vivid sydney

vivid sydney is a winter festival of light, to illuminate the dark skies around circular quay. With the main focus being on the opera house, these photos were taken of the light sculpture installations around in an around the pedestrian promonade.



for these shots I was using a Nikon coolpix 12.0 megapixel digital camera. One thing that I experimented with was turning of the flash to try an capture more of the light coming from the sculptures and preserve the darks.

for those of you who would rather listen than read

The analogy that "reading blogs is like god listening to all the prayers before bed," I mostly agree with except for the listening part. To be more specifically accurate, up until now god must have been using some type of agreegator to read all the blogs. And since frankly not everyone out there likes reading, why not expand the audience and invite some of the non-readers to participate. So I wrote a little python script that can be used to listen to blogs. Think of it as podcasts for those of you on skimpy data plans that don't allow for downloading of multimedia content.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import feedparser


feeds2Read = ['http://cypod.blogspot.com/rss.xml']

for feed in feeds2Read:
  d = feedparser.parse(feed)
  entry = 5
  if len(d['entries']) < entry: entry = len(d['entries'])
  for i in xrange(0,entry):
    os.system('espeak "%s"' % d['entries'][i]['title'])
    e = d.entries[i]
    content = e.content
    os.system('espeak "%s"' % content)

espeak is an open source speach synthesizer, the script uses it to handle the text to speach stuff. Feedparser handles all the html grepping, it's a little messy with some formating getting into the stream if there is some interests maybe some of you uberneird readers can post a one up in the comments

SurryHills Festival 2011

The SurryHills festival is a benefit for the local community center, featuring local music, food and craft. I was lucky enough to catch this years addition one sunny afternoon not so long ago. Rocking up, after a morning of surf over at Bondi; the first sounds heared came from avante noise rock performance of Domeyko/Gonzalez , as proof of truth in advertising the setting was perfectly surreal. After a quick lap of the craft tents, electronic duo Fishing played a groovy set, even doing a cover of TLC's "No Scrubs" to much comedic effect. The definite highlight on the day was the head liner Jinja Safari a multi-piece rock ensemble that really got the crowd dancing all around. All in all this was a splendid day out, and if your in Sydney for the automn then definitely make it over to the SurryHills festival!

#sando sketch club

So this time I tried to mix some things up, and came up with a few ideas. First up, there is always a shortage of tables,and I sit at a desk all day no this time I tried drawing at a painters easel. Guess what I tablet sketching is actually putty cool, and it means that there is less glare from those reflected overhead lights. Plus it gives a chance to hold the going up through the index finger and thumb, a comfy penny style I picked up at my last drawing class from Allison the instructor. Collectively this was a big win, and a step in the right direction towards developing an individual style.

Besides some advances in the physical mechanics of the process, I had a few insights into operating the software. I am notorious for always going off the page, so why not let the computer help out by zooming in the screen so the is a margin around the edges. When drawing its a good idea to measure out the canvas so I use Photoshop guides to divide up the canvas into grids, this helps with measuring and proportion to at the image up in pieces.

The navigation window has always been my friend. From The class at college of Marin, I learned about creating a thumbnail to help see the broad gestures from a distance. Why not combine these two concepts and look @ the navigator a free thumbnail. Drawing, especially on a computer, can be difficult so definitely make to most out of the stuff that it can help you with.

#Lifedrawing @theSando

the Life drawing group has resumed for the month of may, after a brief hiatus for Easter vacation. Tonight we got our first male model, after so many female sessions, this was a welcome challenge.