A Primer on Image Histograms and Curves

A Primer on Image Histograms and Curves” is an excellent tutorial on what does it take to make image perfect. First application of histograms and curves is at scanning images into the computer. There are plenty of others, of course, such as fixing colors, changing the appearence, and creative touch.

If you do anything above rotating or scaling images, read the tutorial – you won’t regret.

Limassol cinema schedule

Not only Michael Stepanov has written and CPANeda Perl module to work with IMDB website comfortably, but he has also created a webpage with schedule of all Limassol cinemas based on it, which he updates weekly. Updates are usually done on Friday. All movies are linked to their respective pages at IMDB. Great work!

What can I say, I am proud to host Michael’s website on my home server. Keep up the good work!

Archiving old pictures

Me and Olga

A couple of days ago, I finally managed to get some time and take few old photo films to the studio. These films were scanned, converted to digital, and stored on CD. I, than, went through all of the images, sorted them out, uploaded and annotated them, and finally they are now a part of my photo gallery.

While going through the pictures I had an extraordinary hit of nostalgy. I almost cried. I was reminded of the active, fun, and crazy times I had while being a student in the college. All the things they say about college students – I did them. :) Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, motorcycles, parties, carnivals, you name it.

Most of the recovered photos are from the year 1997. If you will look through them, you will get the atmosphere I was living in, although you probably don’t know most of the faces. These were some good old times. I am happy I had them, but I am also glad that I have passed through that stage and went on. :)

P.S.: I have also found films from my wedding (thanks to my brother), which I will be digitizing and uploading in the nearest future. Stay tuned.

Hellboy

Finally, “Hellboy” made it to local cinemas, so Olga and I went to see it before my night shift. It is yet another movie based on the comics. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, since I haven’t ever read any comics.

To start simple, the best thing about the movie is music and the worst possible thing is …well… Hellboy. Music was very well timed, atmospheric and moody. I guess it will also make a nice soundtrack CD. Hellboy was terrible. It’s design wasn’t finished, he had terrible words to say through out the movie, and the whole acting thing was totally somewhere else. The only time he shined was when he almost opened the gates of hell, when he had his horns grown back and a cool looking light coming out of his mouth.

There were a lot of other effects. In general, I enjoyed the special effects – they were almost non-stop and nicely done. But the story lacked a lot, so it was getting boring at times to watch just the CG. Scenery was very simplistic too. Three places that should have been shown better were Scotland at the beginning of the film, Moldova almost immidiately after, and, of course, Russia, in the second half of the film. All three were faceless without any real symbols or any decorations what-so-ever. Just a subtitle telling the audience where the action is taking place. Big mistake.

Overall, I’ll give this film a firm 6 out of 10 and I would suggest that you watch it in the cinema. There is nothing there for a small TV.