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Every year, the gardens of castle "de Haar" are home to the Elf Fantasy Fair. This annual 2-day cosplay event is the place to see -and be seen- for fans of all sorts of fantasy role-play. Daniel, my apprentice Bas, and myself decided to go check it out and make some nice photo's.
Click here for the full album.
After a long day of shuffling through the gardens, my feet are killing me and my face has got some serious sunburn; but it was all worth it. I've seen a lot of hot babes with kick-ass costumes, and I can't wait for the next edition; which is in September.
One of the things on my wish list, was a fisheye lens. The main characteristic of a fisheye lens is that it has an extremely wide angled view. Some even go as far as an 180 ° angle. Because it has such a wide angle, you can put pretty much a whole room on a single photo if you position the camera on the right spot.
The second characteristic is that this extreme wide angle gives the image a spherical distortion. This spherical distortion gives portrait photo's a very funny effect, because the center of the image is magnified more than the sides. I really wanted one, but the only problem was that most of them are rather pricy.
While browsing a web shop stumbled upon a fisheye lens by an unknown brand that was almost half the price of similar lenses of the major brands. I got curious, but remained skeptical; after all the difference in price usually means compromises. After reading a few reviews and watching a lot of sample photo's I was convinced: this lens kicks ass! I'm talking about the Samyang 8mm fisheye lens, which is sold under many names. In certain European countries, including the Netherlands, Samyang lenses are sold under the brand name "Walimex".
So, what's the catch ? Well, it turns out there is no real catch. Optically this lens performs just as good, if not better, than some lenses that are twice as expensive. So why is this one so cheap ? The difference in price is in the way the lens operates. With most lenses, you can set the aperture size from within the camera. A tiny motor then makes the diaphragm either larger or smaller, and thus increasing or decreasing the aperture size. With this lens there is no tiny motor, and you can't set the aperture size in the camera. To make the diaphragm larger or smaller, you have to twist a ring on the base of the lens.
Aside from the manual diaphragm, this lens has no autofocus; it only has manual focus. This is no problem at all, because having a focus ring on a fisheye is rather useless anyway. Because of the extreme wide angle and spherical distortion, the depth of field is so amazingly large that no matter how you set the focus on the lens; pretty much everything will be sharp anyway. For example, if I set the focus on 30cm from the lens, then everything between 15cm and infinity will be in focus.
In short, by keeping this lens a fully manually operated lens, the manufacturer managed to cut the costs dramatically; making this lens extremely interesting for people that are looking to get a fisheye lens, but are not willing to sell their first-born child to get one. I totally love my new fisheye lens, and can't wait to get into the field and shoot some kick-ass photos. 
Put your brand new HTC "Snap" messenger phone in your pocket... Then when stepping out of the car brush your leg against the doorpost. What do you get?
HTC, the manufacturer of the phone, will send a courier to pick it up for repair next Friday, I hope they can get my poor baby fixed soon. 
When dreams contain uncomfortable, dangerous or scary situations; they are generally referred to a nightmares. Nightmares are a common thing, and can be caused by many things. Bad experiences, stress, illness and even things like sleeping position and eating habits are known inducers of nightmares. Many things about the short but violent dream I had last night, would label it as a nightmare; yet I disagree.
It all started out with me standing on the deck of some boat, I was enjoying the wind and sea in the “Titanic” way. Suddenly out of nowhere a raging zombie started to run towards me. When the zombie nearly reached me I bent forward, grabbed the zombie’s legs and flipped it over the railing.
After watching the zombie disappear under the ship’s bow, I walked back inside. Walking through the ship I noticed that all the corridors were empty. Since it was a cruise ship this struck me as odd. As I walked through one of the corridors, suddenly some doors behind me swung open and a horde of screaming zombies came rushing out towards me. I started running into the opposite direction and bumped into a chubby fellow who later introduced himself as Ron and looked a bit like Mark “Barney” greenway.
After running through several corridors with a load of zombies behind us, Ron and I suddenly found ourselves in an atrium or indoor botanical garden. In the opposite corner of the atrium was a table with guns on it. As we approached the table, we suddenly noticed a pale, black-haired girl knelt next to the table, softly sobbing about something. I asked the girl what was wrong, and she suddenly turned towards us hissing and growling. As I looked into her pitch black, empty eyes, I realized that addressing the girl was an obvious mistake. It is obvious now that the girl was a witch from the popular first-person shooter game Left 4 Dead.
The witch was still growling and hissing at us when the zombies flooded in from the other side of the atrium. Ron snapped his fingers at the witch and said ”Shut the fuck up bitch, and hand me that riffle!”. The witch was startled, but handed us some rifles. For what seemed to last an eternity, Ron and I shot the endless stream of zombies that came rushing in; while the witch kept handing us new ammunition cartridges and refilling the empty ones. After the stream of zombies stopped, suddenly a single female zombie came running in and shouted ”Ron, wait it’s me!”.
Ron said that it was an old friend of his, and that it looked as if she was only half a zombie. The girl warned us that another steam of zombies was following her, and that we needed to prepare for it. Moments later another seemingly endless stream of zombies came rushing in. Ron and I kept shooting them, as the witch and the half-zombie girl kept handing us ammunition. After the last zombie had died, the girl handed me another cartridge said that this was the one. Ron told me that he would stay behind and fight off the next round of zombies so that I could escape.
As I stepped through the door next to the table, I suddenly found myself standing in a wardrobe section. I turned around and watched the witch for a few seconds, before I decided to do a headshot on her from behind. Just as I was about to pull the trigger, a zombie wearing a blue bass guitar walked into the atrium from the other side. He saw me and shouted something into the corridor behind him. The very second I did the headshot on the witch; I could hear another horde of zombies pouring into the atrium. I turned around and started running down the wardrobe corridor. Behind me I heard Ron shouting ”Fuck this shit!” followed by two gunshots. A few seconds later, Ron caught up with me and said that the zombie girl didn’t mention that the ammunition supply was depleted.
Exiting the wardrobe we found ourselves standing in a large hallway, looking at a sign with a big arrow pointing to the left that said “exit”. We cheered and turned to our left, only to see a huge hallway crammed to its limits with what looked like zombies. I looked at Ron, shrugged, and told him that there was only one way out. We fought our way through the hallway with zombies; Rob using his gun as a club and me doing selective headshots. Some of the zombies shouted ”What the fuck, dude?!”, but Ron and I didn’t pay attention to it. All we wanted was to get to the exit as fast as possible.
When I finally reached the doors and exited the building, I was confronted with a huge police force that held me at gunpoint. One of the police officers shouted at me to throw down my gun and get on the floor. I shouted back at him that the place was crammed with zombies, and that he had to run for his life. The police officers looked at each other and started to laugh. Suddenly Ron busted through the door, and started to run towards my car; a black Land Rover Defender.
I threw my gun to the floor and also ran towards my car. Instead of getting behind the wheel, I opened the back door and pulled a case from the back. In the case I found a Bazalt RPG-7, which I aimed at building. After shooting the warhead through the front door, the entire building complex and all the police cars in front of it exploded with great violence. A few seconds later Ron pulled a flyer from under my windshield wiper and read out loud: ”Horror Costume Festival”. A few seconds later I woke up.
Even before I bought my new camera, I already knew that sometime I would get a "Nifty Fifty" with a really big aperture for it. They allow you to make real nice photos with creative blur effects because the depth of field is very narrow. This makes these lenses very suitable for portrait photos. I just had to get one!
Fortunately, these lenses are also really cheap. There are no fancy zooming mechanisms in them, which means that they are really simple and therefore cheap. Another plus is that because there is no quality loss due to the zooming mechanisms, these so-called "prime lenses" produce extremely sharp pictures. I can't wait to make some photos with my new baby
While attempting to arrive at work, I am blocked by a big firetruck and a police officer. Upon further investigation it turns out that constructionworkers had snapped a gaspipe during work. My appologies for the poor picture quality. As always Murphy's law never sleeps and (of course...) the only day that something cool happens, my normal camera's batteries had to be empty, forcing me to make some simple snaps with my cellphone.
Having tried a Burn energy shot yesterday, which tasted a bit like coughing syrup; I got curious about what other energy shots would taste like. I went out and bought an energy shot from a company called “Go Fast!”
Where the Burn energy shot tasted like coughing syrup; I would say that the Go Fast! energy shot also tastes like coughing syrup, but then the stuff one would use for kids. It’s not as harsh as the Burn energy shot, but it has a bit of an orange-like taste to it. To keep it short and simple… it smells and tastes a bit like a “normal” energy drink, but less sweetened and more concentrated (stronger taste).
Another note-worthy thing to mention is that the Go Fast! energy shot had a warning label which basically said ”Do not take more than 1 of these per day”. The Burn energy shot had a label that warned not to take more than 2 per day. So either this stuff is stronger, or is the manufacturer afraid that someone will take too many of the energy shots and completely freak out? 
“burn; new intense energy drink. Control your energy.”, said the advertisement, and being a big fan of energy drinks, of course I had to try it. Initially I regretted the decision, but now that the “rush” is gone, I feel that I can make a proper judgment.
I’m talking about Burn, an energy shot-drink produced by the Coca-cola company. It comes in a small plastic bottle (c.a. 50ml), which clearly states that an adult person shouldn’t take more than 2 of these drinks per day. I wonder how they measured that; since humans can vary anywhere between 1.5m and 2.5m (roughly). Logically you would assume that the larger person would be able to handle more drugs in his/her system.
Upon opening the bottle, I noted that it smells a bit like strawberries. The taste, however, was far from similar to strawberries. The first thing that sprung to my mind, when trying to find something to compare the flavor with was coughing syrup. Yes, I kid you not; this stuff tastes like coughing syrup. Not what you’d expect from an energy drink. As expected from a shot-drink, it’s a one-chug deal.
I can understand why they called it “Burn”, and why they placed the 2-serving warning on the bottle, because the effect was noticeable quite fast. Normally it takes a while for the taurine and caffeine to kick in, but with this drink it was pretty much instant boost. All in all, it wasn’t that bad; but it’s not even remotely close to the superior flavor of the green Monster energy drink. But I must admit that it's near to impossible to defeat the green Monster.
Imo it’s not worth getting for the taste; there’s much better ones out there. Since it’s a one-chug deal, it’s not really a good thirst quencher either. I probably would try it again sometime, but only if I need an immediate boost.
Lucid Dreaming is the ability to be aware and even manipulate your dreams. A small part of Lucid Dreaming is that you can remember your dreams. While I can recall my dreams, it makes me wonder how much I was aware of last night’s dream, because it was one of those dreams that don’t really make any sense:
- 1. The Tunnel.
It was somewhere in the (near) future, and I was fighting my way through a very long highway tunnel that was crammed with blown up vehicles and soldiers. The soldiers were undoubtedly part of some totalitarian regime, as we may expect them in the (near) future, and they looked a bit like the Combine from the game Half-Life.
Fighting alongside me was a big muscular man called Gundar. He fought brave and valiantly, and managed to kill a lot of soldiers with his weapon of choice. I can’t remember the exact details of his weaponry, but my weapon of choice was pretty clear. My all-time favorite rifle is, of course, the Heckler & Koch G36K, and it is pretty safe to assume that I was using just that.
After a fight that seemed to last forever, Gundar and I emerged from the tunnel in some kind of SUV, which reminds me a little about the new BMW X6, but it was less graceful. After a short drive over some kind of bridge, an army helicopter with a huge turret mounted on its nose started shooting at us. It had a yellow laser beam that was used for aiming and locking on to targets, and a big pulse-canon that shot bright photon bombs that were causing the actual damage.
It fired some pink stuff at our vehicle, and after an explosion we landed upside-down on some rocks in the water next to the bridge. The yellow laser was scanning for us, but I soon found out that the laser couldn’t locate or lock on to us if we were under water. We grabbed some snorkels and began to swim back to the cliffs where the tunnel was. Gundar noted that there was a smaller, partially submerged tunnel next to the highway tunnel. We swam into the tunnel for about a mile, when I noticed some stairs on the side.
- 2. The slave-girl.
As I was walking up the stairs, I suddenly noticed that my hair had gone black, and I was wearing nothing but a black silken Babydoll. Around my throat was wrapped a band of steel of about an inch in thickness. It didn’t take me long to realize that I had suddenly become a Kajira, a Gorean slave girl.
-
Anyway, on the top of the stairs there was a kitchen area where many other slaves were preparing meals for some festivity. I was assigned to making desert for the event, as it was said that I had a talent for making the best pudding known to man. After a while, we heard that our Master had arrived, and demanded to taste the food before the event would start. In the courtyard, I presented a big bowl of pudding to my Master and two of his friends. I never saw his face, but he called me Hilda.
- 3. The Master
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I opened my eyes and saw my new slave Hilda gracefully walking back to the house with a big bowl of pudding over her head. The House partially consisted of tunnels in the cliff behind the house. Shortly after all the slaves had left the courtyard, my guests arrived and (apparently) we had a good party. I can’t remember anything of the party itself, except how the party ended. My guests and I were sitting on the rocks near the water. On a rock about 3m into the water, a slave girl was dancing for our entertainment. I remember saying “The night is young, and there are plenty of women; so go get some”, after which many of my guests took a slave girl up to the house.
I took a woman by the hand and started to walk towards the house. Suddenly the woman slapped me in the face, made some rude comments about not being a whore and ran towards the house. Enraged and insulted I followed her, bent on raping her and beating some sense into the girl. When I found her in another courtyard, with an old shed in the middle, she was wielding two daggers and said she would rather die than become a slave.
I drew my sword and told her that she should be careful to what she wished for. I told her she was already a slave, and that she had killed her former master, but still wore his collar. The collar was not visible due to some scarves that were wrapped around her neck and shoulders. With the butt of my sword I smashed against a couple of bricks of the shed, which turned out to be hollow. ”Where did you hide the key?”, I asked her as I was smashing more and more hollow bricks with the butt of my sword. After a while Gundar entered the courtyard and helped me smash hollow bricks so we could find the key to her collar.
After we had finally found the key, I suddenly woke up.
Most people would say that dreams are completely random, yet the famous English neurologist Hughlings Jackson stated that dreams are a side-effect of some sort of maintenance program for your brain. He stated that during the day we gather all kinds of data, and during our sleep the brain processes this data and discards all the data which it does not deem important enough to remember.
Thinking back about the dream I had last night, It makes me rather curious about what kind of memory fragment my brain was trying to process. Please allow me to recap last night's dream:
My earliest memory was that I was attending some kind of meeting with a group of friends. It could have been a company party, but it could also have been a RL meeting with a gaming clan. On the meeting there was some kind of contest, and apparently I had been eliminated in round one. Another attendee of the meeting had also been eliminated from the contest, and we were standing at the side of the event waiting for the contest to end.
The other person was a Japanese guy in the range of 45 – 55 of age. He looked like an average older Japanese guy, with the flawless hairdo and a big pair of glasses on his nose. His name was Hitori Miyagi (of course... it had to be Mr. Miyagi...), and he was a friendly guy. He said it was kind of warm inside, and suggested that we would wait outside where it was cooler. As we stepped outside, I noticed that we were in Brussels, Belgium. I have absolutely no idea why I said that, as none of the street images made any sense to me; but Brussels it was.
As we were standing outside, enjoying the weather, Mr. Miyagi noticed a tiny ice-cream shop across the street and offered to buy ice-cream for us both to make the waiting a bit more pleasant. When we arrived at the opposite side of the street, the tiny ice-cream shop had suddenly become a sort of ice-cream fast-food restaurant with a buffet. Mr. Miyagi and I got in line and I ordered some sort of pancake that was rolled up with ice-cream inside and some fruit salad with whipped cream on the side. Mr. Miyagi’s order was finished way before mine, and so he continued down the buffet as I was waiting.
While waiting I had a friendly conversation with some hooligans that were wrecking part of the restaurant. I don’t remember which soccer team they were supporting; all I know is that their shirts were red and white. After my order had been completed, one of the hooligans commented at the size of the pancake and slapped my butt. I giggled and continued down the buffet. Further down the buffet was the drinks section. I ordered a 0.25 liter bottle of cola, but the lady behind the counter gave me a 1 liter bottle with a little bit of cola in it instead.
The buffet continued and ended up at the entrance of some city park. The person behind the counter told me that the cashier was at the other side of the park. I walked through the park, which was filled with pine trees, and arrived at a small booth where the cashier was located. He told me that Mr. Miyagi had already paid for my order and was waiting for me at the patio. He told me that Mr. Miyagi had reserved a table under the name “PA”. He handed me a tablet-PC with some index program in which I could look up table names. It looked like some “looking for group” interface as can be found in many MMORPG’s.
As I was walking back through the city park with the pine trees with my ordering tray in my hands, some small Volkswagen van passed me by and came to a halt about 200 meters behind me. The sliding door in the rear opened and a very large brown dog jumped out, and came dashing at me. It was most likely some pit-bull, but it must have been the size of a small horse. “Aww crap” was the first tangible expression that came out of my mouth, and I turned towards the dog, hoping that I could thrust the ordering tray between myself and its massive jaws.
As the dog approached me, it jumped up and over my left shoulder, before disappearing into the bushes. Immediately following that, another dog (a white, smaller one) appeared out of the bushes on the other side of the road and followed the brown dog into the bushes. And that is when I suddenly woke up.
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