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Planes with propellers

Oh man, we’ve reached that point where I just write about random shots from my camera roll? Seeing as I’m 6 days behind, yes, yes we have.

During my recent trip to Canberra I flew on three different aircraft on the four flights I took. I don’t have the exact numbers, but I’d guess that most domestic flights I’ve been on in Australia have been serviced by some Boeing 737 variant. This time was a little different: while the flights to and from Hobart were on 737s, the rest weren’t.

The flight was on a smaller Embraer E90, a tiny little jet with only two seats per side. I’m pretty sure I’ve been on one before, but I don’t recall them being ever so tiny — the overhead lockers in particular were downright minuscule, not even enough to fit my medium-sized backpack. It was also interesting to note how the seat allocations simply skipped a letter in every aisle. It was seats A and C on one side, and D and F on the other for reasons unbeknownst to me, although if I had to guess it’d probably some Virgin system limitation. Other than that, pretty similar to any other aircraft, if a little cosier.

The real surprise came when I flew in a ATR aircraft (turboprops and all) for the Canberra to Sydney leg. The particular one I flew on was VH-FVP, and I’d never been on one before. There was a bunch of schoolkids on my flight who had just finished a camping trip of some kind (also going back to Tasmania, interestingly enough, although they were flying back to Launceston), and I was somewhat apprehensive at the size of the thing.

The flight itself wasn’t too bad, except for the fact you can feel variations in altitude more readily than you can in an 737 or 747. You notice every bump and difference in air pressure, and dropping a few feet is really kind of harrowing. You also don’t appear to fly as high, staying below the clouds for the most part (land was perceptible out the window for pretty much the entire flight).

Overall, while I wouldn’t want to be travelling on a turboprop aircraft all the time, they probably have a certain advantage for shorter flights.

These words part of Blogvember, a thing I just made up right then about getting back into blogging. You can read more words about Blogvember right over here, but the gist is that I'll be attempting to post something up on the blog every day in November 2014. Read other Blogvember posts.

What Was That, Bane?

We try Roshan and get initiated on. We kill three and lose two, only to go back, try Roshan again, and give up a double kill to an Earthshaker. It could have gone so much worse…

Prints, Part II

Because I shoot film, once in a while I’ll choose to get prints done of a particular roll. Not because I hang onto some form of outdated media (I always get scans irrespective of whether I’m getting prints or not), but because I like to have some physical record of how my film photography is going.

Getting prints done isn’t some egotistical thing, either — I mostly use it as a way to remind myself that shooting film has a cost that’s not associated with digital photography, a real cost both in terms of taking the individual frames and work that has to go into the final roll. I still don’t develop my own film and probably ever won’t, but getting printed copies of my film photography gives me something I can hang onto.

I got back the two rolls I wrote about the other day, and they look pretty good. Taken as a set of 38 frames they’re mediocre, but there are some standouts in the two sets, like any roll. I feel as though I waste anywhere between 5 and 10 frames per roll of 38, just because I’m taking multiple shots of the same thing. There are one-time deals that work out amazingly well, and then there are those that take 2-3 shots and still don’t turn out right. That’s where digital still has the edge over film photography, and always will.

As much as I like some of the photos, and as much as I’m happy with how the shots I did take turned out — there’s this one that is an almost perfect shot of the front of the National Library of Australia — I’m still not content with the kind of photography I’m doing. If Monte Carlos are the only Arnott’s biscuits I’ve ever loved¹, then street photography is the only kind of photography I really enjoy. Which kind of sucks, because I’m only average at it and almost never work up the courage to take the shots that I want to.

It’s honestly one of the worst things about street photography. You can’t just walk up to someone and take their photo, and while you can try and catch people in their natural — staring at their phone, waiting for the bus, leaning against a wall — as soon as you stick a camera in their face the moment is gone. If the second hardest thing about street is taking photos of people in their natural habitat, the hardest thing is working up the courage to do so.

But hey, that’s half of what makes street photography so thrilling. Thrill of the chase, and all that.

See https://twitter.com/bdyling/status/531385411742863361 ↩

Compact Disc

Like everyone else, I stopped buying physical CDs for music years ago. The main computer I use these days doesn’t even have an optical drive, and the only use my PC optical drive gets is to occasionally read a CD full of film photo scans every now and again.

But to be honest, I was never a huge buyer of CDs for music or games. My collection of physical media for music and games isn’t anything to write home about, since I’ve always preferred digital downloads. Steam and iTunes have mostly sated my needs for both forms of media.

As with anything, there are a few edge cases.

If there’s a cool “Collector’s Edition” of a game that I’m somewhat into that has cool physical or digital bonuses, then I’ll pick up a copy of the game. It’s kind of how I ended up with two copies of Dishonored. I picked up the PC version of the game first and played through that. I liked it so much that I gave it my game of the year award for 2012 (wow, was it really two years ago?), only to be disappointed there wasn’t a Collector’s Edition of the PC version, which came some super cool, Dishonored-themed tarot cards. I’m not sure who thought it was a good idea to have special editions of only the console versions of the game, but a quick trip to eBay later and I was the proud owner of the Dishonored Collector’s Edition — for Xbox 360. I’m pretty sure the game itself is still in the original shrink wrapped packaging.

Which brings us to the point of today’s post, the edge case of buying music on physical CDs. I used to buy CDs from artists that I liked, but gave that up a few years ago when physical media fell out of favour. These days, I pirate or stream pretty much everything, only buying digital when I really, really like the artist and album.

I’ve been listening to Taylor Swift’s 1989 for weeks now, and Shake It Off for months before that, but when I heard about the awesome collection of polaroids included with every copy of the album, it was Dishonored all over again. For the briefest of moments I contemplated buying multiple copies of the album, seeing as there’s actually 65 “Photos from Taylor” you can collect — you get 13 with one copy of the album — but I quickly realised that was a little too crazy. I mean, it’s a good album and all, and Taylor Swift is* incredibly pretty, but buying multiple copies of the album is crazy talk.

And yeah, I had a bit of a look on eBay for just the polaroids, but I couldn’t find anything reasonably priced. They’re also not actual Polaroids, seeing as that would be prohibitively expensive — they’re more photos printed on glossy paper to look like Polaroids, but they’re still insanely cool. I don’t have my favourite lyric from the album in the set that I got, but I’m cool with that, too.

Potential

Film is so strange. For the first time in a long time, I took photos with my film rangefinder during my recent working holiday in Canberra, and that’s kind of a big deal because the last time I did so was back in January this year.

Only there’s one difference between the photos I took in January and the photos I took earlier this month. The film I was using — the only film I use with my film rangefinder, Kodak Ektar 100 — expired back in May. From what I’ve read everything should be OK, or maybe the colours will be slightly funkier than usual, but the film has had a pretty gentle life — it hasn’t been refrigerated, but has been stored away from direct sunlight.

I made the silliest mistake when winding back the first roll of film, too. I forgot to set the shutter speed low enough for a short exposure, and accidentally left the shutter open at f/16 when winding it back. Granted, it was in a dark room, and the camera was pointing downwards towards the floor, but the shutter was open for perhaps the last fifth of the roll, as I wound it back. It was such a rookie mistake. I’m not sure what effect — if any — that will have on the final exposures. Maybe it won’t have any effect at all, or maybe the last few shots will be overexposed by a stop or two.

Either way, I’m not sure how the last two rolls of film will turn out. You never are, of course, film being film and all, but that’s just how it is when you choose to shoot film. There’s all this potential contained in those little canisters — huge potential for some really great shots, or the potential for blurry, out of focus, over/under-exposed messes.

It’s half the fun, really.

Return to Dragon Age

Dragon Age: Inquisition is out this week, and I have absolutely no idea what is going on anymore.

Sure, I played Dragon Age: Origins when it came out back in 2009 (!), but I never finished the game. Seeing as it’s been almost five years since the last time I played, I don’t remember much from it. From what I do remember, I made it though about 75% of the game before calling it quits. I think the game just got boring after a while, and my interest waned. I’ve basically ignored everything Dragon Age from that point, including Dragon Age II.

I went to BioWare’s panel at last year’s PAX (after queueing for easily over an hour), but I was pretty much only there for Mass Effect stuff. A large percentage of the audience seemed way more interested in what they had to say about Dragon Age, which I didn’t really understand at the time.

But it’s 2014. Rick Astley was just interviewed on the radio, Taylor Swift is no longer on Spotify, and this week, Dragon Age: Inquisition comes out. All the reviews I’ve read have been overwhelmingly positive, which means it must be time for a new foray into the Dragon Age universe. After all, BioWare are renowned for their storytelling (see: Mass Effect) and characters — two things which are right up my alley in terms of gaming, even though most of my gaming is spent losing at Dota 2 these days.

Unlike Dota 2 or even something like Shadows of Mordor, the biggest problem with lore-driven games like the Dragon Age series is that it’s hard to get into, once you’ve been out. Dota 2 has problems of its own in that it’s not really a game but more a life commitment, but that’s for another time. The Fallout games are pretty similar, I find — because you’re coming back to a playthrough you’ve spent upwards of 50 hours in, you’re not really sure what you’re doing or what’s going on. What do all these buttons do? What weapons am I using? Why do I need to find this weed on the other side of the map?

It’s like that with Dragon Age: Origins, too. I had backups of my character files and wanted to finish the game before it Inquisition was released later this week, but after loading it up and getting it all setup again, I realised I had no idea what I was doing, where I was going, or what the status of the story was. I walked into a room, ran into some rabid dogs, and died almost immediately as I had no idea what any of my skills did. I must have had some idea, about five years ago, but yeah, no idea today.

I quickly gave up on that idea, and checked out other places on the internet. Thankfully, Kotaku published a semi-coherent read of the races and factions within the Dragon Age universe. There’s references to Lord of the Rings which is handy for some, but I managed to glean an OK amount of information from it — enough to get started, anyway.

In preparation for Inquisition I also checked out the Dragon Age Keep, which let you shape your world status using a number of questions in the game. It was alright, but I felt as though there wasn’t enough backstory to back up the choices — mostly it was just “did you let this character live or die”, “did you side with the Templars or the Mages”, without giving you any context why you might have made a decision either way. Maybe I was expecting too much from it, and that kind of stuff was reserved for people who actually played the games.

Anyway, between the Dragon Age Keep and the Dragon Age wiki, I managed to cross-reference enough stuff to make informed decisions about what choices I “made”. All that’s left now is to create a character and dive right into the Dragon Age universe once more.

Benny Ling's Bling

Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.