Author Archives: SkepticaLee

5. Auckland

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Chinara’s
Quite cloudy but still dry and warm

After breakfast this morning there were a couple of mission critical software issues that had to be dealt with urgently. Raw conversion of images in PPP seems to have a major glitch – the blue channel seems to have taken over. The current version uses ufraw, so the strategy was: 1) exchange ufraw for dcraw and test if it works; 2) should dcraw also fail, the attempt an option of using the jpegs for stacking, advanced tone mapping and thumbnailing; 3) try a reinstall of ufraw 0.18 or an older version; try to determine when the deterioration of ufraw set in. But that was the second problem. Continue reading →

4. Auckland

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Chinara’s
Wednesday, February 6: A little cold at first, but very sunny with clear skies
GPS Track
Happy Trampers. Auckland Guided Hikers’ Meetup, at Huia

Happy Trampers. Auckland Guided Hikers’ Meetup, at Huia

Up very early for the hike but Camila was up even earlier so she was through with breakfast almost before I started. Made my lunch and packed some bits of apple and a banana as my hiking provisions and was down at the intersection at 8:20. Mike turned up about ten minutes later and we were fairly quickly in Huia for the hike. Quite friendly bloke about my age, and meeting up with the other people showed that all ages were present. A brief round of introductions followed and then the tour leader Stephen had a couple of words to say about the hike. This was to be a bush bash, a wild hike through the undergrowth, with occasional getting lost. Continue reading →

3. Auckland

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Chinara’s
Tuesday, February 5: Sunny with a few clouds and very windy
GPS Track
Estuary, Le Roys Bush

Estuary, Le Roys Bush

Chinara had gotten into her mind to buy a Canon 450D for $100 and wanted to pick me up around lunchtime and see if the camera was performing OK so I had pretty much a free morning. Spotted a monarch braving the winds and got the camera running and succeeded in taking a few shots. As I was getting hungry I made avail of one of the apples. Continue reading →

2. Auckland

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Chinara’s
Monday, February 4: Raining, clearing briefly around lunchtime, but returning in the evening.
Monarch on Feijoa

Monarch on Feijoa

Slept a good eight hours until the cars were removed from the garages; then waited until the bathroom was free (and everyone out of the house) to make myself some breakfast (coffee, muesli, toast).

Then I decided I needed a couple of extra slides for tonight, so I got those done & practised the presentation once. Now the blog had to be updated, as there had been no publication last Friday. First that gap was filled, and then the blog for tomorrow was scheduled. Continue reading →

1. Sydney – Auckland

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Chinara S., Mahara Ave, Birkenhead, Auckland 0626, via airbnb.
Sunday, February 3: Sydney: overcast.

We were in Sydney on time, and I had had a bit of a sleep after the beef with fried rice, and The Words with Jeremy Irons and John Malkovitch, a couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory.

After security and a random exam of me for explosive remains, there was an extra long wait for the further boarding pass to Auckland, which was with LAN on its way to Santiago de Chile. Had a bit of a surf on the internet and have managed to get most things ready for a quick pass through arrivals at AKL (otherwise I might have to wait an hour for the next bus connection). Continue reading →

0. Hannover – Frankfurt – Singapore

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Friday, February 1: Frankfurt: Rain and cold

I was up rather early and did one last washing machine load while stripping the bed and getting everything packed. Called into the language centre for brief farewells, then it was back without any lunch and I ended up throwing everything I could into the suitcase to weigh in at 23 kg. This time the laptop is in there, so it doesn’t have to be carted out of the rucksack each time at security. Continue reading →

Lost soles

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Before and after. Boot on the right after 3400 km.

Before and after. Boot on the right after 3400 km.

Ah, boots! Can’t do anything without ’em, can’t do anything with ’em.

A long time ago I had an old pair of hiking boots that were well past their prime and I seemed to have gained a couple of blisters from them and lost a couple of toenails in return on their last journey. A mate of mine, Chris Thompson, on hearing of my mishap, had bought a pair of boots that were too small for him, but he reckoned they might be OK for me, so in the style of we’re all one big family, he made me a present of them, when it turned out that they were a good fit. Continue reading →

Kiwi III, 2010

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Sunset at Sunset Beach, 2010 (bracket of 47 exposures)

Sunset at Sunset Beach, 2010 (bracket of 47 exposures)

On the success of Kiwi II, I decided that a trip in early spring (August – October) might be the next goal, at least to explore the North Island more fully. I wanted to go to White Island, Cape Reinga, and do the remaining NI Great Walks. Auckland never seems to be cold, and while it was a little wet… It also very much brought back the Augusts and Septembers of fallen-in-love. Continue reading →

GPS

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Getting from A to B on your own two feet may be becoming a lost art. Not just being able to follow a track and persevere when you think you are lost, but also crunching the kms, one after the other, to reach a distant goal. At the end, you’ll want to know where you’ve been, how far you’ve walked and what time you did it in. Continue reading →

Purple Picture Processor

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Dersch’s A and B vs. Zoom

It seems like we’ll be waiting some time for the camera that takes the view you saw and makes it into a picture on its own. On the way to this goal a number of problems turned up that were solved on the computer. Low dynamic range (high contrast) was improved by bracketing and enfusing; barrelling (radial distortion) by determining the Dersch coefficients (left) and applying a counter-distortion; and chromatic aberration by measuring sets of aberrations (below right) and remapping the colour channels so that they now matched each other. What we might also like to do is process RAW images, save copies of the originals, both as JPG and in a sturdier format such as PNG. And while we’re moving the formats around, taking care that the EXIF data gets transferred too, perhaps a little extra data could be included. Then some postprocessing like Advanced Tone Mapping. And finally, thumbnailing and sharpening so that the images can be experimented with. Oh dear, it seems like Christmas is rather early this year. Continue reading →