Tone Mapping 1

Tone mapped HDR of my street

Back [in black?]

Back in manchester now, and have been doing..... nothing, really, since I moved in.

I have, however, been experimenting again.

This is what I've got:

Here are the originals.

I climbed a tree to get  this one. Everyone thought I was an idiot. They were probably right.

These are several months old now, but there we are.

Nice to hear from you too.

One of the most annoying things about being proficient at using a computer, are phone calls like this:
"Hello?"
"Iain! Can you fix my laptop?"

It's happened twice over the last week, both from people whom I haven't spoken to in months, despite my attempted efforts at contact.

Because I'm an idiot, I attempted to sort both of these problems out. The first one I did in person, picking up her and her PCs (yes, plural. *sigh*) and taking her to my friends house, another person she hasn't contacted in months.
It quickly became apparent that the people who used the machines are stupid.
Stupid to the point where they click every pop up that says: "You're computer is infected! Click here to download more viruses!!".
Or similar.
They also use zango, limewire, kaza, and every application that offers to install a toolbar has installed a toolbar, and spyware and malware and adware and other shit.
The antivirus was out of date and the hard drive was partitioned so that the C: drive had 2% free space while the D: drive had 90% free space, because none of them knew it was even there.
Tasks that should have taken seconds to complete took so long we had a cup of tea and came back and IT STILL WASN'T DONE.
In short, it was fucked.
I should have wiped it, then jumped up and down on the hard drive.

When the shit hits the fan.

This if Phil Bates.
He is a musical genius.

I wasn't looking forward to working tonight, but student loans need to be paid somehow.
My apathy vanished as soon as I realised that Phil, Jo, and Rosie Bates where performing at the Baskerville Arms, where I work.
I've seen them play before, and I know them reasonably well, seeings as they live about 500 yards down the road.
I had, however, forgotten just how good they are.
Phil is a former member of ELO, and he does play a few old ELO songs, but quiet often how he would rather have had them done, something he acknowledged to the audience, saying diehard ELO fans would hate the alterations.
They did covers mostly, with a few thrown in by people like P!nk and Avril Lavigne, both of which Rosie was responsible for, and she has the most amazing voice. It's bizzare, because I've worked with her, and she seems so nervous but according to this she's sung in front of 3000 people.
One of Phil's own was a song called "Waiting For The Shit to Hit The Fan", which was funny but also really good.

So, excellent evening, and I now feel lucky to have been working.
Also, I got a free Indian meal out of the whole thing.

But the gimp' s sleeping.

Want to do clever things in GIMP
Thought this would be a good place to stick images.




I wish to remove the background, and have only the hand.


This is what I've got so far.

Pretty lights!

Fireworks!


This one was a bit worrying.
It was like a sodding ICBM. I was lucky though, because the shutter opened before it actually went off, and there is minimal shake.

Sunset over the pier.



Pam fi duw?

Dying culture?

I was up in North Wales recently, and a few things I saw surprised me.
I was surprised that anyone could drink eighteen pints of Magners and still form (sort of) coherent sentences.
I was surprised that no one would go the literal extra mile with Ben and I, despite the fact that there was only 5 minutes difference in us walking and everyone else getting back in the cars.
I was surprised at how unbelievably dreadful some people are at camping.
And I was surprised by this:





There are scores of these abandoned small holdings littering the hillsides; apparently, if you could build a chimney by sunset, they were given an acre surrounding it by the local lord. That could be complete bollocks, but I can't verify it. Still, sounds like a good explanation for why there are so many of these buildings.



I reached the top first, the turned around to watch the others struggle through the heather.Then Ben caught up, and we laughed at the others for a bit.

On the drinking thing: My friend John used to be the very worst lightweight drinker, in the history of everything. A single pint could get him rolling around and falling off chairs. He's no better now, but he just stayed at that level of inebriation for the next seventeen pints.

We managed to convince him that Xenu was coming for him, and shouting "XENU!" and shining a torch at him was enough to make him fall over.
I also replaced his drink with potatoes at one point.

He did say that he lost control of his neck when drinking. I see no reason to dispute that.

Whilst experimenting with long exposures, I made this:

It's like a genesis album cover, but the subject is Matt, the KW-1 Russian tank.


Rhetorical question for the day:
Is starting a blog too pretentious?
Meh, we'll see.

-Anorak