2019 Archive
 

2019 Archive

December

Layali Dance Academy Student Show, Autumn 2019[a]
What turned out to be a final show before the end of the world arrived with COVID-19!

Wättingeströmmen[b]
This stream connects Lake Tyresö-Flaten with Lake Alby. The distance is justa few hundred meters, but the vertical drop is 5-6 meters, giving it a very rapid flow.

November

Morning at Lilla Essingen[c]
Biked there in the morning.

Hafla Layali, November 2019[d]
A very strong lineup this year - looking forward to the student show in December!

Return to Docklands[e]
I didn't go to Docklands many times - maybe three or four in total - but it was certainly an experience. Loud techno being blasted from stacks of speakers immersed the several hundred people in the shipyard's old welding hall in laser-lit fog and thundering rhythms.

October

Morning in Lawrence[f]
A morning walk.

Liberty Memorial[g]
The national WW1 memorial.

C.W. Parker Carousel Museum[h]
Round and round and round...

Storm Warning[i]
Just managed to metaphorically dip my toe in the tallgrass prairie before a thunderstorm rolled in and it was time to hurry back on the turnpike.

Bigsh0t 720 Degree Video[j]
Because 360 degrees aren't enough.

September

Happy Bike Ride to Husby[k]
A lot less biking this summer than I had hoped, so I enjoy what I managed the more!

Surrounded by Idiots[l]
A friend asked me if I could help out with some product photos.

Sunset Over Šibenik[m]
Watching the sunset with Fort St Michael in the foreground.

Plovdiv Sunset[n]
Watching the sun set from one of the hills of Plovdiv.

Panorama Equivalence[o]
When using a narrower-angle lens and panoramic stitching to get a higher-resolution photo with the field of view of a wider-angle lens, there are some things that change in the resulting photo.

Pano Aim[p]
A tool for aiming the camera when shooting panoramas.

Paint it Whiter[q]
I finally completed the paint job I started in 2010.

August

Årsta Bridges at Sunset[r]
The Årsta bridges with a sunset in the background.

End of the Highway[s]
Due to a mistake, part of the graffiti piece "Highway" by Still Heavens Only Force was partially painted over on August 13, 2019.

The Immoral Majority by Ben Howe[t]
A very engaging read describing the creation of a new faith specifically designed to protect Trump from the consequences of his failings. Howe isn't just calling out the transformation of the evangelical movement into the Trump-evangelical movement as wrong, he's properly arguing against it, and I predict we'll hear the arguments he lays out from other places.

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson[u]
Aurora is a good read. Read not as a story but as an exploration of the author's ideas it provides a well needed counterpoint to the utopianism so common in SF; even if it certainly isn't the final word.

Full Frame Weight[v]
Full-frame (35mm) cameras are heavier than their crop-sensor siblings. Their lenses are heavier too. But how much heavier?

July

Bigsh0t Optimized and Stabilized[w]
An update to Bigsh0t, includes 360 stabilization and OpenMP for the OSX versions.

Caucasian Stonecrop[x]
A little forest of stonecrop by the water.

USS Mount Whitney Visiting[y]
People expecting a cruise ferry to Finland who get on the wrong boat will be surprised by the lack of tango and pickled herring buffet.

Liebe Verfliegt Nicht by Tanja Brandt[z]
The photos are, as before, absolutely amazing. Tanja is a master of composition and lighting, and also picks just the right moment to open the shutter. And there are a number of moments that just make you want to hug the little feather-friends. And the dog. Ingo is huggable too.

Wo die Liebe Hinfliegt by Tanja Brandt[aa]
Calling the book heartwarming is an understatement. Not only because some photos are positively heart-melting, but also because Tanja has an amazing grasp of composition and lighting which makes this an art book and not just a stack of cute animal photos. She captures a view into a magic wonderland.

Pusshållplats[ab]
Someone knitted a "kiss stop" as opposed to a "bus stop" (busshållplats).

Sedum Album[ac]
A colony of sedum album (white stonecrop) near Berggården.

June

GhettoPro 360 Helmet Mount for Less[ad]
Can't afford a GoPro helmet mount for your 360 camera?

Nine Flowers[ae]
Kitchen orchid outdoes itself again.

Haymaking at Järvafältet[af]
Some partial crop circles, but mostly crop lines.

A Rainy Evening in Akalla[ag]
Walking around after a BBQ.

Evenings at the Bergius Botanic Garden[ah]
Sunny evenings and bees.

Enblend 4.2 Color Space Blending Bug[ai]
If you have color artifacts in the shadows when blending large panoramas with Enblend, try doing the blending in RGB color space with --blend-colorspace=unit.

Blood Red Sunset[aj]
The sunsets (especially the hazy summer ones) are amazing from here.

Deltaco TB-135[ak]
A perfect little thing to stick in your pocket if you feel like being away from your workstation and intend to write something longer. Together with a smartphone it becomes an "almost laptop".

The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts[al]
I said that I'd love for a book where Watts does what he does best and left out his tics. I can happily report that The Freeze-Frame Revolution is Watts at his best, with none of Watts at his mediocre. The prose is gripping, the scenes are well written, and the whole novelette is trimmed to perfection.

May

Schweizer Kamel[am]
High up on the Swiss alps, you'll find... a camel?

A Tulip at Klara Church[an]
I think it's a tulip.

The Dandelions at Akalla By[ao]
Hansta has wood anemones, Akalla has dandelions that shoot up at about the same time.

Layali Dance Academy Student Show, Spring 2019[ap]
Since last, the Layali Show Group have been touring Europe and picked up first prize in every competition.

Wood Anemones Blooming in Hansta[aq]
About a month after their blue siblings, the wood anemones cover the ground in Hansta.

Cherry Blossoms 2019[ar]
This year's cherry blossoms - a bit later than usual but just as beautiful.

An Evening Walk Around Riddarholmen[as]
A beautiful sunset.

April

Godox TT350[at]
A cheap and very capable flash unit that gives a lot of bang for the buck.

Puluz 45cm Round Diffuser[au]
A remarkably cheap way to improve your flash photos a lot.

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage[av]
If all you want to do is store data and only occasionally look at it, Backblaze's B2 is peerless. Cheap but a bit slow, if S3 beats B2 on performance, B2 annihilates S3 on pricing.

Silverdals Griftegård[aw]
An old military cemetery.

Signs of Spring in Hansta[ax]
Spring is here - and it's the blue siblings of the wood anemones that are first up through the layer of last year's dead leaves.

Blindsight by Peter Watts[ay]
A very good story about a small crew on a spaceship far out in the Oort cloud contacting an alien life form that, from the very beginning, makes it clear that it does not want company. Watts fills his worlds with a seething and tense psychological horror; but when you as a reader almost have to suspect the coffee maker of being a serial killer in order to keep up with the plot you wish someone just told him to chill a bit.

Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM[az]
A solid performer with wide aperture, good ergonomics and great image quality at a nice, low price.

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger[ba]
Theories about what consciousness is tend to disintegrate into either hand-waving or mysticism. While Metzinger's attempt falls into the former category, he does manage to put up quite a good fight before going down after having exhausted empirical science's current knowledge. The book is quite a ride through that thing - whatever it is - you think you are.

Basler Münster[bb]
A church with a great view over the river.

Elisabethenkirche[bc]
A church.

Sunset by Lake Thun[bd]
Sunset by the lake.

Staubbachfall[be]
One of the 72 waterfalls in the valley.

Mürren[bf]
A little alp village.

The View from Gütsch[bg]
Viewing Luzern from above.

The Needle Dam on the Reuss[bh]
A needle dam across the Reuss, maintaining the level of Lake Luzern.

Jesuitenkirche[bi]
A church by the Kapellbrücke.

Gletschergarten[bj]
A little park with giant's kettles.

Pilatusberg[bk]
There's the Kapellbrücke, and then there's Mount Pilatus.

An Evening at the Stadtkeller[bl]
Rösti and Bauernbratwurst to the Swiss folklore show.

Kapellbrücke Sunset and Sunrise[bm]
Upon arriving in Switzerland (and Luzern) I figured I might as well get the mandatory touristy shots done, and the Kapellbrücke is on the top of the list.

March

Flowers for Christchurch[bn]
Candles and flowers for the victims of the March 15, 2019, terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch.

Color Schema Contrast Optimizer[bo]
Some color schemes are nice to look at, but lack the contrast to be useful for people with reduced eyesight. This is a tool to modify any color scheme to live up to the requirements in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 ("WCAG 2") levels AA and AAA.

Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan[bp]
A book that is less than the sum of its parts. Scientists create monster, scientists argue over monster, scientists solve the monster problem with science magic.

February

Transhumanist Golems[bq]
Lately I've been reading some transhumanist science fiction and watched some futurist shows with transhumanist elements on YouTube. I've enjoyed both immensely, but for reference I'd like to spell out why I think they are about as grounded in reality as your average dragons-and-sorcery fantasy.

Blue Hour at the Nordic Museum[br]
Watching the Nordic Museum lit up against the blue sky.

White, Red and Black[bs]
After heavy snowfall, the ground and most things were covered in white; the red of the old farmhouses poked out and the black of the dormant vegetation provided an outline.

The Stars Above Gran Canaria[bt]
Night sky.

Maspalomas Dunes[bu]
Dunes.

Mirador de Balcón[bv]
A view of the sea.

Roque Nublo[bw]
A volcanic rock.

Super Resolution[bx]
Would you like to double the resolution of your camera, for free? I sure do.

January

Fatter Tuesday[by]
Why do semlas always come in packs of two? They don't - they just need some final assembly.

Emerging Sensation[bz]
An art exhibition in the old nuclear reactor hall at KTH.

Super Blood Wolf Moon 2019[ca]
Watching the red moon.

Enabling Chromecast for HTML Video[cb]
How to configure Apache in order to cast video from your own website.

Lighthouse Audits[cc]
I keep being impressed by Chrome DevTools. Lately, the Lighthouse audit.

Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM[cd]
A lot of full-frame low-light shooting bang for a few bucks.