Forbidden Planet

Two days ago, I picked up a very nice art book called Master's of Deception: Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion . It features the work of many extremely talented illusory artists and at $19.95 Canadian it was an extremely reasonably priced book considering it is full colour and quite large. The problem was that the bottom edge of the book was dirtied and slightly damaged. I looked for another copy but could not find one. I asked at the cash if they had any undamaged copies and they found another, but it too suffered from the same imperfection. I asked if another store had any copies. They did, but it was in worse shape then the ones I had in my hand - the cover was torn. So I took the least damaged copy, they gave me a 20% damage discount (book is now non-returnable) and I got an additional 10% off because I'm an iRewards member. (Going online, I see I could have got an immaculate copy for pretty much the same price). Being religious, I find this picture by Octa...

Went downtown with the kids again and took a few pictures (412 - I wanted to experiment some more with panoramas). I took a number of burst shots on the highway because I was curious what AutoStitch would do with them. This is 1 of 12 shots heading down Autoroute 15. AutoStitch assembled them together in a sort of fish eye view. This is one shot (out of 12) on Autoroute 20 heading into downtown. This is the image retouched using GIMP (something similar to PhotoShop, but free). I straightened the image, cropped out the front of the car, eliminated some window reflections and adjusted the colours to make them brighter and more vivid. I think it came out pretty well. Total retouching time was about 30 minutes. This is one shot (out of 34) inside the Ville-Marie Tunnel. I liked the colours and the blur. This is a retouched version of the image (once again using GIMP). The image was straightened and cropped, the colours and contrast were adjusted and front of the car was painted out and t...

I have been trying my hand at panorama pictures lately - taking multiple overlapping shots and then stitching them together. My first attempts came out quite well. My later attempts highlighted some shortcomings with stitching software. 360 degree panorama in a park we went to for Mother's Day. This definitely came out well, even though I was just holding the camera and turning in spot. A smaller view cropped from the panoramic view. Part of a panoramic shot taken at St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal. Subject matter which moves between shots end up looking like ghosts. I tried to capture a wall of graffiti by taking multiple shots and sliding horizontally between shots. Unfortunately, it seems the stitching software expects the camera to remain in a fixed position and not to be moving. As you can see, it did not stitch it together correctly. The red door on the left is in the wrong place and if you look to the right side, the automated parking ticket dispenser is partly ghosted ...

As promised , side by side (well, top by bottom) comparison of the Fly scanned handwriting and my actual handwriting as it appeared on the page. The Fly and other digital pens require a special paper. The paper has a series of dots printed on it in a pattern. It is a sort of two dimensional barcode. According to Wikipedia , if the entire pattern was printed out, it would cover an area in excess of 4.6 million km 2 . Last weekend, 51cm of snow fell in Ottawa. As you can see, the backyard is filled almost to the top of the fence with snow. Which means the snow is close to 5 feet deep. More than 411 cm has fallen in Ottawa this Winter. There is more snow expected this coming week. We have a chance to break the 1970/71 snowfall record of 441 cm. I think less snow fell in Montreal. As you can see in this photo, the snow only goes about half way up the fence. Making it maybe 3 feet deep at best. A blood orange. The inside of a blood orange. The first animated film I have ever made (if you di...

We got 28cm of snow on Wednesday, bringing the total snowfall total to 355cm in Ottawa this Winter. This makes it the second largest recorded snowfall. The previous record was 441cm back in the Winter of 1970/1971. We are supposed to get another 20cm or more this weekend. So there is still a chance we will beat the old record. I tell Sofia and the kids to enjoy it because they may not see another snowfall like this for another 40-50 years. Picture of a previous snowstorm, but the effect and result is pretty much the same. Following the snowstorm, the trees were nicely covered in snow crystals. Close up of snow crystals on a branch. Snow crystals on pine needles. Photo credits: Richard of Forbidden Planet.

I took the kids skating this past Sunday and managed to take 389 pictures during that time. It becomes so easy with digital cameras nowadays - especially when they feature a nice, easy to use burst mode. I also managed to capture some shots of dripping icicles. If you click on and enlarge the pictures, you can see the drop of water forming and falling. It was a nice surprise to discover when I looked at the picture (they were shot in burst mode). Photo credits: Richard of Forbidden Planet. Sorry, I was a little too aggressive with the JPEG compression settings. [05-March-2008 @ 11:00: added text about the drop forming and falling.]

I first met my friend Emad back in 1992. Megumi invited me over, telling me that she had a friend whose wife was coming over. We went to his student apartment and I brought some Pujabi mix with me. Emad grabbed a handful, popped it in his mouth and thought he was going to die. Apparently, Sudanese do not eat spicy food and Punjabi mix is pretty high on the spicy snack scale. He was incredulous that both Megumi and I seemed to enjoy it without ill effect. Since then, he has learned to tolerate and even indulge in spicy food. He still remembers that first encounter with me when he thought I tried to kill him. Image credits: Richard of Forbidden Planet.

I find this picture pretty nauseating. It is sarcophagid larvae in the gums of an Israeli man. Aside from live maggots crawling around in his gums, the condition of his teeth also leave a lot to be desired. Image nabbed from here .

Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 64. She died 361 days ago. I went with the kids to church this morning to pray for her. The photo is of her when she was 19.

When I was much younger, I had great interest in the occult and paranormal. When I was 13, for Christmas of 1979, I asked for and got a book called The Compleat Astrologer . I wanted this book because it showed you how to draw up a horoscope as well as providing interpretation guides and planetary tables from 1905 until 1979 - which put it far ahead of any other books on astrology which simply were describptive, but didn't show you how to do it hands on. I have no crystal ball and I have long dismissed divination, however let us see what the new year brings forth. And may it be good for all of us. Images scanned by me but remain the property and copyright of Bantam books.