Naquada

Now why does this seem so relevant today ?

Muggy has this great shot on his Flickr site, and I just love it…

Completely and utterly confusing!!!

I’m listening to the new Corinne Bailey Rae album that arrived yesterday morning as I sit on the 7:12 from Reading to Waterloo, lifes pretty good right now. I think I’m starting to finally see that, and understand the things I have around me, that are just worth more that I can put into words.

I’ve come to realise that perspective on life sometimes needs to be turned on its head to really see the complete, and correct picture. That the small things are sometimes the most important and biggest things.

I’m seeing and experiencing things that I haven’t experienced for almost five or six years, and as I have said in previous posts, I’m probably surrounded now by more friends than I’ve ever been before in my life, these are friends I think that are more genuine and honest about their intentions than previously. We all learn lessons from whats past, and I guess we should always be grateful for the slight bumps in the road of life that make the other parts of the journey better.

There have been serious bumps on my road over the last 33 years, some more major than others, and some that still hurt intensely, constant reminders of things that have passed, Deepak Chopra once said Every decision I make is a choice between a grievance and a miracle, I relinquish all regrets, grievances and resentments and choose the miracle. I guess the thought for the day is simpley just that..

Not surprisingly at all that wonderful video iPod picture that has been circulating for the last few days has turned out to be a complete and total fake (mores the pity, but it did look a bit promising!!).

The person with the sharp photoshop skills has kindly released a video documenting how the entire project was pulled off. Along with some funky music, and some quick neat Photoshop moves, the video makes it clear that this particular video iPod isn’t anything more than a normal 5G iPod photographed twice at 180 degree rotations and touched up a bit.

Although there was a lot of is it? isn’t it? flying around, I think everyone kinda knew that it looked just too nice to be real.

A shame really but.. So what will tomorrow bring!?

I’m in London all day tomorrow so I might drop by the Apple store on the way home if there’s any good news during the day…

thanks Jim!!

Apple has planned a special event for February 28, according to several reports. The invitation-only event will be used to introduce new products and will take place at 10:00 a.m. PT at Apple Town Hall on its Cupertino Campus.

The rumours seem to be flying about point to the fact that Apple are releasing the Video iPod (the current one being a ‘taster’). The possible new Video iPod is even more possible given that Apple have filed a number of patents recently on touch screen technology, Theres a few good ‘leaked’ photos flying round that point to the fact that the new iPod video may have a full video screen and a ‘virtual’ touchwheel.

Guess we’ll all find out on Tuesday..

So I recently discovered something pretty cool, as well as finally working out how to put my 350D into bulb exposure!! I’ve found the whole new world of HDR or High Dynamic Range Photography.

Photographs in extreme lighting are often a compromise, you either get the highlights overexposed, or the shadows underexposed. So wouldn’t it be nice if you could take photos that are nearer to what the eye actually sees than what the cameras photosensor sees ?

Unlike the digital world, the Dynamic Range of real-world scenes can be quite high — ratios of 100,000:1 are common in the natural world. Something that previously digital cameras just cannot capture.

By taking multiple photos with varying exposures, normally via a continuous shot mode with Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB), you can use software to combine them into a HDR format picture. A HDR image stores pixel values that span the whole tonal range of real-world scenes. Unfortunately few, in fact no normal monitors or printers can display this, so the image needs to be tone mapped down to something that a normal monitor or printer can use. The resulting photo, has all the exposure of the combined images, and it as close as you can get to what your eye might have seen.

The colours, and range of light in the photo is much better than a normal single exposure photo. The pictures coming out of using this technique are pretty stunning. I found that using PhotoMatrix Pro on the Mac gives pretty good results, and is currently what I’ve using to experiment with at home.

The Flickr HDR pool shows some amazing shots using PhotoMartix and even Photoshop CS2, which has the ability to create HDR photos built in (although Photomatix does seem to do a better job). I’m looking forwarrd to Sunday, as I’m heading out to try and get some proper HDR images that should be more interesting that stuff around the house shots that I’m currently playing with..

So I’ve started to go fully Digital. I’ve liked the idea of DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) for a long time, and was shamed into the fact that my sister had a DAB radio, and I didn’t!!

I decided to test out the whole DAB experience with the Pure Chronos, a DAB Digital Clock Radio from Pure Digital. I’m actually really impressed, on the sound side, the quality it much better than what I had before, I never managed to get my old clock radio to hold any station without sounding awful, crackly, hissing or just losing it completely. With the DAB it picked up all the stations perfectly, and gets 100% signal strength, the general sound just also sound much fuller and better (obviously from being a digital signal).

I’ve also found a few stations that weren’t available to me before, like Chill, similar in style to things like overexposure.fm but with a leaning to more mainstream chill.

On the technical side, I like the idea that the Chronos has four alarms. Each settable for weekdays, weekends, daily or once. The once setting allowing you to set an alarm for a certain date and time in the future. So this means I can now keep my early morning work days separate from my weekend lay ins..

Also, since the DAB signal contains the date and time, no more setting the clock to be right after power-cuts or summer/winter swap overs. The only downside, and I say this is a minor point; the unit only displays nasty 24 hour format time, I’m a purist, not in the military, and like my times to be am or pm.. as yet I’ve not found a way to get it into that format..

So back in June last year, I went to see Derren Brown at the Cambridge Theatre in London, Although its the same show as last year, I’m off again to see him at the Hexagon in Reading on the 18th April.

I’m going in a group of six people, most I believe haven’t seen Derren before, so that should be quite amusing. I’m actually going from the investigation point of view, there are a few things I’d like to double check on the performances and methods. That and the show is very very entertaining!!

I’ve really been getting back into this area of magic again, well, magic in general to be honest. I’ve had a few years break from doing it, but now started to find the time, and motivation to get myself back into it again, and I’m really loving it.

I managed to get hold of an old Derren Brown lecture from about 1998 at the Thistle Hotel in Euston, London. Apart from looking like he should have been in some 70’s porn film (what looks like a velvet jacket, big hair and goatee), the lecture is very good. Not every is explained though, which is a little bit of a pity, but there are some little gems in there on the psychology side of the magic.

I’ve got Derrens’ Pure Effect book, originally made up from some lecture notes he did, generally again a great book, unfortunately the original lecture notes included two tricks currently in Derrens’ repertoire.

One was a trick I believe was called ‘Lift’, where a spectator is made to lift their arm in time with someone standing behind them. The other I think was called ‘Reminiscence’ or ‘Recollection’; a rather fantastic sounding routine in which a spectator replays a memory in their mind and you describe it in great detail, which I think is on the lecture I have, but with no explanation.

Today I’m off to John Lewis in Reading to get some more supplies for my mind reading exercises (no really, they sell all the bits you need!!)

I’ve just managed to update my blog to show my currently (and recently) played track as shown from AudioScrobbler (or Last.FM).

I’ve always had the link to my Last.FM statistics page on the right under the Listening section, but now, in a kinda geeky way you can see what I’m listening or have listened to directly from here.

I’ve always like AudioScrobbler and Last.FM for the ability to understand what I’ve listened to, and what other stuff I might want to listen to, based on my music listening patterns. I’ve actually discovered quite a few new albums from its recommendations..

Anything I listen to at home gets updated in the Last.FM database in close to realtime, and anything I listen to on my iPod gets updated as soon as the iPod syncs up.

The MT scripts came from Cal Henderson (I think!!) and are under the creative commons licence.

I’ve long been a fan of both Eugene Burger and Jeff McBride, and now finally after what seems like almost a lifetime, I’m going to be going to see both, live in Cornwall at the end of March..

I remember one of the first television magic shows I watched was Jeff’s now famous mask act. I remember just how amazed and captivated I was watching him perform. The speed of the changes, the almost infinite number of masks he seemed to swap, change and produce from nowhere, the pure polished look and feel of his performance had me completely spellbound.

Eugene Burger is, in my opinion just a god like figure in the world of magic, his exceptional presence captures and amazes even the most hardened magicians. They wait with baited breath and anticipation round tables, just waiting for his to say.. I want you to pick a card.. Eugene’s complete and utter understanding of the psychology and philosophy of the magic is second to none.

His book, Magic and Meaning is a wonderful trip through the history and meaning of magic in human life, a provocative work of essays and musings between him and Robert E. Neale. Covering what magic really is, and what it means, and how it sits in both historic, and modern life. All this has given him the title of of the most influential magicians of the 20th century.

Along with Jeff Mcbride, Eugene Burger set up, and is still the dean of the McBride Magic and Mystery School; the successor to their Mystery School, an event I wished I’d attended before it ended. The Mystery School ran for 9 years at a retreat in the forest, it was the spiritual journey for many magicians, nothing was right or wrong, it was there for all magic to be shared, viewed, enjoyed and discussed..

I am so very very excited to be able to finally see both Jeff and Eugene live in Falmouth, Cornwall on their only UK date in this world tour (tickets are available through Kernow Magic).. and I’ve so very grateful to the person that knew just how much this meant to me!!!

The Anagram London Underground Map re-labels all of London’s tube-stations with anagrams of their names.

Famous stations swap round as Goodge Street becomes ‘Edge Grottoes’, Old Street takes on the guise of ‘Eldest Rot’, Oxford Circus is renamed ‘Crux for Disco’ and Paddington becomes ‘Apt Nodding’.

Personally I also like ‘Bowel Mind’, ‘Flesh Studio’ and ‘Queasy Horn’…

Not forgetting the instantly unforgettable ‘Queerer Elastics’..

It certainly it puts a much better, and more enlightening view on those dull trips into London..

Or maybe I’m just so stressed today it appealed to my sense of humour this morning when I was sent the link?