The Collected Works of Philip Storry

btrfs

2017-01-26T22:57:25Z

I'm using btrfs for my backup disks. On the whole, I've been very happy with it so far.

But in the past week I started noticing a few more lines as btrfs mounted the disks during boot. (Graphical bootloaders? Pshaw.)
It seems that there have been some issues on at least one of the disks.

There's a command in the tools called "scrub", which checks all the data checksums. It takes quite a while to run, but is showing five files that have checksum issues.

Right now I have many questions.

Is the drive OK? (SMART tests show no issues. No errors in the logs.) Is btrfs correct? Is this an issue resulting from btrfs, or has btrfs just saved my data? (I can do a comparison of the data, so I'll check that.)

I have two btrfs volumes, but I avoid the software RAID1 that it offers - I prefer to sync the drives manually, in a sort of "manual commit" of my data to the second disk once it's in a state I'm happy with. If the two disks have identical issues, it could be a bug in btrfs. If not, it could still be btrfs and some kind of timing issue.

Or it could be that the disk hardware is just lying. It's scary how much storage, when checked, just lies about having written data correctly. So it's possible that btrfs is actually saving my data here.

I don't have time to look into this until Sunday. But when I do, I'll post an update.

-------- Update ------
I ran btrfs utils, and it found no problems.

Yet still the errors persisted.

So I switched to XFS. It took a while of copying, but everything is fine now.

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Been a while...

2016-01-01T21:31:09Z

It's been quite some time since I last used Dreamwidth or LiveJournal.

I just thought I'd drop by to see if everything still works...

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An enforced hiatus...

2011-02-21T14:00:36Z

It's been quiet here on the artistic front, because I've been about two months without a PC.

I did try processing photographs on a netbook, but it's about as pleasurable as trying to write a novel on clay tablets.
With an elephant's tusk.
Whilst it's still connected to the elephant.
Which is very much alive, and not particularly impressed with its new purpose as a writing implement.

If all goes well, I order my new PC next week, and should have it by the week after.

Then, I just have to upload the 5.2Gb of photos I have taken since December...

Let's say that I'm on hiatus until mid March, eh?

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TOP Print Offer

2011-02-13T18:06:29Z

Do you know The Online Photographer?

You really should.

Anyway, one of the ways that they support themselves is by their spectacular Print Offers.

The latest one is up now, and features two spectacular prints from Charles Cramer.

One of them is muted, still, and grows on you.
The other is alive, vibrant, and grabs you.

Both of them can be bought right now for less than the cost of one of Charles' normal prints. They're not mounted, and they'll be delivered on a when-they're-done basis.

But I've bought prints from the TOP offers before, and they're always excellent. I highly recommend this as a way of getting some decent art at a very reasonable price.

Don't wait. This runs for five days, and is an unlimited print run - unless they get too many orders, in which case they'll close early!

Get over there and get some art!

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Gianni Galassi - A photographic artist

2010-09-13T16:35:37Z

Time for another recommendation of people whose work I admire.

And today I present Gianni Galassi, a superb photographic artists who works with buildings and geometric shapes.

That first link goes to his blog, but you should really check out his galleries here: http://digilander.libero.it/gggalassi/photos/photos.htm

Now, Gianni does have photos that aren't of buildings. I should state that up front. But what blew me away with Gianni is his distinctive style with buildings and geometry. He uses shadows to punctuate lines to often stunning effect, and I *really* like it.

Normally, I'm not one for major manipulation in post-production, but Gianni's style works very well. Which is why I call him a photographic artist - it seems to me that Gianni's evidently thinking about the shot and how he'll process it as he takes it.

Frankly, if I get my time machine running, I think I'll go back and steal his style... :-)

He has an exhibition in Venice right now, which I won't be able to make. Instead, I'm going to have to save up for a print.

The only problem with that is it means I'll have to pick a favourite...

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Centre Pint

2010-09-06T20:20:52Z

Centre Pint

The famed Centre Pint multi-story pub in the centre of London.

In some realities, at least. It would appear that our reality is one of the less lucky ones...

( Musings on this photo )

( Technical Information )

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Accompaniment to Summertime

2010-08-27T07:46:31Z

To celebrate the release of Casee's album, I've been re-writing a lost work.

When Casee first released a song named Summertime, I got a vivid image in my mind, and wrote a short story.
Which didn't fit in the comments box, so got reworked and reworked until it did.

Like a fool, I forgot to make a copy - and FAWM clear their website each year.

So I've re-written the story. It's had some things removed, some added, and it's not the same. But it still fits.

It's crafted to have the song Summertime as a background, so first go to Casee's music player (requires Flash) and find it in the playlist.

Then just read.

Accompaniment to Summertime

I was across town in a bar I wouldn't even choose to know by its reputation, let alone come here alone. But I was out of luck and hoping to meet with a troublingly eager stoolie, who had insisted on it being in this dive.
The homely feel of the place was assured by its frequent redecoration, which had either been done by a troupe of blind drunken chimps or some very angry customers. My money's on the latter, but given the simian looks of the staff I'd have a side bet on the first option too.
The smoke is so thick I can taste it, which might be by design if the whisky is as watered as I suspect. I sling the whisky back anyway, and keep up my watch on the door.
The door swings open, and my luck just goes from bad to worse. One of my previous cases walks in. He's six foot four and angry, and it looks like he wants to introduce me to his friends – left hook and right hook. I've been set up, by my friendly concerned citizen. Too late, I remember rule number three - never trust a concerned citizen unless you know all about his concerns.
Nobody will stop a fight here – every table has a twitchy trigger finger under it, and I haven't seen a smile I liked since I walked in. An excuse to settle business is what half this place wants, and they bristle as they see the chance.
And then the cabaret started.
I was saved. The dame sang like nothing I've ever heard. She had two angels behind her doing harmonies, but they couldn't match her voice. It was warm and sweet, and wrapped itself around you.
Everyone in the room has stopped. Everyone is looking at her. When she stops singing, this place will be a mess – but right now, nothing else matters but her voice. And everyone knows it.
It's the perfect moment for me to slip away.
Except that I just can't move.
I've got to go. I've got to.
I can't be here when she stops singing.
But I... Just... Can't... Go...

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Casee Wilson - Beggars and Blues...

2010-08-27T07:35:06Z

Have you heard Casee Wilson sing?

Because you should.

Casee's voice is superb, and she writes great songs. In fact, here's the player from her website - have a listen.
I particularly recommend Dancin', Summertime, Fade to Grey, Strange Familiarity, and, well, the list goes on.

Casee's done FAWM (February Album Writing Month) the last three years, and I've got the MP3s to prove it. But unless you were watching each February, you won't have had much of an opportunity to build up a collection of her music.

But that ends today, because Casee's new album, Beggars and Blues, is now on iTunes! And it'll be on CD Baby later today, and Amazon in a couple of weeks! Or you could buy it from Casee's shop...

You're reading this sentence when you really should be buying an album. Run along now!

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Pipework (Thames Tunnel Series)

2010-08-24T21:06:34Z

Pipework (Thames Tunnel Series)

Pipework in the Thames Tunnel.

( Musings on this photo )

( Technical Information )

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Reflections Overhead

2010-08-17T21:22:34Z

Reflections Overhead

( Musings on this photo )

( Technical Information )

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Show some support

2010-08-16T21:56:49Z

(This post may contain ramblings.)

I'm not a big user of Facebook. I tend to use it to keep in touch with folks I know – so I'm usually commenting or sending messages, rather than uploading photos or updating my status.

Which is why it may have been a surprise for some when, last Friday, I updated my status to say I was spending far too much time playing a new game I'd bought.
(And it's probably my first public Facebook update for a long time, which may have made it look even shadier!)

It wasn't some subtle hack on the part of the game's authors, or some other subterfuge. It was simply an attempt to share with my friends something I'd found that was good.

These days, I feel more and more compelled to share with my friends those things that I find and enjoy.

And what could be more easy and natural than that?

Well, actually, it's kind of difficult. More difficult than I'd realised, anyway.

When I was growing up, all creative experiences - music, film, books - were heavily controlled by distribution and production companies.

This was the eighties, and we did not discover things for ourselves. Record companies, film distributors, and book publishers told us what to do.
Sure, we kidded ourselves that we'd seen this new band on a Saturday morning kid's show, and that they were SO COOL!

Of course, we thought we discovered things ourselves. But who arranged for an appearance on that Saturday morning show?

It's not so much that I was permanently dissuaded from ever recommending things. Just that with recommendations coming thick and fast from elsewhere, I grew out of the habit of making my own. It seems a little pushy, a little forwards. Surely if its any good, they'll find it themselves?

But times have changed.

It's a combination of two things, I think.

Firstly, the onwards march of technology has allowed the average person much better access to tools for their creativity. Tools advanced enough to produce results of a high enough quality that most people won’t know - or care - that they weren’t done with incredibly expensive equipment and legions of trained support staff.

Secondly, the large corporate distributors/producers - who functioned as gatekeepers for what we experienced - got too greedy.
In a push for greater profits off the back of better economies of scale, they went through a phase of remarkably bland conformity, and basically decided that the less profitable markets were barely worth dealing with.

Unfortunately for them, they pulled their interests out of those markets just before the technology allowed people to easily discover and communicate with each other.

So, for example, those who weren’t into cheap cookie-cutter boy band ballads but loved disco or metal (or whatever) could more easily express their discontent with each other - whereas before that, they would have suffered in silence.

Community, even virtual, amplifies the feeling of discontent, which makes people more likely to find - and recommend - alternatives.

The advance of technology and the ever more narrow focus of the gatekeepers form a feedback loop which creates new communities, and therefore new markets for new suppliers.

Gosh, this is all dry economics, isn’t it?

So what does it have to do with the Facebook status update?

Well, I think you can guess by now that I place myself more alongside the discontented than alongside those happy with the gatekeepers.

And I’ve been thinking recently about these new small markets.

And what they need, more than anything else, is the marketing.

They can’t get a spot on Saturday morning television to plug an album. Or get their film’s stars into reasonably priced cars. Or get a spot on some talk show’s weekly bookshelf discussion.

The hardest thing for a small independent producer of any entertainment/arts experience is the marketing.

If they’re a talented musician, actor, producer, director, writer, dancer, photographer, whatever - then they’re probably going to want to share their talent with people. They may even hope to make a living from it. And today, the combination of technology and discontented consumers makes that possible.

But if you like what someone's doing, I think you can make their life much easier by showing it.

Recommend them. Advertise them. If there's a rating mechanism to be used, use it. Spread the word.

Don't leave it to someone else. Especially not a someone else that you'd rather was spending their time writing, composing, performing, creating...

Oh, and this isn't about favouring the little folks. If you think that a major corporation isn't above cancelling TV shows, failing to market superb (and even major) music acts, or stuffing up royally in some new and innovative way, then think again.

You can no longer afford to be a passive consumer. If you don't encourage and promote, you risk losing what you like.

Not to mention the possibility of missing a much better connection with what you like, too...

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Camellia

2010-05-24T14:15:13Z

Camellia

( Musings on this photo )

( Technical Information )

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Lost works and what's coming soon...

2010-05-19T12:23:18Z

Over the years I've lost the occasional work.

It's rare, but it has happened.

Why note this now? Well, the title of this particular blog is "The Collected Works of Philip Storry".

Not photographs.

Works.

Coming soon are what could best be described as deranged infantile scribblings, but I shall describe with laughably optimistic boldness as Writing.

As I was going through my various texts and wondering what to put up first, it occurred to me that there was a very short story I wrote which I've since lost.

It was very, very short. Under 1000 characters, in fact. Because it was put up as a comment on a song over at FAWM.
But I never thought to keep a copy, and they clear their comments out at the end of each year's run.

(FAWM is to songwriting what NaNoWriMo is to fiction writing.)

I'm sure if I had the short story, it would need re-writing anyway. It took a whole evening to write, because of that blasted 1000 character limit. A limit like that really focuses the mind! But still, I'd find some kind of fault with it if I found a copy.

Yet absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. The further away I get from that tiny story, the more rose-tinted my memory of it is.

It might have made for a nice, easy introduction to putting writing up here.

Maybe in years to come, with me long gone and posthumously famous, that story will be a holy grail that scholars argue over and wish they could study.

And maybe I'll go home on a unicorn taxi tonight, if the weather's good.

It still won't change the fact that I liked that story, and wish I had a copy.

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Reflections on Modern Architecture

2010-05-17T22:42:09Z

Reflections on Modern Architecture

( Musings on this photo )

( Technical Information )

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Granny

2010-05-13T21:30:59Z

Granny

This is my granny. She died today, aged 93.

I took this photo as she went out shopping one morning in 2008. Aged 91, she carried on with her life as normal each day. Her sharp mind, her kindness and her down-to-earth manner made it hard for me to think of her being as old as she was.

When I took the photo, I was partly aware of granny's mortality. I had no idea whether she would last another ten years or ten weeks, but knew she could not live forever.

I could give technical details and commentary on the photograph, but right now it seems unimportant.

The only important thing to say is that this photograph is a very special one for me.

I knew it was special in the moment I saw it come together, and at the moment I took it.

It is my granny as I choose to remember her - indomitably carrying on, with the sun shining on her as she goes.

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Ariel, Spirit of the Winds

2010-02-23T07:17:05Z

I walk past this bronze statue of Ariel almost every working day. It's up high on the roof of the Bank of England, and stands motionless yet looks like it's in motion.

( On the Statue )

( When in London... )

( Technical Information )

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Good photos need time to mature, and decent quality control

2009-11-09T23:01:31Z

Part of the reason I've not been posting so many photos recently is that I've fallen into the slightly strange idea that good photos need time to mature.

I came to that idea when looking back through my previous works.

Most of them I like, but I came to realise that some of them weren't as good as I'd thought they were.

Not that they were terrible. It's just that I thought they were good because I was proud of them, or because it was taken at a good time or event. And as that memory moved into the distance, it failed to evoke as strongly, so my fondness of the photograph fades too.

So I tried to put some distance between taking photographs and processing them.

This makes things like the last weekend very difficult. I took some photos at The Whisky Show. And it was an excellent show, and my photos aren't half bad considering I may not have been sober at the time...

But how do I get distance? Which ones will I regret?

Where I was trying to put at least a month between shooting and posting, I can't do that here. People I met at the show want to see the photos soon.

So I'm trying a two-pass system. I just pared it down from ~640 photos to ~100 photos. I think I've got a decent selection.
But now I'll sleep on it and come back tomorrow.

It's still going to be tough though. Especially some of them, which are excellent but VERY similar.

They evoke the same feeling. The same memories. They were taken within minutes of each other, of the same person, doing much the same thing.

And choosing between those is incredibly difficult.

It presents a second problem, which stems from the fact that normally I take a gut feeling on whether I like the photograph, then apply critical and quite negative analysis to see if it stands up to the kind of quality I want.
Effectively, I talk myself out of publishing them. Only the ones that I can't do that with will make it.

But when you have two nearly identical photos, you can't do that - you just end up wanting to publish both. Yet, as I believe a film mentioned in passing, There Can Be Only One.

So the trick I'm going to try for similar photos is to reverse the way I choose.
I'm going to have to try saying what I really like about them. Nothing negative - just why should this photo be chosen instead of the other(s)?
And then finally I'll appeal back to that gut feeling I had at first. If the reasons for the photo are all the same, then the gut feeling becomes the decider.

I sure hope I don't get indigestion tomorrow...

I couldn't do this photography thing for a living. Selecting photographs can be so much harder than actually taking them. The shutter moving is just the start of a very long journey. And it can be incredibly hard on your ego and your confidence.

It's at least as bad as dealing with your internal editor when writing. Possibly worse.

Hopefully, by Thursday, I'll have made the necessary decisions...

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Window in Red

2009-11-04T13:03:31Z

Window in Red

( Musings on this photo )

( Technical Information )

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Lazy Gnome

2009-11-03T22:08:12Z

This little fellow was just lazing about when he should have been working:

That photo was taken way back in March. That's how bad my backlog of photos to publish is.

( Technical Information )

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Pro-Am Prints - The Verdict

2009-11-02T18:50:32Z

The Pro-Am prints arrived today.

I am incredibly impressed. They're excellent.

Firstly, I'd like to note that they were well packed with stiff and sturdy cardboard, and plenty of layers around them. Tubes are nice for storage, but painful when it comes to mounting/framing. So they already did well with their packing and postage!

But what about the prints themselves? Well, some of the prints are ones I already have, so I can properly evaluate them with a "control". And some are just ones I wanted printed.

I'll concern myself just with the control prints versus new prints here. Suffice it to say I'm happy with them all, but I'm particularly impressed with the new prints versus the controls...

The difference is subtle. But it is there. Here's the details...

The first test print was Berries:

The original print was via Photobox, and I was very happy with it.
In the new print, the greens and reds stay similar. But the blue is darker, and also more vivid. It's a lot closer to how the picture looks on my screen, and until now I'd never noticed just how much lighter the sky was on the print.
Note that this is just a colour thing. The shadow areas are very much the same, as are the highlights. But the large blue sky makes this quite a big difference, and I prefer the new print.

The second test print was London Terminals:

The control was printed by someone else, but also using Pro-Am Imaging. I'd sent them a TIFF, they then produced the final JPEG file and sent it on.
Being black and white, the quality is somewhat harder to assess. But overall, the new print wins. Detail is slightly more preserved, especially in the brighter areas like the right-hand headstone with the skull on it.
There are some slight tonal differences across the picture - the highlights are more pronounced, and the shadows a little better defined. It's not a higher dynamic range, more like better definition within the extremes of that range.
It's subtle, but there.
So again, I prefer the new shot - I now realise that taking control of my pre-processing can make a difference.

The final test shot was a favourite of mine - Waiting for a bus from wonderland:

Like the last photo, my reference was actually printed by Pro-Am but the pre-processing was done by someone else using a TIFF I provided.
And here, the differences are even more pronounced. In particular, the previous print's sodium street lights have some slight halo effects around them where the gradient from blown light to diffused light is a bit sharp. In the new print, this just doesn't happen.
The shadows are remarkably similar. Overall, it's in the lights and their halos where the differences are most notable - the overall colour and tone are spot on in both prints.

The two that were already printed via Pro-Am were more than acceptable, by the way. I'd previously compared them with prints from Photobox, and found myself picking on a case-by-case basis.
In fact, I should mention that the previous Pro-Am prints were done for the UK Photo Safari group's exhibition in 2008, and Brian Mosley - the organiser - kindly handled all the printing to everyone's satisfaction. Thank you again, Brian!
Those prints were exhibition quality, and hung on the walls in a gallery where random visitors left very kind comments. They were not shabby, and I AM nitpicking in this regard.

I'd also like to point out that the comparisons were done between 16:00 to 16:30 today, indoors, without decent lighting. So the differences in tone, detail and colour are evident in what many would consider poor light - domestic lightbulbs and the fading light of a sun behind clouds in November.

My overall impression is that by taking control of the pre-processing, I was able to increase the quality of prints in a measurable manner. That may be a burden to anyone printing snapshots, but if you've got photos that matter to you and you work in colour or detail then it makes the difference between a good print and an excellent print. I feel confident that after one or two test runs, anyone could be producing excellent prints via Pro-Am.

It's very tempting to say that Pro-Am's prices must mean that some corners are being cut. But my experience today shows that they will equal prints that cost four times as much with minimal effort, and that if you pay attention and put some care into pre-processing (a couple of minutes per image) you will get prints that I don't believe can be surpassed without spending thousands - or perhaps even tens of thousands - on your own printer.

I declare this experiment a success. All my future large-format printing will go via Pro-Am Imaging.

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A new way for me to print...

2009-10-30T12:54:57Z

I've been meaning to submit a print run to Pro-Am Imaging for a while now, and finally got round to doing so last night.

To help me decide what to print, I created a special set on Flickr. And there's a few photos going to print which never made it to Flickr for various reasons, too.

But the main reason for the delay has been working out the logistics of the printing run.

Pro-Am Imaging has some great advantages:

You do all the pre-processing, so you have a great deal of control.
They're reputable, known for fast turnarounds (I expect my pictures will be printed today and couriered to me for Monday), and have a reputation for high quality.
They're ~~cheap~~ amazingly priced for larger prints.

When compared with most other printing companies, the disadvantages are:

You do all the pre-processing, so it's a lot of hassle.
To get the best results, you may need to buy additional software like Qimage.
The whole process isn't as slick or simple as "upload and print" - I've had to phone them to arrange an FTP account to upload to, and spent most of last night doing pre-processing and uploading.
They're a little more expensive for smaller sized prints (4" x 6") than some of their biggest competitors.

Qimage is probably essential for larger prints, as it's pretty much the best option for high quality resizing of images. My workflow for this printing has been:

Export prints from Bibble as TIFF images into a specific Output folder.
Fire up Windows in VMWare, because Qimage had issues under wine (must report those!) and is Windows-only software. :-(
Set the paper size and DPI for the print run in Qimage, and print to JPEG files using the Pro-Am supplied ICC printer profile.
Once satisfied with the exported JPEG files, organise them into folders as required by Pro-Am Imaging.
Fill in an order form and pay for the print run.
Upload the ZIP file to the FTP site.
Swear at NTL repeatedly, and restart the FTP transfer as many times as it damned well takes for it to complete over their crappy network.

This may seem like a lot of hassle. But it pays off in the long run. Partly because if I'm happy with the print quality, then it's like having access to a very good printer without having to spend a huge wodge of cash on buying and running one.

And partly because it's so much cheaper than the competition, yet doesn't compromise on quality.

How much cheaper?

Well, I submitted 26 photos last night, for printing at 16"x12". That will cost me about £50. And £12 of that is morning-delivery courier service.

By comparison, my previous print provider - Photobox - would charge me £106 for the same prints, before I even add on any postage.

(At this print size and number of photos, it's actually £1.22 per print at Pro-Am and £4.09 per print at Photobox. Quite a difference.)

Even if we add in the ~£50 that I spent on Qimage, I'm still breaking even just on this trial run when compared to printing via Photobox.

And over the long run, this will allow me to economically produce big prints to hang on my walls.

I might even, if I feel I have the time, begin offering prints for sale. It's not terribly likely, as I don't see that much demand. But it's something I have considered from time to time, and this new workflow will certainly make it more feasible.

But at the moment, I print purely for my own enjoyment of my efforts. There is something about a decent print of a picture that's utterly different to looking at it on a monitor. Which I may write about more in the future.

A full report on the quality of the prints should follow next week.

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Raglan Castle

2009-09-21T12:03:39Z

Raglan Castle

( Musings on this photo )

( Technical information )

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Raglan Castle Entrance

2009-07-10T11:56:47Z

Raglan Castle Entrance

( Musings on this photo )

( Technical information )

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Rainclouds in the Valleys

2009-07-09T11:56:27Z

Rainclouds over Welsh valleys - this was just before the nasty flooding of South Wales in September 2008.

( Musings on this photo )

( Technical Information )

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A note on processing...

2009-07-09T11:33:29Z

I forgot to note that the last two photographs (Caressed and Captains of Industry) were processed in Bibble and used the AndyPro plugin.

Frankly, you can pretty much assume my use of AndyPro these days. It's rare that I take a photograph and don't post-process it with AndyPro.

This strikes me as a little odd. People want more of everything these days from their cameras. Yet AndyPro emulates film, which means it actually reduces my dynamic range.

Less can be so much more.

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