I had a pretty good night tonight. I was out front of the building with a few of the other people who live here, handing out candy to the trick or treaters. It was very cool, since we rarely all get together to do something, even though there are only about 15 people living in this building. I recently set up an Internet forum for us to communicate, and it’s working out really well. Almost everyone has signed up, and we’re able to organize stuff like our Hallowe’en effort tonight. Besides that, we had a good time just chatting and catching up on stuff. When I first moved in, I imagined that we would be a pretty close community, and now we’re able to build that by communicating with each other. Ahh… Internet… What would we do without you?

I guess there have been a lot of different random things happening lately, and I haven’t written anything about them. Quite honestly I haven’t been feeling all that well. I used to never get sick. I think I went 12 years without getting anything more than a sneeze. But recently I seem to be getting whatever cold or flu happens to be floating around. I need to figure out what I’m doing differently. For the last week or so I’ve had this cold that’s sapped my energy, yet there’s a lot of work to be done. It’s not a good combination. Anyway, I seem to be getting back onto my feet again. I am optimistic I’ll feel more normal this week.

Briefly:

• I participated in the Improv Jam at the Staircase last weekend. I was cast at the last minute, and the show turned out to be a lot of fun. It was great to be on stage again, especially since our weekly Munchausen shows in Toronto were cancelled.
• I had some pieces accepted into the art rental and sales area of the Art Gallery of Hamilton. They do jurying once a month I think, and they picked four of my photos in this latest round.
• I have started going to weekly rehearsals of Jackrabbit Slim. The first one was last Saturday. It’s fun to play with these guys again. It’s been a while.
• I used Google Earth to locate all of the places where I took all of my published travel photos. It brought back a lot of great memories just looking at the satellite imagery of those locations. I have an urge to travel again. Ok. I admit that I never lost that urge in the first place. Anyway, install Google Earth and then load up this link to have a little tour of the places I took pictures.
• I’m going to California again at some point in December. My uncle is flying me there as a treat to repay me for work I’ve done on his website. We’re going to go skiing in Mammoth. Dad is going to come too. It should be a fun family getaway.
• Although I really like the Raw Shooter Essentials works, the image quality is a bit disappointing. My photos use high saturation and high contrast, and RSE seems to introduce a lot of noise into this type of image. If you don’t process your images the same way I do, you will probably be fine, but I found it wasn’t worth the extra garbage noise, particularly in the blue areas. Hopefully the new Pro version works better, but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet.
• You might notice you have to type in the letters in the “security graphic” thing to make a comment on this blog now. Sorry about that. It’s case sensitive (Diny). I was getting a ridiculous number of spam comments on this blog about online gambling and stuff. The new security graphic thing has stopped it cold. Security Graphic: 1, Spam: 0.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Capture One DSLR for processing camera RAW files, but there are a couple things missing from it, and some features that it used to have that have disappeared in newer versions. I had tried Pixmantec’s RAW Shooter Essentials when it first came out, and found that I just didn’t like the feel of it. However, I decided to give RSE a more thorough tryout to see what it could offer me.

The one thing I noticed right away is that RSE feels fast. It is constantly updating the preview of your image as you make changes, even while you move your mouse up and down a menu. It doesn’t wait for you to let go of the mouse before updating the preview. This is a very nice feature because you don’t have to keep clicking over and over to see what a change is going to do to your image.

The screen layout of RSE is very flexible too. Unlike C1, all image adjustments to exposure and white balance can be made on a single “Task Panel” on the right. C1 splits these jobs up into several different tabs on the right side, so it can be cumbersome flipping between them. RSE’s Task Panel has sliders for adjusting white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, tint, sharpness, detail extraction, and noise suppression. The RGB histogram is always visible and updated in real time at the bottom of the panel. The sliders are more flexible than C1 as well. There are separate highlight and shadow contrast settings, which give a very fine level of control to the finished image, especially in highly contrasty photos like mine. You can make similar highlight contrast adjustments with curves in C1, but it doesn’t seem as intuitive or controllable.

RSE also has the option of moving the thumbnails to the left, right, top or bottom of the screen. You can also pull a slider to change the size of the thumbnails, or turn them off entirely, which allows you to easily control how much space they take up. You can sort the thumbnails into three different groups. This is similar to C1’s image tagging function, but is quicker and more flexible since there are three groups instead of just one. RSE also remembers which images have been recently processed. C1 forgets this as soon as you view a different folder. This is frustrating if you process images over a period of several days.

The menus at the top of the screen are a bit odd in RSE. They’re represented by icons instead of words. This is not bad, but I prefer to at least have the option of changing the icons to words, so I don’t have to remember which icon means what.

RSE always shows EXIF data, like ISO, focal length, shutter speed and aperture at the bottom of the screen. C1 used to always show this information, but now you have to hold the mouse over a thumbnail to see that info in a popup. It doesn’t make any sense to me to hide this kind of critical information from a photographer, but it has been a source of frustration to me ever since they made the change. RSE seems to lose the EXIF data when converting to JPG. This is a minor annoyance, but one that I hope is corrected in a future version.

Checking focus is easier in RSE than in C1. In C1, there is a separate tab on the right, and you have to click on the image to see a tiny window that shows a preview 100% crop for checking focus. In RSE, you can pull a slider to instantly zoom the preview up to 400% for focus checking. Checking for pixel clipping (zero-data pixels either white from overexposure or black from underexposure) is just a matter of pressing the ctrl-key. It lights up dark pixels in blue, and light pixels in red.

Copying adjustments from one image to a large number of them works similarly to C1. This functionality is what kept me from switching to Adobe Camera RAW. Copying settings in ACR to multiple images was cumbersome. In RSE, you just need to select the source image, then shift-click to select the destination images. You can then apply the adjustments from the source to the destination.

I think RSE is a real force to be reckoned with. Pixmantec has included a lot of features that should be in C1 Pro, as well as having made workflow smoother and more logical. I’m not sure that I’ll immediately switch over to RSE for all of my processing, but the idea is growing on me. Oh, and did I mention, it’s free? Check it out.

People are so good to me. I’m lucky to have great friends. Case in point: Dad is away with Sherry in China, leaving me with a void in my Thanksgiving weekend schedule where a family dinner might otherwise sit. No big deal to me. However, Danie was kind enough to offer a vegan Thanksgiving dinner to me on Sunday night at her mother’s place. It was yummy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more vegetables on one table. I particularly enjoyed the kale. There was tofurkey, which is more or less unlike turkey, formed into a ball, and filled with stuffing. It’s better than it sounds. I even liked the brussel sprouts, which I had declared unfit for consumption in 1986.

Today was a statutory holiday, but as usual, I didn’t know that last week, so I booked myself an appointment for this morning with a client. Fortunately, he didn’t know it was a statutory holiday either. Neither one of us will become a labour lawyer I guess. Anyway, I did the job, and it was easy.

Tonight, Alisha felt sorry for me not having Thanksgiving dinner too. She brought me a plate of turkey, ham, potatoes, carrots and peas, and a slice of pumpkin pie. Currently I’m eating the turkey and eagerly awaiting the sedative effects of the triptophan sp?) in it to kick in. Last night I learned that triptophan can also prevent dogs from having seizures, so I feel completely protected from canine epilepsy. I may encourage Dad to go away next Thanksgiving too. This could be a really nice tradition.

Out of pure shame, I must write a blog entry about the various events of the past few weeks. There’s nothing terribly significant, but there is stuff that I’ve meant to write about and didn’t.

Movie: The Exorcism of Emily Rose

I found it very scary. Of course, my threshhold for scary movies isn’t exactly high, but there was genuine tenseness and overall creepiness all throughout it. Laura Linney did a phenominal job playing Emily Rose. The movie didn’t rely on a lot of special effects for its shock scenes, so Laura’s performance was critical. She had me convinced that she was possessed. Tom Wilkinson as the priest came across as being caring, honest and likeable, which was also critical to the success of the film. You wanted to believe him, which makes it easier to set aside skepticism. Knowing that it was based on a true story, but not knowing the details of the true story made it even more frightening. I did some research on the subject after coming home from the movie, mainly to help me sleep better. I’m convinced that in the real case, there was no possession. It was just a case of plain old religious nutbar-ism.

Movie: A History of Violence

I really enjoyed this one. It was about a small town man whose coffee shop is robbed by a couple of thugs. He becomes a hero by saving the lives of the people in the coffee shop by killing the robbers. However, his heroism comes at the cost of attracting attention to himself that he doesn’t want, and the rest of the movie is spent discovering who he really is.

I think what struck me most about this film was its economy of storytelling. By that I mean that there was no hesitation in the movement of the plot. It sprang immediately into violence, sex, emotion, action whenever was necessary, and did it so suddenly that the pace itself was often what was most shocking. So, it was economical. A lot happened in very little time, and we are able to see massive transformation in the characters and relationships.

I particularly enjoyed the performances of the bad guys in this movie. Both Ed Harris and William Hurt were terrifyingly real gangsters. They both managed to convey viciousness and twistedness in a very quiet and believable way that made them seem even more dangerous. The performance of those two actors was something really delicious to savour.

Viggo Mortensen played his character very stoically, almost coldly, which was perfect for the role. I found Maria Bello’s performance as his wife to be rather abrupt at times, especially in anger or anguish. I wasn’t always convinced by her emotional outbursts. Ashton Holmes played the son. He hasn’t got a lot of experience under his belt, but he was brilliant. I think he’ll go far.

Fitness update

I love the exercise ball and the chinup bar. I’m using them both daily. I use the ball mainly to stretch my back, and I sit on it sometimes to use the computer. The chinup bar is excellent though. When I first started last week, I was able to do about 3 before feeling tired. Only a few days later I’m able to do 5 or 6 easily. My goal is to get to 10 by next week.

Improv

It’s good to be playing again. We’ve been doing shows at Clinton’s Tavern in Toronto. So far I’ve had two shows with my new Harold team Plastic Jesus. I haven’t played with many of these people before, and we haven’t had a chance to rehearse together yet, but there was already a big improvement between our first show a couple of weeks ago and our second one tonight. I think we have a lot of potential once we get more comfortable with each other.

Tonight’s show was a lot of fun. Our organic opening was based on the suggestion “potato” and turned out to be a lot of beatboxing with different restaurant and food preparation sounds. The set was very playful. I enjoyed playing a diplomat from the Embassy of Cool, who drove a Camero and was surrounded by a “Cam-Aura.” Next Sunday I’m at Clinton’s again with Jackrabbit Slim.

Photography

I’m in a bit of a phase of shooting inanimate objects. In the past couple of weeks I’ve had to shoot a lot of pairs of eyeglass frames (about 150), more painted glassware from Patti Overgaard, and some leather photo albums. Product photography isn’t always the most exciting thing in the world. I much prefer shooting people. However, it’s not difficult, and it’s sometimes fun to come up with clever ways to light and present these ordinary objects.

Live Music: OK Go

I went with Hesi to see them on Friday night. They’re part of the Edge’s “Next Big Thing” series of concerts. It was fun to see this band in a small venue like El Mocambo, which has a very illustrious history. The Rolling Stones recorded a few songs there at the height of their popularity. Anyway, OK Go didn’t draw too many people: about 300 fewer than the Rolling Stones did in this venue that holds 350. It was a shame since the music was a lot of fun and the band was energetic and entertaining. The best part of the night was the live performance of their trademark dance, which you can see here.