Thanks XKCD

 

Sometimes I love this web comic.  Below is the link to the original along with the comic I have blatantly stolen to amuse myself.  Pure comedy gold.

XKCD comic.

Some quick Photoshop Action

My sister just made a winter visit down the road  to Niagara Falls.  She sent me some nice photos of the trip and I was particularly taken with this one.

I thought this looked pretty great, but given the weather of Canada in Feb, it is a little grey and dark.  So, I thought I would have a quick go at it in Photoshop to see what I could do with it.  I wanted to brighten it up and give it some wintery contrast.

What I did was this:

1. ran the auto tone and auto colour tools.
2. used the smart sharpen filter.
3. adjusted curves to brighten up image.
4. changed levels to increase blue level for a more icy feel.
5. selectively used the burn tool to bring out some of the details for more contrast.

What do you think?  did I go to far?  I thought maybe I oversharpened and it is a little grainy now, but I think I like the overall look of the image.

The Big Office Project

So, I was off for half of last week to build and fill up our new office furniture.

In the next few months, our house will need to be transformed to accommodate the addition to the family.  Basically the following has to happen:

1. Move office from first floor to basement
2. Move Liam from his room to old office (paint and furnish)
3. Paint and reassemble baby room.

So phase 1 started a long time ago with the design process.  Claudia and I took all the needed measurements, then decided what needed to go into the future office.  It was to be a home for our many many books and computers as well as the primary work space in the home.

It will also function as the secondary guest room in case we need another bed, in the form of a pullout couch,futon.

As I continue to hate Ikea, we decided to look elsewhere for furnishings.  After some search, we settled on a German shop, Moebelum.  Many shelves were purchased, and Claudia’s Brother Bernhard was drafted to help me with the project.

First we did the computer corner.  This will be my principal home in the office.

Next up, a cupboard and some shelves next to the desk.  The cupboard will hold my formidable board game collection and the shelves will be all of my books.

Next up, more bookshelves to the right of the desk.  Here you see Bernhard in action.

 

Then we add even more shelves, including a big one to hold our old TV.  This is keeping the long run in mind when we will almost certainly have some TV scheduling conflicts with the two little boys in the house.  We men can all watch hockey upstairs and send mummy off to the basement to watch desperate housewives or whatever chick show she is in to.  Ok, we all know that is not how it will happen…

 

At this point, Liam came home and decided to bring in a crane to help.  I thought he would lament the loss of the big empty room he sometimes played in, but he seems to like the new office so far.

Next up was Claudia’s dream desk.  A great big L desk.  Of course the clowns at the shop first forgot to send the hardware needed to join the L, and I had to drive the loooong way back to pick it up.

Here is how the join works.  There are three little clamps on the underside.

 

The finished desk.

 

Finally, clean up.  Also Liam took this moment to grab my level and make sure all the shelves were OK.  He went to all the ones he could reach and yelled out if they were straight or not.  Lucky for me they all were.

anonymous comments turned off.

Sorry, sick of deleting Spam comments.

no mor anonymous ones, you have to have a userid.

No posts this week as I have been building office furniture for the last days. I will have an update with much shelving soon.

Still a computer geek

Even as a fully grown up person, edging ever closer to 40, I still have a great love of video games. I don't even question this, I would still rather spend my recreational time gaming above so many other activities...

This year for Christmas, my gaming needs were addressed with this gift from my mother:

I was already a firm fan of Rock Band and I have been a Beatles fan for many years. This was a particularly good pick as the music selection is more accessible to Claudia should she want to play with me. She is not a fan of many of the more modern songs in Rock Band (regular) that I tend to enjoy, like the Pixies.

Liam also loves this rock band, but for him the entire game is about playing "Yellow Submarine" over and over again. Liam also liked Beatles music from a very small age, but for some yet to be explained reason, he always referred to them as "car wash"

I think he may have first heard them in the car on a trip to the car wash, but I can't be sure. He may have just randomly selected that name.

TRAGEDY STRIKES

I was shocked and sad to hear that the Joneses had a break in to their flat over the weekend while they were up in Germany visiting us.  Getting robbed sucks, but I think the important thing to remember is that it is just stuff.  No one was hurt and you can always get more stuff.

Apparently the police have advised that there is a problem with “Georgian gangs” conducting burglaries.  This of course led me to the best source of information that exists, Google.

By typing in to Google “Georgia Gangs” the first image that popped up was unfortunately this one:

Which is apparently a still shot from a film about English School girls, one of whom is named Georgia.  As much as I would like to think that an apartment could be burgled by a group of schoolchildren, I think this was likely not the gang I was looking for.

I refined my search to “Georgian Gangs Geneva Robbery” and came to this article:

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/index/Georgian_gangs_behind_rise_in_Geneva_burglaries.html?cid=685424

Apparently there is an organized crime presence in Europe and it has recently come to Geneva.  the article states;

“ Georgian criminal gangs are chiefly responsible for the large rise in burglaries in French-speaking Switzerland over the past year, the Geneva police have confirmed.”

Apparently burglaries were up 20% in Geneva last year, that is pretty shocking. 

Another Google search on “Georgian Robbers” gave me this nice photo of Dick Turpin, who really has nothing to do with either, but again I like to think of robbers escaping on horseback over the hills.

I also had a look at the Wikipedia entry on Georgia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_%28country%29 and it had zero mention of Georgian mafia gangs.  I am going to go out on a limb and say the robbers probably looked more like this:

You can clearly tell he is a baddie as I think it’s pretty universally known that baddies have masks, striped turtlenecks, crowbars, moustaches and smoke.  Also, he is yelling in Georgian and has a sack of Loot.

I have to say, I am filled with a tremendous dislike for all things Georgian and the entire nation of Georgia at the moment.  A few bad eggs have now ruined an entire country for me as I decide to paint them all with the same brush.   DO YOU HEAR ME GEORGIA!  I DON’T LIKE YOU NOW!

Well, that all being said, I am very sympathetic to the poor Joneses brush with EVIL GEORGIANS and I hope that the Police catch and punish the robbers in the most Swiss way possible, perhaps force feeding of cheese fondue while wearing decorative cowbells and having alpine horns blasted at them by traditionally dressed mountainfolk.  Oh, and also endlessly reading “Heidi”

If it is possible to think that any good has come of this situation, I think we can all agree that it has given me the idea for my new TV series “Swiss Justice”