would conduct more experiments in the field of tabletop photography and product photography. Even though I've never considered it before because of the equipments that I must have with me most of the time to take most of such shots, but it seems the only solution available in my case; to try to innovate something and avoid being outdoors too much unnecessarily - in locations that bring problems. On the other hand, who knows, I might as well make a good idea and impression with such field to open up the fields for some financial gains in the future. However, I don't tend to be over optimistic in such matters. I just need to think of what to do next.
Some of my plans for the near future include shooting a censer, a silhouette (as mentioned above), objects dipped in water with some special effect and maybe custom bokeh effect. This is some of the ideas that I've been noting down in my photography note. Would there be someone interesting and interested in what I think, what I do, and share? That, gonna take such a long time as it seems... if any.