Another “selfie” with the kit zoom

Took this one a few minutes ago:

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Self portrait, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

This was with the kit zoom at ~26mm and at f/5.6 using a studio strobe. Processed with Olympus Workspace, Silver Efex, and RawTherapee. Heavily cropped from 4:3 to 2:3, then to 1:1, still big enough for screens and for the web (over 2000pixels wide).

As always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Daily cat portrait

One of many photos of our cat, this time taken for my ‘month of the kit zoom’ series, with a focal length of 17mm at f/4. Out of camera jpg with no post processing whatsoever applied. ‘Muted’ camera profile.

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

Still my favourite model by far – she doesn’t pose, and nothing is in vain… ๐Ÿ™‚

As always, thanks for viewing.

Mixed tape by Bothen

One of the tracks/jams in Wikiloops on which I played last year was included in another album today, this time one of a drummer again:

Mixed tape by Bothen, on Wikiloops

I had uploaded my bass to the track at about the same time as Bothen did with his drums, so I offered to mix them together – and that gave an interesting 3/4 from me, with a 4/4 played over it by him (Arno’s template had this polyrhythm feeling anyway).

I also made a video of this track in my DAW, together with the settings for my bass, so in case you’re interested, it’s here:

Wikiloops Collaboration #153856: I miss you (already)

My own version got some remixes by others as well, so here’s the version from my own album:

As always, thanks for reading, viewing, and/or listening ๐Ÿ™‚ And thanks again to Bothen for including me on your wonderful album – I feel very honoured! ๐Ÿ™‚

Self portrait with bass

Olympus cameras have a cool feature which is WiFi – so you can not only put photos taken with your camera to your smartphone for fast distribution, you can also use that smartphone as a remote control (and display) for your camera. Which means that you can get shots without seeing through the viewfinder or on the rear display, and without being able to reach the shutter. Cool; this opens all sorts of possibilities (like for wildlife/birds for instance).

I just used that feature a few minutes ago to take a ‘selfie’ ๐Ÿ˜‰

Cropped it to a 3:2 aspect ratio, and adjusted the curves just a bit. It’s not 100% sharp because I was only lit by my monitor, had the camera on f/4 at ISO200, so the resulting exposure time was 2 seconds…

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Self portrait with bass, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

You see me with my bass in front of my computer, and with Puccini’s ‘O mio babbino caro’ on the sheet in front of me. And yes, I’m learning to play that, so it’s no fake.

As always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Month of the kit zoom

I have decided that this November should be my month of the kit zoom. Wanted to go a bit more to taking wide-angle photos, and although I have a very nice Panasonic Lumix 14mm/2.5 I’ll opt for the Olympus kit zoom instead which also offers other focal lengths up to 42mm – very convenient.

Of course it has maximum apertures of f/3.5 at the wide and f/5.6 at the long end, and November isn’t the brightest of all months, but I’ll see how I’ll get along. For inside, there’s always flash, right?

Here are some three shots (of my favourite model) using daylight only:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
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Dust, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

First and last one are at 14mm (which is like 28mm on film), and the middle one at 42mm (like 84mm on film).

I’ll show you more after I took any. For now and as always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Update, in the evening:

Here are two more photos – or in fact it’s one photo taken with two different focal lengths (of the same kit zoom lens), 14mm and 35mm:

Cat cup, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
Cat cup, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
Cat cup, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019
Cat cup, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

Notice how the cup seems to be kind of ‘flatter’ in the second photo, taken with the longer focal length? And how that flower vase seems to be coming closer to the cup as well? Well, you’ve just discovered the main characteristics of tele vs. wide angle perspectives, that’s the exact reasons for using one vs. the other.

Oh, and these two photos are the jpg files straight from my camera – no post-processing whatsoever.

Thanks again for viewing, and for reading.

Three versions of “No moon at all”

First of course the original version from 1947, by Doris Day:

Doris Day singing No Moon At All

You like good bass players? Here’s a killer version, and my best guess for the bassist (the album’s Wikipedia page lists three) would be Christian McBrideยน. But that piano and Diana Krall’s contralto are very nice as well:

Diana Krall – No Moon At All

Remember Alba Armengou? You probably should. And that band is as fantastic as always:

2018 No moon at all JOAN CHAMORRO PRESENTA ALBA ARMENGOU (feat. JOHN ALLRED)

Lovely song, three killer performances, hm? As always, thanks for reading.

ยนEdit, from November 17th: someone who actually has this album corrected my guess about the bass player – it’s not Christian McBride in this one, but John Clayton. Wow. I knew he was great, but still – hats off, sir!

Devin is so cool. And so is Bob.

Have a look / a listen:

Let Her Voice Fly You to the Moon and Back!

Yep – this is our “moonchild” from the ‘loops, and my latest one with her was this one:

So please give her a few thumbs on Youtube as well, she’s trying to make a living of it.

Thank you.

And now, the same in Debian

Firefox update to the next ESR release, the one without the built-in Live Bookmarks:

And I’ll do it right after finishing this blog post – now that I know what awaits me (some changes in the Look & Feel department, and lots of manual labour), I’ll just do it. After all, that new version of Firefox also has some advantages compared to its older sibling.

So… still no weekend for me… but thanks for reading, as always.

Update, after the update: the first thing I saw in the new browser version was an additional tab:

That’s a support page, written by volunteers for Mozilla, so thanks for that!

Thanks to you again for reading. Have a nice weekend.

Oh my… goodbye old live bookmarks…

Lost all of my live bookmarks this morning at work, when my version of Firefox there updated itself from 60ESR to 68ESR:

The dreaded first non- live bookmarks release

This was announced earlier, so kind of expected, but I still hate when something like this happened – and Mozilla got their share of comments from me about it, including some not so friendly words and threatening of leaving the browser for good.

But there aren’t any alternatives, really. Google’s Chrome? God forbid. Its more or less free basis with the name “Chromium”? Hm, why? Any other ones? The former “Galeon” is now called “Web”, and there are some forks of Firefox and others, but really, Firefox is still the best of these options, and somehow the last bastion vs the big corporate guys.

So I searched for and installed “Livemarks” – and while that works, you still lose the complete structure of your folders – so you have to manually fix everything (be prepared for some real work there if you have many live bookmarks). Anyway, thanks to Tim Nguyen, and Tom Schuster for making this – you guys rock!

To the Mozilla crew, again: shaking my head in disbelief about such bad decisions. How could you kill the one and probably most important thing which separated Firefox from the rest out there? Can’t you even imagine that with all of the information overflow these days, having the headlines is often enough? :/ But anyway, thanks for making a good free browser.

As always, thanks for reading.