Since last year's pumpkins caused heartburns to some, this time I shall spare them the trouble of having to spit out the seeds by directly supplying bottled acid! Also, this hot witch might delight those who actually “don't give a damn about Halloween” (sic). So here is Circe. In Greek mythology, she's an extremely powerful goddess of magic, “renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs likely to induce transformations.” She's described either as a sorceress or as an enchantress.
Another article which comes just at the right time. Like about much everything in my life in fact. For the last couple of years, after I ceased being “comatose”, I've been feeling as if I were Hop-o'-My-Thumb and now I wouldn't go back the other way for the world. Because I'm no longer afraid of ogres. Neither of the Big Bad Wolf nor the Grim Reaper. Actually, the three Little Pigs, dumb as a bag of hammers, or Little Red Riding Hood and her senile grandma with her jars of pasteurised GMO butter, would be more likely to freak me out. At least, predators are intelligent creatures. But sheeple are stupid. As a matter of fact, I never got why the Little Prince wanted the aviator to draw him a sheep. I, for one, would agree to drop the whole shipment on his little tiny planet — that certainly would overpopulate it! So, as I was saying, this article is ideal to set the record straight. It reminded me of the mind-blowing, disgustingly naive “Je suis Charlie” phenomenon that went viral earlier this year as it was echoed by all blogs all over the world. Let it be said that I am NOT and NEVER will be Charlie for the very reason cited here by Mr. Rappoport and on top of what David Icke and a few others already said, as well as my personal stance on the issue.
Ey@el
I could trace my 30 years of investigative reporting as one long project emanating from what people are supposed to think.
What they’re supposed to think about nuclear weapons, pesticides, medical drugs, vaccines, presidential elections, major media, the CIA, US foreign policy, mega-corporations, brain research, collectivism, surveillance, psychiatry, immigration…
In each case, there are a set of messages broadcast to the population. These messages are projected to replace what people would think on their own, if left to their own devices.
And in many cases, these messages have the same underlying theme: feel unlimited sympathy.
A while ago I had shared my great liking for the art of talented Argentinian illustrator Gaston Viñas whose favourite medium is cartoon animation. His works include two videos for Radiohead. Like me, that's actually after randomly viewing his "2+2=5" clip on YouTube that Kingcrow singer Diego Marchesi was inspired to contact him: “I told Gaston how much I appreciated his art. He wrote back that he loved Kingcrow – and that’s how it started. I gave him some input about the album concept, the artwork and the lyrics, and he came out with another brilliant piece of art.” The somewhat atypical Italian hard rock sextet, who took its name from a poem by Edgar Poe, was founded in the late 1990's in Rome and has ever since known many changes in its original line-up. This excellent track comes from their sixth album Eidos, released this year on independent label Sensory Records. Incidentally, I had just completed an article on summer bugs (essentially based on French idiomatic expressions and puns which can't be translated into English) featuring an animated GIF with moths circling around a lighted lantern when Gaston sent me this video (in July). I found the coincidence rather amusing.
Ey@el
Really don’t you realize What you lost during your search for glory? Just like moths we may go blind Chasing for the glow of our desires.
Time keeps crawling While you’re burning... Time keeps crawling While you’re burning...
Dealing with some big regret Or dreaming of a different life somewhere else — Someone else And your heroes turned to dust. Did you trade your dreams for common knowledge? Was it fair?
Time keeps crawling While you’re burning... Time keeps crawling While you’re burning...
Sometimes it calls And the past howls through the night... Sometimes it calls And the past howls through the night...
I meant to publish some pictures I took this summer, but I felt that all this greenery might bring on a longing for warmer days so I thought I'd make them match the actual season. This is a dead simple manipulation suitable for beginners provided you have an image editing software. As usual, if you do not use Paint Shop Pro, you'll need to figure out the equivalent tools.
Materials
a summer landscape photo
Instructions
1. Open a copy of the image you wish to manipulate.
NOTE: To improve the effect, I've slightly decreased saturation and luminosity then changed the overall colour temperature using the Automatic Colour Balance dialog, correcting colour cast and choosing a warmer tone. This type of setting is the same as tone mapping except it changes colour temperature (to colder or warmer tones) globally instead of selectively. The output is less accurate however it is useful to balance out all the colours as they would normally look like in the autumn light.
For the above variation featuring tamarisk, after tone mapping, I used the HSL (Hue-Saturation-Luminosity) dialog to decrease hue to -5 and saturation to -8.
It is, of course, possible to get even more realistic and stunning effects using external filters (such as Color Efex Pro), but these are usually not free and not compatible with all operating systems or graphic applications. I hope you enjoy this tutorial. Now, you may not be able to make it rain or shine in real life, but in your pictures you definitely can.
Originally, I had translated the lyrics of this song for a Muse site called Space Dementia to support a French community project around featured themes on EklaBlog — last month's theme was animals. However, for some reason, it never got published. Okay, so that's just one more for Muse in the Yorke-Bellamy competition as both lyricists certainly do inspire me a lot! A note about the chosen video: this is not the official clip, but the winning entry to a competition launched by the band. Pretty good, isn't it? What do you think ?
Ey@el
Animal You’re an animal Don’t take anything less
Out of control You’re out of control Strike those in distress
Analyse Advertise Expand Bend more rules Buy yourself an island
Animals We’re animals Buy when blood is on the street
Out of control We’re out of control Crush those who beg at your feet
Analyse Franchise Spread out Kill the competition And buy yourself an ocean
Amortise Downsize Lay off Kill yourself Come on and do us all a favour
Worry not, I didn't fall asleep with my head in the ice box nor did I forget to close the fridge door! It's just that ages ago (back to the last Ice Age some might say), I was given an all-white teddy bear to celebrate my coming to earth — I rejoice in having best withstood the passing of time than the poor thing did. That is to say it's only a fun reminder of yesterday's article.
By conversing so often with Brume (a fellow blogger whose username means mist), I had to write an article on her somehow. But which mist are we talking about? Well, here we'll only talk about enhancing your pictures with natural effects by adding some fog and/or soft glow. As always, I have used Paint Shop Pro X, but this tutorial can easily be adapted to any image editing software.
Materials
a landscape photo
Instructions
1. Open a copy of the image you wish to manipulate.
2. Add a new layer and draw an irregularly shaped strip in the central part of the picture using the freehand selection toolwith the following settings:
Feather = 45 Anti-alias activated
3. Flood fill with white than select none.
4. Now move the fog strip wherever you wish then lower the layer's opacity according to the desired effect (I lowed it to 68%).
NOTE: To make it look more real, I changed colour temperature to cooler tones (6780 K) and added up a bit of cyan to mid-tones, thus increasing the morning mist effect. Finally, to give a flawless finish, I slightly reduced colour saturation.
For the above variation, I used two different selections as shown on screen capture. The ground selection is to reflect the light. The layer opacity has been reduced by 20%. As for the mist itself, a feather of 60% has been used to draw the selection with a 42% layer opacity. Colours have also been altered. First by mapping hue 0 to 198 and hue 36 to 203 and decreasing saturation to minus 40%. Since sky saturation was still too blue, I used the Magic Wand tool to select it and further reduced its saturation to minus 40%.
On this last sample, I only added soft glow which is particularly well suited to black and white pictures. As you can see on the left capture, I drew three selections. The first (magenta-purple) has the layer blend mode set to Dodge with 12% opacity. The second overlapping (cyan-purple) uses the same layer blend mode with 53% opacity. Finally, the last one (green) uses Lighten blend mode with 55% opacity.
As you can see, you need to adapt settings to each picture and your desired effect. Feel free to use as many layers as needed and experiment with blend modes to achieve optimal rendering. I have focused on “realistic” photo manipulation, but this technique may be used to produce “supernatural” or surreal effects. As always, the only limit is your own imagination.
FR
