Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Books, books, books, and art

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Well, today after a conversation (and a very nice meal at a tapas restaurant in town) with Åsne, I reluctantly realised that I need to decide how much money I’ll allow myself to spend in London in August. Being that I bought 13 books in London in March, and 10 this summer, I can’t really buy too many… But then again, buying books is one of the main attractions of London (all the bookstores I’ve seen in Norway pale in comparison to Waterstone’s or Borders both in size and prizing).

This time I’ve also got a few DVDs I want to buy as well. Not that I remember what they are at the moment, but still. And there are some books that I really want but which they might not have, in which case I will have to budget enough money to buy them later on. I’ll have to sort my books and figure out which books in which series I lack. I should start buying all the books in a series if I’m going to buy one, so I won’t have to deal with this endless hunt.

Åsne suggested around 1000 NOK for books, but I’m not sure… If I’ve got a lot of books left that I haven’t read yet, but which I own, I should probably limit myself to less… In any case I think 1000 NOK should be enough. I’m thinking perhaps 1500 NOK for books and DVDs put together. If I don’t find many DVDs I can spend more on books and vice versa. In any case the suitcase will be significantly heavier on the way back.

That reminds me that I need to buy a new suitcase… My old one is falling to pieces, and the zipper in one of the outer pockets are completely ruined already.

As for the other part of the title, art, deviantART just released its portfolio system. Even though I plan on designing and maintaining my own website, we all know how much time I have to do that… In any case I will have to decide which pieces I have that are good enough to upload. I want to make sure that I only have my best pieces in there. Not that I think that I’ll be the next big thing any time soon, but you never know who might see it. I don’t want to ruin any chance that I might have.

So I’ll have to sort through everything. Being that I have around 10 000 photos, that’s quite a project. I have problems deciding which are good and which are not… I have to be hard with myself. I can see that those photos which I thought were really good before and which I couldn’t really understand why not more people liked, aren’t all that good.

In other words a lot to do… Again.

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All Good Things

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

This is partly the follow-up to the previous entry, partly not. Despite having a depression things are actually quite nice and bright at the time. “At the time” meaning the last couple of days.

1. Was at a linguistic workshop at my university today. Lots of things went over my head, and I forgot to drink so I ended up with a massive headache and had to go home early, but it was interesting. It is nice to be part of a larger, international research community, although they of course don’t research the same that I do. And there’s a great many “characters” there. Inspired by the phdcomics (www.phdcomics.com, I think, or is it .net?), I’ve made a conclusion regarding male professors and their “fashion sense” (or lack of it). There are, in my view, three types of male professors.

A. Suit-wearers. Might only wear the jacket, and might wear jeans to it, but feels a level of formality is necessary, and at events will wear an entire suit. Pretty much the only professors seen wearing ties.

B. Shirt and sweater-types. Wears a formal shirt, but no tie. Variations: Only shirt, shirt and a very unformal sweater on top, or shirt and a vest (of the non-formal type). Relaxed type of dress.

C. Hawaiian shirt wearers. Might not be a “real” hawaiian shirt, but some variation thereof. Very informal way of dressing, often extremely enthusiastic. Those I have known are mainly firm believers in that their field of study is more important than ANYTHING and they’re so enthusiastic they just have to share it with the world and isn’t case structure in Amazonian languages AMAZING? Often end up as professors that their students really love, not because their way of dress but because their enthusiasm is extremely contageous. There was one of them at the workshop today, a guy from Oregon, and frankly, I couldn’t understand a thing he talked about but I loved it nonetheless.

Okay, moving on.

2. I’ve actually been eating much healthy food and little unhealthy food the last days and I can really feel the difference. It’s great to have some extra energy for a change.

3. I got the apartment. Do I need to say more?

4. I’ve been reading Neil Gaiman’s blog today. There is something inspiring about it, because now my fingers are really itching to write. Not a sense of obligation to write the novel I’ve been planning for years, but a very real itch to just write. Apart from a short burst some weeks ago I haven’t felt that for ages.

5. For someone who love listening to languages I don’t understand, Eurovision Song Contest is a treasure. Less so now than it was back when you couldn’t sing in English if it wasn’t an official language of your country, but still. Languages are beautiful :D

6. I managed to fill up my partition dedicated to my photography. 160 GB. I really need to sort through it, I probably don’t need 9/10th of the RAW-files, and they’re the ones taking up space. The nice thing about it is that buried deep down in those thousands of photos there MUST be something good.

7. I actually don’t remember what the seventh point was. But I can use it to say that life is good and I am really happy for this period of… happiness. The small things in life are really not so small after all.

Have a nice day!

Posted in Language, My everyday life, Photography, Writing | No Comments »