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~ occasional thoughts, images, and videos

kitlaughlin

Monthly Archives: June 2013

Today, the weather is superb

30 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in General, Photography

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

B&W, kangaroos, kangaroos and rocks!, kitlaughlin.com

Just a quick one to which I will attach some images later: for the first time in a week, the weather is clear, the sky is blue, and the temperature—well, balmy would be overstating the case dramatically, but it feels that way!

Miss O and your author will be ascending either Mts Taylor or Arrawang, and I will take a camera with me. It’s perfect weather for a panorama (‘panos’ in the biz, but she does not like the term, so it’s panoramas all the way, here).

Man plans; God laughs—heard that one before? Some images:

27 years ago

27 years ago

Found while 1) moving things to make way for the second set of stall bars to be attached to the studio walls; I acknowledge that the moustache was a youthful excrescence and I own no suits presently; and from the walk today:

How many furry friends can you see?

How many furry friends can you see?

There are 15+ mega-large kangaroos in that image; I will show you tomorrow (and the kangas are BIG presently: four seasons of good water and grass), and a closer shot of some of the rocks that make this such a lovely area to walk around:

Many rocks

Many rocks

Á demani

Pro video cameras are dead

29 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Photography, Technology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Olympus 50 macro, Panasonic HMC-152, Sony NEX camera, Voigtlander MF lenses

Today Paul Janssens came around to my studio and I gave him his new camera—a second-hand Sony NEX 7 with the PZ 16–50 (24 to 75mm EFOV in ‘old-speak, 35mm camera terms) lens, and the truly excellent Jim Buchanan ‘palm grip‘. I have written about the NEX 6 camera on this blog in a number of posts before; the ‘6’ is the slightly lower-spec version of the 7, but for my eyes, has the better EVF and ergonomics (the 6 has a mode dial; on the 7, you need to menu dive to select manual, or other modes—who was in charge of that design team one wonders?

The reason why Paul wanted a NEX 7 is that it has a 3.5 mm mini-jack (allowing microphones or external sound equipment to be connected) and 6 does not. As discussed before though, this is not a problem for me because I always record second system sound. With the 7 in the bag, we have this additional option.

And today, as two ex-professional videographers and filmmakers, we made a truly momentous decision, wherein the title of today’s blog post. We are selling the relatively very expensive Panasonic HMC-152 cameras; we have two between us, and this has allowed the many two-camera video shoots we have done. For people that haven’t looked into this, shooting any video live to two cameras means that the editing process is simplified enormously. One of us holds a wide shot and the other is on a closer, or ‘tighter’, shot showing details of what the presenter is explaining. Laying both video and both audio tracks on the timeline in Final Cut Studio and using the razor blade tool means that both shooting and editing are very rapid processes compared to yesteryear. We have been using the pair of HMC-152 cameras for this purpose for a number of years now.

But with two NEX 6 bodies and the NEX 7 as a backup, and all the Sony cameras being able to shoot 1080/60p or 24p video means that we no longer need the Panasonics. The only advantage of the Panasonic is that they can take XLR connectors directly into the camera on two channels. Shooting second system sound mean that this is no longer an important factor for us. And a direct comparison of video quality shows us that the Sony video quality (with its much larger sensors) is a step ahead of the Panasonics’. And because the Sonys are stills cameras at heart, directly controlling white balance, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO (and a host of other things that one needs is a professional videographer) is very easily achieved. Further, because the NEX bodies are so tiny and the entire two camera recording setup can fit into a bag that is well below the carry on weight limit (including a remote screen), travel is hugely expedited. And the tripod that we need (and the fluid head that sits on it) is minute compared to the pro video camera setup—the tripod and fluid head alone weighs 20kg.

A side note: the NEX 6/7 can take almost all of the previous generation manual focus lenses via simple blind no-optics adapter—many specialist lens options are available. I am using a 40-year-old Olympus 50/3.5 macro lens, and a Minolta 50/1.4 lens, and the lens I am awaiting is a Cosina Voigtländer 35/2.5 Color Skopar (Leica M-mount), that will see double duty as my main still lens AND my main video lens. Pretty much ALL the lenses of previous eras can be used this way, and all have their own signature look.

For the YouTube market, we were way ahead of the curve in using a pair of the video cameras for the last few years—as you all know the majority of YouTube videos are shot on iPhones or other similar devices. And you have probably already noticed, the audio quality on the standard YouTube clip is wretched—most new directors are fascinated with image quality and forget that the major informational and emotional content is carried on the soundtrack. Note to new directors: make sure you get good sound!

So, and this is a huge decision and change of position for us, the week after next both of our Panasonic cameras, their fluid heads, and their carbon fibre tripods will be put up on Gumtree or eBay for their next owner to find. Pro video is dead; long live the King.

On changing blog/vlog catgories

28 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Photography

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Cosina Voïgtlander, Dave Wardman 90 day blog challenge, MS-Optical Perar, NEX 6

This morning I decided to delete the philosophical and medical anthropology categories on the blog. My reasoning is that many of my posts contain elements of both of these anyway and from a category–theoretic point of view, one could argue that having these categories is redundant, given the overall flavour of what I am interested in writing and talking about.

I have been looking back and reflecting on what I have chosen to write on a day-to-day basis following the Dave Wardman 90 day blog challenge. Looking at the current categories, a purist may claim that photography very fairly belongs as a subcategory of technology. I would agree with this and have only separated photography out because so many of my musings are about this interesting activity. I see that I have three main interests in technology: computing devices, tools used for listening to the sounds of different kinds or recording sound, and devices used for seeing or recording things that we see. Accordingly photography stands as a category on its own, and I may add one for the aural side in the future.

The weather and the light over the last week have not favoured photography. It has been bitterly cold and either raining or extremely overcast. The cameras that I am favouring presently (the NEX 6) can operate in quite low light levels but the person behind the viewfinder in this instance is the constraint against photographing out in this kind of weather!

I have two very interesting lenses coming sometime this week or perhaps next. One is a 35mm ƒ2.5 Color Skopar are made by Cosina Voigtländer. The latter part of the name belongs to the very famous German photography company from many many years ago and it is licensed to the Japanese lens manufacturer Cosina. The other lens is one of the world’s most compact extending lenses, also the same focal length of 35mm but with a slower ƒ stop of 3.5. It is version one of the MS-Optical “Perar”.

On the NEX 6 APS-C sized sensor, both of these lenses produce a field of view that is roughly equivalent of the human eye, and in 35mm photography terms, roughly equivalent to 50 mm or standard lens. Having been a photographer for over 30 years I find that the 45 to 55 mm field of view to be the way that most closely approximates how I see. Another advantage of fixed focal length lenses is that the optical quality is high and the fact that they cannot zoom makes you see the world differently. Photographers like myself employ what’s usually called “sneaker zoom”: to get a closer to what you want to frame, you walk closer and to get wider, you you walk further away! This is simple approach and work for a long time and it has a tendency to overcome the inertia of modern photography. Images to come.

Apple’s iTunes, ‘Home Sharing’ and networks in general

27 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in General

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

5GHz vs. 2GHz networks, Airport Extreme and Express network, Bill Evans, Home Sharing, iTunes, jazz and classical, kitlaughlin.com, Miles Davis

While your correspondent types, the great Bill Evans is tinkling away in the background—when I say ‘tinkling’, I do not mean to be disparaging to the great BE (who was discovered by the possibly even greater Miles Davis); I refer only to the aural experience of hearing him via the tiny speakers of the Macbook Air—a wonderful tool, but never likely to be mistaken for a hi-fi. This will be rectified later today.

Can I allow BE to play in the background as I dictate? Apparently so, although I suspect the error rate will go up, though not in the sentence just dictated. No, I’m mistaken: there is an amazing interaction between Dictation and iTunes: as I start to dictate iTunes’ music is muted—now that is sophisticated. I am impressed on this clear cold morning.

Interesting from a network perspective is that iTunes, while loaded on the MacBook Air, is actually playing my library from the MacBook Pro which is in Olivia’s house, some 20m away. Using an aspect of the Apple/iTunes environment that I knew nothing about until yesterday (called Home Sharing) both Olivia and I are able to use a remote library controlled by the MacBook Pro. Actually it’s very unlikely that she will use any of the music off the MacBook Pro because our musical tastes differ significantly, though do overlap (if I were to plot the overlap on a Venn diagram, you might need a magnifying glass to see it, though). I am fond of saying that Beethoven and Miles Davis have said most of the things that are important musically; and of course that’s glib but, nonetheless, jazz and classical are my mainstays. Olivia on the other hand prefers wonderful female vocalists like Norah Jones and Sarah MacLachlan, both of whom do reside within my library. But she also likes Celine Dion, whose voice is manic scratching on a blackboard, to me. De gustibus non est disputandum.

One of the beauties of Home Sharing though is that Olivia can build up her own library on her machine and simply make it available to me by the same Home Sharing facility, and out to the network. And files on the home shared network can also be used to make playlists that are personal to me or to her and also to make up road trip CDs from either library I believe.

There is more. Olivia is going to buy an Apple TV on credit card points and I will connect this tiny device to the plasma screen in our viewing area. I have excellent software that will allow me to convert the MPEG2 files (that I have made from the DVDs that we own) and convert them to .mv4 files which iTunes will recognise natively. And then if we want to watch something together in the evening, and that file is found in either of our libraries, we simply use either MBA to control what iTunes sends to the Apple TV and the hi-rez sound and vision will appear.

There is a side note to watching a film on the plasma screen with Olivia: because of my impaired hearing (rifle and pistol target shooting, from years ago, pre-Dunblane) I need the volume louder than she does, though not too much louder. So what I have configured is to take the audio output from the amplifier into a Headroom stereo portable amplifier and out to a pair of headphones—this allows me to adjust the volume in the headphones to a level that works well for me and at the same time, because my headphones are both circumaural (they fit over the whole ear) the stereo’s sound (which, for dialogue, is never as clear as what comes through a set of decent headphones), even though the plasma screen is accompanied by a hi-fi stereo system.

One final comment on the Apple Airport Extreme and Express home network we have: I spend some time yesterday afternoon reconfiguring the Airport Extreme to create a 5GHz network rather than the 2GHz that used to be standard. As a result we can now enjoy 10 Mb/second download anywhere within the network. In our current working environment, a stable and and relatively fast network is critical. I am hoping it is a set and forget option! So far, so good.

“The new attitude is gratitude”

26 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in General, Mindfulness

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

being grateful, breathing, Numb3rs, world population

Now repeat that with a Flavor Flav-style cadence: sounds pretty good, doesn’t it.

This assertion was the last line of an episode of NUMB3RS I watched last night, and I think it worth pondering. We live in a world of self-asserted rights and entitlements; hardly surprising when each of the 7,125,402,658 (and counting) denizens of the planet Earth know him/herself to be the actual centre of the known (and unknown) universe.

Accordingly, I decided to take stock: what am I personally grateful for? First and foremost is breathing; so constitutive of life, so close, yet so ignored. If one pays attention, even with a partial attention, so much else of the experience if life is changed and benefitted thereby. Here comes one (rising); there is goes (falling). So simple, but so profound. So now.

Next (but really at the same time), I am grateful for being alive. And being alive is about relationships as much as it’s about anything, and ours constrain and enable in equal measure. I am grateful for all the relationships that surround me and make me: familial, other species (thinking encatment here and the trees I walk among); and all those we can’t see.

Life is good, and it’s easy to forget this in the insane business that we find ourselves in—thinking here of work, Facebook, Twitter, the too-many Kardashians, live news feeds; endless broadband streams of problems—other people’s problems and, moreover, most of them people we will never meet.

Thank you, sincerely.

Found on a walk through Woden Plaza, in search of Vicco *Vajradanti*

25 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in General

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

catch-up TV, infinite happiness, iTunes, kitlaughlin.com, streaming via AirPlay, SWMBO

Infinite Happiness

Infinite Happiness

And only $5 per month, assuming a $60 plan—who would have thought? is this a bargain, or what?

Let’s unpack this a bit: looking at the details, we see that ‘infinite happiness’, at $5/month, requires a $60 plan—what does the other $55 get you?

consumer craving?

intermittent unhappiness?

finite happiness?

occasional misery?

Anyhow, that’s all for today, apart from a little technical note. This morning, I realised that one of my spare Solid State Drives (SSDs) could hold my entire iTunes library (all ripped at full resolution, or 44.1KHz) with 50GB left over. And what’s more, by plugging this SSD into my Airport Extreme, it’s now available to the network, meaning that AirPlay speakers and the like can be moved anywhere for whatever music we feel like listening to. Either of us can listen to music via headphones (ex the MBAs or the MBP), or their built-in speakers. An Apple TV is on the way; it, too, will sit in the network.

SWMBO has been watching ‘catch-up TV’, which has brought us closer to our 60GB/month download plan limit; I don’t watch TV myself, but this is the future, now. And THIS is an interesting spin on how companies are getting past the current technical capacity to skip past ads, when using a record–time delay system like Dish.

Personally, I dislike ads intensely—so I buy the DVDs of programs (like my present fave, Numbe3rs) and watch an ep. or two when I want, 100% ad free.

Bumping out the Monkey Gym

24 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Monkey Gym

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ANU Monkey Gym, bumpout day, kitlaughlin.com, Pipe climb

It’s a wet grey day here. So, from the ‘reset the internal mood-o-meter department’ comes this image:

GPL and KL cutting down the pipe climb

GPL and KL cutting down the pipe climb

It looks as thought we are cutting the chain that holds the platform up in to the ceiling, but no: we were able to borrow a brilliant mobile scaffolding from a friend (picture carrying 3m+ aluminium poles up four flights of stairs, not to mention the platform we are standing on—it’s heavy), then erecting it, then doing all the cutting/unscrewing, and doing it all again, but in reverse; that was bumpout day. The whole job only took a morning.

This image shows Greg using a cutting wheel to slice through the chains that held the pipe climb onto the girders in the ceiling. The pipe climb was like the Phat rope: much admired and speculated upon, but not that often used.

Dave’s wife, Hanh, was the most elegant climber of the pipe, IMHO: she was the first to traverse the entire 10m from fully brachiated arms (the centre two poles formed an upside-down ‘V’, too, so you needed to climb and descend that section, in addition to each pipe being thicker than the preceding one), using a gently whole-body sway as the propulsion agent. When men climbed this apparatus, it was all arm muscles and little grace—but Hanh showed us all a different approach.

For the record, Geoff Fraser climbed the full 10m four times on one go; Pierre three (from memory), KL by one, and Olivia (using the same graceful approach pioneered by Hanh) by one, too. We will be offering ‘underground Monkey Gym workouts’ in the months to come, too; when we have worked out the most efficient way of alerting interested folks, we will advise. There is a set of ladder bars in Kambah, for example, that are almost 10m long, and we will be playing on these for sure!

Relaxing after the job

Relaxing after the job

Anger (or whatever one’s default reaction is)

23 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in Mindfulness

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

anger, bodymind, dukkha, skilful means. "Just say no", structure of mind, upaya

A friend and I have been talking about default emotions, but what I will talk about today applies equally to any recurring thought form or emotion (some refer to this as self-talk); most generally, I am talking about what emerges when you are tired or your buttons are pushed. It might be self pity; a tendency to reflexively blame others; any one of hundreds of behaviours, internal feelings, or recurring self-talk—but notice that for each of us, there’s a ‘signature’ response, and one that you have experienced 10,000 times. One of the ideas that one of my teachers pushed endlessly on to me is that “it is never the other guy”. For me personally, this was simply the hardest of the lessons that I have had to learn (and I resisted accepting it for years); let me try to explain.

Anger is my default: it starts with unsatisfactoriness, moves through irritation and, depending on the day, may move to volcanic rage. In my case, the anger is directed inwards; for others, it might be projected outwards. Often, when anger ‘is upon me’ (as the Tibetans say), it will have been triggered by technology not doing what it’s supposed to do*. I will return to this below; it is the critical aspect. Internally, there’s always a reason (this is the self-talk part); externally, a clenching of the jaw and a tightening of the muscles of the neck and upper back. Anger is the ‘arrangement of my mental furniture’; I was born with and it will always be there, a feature as distinctive as my nose or eye colour. It is my spur to grow.

All this is by way of an introduction. A well-known spiritual teacher by the name of Byron Katie was the first to articulate this in contemporary English, I believe. Her own life story is extremely interesting; her big realisation came when she saw and understood clearly that all internal reactions like anger or resentment or annoyance are actually nothing to do with the ostensible cause. I will speak about anger, because it is most familiar to me; the closest I can come to explaining this in words is that my bodymind is primed for, or is waiting to be, angry. For example, the resentment, irritation, and anger, I feel about the guy next door playing rap music I project on to him because my mind tells me were he not there, then I would not be feeling those feelings. This is a lie.

Byron Katie’s insight was to realise that if those feelings are not already in you, they simply cannot be triggered by any external event. In other words, the event that I describe reveals the structure of my mind perfectly.

I resisted this idea for a very long period of time because I would argue to myself if the person next door playing the rap music was not there, then I wouldn’t be feeling those feelings. But, the more closely I looked, I see that these feelings and potential reactions are there all the time; they are, in fact, the structure of my mind.

I was born with this and it’s not my fault. The more I cultivate serenity in my own body, the less this is any difficulty for me. This was the deep (though unconscious) reason I gravitated to the samatha style of meditation.

The same teacher pointed out that this aspect of my mind will never change; it was depressing to consider this at the time. But this is what I learned:

Imagine you are standing on a train platform, an infinitely long one. You don’t know when the train will next appear, but you know that when it does, it will always take the same journey. You wait. The train pulls in; and the doors open. Do I step in today? No, thank you; the train pulls away.

Everyone who recognises the structure of their own mind will, at some point, want to change it, or improve it—but this can’t be done. You can’t polish a turd.

All that’s useful is to become aware of it. It’s not a problem. Awareness changes everything; the more aware you become of your innate tendencies, the easier it becomes to adopt what I call the ‘Nancy Reagan’ response: “Just say no”—but gently (and lovingly, if you can!).

And there is a second thing I have learned, too:

In every case I have been awake enough to catch, there is always a corresponding body state change.

So, to allow what another teacher called a “pivot” to occur, I drop my awareness into my lower abdomen, and let it relax completely, and I pay close attention to the sensations of the next breath or two, in and out, and in the process choose: do I step onto the train? I know where it’s going, with certainty. This is pivoting.

So: from left field, this is one of the benefits of learning how to stretch your physical body: the more familiar you become with the sensations in your gut and your muscles, fascia and nervous system, the easier it is to feel these “setup” changes occurring, and the easier it is to insert an “interrupt“, and the more gracefully one can pivot. Truly, these are skilful means.

—————————-

* This is dukkha, our old friend. As I see it, the root of dukkha is wanting reality to be different to how it’s actually presenting to you now. Good luck with that.

The degree of the perception of the gap of what the mind wants, and what is, yields the degree/severity of the dukkha experienced. A totally relaxed person does not experience dukkha at all.

“You can’t polish a turd.” These immortal words were first uttered to me by Chic Henry, a famous car show promoter. He was talking about a car, but the principle is universal.

Skilful means: Upaya.

Failed attempt to claim encatment, and brrrrrrrr.

22 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in General

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

failed encatment, kitlaughlin.com, solid water

Last night, your correspondent was caught out in a naked attempt to claim encatment (to avoid having to put more wood on the fire); this is what is looked like:

Encatment?

Encatment?

No siree, Bob: epic fail.

And it was COLD last night, too; this is what I saw this morning:

Water in one of its forms

Water in one of its forms

Anyhow, just something to amuse today; I have a number of more substantive ideas percolating, and will share when fully brewed.

“Encatment”; the noun form of ‘encat’ (v., Eng., forward formation)

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by kitlaughlin in General

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Tags

encatment, event horizon, extend-drape combination, kitlaughlin.com

Chéz Allnutt–Laughlin, certain circumstances allow either of the occupants to be excused familial responsibilities, momentarily. As an example, I present an instance of ‘encatment’:

extend–drape combo

The extend–drape combo

Encatment, the state of being immobilised by the third member of the family, is not uncommon here. The first recorded instance of this new language usage was expressed thus: “I’m encatted” (and hence unable to assist or contribute further); this instance of the passive voice quickly led to the noun formation describing the state itself (encatment). As for the encatting agent, she is yet to pronounce on the subject: she simply acts.

On occasions, discussion has centered around degree of encatment; for example, would having only the tip of the tail resting on (say) an arm constitute encatment, if it be encatment at all? So, how much cat comprises encatment—and is it proportion of body length, or proportion of weight? Or, are the different human body parts that might be encatted at particular times to be accorded different values? It’s tricky ground, and reminds us of the gedanken concerning the Eiffel Tower: if the component beams are changed, one by one, at what point does the Eiffel Tower become something else, or is it the form that defines it, and hence the components not relevant? I started this discussion, in the so-far vain hope of creating wriggle room for myself in consideration of future encatment events, where the term event horizon might be considered to properly apply.

The example shown here though, is full encatment: moreover, this is a perfectly executed example of the extend–drape combination: note that the head and neck are fully supported by the calf muscle; the left leg is elegantly extended, and is draped over the part in question. Yes, no wriggle room here: I must now do what’s needed, whatever that is.

Further discussion concerns category (lovely word) of encatment: a personal favourite is the cross–extend (I do not have an image of this presentation at hand, but it’s when both arms are extended, and crossed; a delightfully elegant form). There are others.

A technical note: the encatment image was shot with the NEX 6, 3200 ISO, at ƒ2.8 (wide open) on the Sigma 60, under a tungsten light, in front of the fire.

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