Black Coffee (Deprecated)

Fake Tilt Shift Photography

Stas pointed out a decent tutorial on synthesizing fake tilt-shift-lens photography and a another site with some really nice examples of fake model photos of disneyland.

A few differences from the tilt shift lens attempts I've made.

Apply Gradient Mask This is how I first did it, select a pretend focal plane in the picture and then drag a gradient away from that line. I don't recall if i used the cylindrical gradient. Then stas had a suggestion that I apply the gradient mask as a layer and then erase it at key points. So for example in teh photo of people crossing the street, mostly just the people are clear and un-blurred. Hopefully this makes the desired details stick out a bit more. I also noticed that the tutorial used really heavy blur on the gradient, probably more than I have in my experiments. Not sure if it looks better or not.

Apply Lens Blur Stas also suggested I use Len Blur filter. However I use Photoshop 7, so all I get is the Gaussian blur. I guess Lens Blur can be more realistic but then I see it has an awful lot of minimally-meaningful sliders, so I'm wondering if it's precision that I'll never get to utilize intentionally.

Apply Curves I do something similar, not curves, but i just compress the contrast to dark shadows and blow out the highlights. I think this, as the author also points out, makes it seem more like it's being illuminated by a cheap Ikea halogen desk lamp. There may be more opportunities to change the quality of light that could help the effect.

Choosing photographs The author is dead right. Choose photos that are strongly lit and taken from a high vantage point. So far I've used both telescopic and wide lenses.

I'd say my biggest challenge is deciding what areas to blur or not. Does the focal plane work better than the spot highlighting? To what degree do I blur it and what other modifications would improve it?

It's actually hard to work on these photos for an extended period of time because after a while I lose my ability to see the differences or even see the effect. The effect of these photos is best when first spotted. Extended staring at them makes them become familiar and hard to distinguish.

Lee brings good things back from Sydney

My soon-to-migrate sister in law, Lee, just returned from a reconnaisance trip to Sydney. She brought me back three great things.

Ruffino Chianti Classico Riserva Ducale Gold 2000

A USABLE sandwich grill. I've had so many others, and they've all sucked. Why? Because they close with a hinge, not in parallel, so you crush and squish your sandwiches. Because the grill plates are too small, so cheese melts and goes everywhere. And because the plates are not removable and cleanable.

And, lastly, a few dozen Krispy Kreme donuts, something I've not enjoyed since Ling and I spent our happy years in the SF Bay, eating Krispy Kremes and bad coffee with Adam and Matt in Redwood City.

Passages

Hey, I'm as into secret rooms as anyone. I remember diligently mapping out my grandparents' house in Corsica with a tape measure and graph paper hoping to deduce where secret rooms, or at least compartments were located. I'm still convinced there were some at Aunt Ruth Godfrey's place, at any rate.

However, this company that contracts to build secret doors and compartments looks pretty lame.

I mean, come on. When I watch the videos of rotating candlesticks, lifting pictures, and switches-disguised-as-gilded-tomes all I can think of was episodes of the Wild, Wild West where Artimus Gordon pulls a switch rotating the two "display" revolvers towards the bad guy and blowing him away.

None of it seems realistic or practical or hardly even secret. Their constructions seem secret as in "it's a 'secret'". As they say in the promotional material, "Your practical and exciting investment will amaze potential buyers and dramatically increase retail value."

I think all it does is make potential buyers think you're a fucking freak. And anyway, if I buy a house with a secret room, I want to discover it myself, not take a tour of it during the Open House.

If you want to see a real secret room, check out this Tennessee bungalow.

Toothing?

I meant Teething.

And that's what Luke's up to now. He's been in a bad mood, has the shits, and you can feel a few tiny teeth under his grinning gums. According to people who know more than me, these are all signs of imminent teeth. I'm just hoping he doesn't start getting fevers as well.

Mom is coming out in a few weeks and it looks like all sorts of seminal events might occur while she's here. He's itching to start crawling too.

Seen: Munich

The Steven Speilberg movie "Munich" was released in Singapore this weekend.

This is months after it was released in the US to considerable critical scorn and applomb. Even the Israeli Amabassador in Washington published an editorial about the movie.

One of the big contentions about the movie was that it implied "moral equivalency" between the Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli hit-teams.

Whatever, I don't care. I watched the movie as a story only. And apparently it is very much a story and not very much truth. It's commonly said that the book it was based on, "Vengeance," has been discredited as fiction.

As a story it's quite entertaining despite being close to three hours long. The period setting, early seventies Europe is marvelous -- costumes, props, and sets are all very cool and the actors (except the stereotypical neurotic Jewish bombmaker) are solid and consistent.

As far as deeper meanings go, as I said, I chose to ignore all that stuff and instead treat it as it is -- a rare, rare opportunity to go out with my wife on a Saturday night. The farthest I chose to go with it was the sense of, "yeah, this is how you might deteriorate if you spent years doing nothing but killing people."

I also note that there is a killing scene in here which is literally the stuff of my nightmares. The killing of the person in Holland near the bikes was just absolutely harrowing and horrifying to me. The only other killing scene I've seen that has been almost as believable (I've never participated in an assasination) and disturbing was a scene from Little Odessa where the hitman shoots the guy at a payphone. Still, it didn't hold a candle to how terrible and hellish this scene was. It seemed it was almost custom-designed to horrify me.

So yes, I enjoyed the movie, I didn't find or choose to find it overtly, repulsively political. It was to Ling and I just a good story. Nothing more. Note to commenters: any Jew/Arab/Right/Wrong remarks will be assasinated much more quickly, effectively, and cheaply than the Israeli Vengeance Squad managed.

Wikis: what did I expect?

I was looking through my server logs tonight and noticed activity on my /wiki branch. Although not private, it's essentially a seldom-used service to myself and a few others. That it was experiencing high traffic was a bad sign.

So when I checked, yes, of course it's a bad sign. Just like with every other publicly-accessible web service, there is a problem with spam bots. The interesting thing was that they seemed content to just pollute the index page, but none of the subsidiary pages. This means less clean-up work for me and easier for me to protect that single page.

The more interesting thing is that a secret war was going on among various spambots. For months every day bots logged in and wiped out each others' changes, replacing one's spamlinks with their own.

It sort of reminded me of the US Army's secret fights to eliminate salafists in North Africa or Al Quaeda in Djibouti.

Found: a drinkable spirit

Made a risotto tonight, which requires either a dry white wine or a vermouth. As I grabbed a bottle of Martini&Rossi Extra Dry Vermouth, I saw beside it several versions of Cinzano. You've probably seen the art deco ad posters from the 1900's. They didn't exactly say they were vermouths, but it seemed likely. I checked the bottle of Cinzano Rosso which had a description that made me a bit wary:

Cinzano Rosso is a classic apertif world-wide appreciated for its delicious taste with a uniquely persistent but pleasantly bitter after taste. Its recipe is a well kept secret, based on high quality wines blended with essences of herbs and spices from all over the world. It is still produced according to the original method developed in Italy in the 18th century.

SERVING SUGGESTIONS: Enjoy Cinzano Rosso neat over ice, or as a refreshing long drink with one of your favorite mixtures such as lemonade, orange juice and tonic or soda water

"Persistent yet pleasantly bitter?" Sounds like Campari, and that is in no way pleasant, in any manifestation.

I bought it anyway.

My sister-in-law just flew in from Sydney. When she arrived I poured us each, as ordered, a splash of Cinzano Rosso neat over ice into a cut glass tumbler. I hear 'Rosso' and I'm thinking red. It comes out looking like uncarbonated Coca-cola. I'm thinking, "ewww this is going to be really bad."

Turns out, it was marvelous. Eminently drinkable. The secret herbs make it "heaty," as Chinese would describe it, but not overly so. It was if at all, barely bitter. Campari is astringent. This Cinzano Rosso was more like a Kir (Creme De Cassis & white wine). Very sippable, yet strong.

I tried to find out more about it online, but the Campari Group (I guess they own the Cinzano brand) only listed some vile cinzano-based soda-beverage targetted at teens. I found this useless and unctuos description elsewhere:

Very dark tawny tone. Heady perfume speaks of overripe grapes, quinine and roots. Agile, tar-like in the mouth as flavors of quinine, citrus peel, roots and berries combine in a piquant twang thats neither clumsy nor cloying. Finishes tasting of ripe oranges and pink grapefruit. Very nice with a splash of fresh-squeezed O.J.

"tar-like in the mouth" ? [rolls eyes] That's like the description of a wine we considered for dinner tonight being noted as having hints of "Saddle Leather."

Neat is good, but i'd like to next try it with some soda. This might become my new alternative to beer, especially when I'm not in the mood to drink with food. The idea of mixing it (or anything) with sickly sweet orange-juice is revolting.

Singapore MRT Anagram Remix Station Map

Singapore MRT Station Map
Singapore has one of the world's most modern and efficient infrastructures. Until now, however, it didn't have an anagram remix station map.

Red Meat

The latest thing in American Food Science is to pack red meat in a container sealed up with some carbon monoxide. It keeps the meat red indefinitely.

Really indefinitely.

The New York Times article did its own test and kept treated and untreated steaks in the refrigerator. "The conventional meat was brown, but the treated meat was still rosy."

That was the idea.

But the Feb 21st article goes on, "...other treated meat was still red despite having been left unrefrigerated on a kitchen counter since Feb 14.

Apparently some of the labels are "Laura's Lean Meat" and "Creekstone's" -- I wouldn't touch the shit.

A Scanner Miscast

A Scanner Darkly

I feel like someone scanned me and calculated, "who are the five actors/actresses he would least like to see in a movie?" and then the only one they didn't include was Wilford Brimley.

Such a pity too, because the whole cartoon-transcription-of-a-film noir is really cool looking and the story itself (I read it a long time ago but no longer remember it) is possibly quite good.

Just the prospect of enduring Keanu, Woody, Wynona, and Robert is just so loathesome -- no respite at all.

Major bridge to villainy

I found out today that I am only one degree of separation from the true Pope of Coptic Christians.

Imagine who else that must connect me to.... One of the biggest religious figures in Egypt.

Pope Shenouda
Hosni Mubarak (President of Egypt)
Pervez Musharaff (Prime minister of Pakistan)
Dr AQ Khan (Pakistan's nuclear weapons proliferation facilitator)
Kim Jong-Il (Leader of Democratic Peoples' Republic of North Korea)

Out of sight!

Flickr banned?

My brother-in-law reports that his friend in Dubai was unable to see photos of my son posted on Flickr. Why?

Apparently "the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates. "

When he told me, I was excited because I thought he was saying karavshin.org was banned. Alas, I am not significant enough to ban.

Walter Mitty

My brother-in-law is a plant engineer at one of the large petrochemical facilities in Singapore. He resigned today and is heading off next week for a two-year program to become a pilot for Singapore Airlines!

Not clear what plane he'll be assigned to. Perhaps a mega-ark?

I've been using my Canon 380EX flash to bounce some catch-light onto Luke when I'm photographing him. I hate direct flash from the camera. It's harsh and one directional. My technique has been to carry the flash in my left hand while it's connected to the camera with a cable. Then I bounce it off walls/ceilings/whatever.

It works well except that my 1dkmkii weighs about five pounds (heavy) and it's awkward to shoot one-handed. If I'm lucky, i'll drop the 380ex flash. If I'm unlucky, I'll drop the body.

So today I decided to buy a diffuser for the flash head so that I could dispense with the cable and off-camera flash. I bought an expensive Gary Fong Lightsphere II Photojournalist

The results were odd. Shooting head-on with the diffuser seemed to not produce much light. The resulting image histogram was really compressed and fairly dark. I would have to crank the exposure up significantly to expose for highlights. Aiming the the flash head up at an angle pumped out more light. Perhaps that's because it was shooting through the clear sides of the head?

Perhaps I'm missing the point of this diffuser and shooting a dog in a box is not the appropriate test of it. Probably what they'd say is if I was shooting a person or something, there would be fewer gross shadows and less harsh light?

I don't know, but clearly I need more work with this product before I can tell whether it's any good or not.

update: ok, I just found This tutorial. It's not great, it's got a really irritating streaming video component and then the rest of the tutorial is pretty patchy. Anyway, at the very least it appears you use the thing pointing straight up, not forward at the subject, in most cases.

A disaster before she arrived

Maid is due in February 10th.

I was running the espresso machine this morning when Ling received a call. I thought she was talking to the Toshiba Service Center. She sounded *mad*. I thought to myself, "so what if it takes another month to get the laptop back?"

Then she hung up the phone and told me that it was the maid agency calling to say that our would-be maid had gotten pregnant and wouldn't be coming.

Fucking great. I knew she was a single mother when we picked her out. Fucking stupid, irresponsible idiot did it again?! I thought her being a single mother might make her more responsible. Optimistic assumption.

It's immensely irritating that we won't have a maid for a least another month. On the other hand, this irresponsible woman would have probably been a disaster here. In Singapore, if your maid gets pregnant or runs away, the employer gets stuck with a $5000 fine. No wonder people don't want to give maids their days off - - how can you ensure she doesn't go running off to Sunday afternoon tea dances with foreign workers?

A guy I know went to a dodgy bar one night. There he ran into his very own maid, clearly dressed for action. When he questioned why the hell she was out, she reassured him, "It's ok sir... fucking and sucking, but no loving."