Latest Tweet
- Watching Oldboy. Amazing stuff. 2009/07/01
Pages
My Places
July 2009 M T W T F S S « Jun 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Archives
-
Recent Comments
- admin on 600Hz TVs are a sham!
- BjørnH on 600Hz TVs are a sham!
- BjørnH on 600Hz TVs are a sham!
- BjørnH on 600Hz TVs are a sham!
- BjørnH on 600Hz TVs are a sham!
Meta
-
Magnulus.com RSS
600Hz TVs are a sham!
There are quite possibly some advantages in terms of comfort, as the image will appear “smoother” since there is no discernable flicker at such high refresh-rates, but they do not give you actual, smoother motion, which is what all the ads are trying to tell people! Don’t let yourselves be fooled!!
Tagged advert, commercial, framerate, hz, monitor, panasonic, refresh, sony, tv100 Pushups 2 – Week 3 (twice)
These past two weeks have been tough on me as far as the whole pushup thing goes, but I’m sticking to it thanks to you folks, especially the ones who are doing the programme with me. Remember to hydrate well before and during your workouts and to neither eat right before you do it nor do it when you haven’t eaten in a long time.
If you have joined me, keep it up! Let me know how you’re doing!
Tagged fitness, health, press-ups, pressups, push-ups, pushups, strengthTowel Day 2009
Towel Day. 25th of May. Always know where your towel is.
Tagged douglas adams, hhgttg, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, tool, towel, towel day, towelette, versatileHundred Pushups: Week 2 End – 30
So, it’s been two weeks, and as you will see from the video, I managed 30 push-ups today. I’m quite happy to have gone up nine push-ups in two weeks, and I’m looking forward to the end of week 4, when I will be doing another test and hopefully scoring a 50.
Tagged challenge, fitness, health, press-ups, push-ups, workout100 Push-ups…
On sunday, I took a lamentable 21 push-ups, which is a far cry from the number in the title of this post. Why did I do that, and why am I setting myself up against such a number?
Well, according to the 100 Push-ups site, I should be able to take 100 push-ups in one go after completing their six-week program. It sounds pretty crazy to me that such a progress can be made so quickly, but I’m at a point right now where I can’t find the time to go to the gym, so why not give it a go?
I completed the first week’s program just minutes ago, and I’m feeling SOME kind of progress, at the very least. At the end of the second week, I’ll be doing another test to see how many I can do before I have to stop. We’ll see then whether this has any merit or not.
If you’re up for it, why not join me? You’ll be a week behind, but it may be worth it! JOOOOIN MEEE!
Tagged fit, fitness, health, magnulus, press-ups, push-ups, strength, working out, workoutUniversity Film: Monday to Friday
A project for university, in the module “Deconstructing Narrative”, in which we were tasked to create a short film which used a non-linear (or, more accurately; alternatively linear) structure. After some discussions within the group, I stuck myself on the idea of the letter and how you’ll read it as something in the present, but it’ll actually represents the actions and thoughts of the past. No one knows what could happen from the moment you drop your letter in that box until the moment the postman drops it off at its destination. What used to be your future is now your past, and it may be a much happier past than you envisaged, or it may be much, much darker.
It’s obviously not a perfect film. I would have loved for the main actor to be dressed a little less modernly, as she is quite an old-fashioned girl.
Ideally, we would have filmed the two interior scenes at different days so we could prepare and play off the footage of one phone conversation to the one acting in the other, that way they would have syncronised a lot better.
Issues with the camera led to us using 4:3 rather than widescreen. As it turns out, it works relatively well, but I would have liked it to have that full wide format, because we would have had more space for each shot.
Are Games Art?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I want to write a longer post/ full-length essay about this. However, I thought I’d put it to my friends out there on the webternets to tell me what they think. So if you have any kind of views on this, even if (actually, maybe ESPECIALLY if- ) you’re not interested in playing games yourself, air them in the comments. I’d love to see a discussion go on about this in the comments, and I will join in myself.
Some points to think about:
Games are a combination of several art forms. Does this strengthen games’ position as art or does it make games an industry rather than an art?
On industry: Studio games these days have bigger budgets than most big-budget films and take years to develop with huge teams. They have several people just to keep the economics in check! Other games (independent and freeware ones) are developed by small and even single-person teams.
Film is established as an art, so does this negate the entire industry argument against games as art? If not, why? What makes film different from games?
ARE films art?!
What IS art? Specifically? What is required to call something art? An art degree? A purpose? A meaning? Anything at all?
Games don’t seem to generally have the same versatility that films, books, paintings, comics and other art forms have. Is this because they’re still new? Will even mainstream games develop to such a degree that they can create a war game that actually treats war with the depth that war films can?
Some indie games deal with quite heavy themes and also experiment a lot more with gameplay, pushing the boundaries of what games are and can be. Are indie games inherently more artistic than mainstream games?
Are we in the middle of the game industry’s version of the Avant-Garde?
I’ve probably made some assumptions you don’t agree with here, and if I have, feel free to say so! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
Tagged argument, art, arthaus, arthouse, artistic, creative, creativity, discussion, gamers, games, gaming, industry, interestingTemple Park Crescent at Night
We were sitting around working on stuff in our home-office, and wifey enjoyed the sight of the overly orange street lamps so much that I was forced to try to capture it. I ended up having to wipe the windows on the outside so I could lean my camera against it for support. It was highly monochromatic in the original photo, but there were blues hidden in the sky that I brought out with some Levels-tweaking.
So that’s what it looks like outside our flat at night. Yay. I’m cranky and tired and will be going to bed now.
Tagged edinburgh, long exposure, night, photo, scotland, streetA Czech Swan
I felt like making a post, and I felt like doing something to one of my photos, so this is what you get; An edited picture from my honey moon with Marit. I know, it’s pure candy with no substance, but I like taking those pictures every now and then. I was always meaning to edit the original photograph (on the left) and give it some contrast and vibrance (on the right), so I did it this morning. I feel it’s relatively successful, and I wouldn’t mind having it on my wall.
If you’re curious about my methodology, you’re in luck. If not, skip this:
1 - Levels on all the separate colour channels to achieve maximum colour neutrality and also the brightest whites and blackest blacks without losing detail. (holding alt while moving white/black-points helps)
2 - Curves to create the desired contrast. Because of the amount of work I had to do to get detail out of the dark water and the bright swan, I used two separate curve layers; one for swan, one for water.
3 - Hue/Saturation to remove that disgusting chromatic abberation that’s so hard to avoid on high-contrast edges. (mostly visible in full detail)
4 - Noise Reduction just to make up for the colour noise I get from brightening those darks up so much.
5 - Sharpen to give those edges a little extra punch.
Aaand that’s the general gist of it.
Tagged czech, editing, photograph, Photography, photoshop, prague, praha, republic, swan