Author: wjl

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In case you like fiction…

Here are four books which I’ve got for my birthday this year, and in the order I’ve read them:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49603232468/
Birthday presents, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

I like Murakami anyway, and I had read some five or so other books of his already – but these here are all exceptional. I think that I’ve read them in the right order, so if you don’t know the man, that would be my recommendation. Other than these I can recommend ‘Kafka on the shore’, ‘Norwegian wood’, or ‘Killing Commendatore’, but in my opinion these ones here are truly good. And that last one, ‘1Q84’ is definitely a masterpiece (and one of his latest if I’m not mistaken, it was published 2009/10 in Japan, and 2011 in Great Britain).

Recommended, all of them.

I took the photo with the same in-camera black & white settings resembling a digital Olympus Pen-F camera like I wrote one day before my birthday, here.

And, as always, thanks for reading, and for looking.

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Eliška Lenhartová

I presented Eliška Lenhartová before in this post as part of the Duo Françaix – now here she is alone, some three years after that previous video:

Wonderful, isn’t she? And looking at her fingers move along that guitar I wonder if some people were just born for certain instruments…

Thanks as always for reading, and for watching. Hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I did (and for me it’s always a pleasure to see and hear good musicians)…

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Unspoken by Erwan

Today, the album of the day in Wikiloops is Erwan’s ‘Unspoken’ which he published yesterday, and which even contain collaborations with me on two of his tracks. But even so, it’s a really nice one, so if you like bowed classical string instruments, have a listen:

Downloaded it already, and also wrote a review on it. I love it. Even the cover picture is awesome in my opinion.

As always, thanks for reading.

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More is More!

A remix from ‘eGiL’ from Norway, who also mixed in ‘kimbo’ from Cornwall, and me as Dalek:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-181902.php

As always, thanks to my friends for all the fun, and thanks to you for reading and for listening.

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Just voices

The human voice is the ultimate instrument. Not only do you have it with you wherever you go, but its expressive capabilities seem to be just endless.

This was recorded some time ago, but listen to the young women and men of this choir:

The Parting Glass

I like this one even more. Gets me each time:

Black is the Colour of my True Love’s Hair

“And I love the ground whereon she stands”

Wow.

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That Pen-F look

Olympus has had this special camera, the Pen-F (talking/writing about the digital one here, not the original half frame film version from days long ago). And that digital Pen-F was special because no other camera did black & white as good as that one, in my humble opinion. They really should consider their decision not to continue it, it was simply brilliant, and lots of people loved it (at least those who bought and owned it).

Now a fellow photographer who has both the Pen-F as well as the OM-D E-M10 Mk2 (which I also have) has managed to get pretty close to the look of black and white images from the Pen-F when using his E-M10 Mk2. So here’s Rob explaining how he did that:

How to Get That Olympus PenF Monochrome Look On your OM-D ep.210

Of course I immediately had to try that, and I used the Mono-2 without grain settings to try. I also noticed that indeed applying a -0.3EV compensation helps with keeping a bit more infos in the highlights. Look:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49547749286/
Zuleikha, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2020

That’s really very close to Kodak Tri-X if you ask me. And although this was at ISO 1250 it’s still much cleaner than film ever was – if you want to apply grain you can still do so with a few mouse clicks.

Cool. Thanks Rob, your tips help a lot. Really appreciated!

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Vitamin, remixed

A remix job I just did for friends of mine from Wikiloops:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-182443.php

Lovely track, hm? I didn’t play a single note here myself since this one had a bass in its “blue part” already, I guess that was Trilian (a sampled double bass).

As always, thanks for listening.

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False positives at GMX

I have a friend from the UK who – like me – uses a GMX mail account or two. The only difference is that her domain is gmx.com while I’m using gmx.net.

And twice already some mail of hers landed in the internal gmx “assumed spam” folders which you only see via their web interface if you look – so my advice: don’t ignore their regular messages about that assumed spam folder, and go and check it – you might have missed someone who clearly didn’t send spam (in my friend’s case, not even a link was inside her mails, so it’s not clear why the gmx algorithms assumed that to be spam…)

I’ve told their web interface to not classify her mail addresses as senders of spam, still have to check if that works.

Otherwise they’re very good – and they really keep out lots of spam. Not bad for a cost-free provider at all – and if you’re using them with an email program like I do, you won’t even see all the ads which they need to finance it all.

Just a hint to go and check…