Għajnejn Miftuħiet Wiesgħiet…

Here I am, back to work and the daily turmoil; traffic jams, turbulent home, and turbulent sleeping pattern. Despite some of the problems I had in Malta, I do feel like doing back just to relax even more. I can get very lazy, I know, but who wouldn't be, with a continuous headache like this.
My sleeping pattern is not fixed and I've been going to work all week being awake since midnight or around that time (and sometimes before this time even). All that leaves me too exhausted and paralyzed with not much work done to my newly-acquired photos from Malta. The only time available for me in the meantime is after waking up in the middle of the night, and not much is done during these hours. I'm trying to organize my life a bit (starting with my room cleaning) but I think I will need few months to do this instead of some days or weeks!

it-toroq kollha jwasslu li Ġużeppi
(all roads lead to Joseph)

In the meantime, seems I've stitched all my arsenal of panoramas from Malta. What is left now is doing various projections of them. Some of those though won't have any other projections since they are just simple panoramas with few shots and not full space panoramas. Also, there should be a lot to be done in inspecting other single shots taken around Qala, where I stayed. I have to inspect these single shots thoroughly to find possibilities for 3D anaglyphs processing; some of those I did intend to make them into anaglyphs, but sometimes single shots taken from the same location repetitively can have a difference in perspective which would help in making a 3D image after all.

Kbir Qaddis Ġużeppi
(3D)

Unfortunately for me though, the panorama taken in Qala Pjazza where the church of Kbir Qaddis Ġużeppi lies, and which I've shot twice intending to make it as a 3D panorama, did not work quite well for many factors, specifically the change in the lighting conditions and the movement of the clouds (the two reasons are interconnected anyway). Thus, I've abandoned this idea.

Infra Ġużeppi

One of the interesting panoramas that have been stitched lately as well is the infrared panorama taken from the same pjazza (or piazza) in front of the church. Despite the shining sun, I had to raise the ISO value to 400 to shorten the exposure time down to ~1m20s. In the beginning there had been problems in finding matching points between many slides specially those where the clouds line occupy a large area of the image. However, removing the zenith and the nadir points seems to have worked wonder somehow and the problems were reduced to only 1 or 2 slides that needed control points to be specified manually, and what caused this was mainly a difference in levels or tones between the two slides caused by the movement of the clouds in the sky which turned the sun on and off and probably the angle at which some features are shot with do affect the direction of reflection of infrared radiation towards the camera (but I'm not sure about that, but this is the case of using a polarizer, hence it's no good to use a polarizer to shoot a panorama). The hardships in this panorama though started with the processing endeavor; it's infrared, i.e. no real colors. I was fluctuating between having a reddish look or a bluish look; should I apply a channel swab or not? I've tried many aspects for this but at the end I've decided to settle down with the black and white look (adding a tiny bit of bluish tint). My work was not over at this, but I had to crop away some of the annoying features, which means the panorama is not 360° any longer. I had to do this mainly to crop away the flaring sun. A typical annoyance with panoramas shot outdoors, and the annoyance increases when doing an infrared panorama (with an unconverted camera which requires long exposures). Now all what is left with this arsenal is to be sorted out and to see which one can be uploaded to stock sites, and which ones would be beneficial for the group's usage in contests, and let's not forget my website which settles there, idle…

Finale

For this load and this sleeping pattern, not much could be done this week I suppose. Well, many images were processed already but I don't like to put all the eggs in one basket here. Beside this, there might be a re-visit to some of the shots taken in Oman back in September to extract more of them. The matter of QTVRs from my panoramas from Malta is abandoned in the meantime. Probably if I know of a good (web) location to host these and display them easily for regular users, only then, probably, I'd like to create more QTVRs, or upon request.
This is my life right now: work, chores, and more work. Probably my long sleep since I got back from vacation is just a trial to escape reality? I'm not sure; I'm no psychologist. Least I'm hoping for is an end for this damn cough, which seems to get better by now - a good sign on top of all the black endeavors…

3D Giovanna Debono

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!