The other side of me and HF

It was our last night in Rome, strolling along streets after streets, plaza's after plaza's, and finally got back to the famous oblong Piazza Nouvana. We observed an artist just finishing off his caricature artwork of a boy and it was quite funny.

I asked HF if she have had any caricatures or portraits of herself upon which she said no. Neither did I. I insisted that we should have one for ourselves but she hesitated. It would cost €20 for the both of us (€10 each) but the artist wanted us to have a good time so he decided to do one for us for €15.

He began drawing the "Beauty" first and when he's done, he said, "OKAY! Now the monster! Smile.... smile! Hokay, look there, not at me... Do you smoke? Because I want to put big cigar here", pointing his pencil to my lips on his art paper.

The "Monster" has my nose and made a pair of very Asiatic eyes to which I do not think I have. It's funny because my "Beauty" has become my perfect match in the outcome of the caricature. I look more like a mob boss!

Gimme a break

HF just said to me, "Dan, I still can't believe that this is coming true. Still feel like I'm living in a dream..."

"It is true and we're going to see it happen in the next 6 hours, even before sunrise", I interrupted.

She smiled with contend.


We've been waiting for this day since last year. A few minutes back she asked me, "Dann, do you know where will we be at this time tomorrow?"

"Milan!"
"No. We'll be in the home of Juliet and Robert"
I frowned in suspicion. "You mean Romeo and Juliet?"
She burst out in laughter and her face quickly turned red in embarrassment and gave me the look as if asking for forgiveness.

Anyway, the places we will be visiting are listed in this post. We will leave from Leeds Bradford Airport at 07:05 and expected to land in Milan 2 hours later. I plan to voice record my journey and publish them here later. There will be no videos but will be tonnes of photos.

Give me a break from this city. I will, tomorrow will be that break! A 10 days break. I hope all goes well and ends well. I hope and pray for good weather. Safe journey to us! Will be back after 10 days.

Adobe Photoshop knows

In an attempt to record, among other things, a memorable point such as photographing the hundreds of Euro bank notes in which I have just purchased for the first time, Adobe Photoshop CS2 seemed to have an edge in recognizing what sort of image is being loaded into its cache and/or memory.

As soon as I dragged the front and back files of a 50€ bill into Photoshop CS2, a pop-up appeared with a message before the image did prompting for my action. I found it rather amusing and was perplexed over the fact that "Omg! It knoowwwsssss............!!"

I was stunned for a couple of minutes before putting myself together again. Coincident? Clicked on the "Information" button and it took me to this website. You should check it out! I got more afraid. Got the feeling that I am being "watched"!! Invasion of privacy! etc. I couldn't type or do anything for crap but stared at my screen flabbergasted. I was like, "WTF?! How the frack did it know?!"

There could be many explanations for this but the one I came up with was the possibility that Photoshop CS2 would scan, examine, evaluate, and analyse patterns of all [digital] images and compare it (binary sequences) against some database that will trigger such a pop-up message if found to be a very likely possibility of a bank note.
... which all seems to be beyond the grains of my brains.

Wait a minute. If Photoshop CS2 knows, that would mean somewhere in the application's database there must exists all necessary information/data on bank notes. It has Euro's for sure! Somebody just needs to decipher and decrypt all those security barriers that I believe is in placed. If that is broken, hmm... imagine the possibilities. I'll first purchase some properties.

Bank notes with such message and an accurate information? I wonder if that's the only thing it will be flagged for. What will ACTUALLY happen if you load an ariel (as well as details of all sides) image of a military aircraft of, say, F-22 Lighting? Or a passenger carrier 747 Jumbo jet? Will a pop-up appear with the message:
"Adobe Photoshop:
This application does not support the acts of terror, and/or any activities related to terrorisms!

You can continue to open and edit this image but the FBI, CIA, and Home Security Office have been notified of your activities. For more information, select the Information button below for Internet-based information on Axis of Evil, Terrorism Act 2002, Anti-terrorism."?

Maybe one day... one fine day it will all come true. Intelligent, huh?

A welcoming surprise

I received an email message on November 7 asking permission to use my photos in which I took on the night of Roundhay Park's Bond Fire Night November 5 2006. The sender of the message is one of the joint editors of Friends of Roundhay Park newsletter. His message is as follows:

Danny

I am joint editor of the Friends of Roundhay Park Newsletter and have seen your photos taken on 3rd November at the park in a blog. My wife and I missed the firework display this year as we were otherwise engaged.

Could you kindly give permission for us to use one of your photos in the Newsletter? It would necessarily be quite small, just black/white, but your name would appear as the photographer of the original. However, as a voluntary organisation and Registered Charity we would not offer any payment for the use of the photo. How would you feel about that?

If you wanted to submit a short item about the display itself and what it meant to you as a 'visitor' to Leeds, we would gladly consider publishing that as well.

Sincerely

Alan Jackson

I felt privileged and overwhelmed by the fact that my photos are getting noticed. While trying not to get too ahead of myself over this matter, at the very least it was a very good opportunity and I hope the two photos, DSC04038.jpg and DSC04048.jpg, that Alan has selected will serve the interests of the newsletter best. We will wait and see if the newsletter gets published. Looks like there has been a long delay.

The number of people with digital cameras these days are rapidly growing by the minute. This will only make it tougher to getting paid for good pictures as the competition is just too massive with low demand and excessive supply. Charitable works may be a way to start before getting recognized as a photographer. But that's a long, long way for me. I'm only doing this half of a part-timer.

Telemarketer's nightmare

I wish I could be the person doing this as I received hundreds of telemarketer calls per week! Lol! Absolutely hilarious! Check this out...

http://howtoprankatelemarketer.ytmnd.com/

Must watch comedy

Here is an entertaining lecturer from Nanyang Technology University, Singapore, awaiting feedback from students and later entertain them. Vvery funny!

Bond Fire Night

Remember, remember, the 5th of November; The gunpowder and treason plot; I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot
Fireworks displays all over England and the view from our balcony was one hell of a beautiful sight that lasted well over 5 hours! I bet that the Air Pollution Index (API) peaked on this night.

Fireworks at Roundhay Park, Leeds. The show lasted 45 minutes.

HF & I, with Asa, among thousands of people observing the Bond Fire Night on Roundhay Park. The air smelt of gunpowder and was thick with smoke. It was cold, about 3 degrees centigrade (my nose knows).

Here with Asa who's from Sweden agreed with HF that a roast turkey (or any meat) would be perfectly ideal that moment. I only smirked.

Painting with lights using fireworks as subjects always creates satisfying and beautiful effects, only when it's done properly.

Ecstatic moment.

Painting with light #2.

Painting with light #3. At this time it was almost towards the end of the show -- the pyrotechnics' moment of excitements!

Painting with light #4: The grand finalè -- did not reach climax. It wasn't all that fantastic to be fracking honest. All there was was this huge boom with a large fountain effect. I rate it 6/10. Could have been much better. I guess they burnt all the 'good stuffs' in the past 44 minutes.

A little girl in her wonderland with a stick of crackling fireworks, which I had asked for when I noticed a group of people behind us had packets of them. I offered to buy one and was refused at first but was then given one, I think, out of sympathy. At least, it works!

We've got just one stick of firework that gave us a good 5 minutes of thrill. We took turns to take pictures like this and it almost ran out on me. Good times.
Barricades were in placed at least 50m from the bond fire as the heat from the fire was so intense that people would stretch out to warm their hands.

My brain

Your Brain is 33% Female, 67% Male

You have a total boy brain Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts And while your emotions do sway you sometimes... You never like to get feelings too involved

What Gender Is Your Brain?