Studio

Yesterday I got my first shipment of equipment for my home studio, my Döör background tripod. Naturally, this called for some experimentation and luckily my family were more or less willing test subjects for my experiments.

Since I havn't got my hands on any strobes yet, I only had my HVL F58AM flash to rely on. Tough to get consistent results, but I got a few decent shots if I say so myself - at least compared to no flash or just the built in one.

85/@5 Wife and son

Signs of autumn

I have a few days off now after my daughter was born. It's been busy days, but I've still managed to squeeze in some photography. 

 

 

85/@2 Autumn is approaching

Now when I have an excellent portrait lens in place, which you can see a sample photo of above, I've decided to move ahead on my plans to set up a little studio at home. I've been looking at the Elinchrom d-lite strobes which I suspect I'll end up with.

The wait is over

The wait is finally over, and I am not thinking about the Sony a99 or the new 50mm f/1.4 ZA lens finally being announced.

Yesterday my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She's our third child, with two brothers already in place. It was a long wait in the hospital, but things went very well and my wife did a great job. It's a breathtaking experience and I was very happy to hold her in my arms.

Photography

About two years ago, I rekindled my long dormant interest for photography. Being fostered in the world of IT, I never did much else but sit by the computer. So what better excuse I thought, to get out there than to take up photography again I thought. Oh, and getting out there to drink a lot of beer can be fun too.

For a long time it was all about taking snapshots and documenting life for me. Not until recently, when I upgraded to a better camera and lenses, that I've tried to take it to a higher level and at least put some thought into what I am doing.

Ken Rockwell is a pretty good inspiration for this.

85/@f8. The path to better photography?

What's new?

Was googling myself, as any self respecting narcissist does from time to time, and I found quite the trail after myself. Usually, it is just stuff I've written about myself - how great I am and so forth that I find. But this time, someone else had written about me. An old Internet friend from 15 years ago or so when I was still running my Final Fantasy 3 site, thought to mention me. I thought that was pretty cool and I was happy to learn I had made a small impact on someone.

If I allow myself to be nostalgic, which I can, since it is my blog, I sometimes miss the fledgling Internet I grew up with. Before it was inhabited by normal people.No spam and the only trolls were the voices in your own head.  It was its own seperate world where you pretty much by default ended up talking with people you didn't know from other parts of the world, now it is more an extension of the real world where you just talk to people you already know from it. Maybe it is just me having changed how I use this tool, since I am sure it must still be like that for some people.

And as far as Final Fantasy 3 goes, I played for a bit not too long ago and it is still a great game which I recommend.

Earn money online

There are a few ways of earning money online that I've come across during my days and I thought I'd share them with you in this post.

The first is the Gomez peer application, which basically is a background application that processes data in the background on your computer. They are currently overhauling their compensation plan, so hopefully it will be much higher!
Link here


Another good way to earn some money is with Yuwie. Yuwie is like myspace, but they pay you for being active by visiting profiles, being visited and getting friends to join.

Master and bachelor thesis

I'm finally done with my master thesis in informatics and my bachelor thesis in business law. Now I only have a few final credits that I intend to take most of in the beginning of spring and then I'll be done.

1408

I saw the director's cut of 1408. A really interesting film. Very Lovecraftian. I enjoyed it.

Yuwie

I found a social community site, like Facebook, but this pays you for the traffic you generate to your profile. At the moment, it isn't as good as Facebook, but it pays and there's quite more ads around which is a bit annoying.

But check it out and form your own opinion at Yuwie.

Call of Cthulhu session

I and my friend had another Call of Cthulhu session the weekend before the last one and it was pretty fun. I didn't quite achieve the same flow of events as in the first session, but you can't have action the whole time or soon the action would be dull. Call of Cthulhu is mainly about investigation after all. But I have to say I'm fond of the mix they got in Dark Corners of the Earth. Was so much action in that game though it left your knees weak.

Unfortunately now my friend is travelling to India with his company, so it'll be another couple of weeks before we can play again. Another enthusiast has shown interest in participating by then.

In the meantime I'm studying, new coureses started this week and playing Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Struck the mother lode!

Well, maybe not quite.. But I finally reached 4 bux in Gomez.. Only another buck before I get payment, but it will be a while.. but I guess it is always something. I could always retire...

New blog

Today I started another blog where I write in swedish, so it is mainly for the swedish audience. So I'll write in both places as it strikes my fancy, but in general I'll reserve the international matters for here and the swedish stuff for the swedish audience there.

But check both places!

To my other blog.

Robert D. Anderson & The legacy of Cthulhu

I tried it out a little bit, but all I can say is that you probably have to be a true die hard fan of Call of Cthulhu to enjoy this. The bugs put me off it after a short while so I didn't play much of it, but for a fan made product it was impressive. But I think I rather play through Dark corners of the earth again than invest my time in this game.

On the first level you find a submachine gun and your character refuses to take it, saying he didn't like what they did in Chicago.. Then in a couple of rooms later, a german soldier kills you when he spots you in 2 seconds with full auto from an assault rifle... So guess your character likes the tough odds.

Call of Cthulhu

At last, another roleplaying session. It wasn't looking good, since none of my friends were able to make it except one of them. But we decided to go ahead and play anyway and it really turned out great. It worked really well and it was an exciting session with action and scares. I returned to the storyteller's chair after a very long hiatus and I personally think I did some of my best work.

It could be Call of Cthulhu is a good game to play like this because it in many ways focuses on the individual and their mental degeneration.

Hopefully we can set up another session soon.

Party

Yesterday we had a family party where we enjoyed some crayfish. It was a pretty fun event. It had been arranged by my girlfriend, but sadly she fell ill just prior to the party so she couldn't participate. But we're planning to redo it once she is better so she can participate. We werent the only ones partying though, later after I got home I heard a neighbour placing music for the entire neighbourhood.

Before the party I also watched the movie Bloodsport. It is still a pretty cool movie.

The return of Isa

Yesterday was quite a hectic day. While visiting my dad my mom's dog, Isa, mysteriously vanished and despite us calling out and going looking for her she didn't make herself known. Granted, she has a habit of walking off, but rarely on her own or for very long. But yesterday she didn't show up for 6 hrs so naturally we started to fear the worst.

Although sometime during the night she came back, but she was injured and had trouble walking. So we can only speculate in what has befallen her.

Excavation

Today we continued with the work on our property, moving some rocks and stumps. It's coming along quite nicely now though, despite the lawn being pretty much destroyed because of the big excavator and all the rain having turned it into a muddy slope. We barely got the excavator out of the mud.

Today my g/f passed her driving theory exam, so congratulations to her!

I've nearly beaten Fallout 2... And the phone lines are partially not working here; I can phone out, but you can't phone here. Telia said it would take them like a week to fix. Not too great.

More rain

It keeps raining and raining and raining. So not terribly exciting to write about. Yesterday, I made lasagna and varnished half the ceiling in the room we're renovating for the second time. So we could move the bed in there tonight and sleep there for the first time. Big room compared to our old bedroom.

Apparently cow farting is singled out now as the #1 factor for our alledged demise in what is known as the global warming. So if you own a cow, try to keep it from farting since this will apparently save the world.

Storm update

So I survived through the storm. Wasn't much of a storm here really, but it rained a lot for a very long time. So now I',m hoping for better weather, but doesn't seem like it will improve for a while yet.

Storm warning

Storm warning here in Sweden. They're fearing it will be as bad as in Germany and England, so all had been advised to stay indoors. Where I live it has been raining non-stop since about 3pm, but we are not flooded yet.