IDLE? WHO? ME? (06/03/14)

It is warm and wet and looks as if it will be so for the next few days.

I haven’t been lazy, I set up some coloured LEDs with the Arduino, no heavy programming. All on or None on. Even I can programme on and off. I put the resistors in the bread board and then ran the LEDs to the top of my backdrop with those long thin crocodile leads that Maplin sell . My backdrop is a 72 pack, 50% free, Weetabix box with black material draped over it. I clip the wires to it with clothes pegs. I wished for some refractions in water droplets and also some background bokeh. I am getting there but it didn’t turn out as exciting as I’d have wished. That’s being polite, it was an unmitigated disaster.

I then tried to do it in Blender 3D. Blender is very useful for lighting experiments….I’m sure it could be in competent hands. I drew a lovely big water drop, I managed on the third attempt to eliminate all duplicated normals.  I popped a little red light behind it having given it two sub surface modifiers. I used glass as the material and dropped it’s refractive index to that of water. It looked good on a quick render. I came back to it and couldn’t find it. I’d gone out to find a bit of reed to snap so I could UV map it and attach the fake droplet. Far too ambitious I am.

Maria at THE TROPICAL FLOWERING ZONE suggested using Photoshop CS6 to photo stack. I knew there was a good reason not to.  Moss Zerene Stacker.

  Moss Photoshop CS6. Okay were it cropped. These were loaded into File>Script. Then all selected then Edit> Auto Align. Then Edit>Auto-Blend>stack. I can see comparing the two that Zerene has got precious little more out of the images than Photoshop so I’ll have a serious go with PS. Zerene now I’m learning the keyboard shortcuts is fast. I can look at the final image I’m editing scroll up and down till I find a sharp bit in the stack and then press ‘S’ and paint it in. PS would mean searching the masks and painting in black which with anymore than half a dozen images really isn’t on.

   It’s sleeting now and has been either foggy or raining or sleeting all day.

I have finished a really good read. Entry Island by Peter May. It is good, it took me a while to get into it. I enjoyed it but like the Lewis Trilogy books it ends in a rush of foul weather, sum up and tie up. It’s as if he has done the requisite number of words in his contract and thought bugger this. This time he does treat us to a couple or three epilogues. I bet that pissed him off. It’s annoying when I’ve paid full price for it, I’m paying for entertainment. I enjoy his style, it’s middling easy reading and in this book he does mix Gaelic and English so I can think the Gaelic in my head. He could have started a Newfoundland trilogy.

I have also been reading Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. It’s hard work, I’ve done three chapters and feel like a slave. I wasn’t expecting humour but nor was I expecting a diary. I’ll keep plugging away. Sometimes I just suddenly attune and zoom through a book. I hope so. Not to worry it was only fifty pence. The book from the film script is the thick end of three pounds.

Have fun and I’m sorry for the paucity of pictures. I only get about one a month I'm happy with, it’s less than a week into the month so time yet.