Chasing the wind

How time flies

2012-01-20T17:58:00.000Z

Checking out some piano sample libraries at Imperfect Samples, it seems like the downloads are in the range of gigabytes. Like..... more than a single layer dvd! (Ok, so I'm outdated but whatever)

It just brings me back to the old days with my 28.8k modem, when a game *patch* for like mechwarrior 2 or some microprose game, which was like perhaps a megabyte plus took about a quarter hour to download. A megabyte won't take more than a few seconds with today's dsl speeds.

Similarly - RAM. I remember the day I earned enough moola to afford the 8MB ram upgrade so that I could actually play mechwarrior 2 - I'd purchased the game only to realize 4mb of ram was insufficient >.> And look at us now. I have 4gbs on my laptop at home, and at work we get to use machines with insane (to me) ram limits.

How time flies, and technological progression marches on. Now if only we can develop not only technologically, but *socially*, as a species.

Wacom Bamboo, 3rd Generation

2012-01-17T22:47:00.002Z

Time really flies - has it been almost 2 years since I began my journey into learning more about sketching? Even though I only spend about a quarter of an hour a day - as well as a weekly trip for life drawing sessions (this has stopped due to time constraints) - I've seen well warranted improvements over the hundreds of hours spent.

On a whim about two weeks ago, I decided I want to dip a little into digital painting. A tablet makes sense here, and a Wacom tablet is in order then, but the prices of intuos was a major turn off - £250 for the M sized tablets I see littered around the desks of artists at work?

Ouch inducing for a newb! The alternative choice is Wacom's entry level tablets, the Bamboo series, that clocks in at £49. The Bamboo Pen Tablet (CTL-470) is the cheapest of the bunch, and features just a pressure sensitive surface with no frills. It does come with a license for ArtRage 2.6 though.

In use, I can't say it's better than an Intuos or not since I've never really used an Intuos, but it compares well, or maybe better to the Graphire I used to use. One thing I've noticed, is that after learning how to sketch on a pencil, I had a far easier time with the Bamboo, versus back in the day when I could *not* draw - the graphire was a pain to use.

In practice, the Bamboo is well built, and while the feel is far from that of the Intuos (£49 vs £150 for the similar sized Intuos S) and lacks buttons, for the hobbyist it is great. One minor gripe I have is that it uses one of the odd micro usb connectors, different from the types we connect mp3 players and portable drives with - another cable to keep track of.

On OSX, it plugs in and works out of the box. The installation CD leads to a web download of some apps as well as the Bamboo driver. So far, I'm still figuring out how to paint, with ArtRage and Pixelmator. The later, is to me, a pseudo photoshop for twenty quid. Imports .abr brushes, and the menus, panels and layers just work for me.

The issue I found here was the response of the pen did not work for me out of the box - and caused me quite a bit of frustration as I messed about with the pressure settings in Pixelmator to get it to work. It ended up to be a setting in the OSX's Bamboo Control Panel for the pen's stiffness - a stiffer setting worked far better for me.

Tried it on my Ubuntu box, but gave up after a quarter of an hour fiddling with drivers and all. I have much better things to do than figure out software - like harmony and all that jazz. If only OSX didn't have such a crappy interface - I really, really dislike the Finder in Snow Leopard, and the way resizing windows works etc just plain sucks. It's too bad, since I really enjoy how applications and stuff just works. Much prefer to spend my time doing/learning stuff than compiling drivers, seriously. That's me getting old and whiny.

So, to wrap this up, I think for the price the Bamboo is a great buy, and perhaps down the road in a few years, I may upgrade to an Intuos.

Corel AfterShot Pro.... what?!

2012-01-11T22:59:00.000Z

Last week, Bibble Labs announced that they have been bought over my Corel. I think I snorted out some of the tea I was drinking. Like... what. the. hell?!

Apart from OS upgrades and reinstalls, RAW converter changes annoy me. Alot. Between bibble 4 and 5, they'd made a change to their rendering engine, and whilst it was for the better, I need to re-learn all the tools again.

So what about AfterShot? For the moment, I've got the trial version - and us Bibble 5 users get to purchase the full version for £14, so it's quite a good deal. Well it had better be a good deal since Bibble is now sold to Corel for goodness sake.

Initial tests went well. Loaded it up, set my icc profile, reset, and tested on some D300 and LX5 files.

Out of the box, AfterShot IS bibble, all the familiar commands are there, and on my Linux box, it actually seems to run smoother, and the UI seems to work better. Props to the team there. Noise Ninja seems to be the full version, but it could also be a system thing since I'd purchased the full version years ago.

In general, the controls I use mainly in B5 have moved over seamlessly to AfterShot. There are some custom curves I have developed over time that I will probably need to port over, but it's not difficult to come up with new "looks".

The D300 raws ran as expected, though I feel that the click white tool *may* work better previously, but it's hard to say. LX5 wise, the click white tool still does not work as expected, and the color balance profiles just don't work. Thankfully, the LX5 has much better white balance detection compared to the D300, and the "As Shot" profile usually gives very good results. Usually. I've had one or two LX5 raw files come in... green.... and it was a picture of a piece of paper.....

This is the thing with digital photography, raws are good and all, but I wonder, I wonder, when will my D300 raws be no longer viewable?

On the flip side, fact: My photographs aren't exactly pro-level "omg awesome" level good, so even losing them won't mean much. Plus, all the keepers are already exported to full sized jpegs, so at least there's that.

Bottom line, the new piece of software works, and time spent agonizing over the D300's raw format is a waste of time. Time better spent say, oh, doing houdini or figuring out chord voicings.

Wolf, out.

RBD Chain Sim

2012-01-09T22:44:00.000Z

Found an interesting problem on the forums, and had to investigate. Chains, a fully simulated chain. The issue the OP had was with the links penetrating, and testing showed that increasing substeps helped.... but was that it?

Further stress testing showed that the links will still inter-penetrate given certain motion types (like that shown in the example, an animated link lifting the rest of the simulated chain).

Solution was to increase the Collision Passes parameter, *together* with the maximum substeps.

Weekend project - procedural active state sim

2012-01-08T22:56:00.001Z

Inspired by this video, I did the above sim. It's more or less setup for the particle emission as well - feeling under the weather atm (fever, cold, etc), no mood to do more.

Ikuze, 2012!

2012-01-06T20:00:00.000Z

The first week of 2012 is over! Dang that was fast. Started on a new shot today, looking forward to Monday to try some stuff I thought up on the way home. If not, it's full steam ahead. 2012, let's make you a great year!!!

We're all beginners... at some stage

2012-01-01T13:38:00.000Z

Let's start the new year with an inspirational quote!

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

Ira Glass

From: writerunderground

Whilst Mr Glass refers to writing, this is obviously applicable in any creative field. Keep on plugging away, chase the dream, make it reality.

Silent Night, Holy Night

2011-12-23T21:19:00.000Z

Just finished an arrangement for "Silent Night". My first arrangement, ever, and it sounds more or less quite awful. Not only that, I tried a new miking position that's closer, and makes the sax sound so damned thin. Maybe I should EQ the sax - if I knew how ;-) Last month's try on Fly Me To The Moon had a really nice tone, and that was done with the mic a fair distance away. GAH! :D

Harmonica and sax :3

2011-12-17T15:52:00.003Z

We had a secret santa on our show, and my secret santa gave me this harmonica above! I don't know that much about harmonicas - apart from what they sound like - and some research proved it to be a very capable - and inexpensive - instrument indeed.

For a start, what I received was a 10 hole diatonic harmonic keyed in C. What's interesting is how the notes are produced - not only by blowing into the harmonica, but also from drawing air through it. I'm guessing mine is based on the standard Richter Tuning. Many props to my secret santa, that made my day :)

In other news, today was the last day of my sax class, for the year anyways, and we covered *alot* of topics, vibrato, tremolo, improving the articulation on the upper register, subtoning, and modes. Whew.

Articulation didn't take too long as I'd already mentioned to my teacher last month that I was having trouble articulating it, and we'd look at it the next lesson (i.e. today). In the mean time though, I worked on improving my embouchure - which seemed fruitless - but changing it - more lip out - seemed to do the trick, and my teacher agrees. Not only did it allowed me to articulate the upper register, it also added more harmonics to the high notes. Win.

Subtoning is new for me, so more things to practice, and modes, something I was never interested in but since I am learning about basses (mmmm double bass) and walking bass lines, that came up and had me throughly confused. Thankfully my teacher cleared up my misgivings quickly. Can't wait to get started on my arrangement now.

Forward!

HunbleBundle - Indie games - for all platforms!

2011-12-16T23:18:00.000Z

Stumbled upon The Humble Indie Bundle a few days ago and have been gaming the past few nights. Oh joy! The main game of this bundle I was after is Gratuitous Space Battles, aka GSB. Reminds me visually of Master Of Orion 2, so picked it up hoping the gameplay would be similar.

Yes, and no. It's basically MOO's fighting and ship building section, in continuous waves. No building ships, no worries about space amoeba, just design ships, hit deploy and watch your fleet take on the cpu's fleet :D

Found a nice tactic of tanking with heavily shielded ships up from, with a second line of ships with just missiles. Shreds enemies reaal fast. What's curious, is that the *basic* weapons seemed to do the best damage *shrugs*. At the core, it is still a scissors-paper-stone kind of game.

Towards the end, I didn't even bother to deploy small ships, just the main cruisers in the pattern above, or for the giggles, a whole menagerie of the middle sized space ships armed with nothing but missiles and torpedos.

Apart from that, other games I tried were the a platformer and shump, Cave Boy+ and Jamestown. Jamestown refused to run on linux - spent a good hour browsing forums to no luck. Luckily, my "audio production machine" - a mac - runs the mac ports perfectly. Download, click, install, game on! No fussing about with dependencies or segfaults, gah.

Both games are superb, and they take me back to my youth, with Cave Boy's old school pixel art and fm sounds. Jamestown is a great shooter, graphics are amazing, and alot of attention to detail was paid on the sprites. The music is superb, with great cut scenes as well.

I've mostly stopped gaming as I know I get tunnel visioned to complete the game, and with games like FF XIII clocking in at more than 50 hours of game time, it's not a way I wish to spend my time.

These smaller games don't seem to suck me in that much, especially with smups like Jamestown that don't seem to have any leveling system in place - easy to just hop on and get distracted for an hour or two.

Oh well back to more serious stuff.

Audio Synthesis in Houdini

2011-12-15T22:27:00.003Z

I purchased Logic Studio recently for my recording and mixing needs, and came across the synthesizers in it, learned alot about alot (ok two) of them and have fallen in love with the concept of synthesis, be it subtractive synthesization, FM and what have you. I've learnt a bit of this in school (yay engineering) applied to linear systems, and have some experience with RF modulation, but never for audio synthesis like this.

The concept of creating an initial tone, which is then filtered and passed through an envelope generator to give us a sense of articulation, sustain and delay is just... wow. I'll never listen to electronic music the same way again.

Having been doing various tutorials with Logic's ES2 synthesizer, which is a mainly a subtractive synthesizer. Whipped up this little test in Houdini's chops for giggles.

It's exactly as described above. My base tone is a Triangle wave, which seems to give a very pure tone with some harmonics. A square wave is then generated and passed to the trigger chop, which generates envelopes. (The envelope controls are surprisingly, a step ahead of the ES2's controls, including features such as interpolation type, delay *hold* length, among many others).

CHOPs node layout

Multiplying the envelope train against the triangle wave gives a psuedo wind instrument sound.

I have a copy of Andrew Lowell's Simultaneous Music, Animation, and Sound with Houdini - from years back that I did not finish. Looks like it's time to figure out how I can link my music to houdini :)

Ignore Everybody

2011-12-12T22:25:00.000Z

http://gapingvoid.com/ie/

Came across this website, of all places, a forum discussing the merits of different audio compressors, i.e. VCA vs Opto vs FET vs etc etc

It's a very pleasant read, and I hope to incorporate a few more ideas into what I do in my free time.

The bottom line I read from the extract is:

Choose to live your life the way you think is best for you. No one else knows what is the best for you.

Chase your dreams, no matter how small. Don't copy*, be original even though the path may be lonely and un-travelled.

Work hard. This brings up the 10,000 hour rule, and the question of talent vs hard work. I'm sort of in-the-middle of the rule. I think talent is important, but more importantly, I think is the desire, the drive, and the (shudder) "passion" for what you love. Talent (which I wish I have) plus drive and dedication means an uber vfx td, imo. Which I am not. Yet. :P

Challenges. Everyone has their own set of issues with which to conquer. I think I have a fair number of those, like my inability to go socialize. I am sooo sad here, and it is what I believe to be a BIG challenge to tackle.

* I some what disagree with the no-copy idea. As stated in posts before, copying is a very good way to develop skills, not to exist as a copy. Skills learnt can be applied in so many ways (e.g. I use alot of wedding photography style flash, BUT I've never shot a wedding ;-) ) - once again, it brings up Everything Is A Remix.

This quote from the URL easily summarized the path I've chosen to walk.

"The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care."

No regrets. Carpe Diem.

Parallism of Learning II

2011-12-07T10:45:00.001Z

STICK WITH WHAT YOU GOT
Another aspect of learning is your tools, or rather, learning the nuances of our tools, before we can actually perform. In the case of photography, it's learning about just how to operate the camera, from basic stuff to like filenames, to more advanced stuff like setting up dynamic AF, tweaking the exposure meter, AF tracking time etc.

Things like this take time and experimentation, and only experience gives you the knowledge when to use it e.g. If I have time, I will use a single point AF combined with the AF confirmation light, if it's a fast moving street type situation I might go the hyper focused route, quick busy situations may require the dynamic af, giving the focus more chance to be "in focus".

Not to mention the exposure meter, no reflective meter is that good, and after years working with the camera, I instinctively know when to increase/decrease my compensation for the exposure I need - without checking the histogram to know I'm in the correct ballpark - comes with experience and many, many thousands of deleted frames.

Even though cameras are built to perform similar functions, I choose mine because it is the most intuitive to me, and it is only after years of use on the same camera that I can quickly adapt to the situation.

Similarly for the saxophone. Unlike cameras, they don't come with instruction manuals (ok it does come with a fingering chart), and it takes years to learn the nuances of the instrument. For example, my Middle D plays very sharp - a characteristic found (supposedly) in almost every saxophone.

Adjusting your embouchure (shape of mouth, in layperson terms) supposedly is the way to fix this, but not on my sax - it drops to the octave below. I need to play it with another key (high D) pressed down, just to get it on pitch. That said, I've noticed that my middle D intonation is actually getting better, so much so that with high D pressed, I actually go flatter......

Apart from variables like these, we've got the favourite part every saxophone player tends to fiddle with at times - mouthpieces, and their ilk, the ligature and reed. I've swapped a few mouthpieces in my short span of playing the saxophone, and everytime I tried on a new mouthpiece, I have to relearn how to play the piece. With my current piece, the Vandoren V5 A27, I think I've had it for at least 4, 5 months, and I'm still learning subtle nuances about it. How to hit harmonics, where to put the jaw, breath pressure for different notes.

Bottom line is, unless there is something majorly wrong or holding you back, equipment nowadays is more than suitable for most of us. Ok well more than suitable for me. No plans to change the saxophone (although I am still drooling for a vintage finish keilwerth sx90r) - and definitely not for the camera. Heck, ever since I got bitten by this music bug, the camera's usage has dropped significantly, only bring it out once a month or so.

Let's see how long it takes before I buy a new sax or mouthpiece :3

Parallelisms of learning

2011-12-06T22:05:00.000Z

Today I realized how similar the path I took with the saxophone versus photography. In terms of learning, I approached them similarly, but one of self taught (photography) versus the saxophone, which I had the guidance of a really good teacher.

First, is learning from the masters.
One underlying topic my sax teacher has pushed is transcribing (I am pretty sure I wrote this in another post but whatever) - by doing so not only do we train our ear, we also learn the nuances of how the pros play, how they articulate to give a certain feel, it's like parker vs pepper vs desmond. Learn from the masters, and incorporate them into one's playing.

Exactly like what Everything is a Remix is trying to get across.

On the flip side for photography, I do the same, analyzing how the photographers I respect do their photography - this is exactly what I've seen mentioned in the many books I've read. But I only took to this several years ago. And indeed, it seemed like my photography skills improved quite rapidly after that.

So bottom line, copy. Devour everything you enjoy, find out how they do it, copy copy copy. And like the borg, become something greater than the sum of the parts.

or not.

:P

One year of sax...

2011-12-04T21:49:00.000Z

And what a year it has been. The good, the bad, the ups and downs, the time wasted, things learnt. Looking forward to the future.

In more positive note *ahem* this is also my first outing with Logic Pro 9 :3 I finally bit the bullet and bought a whole slew of software and books for my xmas break. So far, Logic seems like a pretty good step up from garageband - it allows really basic stuff, for example, recording from mic 2 only (garageband only allows mic1, or mic 1 and 2 on the same track)

There is also a proper mixer, with peak levels display which is great to know when I'm clipping. Still very new to the package though, just figured out enough how to record, add reverb and export :) Logic studio comes with Space Designer, a convolution reverb that I'm just getting my feet wet with. The video above has the "Jazz Vocal Room" reverb engaged. Seems nice, but I need to do more tests to compared it against the AU Matrix Reverb, which is very nice in its own right.

Out with the old...

2011-11-30T23:28:00.000Z

Today actually marks the end of NaNoWriMo, and I did not make it close to the finish point at all (10k/50k). On the flip side, in the brief time I did spend on it, I learnt a little bit about writing, that I do enjoy writing but it's not something I'm "passionate" about (observe the double quotes, I'm not a fan of the word passionate).

Also, I finally wrote down what has been going on in my mind for years, which is very nice.

I will probably finish the story down the line when I keep figuring things out. In the mean time, I have other pursuits that I do enjoy spending time on.

This month has been quite downhill, for out-of-work things, but they seem to have calmed down, let's see what the next month brings.

Transcribing

2011-11-26T20:46:00.000Z

A few months ago, I wrote a small python script to aid my ear training. Things that happened today and last night made me re-evaluate the point of such a script.

Firstly, I finished last night, an introductory book on music theory, and for some reason, my teacher spoke again about transcribing music to observe the nuances of recorded performances.

In essence, transcribing is not just identifying notes - it is much more, such as figuring out the jumps between notes by ear, as well as picking out how individual artists play a certain piece - for example, pick a jazz standard, and observe how the different greats play it.

Both the book and my teacher spoke at length about this, so I've now started transcribing stuff. Gonna be challenging :) And I'm moving on to the next book as well.

Life

2011-11-26T12:57:00.000Z

I just got informed today that Michael Garrick has passed away >.> Conversed with the gent a few times about the winter jazz course. Why? :(

Once again, feeling like numb and all. Sigh.

The Old Rugged Cross

2011-11-20T21:13:00.000Z

This is my 3rd take of "The Old Rugged Cross". Googled for bereavement songs and this was one that came up.

I'm going to sound like a dick, but fact is, this is probably a form of closure more for myself than anything else.

I dedicate this piece, to those who have left us and are forging a new world ahead of us. You are all missed.

What is life?

2011-11-20T10:07:00.000Z

So, one of my classmates departed this morning. I'm feeling very numb and empty inside. Even though we were not at all close, nearly 4 years of studying together still forms certain bonds of camaraderie. Sad to say apart from yearly new year greetings, we hardly spoke.

RIP mate, I am certain you are missed.

A* Path Finding in C++

2011-11-13T12:52:00.006Z

So, I got curious this weekend and decided to code up an implementation of the A* Pathfinding Algorithm.

A nice ZIP file can be found here with the source code.

I followed the description found at Policy Almanac and it seemed to work perfectly. The main problems I had implementing the code were mostly race conditions (pain. in. the. rear. >.>) and making sure I didn't go over the bounds for my 2d array (segfaults! boo!).

Here's some example runs:
000/0000
00/1\000
0S010E00
00010000
00000000

S00/--00
0\-111\0
0001E1|0
0011\1|0
00000/00

S000000000
0\01110000
00\1010000
0/11010000
00\00/--00
000\-110E0

S00/--00000
|0/111\1100
0\0101|1100
111101|0000
000100|0010
0001111\110
00--\01|000
0/111\11\00
E00010-/000
^^ Does not seem so optimal - at the start it should go directly to the right, instead of going down.

S---0011000000000000000010000000000000000
1111\011000000001111110010000001111100000
00000\11110000001000000010000000000100000
00000|000100000010000000100000/---0100000
0000/111110000001000111110000/1111\011000
0000|10000000001100000000000/00001|000000
0000|1001111100110000/------000001|000000
0000|100000110000000/1111111110001|001100
0000|100000/00/-----0100\000010001|000000
0000|10000/1\-111111110/1\00010001|000000
00000\----010010000001/011\0010001|000000
0001111111110010E00111|0110\010001|000000
00000000000000100-\111|01000\11111|000000
0000000000000010000--/0010000----/0000000

Heh, that was fun.

EDIT: It seems like I did not maintain a priorityQ for the lowest cost F for open nodes, darn.....
EDIT 2: Which doesn't make a difference since I'm only picking the lowest F for iterating on. The only issue is, efficiency. Or lack of, thereof :)

Saxophone Log, Life, Blah

2011-11-06T23:12:00.000Z

Another month, another video. It's coming up to my one year anniversary soon, I'll be making a special video for that.

Most of today has been spent attempting to write for NaNoWriMo, only got 6k this week, from a target of 10k. Not good, but I'll see how it goes :)

Distant Worlds: Music of Final Fantasy

2011-11-06T00:07:00.003Z

This evening, I was at the Royal Albert Hall attending a concert by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring music from Final Fantasy. This concert is titled: Distant Worlds.

An enjoyable evening is an understatement. Listening to a live orchestra playing the video game music I grew up with beings back fond memories and times I wish I could return to.

There were many highlights of the day, for example the Opera House song in Final Fantasy 3 (USA) was done with 3 opera singers, each playing the roles of Maria, Draco and Ralse.

For the encore, they did the full set of One Winged Angel, with Nobou Uematsu himself singing part of the chorus (the "sephiroth") part. I think the crowd was going wild here.

Another momentous favorite of mine, "Eyes On Me", was performed with a vocalist, Susan Calloway. Another uber awesome song was Kefka's theme song, Dancing Mad. And it was performed with a proper pipe organ, that is seemingly built into the concert hall!

It is amazing, and this time next year I hope to attend it again, but this time with a proper seating. I only heard about this about a month ago, and by luck the "chior" seats were available about then. If not, the tickets are sold about a year in advance, and are basically sold out on the spot.

This only gives me further inspiration to push my musical adventures. Onwards!!!

Legere Signature - New packaging?

2011-11-04T20:12:00.001Z

A bit over the top for a reed, I'd rather save a bit of £££ on the packaging to get it cheaper... plays similarly to my current reed.

NaNoWriMo!

2011-10-29T11:51:00.001+01:00

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and runs for the full month of November. The goal is to write a 50,000 novel in the month of november.

I'll be joining in this year, and hope to finish this story I've had floating in my head for years. Well the first part anyways. Already got the characters laid out, major plot points laid it, let November 1st arrive....

And now back to C++ and sax :)

New Saxophone Mouthpiece!

2011-10-22T23:00:00.003+01:00

Aaaaand either a) I've been sent a wrong piece else b) it will be going on ebay soon :3 This is a handmade, custom piece that I just got on Tuesday, but I've been having brain crunching days at work, which leaves me too mentally exhausted to do more.

Today though, I spent a fair bit of time with this new piece, and after much comparison with the V5, decided it was not for me. Hopefully I was sent a wrong piece, and I do want to use a custom built piece (yes I am vain). This piece plays very similar to the Vandoren V16, so a meyer styled piece. The low to mid register is absolutely delicious - low Bb to high E play beautifully extremely easily, and this mouthpiece actually fixes my middle D intonation issues! Unbelievable.

Downsides include a wildy sharp palm key notes, and the higher notes feel very thin. This is exactly what I felt with the V16, so it's basically a souped up V16.

I still decided on the V5 for the same reasons as before: The tone is good enough for what I want, all register play with good intonation - middle D can be fixed by adding the palm D key - and the tone feel nice and thick even at the palm keys.

This is the basis of what I need - an instrument that I do not need to fight. Reasonable intonation, and evenness of tone. I do not need to achieve "Saxophonist X's sound" etc etc. I sound like me and I'm bloody pleased with it.

One positive aspect came out of this. Because the new piece has a slightly wider tip opening, I had to put in my Legere Signature #2.25s, else I would wear out my embouchure in minutes.

Recordings show that the low register plays very evenly (and easily), unlike the V5 which I tend to need more puff to get the low notes to speak - and this causes the low notes to sound louder and more pronounced compared to the higher low register notes. On a whim, I switched the #2.25s on the V5, and wow, now the low notes play way easier (still not as easy as the new mouthpiece but) and the palm keys seem to play easier.

Need a bit more practice see if there are any downsides to this switch, but yeah, I was quite surprised how going down a 1/4 strength makes such a large improvement.

EDIT: To be sold ;-)

Saxophone Weekend with Andy Scott

2011-10-16T22:22:00.004+01:00

Architecture beside St Lawrence's Church.

Spent the weekend in beautiful Winchester attending a saxophone workshop with Andy Scott organized by Sarah Heard. I think the workshop was really well organized, with neatly timed sessions with short breaks inbetween.

Buddy's, an American Diner just off the high street.

The group that attended seemed to range from 11 year olds to retirees; some probably have had musical background for decades, and others were just a year or more in.

Part of Winchester Cathedral

The focus seemed to be on ensemble playing as well as improvisation. We were introduced to a medly of tunes with funky beats to a laid back african piece. Some pieces had spaces for solos, and I had a great time doing with my turn at improvisation.

Evening recital.

We ended the 2nd day, with a performance for friends and family. Playing with an ensemble is really eye opening and good fun.

Am currently pooped as I went back to the office to check on simulations :P

Safety Straps for sax?

2011-10-09T16:21:00.004+01:00

So after yesterday's snafu, it got me thinking. Are there ways to prevent what happened yesterday? And the answer came up - SAFETY STRAPS!

Just a velcro strap that goes through the back of the case that loops around the bell or some part of the stack. Why isn't this standard in saxophone cases?

GW

Broke my sax :-/

2011-10-08T22:19:00.004+01:00

So this morning as I was leaving for my saxophone class I picked up my case and... the sax dropped out >.> Did not zip it up after packing it last night, and I broke the screw that tightens the crook. Thankfully the sax seems to work fine, though I had difficulty playing low notes softly. Teacher checked it out and seemed fine.

Seems like that wasn't the only thing damaged, my Vandoren M/O ligature may be otherwise bent as well >.> Switching over to my cloth ligature proved to be the case as I got back all my low notes. Gah. Hopefully I can get this fixed in time - I've got a two day saxophone course next weekend. Perfect timing, this >.>

Long Live Play? Huh?

2011-10-07T22:40:00.000+01:00

"When they tell your story, what will they say?"

Few words, and they inspire one to be more than they are.

Taken in context of the above commercial though, I feel they fall flat.

For some reason that will take awhile for me to fully externalize (hey I'm an introvert - cut me slack) - the moment they started to cheer for "Michael", who is probably the gamer in question, one word came to my mind.

ESCAPISM.

Great, so we're celebrating the gamer. The person who saved the world over and over again, won WW2, took down hades, destroyed sephiroth, saved the princess blah de blah. Erm.

We did not. We did it in a GAME. What happened, was not real. The only thing real, was you spent time, in a fantasy setting, living your fantasy. There is something happening in real life called.... real life.

Granted, my point of view, i.e. data point of ONE, hardly reflects the masses. Do I game? Sure I do. Not as a form of escapism though, it is purely a form of relaxation to allow my mind to connect the pieces together I've been working on. Not much different from going for a swim or a walk around the park, except that there is a very high chance that I get addicted to games. I know myself, hence the avoidance of owning a console myself (glares at the now-dead ylod PS3)

The point of this post? No point at all, apart from the fact the commercial rubs me the wrong way and I just wanted to emo about it. Seeing the $249 PS3 ad at the end was win. I shut the browser down. Sorry sony, want me to get another PS3? Buck up and give me FF7, in hd. With *all* the damned bugs.

With a bit more thinking, I think what truly irks me, is time. Or, the fact that time is probably the only resource that once used, cannot be recovered. Gaming, eats up time. No doubts about it. Is it a skill that once learned, can enhance our daily lives? I really doubt it. For example, I have completed FF7 like 3 times. The first run was about 17 odd hours; the next two runs I tried to do all the side quests, get the gold chocobo etc (till date, I have not killed the Emerald or Ruby Weapon. Insert sadface.) - easily 50 hours if not more, resetting the game just to get a bloody black chocobo for breeding. Seriously, what was i thinking?! Did I gain some skill in real life from breeding chocobos? (Side note: I still think chocobos are AWESOME and uber cuddly. Not as cuddly as wolves but I digress....)

I'm going to end this post now, as thinking about this just makes me more annoyed. I have stuff to do. In real life.

EDIT: I thought an answer to the question: "They'd say you spent your entire life playing games!" Wow! Compared to say, "He spent his life looking after dementia patients".... I really much prefer to have mine as "he spent his life learning stuff and not doing anything" to that, seriously.

SM57 VS Heil PR31BW

2011-10-06T20:12:00.000+01:00

I mentioned to my teacher about the Heil PR31 I got and he requested an A/B test with the SM57. Here are some results.

First, the SM57 gives a weaker signal, as seen in audacity. Both were recorded at +60dB gain on my Onyx Blackjack, and the Heil comes in just 0.7dB below 0dB.

Top track is the Heil PR31, bottom is the SM57.

I wonder if there is something up with my SM57 as it does seem quite low output. I was mic'ing about 10, perhaps 12 inches away from the sax, aimed at the middle of the upper stack, straight on.

Here are some full clips, Doxy is more jazzy, whilst Endless Night is more for evaluating a slower legato piece.

Heil PR31 vs SM57 by Gallen

DIY Ribbon Mic?

2011-10-05T23:29:00.002+01:00

Little side project I'm working on, a diy ribbon microphone. The parts required are really bog simple, magnets, aluminum foil and a transformer. The foil is in the micron scale though.... difficult to source. But here's the magnets, N42 neodymium.

For a start I'll be designing the housing for a short ribbon length, about 1 inch, vs the longer lengths commercially available.

Bari Reed - pretty impressive!

2011-10-04T21:45:00.002+01:00

So I'd a go with the Bari Plastic reed today and it's actually quite good! First thing I noticed is how easy it is to blow, from bottom Bb to high F#, it seriously was effortless. Even more amazingly, I was able to get middle D in tune, without pushing the mouthpiece all the way into the cork. Hmm.

It is much brighter than the Legere Signature though, and has a very very tiny touch of buzziness to the sound. The most stand out feature though, is the volume. It is LOUD, easily giving me 3dB or more in terms of volume. The setting where the legeres were peaking about 2dB below 0dB at ff, the Bari was already peaking when I was blowing an mf. On the flip side, playing soft was quite challenging. I felt the reed presented a wider dynamic range, and it could take alot of air without choking up. This free blowing characteristic has a downside, some longer passages I usually finish with a bit of reserve on my Legere, I ran out of breath very much faster on the Bari. Mrrr.

All in all, in terms of synthetic reeds, I'm still keeping the Legere at number 1, with the Bari a very close second. Here's my personal chart of the reeds I've tried, keep in mind that I'm playing for less than a year, and the following is my experience on a Hanson SA5 on a Vandoren V5 A27

Characteristic/Reed	Legere Signature	Bari Plastic	Fibracell	Hahn Synthetic
Body/Core	***	**	**	*
Buziness		*		***
Brightness	*	**	*	***
Volume	*	***	*	*
Free Blowing	*	***	*	**
Intonation	**	***	**	*** (with reservations)
Ease of Articulation	*	***	*	***
Price	*	***	**	**
Looks like a cane reed			***
Edible

Intonation: While the Hahn could achieve reasonably good intonation over the range, even the pesky middle d, playing with it felt weird to the mouth and ears... Can't fully explain it.

Buzziness: Playing the Hahn on the V5 reminds me of playing, say, the Legere on a Lebayle Studio mouthpiece - it gives a very contemporary edge to the sound.

Bari Plastic Reed

2011-10-04T00:27:00.001+01:00

Bought a new Legere Signature #2.5 and at the same time, got a Bari Plastic Reed. Hmm. First impressions are.... it feels like it's made of the same plastic you'd find on disposable cutlery :D

Can't wait to give it a blow. My teacher used to play on these so, hopefully they are a viable choice. One other reed I'd like to try is Harry Hartman's Fiberreed, however those are quite ouch inducing, so perhaps in a month or two. The Legere Signature has been my favourite so far, off all the reeds I've used, it has the most body and not too bright.

Saxophone Log October 2011 (or Heil PR31 rules)

2011-10-02T19:21:00.001+01:00

Finally got down and dirty with the Heil PR31, it is *awesome*.

Signal chain is straightforward, Heil PR 31 -> Onyx Blackjack @55dB gain -> garageband. I only put a bit of plate reverb (a preset on the AU Matrix Reverb on OSX) on the saxophone track in the mix. (As much as I'd like to EQ the sax... er... I have no idea how to use eq :P)

Lovely lovely piece of kit, would definitely recommend it for alto saxophones. I've put in the files on soundcloud as well, and there is a raw version up there as well.

Saxophone Log: October 2011 by Gallen Saxophone Log: October 2011 raw heil pr31 by Gallen

Heil PR31 BW

2011-10-01T02:22:00.000+01:00

So, it's payday and I got myself a new toy..... a Heil PR31 BW dynamic mic. I think the most recommended suggestion to record the Alto Saxophone seems to be the Sennheiser, MD421, MD441, Royer 121 (and sometimes... AKG C12?!) - all of which tend to be... pricey. (case in point, the AKG C12 runs more than £3k)

Nice box :D

The box is very utilitarian - I like it! A simple instruction manual, the mic and its clamp. The instruction manual indicates that this mic has a Super Cardioid polar pattern. Not sure what's with the massive side grills, but the mic's an end fire mic, and it comes with instructions as well as text printed on the mic casing to indicate where it picks up sound from.

The clamp does not come with an adaptor for the smaller threadsize used in the UK, but the PR31 does fit into the SM57's mic mount. Barely.

It is ridiculously small. The Heil PR 31 BW uses a similar element to the PR 30 (that I really would prefer - just for the fact it has a RED grill :D). However, the PR30 is somewhat larger and would not fit properly in the Studio Projects Reflexion Filter. This will... but would there be a point to using the reflexion filter with a dynamic, I wonder.

Since this is a super cardioid - it does pick up an attenuated amount of sound from behind the mic. The reflexion filter _may_ help in this case.

And here it is besides my Shure SM57. As mentioned, ridiculously small, the size of a baby's milk bottle. Initial tests seem to be good, and I'll be doing some recordings over the weekend to give it a more through run down.

Houdini + Arduino + ADXL335

2011-10-01T01:37:00.001+01:00

Spent this week re-visiting an old project - getting my arduino interfaced with an ADXL335, then writing the python required to get houdini talking :)

Fun stuff, next, some audio engineering :-)

Project files are in this odforce thread.

Python for Alto Saxophone: Intonation, Transcription.

2011-09-25T20:59:00.001+01:00

Two things (out of the many) I hope to work on my saxophone, is to transcribe music, so that I can re-arrange it, as well as improve on my intonation. The following script is to aid me in this endevour:

from wave import open as waveOpen
from ossaudiodev import open as ossOpen
import sys, tty, termios
import random

ver = "1.1"

def playTone(myToneFile):
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/307305/play-a-sound-with-python
	s = waveOpen(myToneFile,'rb')
	(nc,sw,fr,nf,comptype, compname) = s.getparams( )
	dsp = ossOpen('/dev/dsp','w')
	try:
  		from ossaudiodev import AFMT_S16_NE
	except ImportError:
 		if byteorder == "little":
 	   		AFMT_S16_NE = ossaudiodev.AFMT_S16_LE
  		else:
  			AFMT_S16_NE = ossaudiodev.AFMT_S16_BE
	dsp.setparameters(AFMT_S16_NE, nc, fr)
	data = s.readframes(nf)
	s.close()
	dsp.write(data)
	dsp.close()

def _getch():
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1052107/reading-a-single-character-getch-style-in-python-is-not-working-in-unix
        fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
        old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(fd)
        try:
            tty.setraw(sys.stdin.fileno())
            ch = sys.stdin.read(1)
        finally:
            termios.tcsetattr(fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)
        return ch

def getNextRand(currentRand, randRangeMax):
	newRand = random.randrange(0,randRangeMax)
	while (newRand == currentRand):
		newRand = random.randrange(0,randRangeMax)
	return newRand

# Setup dictionary of tones here
# Full range of tones:

fullRange = (
("Low Bb", "low_Bb.wav"),
("Low B", "low_B.wav"),
("Low C", "low_C.wav"),
("Low C#", "low_C#.wav"),
("Low D", "low_D.wav"),
("Low D#", "low_D#.wav"),
("Low E", "low_E.wav"),
("Low F", "low_F.wav"),
("Low F#", "low_F#.wav"),
("Low G", "low_G.wav"),
("Low G#", "low_G#.wav"),
("Low A", "low_A.wav"),
("Low A#", "low_A#.wav"),
("Middle B", "middle_B.wav"),
("Middle C", "middle_C.wav"),
("Middle C#", "middle_C#.wav"),
("Middle D", "middle_D.wav"),
("Middle D#", "middle_D#.wav"),
("Middle E", "middle_E.wav"),
("Middle F", "middle_F.wav"),
("Middle F#", "middle_F#.wav"),
("Middle G", "middle_G.wav"),
("Middle G#", "middle_G#.wav"),
("Middle A", "middle_A.wav"),
("Middle A#", "middle_A#.wav"),
("High B", "high_B.wav"),
("High C", "high_C.wav"),
("High C#", "high_C#.wav"),
("High D", "high_D.wav"),
("High D#", "high_D#.wav"),
("High E", "high_E.wav"),
("High F", "high_F.wav"),
("High F#", "high_F#.wav"))

middleRange = fullRange[7:21]
lowMiddleRange = fullRange[0:21]

soundDictionary = middleRange

print "Intonation/Transcription Ear Developer " + ver
print "\nSpace to play tone, 0 for answer, Enter for next tone, q to quit"

kbValue = ord(_getch())
# set a random note at start

random.seed()

currentRand = random.randrange(0,len(soundDictionary))

currentSound = soundDictionary[currentRand-1]



while 1:
	if kbValue == 32:
		print "Playing tone." 
		playTone(currentSound[1])
		playTone(currentSound[1])
	elif kbValue == 13:
		currentRand = getNextRand(currentRand, len(soundDictionary))
		currentSound = soundDictionary[currentRand-1]
		print "Switched to another tone." 
		
	elif kbValue == 48:
		print "The answer is: " + currentSound[0]
		
	elif kbValue == 113:
		break

	kbValue = ord(_getch())

So basically what it does is very simple, play back a specific sound sample, which I will try to use my ears and saxophone to match. In essence this will achieve two things.

First, figuring out a particular note will aid recognition of the particular note, and that will aid transcription. Secondly, with the playback, assuming I can figure out the note, if I can harmonize with the note should help with my intonation.

Hope it works :)

Edit: 27th September 2011
After some real world use, I found that randrange kept giving very close values for the small range I'm using, so additional code was used to ensure the previous tone would not be the next one as well.

Squeeks, figured

2011-09-25T10:34:00.004+01:00

Figured out why I was squeeking so bad - it was a bad reed.

That's sad, as this Legere Signature #2.5 is a new one I bought just 2 months ago. The other legeres I got did not seem to exhibit this problem, nor other reeds. Oddly enough, I got this new reed because my old reed had developed a crack. Playing the cracked reed on the V5 did not have the squeeks, but it did have an extra buzz to its sound.

Looks like next month I'll be getting a new Signature... wonder what happened to this one to cause it to fail, no drops or bumps :-/

Hate reeds and mouthpieces! GAH!

2011-09-22T20:08:00.002+01:00

The past few days I've been testing out various combinations of reeds, ligatures and ligature positions in order to figure out why I'm squeaking on my V5 A27. And today, I had a go with a Hahn #2.5. It did not squeak at all, although oddly it had an unexpected side effect of being quite flat? Very obvious when doing my mouthpiece exercises.

On the usual position on the crook, the mouthpiece played very very flat, like 40+ cents flat, I'd never seen that before! Pushing in the mouthpiece till the very edge of the cork seemingly fixed it, and a positive side effect is that middle d is now _only_ 20 cents sharp! Wow!

Would the Hahn be my cure?

I decided to try other synthetics. Fibracell. Other legeres.

Not. A. Squeak.

ARGH!

[ Houdini Cookoff ] Complete!

2011-09-18T11:39:00.005+01:00

FINALLY! IT IS DONE! Oh my goodness.

I think this mini project, whilst cut short had me learn a lot of news things - controlling fluids, figuring out how to composite in COPs, bits on shaders - lots lots.

Not going to do this for a looong while, this sucked up a fair amount of free time, now I can get back to the other stuff I want to learn, music theory, composition, audio engineering, acoustics, python, arduino, photography er.... yeah I have no life :D

10,000 hours

2011-09-16T10:32:00.000+01:00

http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/how-many-hours-a-day-should-you-practice/

http://christianhowes.com/2009/10/29/perfect-practice/

I got lots of simmin' to do...

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 17

2011-09-14T23:52:00.000+01:00

Started on rendering the various parts. Can I get this done by this weekend? :D

Dynamics vs Condensers: Microphones

2011-09-14T01:26:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, I received some new toys in the mail, a SE Electronics X1 condenser mic, and a Project Studio Reflexion Filter. There was a really good bundle from dv247, that included a metal pop filter, and I really wanted to a) try out condenser mics and b) improve my recordings by improving my room's acoustics.

I only did vocal tests last night on the SM57 (plus Fethead) and the X1, and I can't really say which is better. Subjectively, I actually prefer the SM57!

This evening, I did some quick tests after my saxophone practice - 2 songs, one run on each mic. After getting the levels up to 0db (I'd set the gain on my pres so that I'd only need 0.9 - 1db gain boost in Audacity) and comparing both mics......

I honestly could not tell which was the SM57 and which was the X1.

More testing will be done this weekend.

In addition, the Reflexion Filter may be a dud buy. Not because it does not work, but it may be a possibility that my room is actually quite dead, sonically! Clapping in my room I hardly hear any reflections, similarly with my saxophone. I do notice that there actually are reflections coming in from the small passageway to the bathroom, seemingly sorted by draping some clothes over the door. Buh.

I also did some vocal tests last night on the X1 with and without the reflexion filter.... can't really tell the difference at all. Maybe I need to develop my ears further. Truly, I did not hear any room reflections without the filter.

On issue I encountered with the reflection filter is using the Fethead with it and the SM57 - the extended length of the mic + amp, fitted with the xlr cable at the end actually causes the mic capsule to protrude significantly from the filter's dead zone. Not that I could tell really, thanks to the room's deadness.

Dud buy? Hopefully not.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 15

2011-09-14T01:16:00.005+01:00

Still plodding along, and here's what I've got so far, a ripple simulation that represents the interaction of the milk being poured. The mesh will only be used to generate a reflection pass as the diffuse contribution will be from the volume simulation.

The final comp will perhaps be another second or two longer, just long enough to fade out. Will definitely not be putting the spoon interaction et all in - many other projects demanding my attention, and I haven't been able to concentrate on my music theory since this project started!

All in the mind?

2011-09-11T18:16:00.005+01:00

Decided to spend _some_ of the day not cooped up at home, and to spare the neighbours my un-wholesome sound frequencies, decide to practice at (or under) Primrose Hill Bridge. It's about an hour's walk from where I live, beautiful weather today, sun, with a good breeze, and not humid. Had good fun for two hours, but next time I go, I'll be sure to bring some clips, the wind is strong under the bridge, and had my scores flapping away twice!

Still on the V5 A27, still loving the piece. That said, there is an issue of notes just jumping to the next register for no apparent reason? I did a quick shootout at home with the Optumum AL4 and V16 A6S, and indeed, both of these pieces did not exhibit this tendency. So whats up with that? Going to get my A27 down to a mouthpiece refacer to let them work their artistry on it next week - got class this saturday and I don't want to be without my A27 :)

That said, testing the other two pieces once again brought the sound qualities to the fore. I found it odd that the A27 has become the brightest piece, at least to my ear! And not in a bad way. The AL4 actually sounds bigger, fuller, but it still had that faraway kind of tone. The V16 on the other hand... felt too dark! Still very nice to play at the low register, but I was like.... er... meh.

Will be selling the V16 soon :)

Fethead Inline Amplifier on Sax and Vocals

2011-09-10T21:39:00.001+01:00

The TritonAudio Fethead is a tiny and quite affordable inline amplifier that sits between your microphone and preamp. In my case, I use the Shure SM57 connected to a Onyx Blackjack USB audio interface. The blackjack provides up to 60db of gain, which does sound quite clean even at 60db. (NB: I am a newbie at this).

However, when far miking my saxophone, the recorded audio levels are quite low. Enter the fethead - it uses phantom power, and provides about 20db of clean gain for dynamic mics.

Here's a few charts showing the recorded audio. The topmost sample will be the onyx at 60db gain with no fetheads, and the ones that follow below are with the onyx at various gain levels. Even at just 35, it gives a reasonably hot signal.

And here are some audio clips as well. Note that to hear the full effect of the fethead, you'd definitely need to be listening through a good set of speakers or headphones. I'm using AKG 240MKII studio headsets, and I've been told that listening to these clips on a good set of monitor speakers also show how the fethead fattens up the sound.

SaxFetheadGain35 by Gallen SaxNoFetheadNormalized by Gallen Vocal With Fethead by Gallen VocalNoFethead by Gallen

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 14

2011-09-08T23:59:00.002+01:00

No, I'm still alive. Still on the Making Tea exercise, but tackling it bit at a time - this is taking up waaay to much time and a bit more time intensive than I thought. So here I present, after a lot of tweaking, the tea being mixed with milk!

What I'm not too happy about is the stream of milk entering is already the light brown color - in the reference it still maintains its whitish aspect for abit. If I can get around, I'll do another fluid sim for the white spreading element I've observed.

If not, the next layer will be the reflection pass - this is basically the diffuse pass.

Saxophone Log: September 2011

2011-09-04T20:30:00.001+01:00

The usual every month. As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm playing with my new Vandoren V5 A27 mouthpiece. In addition, I have a bit of new bling - a Vandoren M/O Ligature.
And here's a little extra I bothered to record on video, the super mario bros theme, abridged, at 80bpm :)

Few other soundclips below as well :) Apart from just learning on my own, I'm looking to join a band or orchestra, already have two in London I'll be checking out. In addition, I'm working with a keyboardist to produce some music :3 We're working on an old 80s michael bolton song at the moment. Let's see how it goes :)

Aaaand back to the houdini cookoff :)

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 13

2011-09-02T00:32:00.002+01:00

Implemented the smoke sim that will fill up the cup this fine evening. Took awhile to get a nice swirl action going, but yeah :)

Introversion

2011-09-01T15:34:00.000+01:00

Every few days I load up google and search with terms like introversion, introverted etc. Had a new hit pop up:

http://www.moorea-seal.com/2011/06/i-am-introvert.html

I thought this description is much less dramatic than the usual link I toss around, Caring for your introvert.

The Quest for "Tone"

2011-09-01T11:31:00.002+01:00

It is still very early days in my saxophone playing, and one thing I recently explored has been modifying how I sound via changing mouthpieces. For some reason, after trying out a multitude of pieces, I went "back to basics" and am currently using a classical piece, a Vandoren V5 A27 (yes I bought yet another one).

Veering off topic for a bit, as mentioned in a previous post, I'd picked up a Vandoren V16 A6S after doing lots of tests down at the sax shop. Playing the V16 for a bit still gave me the feeling that it was not as flexible* as I thought it was. The Vandoren Optimum AL4 has that flexibility - or perhaps it is all the harmonics - but I heard the tone as quite nasal. The V5 sorted that out, not nasal, brighter, more focused. On the flip side, the V5 bears similarity to the AL4 in that middle D took more effort to play resonantly - unlike the V16 that seemed to sort that out. Similarly, the lower register took more effort to play. The V16's lower and mid registers were effortless to play, notes just spoke! On the higher octave, the AL4 and V5 A27 had more body and fullness to them whilst I made the V16 very thin sounding.

Is this the sound concept I'm looking for? No... at this moment I must say I am not exactly sure what kind of sound concept I'm looking for. Why I went for the V5 is mainly how I hear the saxophone - I can't put it down in words, but it sounds like me. It's as if the V5 provided more projection, removed the nasal tone, but did not color the sound, and allowed me to come through. For now, I'm content, and can finally focus on playing, expressing oneself on the sax.

This brings up similarities between photography and the sax - the endless quest for "the lens". Will it give the smooth bokeh, the sharpness, the warmth? All these are valid points, but they do take time away from actual photography. A bit of a rant, I see too many "photographers" kitted out with the latest specs, and sometimes asking me why I'm using an old camera (2007), or why I'm actually using flash in broad daylight >.>

I feel really sad, that in this modern day where information can be found at a click of a mouse, people don't seem to use that capability to *learn*. There is so much out there on the web that just 10 years ago, non existent even in libraries. Few seem to realize that to develop a skill, it's not about buying the latest and greatest. Something even more expensive needs to be used to obtain these skills - time. Time to learn, time to practice, time to put the practice into action.

I think any art form revolves around woodshedding or practice. Endless practice.

And yet, practice just for the sake of practice, I find equally pointless. There have been many days I forced myself to do photography or hobby X - but there was no heart in it. Progress would be minimal. Another key factor, I'd like to think is drive. Passion? No. I don't think I have a "passion" for photography or the sax. Rather, I just enjoy them. For me I think my "passion" is the act of learning, accumulating new skills and gaining knowledge.

*flexible: As it the tone production feels locked down, or guided by the mouthpiece not me.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 12

2011-09-01T01:14:00.001+01:00

So here's tonight's WIP, got the solid milk in place. Next stage will be to emit smoke from it. Tomorrow!

Amsterdam, wow...

2011-08-30T23:03:00.000+01:00

Morning at Hoek Van Holland

Well that was a whirlwind weekend - set off for Amsterdam Thursday evening via the Dutch Flyer, an overnight ferry service. Arriving bright an early at Hoek Van Holland, two transfers (Hoek Van Holland -> Rotterdam -> Amsterdam) saw me bright and early in Amsterdam. As per normal, I bought a map and wandered roughly in the direction of my accommodations. I had no help from google maps this time - bloody t-mobile didn't work.

"Yellow Bike"

I have been asked before, in fact the day before I left, aren't I scared to travel alone? That, or why not travel in groups as it makes economic sense (uh, no that makes NO sense to me at all as I make my own itinerary and enjoy my privacy).

Dutch Fries!

First, no I'm not afraid to travel alone, it's not like I'm going to a warzone or some far far away place where there is no help except via airlift. Second, going on a group tour is fun... for awhile. Then my introverted side kicks in and I want peace and quiet.

Green Hill Zone

Itinerary wise, I did not visit any of the major attractions in the cities, for example the museums. I was planning to visit at least one, but the call of random city exploration calls. For example, I went to the eastern side of Amsterdam where I hardly saw people, much less tourists. Its there can one glimpse a view of cutting edge European architecture, as well as the last surviving windmill located inside Amsterdam. If I had a day or two more... maybe I'd visit. But the call of the wild (and maybe the zoo) is too strong.

Modern Architecture

I really enjoyed my time here, the level of service here is very high. One thing about Amsterdam though, it's that it is too much of a modern city at times, I had a tough time hunting down dutch restaurants, not to say authentic ones, among the sheer amount of choice from steak to sushi to chinese to greek and more. Perhaps a journey further inland would find more traditional outlooks and food choices.

R-Strap revived!

2011-08-23T20:27:00.000+01:00

Got updated hardware to replace the worn out connectors on the Rstrap! So glad there are UK stockist for the parts. It looks really good, and the locking carabiner makes for a much more secure lock around the ring on the camera.

Looks good, but it'll need to be field tested - and what better than a bank holiday weekend in Amsterdam :)

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 11

2011-08-23T00:40:00.000+01:00

Aaaand here's the milk pour using geometry. Multiple set of curves were blended in order to get the motion; 3 were used to give the general motion and waviness; one curve was used to exaggerate the initial pour, and one more when the bottle is lifted up. Switching between these 3 sets of curves were manual blends, though I used chops to blend between the 3 curves that formed the bulk of the pour.

Seems to be going well, tomorrow I'll work on adapting yesterday's sim properly into the cup.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 10

2011-08-22T00:47:00.000+01:00

Finally got a simulation that I like going on. Initial tests with emitting smoke directly was utter fail - there was no way the smoke was going to go nicely hit the wall, sink, then rise up. A liquid sim was done first to provide a base for the smoke fluid to emit from. To get it to rise up, a simple emission of the heat into the temperature field ensured that it would hit the top.

Learnt a new setting on the Iso Offset SOP to convert a SDF volume (the density field from the liquid sim) into a smoke volume with the "Volume Sample" mode. So basically, SDF in, and nice clean smoke volume out. Win!

Thoughts on the Vandoren V16 A6S

2011-08-21T22:17:00.001+01:00

Fluid simming and not in the mood to do anything more so I'm putting down some thoughts about the new mouthpiece and listening to music.

First, I start practice sessions with mouthpiece exercises. Some other terms include Buzzing the mouthpiece. Basically, playing the mouthpiece on its own. With the AL4, hitting the notes is relatively easier as I've been practicing these exercises for awhile. The V16, not so much. I can hit the correct pitches, but I can't hit it exactly, and needs to be corrected. Nothing a few months of practice can't sort out.

Intonation wise, this piece is totally different from my AL4. My main gripe with the AL4 is middle D, ah lovely middle d. The note well known for being stuffy, and out of intonation. On the AL4 and my Hanson SA5, I can get it down to maybe 30 cents sharp. Lipping down basically causes the note to go down an octave, even with the octave key pressed.

The V16 otoh does not share this peculiarity, and it is possible to bend the note so that it plays in tune. Note that I say possible to; getting it to stay at the "correct" pitch is nigh difficult, I was wavering all over the tuner :P

Pretty sure practice will fix this. For most of the range though, I felt it was easier to blow - perhaps this is due to the longer lay? I felt quite confident with the low notes, even down the Bb.

On the flip side, is intonation in the higher registers. Roughly above high F, I though I had difficulty getting the proper intonation. High Eb up, it required a much stronger embouchure to play the notes in tune. Hmmm. Most of the time it seems sharper than expected. Lipping down works but it seems to take a lot more air. Also, I felt that the notes did not seem full as the notes on the main stack. The AL4 seemed much more stable for intonation on the higher notes.

To combat this, I've temporarily moved up to a harder reed, a 2.75 from my regular 2.5. Experience on other pieces showed that a week or so on a harder reed strengthens my embouchure much faster, and when I come back to the softer reed I feel it is much easier to play.

Oh well back to tweaking sims...

Vibrato Sax!

2011-08-21T21:45:00.000+01:00

Held one of these plastic saxophones when I visited the Sax shop on the way home. They are bloody light! And with old folk like me, light is good :D They're a tad expensive, but I'm hoping to get one when I'm visiting Singapore (they were invented, and made in Thailand).

Tale of Four Mouthpieces

2011-08-20T21:56:00.001+01:00

Disclaimer: I have been learning the saxophone about November 2010, and this post is in August 2011. As such, I'm reaally new to it.
Watermarks?! Yes, these are to deter any idiot scammers trying to list bogus auctions of mouthpieces with my photographs.

This beautiful classical piece above from Vandoren is the Optimum AL4. This is the mouthpiece that came with my saxophone, and is probably the reason why I took on so well with the sax - it's very well made, and possesses a good intonation and all. As it's a classical piece, the tone is geared more towards well... classical. And it's not exactly the kind of sound I am looking for. It actually works very well for mellow ballads.

Now this mouthpiece above is the E.Rousseu JDX 6. I'd watched a youtube video - that I can't seem to locate - and thought "Hey! I want to sound like that!!". As luck would have it, I found a used mouthpiece on ebay for half price. Initially, I loved it and thought that this would be *the* piece for me (go ahead, snicker ;-)). After about two weeks on this and many A-B sessions with the AL4, I found that I actually disliked the tone.

It is bright, and to my ears, somewhat "spread". What's more, I felt somewhat "restricted" in terms of the tone produced. After much back and forth, I went back to the AL4 and that was definitely the correct choice. Whilst the AL4 was not as bright as the JDX6, I felt the tone produced has the colors I'd expect to hear.

This really sounds somewhat abstract, but I think you'd really need hear it to appreciate it.

The above is a Lebayle Studio 7 Metal. This, I bought at a whim off ebay at the same time I got the JDX - mainly as it was a good deal, and that some of my favourite players, Candy Dulfer and Kaori Kobayashi, to name two, use this mouthpiece. It is a 7 tip opening, and just takes too much air to blow at this time of my embouchure development.

The Studio 7 has a so-callled bullet chamber, and produces a very modern contemporary sound. This brings us to the next mouthpiece...

This is the baby I got just today - a Vandoren V16 A6S. These mouthpieces come in two chambers, the Small and Medium - Vandoren's website has small diagrams indicating the difference between the two, seems like the S chamber is a squeeze throat. I'd actually spent a fair bit of time trialing the following mouthpieces today:

Vandoren Optimum AL4 (my own)
E. Rousseau JDX 6 (my own)
Berg Larsen 80/2
Beechler "Diamond Inlay" 6
Vandoren V16 A5S, A6S and A5M

There were many other mouthpieces I'd like to try, e.g. Ponzol Vintage HR - but the sizes available were bigger than what I'd like to attempt at this moment.

First mouthpiece was the Beechler - my favourite final fantasy saxophone player, Muta1206 on youtube uses a metal beechler to great effect. My own experience with the Beechler 6 was, wow, nice bright tone. However, it felt like it had a lot of resistance and I went on to the Berg next.

I've read alot about Berg Larsen mouthpieces, and I was really hoping to test out the smaller tip e.g. 70 or 75 sizes, but the dude at the shop said to give it a go :) The /2 indicates the kind of baffle it has, and 2 is the baffle designed to give a more rounded kind of sound. In play, I loved it. Not too mellow, not too bright, and with enough edge. I had a hard time putting it down, but I did for two reasons. First, it a baffle. Like the JDX above, I was told this kind of pieces tended to produce a certain kind of tone, versus the pieces that lacked a baffle and allowed more of one's own "sound" to come through. Secondly, I had difficulty articulating certain notes. This seal it. Maybe I'd come back a year or two down the road and look at these pieces again. Although an 80 piece, it was actually quite an enjoyable blow.

Now the Vandorens were the pieces I spent the bulk of the time on; after spending two weeks on the JDX, I knew so much better about the kind of sound concepts I'd be working towards, which is more of the older school jazz type sound. The A5S certainly was very promising, it just felt like a brighter version of my AL4. The A5M OTOH I felt not as solid as the A5S, so I decided to go for the S chamber. I then decided to try out the A6S ;-)

The A6S was just right, not as bright as the A5S, more mellow, yet could get the edge when pushed. On the plus side, high F# seemed easier to produce. The A6S has two issues on it's side: it's a size 6 piece* which mean keeping correct intonation would be more challenging. Overtones were much more difficult, if not impossible to produce - went back to the AL4 and immediately got my overtone range back.

The tough choice between the two pieces, the A5S which did well for overtones, vs the A6S that sounded the way I'd prefer, but I'd need to work on intonation and overtones. Short while later, I walked away with the A6S.

I knew, with experience from the JDX6 that intonation issues can be worked and conquered. Overtones? Again, can be worked on ;-)

Well I can't wait to get into this new mouthpiece. The AL4 will probably stay on as a classical piece if I need to blend in with a band - not sure about the other two though. I've been told that mouthpieces that don't work now, could very well work years down the road. Let's see :)

Many forum threads go on about sticking with one mouthpiece for a year and not changing - and initially that was my plan - till I encountered that youtube vid ;-) In my experience, yes, perhaps about 8-9 months in, may be a good time to experiment with mouthpieces. That to this experience, I've noticed that I am much more critical of how saxophones sound in music - and much more appreciative of the old school professionals. Spending two weeks on the JDX was also like weight training - when I switched back to the AL4, my tone sounded much bigger, and I figured out how to change my embouchure so that I could sound more mellow or more edgy. Intonation also improved massively after the two week stint with the JDX6. I attribute it getting used to intonation with a larger tip opening, and going back to a smaller one felt easier. I used to spend about 10 hours+ a week, but I'm trying to cut down now - maybe 5-8 hours a week.

*NB: sizes between manufacturers rarely match - a size 9 with one manufacturer could be 6 on another.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 09

2011-08-19T22:44:00.001+01:00

Ok so I spent several hours over the last 3 days trying to get a good fluid sim to work. However the look is far different from the reference, and it's time to look for cheaper, faster solutions ;-) Taking a closer look at the milk pour (see reference in this post), it can be observed that there is actually very little reaction to the surface of the tea, whilst the fluid sims I've got have a very visible reaction.

Hence, I've decided to go with a procedurally based solution in SOPs - to actually model and procedurally animate the milk stream as geometry. Looking at the stream, it can be generated using multiple curves that are shaped and joined together. A handy way of generating a mesh from curves, is with volumes - or more accurately, signed distance fields. A good readup can be found in "Levelsets In Production: Spider Man 3".

I did a quick test to make sure the blending works in Houdini, just using a Volume Mix set to minimum.

A few nodes are added to ensure that both sdfs to be merged are of the same dimensions.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 08

2011-08-16T23:20:00.000+01:00

Since I got home earlier than planned, I setup a good part of the system for simulations. I'm planning to use the rest of the week to tune the main water sim; if by Friday I cannot get a good result I'll have to stop and focus on getting the milk to work (lol). Initial tests seem to be ok, the sphere represents the area where the milk will be emitted from. However, compared to the reference I have it seems to have a much larger impact on the surface.

Tests with a localized drag force seemed to tame down the water surface, closer to the reference. Increasing the time scale seems to compensate for the "sticky", almost viscous feel caused by the drag, but only more testing will tell if this will bear fruit.

Going to stop early today before I burn out :P Time for some music theory before bed.

Giiiiig!

2011-08-16T22:20:00.001+01:00

Down with the life drawing class for a gig, surprisingly there were 4 of my classmates performing, not just the one. Bloody inspiring, and if it weren't already 10pm, I'd be honking my horn (wish I had a sax mute.....)

This is also probably one of the few photos I actually tweaked non globally! OMG! I'm not a photographer anymore?! Basically apart from white balancing to get the skin tones "more correct" for the band, I'd allow a radial falloff for saturation, keeping the band at its original saturation.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 07

2011-08-15T22:50:00.002+01:00

For some inexplicable reason, I'm actually rendering stuff before simulation >.>

No, don't ask me why. I just felt like it was mantra time :D

I'm keeping things really simple - 3 passes, AO, Diffuse+Cd and Reflection. The screenshot above is just for the bottle, and similar passes will be used around the cup.

For the diffuse pass I was thinking of going down the PBR route and actually setup the lights to resemble the windows, but it was taking somewhat longer to get rid of the noise, so I reverted back to the micropolygon render and just two distant lights; one key, one fill.

Motion blur is fun with deformation geometry :3 Deformation blur, with 3 samples. Love to get the curves in :)

This brings up the thorny issue of reflection of my *hand* in the water..... will probably do some crappy "map my fist onto a sphere for reflection" thing. Let's see how it goes. I'm taking tomorrow off to attend a gig a friend is playing, so no updates, till at least Wednesday.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 06

2011-08-14T22:44:00.002+01:00

And here's the animation of the bottle and a roto of the stand-in spoon. Took awhile, gods.

Test test - side mic'ing

2011-08-14T19:38:00.000+01:00

Mic'ing about 45 degrees off axis. Still feels abit "far". Also, this post is an excuse to test embedding the soundcloud player.

Saxophone thoughts

2011-08-14T00:10:00.000+01:00

So I've been playing the saxophone for about 9 months now, and it's been a journey of continuous learning, joy, and of course, pain. One the web, it's sometimes said that the saxophone is an instrument that is easy to play. The come back to that line is, that they missed a word - badly. Yes, the saxophone is an instrument that is easy to play badly.

I submit myself to the court of public opinion, a horrible first 8 bars as I am totally out of tune. I thought the rest was not too bad, given I'm only spending maybe 6, 8 hours a week on it. Not substantial compared to full time professionals, but enough to slowly move on. As mentioned in a post below, the sax is one of the elements that helps me learn more about music, and in turn, more about myself. And from there.. to learn even more :P

Case in point, saxophone recording. How does one record a saxophone properly? Upteen hours on gearslutz, homerecording and many other similar forums reveal a horrendous amount of techniques, equipment and variables required to get a good saxophone sound. Hence now, I've got a few new hats to learn and wear (omg I'm a red mage) - namely "composer*", audio engineer.

Time learning about the saxophone and music related to the saxophone firmly gives me a better idea about my tastes - that I'm definitely not one to go down the "I'm a saxophonist - I play jazz" route. Rather, that is only one of the paths I want to travel. The more I listen to various kinds of music leads me down the path of game music - and with inspiration by Muta1206 that is definitely what I want to do several years down the line - arrange game music that is memorable (to me), as well as instrumental covers of old music that I love.

With game arrangements comes the name, ocremix. Been listening to remixes since... wow a long time back. Lots of it off last.fm, only thought to join the forums months back. Much talent there, and it's bloody challenging. The way I like it :)

*arranger? Remixer?

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 05

2011-08-13T23:17:00.007+01:00

And here we are, the textured carton. Basically shot each end of the milk carton with my slr, and assembled all the images in gimp (needs to be photoshop for linux :-/ )

And here come a minor issue - the linear/sRGB thing. Mantra renders in linear space, but the sRGB jpegs I shot are in well... sRGB space. For those concerned about this, please please google for info - I am definitely not one to be giving out info on linear workflows. Remember, google "linear workflow".

As a quick cheat, I applied a power function with an exponent of 2.2 (i.e. 0.454 gamma - 1/2.2) to the color channels (inside the shader), transforming them to a pseudo-linear space for rendering. At the mplay viewer, a 2.2 gamma is then applied again. Hence the colors will look correct, and thanks to the linear rendering, light sources will react properly.

This will need to be baked out in the final .mov file for submissions.

Tomorrow I will be doing the animation block in as well as tracking in a cg spoon. What have I taken upon myself!?

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 04

2011-08-11T23:00:00.000+01:00

Modelling night! Did two poly meshes, one for the cup's matte object, and another for the bottle used for pouring.

Eh this is just a extruded tube with subdivisions thrown on. It's not a 100% match, but close enough.

The milk bottle also has its corners cut - no time to feasibly do a detailed model, so I've decided to allow for texture mapping for the most of it. I did use the Sculpt SOP to put in some indentations for an undulating surface.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 03

2011-08-10T22:44:00.003+01:00

Ok so today I spent time working on the camera track as well as getting the HDR assembled image to be orientated properly.

It has been a long while since I've done a camera track - you get professional trackers for all tracking needs as a vfx td ;-) and I think it is good enough for the cookoff. The LX5 thankfully records a .jpg thumbnail of the HD video with exif data - at 10mm. Given the crop factor of the lumix is 4.6875, I put in 46.875 into Houdini's camera and put 35mm as the aperture :P Seems to match the blu tacks quite well.

Once that was done, I put in a cg sphere, and dropped a reflection shader on it. This is a hand built (yeah yeah - its just a vop network) shader env map shader; basically using the fresnel vop to give me a reflection vector, that I then translate to world space and rotate about to match the reference plate. (Thank goodness I'd shot a few stills with the mirror ball in-frame)

It's not a perfect match, but I think close enough for reflection mapping and probably ibl. I'm thinking the mismatch is due to me shooting the sphere so close - I'd bet if it was shot at least 3-4 meters away - a physical impossibility - unless I broke down a wall - the results would be better. But oh well.

There is also a green tint in the CG render - I'm not sure why, but my wolfy intuition tells me it's most likely due to the florescent lights in the passageway. A little color correction will clear that up. Hopefully ;-)

Tomorrow, I hopefully will have time to create a matte object for the cup, as well as a model for the milk bottle. And texture it.

Given that I'm working in Houdini Apprentice, I'm set to render the maximum allowed - which is pal, at 768x576. The backplate is scaled down to a width of 768, and black bars put in to fill the empty space.

Replacement Zoom H1

2011-08-09T21:04:00.000+01:00

Previously I'd mentioned my Zoom H1 had developed an issue with battery drain. This evening, I arrived home to find a replacement by the UK Distributor. Very good job - I sent it out just last Friday, and got it on Tuesday. Props to them!!

I've got a nice new Energizer battery in it now, let's see how it runs.

London Riots 2

2011-08-09T01:02:00.002+01:00

Can't sleep. Just saw the news that Camden's high street is affected too. That's like 15 minutes on foot away from me. I'll be sure to ready my 70-200. Can't sleep, too wired.

London Riots

2011-08-09T00:03:00.000+01:00

At the time I'm writing this, my heart is still racing, and I'm just generally feeling uneasy all over. I'm perfectly fine, and safe at home, but I would like to put down what I experienced this night.

Life drawing class as usual, and the tension was in the air today. It felt... different from usual. No matter, just finish the class as usual and head home, no big deal.

That's when things changed.

Staring down the shuttered gates of Bethnal Green station, my heart skipped a beat. What happened? Why would a tube station be shut just minutes before 10pm?

Several other passerbys were similarly slightly distressed by the shut tube.

Thankfully, one of my class mates came by, and he was also nonplussed by the tube shutting down. He on the other hand, knew other means to get back - and guided me to the bus stops where we could both get our respective rides home.

On the bus towards Soho, it was clear many were delayed thanks to the shut tube station.

The journey to soho was uneventful, and I got off along New Oxford Street.

Heading north, I wanted to grab some groceries, only to find the Currys had a massive pole lodged in the glass, with large rocks arrayed around. Across the road, many places were shut, and the grocery store had shut, employees looking outwards with concerned gazes.

It was then I felt a great sense of unease and quickly trotted home. Along the way, usually open stores were shut, only adding to my distress.

I've got a pack of noodles for dinner, and I'm still feeling jittery. Can't focus, can't read. Hopefully I can sleep this off an be good for work tomorrow.

Stay safe, carpe diem.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 02

2011-08-07T19:49:00.000+01:00

Yes, finally I got my act together to acquire the plate, as well as capture the image sequences required for creating a hdri map.

First off is the location.

A nice window sill, with a nice cloudy sky providing beautiful soft shadow. It's a little tough to see, but there are four dots of blu-tack setup in a 12x12cm grid - this will be to ensure ease of camera matching the plate, and visible by the shooting camera at all times.The cup specifically chosen to be easy to model in Houdini (i.e. straight sides), and has its bottom blu-tacked to the sill so as not to move during the stirring action.

For the actual shoot though, I'd put a white box as a makeshift reflector in order to lessen the contrast of the shadow side of the cup.

In terms of image acquisition for the hdri map, I'd found a great recommendation by a colleague - Ball Finials in a chrome finish! A whole lot of these can be found at John Lewis (in the UK). The surface is far from perfect, but it is very solid, and more than adequate for little projects like these.

From the reflection above, I am actually quite close to the sphere; barely few feet away. Usually for HDRIs, you'd want to be far away so as to present less of the photographer in the ball, and being further away will better simulate an orthographic camera. Sadly, due to physical space constraints, I brought out my 200 and 300mm full sized SLR lenses but I simply could not find the space. I just hope these env maps will work! I only need them for reflection and diffuse lighting. Obligatory link to Paul Debevec's website on light probes.

Stills were acquired in two positions, from the shooting camera's POV, and one with the lens axis parallel to the ground. For each shooting position, I'd shot at iso 100, F2.8, 1/2000 to 1/4, giving me wide range of exposures to pick from. Each of these positions were shots twice, with different white balances (Cloudy and Custom) as I know my raw converter software does not do well with the white balance of the Lumix LX5.

Above is the plate :3 Well one of them anyways. Haven't yet decided which to use. I shot it overlength, and will only use at max 15 seconds, or less - I only have 4gb of ram on my home machine, and tests so far are already hitting the ceiling. Not really wanting to buy more ram as I rarely hit the ceiling.

The first few seconds was to allow the camera to settle down after I pressed the shutter, and the next few is to allow the milk carton/bottle to fill up the tea. Next, I stick the end of a spoon into the cup, stir, and pull out the spoon.

Originally, I'd thought to leave the spoon in, but I do not think I have the time to properly integrate a live action spoon, hence the stir and remove. I will probably need to create a stand in cg spoon element, and hopefully the motion blur seen in the plate above won't cause too much issues. I'd also blu-tacked the spoon at the 5cm mark to give me a frame of reference when I'm matching the animation. *Not* looking forward to that.

Well now that I've got plates and ldr images for the hdr map, no excuses....

Daaw!

2011-08-05T00:55:00.000+01:00

I've been quite inspired recently by OCRemix, and I hope to do some arrangements of my own for the good old games back in the day. As such, I've built a beginner's DAW.
The signal chain is quite straightforward; microphone -> audio interface -> laptop, and my main application (for now) would be Garageband.

For microphone, I decided (after much, much going around in circles) to go with the good old Shure SM57. The logic follows that it is a very hard wearing microphone, plus it's a dynamic and will help reject ambient noise as my room is not properly treated.

Audio interface is an Onyx Blackjack. There are several interfaces at the same price point, and this was chosen mainly as the preamps are supposedly of very high quality. There is no midi in/out, and that is alright as I do not think I will be connecting any devices that use traditional midi connections at the moment.

The mini keyboard is the Akai LPK25, a really small usb midi keyboard that I think would be fine for use with garageband. Having used larger M-Audio keyboards with weighted keys, the keys on the LPK feel like a cheap casio. In addition, the velocity feels non linear. Can't be helped as it is very affordable. Still, I had alot of fun playing tunes on it in garageband. Some songs with extended ranges annoy with the octave break though :)

Sound wise, I haven't tested my saxophone on it. Based on vocal tests, this is a very different sound from my Zoom H1. The H1 is very clear, but doesn't seem to have as much bass. The XLR signal chain at the moment sounds very smooth, with the right amount of bass. I actually thought my voice wasn't too bad through the sm57.

Can't wait for the weekend when I can go all out and check out this setup on the saxophone :) Still working on my Houdini cookoff project - was doing fluid sim tests - and was playing with the above whilst the sims were cooking away :)

Pst. You know that chick?

2011-07-30T23:58:00.001+01:00

Yeah this is supposed to be a photography blog? So where's the photographs? Not putting up the majority of my stuff lately as I'm prepping a new website. Or should I say, was prepping a new site. With the projects I'm working on at home and learning sax, doing photography. I'm pooped.
This was snapped with my dear Lumix LX5 on the way to a funk gig. As an attendee :)

Wore through my R-Strap!

2011-07-30T22:56:00.000+01:00

Ok so I've been using the Blackrapid R-Strap for several years now, and I love it. I used to use it quite heavily during weekends - but not much after picking up the saxophone - and finally today after an afternoon of shooting, I wore through part of the connecting lugs so that the clip is bent out.

This is not a crit on Blackrapid's part - but just that I do take a heavy toll on my equipment (you need to see how badly worn out my 16-85VR is - rubber has fallen off, paint is mostly gone, hood cracked in at least 3 places....

Will definitely get the updated version as I think the r-strap system is simply the best camera strap for travel, wildlife or event photography. Yes, I use to average 20+, sometimes almost 40 hours worth of wildlife/travel photography in the weekends. I blame the lack of photography nowadays on the saxophone. :P

Macbook dropped!

2011-07-20T23:15:00.000+01:00

Omg! I've turned into a mac fanboi.

Maybe.

Nah.

Ok so I'm hoping to be producing backing tracks for my saxophone down the line, and linux is just not cutting it for me - mainly just setting it up takes *forever* to find the dependencies et al for music production. I got it working in the end, but seriously, spending 3 nights just to set it up, vs me walking into the apple store and laying down a piano track under 5 minutes (this is no joke) in garage band is a no brainer: I want a mac to work on my music. No windows machines please, thanks.

Linux will be for my main machine, houdini, raw processing etc, and I'll get a low end macbook of sorts to run my "music production".

Given that the white macbook has been around for awhile, I was hoping to see apple release a new model, sadly it seems the new macbook air has supplemented it.

The air only has a SSD for storage, and I'm just not sure if that's a good thing for audio. I'm probably going to go for a used mac off ebay, something enough to run garageband and logic, or perhaps maybe just bite the bullet and save up for a low spec macbook pro.

Will need a good think about. Not relishing the thought of running osx again though - I ran ubuntu on my last mbp ;-) Best linux experience ever. Seriously.

Zoom H1 - battery drain >.>

2011-07-19T22:43:00.001+01:00

Exhibit 1 above is my Zoom H1 portable recorder. Issue: Major battery drain even when switched off.

This is a known issue with some H1 recorders, and actually, mine (got it in February) has been perfectly fine, till the last month or so when it started eating up batteries at an alarming rate (drains a new energizer battery in about 5 days).

Hopefully, I can get it repaired. At the same time, I'm also looking at a new recorder released by Tascam, the DR-05. Not only do reviews indicate it's much better built than the H1, it seems to have a better spl rating (125 vs 120), built in tuner and just looks cooler to me :) If Zoom's UK distributor does not get their act together, I'll probably pop this on the devil's junkyard and use what I can get from the H1 to contribute to the DR-05.

EDIT: Yay! They finally got back to me for an exhange. Sweet.

Life Drawing, Sketching, thoughts.

2011-07-18T23:39:00.001+01:00

I've been doing life drawing since April 2010, and only started learning how to sketch a few months before that (see my drawing blog). Last week, I'd used up my A3 sketchpad that I use for my life drawing sessions, and this afternoon I popped into Cowling and Wilcox to get more paper. Inside, I was agonizing which to buy - a £10 pad, or the £6 pad.

I then realized, that I actually took more than a year to finish up a pad, so just bought the £10 pad (It was a heavier grade of paper, plus very nice covers). In essence, this is a very enjoyable, yet affordable hobby.

Basically, I spend £30 quid for 6 drawing sessions - this lasts me a month and a half - or £5 per session. Add on a bit for transport. Pencil lead is not exactly cheap, as I use lead holders - however out of my entire box, I've only used.... 2 pieces so far.

That's for cost of attending life session, on a day to day basis I spend from 15 minutes, to sometimes hours if I visit a museum or zoo over the weekend.

Sketching for me serves many purposes, but my key reason to actually learn how to sketch was to conquer my fear of drawing.

Or rather, how much I hated sketching in general.

Rewind to a much younger age, I was never strong in the arts - usually the lowest grade in the class. Does not help self esteem there, I assure you.

Even during my uni days, I've tried learning on my own, and attending life drawing sessions, but seriously, telling a complete beginner to draw a crunched up ball of paper without instructions... doesn't really help. needless to say that did not last long.

Fast forward to London, I decided that I would learn again, and see where it takes me. This was also a time of personal pain for me, and I really needed things to distract myself. It worked out far better than I thought.

First, I think the main thing I learnt, is how impossible it is to achieve perfection. I am only human. Attempting to reach perfection is one thing, but stressing out because something is not perfect is not the way to go. I think I have been stressing out on that at work, at photography, at lots in my life.

Just learning on my own, day to day, taught me about how to get better - simply by practice. I used to believe that I would never ever draw. I now believe I can achieve whatever I care to set my heart upon.

Other beneficial side effects (pun intended) include meeting new people. Drawing at museums often see the stranger wander up to exchange a few words, and almost always, they are friendly and positive. I remember I had an Italian sculptor wander up to me once. He was on hols, and told me to visit Genoa, as there were a multitude of amazing sculptures there. I still need to take him up on it.

Weekly drawing sessions also helped me conquer my fear of speaking with people. Maybe it does not show, since I have little fear of teaching classes or giving talks - but one on one with someone? Engage the escape hatch please. Over this time here, I've come to appreciate how the people in my life drawing sessions are still friendly, even though I am a living icon on taciturn-iness (hey I invented a word!)

Of course, I have a long way to go, being introverted and focusing on myself and a narrow range of subjects do not help.

Going slightly off topic, once again playing the saxophone was yet another distraction - again, personal issues - and once again, it is a blessing in disguise. Not only have I found a music instrument I really like (flute, piano, NAF, keyboard etc did not last too long over the years), a fair few amount of people I've met here in the UK play musical instruments, and it makes for an easier time to connect. Down the road, I too hope to be able to join in local bands or just get good enough to jam at.

I think this is due to drawing, it showed myself that I can improve, abeit slowly. And these two seem to form some sort of positive reaction loop, confidence or improvements in one area gets me going in another.

Should I even be putting this down?

Hell yeah, one thing I learnt from all of the above. Live. Live now. Carpe Diem.

Framestore's work on Deathly Hallows Part 2

2011-07-18T14:11:00.000+01:00

Had this article pointed at me this morning :) Yay! Watery goodness. I was assigned 4 shots where I was involved in the main simulations, one of which is in the article - the one with Ron and Hermoine looking up, walls of water on either side of them.

[ Houdini Cookoff ] 01

2011-07-13T23:00:00.000+01:00

Project time! More or less recovered from my last project (Deathly Hallows Part 2), so I thought I'd tackle this little project that SideFX has got running.

The competition's supposed to be about creating a food related project in Houdini - I know tea is not strictly food. I'm not in it for the prizes, more like a challenge for myself. Plus, I've always wanted to do it :P

So, the video above shows what I hope to achieve with Houdini, brown tea getting lightened up with a fair bit of milk.

Currently, I only got the reference above, and still plotting how deep I want to take this. For one thing, I do not plan to spend my waking non-work hours on this, so I need to keep it down to quick sims and tricks. What I definitely will need includes a backplate, with an empty cup. The plate will be basically a hand stirring the spoon, which means I'll need to track a cg spoon into place.

Thankfully, the spoon only shows the top tip of it, so I do not need to like be uber correct. One thing I noticed with the spoon is how the meniscus reacts to it when laid down to rest; I will probably have myself remove the spoon after stirring in the plates; one less thing to worry about.

The milk bottle I have two minds about it - half of me is thinking go full CG, get a HDRI env map, let PBR handle the rendering. The other half says, use practical, and get someone to track in the milk carton/bottle. That's still up in the air, and I need to get it locked down before I shoot the plates.

I'll still want a HDRI map of the scene for the top surface of the water. I also need to keep this short, as the machine I work on at home has very little hdd space left, and only 4gb of ram :P

Simulation wise, I think I will be looking hard at combining both the ripple solver and fluid solver *and* smoke solver. My gut feel (and experience) from running the fluid solver tells me that it will be all splashy when the poured liquid hits - not like the ref in which the surface stays pretty calm.

So I'm thinking using voxel fluids to get the shape, then merge the SDF volumes to create a single geo surface.

Smoke I'm thinking would be used below the surface, and we can trace into it. Or, pre-render, then project onto the water mesh. 6 weeks to go, got to get the camera track and even animation done in the next week and a half, then I can focus on simulations, the last 2 weeks would probably be final renders and comp.

Note to self: the cup moves when being stirred; recommend blu-tack to keep it locked down. I do not want have sims inside moving geo :D

Everything is a Remix

2011-06-21T21:31:00.000+01:00

http://vimeo.com/25380454

Side Effects Cookoff!

2011-06-10T23:51:00.000+01:00

http://www.sidefx.com/cookoff/

I'm so looking forward to this! Hopefully, I will be able to get something out in time. It has to be food related, however my idea is not exactly food - mixing milk into tea. *yeah everyone tells me it's not food* but you know what, even if it doesn't qualify for the competition, I'm still going to try to get something going. It's always possible to learn new techniques from just trying out new ideas.

Already have some reference footage of tea being made ;-) Let's go!

GW

Houdini: Foam Pass for level set fluids

2011-05-15T23:54:00.000+01:00

I've been using Exotic Matter's Naiad for water simulations, and apart from the main simulations, other layers are included, such as foam particles floating on the surface, as well as particles ejected away from the surface to simulate spray.

This experiment is an attempt at creating foam off a Houdini Level Set Fluid simulation (Note: Naiad uses FLIP fluids.)

Emission is basically scattered points on a mesh that was converted from the fluid's main level set ("surface" volume: with a convert sop you can get a mesh). Two parameters are used to control emission regions; curvature (measure SOP) and velocity (lookup into velocity volumes).

These points are then used as for emission in POPs; this particle layer is relatively fast to simulate because it's all pops! Inside pops, there is a fake "advection" stage where the particles sample the velocity volumes from the base simulation, and uses that to move each particle to its new position.

This however will result in particles moving into positions below the surface, or a bit too high above the surface. Tests indicate this can be improved by a high resolution level set, but we all know how expensive those are ;-)

Instead, a VOP POP was created to move the points based on the gradient of the base simulation's distance field, and points are moved accordingly to whether they are negative or positive (i.e. negative distances moved towards the surface following the gradient vector; positive distance are again moved, but against a negative distance vector).

I have no idea about those spots that hang on the ceiling - there is a cull pass that removes particles if they are a set distance away from the distance field. Since those particles are hanging there, I'm assuming there are remnants of the level set that do not have velocities affecting them and not dissipated.

That's it for this experiment, maybe I'll look into it another day.

GW

Houdini: Arrow system using Quaternions

2011-05-14T22:39:00.004+01:00

Got inspired the last few days to design an "Arrow" system and finally took Friday evening and Saturday morning to figure out a good way to create a system that allows stuck particles (arrows) to change their orientation based on the underlying deforming geometry.

The main concept is getting an origin frame of reference (in this case, it's the primitive normal of the collided polygon that the particle hit, as well as the vector of the first two vertices. These will give a reference frame.), as well as a constantly updating frame of reference (the prim normal and vector again, from the deforming primitive).

Originally, I had used the Align VOP to perform this calculation, however, the align vop simply returns a transform from one vector to another vector via the shortest path. In this case, it is basically a rotation with an axis that is the cross product of the two vectors. What we want is a proper rotation, so I used the look at vop to generate rotation matrices from the two frames of references.

Next, these were converted to Quaternions, and then I used the SLERP function (Spherical Linear Interp VOP) to obtain yet another quaternion that blends the original frame orientation to the final deformed frame.

The issue I encountered was that the SLERP function returns the initial orientation quaternion when both the initial and target orientations are the same - this is obviously the case during the collision frame; both reference and initial orientation are exactly the same.

This, we do not want; as during the collision frame, I want my arrow's normal vector to be operated on by a Quaternion of xyzw = {0,0,0,1}, not the quaternion for the initial frame. Hence, by subtracting the initial frame's quaternion from both the initial frame as well as the target frame (this is done by doing a quaternion multiplication of the conjugate of the initial frame's quaternion against both initial and target quaternions before putting them into the SLERP).

This seemed to work, from the examples above. :)

Woo! Slowly attacking quaternions. And Houdini just makes it so simple.

Other issues I encountered is during rendering: proper motion blur for the arrows. With a stuck particle, the "v" velocity vector is actually locked in place whilst the particle is with the pstate of 16, hence during renders, this is uber incorrect.

Initial tests using to Attribute Transfer velocity vector (calculated using a Trail SOP) did not work out as it was very inconsistent. What I did then, was to do a look up into the geometry (the collision POP stores the posprim attribute, allowing us to find out which primitive to query), and allow the hit arrow to take the velocity of the underlying geometry.

GW

Saxophone Log: May 2011

2011-05-08T23:38:00.001+01:00

Here's another saxophone log from this month. I'm playing from a play along book called "Dig It!" for Saxophone.

What's nice about this is that just one book caters for Alto, Tenor and Soprano as well! The Tenor and Soprano scores are similar, just that the soprano will need to be played one octave below the score. In addition, there are multiple parts for the different saxes, to be played together e.g. alto + 2 tenors. Good stuff!

Side Effects Software: Why use Houdini?

2011-04-13T22:25:00.000+01:00

And more question such as:
How many companies have a new daily build accessible from their website, containing bug fixes and feature improvements?
Where can you meet the developers in person and talk to them?
How often do representatives visit you in person?

Well SESI does all that, and more. A few weeks ago, I put up the robotic servo arm controlled by Houdini. It's just a proof of concept that went overkill, but seemed to generate a fair bit of interest, so much that the code and concept may be used for other projects.

Fast forward to last night, it seems like I had failed to test for keyframed animation support, and I fixed the otl right up. The developers at SESI took it to actually rebuild my entire digital asset from the ground up, pythonized, so while it looks the same on the outside, the guts are totally revamped.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TImyQ7VnS_M

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/12916-houdini-arduino-robotic-claw/

Next project I'm working on will involve an ADXL335 accelerometer, what will I use with it? As always, these are proof of concepts I hope to learn from to build on for bigger projects :)

Saxophone Log!

2011-04-02T21:41:00.000+01:00

To prove that I have no life, here's me on my monthly saxophone log.

Houdini + Arduino + Robotic Claw

2011-03-26T20:51:00.000Z

Ok so I've been amiss from updating this blog. I am still snapping photos left right and center, but I've not been putting them up here (mainly on facebook). This is because I'd planned to have dedicated website for my photography, and a photography blog as well. The website is up, but... the content is not ready :D Will be coming probably in June, after I finish my current project and get some free time.

In the mean time, I am very busy at work (crunch time now, for the next 6 weeks at least), and when I'm not at work I'm working on other stuff, some of it which is houdini related. Like today's post!

So I've been working on Arduino for several months now, just on and off when I get a free moment, to keep busy. (Else my mind wanders). I think microprocessors are awesome, but back in the day when we had to use massive programmers and UV light to wipe the memory, it was not as accessible as the Arduino, which only requires a USB port to provide power, transfer programs from the pc to the microprocessor and do other cool stuff, like what I did above.

Source code and the HDA can be found on odforce.

I'm slowly getting back into doing Houdini as well (where do I find the time for this, when I'm learning how to draw, learning the sax, doing my photography, houdini, work and other stuff?!) - have been inspired by lots of work lately, and want to create some of them by my own hand :3

Looks like someone's laptop needs a ram upgrade. DDR3 anyone?

GW

More camera related nonsense - Nikon P7000 vs Canon G12

2010-12-18T16:53:00.000Z

Basically, Nikon makes crappy handling P&Ses!

Ok to be fair, I'm mainly comparing Nikon and Canon, Sony's handling is even worse off for me.

So on my way back today, I decided to ponder if a P&S would work for me instead, and decided again to drop by Jessops to check out the Panasonic LX5. Seems like it's a very popular camera, as even the display model was sold :-/

Nevermind, I'll check out Nikon's top of the range P&S instead. Costing about an entry level DSLR, (a used D200 is cheaper), it feels really nice, and I was going, "Oh wow, look at all these controls! Gotta be a dream to shoot with!" Sadly, it took me a fair bit of fiddling to actually figure out basic stuff like trying to change the ISO or white balance. Still, it feels very good and well proportioned in my paws.

Tried a few other Nikon P&Ses but I'll not bore you to death further.

Popped over to the Canon section, and lo and behold, the luscious G12 was there. Immediately, I saw how easy it was to manage the camera - ISO was on it's own dial, even with Auto ISO - I may actually prefer having a dedicated ISO dial on my dslr - and EV comp was it's own button, and another dial for easy PASM stuff. I thought it was very well designed, and the handling was superb. Menus were also easy to get into. Folding screen + optical viewfinder? Big big pluses.

Gotta try the LX5, however if it's menu layout is like the TZ8 - I'd say I'd pick either the G12 or LX5, as they are cameras for different purposes - especially the LX5 with the low zoom range and fast lens. P7000? Another top of the line P&S I will probably not care about.

GW

Checked out a Nikon D5000 today

2010-12-15T21:51:00.002Z

So I went past the Jessops along New Oxford Street (in London, UK for newer readers) seemingly by accident today, and decided to pop in to give the D5000 and D3100 a try after dismissing them the last time.

(Side Note: At the moment, I've more or less disqualified the GF1 as a choice, mainly due to the insane distortion of the normal zoom and battery life. Maybe down the road when I have loads of disposable £££ I may get it, however right now, I want something I know I will use.)

As luck would have it, the D3100 was not on the shelves, sold away perhaps? Only had the D5000 to try. As mentioned in a previous post, I put the D5k and D3.1k at a firm no just by virtue of their lack of a top LCD screen. A screen I use very very often on my D200/300 for settings.

First off, the AF on the D5000 was bloody bloody slow. And no AF points showed up. A quick tour of the menu indicated the auto area AF. Switching over to single point AF resolved any speed issues. I've owned the 18-55VR in the past, and am quite familiar with its focusing speeds. I wonder if this auto-area AF is similar to the close priority dynamic AF on the D200 - the AF was so much faster on the D200 in similar light. But who knows. I am fine with the single point and dynamic AF on the D5000 + 18-55VR, it's definitely not 17-55 AF-S speeds, but snappy enough inside the store.

One big issue concerned me - the seeming inability of the camera to separate the shutter button and auto focus. I was able to set the custom function to allow the AE/AL lock button to be used as Af-on, however, did not find a custom function to disable AF on the shutter release. As with the D90, the AF selector is just waay off from where my thumb rests.

There is a possibility I'm just asking too much from a budget, entry level dslr designed for beginners :) Some plus points include a very nice +/-2 stop bracketing ability. I'm pretty sure even my D300 has a maximum of 1 stop between brackets, though it's possible to do a 9 frame bracket on the D300 vs 3 on the D5000. That's a low priority thing anyways. Tested live view AF - a joke, seriously when compared to the GF1, or even my Lumix FS7. Also, the AF point layout is similar to the D200, plus point there. And there is even the overlaid grid which I really like. Viewfinder is of course, super dim but we're talking about a small dslr with a pentamirror, not pentaprism and 100% view which costs like 3 times more.

Also, the obvious lack of AF motor. In general though, looks promising. I'm just reeling at the idea of missing the usage of the 24/2.8 and 50/1.8 on this baby. However, as memory serves, I've never actually used either of these lenses when out on tour even though I've brought them along so..... perhaps I should just bite the bullet and get the D90.... or D5000 + a 35/1.8DX to satisfy my urge for a fast prime (hahaha 2.8 is fast for prime? lols)

On a crop body, the 35mm is about 52.5mm equivalent field of view, which I am just not a big fan off :-/ Even when I was shooting film, on my Contax G, even though the 45mm/2 Planar produced the most amazing feel, I still preferred a wide normal; hence the 35/2 was the one mostly mounted.

End of the day? I still have no bloody idea. I've still got a week or so to decide. Ah well.

Getting a smaller camera - D90? GF1?

2010-12-10T21:18:00.000Z

So my D200 has been dead for several months now, and I've just started the hunt for a smaller camera.

Why?

Basically, whilst my D300 is super awesome kickass, for general day to day use, and just basic travel purposes - it's just to damned big and heavy. In addition, it's not inexpensive, and I just don't like swinging around something that expensive everywhere I go. The D200 IS expensive... back in the day.Thankfully I got mine used for a bargain.

So I've made a trip down to Jessops today, twice actually, to check out the cameras on display.

For the Nikon lineup, I tried the D5000, D3100 and D90.
Other cameras I've tried included the Sony NEX series, Olympus PEN, one of the Samsungs and the Panasonic Micro 4/3s.

Nikon side, the D3100 and D5000 were immediately off my shortlist. When I first grabbed the camera, I went... erm... where is my top lcd? Can't change my settings quickly without that! The back LCD is where its all at, but it's just too damned cluttered. Nope.

D90 wise, apart from me nitpicking certain aspects, seemed like a good choice:
- Push button + control dial for ISO, WB, Qual, Drive etc. Very much like the D200.
- Rear screen is awesome
- Good size and weight
- Shares batteries with my D300
- AF system is similar to the D200, so no issues there
- Viewfinder, though I don't have my D300 with me, seems bright enough. Don't need no 100% viewfinder.
- Motor for AF lenses!
- Relatively quiet shutter. My D200/D300 sounds damned loud in comparison. Could this be due to the slower shutter release time?

Nitpicks:
- The main one: The 4 way rocker which is used to select the AF points during shooting is just not lining up with my right thumb. This has to do with the physically smaller camera. The D200/D300 has the AF selector perfectly where my thumb rests on the back of the camera, not on the D90. It is much lower.
- No dedicated AF-On button. I think the AE lock button can be configured for that, but then how am I supposed to lock exposure? :P

Really minor nitpicks
- Flash sync of 1/200. Bleh.
- Bracketing features weak compared to D200. But I don't bracket much so...
- Uses SD cards (yuck), but can't be helped.
- RGB histogram doesn't show flashing highlights
- The name D90 is just not as inspirational as D200 or even D5000

Olympus:
E-PL1 has so-so autofocus speeds. Really, really did not like the menu layout.
E-P2 - again so-so AF speeds. Controls much better, but menus still weak.

Sony's NEX
Af speeds seem good, and the handling of the camera is surprisingly good. However, the menus seem to expect the user to be a total n00b. Nah. Also, the 16mm lens is an odd choice for their fixed prime. 24mm equiv fov is quite wide and not easy to use as a single lens.

Samsung:
Only tried the Samsung NX100, not a fan of the interface. Controls of camera body were quite sparse too. Eh...nah.

Panasonic:
Well last to be mentioned. Because I really enjoyed the camera. I tried the G2 and GF1, and thoroughly enjoyed the GF1. The on screen display has symbols indicating e.g when in manual mode, to push in the rear dial to switch between controlling aperture and shutter speeds. ISO has a dedicated button, as with AF and some other settings that I forget.

AF speeds are fast and responsive, and I enjoyed the AF tracking mode. I mean, look. I didn't even read the manual, it just worked thanks to the blinking icons!

Body is also very well built, feels like a nice expensive piece of kit, whereas the D90 really feels plasticky.

20mm/1.7 is an amazing lens. Just for that lens alone - giving a 40mm QL17 equivalent FOV - is a tempting idea.

At the moment I'm not sure if I should get either, get a used D200, or just don't do anything. The D90 will allow use of all my lenses and flashes, and apart from the SD cards, a straight fit into my system. And it can be the lightweight counterpart I could use on a day to day basis.

The Panasonic OTOH is just so damned tiny. Even with the zoom lens on it's minuscule, even compared to say, D300 + 24/2.8D.

Ah well. I'll see what happens.

Traffic Light Tree

2010-11-11T19:58:00.000Z

Was at Canary Wharf this weekend, and shot this Traffic Light Tree sculpture :D

My Son Is Gay

2010-11-05T16:41:00.001Z

No, obviously I do not have a son (or daughter) but this blog post I saw really makes me ask myself if people actually understand certain basic aspects of Sex, Gender and Sexuality.

Sex: What reproductive organs you are born with
Gender: Whether you identify yourself as male, female or other
Sexuality: Whether you are straight, or homosexual, or the whole gamut of sexuality.

If wearing female clothes makes one change their sexuality, will wearing a werewolf costume make me a wolf? Gods, people. I really love the Ninja comment :D

GW

Eagle Heights in the rain

2010-10-31T21:41:00.000Z

Went to Eagle Heights today, but got hit by showers in the morning.

Harold the Griffon Vulture demonstrating his 8 foot wingspan. He's being weighed.

Due to the rain, the usual flying demonstrations were held indoors.

Here, a White Tailed Eagle lands beside my friend.

I didn't even know I shot this!

Tawny Eagle. Not my usual style to include man made stuff, but thought it was interesting.

A view of the road up to eagle heights lined with the trees in full autumn colours.

Unidentified falcon nomming on just caught Partridge.

On the way back, Swanley rail was experiencing engineering works, shot this whilst waiting for the rail replacement buses.

Portobello Markets and Trellick Tower

2010-10-24T19:18:00.000+01:00

Decided to visit the Trellick Tower via Portobello Road. I deftly avoided all the classic camera stalls. The shots from yesterday were useful in color grading than anything else.

Slowly getting the hang of Bibble 5

2010-10-24T16:24:00.001+01:00

It's been several months since moving on to Bibble 5, and I'm slowly getting the feel of the package. Here's one of my latest attempts from a visit to the ZSL today. I call it, "bending over".

Bushy Park Deer Rut

2010-10-17T22:50:00.000+01:00

I think I may be shooting it a little late in October since I was so busy last month.

Maybe next week I'll be able to get some fighting shots.

Brutalist Architecture : Robin Hood Gardens

2010-10-02T20:28:00.000+01:00

Was introduced to Robin Hood Gardens as a possible photography subject, and surprise! It's an example of brutalist architecture. A kind of architectural subject that I have a love/hate relationship with.

Here's what I got today:

The whites look a tad grey in my browser :-/ Darned color management.

GW