Did someone say "Pictures?" Ok, Pictures it is + BONUS

Hey there Guys! I hope you had a great weekend. So here i am again, posting some pics of mine. And also there is a nice bonus link i found on the internetz which opens the endless creative possibilities to those who like to take night photos.
So here we go:

When in Riga it's one of my favorite things to do: Go around the city, find some nice place in the park and feed some birds. Of course much more fun when with someone. If you're patient enough, birds may become friendly and sit on your hand.

Fall in Riga is always extremely beautiful.

 

And when it is dry and sunny it looks very fairytale-like.

My stupid cat always lies on my notes when i need to study. But i guess he doesn't care :D

One of the photo trips in early winter in Riga. Famous LAIMA clock in the center which are the traditional meeting place.

Over the past few years winter in Riga is quite cold, but never starts earlier than late December-January. 

One of the small waterfalls in the park.

Lol, i once decided to see how i would look if my face was beaten up :D Yeah that's real blood, but it's not from being beaten, lol. It's from the bleeding nose i occasionally have. Still looks cool. I scared my mom so much she'd beat the sh.t out of me for that joke :D

Finishing with birds eating some bread.

And here's a little bonus i was promising.

You ever wanted to take a photo of a falling star? It's easier said than done, since the thing is a random process and you never know when to start shooting, because you need long shutter time. Not that the resource i found solves the problem, but gives a little trick-cheat how to get a photo like the one above. So technically it is not a falling star: it's a satellite of the system called "Iridium". Flying at the orbit of around 700 km, these things sometimes reflect light from the sun to earth. That we can see as a bright star moving very fast in the sky.

So the main problem is to find the time when to take a photo. Luckily the Iridium company has provided us with JUST GORGEOUS service of creating a personal timetable of when you will see the satellite over your area! and it's easy! 

 STEP BY STEP:

Go to www.heavens-above.com

Click on "Select on map" in Configuration part.

Choose your place. Click submit.

Click "next 7 days" in Satellites part.

Stare at the stars at the right time.

...

Profit!

I already saw my satellite today! How about you?!

:D

No End of the World?... Posting more pics then! +space bonus:)

Hey guys, i've just came out of the shelter-bunker i built in my basement to hide from the Jesus for the rapture.

Seems that nothing happened and i still have to go to university and study for exams (. Too bad! Yo, the guy who calculates that sh.t! Do the math better next time! Sheesh.. So anyway, another set of pictures made by me, hope you like them ^_^. Here we Go:

Maple leaf in autumn, Riga. It's very beautiful at that time in my hometown.

A candle. I could make photos of candles all the time. It just takes the mind away.

I'm not sure what i was going to take a photo of here. But, oh well ^_^.

Macro pics are always impressive, don't you think?

Another candle... Hmm i remember some coolstory from the night that picture was taken. Oh god, that was funny :D. Maybe gonna tell you all later ;)

A tiny snail i found on my table after buying some groceries. I let it go free later, by throwing it out the window of my fifth floor ^_^.

Another Macro photo of a flower. Also have no idea what is the name.

Turned picture of a tree. Sometimes i catch myself staring at the tree for a long time just because of it's awesome structure.

A pic from a camping trip with boats i went to some time ago. It was amazing. Especially putting up the tent in the middle of the night with no lights and hugely hard rain. And then getting warm by drinking vodka and sleeping in soaked tent fighting mosquitoes :D I love camping.

A picture of Riga from the building of Latvian University. Miss my city.. :'(

Also a little bonus link: Yesterday was witnessing the preparation sequence of the International Space Station for detachment, maneuvering and returning to Earth one of the landing pods. It was just amazingly interesting! You can hear everything they say, see live pics of the pods moving and everything, sooo awesome! You can follow the schedule on www.nasa.gov  

And here is the link for the live stream video:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html  

I STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU TO CHECK IT OUT!!! ^__^

The end of the worldz. (Long post + pics).

Whoa, guys! I see every second one of the blogs i follow has a post about the end of the worldz there! O_O Lemme also keep up with the trend here! In this post i'll put a little bonus + usual picture set of my creation!
I hope you'll enjoy! ^_^

Well, since tomorrow (today already) they say the World Ends, however atheistic my views are, i decided to make another post a little earlier, because, well, ok, it all may be bullshit, but in the theory of probability there is still a chance different from zero that THE END will be every day, including tomorrow. :D The thing is, who cares? Personally, i stick to all logical and scientific explanations of everything. One of the statements i'd like to relate to is a simple case of risk management. Those who are familiar with the thing know, that simplest way to calculate the risk together with which decision to make is to make a table of all events.
So here we go:

So on top we have two possible variants and on the left our reactions.

• If we keep bothering and spending time on worrying about the cataclysm, and it never happens - we just waste time and nerves (score: -1).
• If we actually prepare for the inevitable death and do everything we wanted (kiss kids, say to your girl you love her, close bank accounts, buy Bugatti, shoot the helicopter, film in porn, do a dinosaur, divide by zero, eat a cookie, etc...), well, we'll still die, and then it's like loose-loose, which is compensated by the fact that we did what we wanted (score: 0).
• Let's see what happens if we just take it cool and don't bother.
• If there is NO end of the world, well, we never bothered about it, so we save time, do something cool, and well, have fun like we did before (score: +1).
• If there is a big sh.tstorm, and we all die, then, since we didn't prepare for it, it'll be just "oh well... " and then just boom. Not good. (score: -1)

And now let's compare the sum score of two variants: since we don't know what's gonna happen, we just sum up the possible scores for our reactions and chose the one with the higher score. So for worrying and trying desperately to do something about the fact that the world's going pancaked, we get -1, and for chilling for whatever may come we got 0. Oh my! :D

so guys, without any bragging or faith related swearing there is a partially scientific proof that we should just all chill out on that one! :D Good luck and have a nice Judgement Day (lol)!

Usual set of pics with comments!:

A crooked tree of the grapes plant.

A nice macro of a tulip flower

Uphigh Grass

Daisies!!!

More Daisies! ^_^

EVEN MORE OF THEM!!

Summer sun from the shade of an apple tree

Ohlol, it's me :D (no photoshop, real reflection.

A very old door lock with a key. Also one of the oldest photos of mine.

Another up-top picture with a counter light. For some reason such positioning always gives nice shapes. 

Fractals and Photos.

Hello there! I'm here again with a bunch of photos of mine, and also with a small text about fractals later on! It's cool, check it ^_^.

To start with - some flowers from my summer house. The thing is, it is strangely hard to take a photo of these in the natural color, because thy appear blue on the screen when they'are actually dark purple.

I think i had a picture similar to this one before. However this is made using a video-cam.

Another trip to the forest. Some unknown mushroom.

Reall, trips to the forest are the best. Because you enter such a hugely rich environment with all kinds  strange/nice/mysteriously looking of plants. If not the short time of my batteries, i could walk there for hours taking pictures.

A green carpet of these small 3 leaved grass looking stuff. And you can actually eat it! It's kinda sour of taste, and they say can be very nice for your health since it contains a lot of vitamins. Rabbits like it a  lot.

A bug closeup. :D I'm not sure if it is the dirt-bug, or whatever it's name is (the one which rolls the balls of dirt and sh.t, and also was sacred in ancient Egypt?) If not for the camera lens, i wouldn't be able to actually make such a macro shot.

It's soo irritating when you walk in the forest and you feel the spider net string to touch your face... uuuugh. However they can be very beautiful, if actually made into a net, not a single string.

Ok, and this is a part of the stuff i've familiarized myself with some time ago. There is this mathematical concept of fractals. Apart from extremely complicated math, you can describe it as a function, which repeats in itself if investigated on a larger/smaller scale. and if you draw a graph of this function, you'd see that it repeats and multiplies if zoomed in. This is the kind of mathematical beauty everyone can see without actually understanding much of it (like me, lol). You can read about it more here. And some time ago i've discovered a whole bunch of programs to generate nice images of fractals, not only in 2d, but also 3-dimensional using all kinds of graphical support like glows, shades, colors etc. And here is one of the examples to which i could get using these programs.

My shopped eye. :D

and my stupid cat :D

Busy pre-examination week, but pictures don't care :)

Hey there guys! The hard-studying weeks come before exams, but pictures don't care, right? :) This set is a little special, because features some pics which are not photos, but some of my Photoshop works. 

Here's a little disclaimer: i've never done any photoshop courses or anything, was just playing around. So i don't pretend being a madskillz master. Lol.

So here we go:

Tiny Grasshopper on a flower at my summer-house. I found it kinda hard to catch a moment to take a shot when they all jump around :)

Another pic from night Riga.

Heh, when i was small, i used to make presents for my parents myself. this is one masterpiece (sic!) i did for my father representing his working place :D. It's tiny. Like 5cm in height. And you can take unplug the computer :D

Another piece i did for my mom. It's also small and represents a sewing machine (singer type).

Here is an example of my madskillz (sic!) in photoshoping . The flower was taken from a photo i took, and the butterfly i drew on some boring lesson (scanned, edited). One of my personal favorites.

If you ask me what this represents, i most probably won't be able to answer :D. "Problem of choice" maybe?

At some point i've discovered amusement in changing photos with the negative filter. Was fun and easy, more than that, looked quite neat! So there were many many works made in short time.

Also some simple photoshoping using a photo of my hand.

OMG! I was small and silly then, ok :)

Some grass to finish up decently :D