The Last
moments of light before the darkness of reality forces itself back out.

Should be viewed large on black.

So I've been quite busy with books and the library and all that lately but when things start becoming too monotonous my brain starts becoming heterogeneous. What that means to the space that I call my personal is relocation and silly ideas. It has only been two days since I started my search for another world but so far I have glued (not strong) two small wooden blocks to my work desk so I can prop my laptop up against the wall easier. That isn't much of a change from how I've had it up till now other than now the prop is wood and not white-tack. Taking the laptop down is much easier now. And if you're wondering how I use the keyboard now then Synergy is the answer; one keyboard, one mouse, two komputers.
I've also reorganised everything to the right of my computers, I call it efficiency upgrade.. but that is just to make myself feel that I didn't waste half an hour of my life.
I used to have a laundry bag I was going to make but my fingers were too lazy at first and then too busy to finish that project. The materials are still lying in the bottom right of my wardrobe, right where they were a month ago too. I need that bag quite sorely. Some day, some time.
In five minutes I will start searching for the blogger code to add an "Older Posts" and "Newer Posts" link to my blog.




EDIT: here's a beautiful mspaint demonstration of how my computers are set up.







Speaking of websites, yesterday I put a drafted one together, one of those personal websites, based on the strange design I came up with three posts ago. It's not too bad and definitely need working on. I have a well of other ideas I want to realise into concept ideas some day. I'll try for something less, hmm, simple next time.
Go check it out: http://www.geocities.com/talleyway/index.html
Unfortunately I don't have a personal webspace and am too lazy to go searching for a good free service so I popped it into my existing geocities account. Click away the ad-sidebar when you're there.

Been checking out pixelpost lately. A great photoblogging application for databasing and showcasing photography. Fully customiseable. I'll be working with that a little in the near future.

Tom Clancy's End War is finally out for PC. Can't wait to try it out. Voice recognition warfare. *drool* I haven't bought a game in years but I think this will be next in line if the offline turns out to prove good prospects for online gaming.

As for my twitter-week experience. It started out alright, quite fun to share bits and pieces of my everyday life. But it only took one day to start feeling imposed upon by the intraweb. I found it increasingly harder and harder to keep up the updates as I wanted to share less and less information (apart from it being tedious to announce every bit of my day). It was a little relieving to be able to share some of my personal life even if there might not have been anyone on the receiving end. But Susan Greeenfield would beg to differ. I can see the angle she is coming from. The social community today has morphed to something very different from what it used to be only a decade ago. The constantly shifting economy of knowledge is a very different world as specialisation become the keyword of the century. Technology is growing and the world is shrinking.
Keep up, the times are changing.

Currently rediscovered playlist: Feist - Let It Die

Labels: agenda, annoying points about blogger, bored, bugs, computer, flickr, globalisation, goal, life, personal website, photo, rant, reflections, social awareness, time, Twitter, website

Thorns
that hold us back.

This really should be viewed large on black.

Well then, yesterday was the last day of my twittexperiment (Click here for details).
I'll give a very short and brief summary of my experience of that soon enough. But the general experience was one of giving up my privacy as the private became far too public and becoming far more conscious of my daily routines.

Sometimes the only boundary is reality.
Break free, do what you want, and realise that you still cannot grab the edge.

Labels: boundaries, flickr, goal, life, photo, purpose, rant, reflections, time, Twitter

We construct
It's nice to know that the road is under construction, but I find it a little early to tell the drivers when it's 500 meters away.
Perhaps a little closer. But who am I to talk.
Let the speeding cars do that.

The photo is from the same day as the post on the 15th of February.
Just didn't find time to upload it till now.

So, today I think I'm getting the haircut I've been planning to get for a while now. I'm far too lazy for this sort of stuff.
Still waiting for the day they invent a pause button for hair growth.
Heading out a few minutes after hitting the "post entry" button. I might be a bit late for the opening hours though, I'll see. If today fails I'll have the rest of my life to get the cut anyway.

A good habit I've started developing recently that I think everyone who needs it should get, an agenda. And not just to keep it on the shelf (like I did for two, three months before finally picking it up), but to actually note down events and things that you need-to-do, should-do, should-think-over, plan-to-do, etc.etc.
Up until now I've trusted my memory to keep track of all of this. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you all have amazing memories, neither did I forget appointments and such. But by writing them down everything suddenly becomes much, much clearer. Easier manageable and I am able to become much more time efficient.
Not only can I easily plan things for my "free hours", but I have become a little more conscious over how I spend my days, that way I can spend them on something a little more productive than staring at the computer screen for hours on end.

Society is constantly demanding higher and higher levels of efficiency, we try to save time every single step we take, whether it will be spent staring at a tv screen or actually effectively used doesn't matter anymore. Many have never heard of 'stopping to smell the flowers' anymore even and society is erasing that phrase evermore. So why not conform a little and try to become a little more efficient ourselves.
Though while knowing society's growing efficiency demand, we are able to become aware; awareness is important for change. Therefore, with the agenda that you surely now will go and get (*hint*hint*), start "effectively" planning calm nights of rest, notice when you are busy and when you can sit back with a book or go for a walk to take in all that you didn't have time to when running to your bus or while working frivolously at a project.
We used to just have time to slow down and sit down for an extra breath, now we need to plan it. Follow the waves of change.
Pick up a new hobby if you want, for now you have the time to..

And yet again, here's My Twitter and why you should check it.

Labels: agenda, flickr, globalisation, goal, life, photo, purpose, rant, reflections, social awareness, time, Twitter

Earlier yesterday an idea for a possible personal website popped into my head and I found it a pretty good idea too.. that was till I started trying to work it out in photoshop.
The result wasn't as impressive as my mind had pictured it. Some ideas are better off left in the mind.
Click the above image to see a larger screenshot of what I ended up with.
The title saying "TallyWay" and the "My name is TallyWay~" parts are replaced to protect my privacy but would otherwise have my real name instead.

In the spirit of the above topic.
I've become increasingly interested in minimalism. Hence the minimalistic attempt at a website above.
And here is some fantastic minimalistic photography from other flickr members:
(am I allowed to post their photos in my blog even though it's to recognise them?)





Also; go visit My Twitter

Labels: bored, flickr, minimalism, personal website, photo, Twitter, website

Brighton Seaside
Towards the end of magic hour.

View On Black

This is one of the photos from yesterday. Check out my photostream for the other update.

More uploads to come later. I am busy and procrastinating.

My Twitter

PS: I've resolved the comment-box-overlapping-the-photos issue now. Let me know if there are any issues viewing the pages.

Labels: bugs, flickr, photo, Twitter

I have been left speechless. Amazing photoblog. Extremely inspirational. Fantastic photography.

Go visit now:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/the_year_2008_in_photographs_p.html


In other news: My Twitter

Labels: life, photo, rant, reflections, Twitter

Alright. All that hype about Twitter and such and such. I figured I should jump on the train as well and follow the rest of the world wide web and be a nice little sheep.
What is there to say. Twitter...twitter,twitter,twitter. A little device that has taken "Facebook Status'" to the next level. Take Facebook, cut out all the photo albums, the wall, the applications, the events, etc.etc. and only leave the status field and friends list and you'll have Twitter.
You see, some people don't think letting complete aliens know how your day was is enough. Twitter allows you to let the world know you're going to the bathroom, having your dinner, picking your nose, buying groceries, and all the rest of your sad little senseless life.

It is therefore I will indulge myself with this fun little interactive website and see if I can pull off a full week of constant 'twittering' (I believe that word has now been coined by the twitters, yes; "Twitters" *shudder*).
So, starting today, Saturday 14th February 2009 till Saturday 21st February 2009 I will be actively twittering whatever useless information of my day to day life I can muster.. if I make it.
Let us call it a social experiment to get a slight grasp of what the personal tweeters go through.

No, no I don't have anything better to do.

Now come read my week as I live it. https://twitter.com/TallyWeek
*add me if you're already Twittering, if you're not, follow me anyway.

More info on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/, if you're interested.

Labels: bored, globalisation, life, rant, self-presentation, social awareness, Twitter

Street Performing


Alright, here goes. A photo with an actual Person in the middle.

Also, my thursdays are a pain. Annoying timetabling.
More on that next post. Off to next class.

PS: I only recently realised my blog has no "Older/Newer Post" link. I'll get that done when I've figured what the bracket|tag|endbracket script is.

Labels: annoyances, photo, rant, street photography

London Eye


I know this is a rather boring photo. Ground-up-shot-of-monument photo. But I figured I just wanted to do an update now so picked this.
(PS; For some reason Flickr's auto blog function isn't working, curious)

So, tried street photography more or less for the first time this weekend. I rarely ever/never take photos with people as the subject so I figured I should try it.. a lot of rather boring and horrible photos. Not a single one I liked at least. I'll pick one of the people-containing photos for my next blog update.

On the non-photographic side:
Semester two has started again. My timetable for this semester is a complete joke. I have a four day weekend; Sunday - Tuesday, every week. It's rather idiotic. But my solution so far is to move my work hours at the health centre to Tuesday and spending more time in the library. Hopefully that will keep me off lazing around doing nothing.
Also, get myself a part-time job with hours in the weekend through to Tuesday. (perhaps)

I've discovered a nifty little network belonging to my uni. An entrepreneurship network, holding workshops every Wednesday, today was on Social Enterprises, very interesting workshop, very educating. I think I might keep going to their weekly sessions.
Next week: Marketing in the Facebook Generation.

Something less societal and more personal; I've found a growing interest for jazz. I've gone from only liking two artists to discovering dozens of new artists and liking the larger portion of them. I seem to have weekly trips to this small vintage cd shop down at The Lanes with a large array of cds most for only £2-4 each. Great place. All I have to say.

I will then end this post, but not before:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
[W.B. Yeats]

Labels: annoyances, bugs, flickr, jazz, life, London Eye, photo, rant, street photography, Yeats

I'm bored. So very bored. So I present to you, my pastime for today.
I'll be from now and the next few hours stenciling this 55x40cm onto the backside of a pizza box.
I'm counting 11 parts/layers. Should keep me entertained for a while.

Labels: bored, globalisation, rant, stencil

(Before-After retouching)

I tried a little layering yesterday. More or less the first time I've used layering on photos this way. I usually don't do such extensive amounts of editing but am finding interest in the amount of colours this can bring out.

It basically involves splitting the photo up in several parts to bring out as much colour as possible. Regular retouching involves overall enhancing the photo whether in colour channels or just by shadow and highlights.
It's true that layer masks (PS) allow much of the same, but layering allows far more freedom.
Take for example the photo above. I split the photo up in three parts as essentially those are the three main colour and light divisions; the sky, the trees, and the water.
This allowed me to bring out colour and clouds in the skies, saturate and create greater contrast in the trees, and bring out a clearer reflection on the water surface without affecting each other element in the photo.

The photo is five months old and found just for testing purposes. It's not a very impressive photo and the edit isn't much to brag about either. Still, despite having done similar things before, it becomes quite interesting when applied to sky-ground photos.

Labels: photo, retouching, test

Upon The Moving Sea
Brighton Pier

View Large On White

Just testing Flickr's auto blog-this function.

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Nunc malesuada. Praesent id mauris. Nunc blandit nisl et pede. Duis lorem mauris, laoreet eget, fermentum a, tristique ut, urna. Praesent nec mi. Cras porta. Aenean tincidunt ultrices tellus. Aenean et dolor sit amet justo rhoncus ornare. Vivamus sit amet neque vitae sapien auctor elementum. Maecenas erat. Vestibulum suscipit commodo pede. Vivamus luctus dolor eu lorem. Fusce blandit elit a eros.

Labels: extension, flickr, lorem ipsum, photo, test

No title, no description, just a photo.

Labels: photo

Hoist Me Up
Part of an old boat crane lying along the beach rusting away.

Time is but the illusion of events passing by.

This is mostly just a photopost. Spent most of my Friday (after my last exam of the semester *insert big smile*) somewhere along the seaside with my camera.
Very windy. Very refreshing. Very relaxing.

I think I have a cold now.
Been sniffing away since yesterday. Only mildly though. This cup of nice and warm tea should do the trick.

Labels: cold, photo, rant