52Frames – 2021-51 – In The Middle

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Two hands pulling on a green therapy band held by a pull-up bar in front of a door.

It’s Sunday evening and I have two things to do: my 52Frames, and my physio. I decided to combine both and take a picture of my physio; obviously, I got taken by “but I need more light” and “but the composition is not right” – which means I have now done my 52Frames, but not my physio yet.

The theme was “In The Middle”, so I went for a centered, hopefully reasonably symmetrical composition. It turns out that the lamps in our corridor are NOT centered compared to the door, which was making the shadow (even) more awkward than it is on this picture. Hence, I present you the “behind the scenes” of this shot, also called “The Things You Do For Art”:

Selfie with a Lume cube held on my head thanks to a Gorillapod.

For a “quick shot”, this still involved a tripod, a timer, two lights (including the one on my head – the other one to light my arms from below). I’m not entirely satisfied with the composition, which is sloppier than I’d like, nor with the focus, which could have a longer depth and probably a better focal point. But, it’s 22.30 on a school night, and trying to get a completely clean shot under the conditions of being both the photographer and the model is… probably the best I can do for this shot at this time 🙂

52Frames – 2021-50 – Black&White Minimalism

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The theme for this week’s 52Frames was “Black&White minimalism”, with an extra credit for “Portrait”. When putting these two things together, I knew I wanted to go for something where only the face/elements of the face would be visible. My initial concept was to try to have something where the only visible elements would be a few face features, blurring the rest to white – but it felt kind of hard to pull off. (I might still play with that idea later, but that was not for today!).

Conversely, adding the hands to the portrait feels like it adds something to the composition, compared to not seeing them at all, while keeping with the “minimalist” theme.

Anyway, I took pictures of myself in front of a dark curtain, with a single right pointing at my face (I’ll admit that editing the picture was a bit tough as long as I still had remanent spots in my eyes ;)) and that’s the picture for this week.

It’s Advent of Code again!

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Yup, for the 7th year in a row: it’s Advent of Code time!

Advent of Code is an advent calendar of programming puzzles. Every day of December until Christmas, you get a new puzzle and a piece of the yearly story in which you need to help the elves save Christmas because Santa is in trouble! In the previous years, we’ve repaired the snow machine, the clock that guides the sleigh, the printer that prints the nice and naughty list, time itself, we brought Santa back from the edge of the Solar System, and we tried to take some vacation last year but it was complicated. It seems this year we need to fetch the keys to the sleigh that got dropped in the ocean by a clumsy elf…

The format of the puzzle is a problem and an input (there’s a number of different inputs, assigned randomly (as far as I can tell) to all the users); the solution (typically a number or a short character string) is what matters to prove that you solved the problem. This means that you can solve it with any language you see fit… or even no language at all. There’s a guarantee that all problems can be solved within 15 seconds on 10-year-old hardware, but it may require some more significant work to get there.

I love Advent of Code. The puzzles are interesting and the difficulty ramp up is usually great, the story is whimsy, and it’s good fun. There’s a competitive aspect to it: there’s a leaderboard for the first 100 people to solve the puzzle, and there’s a “private leaderboard” feature on the website that allows to compete with friends or colleagues. I found it a great way to stretch my coding muscles and practice another language.

This year I decided to solve it in PHP: I’m still learning the language (which I’m now using in my daily professional life), and if previous years are to be believed, I’ll probably learn more than a few tricks – looking forward to that! I’m publishing my (ugly) solutions on GitHub as I go: Balise42/AoC2021.

The first day is easy… who’s in? 🙂

#balisebooks – Let’s talk about books again

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So. Books. I like books. I like blogging about books. I haven’t blogged about books this year at all, for reasons. I’ve had a few paragraphs ready for a couple of books, so I may as well publish these, even though they’re not representative of what I liked best this year. But, at least y’all get a bit of content, and I feel like I’ve caught up with my Balisebooks duties before restarting with a fresh start 😉

Midnight Blue-Light Special / Half-Off Ragnarok / Pocket Apocalypse – Seanan McGuire

In the second, third, and fourth book of the InCryptid series, the cryptozoologist Price family continues protecting the cryptids that need it, and getting rid of the dangerous ones.

In Midnight Blue-Light Special, Verity learns about an impeding purge of the cryptids in New York by the Covenant of St. George, Price family’s old archnemeses… who believe the Price family to be extinct. Verity, as a cryptozoologist, would really like to avoid that, and starts warning and making plans with the local cryptid population. Oh, and her boyfriend is part of said Covenant of St. George, which makes things somewhat more challenging.

In Half-Off Ragnarok, we leave verity and New York and join her brother Alex in Ohio. Alex works as a zoo-keeper / basilisk breeder, which goes smoothly until the first death of someone who has seemingly been turned to stone. Alex investigates, with the help of his grandparents, while trying to keep the details of what’s happening from her non-cryptid-aware girlfriend.

In Pocket Apocalypse, we stay with Alex who, this time, has to go to Australia, because Australia has a werewolf problem, and werewolves are not native to Australia – hence, problem. I found this book maybe somewhat less enjoyable than the previous books: the setting and cryptid universe felt less original. I still chuckled a few times, and the Aeslin mice were still there, so we’re good.

This is still a very enjoyable series: I love the characters and the universe, and I’m looking forward to the next adventures in the Price family and their families of hyper-religious talking mice.

Random / Wolf – Alma Alexander

Alma Alexander takes a scientific take on weres and shifters.

I heard about Random in a Big Idea feature on Scalzi’s blog; the idea of a werewolf story where “The science is as good as it gets” enticed me enough to put the trilogy on my to-read list.

Random is the first book, in which we follow Jazz, who’s a random were. Random weres don’t have a fixed form, and instead take the form of the closest animal when they first change. Jazz also lost an older sister when she was very young.

In Wolf, the second book, we follow the story of Jazz’s brother, Mal. Mal becomes a wolf and, as such, gets claimed by the local wolf pack. We follow his story as he continues exploring his family’s mystery and studies the science and genetics of what it means to be were.

All in all, an original were take – which ends up being almost irrelevant to the family history and secrets – I’ll probably read the third book at some point.

Harrow the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir

The story from Gideon the Ninth continues in a very confusing but impossible-to-put-down sequel.

Well, this was a mindfuck and a half. This is the second book of The Locked Tomb, taking place shortly after the events of Gideon the Ninth. The story is told from the point of view of Harrow the Ninth, who learns the skills her Emperor needs of her… in less than optimal circumstances. This was honestly one of the most confusing books I ever read, while being absolutely excellent and enjoyable. I’m very confused, but in a good way 🙂

The Locked Tomb feels pretty demanding to read, which I know will make me hesitant to start the next book; at the same time, I know it will be worth the read!

The Last Graduate – Naomi Novik

As El’s last year of Scholomance proceeds and graduation approaches, the school seems more and more intent on… something.

A Deadly Education was one of my favorite books of 2020 and its sequel was one of the books I was most looking forward to this year. The Last Graduate picks up exactly after A Deadly Education, and it’s El’s last year at the Scholomance. And, in that last year, you essentially prepare for the graduation slaughterfest. Which… happens, with a number of twists and turns that keep you on your toes for the whole book, while also enjoying El’s snarkiness and grumpiness. I loved The Last Graduate at least as much as A Deadly Education, and I really can’t wait for the third book.

52Frames – 2021-48 – Inspired By A Photographer – and 100 52Frames!

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Aaaaaand 100 in a row. It shows here: all time streak, 100. I almost gave up a few time this year, and I almost accidentally broke my streak (had an upload snafu earlier this year), but it got maintained by the kindness of the Powers That Be at 52Frames 🙂

I must say that, for a 100th week theme, I groaned a bit when I saw the theme. I’m not too fond of that kind of “inspired by”: it makes me feel like crap, because I feel that anyone I’d be “inspired by” may actually feel insulted that my meager attempt may try to emulate them. I did consider getting the inspiration from a fellow Scavenger (I had several people in mind 😉 ) and decided against that for that reason because I *know* these people. (Although, considering the average Scavenger, I’m pretty sure I would have found nothing but support there!).

Anyway, I looked at the problem from the other direction. I considered what I wanted to experiment with, looked for someone working in that direction, and tried to emulate their style as best as I could. And, trying to play with still life and light and that sort of things appeals to me greatly these days. I searched for that kind of thing, and stumbled upon the work of Sharon Core. In particular, I liked the light visibly coming from a diagonal in one of the upper corners; I tried to emulate that. To the best of my ability, I also tried to take more care than usual in my whole setup (subject, tripod, light, background) – it was also the first time I used the background-holding tripod I bought a couple of months ago! – and ended up with the picture above.

I’m actually happy with it, although I still have significant progress to do to light my subject: as it is, I didn’t get what I was going for, although I don’t hate the result. It also feels “right” to have celebrated my 100th week on this project by taking a bit more time to think about what I wanted to do and how to do it, instead of half-baking something at the last minute – as it has happened more often than not in the past few months.

Anyway, now that I have the 100… I can’t leave it like that, now, can I? Here’s to a hundred more!

#balisebooks – Hugo 2021 Short Stories

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I haven’t talked about books much (… if at all…) this year. Part of the reason is that I do not commute at all anymore, and my book-reading time got slashed in the process. Part of the reason is that I’m still struggling with committing to write longer pieces and, while my posts don’t go into much detail, they still take a significant amount of time that I’m having a hard time making, now that I’m back to working full-time.

And that’s how I end up on the day before the closing of the Hugo ballots going “argh, I haven’t read the short stories yet!” and doing that in a single evening, despite having had significantly more time than last year between the opening and the closing of the vote (In all fairness, this year I did rank all the Best Novel candidates!). And, since I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, I felt it would be a nice small, contained thing to blog about. So here we go! And you get my ballot order at the same time… and since they’re also available on their respective publisher’s websites, you also get some short reads if you feel so inclined 🙂

6. Metal Like Blood in the Dark, T. Kingfisher

“What if Hansel and Gretel were robots, and in space?” It was quite a lot of adventures for Sister-the-mining-robot and Brother-the-flying-robot, and I particularly enjoyed the existential discussion about lying and its consequences.

5. Open House on Haunted Hill, John Wiswell

“What if the only goal of the haunted house was to find new inhabitants?” This is a story told from the perspective of such a haunted house, and it’s quite heartwarming.

4. Little Free Library, Naomi Kritzer

“What if there was a mysterious but friendly borrower in a Little Free Library?” (you know these book boxes that spawn in various places? 🙂 ). This was quite cute, a bit sad, and it was a story about a library and the people that put and borrows books in it – what’s not to like?

3. Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse, Rae Carson

“What if zombies were attracted to birth giving?” I was prepared to not like this one at all, due to not liking zombie stories in general. It turns out that the take, the relationships between the characters, and the general action and feminist badassery was enough to make me give my first enthusiastic 5* on GoodReads for this Hugo ballot of short stories (with the comment “I don’t even like zombie stories!”). Quite a feat.

2. The Mermaid Astronaut, Yoon Ha Lee

“What if the Little Mermaid wanted to go to space instead of marrying a prince?” That’s it, that’s the story. It has a strong “Becky Chambers” feeling, and I was pretty convinced until the last minute that it would be the top of my ballot.

1. A Guide for Working Breeds, Vina Jie-Min Prasad

“What if indentured robots had a fondness for dogs?”, I guess. I also do have a strong fondness for epistolary or epistolary-like narrative styles, so that helps. The voices of the robots are very distinct and I laughed out loud for the whole time I read this short story. This was absolutely fantastic, and the top of my ballot this year, even if the ballot itself is very, very strong.

All in all, I think the short story ballot has been my favorite this year. I couldn’t help but notice that all the stories were essentially happy or hopeful or both, with possibly less conflict and shock than one would typically expect from the genre. And, to me, this was very enjoyable: I finished the evening of “reading all the things and ranking them” happier than I started it, and that’s worth a lot in my book.

Scavenger Hunt #33 – Sheet

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Collage of 10 pictures over a grey background. From left to right and top to bottom: close up of green bird feathers, top of three tin cans, see-through slice of lime, abstract image of small bubbles, bunch of screwdriver tips, star confettis, five resistors on a white background, close up of cow-pattern fabric, close-up of a collection of dice, close up of melted chocolate.

As for Hunt #32, there was, for this Scavenger Hunt, an “extra credit” for the people submitting all 10 pictures: presenting all the pictures on a single image – the exact formulation was “contact sheet”, but the constraints were “don’t overlap, don’t re-crop, don’t add borders; if the background is visible, black, white, or grey.

The first image I took was the one with the tin cans, and it has a fairly awkward size ratio, so I felt like I was in trouble. So, I planned.

Handwritten notes assembling 10 words into a single rectangle, with image ratios. The notes are visibly modified after the first version.

I was super proud of myself: I had created an extra constraint for the pictures because for my rectangle to work, I needed precise ratios, but that was FINE, right? Right. Best plans of mice and men. For one thing, as you can see, there’s been a significant reshuffling of dimensions… and images! as I was getting the pictures 🙂

And then I put together the image, it was pretty bad. It became very apparent that I did need a neutral background to separate the pictures; the initial plan didn’t work at all. This was pretty disheartening, because the whole geometry worked well with these ratios, but adding borders to them wouldn’t work easily 😦 I considered re-cropping the images to make them work within the ratios, and gave up on the idea: it felt like re-editing the pictures to be able to add them to a “contact sheet”-type of image would kind of defeat the purpose. So, instead, I moved things around, I aligned images as I could, and I tried to get something as pleasantly looking as I could.

It means that the 3×2 images have far more grey space around them than I would have liked – but it ended up being the best I could do – otherwise I had more space in height, and that was worse. I was quite disappointed, to be honest – when I realized I had overlooked the space for the borders. But oh well, that’s how you learn. I still believe that trying to get the constraint first and shoot within these constraints was the right move – but I didn’t get the right constraints at the beginning 🙂

The complete Scavenger album is available here – along with its winners!: the Sheet album.

Scavenger Hunt #33 – Backlight

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Close-up of a slice of lime with back lighting displaying transluscent details of the lime structure.

While I used the previous Hunt to experiment with composites and story-telling, I wanted to go “back to basics” for this Hunt, and try to get maybe closer from my comfort zone, but also closer to pictures that feel like “me”. But, for the personal challenge, I shot everything with my 100mm macro lens!

The “Backlight” theme was an occasion to experiment with something I wanted to do for quite some time, namely see-through photography that would enable to see greater details and colors – it’s a fairly common exercise in macro and food photography. For all its commonality, thought, finding a (written) tutorial on the matter proved difficult, if not impossible – so it was time for me to put the thinking hat on! We almost always have limes home for, err, mixology reasons, so my subject was pretty much a given (I did consider buying a kiwi – another popular fruit to photograph that way!)

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize I didn’t have to prop my slice of lime vertically to photograph it. Instead, I came up with the following contraption, starring my faithful piece of black fabric, a makeshift light tripod holding a Lume cube with a funnel, two chairs holding a transparent dish (with the help of a little masking tape)… and the slice of lime.

Photography setup: a black piece of fabric, a support for a funneled light, two chairs propping a transparent dish containing a slice of lemon. The setup enables for lemon slice to be lit from below.

Once the setup was done, it was mostly a matter of tuning the alignment of the light and the slice of lime, tune the exposure to avoid blowing whites, and taking a bunch of pictures to get one that was sharp.

Unprocessed version of the lime slice picture above. It has a larger black border, a reflection at the bottom, it's far less colorful and it has distracting light showing around it.
CameraPentax K-1 II
Lenssmc PENTAX-D FA MACRO 100mm F2.8 WR
Focal length100 mm
F-NumberF/5.6
Exposure time1/500
ISO500

Editing required a bit of Photoshop to get better masks so that I could get rid of the distracting light leaks; if not for that, it would have been “crop + color correction + removing a few dots and dust”.

The complete Scavenger album is available here: the Backlight album.