Our Prime Minister

Being set up at the company townhouse for a couple of weeks is great, I have a place to sleep that's close to work and can save money by not eating at restaurants all the time. On the flip side, there's no tv at all and no internet connection. I feel shut out of the world.

It's playoff hockey time and I have to go to a bar to watch some of the games. I suppose I can listen to the games on the radio, but I'd rather watch them.

I'm missing a lot of the news as well. The issues surrounding the government's green plan seem to be picking up, news about the war in Afghanistan, and other interesting tid bits of news.

One issue is Steven Harper's image adviser...read about it here and here.

I don't find it surprising that he needs an image adviser. I don't find it surprising that he doesn't have much of a fashion sense either. I am surprised that he let this issue be a source of contention and the stories about how defensive he gets when asked about it seem weird and juvenile. I couldn't find a news link for it, but I saw the same weirdness his first day in office when he had his entourage drive around the parliament buildings twice just to avoid a single cbc video journalist.

The joys of moving

It's a pain. I haven't moved in about 3 years. Luckily, apart from a couple pieces of furniture, most of my stuff is still packed from when I moved home from an apartment in Toronto. The worst part about moving is seeing all the garbage I managed to accumulate and getting rid of it. I can move in small batches over the course of a few weekends though. I'll just need to rent a truck to move the bigger furniture pieces.

I did manage to find an apartment fairly quickly. It has easy access to both the Don Valley Parkway and the Toronto subway train system. The amenities are pretty good...there's a mall right across the street and a grocery store nearby. I just have to find the closest machine for my bank.

The main thing is that I can still abide by my rule of having a 20 minute maximum commute to work and still have easy access to the downtown area without having to drive.

More photo editing

I've been exploring different techniques in GIMP and trying different things to make some of my pictures a little more interesting. I'm especially interested in making b&w pics. Some pictures just seem that they would look better in monochrome...especially one of people.

On top of using the techniques I've posted about before, I've been trying square format crops as well and seeing how it changes the feel and look of the picture.

Here's one example:



The original looks ok...nothing spectactular. It could use a little increase in the colour saturation. After editing though...



...there's a whole new look and feel to it. The cow now looks stockier and much more engaging. The picture also has an 'old' feel to it...

I could try some sepia toning too, but I don't think it will affect the picture much.

James Nachtwey

I first heard about James Nachtwey when CBC aired a documentary called "The War Photographer" about a year ago. I found his job really interesting, albeit a little dangerous.

I recently picked up a Dec 2006 issue of National Geographic and some an article about war medicine in Iraq with his pictures. Have a look here. You can also see more of his work here. Really powerful stuff.

It's amazing how he or any other photographers can work in some of those insane situations. To produce some stunning work while bieng in the middle of a disaster zone is mind boggling to me. You have to admire their mental toughness and focus...and the dedication to their work.

craygc flickr photostream

I was digging around the web yesterday researching flatbed scanner quality for scanning film when I came across craygc's flickr photostream. He's got some really neat stuff in there.

Hiatus is over

I finally got a job...I'll be joining a couple of my friends at a place called Multimatic in Markham, Ontario.

I'll be working in the design department designing hinges for cars...doesn't sound too exciting, but there's a lot involved in designing door/trunk/hood hinges. It should be a really good learning experience for me...I'll be working with other engineers and being supervised by more experience engineers. It's a really good change from where I was working before I decided to go on my career break.

It's all happening pretty quick...I start on Monday on training for Catia for week and then get at 'er the following Monday.

I'll be busy hunting for an apartment or some sort of accomodation. I had a quick look and the prices seem ridiculous for some of the places I see. I wasn't a big fan of living in the big metropolis before, but I didn't exactly live in the best neighbourhood either. I'll have to find a balance between rent and location and hopefully find a place that'll be a good value.

The photography stuff will obviously be on hold for a little while...

Around Fort Erie

I had a few developed B&W rolls lying around of pictures of around Fort Erie. I decided to scan some of them in and try touching them up through GIMP.

I basically played with the levels and tried to increase/decrease contrasting. I also tried a few things with masking techniques. Here are a few...

One of the statues at the entrance of the actual fort:


The Peace Bridge at night:


NCC...A few of my friends here went to high school there. We used to play basketball their gym:


This place is now closed...but the sign is still there:


Mather Arch...


Monochrome photography is a challenge. Colour helps a lot in terms of composing a picture, but when you're shooting black and white colour isn't much of a factor. You have to see the scene in terms of shades, contrast, and intensity. I have two bulk rolls of Kodak Tri-X to go through. That's plenty of film and I should improve over the long run. A quality film scanner is at the top of my shopping list though...trying to compensate for poor scans using photoshop techniques is a pain.

Photo Retouching

I've been going through my pictures trying to pick out the best one for organizing some kind of album...one that I could print out or post on the web...or both. I kept looking at some pictures and thinking that their compositions were great, but they lack some pop.

So I did a little digging around for GIMP tutorials and saw a couple useful ones on Gimparoo: basic photo retouching and contrast masking.

The results are pretty good. The techniques don't work with all pictures...for some, the original looks better than the modified one. For others though, the originals look flat in comparison. Overall, the tutorials were very useful and really improved the look of some pictures. Here are a couple of examples:

Original:



Retouched:




Original:




Retouched:




In both cases, the retouching has a vast improvement on the picture. The colours pop more in both and they seem a little more interesting. Some of the background detail sticks out a little more.

I don't want to go through and retouch 3500 pictures, but I will retouch the ones I pick for the albums.

British Navy personnel held in Iran: FInal Note

After watching the press conference and hearing what the British Navy personnel held in Iran had to say, it's pretty sad to hear what they went through. The solitary confinement and not knowing if your crew mates are still there or not must have been pretty tough.

At they same time, I can't help thinking about the pictures of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what the American soldiers did to those Iraqi prisoners.

Neither scenario seems humane at all...very cruel. I can't grasp how someone can treat another person like that. History is filled with stories like these though...and there will be many more stories about people being imprisoned and maltreated. It's all part of a bigger chess game...

Nikon Small World

Just ran across the Nikon Small World gallery. It seems like some labratory science people got creative with some cool lighting.

The pictures are cool to browse through...some of them are really neat. I wonder if you can do the same thing at home with a microscope rig...obviously, you'd need some interesting subjects too.

British Navy people released

CBC news article here. It seems the Iranians got what they wanted and agreed to release the captured British Navy people...with the usual rhetoric as well.

From the picture in the article, it looks like the boys got some brand new Iranian suits. It's also evidence that Iran has a ways to go in terms of equality for women. The lone woman in the group got some pretty shabby clothes.

The truth of what really happened here will never be know to the general public, but, to me anyways, it looks like Iran played this smart and got the better of the British and the Americans.

As far as repercussions go, I don't think much will happen here. Already mired in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't think the British or American public has the appetite for another war...I don't think their governments will have enough money for a war with Iran anyways.

For a better analysis of the subject, read the PINR report here.

British Navy people held in Iran

If you're watching the news and puzzled by the whole issue of British Navy people arrested by Iran, there a side of the story that's not so readily available on the mainstream news channels.

If you're of the belief that Iran is run by a bunch of crazy radical muslims who hate everything not muslim, then the news makes total sense to you...the Iranians are crazy and the west should invade their country asap and get rid of them.

However, if you understand that Iran isn't run by a bunch of crazy people...at least not any more crazy than the people running the US...and that an unprovoked action by Iran against the US is incredibly risky, then a less risky, albeit seemingly uprovoked, action against a more level headed ally of the US seems like a calculated move. There must be a good reason for why Iran took the British Navy people.

Here's one explanation that I haven't seen on the tv news over the last couple of weeks. There are other news stories about Iranian diplomats being arrested/abducted/kidnapped...read about one here and here.

An Iranian diplomat was released today in Iraq...news releases are not very detailed but you can see them here and here.

Don't be surprised if more Iranian diplomats are released and the British people are released over the next couple of weeks.

There's no doubt that Iran has operatives, or 'diplomats', working in Iran...they'd be stupid not to have anyone there. It seems that this whole standoff is about getting those people back. The Iranians seem pretty shrewd here. Abducting US forces would have been difficult practically and, politically, would have provoked a lot more rhetoric about being a threat to the skittish American public. Abducting British forces avoids a potential military conflict and deals with Blair, a British politician already getting a lot of heat from the British public about being in a military conflict.

Using the British to get the US to release the Iranian people rather than trying to deal with the people who are itching to invade Iran doesn't seem so crazy.