(Farb)negativ

Heute morgen habe ich 2 Filme vom Entwickeln zurückbekommen. Wie anscheinend schon fast üblich, war ich erstmal entsetzt darüber, was ich da schon wieder für einen Müll zusammenphotographiert habe.

Nachdem ich die Bilder jetzt eine Weile angeschaut hab und den Scans die nötige Farb- und Helligkeitskorrektur verpasst hab, sieht es schon nicht mehr ganz so schlimm aus. Da sind wohl doch ein paar Bilder dabei, mit denen ich leben kann. Der Glockenturm hier ist mal ein Beispiel. Immer noch keine gescheite Komposition, aber die Farben und Stimmung sind ganz nett.

Was ich so gelernt habe: Wo ich mit der Digitalknipse spannende Kompositionen probiere, bin ich bei der Fachkamera viel zu konservativ und langweilig. Hab gestern die digitale Pentax aus der Reparatur zurückbekommen und werd sie jetzt wohl erstmal als "digitaler Sucher" benutzen.

Was ich auch gelernt habe: Der riesige Belichtungs-Spielraum von Farbnegativ-Film ist ideal für mich, denn mit der genauen Belichtung hab ich's noch nicht so. Dafür müssen die Scans ausnahmslos und immer korrigiert werden. Wo man auf einem Dia sagen kann: "So hats ausgeschaut", auch wenns gar nicht wahr ist, lässt das Negativ alles offen... und ohne Korrektur sieht so ein Scan immer schlimm aus. Aber nicht verzagen, ein paar Versuche lang kurz an den Kurven gedreht und das richtige Bild kommt zum vorschein.

Die zweite schöne Überraschung war, dass ich wieder zwei Aufnahmen mit Lichteinfall habe. Eigentlich hatte ich gedacht, dass ich mit den zwei kleinen Löchlein, dich ich im Weitwinkel-Balgen geflickt habe, das Problem gelöst hätte. Scheint aber noch ein Problem da zu sein. Wenn ich da denke, dass ich mit der Arca jahrelang gearbeitet habe, ohne je so ein Problem zu haben. Woran könnte es wohl noch liegen?

Map ex Commands in vim

In vim, Greek, and utf-8 Keyboard Commands, Giorgos had asked in a comment if it would be possible to not only switch vi's keyboard shortcuts to a Greek keyboard, but also to use Greek letters for ex commands. For example to be able to write :γ for :w. Yes, that's possible, do something like the following in your .vimrc file:

cab γ w
cab κ q
cab γκ wq
cab ε e

Due to the use of cab for these "abbreviations" (that's what the ab is for), they will work only in the command mode. There are some limitations. First of all, when entering :γ you will not see it replace with :w right away (you can hit space to see it replaced), but it will work. Also if you have ex command lines with a single ε somewhere in them for example, you could get into trouble, as vim would continue to change that to an "e". I will not be using this myself for this reason.

Blonde Hits Bus

There I was, having looked up the bus schedule, the bus right on time, the streets empty of traffic, far from the city center (which right now is full of demonstrations and cops busting people for "looking young").
The bus stops at a bus stop. This seems to have surprised someone. We hear a cracking sound, not even very loud.
A blond lady with a little jeep has humped the bus' back, denting it in. It's dripping cooling fluid and we waited for the next bus. On our way now.

Let them eat muffins instead...

The city is burning, the garbage is piling up... let them eat muffins instead. Blueberry muffins. A few days ago I enjoyed eating an overpriced blueberry muffin together with my lunch sandwich.

Now instead of posting pixx of the garbage piling up in our streets due to a strike of Athens' municipal cleaning workers, I'll post a few little compositions I took. Instead of pictures of demonstrations getting out of hand and police violating several laws, I show you various stages in the life cycle of the common blueberry muffin.

Compile Python 2.4 on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

For older Zope versions it is still necessary to use Python 2.4 versions. To compile Python 2.4 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, I had to jump through a few little hoops:

First I downloaded and unpacked the python tarball, then I applied the following patches:

• readline-libedit-2.patch found on the python issue report 6877 - one hunk of this patch does not apply (the one for Doc/library/readline.rst, just let it skip that hunk, who needs documentation anyway?) This patch makes python use the system readline, which is finally in shape to be used with python.

• python-2.4-darwin-10.6.patch found on plohn's svn repo - I don't remember how I found this patch, it applies cleanly though. This fixes a lot of things that stem from this python being much older than the 10.6 system.

• now configure python with:

  ./configure MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6
  

• now go on to make and make install python2.4 as usual

After this little process the python2.4 binary works just fine.

Rain Hitting the Hills

Our new (ok, not so new any more) office is in the 7th floor. We've got a wide view. Some days just watching the weather unroll is a spectacle.

Today there was a lot of rain and lightning. Not a drop fell on our building, but the hills that surround Athens took some beating. Large quantities of water coming down. Black clouds moving to and from.

I stuck my little Pentax against the window, hoping to catch a lightning. But no such luck. Obviously calculating the reaction time of me and then the camera, it's useless to see a lightning and hit the button... and expect to have it on the picture. The proper way to do it is make a long exposure (about a minute maybe) and be lucky. To do so, one uses ND (for "neutral density") filters, to prolong the exposure time without overexposing the picture.

Silly me, I had not brought my ND filter to work. In fact, I don't even own an ND filter. Maybe I should buy one. Still, I liked one or two of the pictures I took.

Late afternoon sun on Hills

Wanted to post this image for some days now. The same view as the last picture with the rain on the hill. Here we see the same hills, on an afternoon two days later.

Now the evening sun is hitting the hills. There are a few light clouds around to make things interesting. The sun brings out different features and the little hill that is so spectacular in the rainy picture is almost invisible. The bad weather picture is much more interesting.

The viewpoint and cropping of the picture are almost exactly the same. I think I got a few more pixels to the right this time.

Preparing Server Upgrade

These days "between the years", that I'm not working, I prepare to upgrade my server. That's right, the very server that you view this web page on. Still have a lot to prepare and read up, but once I'm done *preparing* there will be some "downtime" and hopefully the server will come out of that and be rebooted to a new self... or rather to a new system.

I've had a few not so lucky experiences with server upgrades, so wish me luck, cross your fingers, whatever lucky charms you feel like doing. I'll run some backups, but if things go wrong, it might be some time before I get things working again. By that time though, you will not be able to read this, irony of ironies. I'll get back to reading up and preparing, in order to avoid it now.