This is an image of yesterday evening. It’s 17mm, ISO 2000, f4 and 1/15s. I’ve used Noise Ninja against the noise and Topaz Detail to accentuate local contrast, mostly in the foreground.
Other than that I have made a change to my buying habits that was long due. My last three music purchases were digital downloads. Funnily enough this came totally by chance. While I installed software on my laptop (the one that I just use while being on the train to Carinthia), I wanted to download the latest version of JetAudio. JetAudio is the proprietary music player of Cowon, the company that produces the excellent iAudio players. I own one of them, because Cowon is one of the few companies who care to support the free OGG music format, and because I have originally started to rip my CDs to OGG, I currently have about 30.000 tracks in this format. OGG was originally superior to MP3, and it is a format designed and implemented as open source. Unfortunately Apple obstinately refused to support the format in their players. Well, so did I buying their hardware. I even filed a bug report and wrote them one or two mails, but of course I got no reply and nothing has changed.
Anyway. JetAudio was my preferred software player so far. It’s pretty OK but nothing special. Think of WinAmp or similar programs. Now, as I installed software recently, the download server for JetAudio was unbearably slow, so I decided to look for an alternative. I found Songbird, a Mozilla-based iTunes look-alike with similar functionality and all the usual Mozilla features like plugins and skins. I had looked into it at least two years ago, then it had not really impressed me, but in the time since it has really grown up.
Well, here I was with a new player, and like iTunes is linked to the iTunes store, Songbird has plugins for music stores. Here in Austria it offers integration with 7digital, a UK-based service and of course Jamendo.com and Magnatune.com. Integration of Jamendo does not even need a plugin, and in fact I currently hear the album “The Green Waltz” by “The Dada Weatherman”, an album released under Creative Commons, an album that I have downloaded from Jamendo for free. For 10€ I could also buy the album in WMV format, i.e. uncompressed full CD quality. I have no idea how many people do that, but I seriously consider it. It’s excellent music.
The three purchases from 7digital were Ella’s “Twelve Nights in Hollywood”, on CD available at around 50€, as 320kBit MP3 offered for about half of it, a Greatest Hits compilation by Blondie and the debut album of Melody Gardot. Well, it looks like my plastic buying times are over 🙂
Regardless of the music that I’ve talked about so far, the Song of the Day is “Twisted”. Not the Annie Ross classic that we had in “578 – Twisted”, not Joni Mitchell’s respectable version from “Court and Spark”, but instead the completely unrelated song from Annie Lennox’ 2003 album “Bare”. Hear it on YouTube.
Flo (2010-02-27)
I love the tilt in this image! I don't feel like I'm going to fall out of the image - for some reason, this tilt just seems natural to me! It might make an interesting image if, when you are back at this place, to put your camera on the pavement and shoot without looking through the viewfinder. Better with a little more light, tho, as you'd probably have to tilt the camera slightly upwards, which wouldn't be steady for a longer shutter speed.
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