365.362 another bad lanscape, this time with Ducks!

Well, at least I got the big camera out today.

I hit a sort of tipping point in the unpacking, and it’s (mostly) all downhill from here. I foresee a completed apartment come this time tomorrow, assuming my health holds.

I’m sore pretty much all over, and am half afraid that I got some sort of bacterial infection from one or another of the 8 bites I received from Ivan in trying to get him into the travel crate a couple of nights ago. Hopefully, though, the dragging arse feeling that I have is just due to dehydration and malnutrition, and hopefully the pedialyte and big effing salad, bowl of fruit, yoghurt and the soon-to-come usual nacho dinner will put me right again.

I’m not really feeling sick, but more feeling hungover, so I hope it’s just exhaustion and not something more serious, and so the unpacking is going a bit slower than it would otherwise.

Oh well.

This little park is just down the road from the new place. I found it when I tracked down a recycling drop-off bin, and took the camera with me in hopes of getting something nice to share.

There was good-enough light on the way there, but it changed about the time I parked and became that hazy afternoon blah that Texas (or Dallas, anyway) is so known for. Had I had a longer lens on me, I would’ve likely scored a better picture of the ducks, but I doubt I would’ve had the strength to hold it up…

If I was feeling better, I’d make another attempt today. Alas. I’m exhausted and feeling a bit beat down, so this will have to suffice.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO100, 1/8000th (AP mode), f/1.4, -1EV. About 90 seconds of slider play and a fairly radical crop in Aperture.

365.361 a state of utter disarray

Well, I made some progress today—got the last 2 loads of small things out of the old apartment and into the new; set up the entertainment center*; got the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom in (mostly) good shape; and had a 3 hour nap (the cats played Marco Polo from 9pm to 1am, and I got maybe 4 hours of rest); and am now just about to cook the first meal of the day.

I’ve not been kind to myself today, and it’s catching up with me. Yuck.

So all that remains is the daunting task of rebuilding the bookshelves; shelving the books; hanging the art; taking out the recycling; and finding places for the rest of the detritus and the nicknacks; and getting the cats used to the new place.

Fingers crossed that I get some rest tonight. If the cats start up again, I might be getting it on the sofa.

iPhone 4. Hipstamatic app: Tinto 1884 lens; D-Type plate. No post processing.

*I’m going to use the 24″ monitor with the old 13″ lappy, add some external hd’s (when I get new ones for the main work machine, this one) for media storage and a record player, control the whole thing from wireless keyboard/mouse, and stop having a desk for the focal point of the entire living area: this apartment will have zones for work, for reading, for lounging and chatting, for eating, rather than just one area with a sofa and a cluttered desk.

365.360 all I really wanna do-oo

Well. Today was Moving day! Yay!

I’m worn out—and have been since about 11am, and if not then, then certainly by 1pm—and have really only one thing on my mind, and it’s not whatever Bob Dylan was singing about in whatever song that was…

I need rest. And then I need protein, vitamins, and salt.

When I was driving the truck back to the rental place, I caught my reflection in something or other… no, I reached up to scratch my forehead, and found salt crusted all over my forehead.

I think this is a sign of dehydration, maybe. Maybe. But I certainly feel dehydrated, and my lazy ways caught up to me today. Jeez. The buddy that helped me (1 of 2, which made things 2/3rds harder (1/3rd for each me and and a second 1/3rd for the one who showed), and made the whole thing take 1/3rd longer, or are my maths off?) worked about twice as hard as I did: he rides skateboards and walks most everywhere he goes. But I paid him well for it (gave him 90% of what I was going to whack up with the both of them, so everyone came out ahead: GoGo), and he looked at me funny every time I apologized for being so weak, stamina and fitness wise.

I did leave the broom at the truck rental place, and I did break the really awesome coffee cup that my step-niece and nephew gave me for Christmas some years ago. (It remains to be seen what else I broke…) That second one is really a shame… I loved that coffee cup, and it was the only one I use. I’ll have to use the travel mug until I find a suitable replacement…

Anyways, I’m phoning this one in. Apologies.

iPhone 4. Hipstamatic app, Tinto 1884 lens, D-Type film. No post processing. Make no mistake, this is not a good photo. I like the effect, and will play around to see if I can make some good pictures with it, but I really just want to lay down.

I should shower first, though…

Also: I’m in no way mad at the buddy who didn’t show. I’m a bit bothered, perhaps, but harbor no ill will, and sometimes wish I was the sort of person who could flake like that. I’m to serious much of the time, I think. Of course, now I’m just getting punchy…

Goodnight.

365.359 the solstice sky

Well, in some sense, the world is going to end today…

This is likely the last time I’ll take a picture of this particular sky.

I’m moving tomorrow! Just across town, but still a different sky.

And in the Heracleitian sense, the sky is never the same twice, as the clouds and winds and all the stuff that fills what we call ‘sky’ is constantly in motion, but I didn’t mean to open that particular can today.

My luck continues to hold… earlier today, the truck-rental place called to let me know that the truck I reserved 2 weeks ago wouldn’t be ready until some time tomorrow afternoon. I insisted that this was wholly unacceptable, and immediately cancelled my reservation.

30 minutes later, after much scrambling to set up other options (at which I had mostly succeeded, though in a very non-optimal manner), the nice lady called back and told me a magic truck had fallen from the sky and magically landed in their back parking lot, and that they could keep my reservation after all.

I should go buy a lottery ticket.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO125, 1/8000th (AP mode), f/1.4, -1EV. About 1 minute of slider play in Aperture.

365.358 too stressed

Ok. Adobe rant:

I installed Lightroom last week. I haven’t started using it, but it’s on the computer. Apparently, when I installed and activated it, it deactivated or corrupted CS6, so when I went to make this panorama of the source of my stress, it told me I had 30 days left on my trial.

But that’s not why I’m ranting. I reactivated, and I’ll call and curse out Adobe after the move.

So I made a 9 shot panorama of this pile of most of my stuff—it’s too much stuff—and loaded it into CS6.

After about 15 minutes of careful consideration, it spat out a very long vertical image with the 9 shots pretty much just spaced out top to bottom, as if it didn’t even try.

(If 15 minutes seems a long time to (not) stitch together 9 frames, consider that I’m attempting this on a 15″ macbook pro with a 2.6ghz i7 and 8GB of ram, with mail, iTunes, Chrome, and Aperture running, and maybe you’ll wonder what the effing eff is up like I do.)

So I looked, and realized I only had maybe 1/5th of each frame overlapping, and so maybe CS6 wants more.

(Meanwhile, I was engaged in tearing my desk setup apart: packing up printers and unused storage drives and etc.)

Ok. You want more? Fine.

I shot a 29 frame panorama. It went floor to ceiling.

I loaded 27 of 29 frames into CS6 after examining them in Aperture and finding that I had between 1/3 and 1/2 overlap for every image, top to bottom and left to right.

After 37 minutes, CS6 spat out a long vertical image with about 7 frames clumped together in the center, and the remaining 20 strung out top to bottom.

The neighbors in the apartments across the street probably heard the string of profanity that came from my mouth.

So you get the clump.

I didn’t merge the layers in hopes that the stitch lines would remain, but alas.

I’m (not very) seriously considering offering my license keys to the 9th caller.

For the record, I have made exactly 3 successful panoramas in CS6, vs about 300 in CS5. My process has not changed, and the engine was supposedly better in CS6. Pshaw.

Also: this is why I’m an amateur and not a pro.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ~7 of 27 frames, all shot at ISO800, 1/60th, f/1.4. Unsuccessfully merged in Photoshop CS6, and given about 25 seconds of slider play in Aperture.

365.357 a quick reminder

On the way home today, I remembered that my neighbor promised to bring the key to my apartment back this evening. She’s had it for 2+years, and uses it to look after the cats when I’m away, help herself to snack foods (when she’s not on a health kick), and examine the level of filth in and around my living spaces. I’m thankful for the first, she’s welcome to the second, and the third is plain to see for anyone, so she’s been welcome to the key.

Of course, now that I’m moving away, I’ll need to give the keys back to the landlords at some point, so I told myself to put her key with the other spares.

But wait… what did I do with the other spares?

I know I planned to put them somewhere where I wouldn’t lose them or forget where they were, but where?

They weren’t on the desk.

The weren’t in the camera bag.

They weren’t in the part of the desk box that contained their former drawer mates.

5#!7. What did I do with them?

I looked in the bathroom. I looked in the kitchen, around the coffee pot. I looked at the desk again. I looked in the bag again. I looked in the part of the box where the desk drawer mates are. No luck.

Crap.

I guess I’ll have to unpack and repack stuff until I find them.

(they were in the part of part of the desk box containing items from another drawer, and directly below the part of the box where the spare keys’ former mates are, and it only took an additional ~45 seconds to find them.)

So I dropped them in the camera bag and snapped this picture as a reminder.

The bag is now shouting at me: they’re in here, dummy!

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO800, 1/60th, f/1.4, pop-up, in TTL mode. About 30 seconds of processing in Aperture.

365.356 work party abstraction

So the annual holiday White Elephant gift exchange happened this afternoon at work, and I had some errands and phone calls to make after work, so I went ahead and shot the 365 with the phone this morning. Ends up, the party got me out of work earlier than expected, the errands took no time, and the phone call was an absolute pleasure.

(Believe it or not, the main phone call was to set up moving internet service from the current place to the future place, and was completely painless! Time Warner have listened to their customers and stepped their game up somewhat in the customer service department, and I should have 1) no interwebs downtime; 2) faster speed; 3) a tiny increase in price for the much faster speed, all of which were completely unexpected! I should go buy a lottery ticket…)

I dropped most of the $10 maximum on wrapping supplies, as my gift for the White Elephant came to me in 2010’s White Elephant… (its third appearance in said gift exchange), and I therefore had the fanciest wrapping in the house. This is some of the plastic foil wrapping sheets that I used in place of tissue paper. It looked so interesting on the desk… it had to be shot, and so it was.

And now I have a few minutes to dust the empty bookshelves before dinner time! GoGo.

iPhone 4. Built-in Camera app, in HDR mode. 4 shots made at different exposure points, and combined/recombined in TrueHDR app, with a very minimal crop in Aperture.