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Music Shop FAIL January 17, 2009

Posted by CLibra in Fun, Humour, Images, Music, Photos.
1 comment so far

Found this whilst digging around on my PC.

It’s from December ‘07, found it in Zavvi.

Easy Tilt-Shift Photo Generator January 10, 2009

Posted by CLibra in Images, Photos, Tools, Websites.
2 comments

You’ve probably all seen a tilt-shift photo – a real scene that is edited to make it look like a smaller model. This is usually done by trial and error with a tilt-shift camera, or digitally with by blurring & enhancing colours of certain parts certain parts of a picture in PhotoShop, but both ways are cumbersome and take a long time to do.

Lifehacker have recently found a free online tool, tiltshiftmaker, that can automatically tilt-shift photographs for you. All you do is upload from your computer (or provide a URL of a photo on the web) and move the image band until the preview looks right. That’s all! Have a look at one I made of a photo taken on the Paris trip in Novemeber.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
[Click for full size]

Yup, now it looks like I have a Moulin Rouge model. tiltshiftmaker is free and extremely simple to use, whilst producing high quality results. Check it out, see who you can fool with it. Also, have a look at TiltShiftPhotography, which has lots of examples of tilt-shift fake photos, and tutorials of how to make your own.

[http://tiltshiftmaker.com/]
[http://www.tiltshiftphotography.net/]

The secret behind Twilight’s success January 5, 2009

Posted by CLibra in Articles, Literature, Reviews.
1 comment so far

It’s no doubt that the world has gone crazy for Edward Cullen – Libraries are left without any Stephenie Meyer books in stock, fans surround movie theatres, and numerous websites are set up adoring the characters; it’s like Harry Potter all over again.

 

After re-reading the book and seeing the film, I’ve been able to come up with a few reasons why vampire love story is so appealing. 

  • It has the ‘James Bond effect’. Girls who read it want to be with Edward Cullen. The guys want to be him. He has a dangerous lifestyle that’s loved by all.
  • Twilight is a blend of very different genres. Take all the best parts from a steamy romance novel, add a handful teen angst mixed with Sci-Fi, and a lot of action-adventure. Bake for 434 pages and you have Twilight. The different parts of the novel will hook a wide demographic of people.
  • We can all relate to a character. Okay, so I don’t have the problem that I crave human blood, but I can certainly place myself in Edward’s shoes in a few of his awkward situations. However, one of my friends said that she could identify with Rosalie’s issues a lot. The characters are created to reflect our everyday feelings.
  • And of course, the thrill factor. There’s a lot of adrenaline in Twilight. The thrill of the illicit human-vamp love, the thrill that Edward may turn on Bella, the thrill that the coven may be found out. Meyer has created a lot of suspense in all of the right places, which really pays off in keeping fans.

Twilight has been an overnight craze, so I’m glad to say that I was a fan before the hype started. If you’ve not yet come across it, I’d really recommend to have a look! You will not be disappointed.

The Irony of the MySpace initiative January 2, 2009

Posted by CLibra in Music, Social, Websites.
1 comment so far

It’s slightly ironic how music companies believe that creating an official MySpace channel for artists is helping to promote their music.

Usually, most MySpace pages that I visit (which I try and avoid to if I can) contain large and bloated graphics, autoplaying music with flashing cursors and an assortment of irritating scripts, followed by a long string of comments  generally resembling something like “hey… uu iz well fytt”. And recording companies think that it promotes music? To some, yes, but to those like me who already detest MySpace, no, oh no.

And do the record labels not realise how much using the MySpace Music Player is hurting their bands? One knowing the right online tools could easily rip the MP3s off the pages, and nobody would know; it’s like MySpace is becoming the new Napster 2000, DRM free music practically given away by favourite bands.

Excuse my pessimism, but I really think that MySpace isn’t an appropriate medium for the music industry. Got any comments? I wish somebody would try and show me the good side to it all, ‘cos I’m really failing to see it.