Audacity 2.0 released!

Alhamdulillaah, Audacity 2.0 has been released! As an audio recorder, producer, editor, and overall manipulator, Audacity is one of my most important tools (more on my whole multimedia workflow to come in a subsequent post).  I have been using it for so many years, I’ve lost count.  Before Audacity, Adobe Audition was my staple, as…

HDR Scooter

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I am quite pleased with the following HDR image I was able to assemble.  While not as good as the best that are out there, it is definitely a step-up from my other attempt I shared here.

High Dynamic Range photography

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I’ve just managed to produce my first HDR (high dynamic range) image the results of which I’m pleased with.  Once again, I have CHDK to thank for enabling this feature easily.

March of the Ants!

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem As bugs are normal around the house here in Malaysia, I have just gotten used to them for the most part.  Yes, the wall next to me is a veritable graveyard for mosquitoes, but most other insects don’t bother me much, alhamdulillaah. This includes ants.  Ants are usually very benign, they mind…

Flock of Seabirds

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, from our apartment in Alexandria, Egypt, we have an outstanding view of the Mediterranean Sea on clear days. On foggy days, we’re treated to an eery sight where the sea is ambiguously “missing”. One of the amazing sights I discovered while looking over the sea was the hypnotizing landing sequence of…

International Year of Astronomy 2009

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured an announcement for the International Year of Astronomy.  This alone would be noteworthy enough, but they also have a downloadable trailer (warning: contains some music, but it’s not prominent until the end).  This is great for geeks, and especially video geeks like Belal & me…

From the South China to the Mediterranean Sea

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, my wife & I arrived safely in Alexandria, Egypt this past Friday to the welcoming arms of my parents, whom I haven’t seen since I left the US back in June.  If you’ll recall, I originally departed on this journey because I could not bring my wife to the US yet,…

Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, though I am woefully behind in catching-up on my Planet Fedora feed, I do sometimes uncover gems in these old posts.  One such post includes a link to a TED talk by Ken Robinson, “Do schools kill creativity?“.  I found the video to be both enlightening as well as entertaining, as he…

Close Encounters of the Blurred Kind

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem While riding (on a scooter) to a nearby masjid with one of my brothers-in-law, I felt something flew straight into my eye despite the fact that I was wearing my glasses at the time.  I was unable to flush it out while on the bike, and I thought that, like most eye…

Message Mastery by Belal Khan

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, my good friend Belal Khan of Leechon Films fame has started (a while back, actually) a program called Message Mastery.  You should get the full explanation from the website, but the basic gist of it is that it is a training seminar focused on developing masterful messages through the medium of…

Time Lapse Barrage

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I’ve been able to take an enormous amount of pictures during my stay here in Malaysia until now.  And while the actual yield of shots with any value may be low, the sheer volume of photos means that I have plenty I would like to share. The sheer amount of work…

Panorama shots of Kuala Lumpur downtown

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulilllaah, there are some outstanding opportunities for views of the downtown Kuala Lumpur skyline from the roof of our apartment here.  Some of the shots are clearer than others due to the conditions at the time I took theme.  These are my first attempts, as well, so keep that in mind.  Click…

Blog now completely Creative Commons-licensed

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, after finding the wpLicense WordPress plugin on the Creative Commons website, I’ve been able to completely license all my work released through my blog under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license.  This means such world-changing works as my essay on Social Networking & online projects, my tirade against anti-userism,…

More time-lapse fun

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Okay, so I have an addiction. Here are some more time-lapse sequences I took this past weekend and Monday. I’m now dabbling with alternative frame rates and sizes, including, by “popular” request, HD resolution videos. I’ve learned a few lessons from these sequences, and I’ll elaborate a bit more on each one.

ffmpeg from svn

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I have really been engrossed in using ffmpeg, one of the most amazing a/v command-line tools out there, for my various personal video projects.  However, recently I was experiencing a recurring bug where I could not work with some specific codecs when either the input or the output file was on…