Author: Don

The return of the archer

Archer

More fun with focus stacks in stereo. This one is composed from 58 images in two stacks. It’s a cross-view stereo, i.e., the right eye focuses on the left image and the left eye on the right. Cross-view images are not as comfortable to view as parallel-view, in which the left eye focuses on the left image,1 but they can be much larger.

You can view this at various sizes by clicking on the picture or opening it in a new window. At the largest size (1920 pixels wide) it probably won’t all fit on your monitor, but you will be able to see the upper half in great detail.

Stopping in for a moment

I’m currently dealing with an excess of reality, and I will probably continue to be scarce here. While I’m away, you can listen to about 30 hours of music for piano and orchestra for 10¢ per hour, courtesy of Amazon.com, here, here and here. There’s ragtime here, if you’d prefer that. (The last includes some Louis Moreau Gottschalk, for no obvious reason.)

*****

Which famous historical figure is this actor portraying?

Who?

Hint: here’s a contemporary representation of him. He’s the one seated in the middle.

Spoiler

Who, indeed?

[collapse]

The answer is here.

Today’s word

Underdue, adjective

An example of its usage from an Alan Coren book review:

MAXIMINUS NAPLES
The first Proconsul of what was, in the second century BC, still Calabrium, Maximinus is chiefly remembered for his habit of throwing political opponents into Vesuvius. His proconsulate was exceptionally stormy, corrupt and inefficient, and in 134 BC, Emperor Tiberius Gracchus demoted him to the proconsulate of Sicily, where he is chiefly remembered for his habit of throwing political opponents into Etna. His significance is minimal, and my own opinion is that this dreary account is long underdue.

The book in question is a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and Coren’s review is based on the title on the spine. The review is included in The Sanity Inspector, the book I tossed in the camera bag yesterday to read while waiting for the cosplay contest to begin.

Coren on the Netherlands:

… it is an interesting country, sweeping up from the coastal plain into the central massif, a two-foot high ridge of attractive silt with fabulous views of the sky, and down again into the valleys, inches below. Apart from cheese and tulips, the main product of the country is advocaat, a drink made from lawyers.

The wrong side of the gate

Sailor Mercury

I was disappointed that Rory Mercury wasn’t at the anime convention today. Sailor Mercury was there, though, as was One Punch [Wo]man.

One Punch

There are a bunch more pictures that will take some time to go through.

Cosplayers

Update: I’ve edited as many as I’m going to. As usual, the organizers did their damnedest to make taking pictures difficult, and none that I took are any better than snapshots. You can see them all here.

I have no idea who this is supposed to be.

Obviously true …

… but worth stating anyway —

Josh W. Thursday:

… often an artist’s storytelling capabilities exceed their own philosophical limitations and wind up being more universal than their idiosyncrasies. A good story tends to to be more universal than its philosophical scaffolding, which is why I don’t need to, say, find the political and social views of Asimov or Le Guin particularly toothsome to nevertheless find their works deeply meaningful for me.

Fillyjonk:

… one of the beauties of our system of government, of how the rights we have are protected: we are free to disagree with the government. That robust and strong systems are able to tolerate dissent. And by extension, I suppose, the weak and insecure ones are those that work to quash it.

Conned

I may visit Anime Festival Wichita next week, after skipping it for several years. It’s kinda dinky and the halls in the venue are too narrow for all the cosplayers, but it is within bicycle distance. It would be helpful if its website were more informative. The “events” page states that “The full schedule will be available soon.” It has said that for months. Five days away, the schedule is still not online, which makes it difficult to plan my weekend. (Update: it’s now the day after the convention, and the schedule has still not been posted there. I did eventually find it on the official AFW Facebook page. (There’s another page that turns up first in searches, but it’s the wrong one.) I hate Facebook.)

Conned

If you have a hankering to attend an anime or anime-related convention next week, you don’t have to come to Wichita. There are at least ten others scheduled for the same weekend, from Illinois and South Carolina to Finland and France. There’s even a “Sailor Moon Celebration” in Toronto.

*****

So, what have I been watching lately? Mostly older stuff. I’ll marathon the rest of Ushio and Tora when I have the time — the word is that it ends well — and I might finish Tanaka-kun someday, but otherwise I lost all interest in the spring season. Nothing this summer looks very promising, but I’ll sample some first episodes when they’re available and see if there are any surprises.

What I have enjoyed re-watching: Redline2, UHF, Humanity Has Declined, The Wrong Box, Duck Soup, Shounen Onmyouji, Mouretsu Pirates3, Keroro Gunsou.

The final poppy

Orange poppy

I’m tired of seeing that ugly car first thing every time I check my website, so here is the last poppy picture of the year. Below is the first nine o’clock picture. (The common name of Mirabilis jalapa is “four o’clock,” but heat and daylight “savings” time means that they don’t open until around nine in the evening during Kansas summers.)

Mirabilis jalapa

For those interested in technical stuff: the top picture was assembled in Helicon Focus from 36 separate f/11 images. The bottom picture is a single shot at f/16.

Efsitz

I thought of this ancient E.B. White story the other day and found it online:

Irtnog

Along about 1920 it became apparent that more things were being written than people had time to read. That is to say, even if a man spent his entire time reading stories, articles, and news, as they appeared in books, magazines, and pamphlets, he fell behind. This was no fault of the reading public; on the contrary, readers made a real effort to keep pace with writers, and utilized every spare moment during their walking hours. They read while shaving in the morning and while waiting for trains and while riding on trains. They came to be a kind of tacit agreement among numbers of the reading public that when one person laid down the baton, someone else must pick it up; and so when a customer entered a barbershop, the barber would lay aside the Boston Evening Globe and the customer would pick up Judge; or when a customer appeared in a shoe-shining parlor, the bootblack would put away the racing form and the customer would open his briefcase and pull out The Sheik. So there was always somebody reading something. Motormen of trolley cars read while they waited on the switch. Errand boys read while walking from the corner of Thirty-ninth and Madison to the corner of Twenty-fifth and Broadway. Subway riders read constantly, even when they were in a crushed, upright position in which nobody could read his own paper but everyone could look over the next man’s shoulder. People passing newsstands would pause for a second to read headlines. Men in the back seats of limousines, northbound on Lafayette Street in the evening, switched on tiny dome lights and read the Wall Street Journal. Women in semi-detached houses joined circulating libraries and read Vachel Lindsay while the baby was taking his nap.

Continue reading “Efsitz”

110 layers

Nigella damascena "Persian Jewels"
Nigella damascena “Persian Jewels”

In the field, stacked focus close-up photography is iffy. Sometimes you get good results, but usually there’s too much wind, the light is constantly changing, or it’s impossible to control the lens with sufficient accuracy to get a workable stack of a botanical subject.

It’s much easier to do indoors, where there is no wind, you can control the light and background, and you have a focusing rail handy. The picture of the very three-dimensional Nigella damascena above was assembled in Helicon Focus from 110 separate f/11 images and has a total depth of field of roughly three inches — not bad for a macro. (Click the image to see it larger; right-click and open in a new window to see it at full size.)

If 110 slices at f/11 sounds excessive, you’re right. Here’s another picture of the same flower composed from a stack of 31 images:

Nigella 31

Continue reading “110 layers”

Flying panzer polka

Inside the Finnish tank

I looked around for sheet music to the “Säkkijärven Polkka” featured in Girls und Panzer der Movie. Apparently no two musicians play it quite the same way. Most of the versions I found don’t sound much like the tune in the movie. However, I did find a simple piano arrangement that matches pretty well here. (I suspect that it was transcribed from the OST.)

Bumpy ride

Another old analog camera
Another old analog camera

I finally had a couple of hours to devote to Girls und Panzer der Movie. Quick reaction: If you liked the original series, you’ll like this. If you found the original too implausible to enjoy, this is no different. For those who haven’t seen the original: if the idea of watching high school girls engage in the recreational equivalent of war with real WWII tanks sounds like fun, check out the series here. If you like it, then track down the movie. You can watch the movie first, I suppose, but it will make less sense and you’ll miss the significance of the various characters’ actions. I don’t have time to write a proper review, but there are reviews here and here (beware: the latter has many spoilers that aren’t hidden).

One of my father's favorite books
One of my father’s favorite books
Ooarai expects that every duck will do its duty
Ooarai expects that every duck will do its duty

As Steven guessed, one of the highlights for me was a lively Finnish polka with kantele and accordion in the soundtrack. The movie’s makers didn’t pick the tune at random; “Säkkijärven polkka” has a little history behind it. To make Steven happy, I’m placing the tune below the fold.4

Continue reading “Bumpy ride”

The real star

So you’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned shounen story about fighting monsters with magic, but every time you watch Twin Star Exorcists you wish someone would slap some common sense and courtesy into the characters? You are in luck: Shounen Onmyouji is available on YouTube, albeit as an old fansub tranlating the dialogue into something similar to, but not quite that same as, English. (It’s intelligible; you just occasionally need to translate the translation. (Update: The second episode and beyond use a much more readable translation.))

Shounen Onmyouji was one of the last series licensed for North America by Geneon, just before it ceased its American operations, and consequently most of it is difficult to impossible to find legally at reasonable prices. Someday someone will rescue the license — it’s too good a show to remain forgotten — but who knows when?