I never tire of taking crazy light photos. I really should practise more and try different things..
And here's a pic of the moon last week (full pixels - the 105mm would make this smaller :( )
Other than that a pretty standard Monday. Actually had a bit of a lull in my crazy todo list so did some operational stuff. Not much tonight other than a full backup of my hard drive.
Warning: complete boring obsessive-compulsive post.
This morning I had the thought that I really should get around renaming all our UK photos with date/timestamps.
Sounds easy, no?
Well with the right tools, the bulk of it is. Point an application such as Renamemaster at a directory of files and you're done.
Well that only works on the days that all files are in the same timezone. As soon as you start throwing flights into the mix, the problem becomes how to deal with files in different timezones. Especially problematic when you're going back in time - you can end up with overlapping files if you do it wrong :/
The first challenge as always was to figure out exactly what time (local time) photos were taken to see which ones need offsetting. That took ages. Especially with photos from three still cameras, two phones and a video camera to sort out. All with different behaviours. The still cameras were fairly easy cause the time is set manually. They just worked. Phones automatically pick up the new times when you change timezones so they were also easy enough, except for some of the iPhone pics which didn't have a date modified timestamp on them that Renamemaster could find - weird! The video camera was a bit painful because it was set by changing the timezone on it. For some reason the still photos it takes and the videos were different by an hour. Yay.
I used Exif Date Changer on some of the files (the ones where I was going forward in time and wanted to update them to local time after I'd changed timezones).
The movies taken by the still cameras I renamed manually cause there weren't that many of them. But when I got to the video camera and they all needed adjusting by an hour I used Bulk Rename Utility. Its interface is a bit scary, and by accident I actually modified the original modified date (possibly that will be a problem when we're not in Daylight Saving anymore..) but then also managed to rename them as well.
So anyways. It took around eleven hours *groan* but got everything sorted and renamed and the blog posts updated with the stats.
I'm sure my brother will tell me I'm doing it wrong. But at least now all ~13000 files are done.
Hurrah.
Tonight's project was scanning the oldest of the "evil" photo albums. You know those albums where the sticky stuff deteriorates and sticks to the photos :( Not sure where this album came from. It might have been one of the grandparents'. I seem to remember inheriting it a few years before I left Sydney.
**EDIT** - more than a few years! I actually first scanned these (at very low resolution) in 1999!!!
It contains mostly baby/toddler photos of me from birth (obviously) to about 1983 when I was ten. But only ~64 photos in all of that. These days a kid would have 64 photos on their first *day* let alone ten years!! There's probably more around, certainly of later years, but there just wasn't that many taken of my in my first few years. And they did lose about six months of photos through some mishap as well.
The album is now to be thrown out, and the photos stored in a box somewhere (with clean paper between each one to stop the sticky residue sticking to the photo behind it).
I'm feeling quite old doing this. Remember, when I die *noone* is going to care about these photos. No kids and no nephews or nieces are going to exist to be interested. Our family will history will die with my brother and I. When I die someone is just going to throw all these photos out and format my hard drive and that'll be the end of me. It's kind of a weird feeling. Especially since I have this feeling that I'm probably half way through my conscious life so it's all down hill from here..
But anyways...
I guess I was kinda cute as a baby .. where did it all go wrong..?
This time with my high school photos.
Urgh high school hey. Plenty of good memories .. plenty of bad ones..
2011 will be twenty years since we finished high school in 1991. Our year was the last year to go through year 12 in the girls school, as after that they merged with the boys school across the road to become "The Jannali High School".
Sadly it looks like I never got around to labelling this photo. Oh well.. Have uploaded them all to Friends Reunited anyway.
I cleaned my desk a bit more today and decided to attack a folder of photos that my mother had sent to my grandmother over the years. Mum had put some baby photos and all our school photos into folders with nice labels and everyone labelled! She would have done this with three copies of photos - one for her and one for each set of grandparents. Dozens of names repeated over and over again over the years. (In case you were wondering where my obsessive-compulsiveness comes from!!)
** EDIT: actually I think most of these were actually mum's originals. When she pulled apart the old evil photo albums that destroy photos I think she separated them out for us, and gave my photos to me and my brother's photos to him **
Anyways. I scanned the couple of baby photos and all the primary school photos and typed up all the names on the backs for each of them. I then uploaded the group photos to
Friends Reunited. When I get the energy I'll do the high school ones as well.
Seeing the faces and names brought back all sorts of memories. I've been thinking I should have some sort of "memories" blog where I can write down everything I can think of about my past. Not sure who it would really benefit though. Certainly noone else is going to care about what I thought about people thirty years ago. It could be interesting for me when my dementia gets worse. Although chances are those old memories will be the last to go lol.
Nat and Andrew came over this arvo and we spent ages in the pool, then I cooked a pasta bake for dinner (no leftovers tho - doh!) and then we played a few games of Bananagrams (which is a lot like Take Two) which I won all three of, then a two-board game of Roborally which Stu won.
The SIL has been playing with all sorts of photographic effects for a while now. My brother is not impressed. I can see where my brother is coming from. Why take a photo of something then abuse it so it doesn't really resemble what you took a picture of. And to some extent I agree (my biggest gripes are with the photos that take the image then mirror it or flip it around.. I really don't see the point of those). But on the other hand, if you're just having a bit of fun, and the pictures you're taking really aren't *of* anything in particular, then putting some effects on them makes them a bit more interesting.
Like this photo of Stu taken at Knead Patisserie today. I take plenty of pictures of Stu, but to be a bit different, I added an Instagram effect (can't remember which one!). Not a very exciting (or even very good) photo, but the original is even less so.
Or these pics of the Belconnen Markets. The original was created with Pro HDR. The HDR exposes for both the shadows of the shops and the bright sail. So it's already looking better than a regular photo would. But really the content isn't that exciting. Why not apply an old-school filter to it, then you could look at it think it was out of someone's photo collection from the 1960s or 1970s.
I really liked this picture of a random guy sitting at a table. With the "antique" Lightroom filter it looks more interesting than the original below it.
And a picture of Stu's coffee. Again, completely boring subject matter, but livened up with an Instagram filter.
So I can see its point as art. Because you're not trying to faithfully recreate the original scene. You're manipulating something that would otherwise have little interest and have some fun with it.
I moved cubicles today. Moved to the same spot in the next bank of cubicles. Our section is taking over the floor mwooahahaha! Got a few bits and pieces done and went out to lunch for Chris' birthday. And got a slight early mark.
The pool is now blue again which is a Good Thing.
There's a red-back spider in the garage.
Nothing more of any interest, so here's a couple of photos.
A Gak Gak bird yelling at me for getting too close to its chick (which had a broken leg or something and wasn't doing too well :( )
Sunbeams
I've had only a detached interest in the Queensland floods. Devastating, yes, but somehow not personal.
Until it hit Brisbane and places I've been to. Watched coverage for several hours tonight. Sad sad sad. Stu was pretty sad tonight too. He having lived in Brisbane for so long and all..
The only people I know in Queensland are ok, although not far from the devastation in Goodna.
David described scenes like this as like the end of the world..
One of the images that really struck me though was from a couple of days ago in another part of Queensland.
This page is pretty freaky too. Someone's done an overlay of the Brisbane River and the extent of the possible flooding..
So yeah. Stay safe everyone...
Well not on a weeknight anyway. Especially not on a weeknight. Nothing interesting to talk about. Haven't done anything interesting. Boring boring boring.
I backed up my photo directory tonight. Is that exciting? Well all except the "masters" directory cause that's too big to fit on this particular disk. And the UK photos don't fit either. Good thing I have two other disks that *do* fit all those photos. I have 38gb of Canon masters, and that's only 6106 files, excluding all the UK photos.
I have four backup hard drives at the moment. Two fit everything. Two fit a subset of files. I'm thinking of ditching the two smaller ones. I mean what can you do with an 80gb drive these days *really*? Besides, all four don't fit properly in my offsite storage location.
Ok that's enough with the boring talk.
Here's a boring picture of my dinner tonight - a lamb red curry with some very old lamb I found in the freezer, pak choy or choy sum or something like that, garlic, a chili off a Crust pizza, capsicum and mushrooms, with red curry paste and a tin of light coconut cream, topped with cashews. Well it was yummy anyway.
Part 3 of the Coppins Crossing series. Here's some of the clouds from the incoming storm...
All but the very last one are just regular photos, no HDR. The last one is HDR on the iPhone.
The storm brought some pretty impressive hail to Canberra's southern suburbs, although only rain to the northern suburbs.
Had an ok Friday today. Got some stuff done and may have even had a win (will find out next week if we did or not).
