Showing posts with label leave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leave. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Alexander 2, V4.

Some enhancement with the mood, but I had to receive some bad news from the press with my model for the brochure that I made for work. I have to make the fonts smaller and blacken them out just to fit their machines. Anyway, this is supposed to be some "easy" task to do... if only I would find the original PSD file of this brochure.
I couldn't believe my eyes when Fotolia rejected my 2 images of the dome, claiming that they have aesthetic problems. I just can't understand what those people are asking for? Anyway, Canstockphoto accepted the 2 photos and that's fair enough. I'm waiting for a reply from Bigstockphotos as well. They surprised me indeed when they accepted 2 of 3 from my shots from the parking lot in Soog Sharg!



Shallow Forest.

Rejected



Forest of Lights - Panorama.

Accepted



Forest of Lights.

 Accepted

After accepting these 2 images, I revived my hopes in them. And I used to think that they are worse than Fotolia in their conditions! Pah! It would be somehow a disappointment if they rejected the dome photos... and since no luck is my friend, then they would reject them eventually!

Back to the images from Ireland now, and as I finished the folder of 1-10-2009, I'm checking the special subfolders that I usually keep for panoramas taken on that specific day, and they were a lot. I'm hesitated on wether should I spend more time fixing the errors in these images or just do the easy stuff and move on and come back later one day to these! Apparently, the noise problem that I just noticed a month ago and picked my camera for sensor cleaning for it was apparent in the photos taken back then, but for some reason I didn't notice them at all. But with the new panorama that I've made, I've noticed how much spots were there...



Before The Storm - Corrib Lake. Co. Galway, Ireland.


The previous image was cleaned from spots and noise with cloning stamp in HDR state before the tone-mapping. Also, I added layers of hue and saturation adjustments to make the colors more bluish and fanciful with some greenish hue for the trees. Honestly, the image looked perfect to my eyes just like that without tone-mapping. However, I made the tone-mapping with Photomatix and not in Photoshop, because in such abundant details and wide image, I tend to make lot of mistakes with the manual job. I was surprised though with the amount of noise that appeared after the tone-mapping that neither NeatImage nor NoiseNinja did any good in removing it! For this reason, I kept this image for myself. It looks better in small size, but in actual size, it is horrible. Thus, I did not submit it to Canstockphoto (and that's why I didn't put any watermarks on it). If you want to use it, please go ahead, just give the credits, please.
I'm trying my best to sharpen the image in the HDR state before tone-mapping, as I read and learned from Mr Christian Bloch's book about HDR imaging, but this option seems not so very useful to do, at least for my images. When I sharp and watch the sharpening artifacts show up (by checking the higher EVs of the image in HDR state), I do reduce the amount of sharpening and the radius and they become so low that, eventually, you see no sharpening effect in front of you at all! Thus, why use it? I guess doing the sharpening after the tone-mapping is better in my case. Sharpening too much without taking care of the artifacts and the color noise at the edges in HDR state, would make tone-mapping later on a bad experiment with weird spots of colors showing every where.

My work with transliteration today would be limited to one verse only I guess. I've discovered some confusion in my present tense make-up (the last syllable of the 4-letters verb). For example, "to leave" is (ğaţbaš), now to make the present for 1st person - I leave - it would be (ağaţbiš), but then some verbs I wrote like (ağaţbaš) and that made me some confusion in the matter. It is a serious mistake that makes me think of all the previous writings and transliterations that I did before. I might have to check them seriously and see any corrections that appeal. I hate this when it happens. Moreover, it might make me record some stuff again, which I thought I've finished already.
For the time being, I'm going to check what I transliterated already from Alexander VI story, and hope no mistakes would show up in the future. At least in grammar that is.
For today, we have Alexander 2, verse 4.
__________

The tidings of the ill omen travelled like lightning
the king killed the messenger for no right or wrong
Thus, Alexander raised his eyes up to the sky and prayed
with tears on the cheeks for the poor man he sent
"O Lord, what to do, I obeyed and listened
but the devilish ones accepted nothing but evil
By Your might I come and go, live and die
guide me through this and do not let me go astray"
Then the voice came down to Alexander
and only he could hear it in his ears from above
"O Alexander, by My power you shall succeed,
and with the light of Mishdárá you shall go on
We know what happens, and happened and what will
go and victory is yours, this is a test for you and your men"
Thus, Alexander got down from the mare and bowed down
to the Almighty, the Giver of life, the Giver of might
Then to his soldiers he looked and organized
and spread the twelve generals across his eyes
Chinchán, Ishkán, Chírán, Érán to his right
Dómí, Tólímí, Kahrímí, Gehámí to his left
Then Shakrashom, Dartalom, Keríhom come
along with Galgolom, they were in his front
While the bugles of war screamed so high
for the blood scattering and for men's valour








Tuesday, July 28, 2009

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!