2019-10-30
Over the years, since i'm on the internet for more than two decades, i made a handful of animated GIF images manually. They were either rough or just simple motions. Good enough for me and to impress others. Last year, i started to automate the process of making animations. There is some math involved, especially for the ones i created in the recent weeks, with more complex movements, including the use of sine and cosine. This was the first time i used them for something real, outside a school environment.
I never got into using frameworks, since there were none when i started. I do things mostly from scratch, based on the language and their basic set of functions. These days, young people may say "like some sort of psychopath". But this makes the apps i build really efficient and lightweight, without unnecessary overhead, which is important to me, since i'm running low on resources.
I started writing the tools for creating my GIF animations with ImageMagick in PowerShell. But after having made several .ps1 files for this purpose, i decided to make it more compact and portable, and wrote it all in one single .pl file and in the Perl programming language. This way i can take it with me and do the same workload on a Linux machine, just like with my video editing robot.
Since Twitter is converting GIF images to videos, it is basically a video running in a loop, with added compression artifacts. Luckily, i upload them to DeviantArt and Pinterest too, to preserve their original GIF character. FYI, if i only put them on my web server, people are never going to discover them. And it is nice to not have to pay for the traffic. At the end, it is fun to take an ordinary still image and make something move as you want. Maybe like with motorized Lego Technic, but not as expensive. This is a different league than just photoshopping.
2019-09-28
I was invited to a handful of birthday parties in my life. They were fun, because i got to see other cultures. For example, a classmate from primary school was only allowed to drink Coke once a week. And guests got a little bag with goodies. But i never had my own birthday party. I celebrated this day with my parents. Back then, with a cake. And later, without. Because i realized this was just bread with a large amount of sugar. I rather eat salmon with rice.
At the end of July, i made my parents get some of my old photos sorted by age. I scanned them a while ago. They were shot analog, and therefore without date metadata. The newer ones i had already sorted by myself, since they are mostly digital from the beginning. I created a slideshow with a selection of images from 1986 till today. Basically me getting thirty-three years old, compressed in one video. It will be online sometime next month.
I started to do yoga inspired exercises, while waiting for my water to boil, or having idle time. Interesting to see how fast muscles can build up. I really like the shape my legs are getting. I enjoy watching nice legs, so this is the least i can do to appreciate my own. Yoga seems like a gentle way to get parts up to potential. No sweating involved, just some burning and relieve.
2019-07-16
End next month, i will fold my last batch of origami cranes in Stockholm. Sadly, this was never financially sustainable. But i really wanted it to be. And do it in America or Japan too. After this is over, it will take me two or three weeks to process all the videos, and it will take me one week to get them all online. Maybe in time for my birthday.
What i learned in all these years folding so many origami cranes? That words are cheap. And to let things go, although it is still hard. I keep a clear memory of them as a whole, and the places they were made. But i'm still lost in this world, and i haven't found a way to make it. I promise, i will still be here. Let's say i'm going to take a break, like in standby mode. Probably doing some doodling on DeviantArt, and eventually getting back to folding.
Mom told me that her father, my grandpa, was a pigeon breeder in Hong Kong. He was later outcompeted by the Chinese, when the restaurants started to import them from China for less money. He had to stop breeding pigeons, and started catering to smoking gamblers in the casino. Second-hand smoke was a term that had yet to be invented. This is how he got sick and died. I never met him, he died before i was born.
2019-07-07
Last month, i ordered the Moonman Wancai Mini, because i got a coupon from eBay to save five Euros, almost cutting the price in half. It took less than two weeks to arrive from China. And i already did a video on it, including unboxing and doodling. I selected the acrylic demonstrator version, since this is what makes the pen different, besides being small like a lip balm. It gets to full-size by screwing the cap to the end. The pen worked right from the beginning.
The included fine nib is ideal for details, but can be a little dry at times. There are cheaper and more expensive writing utensils out there, but i'm happy with it, especially because of the large capacity, compared to my other pens. Watching the ink flowing inside is fun, although it may be distracting. FYI, if you are only a consumer, and not a creator, nothing here will make sense to you. But at least somewhat enjoyable by design. This is how they get your money too.
When i ordered the Hero 234 ink last year, in February 2018, i didn't know i would use it like that. I bought it with converters for my old fountain pens. Back then, in primary school, we used to learn to write with fountain pens, and i never stopped using them. They take disposable ink cartridges. And i wanted something more affordable. So i went with a 56ml ink bottle, and reusable converters. I didn't realize i got pigment-based ink. But i like the intense carbon black.
It behaves well on simple printer paper. Some ink dots may come through on the other side. But this is only true if i keep the nib for too long in the same place. I make my own notebooks with printer paper. I make holes and sew the pages together. There are no limits on what can be done, like with soft or hard covers, or the amount and size of pages. And it doesn't cost much, compared to branded notebooks, where you have to pay for their marketing too. I'm looking at you, Moleskine!
2019-05-24
Two years ago, in April 2017, i started this blog, because i updated my "core drive" months before. I got triggered by Jessica Clements, and i made her my cornerstone, a memory leading me through this path. Later, i tried to delete her, because i didn't want to experience losing someone i never got to really know and love. Maybe it wasn't about her at all. She made me interested in me, like a reflection.
I was thirty years old at the time, and in less than five months, i will be 33. I learned i would like to say "i love you" someday. But the universe is cold, and no one cares. Jessica Clements and her birds made me care again, that there is this special place i want to find. It was my chance to break the loop, to question choices, and to ask what to do. Happy anniversary, and take my heart when you go.
Remotely related, early this month, i modified my headphones, because they were pushing into my head. I cut a thick piece of full grain "vegetable tanned" leather to size, and attached it to the inner headband. The weight is now distributed on a larger surface. And i like to think that all these random things in life become less heavy with a partner too.
2019-03-25
After having folded more than 10.000 origami cranes in less than 6 years, i'm currently processing 20.738 videos. I documented my trail of thousand origami cranes with different cameras and therefore resolutions. For example, my first GoPro was a Hero2 from 2012, and my latest is a Hero4 Silver from 2015, both used as third-person cameras. I also made recordings with Galaxy Nexus, PowerShot ELPH-150 IS, DSC-RX100 III and DSC-RX100 IV, to cover the first-person perspective. Because of the variety of sources, i decided to brighten the shadows and darken the highlights of some earlier footage from the GoPro, Samsung, and Canon. Their "dynamic range" is not as wide, compared to Sony and my current setup with center metering.
This is why some origami cranes don't look right in old recordings. White objects on black backgrounds are quite needy. It took me some time to find the balance, without to make it look like HDR gone wrong. And sometimes there is just too much contrast and not enough data to push it. The goal here is to make the difference less obvious. I developed tools based on Perl and PowerShell to automate this job. Relying on my filenames with dates and serial numbers, i wrote rules to let my script decide where to make certain adjustments to the videos. This will take some weeks of heavy processing with an Intel Core i7-8700. And no further human action is required to chew through 2,82 terabytes. Later, i will let my "video editing robot" have some fun too. I'm basically doing a complete remastering, since i already published almost each origami crane as a separate video in the past years, except for the latest 730 pieces from this year in Hong Kong.
2019-01-02
Since 2012, i changed my video editing style just by adding a camera for another point of view. First, i chopped the files at positions where it doesn't interrupt the flow at all, and switched the view between them at these particular moments in the timeline. But after having stopped making educational origami tutorials, this don't matter anymore for documentary purposes. Over the years, i improved the way i cut the videos. I developed patterns for consistent repeatable experiences, in terms of production "behind the scenes" and consumption for people on the internet. By doing this, i also made recording, editing and publishing everytime a little bit more efficient.
To a point where i got many thousands of videos made and uploaded to YouTube by myself in the past years. I wrote tools to get these things sorted, although still with some manual work involved, similar to "jigs" in the woodworking world. In the last days of December 2018, i translated my latest "editing style" into a script, completely replacing the need for GUI based Microsoft Movie Maker. And a lot of time is saved. All i need for a fairly finished video is to write the positions where the parts needs to be chopped, merged and processed into a simple text file, including special instructions, if required. And not selected portions will get automatically sped up to target size, among other things. My "video editing robot" is written in Perl, built from scratch and tested in less than two weeks, after years in the field.
2018-11-13
Since mid October, i had to stick a tiny fan at each window, to keep it free from condensation. Thanks to Daniel Rüd for the idea. I got both 12V ball bearing fans by taking apart an old HDD case. And to get them going, i found two old AC to DC 8V power supplies by Siemens, from an ancient time when they sold mobile phones, next to Ericsson and Nokia. This way the window in front of the Raspberry Pi Camera stays clear, even at cold days with humid air indoors. FYI, from my experience, sleeve bearing fans are less noisy, especially if the ball bearing counterpart had to sustain a shock at some point.
To get my Pi Zero Ws even more stable, i have lowered the resolution to 1920x1442, which is the size i use to archive my time-lapses anyway. And to compensate for less data, i slightly bumped up the JPEG quality. Since some months, i save all output to external 32 GB USB thumb drives, eventually to be downloaded via SSH and psftp. Now the microSD cards are dedicated only for running OS and applications, and relieved from the heavy read and write loads. Otherwise the flash memory may slow down everything by becoming a bottleneck, and eventually crashing. This way the wear and tear is no longer directly happening at the system storage, possibly extending the lifetime too.
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