Chthonic Wildlife Ramblings

A couple of the introduced, cosmopolitan and completely harmless Pholcus phalangiodes

#1


#2

The original Sony walkman went on sale on 1st July in Japan thirty-years ago.

I'm still using the walkman. I bought myself a new MP3-style Walkman just before Xmas (not an Ipod).

I went for the 8 GB, video version. Great choice, albeit I would skip the noise-cancelling version. That function isn't really worth it.

The nice things about the player is the grunty battery life (better than the equivalent Ipod) and pressed aluminium shell body. This is intended as a travel companion so I didn't want anything plasticky.

It is also multi-format. It plays MP3, AAC (for Itunes) and WMA. Likewise the video formats include WMV, H.264 and MP4. Powers up nicely on just a USB cable.

Sound quality is also very good, and being an old hand with computers, lets you use a simple drag-and-drop system for moving files over from the computer.

The main idea is that it replaces my PSP as a multimedia tool when travelling. Seriously, I can't cope with more than about 10 minutes of poppy Chinese pop music. So, the walkman lets me bring (in a much more portable fashion) the music that keeps me sane.

The video is not as good as the PSP, but the PSP is a lot bulkier and with a lesser battery life. The reality however, is that most of the time I listen to music when travelling- not watching videos. And the walkman has a far better music management system and better sound quality. So it wins out where it matters the most.

Just to give you some idea of how much detail can be captured with the gear I use.

Okay, for this shot I've gone for a 3:2 aspect ratio (like the original), masked the bride while blurring the background, added a slight glow in a new layer, then a smaller white vignette in a third layer (but applied a graduated mask to preserve the detail of the dress).



Still need to do some work to get the colour balance right, and have some more work on the masking of the bride to preserve the details of the hair and earrings (the last part takes a lot of patience).