Digitalian is eating breakfast

Happy New Year!

2012-01-19T02:27:00.002+02:00

Barely has Christmas left us and we're already almost three weeks into 2012. I can already see that this will be one of those years that will be over before I know what happened.

Something is quite different this time though.

Going into 2012, I feel better than ever about the future. My humble collection of photography gear has grown into quite a complete setup, with which I can make almost any picture I could imagine. (Just a couple of more flashes...) My music gear continues to rate higher than my actual skill level, so that's ready for whatever I want it for. My personal life is looking quite a lot brighter than ever before, thanks to a certain someone who entered my life a while back. The only cloud on the horizon is the lack of a steady job, but for the moment that does not worry me too much.

It feels like this will be quite an interesting year..!

Farewell M-Audio

2011-12-30T19:41:00.002+02:00

I have owned (and still own, for that matter) a number of different M-Audio products. What they all have in common is that they have failed me somehow.

My first was a MIDI keyboard, which failed me in a faulty MIDI out port when I was going to connect it to my M50.

Second was the Firewire Solo audio interface, which failed me after a couple of years in that noise and glitching started to appear, both in the inputs and outputs.

Third was an expression pedal, which failed me just recently by spontaneously breaking, even though I hardly ever use it. As I was moving it around I heard something loose inside it. Turning it around a bit produced a plastic piece from its innards, and when I tried to hook it up to my synth there was no effect from activating it.

With this behind me, I have made the decision to try to avoid M-Audio as best as I can in the future. And I have found good replacements for two of the three products!

For the keyboard I went with Korg, once again. The expression pedal wasn't really worth replacing since I found I didn't really take it into use anyway... But for the audio interface I found a second-hand Presonus Firebox for a nice price!

Looking back I wish I had had the good sense to just get the Presonus from the start, since it's a better product in pretty much every aspect. More outputs, more inputs, better control of the audio signal in every way. The only little thing that I miss about the Firewire Solo was the M-Audio drivers which allowed you to set the audio level in software with the keyboard volume keys, but for the features I gain it's a small loss.

Speaking of which

2011-12-23T00:14:00.003+02:00

Speaking of the stand, I also noted on the Christmas list from two years ago that I eventually got every item on the list (except for one which I don't want/need any more).

The 1000D I got as one of the first ones, if I remember correctly, only a few months after Christmas. Then the order gets a bit hazy, but I have some order confirmation e-mails to help me. The Yuki Kajiura DVD I got in April 2010, the Professor Layton game I got this year in October; the YPK2030 cable I'm not sure when I got, but I remember I got it at the same time as the M-Audio expression pedal. (Which is now broken, which is another story that I will deal with later.) And now the keyboard stand.

Maybe in two years I will have what I'm wishing for now..!

Good things come...

2011-12-21T19:53:00.003+02:00

... to those who wait. Two years after writing about my wish for a two-levelled stand, it is now here!

Updates

2011-11-19T01:28:00.002+02:00

Where to start? Perhaps with a lens: the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6. Ultra-wide is amusing, though I doubt it will see very much use.

And then? Maybe a photo.

As for what I have been up to lately, mostly work. Not as much photography as I would prefer, but some images are taking shape in my head that will eventually want to come out.

Farewell nifty

2011-07-28T20:42:00.003+03:00

The other day I sold my "nifty-fifty" 50mm f/1.8. It was the second lens I bought and it had some emotional value, but in the end I just couldn't rely on its AF for my uses.

Some will probably say I'm crazy for selling on a mk1 version of the lens, as it's somewhat of a rarity, but I'd rather someone who would put it to better use have it than I keep it just gathering dust.

The frame makes the artwork

2011-07-14T02:30:00.001+03:00

First a rhetorical question: what is art?

As with all things, that is relative. Beauty is, as they say, in the eye of the beholder. But where everybody have their own opinion on beauty, what is art is very often as dependant on the context as the substance.

Take, for example, a world-class violinist and place him in the subway, and very few will recognize him for what he is. Put him on a stage in front of an orchestra and people will pay several hundred dollars to see him perform.

And in an example from the other end of the scale, take a virtually talentless videographer and give him the tools needed to make derivative pop art, boosted by the words of already known street artists, and you have people flocking to his exhibition.

What to make of all of this? Simply put, people can not recognize art by themselves; bombarded with impulses, people need a large message, something to grab their attention saying "hey, look at this, this is really nice". Art needs a frame. Present a person with 100 of the best photographies on postcard-sized prints the reaction will be muted, but show him a really large print and the reaction will grow proportionate to the print size. This is what he is used to seeing as art, this is what he imagines it is like to walk around in a museum looking at all those large, splendid works of art. To him, it is equal to art, because it is presented to him in a form he recognizes as art.

If you want to be a big artist, make big art.

Small things

2011-07-05T04:16:00.002+03:00

A collection of gear wouldn't be complete without loads of small things, so here are some that can always find a place...
Green EOS strap (because I like something a bit less conspicuous than the EOS DIGITAL with red)
PC sync cable
Looooong 3.5mm stereo cable (I use them for my homemade sync connectors)
Sandbags (for holding down lightstands, don't know exactly where to get those)
Film (Fuji's Superia is what I usually use)

What are they doing to Natalie Portman's face?!

2011-06-20T19:47:00.005+03:00

It's interesting to compare Bluray and DVD releases, because the makers in most cases end up differentiating between the two in the colour representation of the cover images. Sort of like how they try to show advertisements for high-definition TVs on regular TVs, trying to illustrate the difference in image quality by simply using a clip with boosted contrast and saturation for the "high-def" experience.

In the case of Black swan though, it's not only colours that's undergone a change...

First the DVD and Bluray covers.
But something looks a bit off, let's outline the edge of Ms. Portman (brightened a bit to see the real outline hidden in the shadows).
And now the same outline applied to the Bluray cover.
It appears as if the makers of the Bluray also felt the need to show the splendidness of the format by slimming down the face of the lead actress. Buy Bluray for even slimmer ladies!

Frequency separation

2011-06-14T01:07:00.002+03:00

Lately I have been investigating the prospects of frequency separation. Experimenting with the high pass filter in Photoshop for sharpening, inverting the layer to soften. As usual there are at least ten ways to do any single thing in Photoshop, which leads me around looking for one that can fit my workflow, and this approach by Natalia Taffarel seems like it holds potential.

The idea is basically that you can separate each image into separate layers holding texture and colour tones; with that you can then make adjustments to texture without affecting tones and vice versa. If this all sounds greek, don't worry, you're not alone. It took me quite a while to even start getting my head around it, but I feel the image of Albert Einstein/Marilyn Monroe in the above link shows the concept far better than I can explain it...

Picture at the top is from a portrait shoot I did some time ago that I thought would be good to practice on.

Self-portrait

2011-05-27T02:08:00.005+03:00

Continuing a bit on an earlier theme, I got the idea of a mental patient-style self-portrait.

It's probably a side-effect of reading so much about lighting that I have, but I always start the process of making an image with the figuring out the lighting. In this case, the picture was always going to be centered around the shadows under the eyes, so I knew right away I needed a hard light coming from almost straight above.Working with my surroundings, I also saw a suitable shape at the kitchen/livingroom shelf. A cardboard box as a large snoot? Why not.Indeed that seemed to work quite well.I also added a green-gelled (though it's not real flash gel...) snooted flash on the floor shooting up into my face. I didn't get a pic of that setup, but you can see a bit of the effect as a green light on the wall above my head.

After that it was mostly a case of adding scribbles on the wall and some tossing about of chicken marinade to get the scene ready. Unfortunately I couldn't get a real straitjacket, so I had to settle for a fake one ordered from a costume store. I made a lucky find at a second-hand store for the pants, and the hair was already quite long and it was just a matter of messing it up with hairgel. And then some amount of post-processing, of course...

Photographic pondering

2011-05-11T03:18:00.001+03:00

Going through 30 year old photographs isn't just nostalgia-inducing, but it also makes me question my own photography.
Of the many pictures I go through, the ones that I find most fascinating are the ones with people as subject. There are many, many landscapes, scenery, birds, cats and other animals, but none of those catch my eye as the people photographs.
So what am I photographing now? In the beginning it was mostly what I think is the most boring of the pictures I go through now, flower-macros, landscapes, sunsets... Luckily I've adjusted my goals a bit and photograph more people now, but beyond that there is another question that has awoken inside me.
One of the things that struck me about these images is how well they have lasted. Most are probably more than 20 years old, and they still hold incredible detail, even when compared to images taken today with modern DSLRs. And even more when compared to digital cameras from the time they started coming into popular use.
And what of the images taken with the first digital cameras? How many images have not been lost in computer crashes, harddrive malfunctions or just simply archived on CD or DVD and then forgotten about? And when they are found, will future generations even be able to know what these discs are, how to access the files, or even be able to open the file formats with the computers of the future? Luckily the JPEG file format is widespread to be relatively future proof, but the digital RAW files are often proprietary and are at the mercy of manufacturers to maintain compatibility.
Not many people think about it nowadays with online picture galleries and social networking sites, but it's a very good idea to occasionally look through your photos and get them printed on actual photo paper. Not only will they last through your next harddrive crash, but it will give you perspective on your own photography to see your pictures printed. Digital photography also meant the big economical obstacle of photography itself, the film developing, was removed, bringing with it an abundance of digital imagery. With digital photo libraries containing possibly tens of thousands of pictures, we could soon be unable to even get a proper overview of our images. By occasionally culling and selecting only the best to be printed we are consciously critiquing our own images, thereby, hopefully, becoming better photographers in the process.
And while reviewing and grading our own pictures, maybe we will gain some insight into what is important to us personally. What kind of images we want to leave after us, what our future, grown up, children will be interested in seeing of our daily lives, and what kind of pictures will we want to retain to reminisce over when we are old.

Hunting for primes

2011-05-07T18:35:00.003+03:00

It feels like ever since getting starting with photography I've been on the search for the one prime to rule them all. In my heart I know it's the 35L f/1.4, but that is a bit over my budget at the moment, but that is the focal length I am after: a ~50mm equivalent.

The Canon offerings are at 28-35mm, but it seems like I have some issues with almost all of them. The lowest in price, the 35mm f/2.0, seems good in image quality, not much slower than the "prime-standard" f/1.8, but the lack of USM bothers me. After having experienced it on the 85mm f/1.8, I don't want to go back!

The 28mm f/1.8 is one of the top two contenders. It has USM, slightly wider than 50mm equivalent (which is fine), but from what I've read it has some image quality issues.

Then there's the one pretty much made for the purpose, the Sigma 30mm f/1.4. This has all the aspects I want: almost exactly 50mm equivalent, the Sigma version of the ultrasonic focus motor, HSM, and a very good maximum aperture. There are two things that stops me from getting it right away. First is the focus issues I keep hearing about. Knowing that my 1000D had issues with my Sigma 17-50 f/2.8, it feels like probability is high that it would have issues with the 30mm too. Second is that it's made for crop-sensors. This isn't that important, but I sort of want to move away from crop lenses in case I want to go full frame in the future.

What I'm hoping for are some updated primes from Canon to decide the issue.

Picture of the now

2011-04-26T03:13:00.002+03:00

Plastic fantastic

2011-04-23T16:52:00.003+03:00

Found this little thing at a second-hand store and couldn't resist the price! Simple as can be, load the film and press the button, no settings that you can change. I loaded it up with ISO 100 film which might have been the right choice for sunny days since I read its exposure settings are at f/8, 1/100...

Macro

2011-04-23T04:00:00.002+03:00

Lately I've also discovered the wonder of reversed lenses.This was taken with the 55-250 with a reversed FD 50mm f/1.8 taped onto it. The FD lens is pretty heavy though, being old-school with lots of metal. I'm almost considering getting the mark II of the EF 50mm f/1.8 just to have less stress on the mount...

An experiment

2011-04-23T00:15:00.002+03:00

A little experiment I tried while thinking of getting smoke without smoke... Clear plastic from a plastic bag scrunched up and held in front of the lens. The idea came from remembering Burning Money Away.

Ghetto rig

2011-04-17T01:52:00.003+03:00

Another in the series of ghetto-style DIY, here's my simple and somewhat fragile slide holder.
I had some problems at first finding a good way to keep the slides in place. I didn't want to tape the contraption right to the lens, so I needed something to go between. I figured a lens hood would be suitable, but I don't have the hood for the 18-55 kit lens. I do however have the hood for the 55-250, which I thought I could use instead, until I noticed that the same hood fits on the 18-55 too. And since I'd only be using it at 55mm to get the highest magnification it didn't matter that it obscured the image at the wider focal lengths.
Having found a go-between, it was only to start constructing. I used the ever-handy empty milk cartons to make a couple of prototypes, to check what I needed. Eventually I ended up with the bottom of a milk carton, with a hole at the end, a small frame attached with adhesive tape to hold the slide in place, and more adhesive tape to hold it together with the lens hood.
Then the whole contraption is placed in front of a flash with a white paper to create a pure white, bright background.
With very acceptable results, in my opinion.

Blast from the past

2011-04-16T03:29:00.003+03:00

I was visiting my parents, and while looking through some cupboards I realized that they have a huge amount of old slides. These are some 30-odd year old pictures that still look good, so I got the sudden urge to try to digitize them.

First I tried the all-in-one Epson scanner, but that failed miserably. Rethinking it, I remembered I had seen instructions on how you could use a DSLR to "retake" the pictures, thereby getting them into digital. With some ghetto-style construction using a milk carton, I got surprisingly good results.

I don't know if it's my brother or sister or somebody else, but looking through the slides was almost like peering into a time-machine. I will definitely have to build a better rig for getting these digital.

Pizzabox softbox

2011-03-24T21:34:00.004+02:00

What to do when you are in need of a new softbox but don't have proper cardboard at hand? Pizza boxes.

Go-to gear

2011-03-16T22:04:00.003+02:00

I'm quickly getting a feel of what gear I like and what I will reach to first when going out shooting.

I got a message (on short notice) from our conversation teacher who asked if I could come take some pictures of their volunteering for the Red Cross in favour of the Tsunami-victims in Japan. Didn't want to bring too much, figured no more than two lenses. I didn't even make a conscious choice about the body, went straight for the 40D, which meant the Sigma 17-50 that I use as standard on it. As second lens I chose the 85mm f/1.8. Now I have a real tele-zoom in the 55-250 EF-S, and it's not like I needed the extra light of the 85mm, so why not go with the longer zoom?

It boils down to the fact that I just really like the 85mm more, despite the limits of the fixed focal length. It's long enough that you can get some distance from the subject, so you can get more candid shots, but the form factor of it is still small. It's the same size as the 18-55 kit lens, as opposed to the long, thin 55-250 that protrudes noticably. It also has USM AF, which is a dreamily fast on the 40D. To me, it's a real performer of a lens.

Fresh aspects

2011-03-11T03:02:00.004+02:00

It's all too easy getting stuck in the digital-only hole of photography, where you take the picture then only view them on a computer. It's too easy. Just transfer the pics and you're done, everyone has a computer anyway, just upload to Facebook and they're there for everyone to see, without the hassle of printing everything out and having 100 images to go through by hand.

But with all the simplicity, the act of making a physical image, rather than a digital, is significantly overlooked.

Recently I have been doing some exploration outside of digital.

Firstly, I started using my dad's old Canon AE-1 some time ago, shooting on film for the first time in perhaps a decade. (I remember taking a picture of a comet with it some time during the 90's, most likely Hale-Bopp, which puts it at 1997.) Results have been mixed, but I've gotten a couple I like, currently up on Flickr. Among them is this, which I really like:

That's not all though. I have thought for a while about making some larger prints, and today was the day. Five of my favourites got the honour of being reproduced on 20x30cm photo paper. And I have to say that you get a completely different view on them once printed, especially at such a size! You feel much more that you have created something when you can hold it in your hand and look at it without the glow of a computer monitor supporting it. Next is to find a good way to display them! I almost feel like taking pictures of the prints just to show their coolness...

Update: an image to show a bit what it looks like...

Wacom Bamboo

2011-03-09T02:14:00.002+02:00

So at some point I started thinking about getting graphical tablet to assist me in photoshopping. I guess it was a combination of seeing someone else use one to do image editing and my hand cramp that sets in after long sessions. In any case, the stars aligned, the time was ripe, and today I got a small Wacom Bamboo, Pen and Touch. (What this means is that the tablet also functions as a touchpad.)

It'll take some getting used to, but I've already started adjusting my workflow to it. Losing the mouse also means losing the scroll wheel, which deprives me of my "hold Alt-key and scroll to zoom in/out" method, which is a bit of a shame. So far I really like it though, I can see myself growing attached to this method of editing.

Movies

2011-03-07T00:15:00.003+02:00

After watching Black Swan I realized something important about my movie watching. It will probably sound sort of bleak, but I have the best movie experiences when I'm watching a movie alone. It could be based on insecurity, but for me a movie is a very personal experience. When I watch a movie I want to completely immerse myself in it. Discussions, comments, everything like that can be left until after it's done. With an increased amount of people simultaneously watching the movie, the more inter-personal communication will inevitably arise, and the less I can immerse myself in the movie.

My best theatre experience was watching Hero in an almost empty movie theatre.

The Death of Vincenzo

2011-02-23T02:51:00.002+02:00

So perhaps I'll say something about this one, since I like how it came out.

I had originally intended it to be a bit more intricate in story, having a grieving woman hunched by the sofa with her head up next to waist and the doctor standing more to the side, but you have to work with what you have.

The lighting for this turned out to be my most controlled yet, I feel. Instead of just blasting the area with light I wanted something more restrained, which meant lots of gobos in various shapes and forms. The light on the left was originally intended to be a softbox, but trying it out the spread was just too much and too soft. I wanted a window-like light, for which I figured a softbox would be ideal, but the light turned out to be way too soft when I tried it out. I realized what I wanted was the look of the sun shining directly in through a small window, so what I did was simply take a Speedlite and put it inside a cardboard box, thereby restricting the light, then taped a cardboard cross-shape at the opening opposite of the flash so it would look a bit like a window.

The light on the right should be easier to figure out as I just stuck a Speedlite into the empty lampshade. I didn't want it to light up too much though, so there too I stuck in a gobo in the shape of a tube to stop the light from the flash hitting the shade itself. At the end of the tube I taped some blank white paper to soften (and weaken, since it was so close to the subject it was already at the lowest power) the light a bit.

Photography and Photoshop

2011-02-22T02:33:00.005+02:00

Wherever there is digital photography, there will be Photoshop. The two go hand in hand like horse and carriage, to the extent that "to photoshop" has started being used as a verb meaning image editing and manipulation. "Just photoshop it." In the digital age I've been faced with a problem, one that is still ongoing. When you can change every aspect of an image in post-production, how much should you change?

There are the obvious things for me that I do to every image, basic colour correction. But these quickly expand into a myriad of options. If the subject is in the shade, should I adjust skin tones for shade or the sunlight of the background? Or should I use a separate layer for the subject and mask the rest out, effectively creating two different "images" in one?

Let's take an example. Below is a vacation image of someone who was out on a bit of a cloudy day.
With the basic fixes the image brightens up a bit, but it's still a bit dreary.
Using a rough feathered polygonal lasso selection of the subject, I create a new curves adjustment layer and brighten only the subject.
And since we've gone that far why not make the view a bit more colourful with a bluer sea and sky? And perhaps brighten the whites of her eyes to give a bit more presence, oh, and that little bag under the right eye could use some fixing...

It quickly adds up. So how much is enough? When I first started shooting with a point-and-shoot I was adamantly against any sort of post-processing, thinking that it took away from the purity of the image. Now, however, I am of the mindset that post-processing should be used to maximise the full potential of an image. Whether that is just making it look pretty, or fulfilling an artist's vision.

But then again, how much manipulation can be done before an image loses its credibility? Doing all these edits is to be intentionally misleading. The weather on that vacation was not at all that good, the sea wasn't the wonderfully blue as can be seen in the manipulated version. Yet all of this and more is being done every day by professionals and amateurs alike. That model you see on the cover of a magazine probably doesn't have flawless skin, or even as large breasts and perfect thighs as on the picture. But none of that goes through the mind of the average person, who most likely just sees a beautiful woman.

This is the nature of photography. To show only one narrow frame taken out of a larger context, showing you one thing while the reality of the situation might be completely different. A lie disguised as truth.

New year's party-shoot

2011-02-02T00:15:00.003+02:00

2011 started with a snap and a flash for me as I had brought the gear to a party! Here are some of my favourite pics from the event that I have spruced up a bit...

Lighting was pretty simple, white shoot-through on the right and a flash with some coloured paper taped to it behind.
Really fun to shoot! I should make it a rule only to do photography when I'm drunk.

Late night self-portrait

2011-01-16T03:32:00.003+02:00

Coming home from a meeting with the guys, half-drunk, I decided to do some lighting in the kitchen. (Today was I had scheduled to do a quidditch-shoot, but that fell through because of -20°C weather, so I was itching to do some shooting.)

During this shooting I was struck by two things: 1) I feel I'm really getting used to setting up lights, and 2) I was once again struck by how much you can do with so little. This was done with two flashes, the Nissin Di866 camera left and an old SB-24 camera right, both snooted with empty milk cartons (though you could just as well have put a cheaper flash on the left). The camera I used was my old 1000D with the lowly kit lens, not even the IS version. And yet when you look at it you wouldn't really think it came from Canon's cheapest DSLR. Even though I have a great semi-pro body in the 40D and a lens that cost twice as much as I paid for the 1000D way back when, I still use 1000D regularly for testing lighting like this. (Though a large reason for this is that the Sigma 17-50 f/2.8 is so heavy that it ends up pointing downward when mounted on the tripod in portrait mode...)

A large part of me ending up on the road of lighting is of course the Strobist site, with nuggets of wisdom like this:

Knowing what I know now, I would have approached things very differently. I would have started off with a low-end body, a cheap 50mm f/2 (or f/1.8) prime lens and a modestly priced (slower) do-everything zoom. [...]

After that, I would go straight to a small light kit. For less than the price of even turning that f/4 zoom into an f/2.8 model, you could be set with a small-strobe, off-camera light.

That is pretty much what I ended up doing. Even though I got the f/2.8 zoom down the road, it wasn't ever anything that was required for the style I ended up doing. Rather, it was to get the better image quality that I bought it.

Mysteries of the world

2010-12-31T02:49:00.003+02:00

On the last night of the year 2010 I will diverge a bit from the barrage of camera-talk in favour of something completely different.

Despite having seen people around me get together and break up countless times, I still can not understand the specifics of how two people end up "dating". I keep imagining eomtional scenes from teen movies or Japanese drama-series where one character reveals their true feelings while walking home, sharing an umbrella, even though I know it probably isn't anywhere like that in real life. At what point do people decide to get together? What is the chain of events that usually precede it? These are things I have yet to discover, since it is something that I guess must be experienced personally.

Reality check.

But I guess that in the end, it doesn't really matter. Even though it is the source of most of my daily worries, it amount to such an insignificant sum on the scale of wordly troubles. I have my family, I have my health, I have a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in and lots of toys to play with. But even knowing this, I still can't help but worry about things that in the end won't matter.

It seems like people have a certain amount of worries that they need to allocate in their lives. If it's not the large stuff, cancer, death, homelessness, it's the small stuff, like which brand-name handbag to buy or which camera has the better high-ISO performance.

For 2011, I would wish for myself to let that which does not matter, truly slide.

No fear. No distractions.

40D

2010-12-12T19:47:00.005+02:00

It occurred to me that I have barely spoken about one of the biggest purchases I've made, even though I used it in the Trigun photoshoot, namely the Sigma 17-50mm F2.8 EX DC OS HSM.

First impression was that it was large. I had only used the plastic 18-55 before, and the difference in size and weight was substantial. It felt like a serious piece of gear. Of course I also looked at Canon's equivalent offering, the 17-55 f/2.8, but decided to pass on it because of price and size. For the money saved I could buy other gear (which I eventually ended up doing), and I was also more attracted to the shorter and thicker size of the Sigma.

Initial tests were good, and I was very satisfied with the image quality I got from the photoshoot, but I did notice a couple of issues, mostly dealing with low-light auto-focus (the trouble of most cameras) and wide-angle focus. Using it on the 1000D I would often find I'd get better results if I first zoomed in to focus, then zoomed out to wide-angle for the shot. A workaround, but not anything that would fly in the long run. Not really sure if the problem was the lens or the body, I prepared myself mentally to send the lens back.

On my way back from work the other day I decided to stop by the camera-store, since they get in used stuff sometimes that they sell on. Asking what they had, they guy brought out a 40D, same model I had looked at earlier but missed, as someone else got it before me. After some deliberation I went back today and got it.

And I must say the Sigma feels like a completely new lens when mounted on the 40D. On the 1000D it would often hunt for focus, and was just about on par with the 18-55 for speed, but on the 40D it feels a lot faster and more accurate. (Perhaps the Sigma is made with f/2.8 cross-type sensors in mind rather than the slower f/5.6 of the 1000D.)

And beyond the improved AF of the 40D there is also the possibility of exchanging the focus screen to get more accurate manual focus, thereby eliminating the dependance on automatic focus!

Update: just tried the Sigma on a friend's 450D, focus was good. Could it be that it doesn't work well with the 1000D AF sensor?

A list

2010-11-13T13:35:00.005+02:00

While my kit is very quickly nearing a state I can feel quite satisfied with (though I wouldn't say completion since that is hard to define with gear), there are of course some non-essential things that would be cool to hav for once-in-a-while use.

Reversal ring for Canon EOS cameras.
Or more preferrably:
Macro-adapter set.
Neutral Density filter, ~8X, such as this. (Needs to be 77mm.)
Flash gel set.

Update: since I got a 40D, I could also use a Super precision matte focus screen! But I guess that would be hard to get on a short notice.

Then there are other things that would be cool.
Paper cutter.

More later.

Trigun cosplay photoshoot

2010-11-06T19:30:00.005+02:00

This post could easily have the subtitle "A case for speedlights", for reasons which will become apparent. But first, some pictures!

Some days ago I got a message from a friend who had just won the Finnish tryouts for the World Cosplay Summit, and was eager to get some pics of the costume. As a purveyor of fine light, I was happy to oblige! Little was I to know that it would become my most challenging shoot to date...

I had taken the day off work to prepare for it, and we met up at about 1PM. There was plenty of preparations to be done with the costume itself, and then we had to pick up the other part of the dynamic cosplay duo, so we finally got going at about 2PM. This late in autumn there aren't many hours of sunlight, and on the list of things to try was also some available light shots.

We had gotten a tip of a good place that could suit the setting of the show itself, sandy and a bit desolate. We got the worst possible start in that a small, but important, piece of prop was left behind, and we had to turn back to get it. On top of that we spend many hours searching for this place we had been told about, with no luck. We saw some places that could have been good, but they were pretty inaccessible by car, and walking any longer distance was out of the question, with all the gear, props and costumes.

Eventually we came across a place, not a very pretty place, but a place with sand nonetheless. By this time the sun had set, and the remaining light was fading fast. It wasn't the most optimal location, but we could either do it there, or waste more valuable time in going back to town to the b-location. By this time I had discarded any thought of using available light; it was gonna be straight to speedlights.
Checking out the location, image to check light, +~3 stops in ACR.Quickly I assembled the gear, and finally we could start shooting.

But we weren't clear just yet, with light falling as fast as the temperature, it was getting darker and colder by the minute. Before long I was having problems with the auto-focus on my camera, as without light, it can't focus. Luckily I had gotten another SB-24 flash the very day, that I had taken with me to be used as a backup in case one of them failed. So I could take the Canon-compatible Nissin I have and put on the camera hotshoe, and use its AF-assist beam.

This helped me get some critical shots, but time was running out, and the cold was taking its toll. As we were setting up the final shots to be taken, I noticed that the lens had fogged over, making further shooting impossible. As I was disassembling the gear I couldn't get the umbrella-stand screw loosened because I had lost feeling in my fingers...

But considering all the trouble we went through and the circumstances we shot in, we came away with some pretty fine images! And as for the subtitle I mentioned, this is a shoot I don't think would have been possible without small, portable flashes.

More gear!

2010-10-16T13:34:00.004+03:00

Time flies when you're having fun, but goes so inexplicably slowly when you are waiting for something. In my case it is the lure of a constant f/2.8 zoom!

Yes, finally a more substantial upgrade of glass is within reach, after I managed to land myself a temporary job. I might upgrade some other stuff too, but that is number one on the list.

Something I also plan to upgrade at some point is, of course, the body. The 1000D is plenty capable, but I would like at least to have the more sensitive auto-focus at f/2.8 that the newer bodies have, seeing as that is where I'm heading. By coincidence, when I was visiting the camera store, they had a used 40D there that I fondled a bit. It's a lot more camera than the 1000D, even though they share sensor; it has the better AF system, higher burst rate, more ergonomical feel and exchangable focusing screens. The last point could also realize my dreams of a digital camera with a split-prism focus screen. (You can also exchange the screen on the 1000D, but it requires more fiddling about.)

But even with all good sides of the 40D it feels like a bit of a waste since I don't think I've really reached the maximum potential of what I currently have. Not to mention that I sort of like the small form factor of the Rebel-series bodies...

Nostalgia

2010-08-29T01:17:00.002+03:00

I started wondering how long ago it was that I had gotten my speakers, and looked at the post I made after just having got them. Almost four years ago.

With that I also started reading other, old posts I had made, seeing my past replay before me. The Keystation 49 I got as my first MIDI keyboard, my first lesson in Japanese, old TV-shows I remember or like, birthdays, dreaming about synthesizers (finally getting one just last year), complaining about essays (that I actually just got written this year), moving out, first live performance, girl trouble, my first thoughts of getting a DSLR...

Am I the same person now as I was then?

New glass

2010-08-04T02:10:00.011+03:00

As a follow-up to my lamenting the lack of good glass.

Having noted the shortcomings of the Tamron 17-50 VC, the pixel-peeper in me would not let me overlook them.Sample of ghosting on the Tamron 17-50 VC
So, having made a conscious decision to let it go, the options remaining are the Canon 17-55 and the new Sigma 17-50, which both look very good indeed. The Canon has, of course, the advantage of being Canon, full compatibility with past and future EF-S cameras, while Sigma might need a firmware upgrade to work with new bodies some years from now. But to be honest, that doesn't bother me so much. The Sigma is also a bit shorter, a bit lighter, and comes with a lens-hood.

While the Canon has higher scores (and equally higher price), I am somehow drawn more to the Sigma. While I know it would most likely be a bit better, there is something about getting too many components from the same manufacturer that I don't like. There is something I find appealing in having parts from many different sources combined; I also felt this in something so simple as getting the new Nikon-branded lenscap for the 50mm... It's probably also the reason why I don't feel any need or desire to get the Apple-branded keyboard and mouse, instead going with Logitech, and using an LG LCD.

But both the Sigma and Canon are way out of my price-range at the moment. So, wanting something at least a bit better than the old 18-55 kit, I got an 18-55 IS. This might not sound like such a big change, but the new optical recipe Canon had for it is a real winner according to almost all reviews.

Here are some images I took recently, trying out the improved close focusing.
Also in gear-related news, I got an SB-24 for cheap! It feels like my kit is slowly getting pretty decent.

Update: after doing some pretty extensive testing, I have noticed that my old 18-55 is actually sharper than the new IS I bought. This runs opposite of pretty much everything I've read about it, so I'm suspecting I got a bad sample. Overall it's still a nicer lens, with IS, better close focus and nicer feel, but it seems I can't accept the step-down in image quality, no matter how slight it is. This means I don't have any reason not to start saving for the Sigma right away...

B-day list

2010-07-09T02:27:00.004+03:00

Per usual procedure, I list some things that I would not at all mind receiving for my birthday! Huzzah for materialism.

Falcon Eyes PC-to-hotshoe adapter. (Don't need this anymore!)
Male-Male PC sync cord.
Tommy Hilfiger spray deodorant.
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Upgrade (note: the cheaper upgrade version, not the full >100€).
Pendulum - Immersion.

More later!

Need new glass!

2010-07-06T02:48:00.005+03:00

I took the time to bring my camera in to the store the other day to try out the Tamron 17-50 VC that I talked about earlier. Long story short, it just clicked. (Pun intended.)

First impressions was that it was a lot heftier than the kit; being a constant-aperture lens this was expected, but it was interesting exactly how much larger it appeared on the small 1000D body. The zoom-ring had a bit of friction to it, but nothing I can't see myself getting used to...

I did, however, notice something in my test-shots, which I can't see myself getting used to. While I was pretty satisfied with the image quality, there was a patch in the middle focal length around 30mm that was just atrocious at f/2.8. This went a bit opposite of the reviews I've read which usually put 50mm as the real problem area, which could point to sample variation. (I noticed a bit of the same problem at f/4, but otherwise it behaved as I had hoped.) I will certainly test it more thoroughly when the time comes to actually decide to purchase or not, but there is a strong want-factor about this lens.

There are a couple of options to the Tamron: there's the equivalent Sigma 17-50 which just came out, which is about 1.5x the price of the Tamron, then there's Canon's own ultimate EF-S lens, the 17-55, which in turn is about 1.5x the price of the Sigma. They all cover roughly the same focal length (ie. same zoom level) and they're all constant f/2.8. What separates them is differences in build quality, autofocus and image quality, following roughly the price increments: Sigma has a bit better image quality and autofocus motor than the Tamron, Canon has the edge on both of them.

One thing I would want though is working autofocus in low light. I learned that from the 50mm, there's no point in having a fast lens if it won't focus correctly in low light. But seeing as pretty no third-party lens can have the same level of autofocus compatibility as Canon (as they reverse-engineer the connections), that would mean the Canon 17-55, which I really don't have the budget for.

But who knows, I might win the lottery!

Back & front OneLight style

2010-07-01T03:57:00.003+03:00

I had a thought some time ago about the possibility of doing a backlit portrait, where the background goes all white. Having only one light makes it a bit tricky, of course, but I figured that if I could plop a reflector right in front of the face, it might reflect enough light to give a proper exposure.

With that in mind, I started setting up what I had. My cardboard softbox in the back, and at the front, a piece of white paper disposable tablecloth I had found for cheap.
As you can see, relatively close quarters.
Cutting a hole in the paper got me a place to set my camera and get the shot.
So we have light coming from the softbox (quite bright), bouncing off the white paper and coming back. One light, not so shabby results.

Cosplay shoot

2010-06-29T02:12:00.004+03:00

Shortly, a few words.

My friend Mirja did a cosplay of Yuko from xxxHolic, and asked me to take some pictures, a request of which I was happy to oblige! It was a really smooth shoot; having a model used to posing it felt really easy to direct. That coupled with the nice light I got from the softbox made this probably my best shoot so far.

I think what also helped was that I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted. I had looked at some pictures and took a liking to the red, flowing curtains.So I tried to emulate that look a bit. Don't know how well I succeeded in copying it, but it felt good going into the shoot with a plan, as opposed to just "yeah we'll take some pics and see what we get", as I've previously done.

If I had only had another light to put as hairlight...

Softbox

2010-05-23T02:09:00.005+03:00

Today I had my first cosplay-shoot. But that is another story! This is the story of my homemade softbox which I decided to start making the night before the shoot-day, since I'm unable to properly schedule anything.

It all started with a big cardboard box I had from when I had ordered some music stuff (mic-stand etc.); I took that and cut it up into triangle-shaped pieces. Then I covered one side of the pieces with white A4 paper, in the same way I did the dish, except for putting them on a flat plane.

Then I used the cable ties I had left over from the camera bag mod to connect the large cardboard pieces to each other. As front diffuser I used some white see-through sheet thing I had gotten at a fleamarket for 1€.

As for the end result: huge. Behold, The Monster!

For those keeping score, it's about 80x80cm at the front.

Kipinä Spring Exhibition

2010-05-09T23:50:00.003+03:00

Today was culmination of the dance school Kipinä's spring term, with a big exhibition with performances from the various dance groups. This turned out to be quite a long day as I had asked if I could go there and snap some pictures of the dress rehearsal since I desparately wanted some experience in photographing low-light stage areas.

I tried with the kit lens first since that would give me the most variation in focals length, but even at the widest aperture (3.5) it wasn't enough. Good thing I had brought with me my 50mm 1.8 prime. I would have wanted to shoot at about 2.8 for best depth of field, but even that didn't really give satisfying results, so I had to it set at 2.5 for the most part. (That high-ISO on the 550D would really have come in handy.)

First of all, some pictures.

The last one is my personal favourite.

So what have I learned other than that I have a thing for flinging hair? First of all, I need to stop using the focus-lock so much; I had to delete far too many out-of-focus pictures where I hadn't bother to refocus. Second, a stage, especially one where the lighting isn't even and people are constantly moving in and out of the spotlight, is a bitch to shoot; imagine the last shot with a bit more light on the girl in center.

Besides that, some practical issues: get a spare 4GB card and check that your battery is charged. I had to start deleting a couple of sets of old images as I was shooting when I noticed I was running low on space, and I was actually stopped just 60 images from a full card by the battery running out.

And finally some trivia: I had been at a housewarming party the night before and had barely slept off the effects of the drink as I got up at 9 in the morning. Went to the place where I shot about 3 hours straight, then home to get a bit to eat and back to the scene again for my group's dress rehearsal. So I had been up for almost 10 hours already after a night of little sleep as I performed our routine. I don't know if that worked against me or for me, but it went quite ok.

Apple messed up

2010-05-06T02:01:00.002+03:00

This is old news for most people, but Apple really messed up with iMovie version 7 (aka. iLife '08). I was trying to put together a simple video with a long stretched sped up and then a 'Ken Burns' image at the end, and no matter where I looked in iMovie I couldn't find the option to speed up the video. Turns out it wasn't even included in that version. Going back to the previous version, iMovie 6 HD, I did find a "speed up" effect, but it was so limited as to be useless to me.

Good thing I know of the old "add and scale" trick in Quicktime. I still needed to edit the video to have the image at the end and some transitions, so I thought I'd do the transitions in iMovie then export to a new file, then fix the speed in Quicktime, then import that back again into iMovie to add the image and music. If this sounds overly complicated, it's because it really was. It wasn't even a workable solution as when I sped up the movie I just had exported from iMovie it ended up dropping so many frames it was unbearable.

So as I was exporting the clip again for the second time in hopes of getting it fixed, I thought I'd try the known route: doing it all in Quicktime. I wouldn't have any fancy effects, but with the estimated time for the export of the new file being about one hour I had time to kill. Quickly opened the files, Motion-JPEG being easy on the processor, trimmed out what I didn't need, pasted together and fixed the speed; then did the Ken Burns image quickly in iMovie, limited to 10 seconds, but ok. Export that while the first was still going, quickly pasted it all together onto the audio track I had prepared.

End result: iMovie taking the better part of two evenings and nothing to show for it but big temporary files; Quicktime Pro got it done in about half an hour. I know it's a matter of what tools you know best, but Apple seriously messed up with iMovie, at least for what I want.

Oh, and the video.

Dish

2010-04-18T02:40:00.006+03:00

Continuing with the theme of DIY light modifiers, this time I wanted to try to make a beauty dish.

This was quite a cumbersome project because I had a pretty specific shape in mind. I wanted a quite wide and shallow dish, wider than I could get with any of the plastic containers I found, so this ruled out the tupperware approach. I also went past the lampshade section at several stores and scoured fleamarkets for shapes I wanted, but almost all had downsides: if it was the right shape it was usually a heavy material like glass or metal, if the material was light (like the fabric lampshades) the shape wasn't quite right.

So then I thought, why not try to make it out of paper. Not the most conventional material, but it was something I wanted to try. I had a metal lampshade from an old broken ceiling lamp that was the shape I wanted, so I figured I would use that as base and put layers of paper on top, using wallpaper paste to keep it all together.

Step 1: the initial paper layers, cut up into shapes that would cover the metal so I wouldn't accidentally glue it stuck.Next, we have more paper layers applied with paste. (Though it doesn't look much different...)It's solid, and it's holding. Balanced on top of the lampshade used to form it.
I had big problems coming up with a flash-mount for this project. I tried making one out of cardboard (though quite thin), but when adding the elastic band to keep it onto the flash it completely lost its structure, warping way too easily. With that experience I really wanted plastic, so I started looking around...

At this juncture I would like to bring up a quote from one of my favourite movies, Zero Effect:

When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad. Because of all the things in the world, you're only looking for one of them.
But when you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good. Because of all the things in the world, you're sure to find some of them.

It might seem strange in the context, but to me it is the very essence of DIY; to have a goal in mind, but no planned way of getting there. You make up the plan based on what you find to use. When you go out looking for materials for a reflector, for example, you're not thinking "I need a round, white plastic dish with a X cm diameter and Y depth." You go out looking for reflective materials, and if you find something neat, you use it.

So that is when I looked around my apartment, I tried to not look for anything specific, but something that might fit after modification. With that in mind, I found an empty canister of instant coffee...Which I took the knife to.Just the right size for the flash head!

I don't have any pictures for the assembling, but what I did then was to cut up from the center hole of the paper dish so the plastic flash-mount would go through. Add some adhesive tape liberally to connect the whole construction.

That was one part, but I still needed a primary reflector, and I didn't have any convex mirrors handy... What I did have, though, was some of the aluminium foil from the lightpot project. So I cut out a couple of circles and put those onto same sized paper circles with the same clear book plastic as previously. Then I did a simple radius cut, and dragged it onto itself to form a cone.I made two since I didn't know which angle would be best. Left is with just 1/8 covered, so it's a bit flatter, reflecting less towards the sides. The other is with 1/4, being pointier. (Still haven't decided which one to go with.)

The moment of truth...It's alive! The attachment for the primary reflector was quite a hack-job, though. Not having a real plan, I just used some thin cardboard from a pizza packaging. This proved incredibly unstable, so I really want to come up with some other construction for that.

Another part of it I didn't really like was the uneven character of the paper. Lowering the flash output quickly shows the bumps on the surface...
This is most likely due to using paper strips that were too wide, so placed on the curving surface of the lampshade it couldn't fit naturally. I also used the inner surface of the lampshade to shape it, so the inner surface of the dish is the layer placed last; if I had done the opposite and used the outer surface of the lampshade then the cumulative weight of the paper and glue might have been able to eliminate some of the bumps.

But it works. I did take some test-shots but since I'm not too satisfied with the final construction yet I want to wait until I have it really ready... I've also started thinking about making another dish based on the adjustments I had in mind, so I might do that, which would give me another chance at documenting that part in greater detail.

Second shoot

2010-04-03T23:42:00.003+03:00

This week I had my second shoot, if I'm allowed to call it that, and after some rest following two days on non-stop editing perhaps I can gather some thoughts on it.

The first part was outside, which I thought would fail horribly having shot with flash for so long, but I got some really nice shots from it. I also noticed I had almost forgotten how to use the semi-auto modes, aperture and shutter priority, on the camera! I thought I would play it safe by putting it on aperture priority and then just ended up struggling with it to get consistent exposure. Second observation, your hands get quite cold even though it's not many degrees below 0°C.

I've also come to think I need to set proper time-limits for myself in the future. As the subject was quite eager about the photos and I didn't really mind getting more experience with the flash it stretched out quite long, and after cutting out the miserable ones it turned out I had 600 images in total. 600, from which I had decided to take 10. No matter how you look at it that's quite overkill. I think I also need to learn to direct my subjects a bit better; I was quite lucky in my first shoot having such an expressive model, but I don't think I'll always have that luxury.

In retrospect I sort of wish I had tried out the flash outdoors, but I didn't really want to place it in the snow and I didn't have the tripod along with me...

Post-shoot post

2010-03-29T14:47:00.003+03:00

Recently I did my first real test of the off-camera flash. I had gotten Aino to agree to helping me out, so she stood model for me as I snapped away, playing around with light settings and homemade modifiers.

It was really exciting to see the results from it, and choosing ten for postprocessing proved to be very hard since I had many favourites...

Looking through them my eyes really stopped on the ones with the apple. The little piece of red in the image really gives a counter-balance to the gray clothing and blond hair.

Camera bag

2010-03-25T02:02:00.004+02:00

Having gotten the flash cord and light modifier made, there was one more DIY I wanted to do: a camera bag.

The bag I had been using so far felt a bit too big to just carry around the camera in, and the extra space inside made it bump around a bit too much (which caused the lenscap for the 50mm to come off on many occasions, even though that was a really bad lenscap).

So scouting the fleamarkets once again (actually I got it at the same time as the flowerpot), I found a good candidate for 50 cents.

First, a plan! The original plan included making foam tubes for the lenses to slide into, but that proved to be too bothersome.
Then to connect the pieces, using cable ties.
Main structure completed.

Then after adding a couple of separating walls, we are magically transported to a finished state! (Took no more pictures from building process...) The bag, in all its glory. Perhaps not so pretty, but it works.
Opening it up, we see the flash on the left side. On the right under the camera is a space where the 50mm fits nicely.
All this in one little bag.
Now I just want a little pouch for the flash cables and hot-shoe adapter.

Lightpot

2010-03-24T02:47:00.005+02:00

After the last project I was quite worked up and wanted to try making some sort of light-modifier. Scouting the fleamarkets, I found an old plastic flower-pot for 1€. Coupled with some aluminium foil and adhesive, see-through book plastic (found around my parents house), what would become of it..?

Just before I got to a stage where I couldn't easily take pictures anymore.
I had decided that the easiest way to do it was to use several smaller pieces of foil, that I then put on top of the adhesive side of the plastic, with enough adhesive around it to fit nicely into the pot.

Unfortunately I hadn't really taken into account the curving nature of the pot, so I ended up with a real headache of uneven surfaces and bare patches where the dark plastic reared it's ugly green head.

After a couple hours of caffeine-fueled cutting, pasting and many botched pieces of foil, I finally had some sort of result...

At least it shines up to the point-and-shoot flash.
Then eagerly on to the test shots even though it was way past midnight.

It's far more isolated than the umbrella, which is what I was going for, so at least it sort of hit the goal.

PC sync 3.5mm mod

2010-03-19T17:43:00.007+02:00

Having gotten my flash and PC sync cord, I decided to modify it to use 3.5mm audio cords, of which I already had a couple of meters extension.

First of all cutting open the PC sync, finding two separate cords.

Then peeling those and fitting into the 3.5mm stereo females. Didn't know the "official" way to connect, but I knew that as long as connect the same cables to the same connectors I'd be good to go.

No pics from the soldering process since it's hard to hold a camera in your mouth.

Then the cover screwed on. The little pieces of white seen are pieces of adhesive tape I put to cover the sleeve connector (tip, ring, sleeve); I had accidentally left too much cable uncovered and was afraid it could short out if it touched the sleeve.

Finished!

Now to test it out...

It works! Holding the cable.

Long reach!

Mirror shot!

Waiting for the light

2010-03-10T03:21:00.004+02:00

Wherein the lead character once again narrowly escapes a great set-back to his plans and ends up spending more than expected.

So as a follow-up to my previous indecision on which way to follow, I ordered a flash. Of course this was not without complications.

From the start my mind was set on an off-camera flash setup, so I was primarily looking at those I could use as either as a dumb optical slave or with an E-TTL cord of the longer variant. Knowing that the Canon Speedlites usually don't function as slaves other than in Canon's own wireless system I started looking quite quickly at third-party flash units, and my eyes stopped on the Metz 48 AF-1.

Looking at it longingly, I browsed to the website of the online store I was going to order it from. Then, a couple of weeks before I figured I would have enough funds to buy it the price was raised by about 40€. Bummer.

But I went ahead with it anyway, seeing as this was the flash my mind was set on. To accompany it I also ordered a 48" silver reflective umbrella. After a few days of waiting I then got an e-mail from the store saying that the estimated time for the umbrella to become in stock had been changed from 1-2 weeks to 3-6 weeks... This was not satisfying, as I had the money and wanted the stuff as soon as possible to start playing around with it, so I looked around at the other umbrellas they had.

Now, I'm usually the kind of person to let my mind rest once I have something, but with lighting I want to know as much as possible so I kept reading up on flash units, and while wondering what to do with the umbrella, I found out that the Metz flash unit did not work as a dumb slave. While it said it would function as slave on the Metz product page, they intended for it to be used as a slave in a wireless setup, one with either the Metz 58 or the Speedlite 580EX II as master to trigger it. This was upsetting for my plans, but somewhat of a stroke of luck seeing as I had not paid the order yet and could easily cancel it.

So I quickly regrouped. I needed a flash with dumb-slave capability, as the E-TTL cord was not something I could get immediately after the flash and I wanted to get going off-camera. Looking around at flashes in the same price-range as the Metz 48 I came across the Nissin Di866. A very capable unit, it would seem, with a feature-set out-classing the Metz 48 and the Canon Speedlite 430EX II, placing it somewhere between the 430 and the 580. Somewhat inflated guide numbers, which can be expected from most flashes to some degree, but still cheaper than the Speedlite 430 while still having the dumb-slave option, and as a bonus having a PC sync port...

I was familiar with the PC sync port from having read many of the articles on the Strobist, so I knew what it was and what I could do with it. It would take more work than a E-TTL cord, but it would be much cheaper and easier to replace and/or extend if I needed to.

So with that decided I made an order for the Di866. But I still had the umbrella conundrum, so I looked at what they had in stock ready for shipping, and came across the 60" version of the silver reflective umbrella. Measuring up 60" on my measuring tape I came to the conclusion that it was really fucking huge, then I ordered it anyway.

The latest products of my madness

2010-03-02T00:40:00.002+02:00

Did I mention I like Smint?

Two ways

2010-02-13T03:43:00.005+02:00

Having gotten my new, capable camera, I started researching the number of ways to upgrade it. At first I was set on a better standard zoom, like the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 I mentioned earlier (the non-VC version is supposedly sharper), but after coming across the Strobist, I've had to start considering going for a flash unit instead.

light gives you far more bang-for-the-buck than does fast glass or the latest digital camera or 300/2.8

And reading some of the articles and seeing what kind of results you can get with just a basic off-camera flash, I'm can believe it. Remember that even though DSLRs have far greater image quality than the standard compact, they still won't work miracles; if you dial in the exact same setting on a DSLR as on a compact, they will expose the same scene with the same amount of light. The difference lies in that 1) a DSLR can use much higher ISO without the image turning to porrage, and 2) you can change lenses on the DSLR, thereby getting a larger aperture, which lets in more light.

Now, you can only get so much from boosting ISO sensitivity and a larger aperture. And on top of that most kit lenses have apertures in the same range as compacts. Add to that the fact that a lens will almost never be sharp when it is at the widest aperture-setting, and you're gonna have trouble getting sharp images in low light.

This is where the flash comes in. Pop off a flash and the extra light allows you to close up the aperture and raise shutter speed.

Decisions, decisions!

Second-hand

2010-02-04T23:47:00.004+02:00

With me having gotten both my "new" camera and a lens second-hand, it's pretty clear that I don't mind buying used goods. One of the bigger problems here, however, is finding good deals on used things. I've seen old computers with pricetags of several hundred euros.

Here is an ad I came across recently:
For those who can't be bothered to click the image and get the bigger version (or don't know Finnish), the guy is selling a used Nikon D40 for 900 euros. Then in the description he goes on to explain how he bought it for 660 euros more than two years ago. Oh yeah, you get a tripod too. Apparently the tripod is worth more than 200 euros...

I'm guessing it's some old guy with no concept of value who wanted to sell his camera, and being unable to just place it in front of a mirror he went to a "photo studio" to get the picture taken for the ad, then slapped the cost of that onto the price.

Luck

2010-01-27T02:48:00.002+02:00

Lately, that's how it's been feeling, with less than a week since I got the camera.

A decently priced 1000D from a seller in my own town, with little usage (he said he had taken about ~500 images, and it looked practically new); but it didn't come with a neck-strap, so I went to a local camera store to ask if they had one. Turns out they had an old gray one I got for free, but furthermore when asking about the price on the 50mm f/1.8 I got the info that they'd be getting in a used one. (With a price of less than you see used online...)

Bringing the old, dirty neck-strap home to get it washed, my dad offers me the neck-strap from his old Canon AE-1 film camera. A much sturdier neck-strap, in matching black.

Now today, I was picking up the 50mm, all looking good. When I get home I noticed something weird about it compared to the 50mm pictures I had seen. Looking closer, I saw that there was no II on it. This was the original 50mm 1.8, from the 80's. Slightly worried, I checked up on its info.

Optically, this lens is almost identical to the first version.
~Wikipedia, on the Mark II

Phew, so it should give the same sharp images. But what's more, it seems the Mark I had somewhat better build quality, having a metal mount where the Mark II has plastic. Inadvertedly I have gotten my hands on what some consider to be a rarity. To me, I'm just satisfied as long as it takes sharp images, which I will test more tomorrow!

Message to Terry Lin

2010-01-27T02:43:00.002+02:00

Terry Lin of linterry.blogspot.com, if you see this I would ask you to make your blog public again. Though it might seem unlikely, I started following quite long ago after coming across some posts of yours about music, and would like to continue reading it.

買っちゃった

2010-01-22T21:53:00.002+02:00

After all that consideration, I thought it would be months before I would be able to lay my hands on a DSLR to call my own. As it turns out, it would happen way faster than I thought, following a lucky find on an auction-site followed by a quick process.

So now I'm in possession of a Canon 1000D. Old, non-IS, kit lens, but at a pretty good price, second-hand.

Degrees of investment

2010-01-21T02:41:00.003+02:00

Lately, as I've researched deeper and deeper into the gear-related parts of photography, I've more and more been forced to consider how seriously I want to get into it.

For those not in the know, the part of the gear that matters the most is the glass. And as these camera optics are not easy to make (here's a video showing the process), the lenses themselves can be quite expensive. Canon's L-line of professional lenses are almost all starting at around 1000 euros.

Besides the financial investment, there is also an investment of time and dedication that follows should you decide to pursue 'higher' photography. Knowing lighting, knowing composition, knowing post-processing. Standing on the edge considering a DSLR, it looks like an infinite pit.

But of course you don't have to go all in. There is a world of gear, with lenses ranging from 100 euros to 10000 euros. Perhaps fantasizing about the new Tamron 17-50 VC on a decent enough body isn't too ambitious...

Changes of plans

2010-01-09T03:32:00.004+02:00

While I was initially set on first getting a new camera and then the keyboard stand, it seems more and more like I will switch around the acquisition order on them. While I would probably enjoy a new camera more, there is also a matter of practicality; if we are going to play live this year then I would like to get practicing with the setup I would be using live as soon as possible. Right now it's somewhat difficult to play as the K49 is on the left side, while I would prefer playing that with my right hand...

Update: stand ordered! Now I can start planning for the next one!

Epilogue update: stand cancelled! As it turns out, there was less motivation among the other members than I thought, leaving this year quite band-less. Instead I started focusing on a camera instead, to fill the void...

Camera

2009-12-22T00:04:00.005+02:00

Lately I have been looking at upgrading to a camera giving a bit better quality and low-light performance than my aging SX100, and naturally the obvious choice would be going the DSLR route.

I have mostly been looking at two models, the Canon 450D versus Nikon's new D5000. The Nikon has a lot going for it over the Canon: very good high-ISO performance, viewfinder grid, and 11 autofocus points versus the 450D's 9.

The Canon on the other hand can autofocus with all lenses, EF and EF-S, while not all Nikon lenses have the autofocus motor in the lens that the D5000 needs.
Besides that, the Canon uses the same GUI as my SX100, possibly making for an easier transition. At the moment I'm aiming at the 450D, since it's about 100 euros cheaper than the D5000. Of course I've also looked at the Canon 1000D, but with my ambitions of getting faster lenses the extra autofocus sensitivity at f2.8 on the 450D comes into play. (That and it's basically become impossible to find any 1000D kits with the IS lens; having heard bad things about the standard 18-55 kit lens has made the prospect of going up a notch to the 450D IS kit an overall better prospect.)

A list of things that I would not mind getting for Christmas

2009-12-17T20:39:00.000+02:00

As the days to christmas decreases, so do buying-options. Perhaps something locally?
At Fantoy they have a cool series of small models showing the build-up of organs. Head is cool.
At Sisustus-In they have some cool masks.

List of things I won't get:
[Hardware] ADAM HALL SKS-22 XB keyboard stand.
[Hardware] Toslink-S/PDIF coaxial to optical converter (eg. Cypress DCT-2 or this).
[DVD] Yuki Kajiura LIVE 2008.07.31.
Canon EOS 1000D/450D.

More probable alternatives:
[DS game] Professor Layton and the Curious Village.
Pants.
THE SSSNAKE YPK2030 (or equivalent cable, 2x 1/4" mono male <-> 1/8" stereo male).

More to come???

Korg x 2

2009-12-16T22:55:00.004+02:00

As predicted, now I have two boards. Though both are Korg, the difference in the keybeds is quite big. The keys on the M50 have much larger travelling distance with very little resistance; the K49 have stiffer keys that bottom out fast. It could be just the lower price I paid for the K49, but it feels a bit safer doing stuff like glissandos on that, rather than the M50.

Now all I need is a stand...

Gear

2009-11-20T04:02:00.005+02:00

About as long as I've been playing keyboard I've thought about getting a two-board setup. Not really because I need it, but because it looks fucking cool on-stage.Can't be bothered to get out the DVD for a better pic.
The original plan was to get my old M-Audio Keystation back (since I had lent it out) and use that, but as it turns out some of the Keystations have an issue with MIDI out. Mine was one of them. So I had to think of something else...With the help of a friend, I will hopefully have this little thing in my possession before long. It's white, which makes it contrast nicely with the M50, and it's Korg, matching the M50.

Then all that's left is the stand...

Composing

2009-11-17T18:26:00.002+02:00

Something I noticed.

As we are aiming to get at least a couple of original songs made this year with the band, I have gone into construction-mode. This in turn got me really eager to get ideas out, just tossing down chords and melodies, then quickly building them up to include the standard fare, bass, drums etc., inevitably at 4 AM. As it turns out, you can make some really bad decisions at 4 AM, which I realized at the latest band-meet where we listened through the material gathered so far.

So for the draft I'm polishing at the moment, I decided to take some time before sending it out, listen through it and try to hear what needs to be done. So far it seems to have paid off since I almost think it's one of the best of this bunch, even though I'm sort of growing tired of the melody...

Experiment

2009-07-25T03:15:00.008+03:00

Recently I reenacted an experiment I had done for midsummer, where I soaked gummybears in alcohol. That time the results weren't so drastic, as I had not let them soak for long.

This time I was determined to change a couple of important factors, namely the kind of alcohol used and the time for soaking. Last time I used a type of brännvin (for which I am unsure of the English name), but this time I used Vodka, albeit a cheap brand.
This time I also chose to use gummyworms!
Filled up the jars and into the fridge!
I put them into the fridge on Sunday (if I remember correctly), and let them stay there until Thursday, while taking a taste of a worm on Wednesday. Even when I tasted on wednesday I could feel it was quite strong, so I could very well have taken them out then, but I was a bit busy...

So the extraction was left until Thursday.
On the left are the ones soaked in Vodka, on the right control samples soaked in plain water. The ones soaked in water are clearly larger, though that might be due to me not measuring the liquid exactly even for each group.

As for the liquid remaining, the ones in water had soaked up virtually everything, while there was just over half a decilitre of Vodka remaining.It looks almost like urine, but it really isn't.

Unfortunately I forgot to measure the candies before I started the experiment, which makes the following image somewhat moot, but checking out the length of a bear in store, it was about 2cm long. (Measurement here in inches, 1in ≈ 2.5cm.)A growth of about 0.5cm in length and quite a lot in width for the bear. The worms were nicely fattened.

The resulting candies have quite a strong taste and smell of alcohol, though. If/when I do it again I will shorten the soaking period, or use a larger bear-to-alcohol ratio.

Again

2009-02-22T01:35:00.003+02:00

It's sort of unfortunate that I've come to only post whenever I felt the need to unload psychologically. As it is, I've been feeling pretty good lately, therefore not having the same need to expunge my inner waste onto the internets.

I notice that the last post was from last year, and I guess some things have happened since then.

One of the more unexpected things is that I have started playing a 2D shooter series generally known as Touhou. This interest was originally sparked by a medley video on the Japanese video-site Niconico video (crappier Youtube version here); in this video there were, among other songs, many songs from the Touhou games series. The song that really got stuck in my head was 千年幻想郷 (Sennenn gensoukyou) ～ History of the Moon. After hearing it I felt a strong urge to find the source of it, and came across Touhou.

Since I'm playing the games mostly for the music, I'm sticking to easy mode for now, which might be for the best, since the higher difficulty levels can get quite intense...

Another list

2008-11-18T03:24:00.003+02:00

A small list of products suitable for the upcoming holiday.

(DS game) Korg DS-10
(DS game) Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Tripod for my camera, about 140cm, for example Velbon DF-40/F or Velbon CX-440
(CD) Piana - Snow Bird
(CD) Piana - Eternal Castle
(CD) Yellow Magic Orchestra - Yellow Magic Orchestra
(CD) Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
(DVD) Leon
(Book) Slavoj Zizek - The Ticklish Subject
(Book) Slavoj Zizek - The Parallax View

Update

2008-10-19T05:01:00.000+03:00

So I decided a new look was in order.

That is all.

Down

2008-10-03T01:00:00.004+03:00

One of the hazards of insomnia is that I tend to blow things out of proportion as I lie sleepless in bed.
But there's still an amount of truth in it; I have hit a pretty deep hole at the moment. I guess part of it comes from that this will most probably be my last year studying Japanology. No real courses after this year, and if I get the Bachelor's thesis done, then that's that.

The other, more significant part, is a feeling of loneliness. Being at the age I am with no experience with relationships; many that I started school with have already moved on to other things, be it work, other education or exchange studies, or otherwise busy working on their own thesis. New students coming in each year, and with me usually taking at least a year before I really warm up to new people, and on top of that not having the same native language as most of them, I experience a certain sense of alienation.

At the bottom of this, I believe, lies an incident that happened roughly six months ago.

I had once again found myself in the position where I was interested in a girl, but this time I thought there were signs that the interest was actually mutual. But maybe my feelings clouded my vision, for when I finally mustered up the courage to ask her out, I got a very strange response. Not a 'yes' nor a 'no', but simply... nothing. She acted like she literally couldn't get away from me soon enough.

After that followed a couple of days of very odd situations where I would try to greet her only to be met with silence. It didn't take long before I got the hint and just stopped even trying. I was apparently such a perverted being for following my feelings rather than the rational side that tells me I'm useless that she could risk treating me like a person.

A couple of months pass, and suddenly I hear I'm invited to a party she's having. So she was at least acknowledging my existence again, though it wasn't much more than that. Having gone there it felt like I had been invited only as a formality. And ever since then I've had this feeling, whenever we're in the same location, that I'm not really wanted there; that it would be best if I wasn't there at all.

要らない人間。

Edit: This is probably the most personal thing I've written here, and I know I've stated in the past that I didn't want it to turn into one of those blogs where the writer just nags about his life, but I want to stress that it felt like my head was literally falling apart. I did it more for my own sanity's sake than anything else.

My life is a Makoto Shinkai movie

2008-09-30T04:05:00.004+03:00

Or to be more precise, the second part of 5 Centimeters per Second.

It's not very often that I come across a movie that I can identify with to the degree that I could with this. "Identify" might also be the wrong word, since we can pretty much identify with anything, even with a small waste-collecting robot. This was more like looking what a screenplay of my own life might look like.

Always looking for something beyond my reach... sometimes it feels like that's what I've been doing my whole life.

Happenings

2008-09-04T02:59:00.005+03:00

It was my 26th birthday roughly one month ago, and with my birthday being positioned where it is in the calendar, it was pretty close to the Night of Arts. Me and a couple of friends went out on town and had a look at the various people and happenings. Amongst other things we visited Vaasa Water Tower, which wasn't as horrifying as I had thought. But what really caught my eye was the the DSLR camera that one of the company had. I've always liked taking pictures, even having a Flickr account despite not having a camera of my own.

This having to do with the birthday that followed a couple of days later which brought with it a slight economic boost. With the lure of the camera fresh in mind, I set out to find a suitable prospect. Enter the Canon SX100.

Armed with my new toy, I've hesitantly sought my way out on town and snapped a couple of shots. Here's one I like.
Unfortunately I got it a bit too late to take any good summer pictures, but maybe I will have learned to use its full potential by next summer. So far so good, the only real annoyance being with the supplied Canon software. Luckily there's iPhoto...

Oh! And I cleaned the toilet in the apartment, which was an interesting experience. Now it doesn't smell and look quite as much as a truck-stop urinal.

A list

2008-08-01T13:50:00.000+03:00

So I was asked what I would want as present for my upcoming birthday, and thought I would make a small list.

(CD) Piana - Snow Bird
(CD) Piana - Eternal Castle
(CD) Yellow Magic Orchestra - Yellow Magic Orchestra
(CD) Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
(DVD) Leon
(Book) Slavoj Zizek - The Ticklish Subject
(Book) Slavoj Zizek - The Parallax View
(Xbox game) Psi-Ops
(Xbox game) Burnout 3
(DS game) Professor Layton and the Curious Village (which isn't out yet in Europe, it seems)
(DVD) Paranoia Agent 1 (or more)
(DVD) The Pianist (and other movies by Polanski could also be received)
(DVD) Kieslowki's 3 Colours

Etc.

Live pictures

2008-07-21T23:19:00.004+03:00

Some pictures from the live performance we did in the band. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, have a look at some clips from the live here: Jidouhanbaiki - Kasa ga nai and Jidouhanbaiki - Ramen tabetai.)

New Excite Email Sucks

2008-07-09T20:21:00.005+03:00

I don't usually do this, but I really need to blow off some steam.

I remember I got a notice about the new Excite Email some time ago, offering loads of things, though having just gotten acquainted with Gmail, the only thing I noticed was the 1GB storage. So it was with horror that I logged on to my email account on the big day of the switch only to find a bloated, non-intuitive piece of big, stinking, interweb faeces!

Gone was the clean, easy HTML, replaced by yet another failed attempt to make a web-based service look more like a desktop application. Logging in, I wasn't shown the email page, but instead a portal with 90% empty space because of all features that I don't need that I hadn't taken use of. And in a small, small box in the top-right corner, I could, after waiting for the whole behemoth to load, see that I had "New emails (wait for it while it loads...) 0". (That's right, it still says "new emails" even though you don't have any.)

Opening the email treats you to another little loading screen, after which you're free to read your email. Too bad that the default behaviour has been changed, so where before simply clicking on the email opened it, now it merely displays it in a tiny preview below the inbox. If you want it in a window of reasonable size, you have to double-click it. Pardon me, but I was under the impression that double-clicking was generally reserved for desktop applications and internet links required only one click.

And that's just for reading. Want to flag a message as spam? Choose "Junk" from the "Flag as" menu, two clicks where previously it only took one click.

But the most odd addition is that of a contextual menu. Accessed in the regular way, by the secondary button on the mouse, it displays a load of redundant options, the most mind-boggling of which is "Read", which does nothing at all, as it doesn't open any new window with the message, and it is already displayed in the preview window once the mail is clicked on. This is all of course if you can actually see the contextual menu, since the designers seem to have completely missed the possibility of browsers having their own contextual menues also accessible via the secondary mouse-button.

All in all, it is a complete mess, and the main decider for me switching to Gmail as my main account. If only there was a way to migrate all of the mail on Excite to Gmail, but with no batch-forwarding, it would take excruciatingly long, so I fear I must keep it around for the time being.

Edit: I'm not sure if it will have any effect, but here's the link to the feedback page that was mentioned in the mail from Excite about the new system if you want to try contact them via that. If they would only add the option of a "classic" GUI then I'd be satisfied myself.

Also, a comment tipped about the feedback system they have for Excite. "Give specific examples of what needs to be fixed. Don't rant, and keep your response polite and professional."

Live

2008-06-01T05:10:00.003+03:00

So after having done hours upon hours of band practice, we now possibly stand at the threshold of our very first live performance. It hit me for real just now as I was laying in bed, and now it's 5 AM and I'm not the least tired due to excitement. Or maybe that should be nervousness. There's so many emotions at play: fear, excitement, anxiety, joy...

In any case, this, for me, is one of the biggest things in my life so far. Maybe it's due to the long build-up leading up to it, but damn this feels cool!

If it feels like this now, I wonder what it will feel like when we finally get to do it.

Why racism is so dangerous

2008-04-17T23:37:00.004+03:00

I read this comment on Slashdot, and it was just too good to not reiterate.

If you let the balance of power fall too far to the state, it's grossly naive to think it wont lead to use of that power over you, your friends and your children.
The question is, is this really true.

Consider for a moment. Do the supporters of oppressive regimes actually suffer under them? Is it not the case that those who tacitly or overtly support this kind of power imbalance actually benefit? Certainly a minority of top supporters do, but what about the silent and not so silent majority that prop up the regime? Does their support not in fact, pay off?

Are registered Republican voters who attend church every sunday, protest against abortion, call for lower taxes and "family values" really going to suffer under these DHS policies? I invoke Godwin because it is inevitable. Look at 1930's Germany. If you weren't communist or jewish, then you, as a german, probably did rather well under the Nazi's. Why wouldn't you support them? It's not like you valued abstract concepts like "freedom" and "democracy" now did you?

Most americans, no, most people in the western world, do not value these concepts. They support internment, executions, secret trials. I'm not being rhetorical here. As long as you mention the right groups; terrorists, pedophiles, minorities, lower classes, etc, the average joe will not see their freedoms as something worth valuing anymore. People do not believe in universal rights for all, only in rights for the right people, which of course includes themselves. It's sad, but that's the way it is.
-ObsessiveMathsFreak

Which is why it's so easy to fall in the "think of the children"-trap. You always think it will only affect the "bad guys".

Translations

2008-04-03T23:32:00.003+03:00

Lately I finished up something I had had laying around for a while: a translation/subtitle for one of the sketches from the old Swedish comedy-series Nilecity 105,6. I had originally started on it about half a year ago, but didn't upload it because I wanted to see if I could somehow make a bigger version that wouldn't lose so much quality in the transition to Youtube. That proved a bit difficult (due to various computer issues), but as I was looking through my old stuff the other day I found it again and just thought I'd at least try it and see how it looked. Turns out it retained enough quality to be "good enough".

So, without further ado, here's Greger at the venereal diseases department.

And while I was on a roll, I also decided to subtitle a clip from a Finnish news-show called Uutismixi, about the growing interest in Japan.

Marco's Pasta

2008-03-25T21:23:00.004+02:00

Here's an interesting package of pasta I found...

Bearing a slight resemblance to a certain plumber..?

Sick

2008-03-06T19:37:00.003+02:00

I almost thought that I would manage the winter without getting sick, but then it came over me quite suddenly on Monday. A walk to school and back again in vain yesterday (it wasn't until I was there that I conveniently remembered that we didn't have a lesson that day) didn't seem to help either, as I spent the night unable to sleep from having my nose clogged up.

With that in mind, it wasn't easy to decide whether I should go to band practice today. Eventually I decided I would go and see how it felt, and it went alright, considering the circumstances. I still decided to skip the evening lesson since I didn't feel too motivated to make the trip again in the state I'm in.

I also picked up some drugs from the pharmacy to ease the flu-symptoms: some Ibumax pain pills that I got Tuesday, and today some Toncils lozenges (used for disinfection of mouth and throat), and some Finrexin (a powder you mix with hot water and drink for "temporary relief of cold symptoms").

Musics

2008-02-18T03:52:00.004+02:00

Going back a couple of weeks... Seeing Kent live was nice, maybe I didn't really get the full-blown concert experience when I was using earplugs, but I don't want to get full-blown tinnitus either. I really liked the faster, more electronic-sounding, version they did of Dom Andra. I came away from it with a strong feeling of wanting to do it again.

Here's a random image I found on the web.
But that isn't all the musicizing I've done lately.

It started pretty innocently during a conversation with my classmate Aino about maybe trying to play some songs from Bonnie Pink's latest album ourselves; it came up in discussions with other people from school, a couple of more jumped on, and now it seems we have inadvertedly started a band! First practice was last Friday, and having previously only played by myself, it was really exciting to get to play with other people. After the first couple of hesitating steps it started going smoother and smoother, and by the end of the first session I felt we had at least one song down pretty well! (Which was Ramen tabetai, original by Akiko Yano, but our version is based more on Tamio Okuda's cover.

Incredibly fun, and now I'm just looking for the next opportunity that fits everyones schedules...

Concert

2008-01-31T03:05:00.000+02:00

When I was a teenager, I was a big fan of swedish rock-band Kent. It was a time in my life when their music felt very relevant to what I was going through. Around the time of Vapen & Ammunition (Guns & Ammunition), however, they fell of my radar. I still liked the music, but there was the other, more electronic, music genres that had started to grab my interest.

Then some time ago I was visiting my sister's and her boyfriend's place and saw that they had the (at the time) new album. Having heard quite a lot about it, and due to the slightly Bergman-esque title of Du & Jag Döden (You & me death), I was a bit interested in hearing what it sounded like. Over the time I've actually come to like it a lot, thinking it's perhaps their best album.

And now, just a couple of days ago, I heard that they would be doing a live show here in the vicinity, and my sister and her boyfriend were going. What's more, they asked if I would like to come along; a very interesting suggestion! So, after taking care of the financial issues involved for a poor student like myself, we agreed that they would get in touch if there were tickets left.

And it seems there were, and I'm going to see Kent this Friday! It feels a bit strange... My favourite band from my teenage years, that I dreamt so often about seeing live, and I'll finally be able do go...

The Place

2007-12-22T23:48:00.000+02:00

Well, having finally gotten the new computer set up and hooked up to the internet, I borrowed my mother's digital camera and got a couple of pictures snapped of the apartment.First is the view from the entrance: CD-shelf on the left, some box left from the moving process, and then the desk, with various stuff on it. The new Mac mini is practically invisible in that pic, barely visible on the right next to the 19" CTR screen I got for cheap from a school-mate. I'm also going to get a retractable shelf to mount under the desk to keep the keyboard on, freeing up some space, and allowing me to have the MIDI-keyboard more centered. I've also got a poster coming that I'll put up on the wall behind the desk. (The desktop pic is Nagato Yuki from The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, for those who are interested; vectored by yours truly.)
Here's the view from the corner opposing the door. Unmade bed on the left, a poster of a woman in kimono with a red umbrella on the wall, bookshelf on the right. Next to the bookshelf is a closet, which isn't that interesting. (The big shiny sphere is the lamp which is hanging a bit too low; I've lost count of how many times I've bumped my head into it.)

I must say that I'm really pleased with my new setup; the Mac mini is performing nicely thus far, though the real test will be when I start fooling around with Garageband. I haven't really felt inspired to do anything with it lately, but I'm guessing it's a side-effect of just having moved, getting used to the new surroundings. I'm also going to order a new piece of gear soon, a pair of headphones, the AKG K240S, which will hopefully allow me to get a better idea of how my tracks sound in the low end, and which also might come in handy for late-night music making/listening.

So far, living on my own has worked out splendidly.

Moving

2007-12-04T20:48:00.000+02:00

Long time, no post.

After 25 years of living in the same place, I've finally moved out. In hindsight, I probably could have done it earlier, but better late than never. It's been quite an interesting experience so far, even though I've only "lived" here for a couple of days. I'm still lacking some small details, like curtains, umbrella and computer, but I've got all the essentials like clothing and food.

Spending the days without a computer has been... boring. You only really realise how much you depend on it when it's gone. But luckily, I've been offered economic assistance from my parents with it, so hopefully, I should be in the possession of a new Mac mini sometime in the near future. (Having no computer of my own yet, I'm posting this from my flatmate's box.)

It's an interesting location in that I have my classmate Aino next-door, a couple of other Japanology-students a stone-throw away, and yet another couple across the street in another building.

Pictures will be posted after I've borrowed a camera to take them with.

Edited

2007-10-23T10:11:00.000+03:00

Well! I've just had the experience of having my text edited and put in print, and I would certainly want to meet the person who thought it appropriate to edit my text using a chainsaw and duct-tape.

Now, I don't mind editors as long as they know more than yourself, but if they don't, it's like letting a dog perform open-heart surgery.

Boring

2007-10-21T22:08:00.000+03:00

I've been feeling boring lately. Life goes by. Days float into each other, turning into weeks and months. Sitting here at my window watching the leaves change colour and fall.

School has switched gears. Classical Japanese is a bitch, but the translation-assignments are really fun.

I've watched some anime recently, some aired on SVT, others downloaded on recommendation. The one with the greatest impact on me being Voices of a Distant Star (ほしのこえ). If you haven't yet been desensitized by the world/television yet, then watch it. I'm going to order the region 3 DVD (I'd like the region 2, but the R3 is cheaper), not anytime soon, but after I've gotten the essential new computer (which will hopefully be a Mac mini).

Some people can't seem to understand why I use Mac computers. I don't mind their incomprehension as long as they don't try to "convert" me; I've been in more arguments on the topic than I care to remember. Yes, they're more expensive, but why does that matter? Is that so important? Yes, I could get more bang for the buck with a standard or build-it-yourself PC, but I don't really need more than what the Mac mini has; heck, I'm satisfied sitting on what I have now (except for the fan-noise), which has a great deal less power than a Mac mini. I could get a PC with the latest hardware and extras, and force myself to use Windows or learn Linux. Or I could just spend 100 or so more on the Mac mini, being more than satisfied with the power it has, and have a user experience I'm guaranteed to like, having spent many years now with Mac OS X. But I guess personal preference doesn't matter in a world where everything needs to be the same square size fitting into the same square holes, just so other people can feel ensured in their choice because "everyone else has it."

I've been meaning to write something meaningful here, but failing.

It's autumn.

Ten years after

2007-08-27T01:26:00.000+03:00

When standing in line at the supermarket the other day, I happened to catch a glimpse of a former classmate of mine a couple of registers over. He was with his significant other and their daughter, perhaps five or six years old, and it hit me that the last time I had seen him she had been in a stroller.

Now, this wasn't just some random classmate. I'd say that this guy was the most similar to me that there was in school (upper level compulsory school, attended at ages 13-15, for the record). Quiet, teased, bright, dreamer, a bit of a rebel, and with a lot of potential. I remember we were both in the more advanced math class, and he used to always sit in classes staring out the window, dreaming himself away. (I will always remember our math teacher, Jeanette West, since she was one of the first teachers to ever really spur me on and encourage me; my math grade during those years rose from around six up to a nine, on the 4-10 scale.)

Seeing him like that, shopping with his family, it made me think. That two so similar people would lead so different lives, ten years after.

Abilities

2007-08-16T01:20:00.000+03:00

As a result of aging, people always feel like they somehow know more than everyone younger than them, through experience or simply the privilegie of having spent more time on earth, no matter if those years were lived completely differently to how people live now. I am no exception to that, but I would like to think that I have at least some distance to my own mind, and I therefore realise that this is not the ultimate truth. It is now 25 years that I've lived on this earth, and I have indeed formed some thoughts on life, the universe, and everything. I will try to write these up, as I can get them formulated in a way that don't seem like the work of a schizophrenic.

Abilities.

Humans and chimps share about 98% of their DNA. Isn't that interesting? Those remeining 2% of the DNA constitutes all of what is different between man and chimps. Now think about how little the difference must then be between humans. We all carry the same components in us, the same building-blocks. The same "hardware", so to speak. Counting out any severe developmental oddities, we are all born with the same prerequisites. What makes humans differ from each other is largely the upbringing, and how they use the "hardware" that they're given. So if we're all equipped with practically identical "hardware", we should all be able to load the same "software" (if we'll continue with the computer-metaphor). This is why I don't believe in that you need any inherent "gift" to do anything that some might think is out of the ordinary: like playing an instrument, composing a song, or learning a foreign language.

This means, of course, that every time I fail at something, it feels like I'm incredibly stupid; but on the flip-side, I have the power to change.

This is why I also don't believe in "racial superiority" and similar garbage.

Birthday

2007-08-02T16:25:00.000+03:00

And so, soon, the earth will have revolved 25 times around the sun after I was born. As it happens, I was asked for a list of things I would enjoy recieving to mark the occasion.

Savage Garden - Superstars & Cannonballs live DVD
Serenity DVD
Firefly DVD-box
Can of Tommy spray
Late addition: a Guy Fawkes mask, as worn in V for Vendetta

Some more DVDs:
Sympathy for Mr Vengeance
Lady Vengeance
Kung Fu Hustle
Run Lola Run (released 8/8 according to CDON...)
Leon (The Professional)
Infernal Affairs

I will try to append it as I think of more.

1 month of nothing

2007-07-18T02:42:00.000+03:00

The last test of the season was last month, 18th. After that, I have done pretty much nothing, and it really feels like I should start doing something. Has a month of nothing been enough? I don't know, but I'm guessing it has been too much; whenever I get into a rut of inactivity, the days just flow together, making it difficult to even know what day it is.

I bought a new "game" today, if it can be called that, Electroplankton, that I found for 14.90€!I played around with it a bit, and quickly realised that calling it a game is slightly misleading. Yes, you can have a bit of fun with it, but it doesn't play like a game: there are no real levels, no score, and no ending. What there is, is "plankton". These plankton make sounds, notes, when put into action or employed in a certain fashion. It's strange, and it's not easy to get something particular out of it. Mostly it seems like the sounds are decided completely by random, but I do get the feeling that it can be controlled, perhaps utilized, somehow.

***
So it seems that albums aren't quite dead for me yet, even though random play is the most used setting in my iTunes. In my eagerness to have more music in my iTunes library, I dug out some old CDs the other day, among them the two albums that Savage Garden did, and Affirmation has quickly become well-played compared to some of the other tracks. Another album that I got added was the Russian edition of t.A.T.u.'s debut album, 200 По Встречной; I bought it largely on a whim after discovered it in a store one day long ago. (Really, judging by the release date, it's about half a decade.) The premise for a unit like t.A.T.u almost guarantees bad music is certainly a bit dodgy, as even their producer admits.

I saw that most people look up pornography on the Internet and of those, most are looking for underage sex. I saw their needs weren't fulfilled. Later, it turned out, I was right. This is the same as my own desires. I prefer underage girls.
–Ivan Shapovalov

But I still have to admit that it's one of my favourite albums. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for pop in foreign languages.

Speaking of Savage Garden, I'd really like to see their only live DVD, Superstars and Cannonballs... *wink & nudge*

It's summer

2007-07-06T01:05:00.000+03:00

Summer has arrived in full, and I've gone into nearly full summer-slacking mode. I have managed to do some productive things, though. I've finished the first two chapters of the Japanese HP1, and I've been weeding a bit in the strawberry-field.

Reading Japanese is difficult, because I have some problems deciding what approach I should use: I can either read through and when I come across a new word look it up, or I can just plow through the text, ignoring the new words. Using the first approach makes the reading very fragmented, and I often forget what came even in the previous sentence. The second approach is a bit more natural, but I might learn less that way...

Anyway, with summer, a lot of blood-sucking creatures have also arrived. Especially the horseflies are a major pain in the behind when weeding...
That's in inches for those thinking I have a really tiny leg.

iTunes

2007-06-26T22:23:00.000+03:00

I finally took the step into the 21st century music-listening by moving my music collection, previously spread out over two harddrives, to an external drive and letting iTunes handle the library.

The biggest difference is that I listen to music a lot more often now. It's just easier to load up iTunes and having it on random play than thinking what I want to listen to, navigating to the correct folder and then dropping it on the playlist of the player app. (The one I used previously didn't have a library feature.) Having thousands of songs available a click away is somehow a really powerful feeling.

The second biggest difference in my listening is that I listen to fewer albums now. Previously I'd drop a whole album folder on the playlist, play that and repeat if I wanted to listen to something more. With the random play feature I listen to a lot fewer full albums.

Having delegated the position of music-player to iTunes, I also tried its encoder, which was quite a shock. Having done my encodings to MP3 using the LAME front-end LameBrain, it always took me quite a while to rip a CD. But the LameBrain was last updated, wait for it... 4 years ago, to the day, yesterday. So the tech in it might have been a bit old. Using iTunes was incredibly snappy in encoding in comparison. I'm really itching to rip some more just to have more accessible, I can really see now how people end up ripping all their CDs. Perhaps after the prices go a bit lower I'll buy a new HD and swap out the old 160GB in the LaCie Porsche FW (which might be interesting since they seem like a bit of a challenge to take apart).

Summertime activities

2007-06-21T15:15:00.000+03:00

Summer, a time of relaxation and freedom from worries. Or at least it used to be.

The recent exam went about as badly as the previous one, which means I'll probably fail it. I drenched my sorrows in cider and regained some of the sleep-debt from not being able to sleep at all the night before the exam. I had an appointment at the 'cutters in the morning, so I figured I'd go to sleep early, except that didn't work because my daily rhythm had already gotten into "vacation-mode". So, I'm guessing I got perhaps one or two hours of real sleep. Eventually I got fed up with it and got up at 6AM or so and watched the last episode of My Boss, My Hero, a great J-drama starring that guy from Tokio.

I might have been able to take it easy after that if it weren't for the fact that an essay I wrote came back as failed. So I have a couple of days to re-write that...

But after that I can hopefully relax with a couple of the dozen or so books I've gathered, first of all I was thinking I'd try to trod my way through the Japanese HP1 that I got the other day. I'm looking forward to it since I've read it in English already, and I think it could be educational to see English translated to Japanese (since that's the most difficult part for me). After that I'll try to get down to the books recommended by our teacher.Other than that, it's just vacationing. Besides the two history-essays I should write. But besides the literature-essay and the history-essays, I'm completely free. Well, if you count out making the plan for the bachelor's thesis we got as assignment to do. But other literature-essay, the history-essays and the plan for the bachelor's thesis, there's nothing. Apart from the extra assignments we got for summer. But if you count out all that, then I'm free to rehearse the kanji and maybe start studying the ~700 general-use kanji that we haven't had yet.

Ah, summer-time relaxation...

Slipping Away

2007-06-06T00:46:00.000+03:00

I know I said I wouldn't link before I got some vocals recorded, but it turns out I have a crap voice and no other vocalist handy. So go to The Vankov Brothers' space and have a listen. The synthetic vox is the vocal line. If you think you've got the pipes for the job, send a squirt to thevankovbrothers(a)gmail.com.

Epilogue

2007-06-04T14:49:00.000+03:00

I forgot to mention that a few days after I had come home from Stockholm, I noticed an extra withdrawal from my account, which now stood at minus ca. 10€. Which was a bit odd as I only have an Electron, which should block transactions if the account can't cover it...

So, off to the bank the following Monday to straighten it out. After a while of checking things up and making phone-calls, we were told to send a fax (to Visa, presumably) explaining the situation along with bank-statements. The fax was sent, and a couple of days later I found the account balance to be normal again.

***Having come home and done the test, I decided to kick back for a couple of days before starting to study for the re-test (since I most likely failed it), so I went to the library and borrowed William Gibson's Bridge-trilogy, which I read under the course of three days.

Stockholm syndrome

2007-05-31T02:18:00.001+03:00

So I was to Stockholm last week. Which was nice. It was a study-visit to the Institute for Oriental Languages at Stockholm University, just a quick couple-of-days drop-by.

We left Sunday the 20th, taking the ferry during the night. The beds were horrible and I got only a couple of hours sleep, but I survived. We arrived in Stockholm at some ungodly hour, and right as we stepped off the ship we had to hump all our luggage a couple of kilometers to and from subway stations, on our way to the hotel where we were to dump it.

Subway in the morningHaving disposed of our luggage, we headed back to the subway for more subterranean adventures. First we went to Stockholm University and checked out their stuff (campus, library, etc.) and tried some calligraphy.

Having done that we headed off to a street called Tegnér-gatan where there were a couple of Japan-related shops. I got some reading material (a book and a newspaper, not tentacle-porn), a writing pen (for practicing calligraphy... hopefully I'll use it someday, too) and some candy (Pocky). After that we went pretty much our separate ways, I tagged onto a group heading for some sci-fi bookshop, which turned out to be a wild-goose chase as we never got there. Hungry from all the walking we found a couple of others and went to this Korean place and got some eatin'. And that was pretty much day 1. Headed back to the hotel and the bed there.

Day 2 we went to visit a couple of museums, the Ethnological Museum and the East-Asian Museum. At the Ethnological Museum was a little tea-house that we got to see. Which was nice. In comparison, the East-Asian Museum was quite a let-down as they had a higher admission price and was crappier. They were doing some renovations and not all exhibitions were available. After that we were free to roam the town again. We wandered about a bit, eventually figuring food would be in order.

Sergel's Square. All the people there are drug-dealersHaving eaten at some mongolian thing, time was getting short and I finally figured I might be able to check out some synthesizers. So I headed for the nearest store, but it turned out that they didn't have any Juno-Ds or X50s. I got mad and punched the guy in the face. Ok, not really. Time was running out fast, and we had to get back and meet the rest of the people to get back to the ship, so I couldn't visit any other stores.

Finally, we had a little party on the ship, celebrating a pleasant journey. When I got home, I failed the test we had the following day.

Unusualities

2007-05-20T00:54:00.000+03:00

Today I burned a pair of my brother's underwear. But that's getting ahead of the story a bit.

I'm leaving for Stockholm tomorrow, capital of Sweden, home of a lot more music shops than are in Vaasa. This means preparation, which brings with it searching for clothes to cover my otherwise naked body with, in order to spare others from the sight of my nakedness. During the process of searching, I came across an old pair of underwear belonging to my brother, discarded due to the being holy. You know, full of holes.

So they weren't being of any use, an idea was formed. Why not burn them? It's wet after the days rain and relatively risk-free... And so, after checking with all the authorities (that is, pa' and the bro'), it came to be that I stood in the yard burning my brother's underwear. That probably filled up the crazy quota for the month.

It's a bit exciting to be going; I am after all quite unused to travelling outside of the country... I think it's also a slight indicator of how I've grown: if this was five or so years ago I don't think I would've gone. I was way more timid then. Of course I'm still quite quiet and careful, but I've acquired a certain hang of just going with the flow and not worrying as much as I used to. Maybe that's what they call "growing up".

PS: I won't link to the Vankov Brothers space (in a post) until I've gotten the first vocal recorded and (sloppily) mixed. (Hopefully it won't sound too bad when run through a vocoder.)

Potter, etc.

2007-05-12T20:37:00.000+03:00

I don't really know why I watch the Harry Potter films as I'm constantly thinking of how different from the book(s) they are. I found the fourth for 5€ the other day, which I bought on an impulse. (Of course, since I hadn't seen the third yet I felt compelled to download it... I guess it evens out in the end.)

***I always start feeling a bit queazy after having spent the whole day studying kanji. Perhaps it's just lack of fresh air, but I feel really sickened by it when I'm nearing the end of a ~400 kanji-session.

***I am officially fed up with one of the music stores in town. I've been in three times in the last couple of weeks to try out Roland's Juno-D. First time they said that they just sold off the last one, sorry, but they'll get a couple by the weekend that are going to a school, come in then. Second time, sorry, they came and picked them up already, come back next week. Third time, sorry, they're in Copenhagen.

Really...

The cram

2007-05-08T23:23:00.000+03:00

Clocking in at roughly six hours of kanji today. I feel I've gotten a little bridge-head in the seemingly inpenetrable shore of kanji-land. The test is still a couple of weeks away, but I'm incredibly relieved that I had the will-power to start cramming so soon, because with all the other stuff that needs doing there might not be time later.

I've talked about JFC before, but thought I'd talk a bit more about it since that's what has saved my ass so many times. More specifically, my way of using it. I usually set it to show the English meaning, and then I rehearse readings and writing/stroke order, with focus on writing (meaning it's whether I remember how it's written that decides whether I mark it as right or wrong). When I begin a new batch, I set it to duplicate missed cards with the default frequency of 20. This means (if I've understood it correctly) that the missed card repeats every 20th card. I do this so I'll really get it burned into my head. I continue the session until the number of remaining cards (that is, including the repeating missed cards) reach 3-5000, then I quit it and start a new session (once you've gone for a bit almost every card is a repeat, which gets a bit tiresome). I continue like that until I it starts taking too long for new cards to appear, and then I switch off "duplicate missed cards" and run through the whole batch (usually in one sitting). The missed cards are now just moved to the end of the pack without repeating, so once I've cleared all the ones I know, I hunker down and start trudging through the bottom of the pack.

Once that's cleared I repeat a couple of times until I can get an accuracy rate of around 80%.

Shakespeare (and stuff)

2007-04-22T21:37:00.000+03:00

I was surfing around a well-known torrenting site, for a reason forgotten, when I got the idea to do a search for one of my favourite shows, Slings and Arrows. And lo and behold, there I found all three seasons of it!

It's a really wonderful show, which you should check out if you have the possibility.

As I have mentioned before, one of the recurring events at the "local" library (it's like 20KM away...) is the sale of used books, dirt-cheap. This year I got a total of nine books; quite a few more than I had planned for since I was mainly looking at Iain Banks' The Bridge. But since it was three for one Euro, I also picked up Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco and Margaret Thatcher's book about her time as PM (yeah, I know).

Then I went to the library a while later, searching for books by a Japanese author, IIRC, and stumbled upon a table that I thought contained children's books, but in fact it contained fact-books and educational books: intriguing! So I had a good look and left with six books: Yrsa Stenius' Makten och Kvinnligheten ("The power and the femininity"), Swedish edition of Theodore Isaac Rubin's The Angry Book, Insight Guide: East Asia, Torsten Husén's Pedagogisk psykologi ("Pedagogical psychologi"), Swedish edition of Daniel Burstein's Yen! and finally a Swedish edition of Alexandre Dumas' Queen Margot.

Speaking of books, I recently relinquished a book from my own collection as a present for my cousin (since I hadn't bought anything and wouldn't know what he'd want were I to buy anything). The book in question was Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, which has gotten much praise even though I found it relatively unremarkable myself. It was his 18th birthday, which we all know is something quite special (except in Japan, since the legal drinking age there is 20). Having decided it was best to take it easy, I went the whole evening on water and Coke. (Besides not having that much money to blow on drinks at the moment, the recovery-time from a night's drinking always seem to occupy a whole weekend.) But that didn't stop me from having fun as there was lots of dancing to be done.

In time, some pictures the party might surface.

Saturday feeling

2007-04-05T19:51:00.000+03:00

There's something about going out after having also had something else on the schedule for the day that makes it seem like two separate days. It's like I would count only one event per day.

This usually throws off my perception of which day it is, and it gets even more obvious when I go out in the middle of the week, as was the case yesterday as I was invited to a small gathering followed by a visit to the highest located bar in town. When I've gone out in the past, it has most often been on the weekends, so I've had the odd feeling that it's Saturday or Sunday the whole day. (I kept expecting my brother to come home and checked the TV-schedule for when the usual Sunday-programing was on.)

I also got an opportunity to practice my Japanese as there was a Japanese exchange student there. It actually went pretty well, which was good, because talking is the one thing I think I feel most nervous about. I still had to use quite a lot of English; I think the end result was something like 70% English, 30% Japanese.

Another good thing about yesterday was that the dance-floor was wonderfully unpopulated (even though it was small). I was driving, which meant it took a while for me to loosen up, but I did, and dancing felt just as good as ever.

In my past I've often had situations where I was under quite a lot of stress due to the supression of the "fight or flight"-instinct. When I started going out I discovered that dancing was a great release for the pent-up ; so much that I came to see standing at the bar or chatting to friends merely what you while taking a break from dancing. Since dancing is so closely related to running, the connection was obvious.

I guess that this, in turn, is also the reason why I like DDR (the dancing game, not the German Democratic Republic).

The only bad thing was that I had had so much Coke (the soft drink, not the drug) that I couldn't sleep properly 'til around 7 AM...

New entertainments

2007-03-29T20:45:00.000+03:00

I bought the best of Faithless album Forever the other day, almost purely on the basis of "Insomnia". Being a long-time listener to club/dance music, I'm a big fan of the song. Anyhow, listening to the CD, I got the feeling that I was just listening to a dozen variations of "Insomnia"... I think the main reason for that is that I started noticing how little change there was in the rapping from one song to the next by the vocalist. That combined with the repeating of certain rhymes and it just started to seem that way.

Something that I've enjoyed far more is Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It was one in the line of games that were given high scores by Edge that I had set my eye on, and I picked it up from a net-auction quite long ago, but haven't started playing it until now. (As regular readers know, I've been picking up games for cheap like crazy the last couple of months. Between my brother and me, I think we've picked up around 10 games in less than half a year.) I'm always a bit ancious when starting to play a high-scoring game, because I'm worried that I won't like it and it'll just have been money in the lake; this happened most recently with Metal Gear Solid 2 for Xbox, I just couldn't get into it... But since I also bought that for cheap, it wasn't such a big loss.

Back to PoP. The controls didn't feel 100% (games that have that good controls are rarities, Super Mario 64 springs to mind), but with time I got used to them. The first couple of fights were a bit... wobbling. Unfamiliar controls meant I often ended up putting away my sword instead of attacking. I managed to hack, slash and limp my way through the first encounters, and reached the first real puzzles. And then I knew I was hooked. In front of me were huge, delapitated rooms that I had to find a way across, using all of the Prince's abilities: jumping across chasms, swinging between poles, running along walls. Let me say that again, running along walls. If I hadn't been won over by then, I sure was the moment I learned you could do that.

Another big part that drew me in was the story. Just like with Broken Sword, it seems like Prince of Persia has a pretty strong story behind it. Another similarity with Broken Sword is the use of voice-overs using the past form; in BS it often appeared in interaction with items (eg. "I used the metal rod to hit the old bird's nest, dropping it to the ground"), while in PoP the Prince himself is the one telling the story (and when you run out of health and die, saying "no, that's not how it happened", allowing you to retry). While this use of the past tense might only seem like a story-telling mechanism, it also serves to encourage the player: the impression that it has already happened stops you from thinking that that certain, tricky area is beyond your abilities.

Spot the faulty ingredient

2007-03-26T19:59:00.000+03:00

First measure up 100 grams of margarine. (I chopped it up to prepare for the mixing; you can also heat it a bit in the microwave if you want.)Things you'll need next: sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla sugar.Put in 8 table-spoons of sugar, 4 table-spoons of cocoa, 2 tea-spoons of vanilla sugar, and one tangerine (for taste).Next, you'll need porridge oats (that's the word I got from the translator) and milk (not pictured), which you add as needed (really, that's how I do it too, I've never taken note of the exact amounts).Mix and stir into a dough. Be conservative with the milk, if you put too much it'll start looking more like porridge than chocolate balls. The dough needs to be sticky enough so you'll be able to roll it, but not stickier.Prepare two plates, one with shredded cocoanut meat.Next, start rolling.Roll the balls around in the shredded cocoanut meat. (Does anyone have a better word in English for this? It really bothers me to use long phrases like that for something that simple.)Keep going until all the dough is used, then put in the fridge and eat.