I brought my camera and a roll of Fuji Film 200 with me to Edinburgh which added a couple of wrinkles to the trip. First is the film, it can't go through scanners so you have to get it checked manually at security which is grand but it does mean you have to shoot the whole roll before coming back... The other was the camera, my EOS-1 is heavy at 890g and add to that the lens I use being about 670g and you're now carrying about a 1.5kg camera! I think I'll look out for either a old point and shoot camera for travel or maybe a smaller lens. My 50mm isn't ideal for street photos probably something like a 28mm lens.
That aside I'm pretty happy with the photos. I tried a night shot but forgot to push the ISO which was the whole reason of it, but I was tired so I'll try that some other time. Also one shot is totally out of focus because again my tired brain didn't realise I had manual focus on still and I some how didn't notice in the viewfinder that the shot was totally out of focus. 🤷 The weather wasn't the best for photos, some overcast days that left places looking bland and very changeable lighting conditions the entire trip. I'd like to go back to Edinburgh outside of the fringe(he says for the 50th time) because I was more focused on seeing shows than taking photos. Ok now onto some shots I liked and the full album at the end as usual.
I got absolutely soaked taking this because I had to put away my umbrella for it. Worth it though I got that extreme contrast and the lovely highlighted rain drops form the sun.
I stopped off in this coffee shop most days I was there, love the framing of this and how your eye is drawn to the coffee machine and staff. Dunno what's up with the line though seems like the film got damaged as it's on a few of the later shots on the roll.
Love how with a good zoom lens you can really capture how the density of a crowd feels in real life.
The verticality of Edinburgh gives some really great vantage points for photos.
How is August already over? It feels a bit like this month hasn't happened, I was off work quite a bit this month and used it as a time to really disconnect from as much as I could which has done me a world of good. It was still a busy month though. I had another quick trip over to London to visit my friend, we also went to see Patti Harrison and Here Comes J Edgar! A Musical Comedy and I enjoyed both. After that I took a quick pitstop home for dinner and a shower then headed to Mate so that was a busy few days.
We had the Auto-Correbt 10 Year Anniversary show the following week which was fantastic. It was a sold out show and we performed in both halves with a mix of formats we've performed over the years, it was a lot of fun to get to revisit these and it brought back lots of good memories.
A post show photo of us all
In cat drama for this month Dennis had a bald spot with a rash on his neck, the vet has no idea what caused it his best guess was a reaction to his worm medicine but who knows. He needed to have cream put onto it every day and it's starting to heal up well now. He never seemed bothered by it though and is otherwise healthy.
I was in Edinburgh for 5 days to see Fringe shows. Only got to 22 this year, down on 27 a couple of years ago which let's be honest is too many for 5 days. I saw lots of great stuff that I'll mention below but it was a bit of a different vibe this year. I knew enough people over there this year that I managed tog et to spend some time with a friend each day but it wasn't like other times where there's a good group of people to go to shows with and chat about shows with. Still fun, but also a bit boring and lonely between shows at times, I'd definitely make sure I have another person going over at the same time in future or maybe just do 4 days.
No idea how much I can talk about so I won't say much other than I spent a day filming something with a friend, it's my first time having a main role in something that has a proper crew behind it. It was a long but fun day and I hope we get to do more with it in the future.
I haven’t watched this how in a long time, but I’m really enjoying it. I’ve started from the start and it has had me laughing plenty.
Films
Spider-man Brand New Day
I love Spider-man and this is a return to the lower stakes stories that I think work best for Spider-man.
The Odyssey
A great spectacle but as far as the story goes I wasn’t super into this.
Tony
No idea how accurate most of this is but beyond that it works well as a fun story about that summer a guy worked in a restaurant.
Games
Blood Dungeon
I loved the demo of this and the full game had me hooked as well until it felt like the balance started to fall apart. Enemies become bullet sponges and the upgrades don't keep up with that in a way that's fun to play. Add to that how reliant you are on good luck with items and after about 5 hours it feels like too much of a chore to complete the later quests.
Theatre
Patti Harrison
This was fun, but didn’t feel like a super cohesive show. Still funny though.
Here Comes J Edgar! A Musical Comedy
Really good, great performances and lots of good jokes.
Best of the Fringe
If you get a chance to see any of these you should.
Olga Koch: Fat Tom Cruise
Marty Gleeson: Dog Ear
Secrets Secrets Shh!
Porno
Freddie Meredith: Need a Light?
Jeromaia Detto: Giuseppe's Love Quest
Police Cops
Kate Dolan: Trout
CADET KELLY IS THE BEST MOVIE I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY FRIGGIN LIFE
Lara Rictoe: Inkling
Crybabies: The Scaring
Sam Eley is Basil Crumbwick: Soul Sewage
Music
Ariana Grande - Petal
A good album, I'm not as into it as I was Eternal Sunshine but there are some great songs here. Freak & Big Feelings are good. Bad Thing is my favourite, it's a real bop. Bop of the Year probably.
Phoebe Bridgers - Lost Weekend
This is probably going to be my favourite album of the decade, I love it it's absolutely stunning. Upon the first couple of listens I wasn't too sure about it, the songs were good but it wasn't working for me as an album until suddenly it just clicked. I've listened to this about 30 times since it was released, I had it on a near loop in Edinburgh. For someone like me who has been listening to modern American folk since the early days of Bright Eyes this album feels like a culmination of everything that has been done in that genre over the past 25 years. Some of the songs could easily be off mid 00s Bright Eyes albums(The Governor's Waltz, Haunted, Never Going Back!), there’s sounds along the lines of Sufjan Stephens in there too(As Above). There's that wonderful melody we get throughout the album that's most noticeable on Lost Parade. It even has a wonderful mid point palate cleanser in Panorama. Everything on this album is really strong but my top songs are Lost Boys, Kill Me, Bobby, Panorama & I Can't Wait(which also has an excellent music video).
Books
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
A really enjoyable account of walking the Appalachian Trail. I'm lucky to have gotten to see some of the views mentioned in this on a trip along the Blue Ridge Parkway and a nice poster for Shenandoah National Park is on the wall in my office. The way the history of the trail and its evolution is given out piece meal throughout the book works really well and you get a nice taste of bygone eras such as when some of the mountain tops on the route had thriving tourist industries that are all but gone now. Highly recommend this and it has me looking up day hikes nearby.
Neuromancer - William Gibson
I decided to read this after seeing the trailer for the Apple TV show which looked exactly like my kind of thing but I was too impatient to wait until January. I was right, this was right up my alley and I had this finished in a few days. It was also quite inspiring and gave me some epiphanies on making some idea I have for a game make sense.
I got back another couple of rolls of film, you may have noticed I'm sharing far fewer photos on Instagram these days. That's because I just don't trust that they're feeding it into some AI training or something. Sure they're probably scraping the web and these photos will end up in there anyway but at least I'm not just handing them over. Anyway doing a post here lets me pick out and talk about specific shots and share the albums in high quality(you'll find them at the end).
First, some photos from the Candido 400 roll. I haven't shot with this film stock before and we know how that can go... This was not a disaster though, any bad shots are just me messing up the focus. I like this film, it's like Fujifilm 200 but warmer and has a bit more contrast. I'll definitely shoot it again. With the higher ISO I wasn't sure how it would be in day light but it's nice. The first shots I took with it were in the evening, it was the reason I went with 400 ISO because my attempts at sunset photos with 200 weren't great.
I'm happy with how these sunset shots turned out, for these I had my GR III with me to have a comparison.
This is the only one that works as a good side by side, they shots are similar but in this I think the way the light feels bound to the sky makes it look better. In the GR III photo below it's like the light spreads has a haze over the surrounding area. The warmth of this film is really noticeable on the grass.
Very happy with this, I had been re-learning the best way to set the aperture to blow out or not blow out the sky and I think I got it spot on for this.
The sun sets fast! I just about got this in, I was rushing to the end of the street to get the framing I wanted and just about got it. After there was a guy who crossed the road asking to see the shot, I had to disappoint him and tell him he can't. So if he comes across this, here it is.
This is the sort of shot I got the 24-105mm lens for. I shot this at 105mm you can really make a crowd look dense for street shots.
I just like how well composed this shot is, colours are great too. Makes my garden look as lovely as it is.
The other roll was Kodak Color Plus 200, another film stock I haven't used but I've used other Kodak ones so I was more confident this would be grand and it was. I get why they call it Color Plus, it has great colours! Unfortunately with the weather we've been having a lot of these were in fairly stark lighting and I don't think that's where this film shines. The ones shot when it wasn't so bright are very nice though and the ones in bright light are still nice, the colours just don't pop as well.
Any photo of Dennis is great, but the sense of depth and colours in this one are really nice. Your focus is drawn to him really well.
I really like the composition of this one, the colours are nice and the grain gives it a nice mood.
Came across this cat in Brickfield's Park, they were so nice and friendly. The colour on the grass is great, I think this film will work really well in Autumn.
Love the focal plane I got on this one and the way the depth so smoothly blurs behind the crow. Also just very nice contrast, went early-ish in the morning specifically for shots like this.
Another one that draws your gaze to exactly where it should be.
My favourite from these 2 rolls, exactly what I was trying to get! It's so satisfying getting a photo back weeks later and having what you saw in your mind right there. Great colours and I love the way the brightness changes from top to bottom.
NOLF 2 was released in late 2002. While I wasn't a fan of the original the reviews were more positive for this, I remember picking it up and enjoying it. It seems I liked it so much having traded in my original copy(I did this a lot as a broke teen it does not mean I didn't like a game) I at some point re-bought the budget release. I came across the "Best Seller Series" copy when taking boxes of old games from my Mam's house recently and for this play through I installed it from the CDs! Neither NOLF game has gotten an official release on digital stores although both are quite easy to find on the internet archive. Like Max Payne 2 this is not as big of an improvement over the original as I remember. It is an improvement though and I'd say this is worth a replay if you liked it back in the day unlike the original.
Cut scenes are a massive improvement.
By far the first thing I noticed an improvement with was the cut scenes. They're far more succinct with a camera that has more than 2 angles and characters that move around the scenes. The writing is an improvement too and Cate isn't belittled at all. The voice acting is all much better too, there are no slip ups with Cate's accent any more and the supporting characters all sound good. I think this really helps keep things moving, at no point was I sitting through 6 minutes of the same 2 shots as characters gave an exposition dump. That said the story isn't particularly interesting and while the writing is better it's still just fine. This isn’t a game I was playing for the story.
The notes you find are somewhat entertaining.
Hot on the heels of cut scenes when it comes to improvements is stealth. There are loads of cool mechanic that have been introduced to improve this aspect of the game, you can now hide in dark areas, turn out lights to create said dark areas, alarms turn off after a period of time and the state of the level gets reset. There's a gadget that allows you to fire tracking darts at enemies to keep tabs on them and you can move the bodies of enemies you'd knocked out or killed. It's just such a shame you're given so few opportunities to really put all of this to use outside of one level during the section set in India. For most levels the layouts don't lend themselves very well to stealth and the fundamental unpredictability of the enemy AI still undermines everything. I was quick saving before peeking out from a corner in case the enemy facing away from me some how spotted me instantly. Beyond this, there's very little benefit to being stealthy when it's just as easy to go in guns blazing which is what most levels feel designed for.
Only one vehicle, it's still rubbish.
When combat does kick off it's fine. There's a decent amount of enemy variety both visually and in their weaponry but outside of 2 late game enemies the tactics required against them are piratically non-existent. Enemies run towards you shooting whatever weapon they have at you and you shoot back at them. Even the arsenal at your disposal rarely matters. There are a number of machine guns, a shotgun, a handgun and a sniper rifle. There are maybe 2 occasions where the sniper rifle is of use and otherwise it's a case of using whichever gun you have the most ammo for. It's not like there's an advantage to having a shotgun in tight corridors, even outdoors it's so easy to close the distance that it's useful. Even the different ammo types for these guns make little difference, you’ll never have a reason to need to use fire rounds for instance.
Gadgets are mostly context sensitive.
Gadgets make a streamlined return, they've been pared back and their use is usually context sensitive. This is a good move even if all it does is add a bit of visual variety to the various gates in a level. The one exception to the context sensitive use is the camera which I had to use once. The more I think about all the systems and items in these games that go barely used the more I wonder what sort of cohesion there was between the game and level designers.
Cate dresses for the different locations.
A new addition is an upgrade system. Completing objectives nets you points that you use to upgrade abilities in a system that feels very "other games do this so we will too". It's all very plain, weapons do more damage, you get bugger health and armour bars etc. The one bit of it that stands out is stealth. Fully upgraded it makes stealth actually useful as the time required to hide and evade alarms drops massively and if this was just the baseline stealth system it would be great! But instead it's hidden behind a simplistic and unclear levelling system. God knows what putting points into gadgets does, maybe you use them faster and if so why would you ever bother with that? Again, systems that just don't fit in with the levels at all.
The Ohio level is still a highlight.
Let's wrap this up with what kept me playing. Visually it's still a very nice looking game, there's strong art direction and we're hitting that point in games where animations and textures are of a high enough quality that you can tell what everything is meant to be still. The music is nice and the feeling of being a spy is very much there. Searching through folder of documents, zapping an enemy with your stun gun and hiding in a room are all very fun. The variety of locations is nice and the story zips along at a nice pace. I don't think this is shorter than the original and if it is it's not by much but this flew by in comparison to the first, I got through it in 3 sittings. The pacing is very good and they know when to slow things down after a prolonged period of action. It's a fun few hours for sure.
A while ago I bought a Charmera which is a fun gimmicky toy camera. I like the lo-fi early 00s digital camera aesthetic you get from it.
It's a real vibe as us young people say
It can also record video and inspired by this video I wanted to create something in the style of the tour diaries I remember seeing from bands in the early/mid 00s on MTV2. But I don't know much about video editing and without getting a bunch of software I'm not going to get far. I also wanted to capture the DVD player aesthetic I remember from then and had the idea of exaggerating that.
So my first port of call as it is for many thing like this, what Python libraries are there for video editing? I found moviepy and it looked to cover the sort of things I wanted to do. Overlay text, merge clips together, create specific clips etc. so I got to work grabbing some samples and hacking them together. The first version just read AVIs from a folder and put them together chronologically, that was pretty easy.
for file in files:
current = current + 1
filename = path + os.fsdecode(file)
if filename.endswith(".avi"):
clip = VideoFileClip(filename, audio=True)
clip_list.append(clip)
final_clip = concatenate_videoclips(clip_list)
# without setting the audio codec to aac there was no sound on my iPhone
final_clip.write_videofile(folder + ".mp4", audio_codec='aac')
This is fine but a bit too simple and not quite what I'm going for, so next I wanted to add in a title screen that would be like an old DVD player in style; blue screen with low resolution text. I searched for the shades of blue and found some free to use fonts in that style and a few minutes of playing with moviepy I had some code to generate such a screen.
# Create the blue background
bg_clip = ColorClip(color=(3,0,239), duration=2, size=(width, height))
# Create title text
title_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text=title, size=(width, height), font_size=72, color='white', horizontal_align='center', vertical_align='center').with_start(0).with_duration(2)
# Create subtitle text
subtitle_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text=subtitle, size=(width, height), font_size=36, color='white', horizontal_align='center', vertical_align='center').with_start(0).with_duration(2).with_position((0,0.1), relative=True)
# Create the 'play' indication
play_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text='>', size=(width, height), margin=(10, 10, 10, 10), font_size=72, color='white', horizontal_align='right', vertical_align='bottom').with_start(1).with_duration(1).with_position((-0.1,-0.1), relative=True)
# merge them together and add to the clip list
clip_list.append(CompositeVideoClip([bg_clip, title_clip, subtitle_clip, play_clip]))
That's better, now it has some identity. With the clips being short I wanted to give the idea of someone quickly skipping through chapters on a DVD, at first I was just going to add the skip indication but it was too subtle so I exaggerated it with a brief full blue screen as well. I don't think any DVD player was every like this but it works well to get the aesthetic across. I went back to the original bit of code that puts the clips together and added in the blue frame. This was a bit tricky with making the timing work as I wanted the skip text to appear just before the blue frame and stay during it. When I did this I also decided to add in an end clip, so I kept track of how many files were being put together in total to do that.
total = len(files)
for file in files:
current = current + 1
filename = path + os.fsdecode(file)
if filename.endswith(".avi"):
clip = VideoFileClip(filename, audio=True)
if current < total:
skip_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text='skip', size=(width, height), margin=(10, 10, 10, 10), font_size=72, color='white', horizontal_align='right', vertical_align='bottom').with_start(clip.duration-.3).with_duration(.6).with_position((-0.1,-0.1), relative=True)
bg_clip = ColorClip(color=(3,0,239), duration=.3, size=(width, height)).with_start(clip.duration)
clip_list.append(CompositeVideoClip([clip, bg_clip, skip_clip]))
else:
bg_clip = ColorClip(color=(3,0,239), duration=2, size=(width, height))
end_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text="END", size=(width, height), font_size=72, color='white', horizontal_align='center', vertical_align='center').with_start(0).with_duration(2)
clip_list.append(clip)
clip_list.append(CompositeVideoClip([bg_clip, end_clip]))
And now I had everything I wanted for it. Here's a couple I've created so far.
London
Galway Film Fleadh
What I like about this it that I can generate these videos really easily, just put the clips I want into a folder and run this with a title and subtitle and I have my MP4 ready to use. No I do not plan to add a way to mute it and put music over it the horrible sound is part of it.
This is the full script. You need to install ffmpeg and point to it, the font I used is this one. Also thanks to highlightjs for the code blocks.
import os
import sys
from moviepy import *
os.environ["FFMPEG_BINARY"] = "C:\\Users\\paulh\\Documents\\ffmpeg\\bin\\ffmpeg.exe"
os.environ["FFPLAY_BINARY"] = "C:\\Users\\paulh\\Documents\\ffmpeg\\bin\\ffplay.exe"
if len(sys.argv) != 4:
print("moviemerge.py [title] [subtitle] [clip_folder]")
exit(0)
title = sys.argv[1]
subtitle= sys.argv[2]
folder = sys.argv[3]
width = 1440
height = 1080
clip_list = []
# Create the blue background
bg_clip = ColorClip(color=(3,0,239), duration=2, size=(width, height))
# Create title text
title_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text=title, size=(width, height), font_size=72, color='white', horizontal_align='center', vertical_align='center').with_start(0).with_duration(2)
# Create subtitle text
subtitle_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text=subtitle, size=(width, height), font_size=36, color='white', horizontal_align='center', vertical_align='center').with_start(0).with_duration(2).with_position((0,0.1), relative=True)
# Create the 'play' indication
play_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text='►', size=(width, height), margin=(10, 10, 10, 10), font_size=72, color='white', horizontal_align='right', vertical_align='bottom').with_start(1).with_duration(1).with_position((-0.1,-0.1), relative=True)
# merge them together and add to the clip list
clip_list.append(CompositeVideoClip([bg_clip, title_clip, subtitle_clip, play_clip]))
path = "clips/{0}/".format(folder)
directory = os.fsencode(path)
files = os.listdir(directory)
files.sort(key=lambda x: os.path.getmtime(directory + x))
current = 0
total = len(files)
for file in files:
current = current + 1
filename = path + os.fsdecode(file)
if filename.endswith(".avi"):
clip = VideoFileClip(filename, audio=True)
if current < total:
skip_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text='skip »', size=(width, height), margin=(10, 10, 10, 10), font_size=72, color='white', horizontal_align='right', vertical_align='bottom').with_start(clip.duration-.3).with_duration(.6).with_position((-0.1,-0.1), relative=True)
bg_clip = ColorClip(color=(3,0,239), duration=.3, size=(width, height)).with_start(clip.duration)
clip_list.append(CompositeVideoClip([clip, bg_clip, skip_clip]))
else:
bg_clip = ColorClip(color=(3,0,239), duration=2, size=(width, height))
end_clip = TextClip(font="VCR_OSD_MONO_1.001.ttf", text="END", size=(width, height), font_size=72, color='white', horizontal_align='center', vertical_align='center').with_start(0).with_duration(2)
clip_list.append(clip)
clip_list.append(CompositeVideoClip([bg_clip, end_clip]))
final_clip = concatenate_videoclips(clip_list)
final_clip.write_videofile(folder + ".mp4", audio_codec='aac')
