On shift

So, I am on shift again. This time even shift leader, responsible for the experiment, taking care that everybody gets good data to analyse, leading spin physics to better understanding of the proton, advancing human knowledge, working for a better humanity...

Basically I am sitting around, until something beeps. Most of the times the beeping goes away if you ignore it for a while. If it doesn't go away, I'll call somebody. And I have to do some paperwork, filling out forms with data which is also automatically written to disk, just to keep me busy and make me look at screens. (This is the difference to Target Shift, where you just sit around, without any paperwork)

And you can't really work here, as there is a constant hissing of pumps, computers and air condition, the air is dryed, the light is bad and you sit seven floors underground...

Optics

I have been to an optician, because I get headaches after a couple of hours working in front of a computer. Saturday I went to one of those big chain opticians, it turned out that they don't measure your eyes on a saturday. I had to wait some 10 minutes to get attended (although being nearly the only customer there) and then they didn't seem to be very competent. They did arrange the frame of my old glasses though.

Today I went to a local optician, only in Erlangen, and this since a long time. The shop was full of customers but I was attended as soon as I entered it. The senior boss took the measurements, then four people helped my chosing the frame. I was impressed by the friendliness and competence...

And finally the arranged my old frame again, seeing that it wasn't done properly, and suddenly the world got three dimensional again and the headaches got better... So far for the big chains.

In a week I will have my new glasses and hopefully see much better (and look better ;-) )

Thank god it's friday

It's weekend! This week I actually did something for my thesis, I did some physics stuff...

It seems that I need a new bed or at least a new cushion, I didn't sleep very well the last weeks, waking up everything hurts and I am as stiff as a ironing board. My feet are bad again, so no sports, maybe some cycling on sunday, depending how drunk I get tomorrow and how bad my feet are on sunday.

Anyway, nothing changed, everything is as good or bad as usual.

Avast!

Maybe a good alternative: now there is a german PIRATE party. HARRR! And hope you all enjoyed the international talke like a pirate day, ye landlubbing beauties and jimlads.

Wer ko' der ko'

I just did race a highly pimped Mercedes convertible, tuned by AMG or something, blasting RAP music out of it's speakers, roaring exhaust and everything. I won. The driver got seriously pissed when I overtook him three times at a traffic light. On my bike :-) Wer ko' der ko'

Motivation

Everytime I manage to get a faint bit of motivation, just so slight that I would actually start doing something useful, I get a call, a mail or an IM which makes it go away instantly. Today I was asked if the rumors that I will be in HH for the next three weeks are true. I have not heard about it. I hate it when I am being managed and nobody even bothers to tell me...

Somebody should tell some people that it is all nice if they make plans for others. But they shouldn't be surprised if they hear a fuck off as an answer if they don't ask, don't tell...

Workflow

This is the bash script I use to convert my photos from RAW. It works most of the time well, only a few pictures need hand-treatment...

#!/bin/bash
set -e
ext=.CRW

for i in *$ext; do
# Get basename of file for easier treatment
bn=`basename $i $ext` ;
#
# Convert from RAW
#

# The following line converts directly to jpg without any treatment
# dcraw -a -c $i | ppmtojpeg > ${bn}.jpg;

# This should do some basic image treatment:
# dcraw -a -4 $i ;
# convert -normalize -gamma 1.8 ${bn}.ppm ${bn}_dcraw4_normalized.jpg ;
# rm $bn.ppm;

# Including an ICC profile, this gives the best results for my screen
dcraw -4 -c -w -m $bn.CRW | pnmnorm -bpercent 0 -wpercent 0.1 -brightmax | pnmtotiff -truecolor >temp.tif;
tifficc -w -i /PATH/TO/eos10d-linear-8apr2004.icc temp.tif ${bn}.tif;
convert $bn.tif ${bn}.jpg ;
rm $bn.tif ;
rm temp.tif;
#
# Copy and set EXIF stuff
#
exiftool -TagsFromFile $i $bn.jpg;
exiftool -Author="My Name" -OwnerName="My Name" -UserComment="(c) My Name" $bn.jpg;
rm $bn.jpg_original;
#
# rotate according to EXIF (only needed if dcraw only is used)
#
# exiftran -i -a ${bn}_dcraw_only.jpg;
done


Home Again

So, I returned safely from 4 weeks of dives, hiking attempts, helping the revolution and tanning on the beach of luxury hotels (without actually staying at them, but at better places instead...). Now I face the threat of converting about 1000 Photos from RAW to something readable, of selecting a couple of them for the web, some more of them to show to friends and to actually get some friends to see them... (I might use bribery for the last task, some food and wine always helps to get people interested in slide shows ;-))

[Starting Computer and Photo babble now, non-geeks please skip the following]
To convert the RAW files to JPGs, I am experimenting with various methods, all involving dcraw. I am still a bit undecided which gives the best results, but the third method looks nice on my screen most of the time, although sometimes a bit on the blue side... I have put some sample images below, all taken at Lusco Fusco in Erlangen at 2nd of Septembre.

Method 1
dcraw -a -c foo.CRW | ppmtojpeg > foo.jpg

Method 2
Inspired by this webpage:
dcraw -a -4 foo.CRW ;
convert -normalize -gamma 1.8 foo.ppm foo.jpg ;


Method 3
Using an ICC color profile for an EOS 10D camera, which uses a similar sensor as my EOS 300D and as found here:
dcraw -4 -c -w -m foo.CRW | pnmnorm -bpercent 0 -wpercent 0.1 -brightmax | pnmtotiff -truecolor >temp.tif;
tifficc -w -i eos10d-linear-8apr2004.icc temp.tif foo.tif;
convert foo.tif foo.jpg ;

Examples
dcraw only.
dcraw to 16bit pnm, normalizing, converting to JPG
dcraw to 16bit tif, applying ICC profile and converting to JPG

dcraw only
dcraw and normalize
dcraw and ICC profile

dcraw only
dcraw and normalize
dcraw and ICC profile