Blog

I found this After Effects video template, thought it was funny and quite descriptive of us "Flintstones" trying to sail around the world. Hahaha ....

I recently made this video in Adobe After Effects. But there is something not quite right with this video! Can you tell what is wrong?

Instead ... she should be charged with war crimes and jailed for life!

I drove out to False Bay Yacht Club in Simons Town with completed race entry application forms for the Governor's Cup Yacht Race 2014. The Governor's Cup Yacht Race is an exciting 1700 mile summer ocean race from Simon's Town to Jamestown in St Helena Island. Entrants typically range from fast racing boats with experienced crews to cruising boats manned by small families, some of which may afterwards sail on from the island to other destinations. AI are able to enjoy the usually prevailing downwind conditions followed by an activity-filled stay on St Helena Island across the festive season, culminating in a comfortable return early in the New Year to South Africa for crews, supporters and yachts aboard the 7000 ton mixed cargo/passenger ship), the RMS St Helena. Originally introduced with support of the then Governor of St Helena, David Smallman, then Master of the RMS St Helena Captain Dave Roberts and others, this first race first took place in 1996. Held every two years and organized and managed by the False Bay Yacht Club, the Governor's Cup race pits the fleet of competing boats above 30 feet in length against each other in an 8 to 14 day handicap chase across the South Atlantic to St Helena Island What makes participation in this race so special is that the crews can then relax and enjoy a sub-tropical holiday, joined by supporters and family who can connect with the contestants via a comfortable and economical sea cruise to and from the island on board the RMS St Helena; a never to be forgotten experience with something for everyone.

So I paid the race entry fee of R1500.00 and for 4 crew members (R300.00 each). I was handed more papers which we now need to complete which we will do in due time as we add further requirements and specifications for the race. Although not yet "officially" accepted and part of the race yet, we have taken yet another major step on our world cruise.

After St. Helena, we will make a beeline for Rio de Janeiro and in time for the world famous Rio street carnivals! This is where and when I will let it all hang out - literally! This is where I will dance like a maniac, half "kaalgat" (naked) and flash my big arse around in a skimpy G String. Hey man, you only get one opportunity, so to hell with what everybody thinks, let go of your inhibitions - so watch this space for photo's of a my fat hairy arse cheeks wrap around the thin part of a G string, jock strap or whatever I can lay my hands on!
Yeah mon, let's go!

Look, me and this Icom M802 SSB radio has come a long way. For the past couple of months now, every time we visit Revelations I would spend a couple of hours in front of this damn thing. I would turn and dial the knobs in every direction, changing frequencies like a pro - all the while hoping to hear a voice coming from the radio. Instead, I’ve heard every possible electronic noise you can imagine, white noise, hisses and spitting - but not a single voice! Damn frustrating this whole story I tell you. Read the manual everybody tells me - but as quick as I open it, I close it again. To damn confusing all this manual reading stuff.

Instead, I battle on, dialing and turning the knobs. Staring and and even swearing at the thing - hoping it would swear back at me. But to no avail. So, we have come a long ways and slowly, me and this radio are becoming mates. But what is all this jargon on the labels; USB, AM LSB. AFS, FSK, CW, SIMP, DUPLEX to name but just a few. Damn confusing stuff I tell you!

Finally and out of desperation, I once again grab the manual. With a concerted effort and without much hassle, I managed to program Revelation’s MMSI number into the radio. So, I’m making progress - but at one hell of a slow pace.

Like they say in Afrikaans, “Op die paal” (direct translation to English: “Up the pole”). A saying when a unmarried girl indulged in sex and unexpectedly became pregnant. Not a very happy situation in traditional Afrikaans families - normally all hell would break loose when such shameful news are announced. But that is Sue going up the mast and not the “paal”.

“I want to go up the mast!” she announces.
“You’ll break your frigging neck! And you will see your “O” ring whilst doing so!” I say.
“I’ll hold on” she defiantly replies.
“Do not say I did not warn you!” I mumble.

So, there is Sue almost all the way up the mast sitting in a flimsy bosun’s chair. The thing is a couple a sizes to large for her - but no worries, up she went. Close to 20 meters above the waterline, hanging from a rope, sitting in a bosun’s chairs many sizes to large for her. Did I not tell you she is brave!? And the image does not fully do justice to the height as about one third of the mast is not even in the picture.

We are packing like crazy, so there is not much time to visit here. I thought we would be onboard Revelations by now! But it is damn hard work this packing story. We have to sort things out in 3 distinct groups - stuff we will store, stuff to give or throw away and then the stuff we want to take to Revelations. This means that every single item and every paper needs to be checked, discussed and decided upon. I never realized it would be this amount of work. Sue has been sorting and packing for the past month already. Anyway, I decided to take a break from all this work. So back to the computer I went and created this 176 piece interactive jigsaw puzzle. Once we get going and sail the world, I hope to create many more of these puzzles.

Download FREE 176 Piece Interactive Jigsaw Puzzle The .exe file is clear of any viruses - promise.

Sheer exhilaration on a fun joy ride recently with the limiter de-activated doing 320 kmph (and accelerating) with "Born to be wild" playing loud. What? Me? Come on, you guys know me! I'm a law abiding citizen and will never do something like this.

Steppenwolf - Born to be wild!

You may have heard about it before. Perhaps you’ve seen a tilt-shift lens or an old-fashioned camera with a bellows. Cameras and lenses like these can be used to shift the most focused part of your image, resulting in some interesting effects. One of them is the “fake miniature” image below. So, if you haven’t heard about tilt-shift photography yet, then consider this your introduction.

Tilt-shift photography has to do with the ability to tilt or raise the lens in relation to the back of the camera where the image is focused. When you tilt the lens, you’re pointing it at a slightly different angle from the normal straight approach, and when you shift the lens, you’re moving it upwards or downwards to achieve the desired effect. When photography was first invented, all cameras were tilt-shift cameras. The view camera allowed you to manipulate the end with the lens, either by tilting it upward/downward, moving it side to side, or moving it up or down. This design was common in the view cameras of the late 1800s, and it persisted until the advent of the compact camera. At that point, adding a tilt/shift mechanism to existing lenses was simply too costly for the average consumer who was unlikely to use it.

To do tilt-shift photography these days, you need to get a special tilt-shift lens. This lens attaches to your digital SLR and allows you to change the view angle or shift the lens upward and downward to achieve the desired effect. Architectural photographers benefit the most from tilt-shift photography. It comes in handy whenever they’re trying to take a picture of a building from ground level. If you don’t angle the camera upwards from this perspective, you won’t get the entire building in the frame. However, if you do tilt the entire camera upwards, the top of the building bends backwards and its straight lines no longer appear straight.

To remedy this problem, architectural photographers use a tilt-shift lens. By controlling the angle of the lens, they can fit the entire building into the scene while keeping the building’s straight lines straight. Tilt-shift photography is also associated with miniature faking, a technique used to make ordinary scenes appear as though they have been captured with a macro lens. To get this effect, you use a tilt-shift lens in conjunction with a wide aperture to create an unusually small depth of field. Subjects closer to, and further away from the small focus point range will be blurry. It appears as though you’re looking down at a miniature model, whereas you are really looking at the real thing. The extremely shallow depth of field creates this effect, making you think the image was taken with a macro lens. Today you can create most of these effects (including building straightening) in Corel PhotoPaint and Photoshop.

The photographs below is of Houtbay and the first photograph shows the miniature tilt shift effect done in Corel PhotoPaint. The second photograph is the original image without any effects.

Here is a YouTube video showing a kitten catching a BIG spook! Hilarious!

So here is a poster size photo mosaic I made of Sue. Using more than 3200 different images, I painstakingly created this photo mosaic. Each photo was reduced to a small size (image tile) and I then took one image tile at a time, color matched it to the original image of Sue and created this photo mosaic in the same way one would build a jigsaw puzzle. This was months of fine detailed work to build this single photomosaic. Jeez, this was a lot of hard work - time for a break! Time for a margarita!

Really? No! Just bullshitting you ... ha ha.
I used Artensoft Photo Mosaic Wizard to create this photo mosaic. So, no hard work by me and it was all done within a couple of minutes. Yes, there are more than 3200 image tiles used to create the photomosaic. Artensoft Photo Mosaic Wizard Photo mosaic maker builds true photo mosaics by carefully choosing, matching, and fitting each individual tile to form the master image. The photomosaic software does that without resorting to tricks such as blending cell images into a master image with color overlays. Instead, it solves a complex mathematical equation of fitting cell images the best possible way to produce stunning and very realistic mosaics.

Here is the ORIGINAL PHOTO the mosaic is based upon.

Look, I'm an old hacker of sorts and have forever been playing around with code. Self taught and thus not very articulate how I do things, but I mostly get the job done. For years now, I have been playing around with decryption and reverse processing. Yeah, you noble souls out there will no doubt lecture me and cast me to the devil himself. Well, fortunately for me, I don't believe in the devil and if he exists, he is certainly one big arsehole of note.

Anyways, over the years this has saved me a ton of money in forever buying new and updated software. I would simply download the trial version of software and hack away until I find a work around. So when I met Gary again, my brother in-law on Revelations recently, we started talking about him making videos of his diving. He is a diver and spear fisherman of note! Not only has he been doing this for years and years, he is damn good at it. He recently acquire a GoPro HD video camera and started taking footage when he goes diving. So, he was asking about which video editing software to use, how to do it, video editing techniques and a bunch of other stuff. But I'm 'mos' the right person he should speak to and I can help him right in many regards. "No sweat!" I say, "I've got this professional video editing software which I recently hacked. Let me show you quickly!"

It took me in the region of 2 hours to get everything to work on my PC. I had to install and uninstall the software repeatedly before I finally got past the usual registration processes. Gary looked at all of this with growing skepticism and wondered aloud how the hell was he was to duplicated everything I was doing. "No problem" I say, "I now know what's going on. I will write you a step by step instruction on exactly what to do."

So, a week after all this, I start my step by step instructions. But ... for the life of me, I cannot get it right! After trying for some 3 days solid, I finally decided to give up and find him some other video editing software. Is it a matter of "the hacker got hacked" by his own system? I guess it is.

We had some friends over last night - talking shit, dreaming and planning (for our intended world cruise). For now, we plan on sailing sometime in December 2014 / January 2015 and our first destination will be St. Helena - an island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean enroute to Brazil. We talked about all the things we still need to arrange, buy and prepare for this trip. They had some beers, champagne and I had my orange juice - later we had some tuna on the braai (barbeque) - we had some more drinks, dipped into the cold water to cool off in the pressing heat. Generally we had a good time and enjoyed the company.

I was telling our friend Martin about this new photo animation software I was trying out at home. That one can take a photograph and make a motion video with it. This software allows you to run many pre-defined scripts which will create facial movements of a face photograph. Amongst many other things, one can change the teeth, eyes and create all sorts of facial movements in sync with speech or song. He immediately expressed interest in this software as he intended pulling a couple of pranks on some people. Without knowing much nor having seen anything, he then posed for a photograph. So I made this movie and it is dedicated to Martin - pranking the prankster. I graced Martin with a new deck of flawed dentures, made him look sleepy and under the influence of mampoer (moonshine) - whilst trying to make him South Africa's new song sensation. Hehehe hehe ... The video is entirely fictional and all based on a single still image. The software used in making this video is called Crazy Talk PRO. All in good fun!