Fahrenheit 451 or What Do I Do With These Things You Call “Books?”

 Education, Technology  Comments Off on Fahrenheit 451 or What Do I Do With These Things You Call “Books?”
Jul 312013
 

Lately I have been getting rid of books I don’t need. So far, I have donated about 8 boxes full to the local thrift shop. I set aside 2 boxes more for my friend’s son, who likes science fiction books.

My main targets for removal are old law books, old computer books, and out-of-copyright literary works. The law/computer books just aren’t current anymore, so other than as decorations or ballast, they don’t have much value. I’m hoping maybe decorators can use the law books, or someone might want the computer books for ballast.

The literary works I’m trying to give to people who can use them, but even that is difficult. With Project Gutenberg, I can download Mark Twain’s books whenever I feel like it, so having a paper copy doesn’t make any sense. But I know someone out there might want one. Someone like my mom, who looks at computers the same way you or I might look at a live snake.

I like books. They’re comforting. But I have too many, so the ones that don’t make the cut are going out the door.

O’Reilly has a good program going on. Register your O’Reilly books with the site, and you can get DRM-free e-book versions for $5 each. I spent a good two hours registering books, and I’ll probably start buying the e-book versions soon. I’ll probably get rid of some of the older paper copies either way. They just take up too much space.

Progress Report

 Art, Japanese Language, Music, News, Photography, Technology  Comments Off on Progress Report
Jul 252013
 

So I start a lot of projects on this blog, and some get finished, some don’t. I use David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” approach to constantly examine what I want to do vs. what I can do. GTD is a lifesaver in that regard. It helps keep me focused when sometimes it feels like I’m being torn apart by ducks.

So here are some short updates on projects I’ve been wanting to work on/finish.

The Grammar Songs

I discovered that in order to make it work, I need to improve both my Japanese and my music production skills. I studied music from 4th grade all the way through college, so I know a lot about performing music, but I don’t know as much as I should about composing and producing it, which are two entirely different skill sets.

I’ve been using Coursera to work on the production side, and now I need to work more on the composition side. And when it comes to writing lyrics, that’s the result of daily writing exercises.

My Japanese is pretty good, but it’s not quite at that level yet, so I’m working on it. Same goes for melodies. I’m looking for a way to get more music theory under my belt.

Japanese Studies

Those are going pretty well. JOI makes it easy to load up on classes for grammar, conversation, and vocabulary when I need to, and they meet my level, which is a godsend. Being an advanced student in a room full of beginners can be helpful sometimes, but it’s hard to make progress that way. So I’m glad JOI has classes that meet my needs. That’s going well so far.

Also, because of work, I work with Japanese people on a pretty regular basis. The only downside is that since we’re in the US, we mostly speak English and follow US business customs. Not all the time, but a lot of it. Those times when I need to slip into Japanese Mode it comes in really handy.

3D and 2D Art

Well… that had to get put on the “I’ll do it after the JLPT” pile. There’s just too much going on right now, and too many projects require my attention, so I find it’s best to whittle it down to what I can handle. I still want to get into it, but I need to find the right time/place to do it.

I sketch whenever I can. I’m not very good at it, but it’s relaxing, and it’s fun. It also helps me with my photography, and my eye for how I want to compose photos.

Where ARE the Photos?

That’s another thing that’s being put on the shelf for now. I have a giant pile of photos to edit, and just no time to do it. Editing requires big chunks of time for me, and unless I’m getting paid to do it, I just do it when I can. I’m going through the older stuff and gradually adding it, though. I don’t know of a good way to bump old posts up to the top of the site just because they have new material. Maybe I’ll create a new tag?

Calligraphy/Shodo

Well, ever since my class in Raleigh ended, I’ve been going to my usual calligraphy classes. Before the classes in Raleigh ended, though, I spent some time studying Edo-moji, and that was a lot of fun. Now I’m trying to decide what to do next in calligraphy/shodo.

Other Site Stuff

I recently moved the site over to Suffusion, and I like it as far as CMS/frameworks go. I can’t really call it a template, because it’s more like a framework you have to set up and tweak yourself to get it to really sing. My current design is a little Spartan, but I’m from the Jakob Nielsen school of web design. It needs to be easy to read, and accessible first above everything.

Learning Lightroom 5 with George

 Photography, Technology  Comments Off on Learning Lightroom 5 with George
Jul 182013
 

I’m getting the hang of Lightroom 5 now thanks to George Jardine’s excellent new video series on mastering Lightroom. It’s really worth checking out if you want to get the most out of your photos, or if you’re like me, and stare at a so-so photo for 10 minutes, trying to figure out how to tease out the little bits that will make it better.

Sometimes a photo just isn’t salvageable, and that’s a shame. But George’s videos bring more photos into range of “fixable” for me.

One of the tools he really focuses on is the tone curve, more so than the other exposure controls in Lightroom 5. The nice thing about the Tone Curve is that it will “unbunch” bunched-up tones, bringing out the contrast. It does so without smushing up other tones as much as the sliders do. At least that’s my experience so far. I need more practice with the tone curve to make it work really well, though.

I picked up his Library videos a while back, and those were really useful, too. I have all of my photos cataloged and stored in folders where I can find everything fairly quickly, all on a small portable USB-3 hard drive I move from computer to computer. That way I don’t have to worry about messing up my catalog file. I just back that up to a removable HDD on a regular basis.

I recommend all of his Lightroom videos, they’re worth the money and very informative.

The money you’ll save on never buying presets again will more than cover the cost. Really, why would anyone use presets? No two photos are alike, so why would you treat all of your photos as if they’re all the same? I don’t understand the thinking.

My main problem now is plowing through the 10,000+ photos in my library backlog. I love to shoot photos, but edit them? Not so much. Picking just a few is always so agonizing. I love them all, even the really bad ones.

Fireworks!

 Photography  Comments Off on Fireworks!
Jul 042013
 

Last year I tried to take photos of the fireworks in Chapel Hill, and was met with kind of “meh” results. This year I met up with my SO and her mom, and we went to the stadium again for more small-scale fireworks, and I tried to get some photos that were better than last year’s.

I probably should have brought my new tripod with me, but I was worried about it causing a problem at security. (It wouldn’t have. I was over-cautious.) Next year I’ll have to use a tripod, or a monopod.

The photos were okay, but nothing really earth-shattering. Some were artistic, in the way blurry photos can be sometimes.

The fireworks were fun, if a bit loud. They were exploding right on top of us, because they were launched right inside the football stadium.

The method I used was to put the camera on BULB, set it to F/13 or so, 100 ISO, then just open it up when the fireworks go up, and let it go after a second or two. A cable release works best here to avoid camera shake. The Nex has a wireless cable release, but it’s kind of annoying to use. So I wound up using my 60D.

I’m not sure how I feel about that now in retrospect.

I think the best combo would be the Nex with the Leica 21, set to F13 or F16, a tripod, and cross my fingers a bit.

I’ll have to give it a shot next year.

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