Virtual Tokyo

So the Victoria Day (Victoria and Aboriginal Day if the petition is successful) weekend is almost over. I have had a very quiet and relaxing few days, catching up with some old friends. I have also backed up my entire photo collection. Took me 3 hours! I ate a lot of bacon and eggs, great steak and fennel, roasted chicken and now I have brownies baking in the oven. It will be nice to work some of this off tomorrow at the gym. Yoga was awesome on Sunday, while I felt a little rusty since I haven’t gone in three weeks, it sure was nice to sweat!

Here is a great video of a miniaturized Tokyo. No Godzilla but cool techno funky beat here.

Inferno, the new Dan Brown novel

The new Dan Brown novel was released today and so I decided to pick it up. It felt rather comfortable, a similar story to the other stories by Dan Brown that I have read: The da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. I haven’t read his other work but Inferno follows a similar template: noted Harvard professor Robert Langdon tracks down yet another medieval mystery whilst being chased by unknown bad guys. This time it is not la Jaconde or the Vatican, it is Florence, de Medici, and Dante’s masterpiece of the descent to Hell: Inferno! The recipe works, right? Well, I will liken it to the movies of M. Night Shyamalan. Shyamalan burst onto the scene with The Sixth Sense but by the time you get to Signs, you weren’t all that impressed anymore. Same narrative devices, same pacing, essentially the same story that you are familiar with but it seemed, well, lacking and unconvincing. So while Brown provides wonderful historical information of beautiful architecture and art in locales in Italy, it lacks the punch of da Vinci Code. I am sure, though, that tourism to Florence will increase.

and speaking of street photography

W. Eugene Smith, famed street/documentary photographer gave a rare interview in 1956. Excerpt here. More of Smith’s work here at Magnum. From the perspective of an historian, they may be none better than Smith for his ability to capture a narrative in film format.

Street Photography

I’ve never been one for the practice of street photography until lately. I read somewhere that street photography is the art of being in the right time, and the right place, with a camera. I laughed when I ran across this article with an almost identical title. Some excellent examples of right time, right place here.

Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier has a new book out, Who Owns The Future arguing, among other things, that the internet killed the middle class. Salon has a great interview here.

Lanier is a deep thinker about the role of information technology, capital intensive labour, and the fate of democracy. Seeing integrated communications technology as a key driver in the alignment of social forces, Lanier’s thoughts normally make the tours through global history by connecting seemingly disparate forces such as the Facebook and increasing wealth inequality. His main argument throughout his work has been that society gives up much to satisfy efficiency.

This time, Hitchcock!

I have decided to jump into another filmography, this time with Director Alfred Hitchcock! Hitchcock was a rather prolific director so the list is long. I will start with him films from 1925-1934. The list is as follows:

1925 The Pleasure Gardens
1927 Downhill
1927 The Lodger
1927 The Ring
1928 Champagne
1928 Easy Virtue
1928 The Farmer’s Wife
1929 Blackmail
1929 The Manxman
1929 Juno and the Paycock
1930 Murder
1931 Rich and Strange – East of Shanghai
1931 The Skin Game
1932 Number Seventeen
1933 Waltzes From Vienna
1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much

Phew! This will take me a while!

A few more flowers….

More macro with my 60mm. I think that I am getting a better handle on using this lens but the focus issue remains. I think next time I will take multiple shots (I can get a burst of 6 RAW shots before the buffer clogs) and then use Photoshop to stack the images and then blend the focal points together. I will put together (or link to) a good tutorial soon.

For now, enjoy!

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.dot location

Outside of Hong Kong, Singapore, the Vatican and other city states, the internet dot extension for everyone else is either .com or .country code (not to mention .edu or .org etc.).

This story is quite interesting though. ICANN, the people who regulate these sorts of things, gave authorization to allow .bzh and .paris for those in either Breton or Paris, respectively. While more extensions do lead to more confusion (and problems for marketers abound!), there is some sense to using more micro level geographic extensions. Expect a .nyc and .london soon!

Success with Zucchini cake!

So while there are no clean dishes left in my apartment, dinner with my friend RP was awesome! Here are some crappy drunken iPhone pictures that I took, I wanted to document the entire evening but it was too much work! I’m not sure if the steak or the fennel or the dessert was my favorite but I do know that a good time was had by all!

So this is the appetizers, note the goat cheese that was amazing!

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And here is the cake preparation with the final results!

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And this is where I got the recipe from: link

Lazy Sunday

The power was off since I returned from laundry this morning with a scheduled replacement of hydro poles down my street. I took this as an opportunity to go out with my camera, again. The weather is really nice here; however, the sun was quite harsh. And with all the pavement, it was hot. Dare I say too hot?

Moving right along.

Here are some images from the walk through the neighbourhood with my Olympus 60mm. I love the macro capability of this lens. It has truly given me a new perspective on the world around me. The 1:1 is really exciting, seeing the individual parts of the flowers is amazing! I’m still a novice with macro though. I have stopped down to f8.0 and even with the bright sunlight, the challenge is the wind and general camera steadiness! Probably better with a tripod and shutter release but I’m pleased with my handheld results thus far. I’ll keep working on it! Enjoy these as much as I did taking them!

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