Totally and Completely Off Topic

Lately I have been doing a new kind of photography, Art Fashion. While the pics are not here yet (not all of them are family friendly) I have been devoting some time to a new hobby, that of Recurrent Neural Networks. The topic is far beyond the scope of this journal, but I've been training mine on Shakespeare, and I'm hooked on the output. I nudged my RNN to look at his works from the viewpoint of "life and loss" and it came up with this gem, which I thought I'd share.

"...And prove your common name to our reason

That he is cursed that claim to the place of thee."

Deep words from a shallow program.

Post Tamron Len Review

These are just some thoughts on the lens I reviewed below. I'd been meaning to post them earlier, but life gets in the way of a hobby sometimes.

The focus is easy to turn, too easy, there is a sense that the lens will fall out of focus when the camera shifts, but it hasn't happened, at least not yet. The advantage of the free turning focus is you can track a subject with just one finger, and support the lens with the rest of that hand, although I do not shoot video (and probably never will, such things require a completely different skill set) I suspect this lens would be ideal for such a task.

I will be posting more lens reviews in the coming month, starting with another 135mm lens.

Stay tuned.

Point Made

Ever since I moved into my new house, my time has been taken up with that. As anyone who owns a house knows, there is always something that needs doing. In this case, it's the yard. And I'd rather walk through fire than do yardwork. So it goes without saying that although it needs to be done, it's slow going, and I'm rather reluctant to do it. It also cuts into my motivation to be creative with my photography.

I got a comment the other day on my fireworks pictures, which is posted (more or less) verbatim here:

"Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as 

though you relied on the video to make your point.

You obviously know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just 

posting videos to your blog when you could be giving us something informative to read?"

The comment, regardless of the source, has merit. So from here on out, I will write more, be more descriptive about the process and results.

But since I don't have any pics to show right now, I will upload two stories I have written. Each story was written as a page a day, with a cliffhanger at the end of each page. It was fun to write that way, being constrained not only by page length, but ending.

Do please let me know what you think of them:

Day One

The Last Day

You will find I'm hard on my main characters, I generally have a solid idea about the beginning and ending, it's the middle I'm fuzzy about, but by writing a page a day, I find I have time in between to think about how the story will shape up. 

I'm not a great writer by any stretch, I have issues with subject verb tense, but I'd like to think I get the point across and entertain you for a little bit. The second story is more violent than the 1st, but I'm pretty certain they are all ages friendly.

Cheers!

e

Doctor

"Doctor, doctor, give me the news
I've got a bad case of lovin' you
No pill's gonna cure my ill
I've got a bad case of lovin' you

A pretty face don't make no pretty heart
I learned that, buddy, from the start
You think I'm cute, a little bit shy
Momma, I ain't that kind of guy" - Robert Palmer

There were a lot of female zombies this time around, or perhaps, being a guy, I just noticed them. One of the challenges this time around, was getting the walkers not to smile, as that tends to break the illusion.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I know I shouldn't laugh at this, but everytime I see this picture, I start snickering at what might be going through this woman's head.

I can think of a number of things, none of them are family friendly to publish, however, which only leads my mind further along and I start laughing uncontrollably.