042 - Buck 65 Concert, Photoshop Experiments

I like concerts. There's something about live music, being in front of the people who make said music, being surrounded by people who are equally (or more) into the music than you are... something about that whole process that makes the music exciting. In contrast, I don't really like live concerts on cd. There are a few exceptions (Great Big Sea's Road Rage, for example), but the music without the atmosphere is only half the experience. Recently, I saw Buck 65 at the Bronson Centre, with Skratch Bastid and Cadence Weapon. It was a good show despite the mediocre sound and audience-not-at-capacity. Even though the venue is seated (it's an ancient high school auditorium), I still found myself standing by the stage. My ears aren't particularly happy when that happens, but it's worth it.

It's even better when you get a few good shots. My battery life was limited (and died eventually), so I enjoyed the music rather than try to capture it. I wasn't particularly happy, but it was a good concert!

Michele accompanied me to the concert. A few days later, we had some work-related adventures including a trip to our offsite via OC Transpo and a trip to the mall's garbage and recycling facilities. I like adventures, even the ordinary, ordinarily boring ones.

On another note, I've decided that I should probably learn how to use Photoshop. I have such a powerful tool sitting on my computer, and the most I use it for is resizing pictures. Today,I experimented with smoothing out skin tones, leaning how to, as Nelly Furtado would put it, "Make it look whiter than it seems / Paint me over with your dreams." Not that I'm looking for a job over at Maxim or Cosmo or anything...

Before (click to enlarge)


After (click to enlarge)

Just don't show her, because I might get hit. Or worse.

018 - How far could a Klingon hit a golf ball?

I am famous. The following photo that I took a year ago has made its way to the Cheap Eats Ottawa blog:

You can even see Sebastian's shirt to the far right! It isn't the first time that a picture of mine has been used here and there, but aside from a time when I had stuff up on the Capital Music Hall's website (which apparently has changed how its photos are displayed), this is the most prominent display ever.

Thursdays are proving to be long days for me, including early morning class, afternoon class, and work in the evening. Today being Thursday means that my day will be super long. All summer, I would stay up so late - at times until the sky would brighten; the combination of school and work has pushed my internal clock back into the Eastern Standard timezone. It's unbelievable to people who know me when I mention that I'm in bed sometimes while still in the 10th hour of the evening.

I can rest assured that by next week, once I get a heavier homework and whatnot, I'm going to have very little, if any spare time. Maple Story might suffer the most since I'm 700 zombie mushroom kills away from attaining level 30, which is possibly where the game gets more exciting. Given the chance to earn imaginary mesos versus Canadian dollars (which is quite close with the American dollar. Why aren't videogame prices dropping? Super Mario Galaxy should be $49.99!), I would do with the latter.

One of the things I was looking to achieve for this term was to feel more focused. I think I'm definitely on track to achieve this. Especially when I have side projects with Prashanta's father.

Speaking of which, he had me make a couple of posters for upcoming conferences that the Canada Forum for Nepal will be hosting. I'll put them here because I realise I don't do that often enough.

The first one was based heavily on the one that someone else created last year. It just have more colour and has a cleaner look about it.

The second poster is for the broader conference that's going on. It was originally designed as a teaser poster, given that no information about the conference (ie speakers) had been determined, but I stuck with it.

This is the design that I originally wanted. The flat and bold colours and font choice gave a bit of a classic poster style. The background used to be brighter and more off-red, but it had to be changed to bring out more contrast.

Apparently, the powers that be didn't like the red, citing that it was too representative of a revolution, despite the fact that red is a dominant colour in the Nepal flag. In order to please, a blue version came about. The colour didn't match well with the original direction that I wanted, so I went ahead and changed up the background, making it a bit more interesting with a graded effect, and extruded blocks.

Lastly, a gray scale version was made fro printing reasons, though I still need to work on a higher-res version so that the print versions look reasonably nice. After all that, I think this version has some class to it. I need to think about using black and white more often.

Feel free to check out either of these events when they happen!