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Full moon #2

2008-06-23

This time, however, not about the nonsense full moon mysticism and astrology, but a few photographic tests of mine with my Canon 40D with Tamron 28-300mm VC (click for large versions, which are crops without size changes):

The full moon a few nights ago behind the city hall tower pinnacle – unfortunately the moon wasn’t high enough to get behind the ball or the vane, but only behind the middle part of the pinnacle, and I didn’t want to climb on the roof…; the second image is the not perfectly succeeded attempt to focus on the tower:
full moon full moon

With longer exposure, the moon gets too bright, of course, but you can dimly see the tower (yes, I should have focused on that) – first1 with 0.3s exposure time and without post-processing, then with 0.4s and a little color noise reduction and brightness curve adaption (if you don’t see anything above the ball above the moon, your monitor settings are wrong):
full moon full moon

I wouldn’t be opposed to hints from (not only) professionals… :)

  1. Photographed in the opposite order, of course, since the moon had moved farther to the west in the mean time. [↩]

A little plea to the ball

2008-06-21


woman with red soccer ball

Footballer.
You tough sweetie pie you!
Ball, my serious quest.
When jesting in lonely night!
Kick – yes live it!
Escape!
By Babylon’s towers!
Footballer you.
Absurd in all worlds.
Ball between distress and swearing.
Footballer oh so deflowered.

 

Yes, I had no better idea for a post today, so another poem created with the German poem generator Poetron, and I even translated it! (Really quite verbatim, actually.) And I hope you like the photo (by Lev Dolgatshjov – Fotolia.com).
;)

Undisturbed call center entertainment

2008-06-20

You know, I got my FritzBox and my ISDN telephone configured such that callers who do not transmit their phone number only reach a computer voice without ringing which says (translated):

“Good day. You are calling without transmitting your number. Since this is typical for unwanted commercial calls, you are directly – without audible ringing – directed to this answering machine. Please enable your caller ID transmission, or leave a message so you can be called back. Thank you.”

(I wrote about configuring it in this comment in German.)

In the last few weeks, this has proven more and more useful again, after some time with only very few calls – though there were never useful messages left on the answering machine, because except for the lottery call robots (which can’t tell a machine from a human), at most a few short call center background noises were recorded. Except for now:

Yesterday a probably little experienced female call center agent could be heard (*** mark incomprehensible parts from other people; my translation from German, of course):

*** — “If you- if the number is suppressed, you are automatically… put on the answering machine. Had… here I currently have a tape like that, I am to activate my number, or leave something on the machine” — “*** …a tape… ***” — “I don’t know!”

And this afternoon three in a row (by the way, all callers had no number transmission in the first place; no case-by-case suppression and no old analog line):

15:08: No recording.

15:09: Man 1: “What program or something like that does that one have installed?”

15:10: Man 2: “Is cool, huh?” — man 1 (same as before): “That is cool, isn’t it?” — man 3, maybe other conversation: “Maybe that is for him/you…***”

:bigsmile: