The Bund, Shanghai, at low tide

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180 degrees panoramic view of Shanghai

One of the buses that stop at my apartment goes all the way to the Nanpu Bridge (South Huangpu River Bridge), so I took a ride to that edifice for a closer look.

This is a bridge like no other I’ve seen. That is to say, I have not seen many magnificent bridges before. It commands your awe by virtue of its monstrosity and inelegance.

Shanghai is filled with elevated highways – when the roads became too crowded and there was no where to expand, urban designers expanded to the third dimension. Intersections of these elevated highways are always messy yet dramatic affairs: several layers of highways criss-crossing above a surface-level junction, with branches taking vehicles from one highway and diving down to another route.



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The Nanpu bridge’s ramps are a good example of this mess of noodles in the sky. With a bridge deck high above the river surface, a circular ramp was designed to bring vehicles onto the bridge.

The bridge deck is open to tourists at a reasonable price of 10 RMB. There is no need to climb 46 metres of stairs: the columns have lifts up to the deck level.



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The deck gives a representative but rather dull view of the Shanghai skyline. As it is located a distance from the main commercial buildings, most of the visible structures are not of the shiny glass and aluminium kind, but mostly concrete high rise residential blocks.



I took photographs at regular intervals as I rotated through 180 degrees, and quickly stitched them together using Photoshop. With no tripod and no exposure correction, the image is far from perfect but this will do for now.



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3478 wide by 500 pixels high, 240 kb

Photographs update

We now have a coffee machine at home. All hail caffeine.





On Reflection

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Super Takumar 50mm/1.4 with extension tubes





Silver Lining

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Hanimex 400mm/6.3 at 1/4000s, f/22, ISO 100. Note the lack of lens flare despite the sun's rather strong presence.





Swanston Street, 11.11pm

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Moonrise over Melbourne

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Angle of view: ~135°
Super Takumar 50mm/1.4

Today’s directionless ramblings

I’m supposed to start work on the 15th, but I’m not really looking forward to it. More specifically, I am dreading to have to iron my shirts and pants.

On Monday, the firm called. Something crept up, and there was some expression of interest from Hong Kong. Would I be able to help translate something to Chinese?

For two days, I was busy surfing three dictionary/ translation websites in my attempt to translate phrases like building codes, service changeover, analytical techniques. I only hope the person reading it does not get a heart attack and dies clutching my document. He can die of a heart attack for all I care, but please not while holding my translation.


I’ve been in Melbourne for 7 days already, and not much has happened. I worked 2 shifts at the restaurant, which gave me a bit of spending money. A portion of it was spent on ebay buying a couple of adapter rings for my optical setup. Another $20 was spent on purchasing a 15-inch Sony television from a friend who would be leaving soon. So I have a TV now, but the Formula 1 season has not started.

Buy food for the week, one or two lunches outside… it’s surprising how quickly $100 can start to evaporate. And I haven’t even started on the grander things like that fast Asahi Pentax 50mm f1.4 lens, a light meter and a slide projector.

Back to reality…


I’ve been attempting a bit of fiction lately, but it reads rather like a dull piece of modern history of number theory. Seems like I’ve lost my bloody muse.


There are 2 things I would like to do once I have started work and settled into the rhythm:
Train in a form of martial arts
Learn to play the violin (not very sure about this)

When I was back home, I returned to my old Taekwando class for session. The agenda for the day was chopping-kicks and its application in sequences.

The chopping-kick is a very technical one, and requires a certain degree of flexibility in the hips to be able to execute it. Which was good, because I have both in decent quantity and the pace of the session was somewhat slower than, say, a turning-kick session.

A turning-kick session would have been no fun as my stamina and aerobic performance has been extremely low lately. Turning kicks without speed and abundance is just boring.

Chopping kicks are fun. Coil up the leg, and unfurl it towards the heavens. With the help of gravity and judicious momentum transfers, bring the foot of the extended leg crashing onto the unfortunate target, driving it backwards and downwards.


Earlier this afternoon I was experimenting with a different approach to my light box, and made these shots.

Find the Slide Film

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420mm, 1/20s, f5.6, ASA 80

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I quite like this one, it looks very much like what an engineer/draftsman would produce if summoned to make a front view/projection of the Ricoh KR-10 Super. Like a blueprint, there is no sense of depth- you cannot visually gauge how far the lens is ahead of the camera body. This was achieved using a very long telephoto lens (equivalent to 420mm).

Streaks in the Sky

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In December 2005, my family and I took a leisurely 10-hour drive to Sydney. Along the way, I snapped a sequence of images intended for a panoramic conversion. Well, now that I have the software, this is it.

Sofitel Melbourne- possibly Melbourne's public toilet with the best view

Sofitel's Loo

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Horizontal angle of view: ~140°

Sofitel Melbourne is located at 25 Collins Street, near the intersection of Exhibition and Collins Streets.

To access this washroom, take the lifts at Sofitel's lobby up to the 35th floor and turn left upon exiting the lifts. The toilets are a short walk away on the right side.

The window faces approximately 15° south of East. The angle of view is a little less than 180°.

Visit this for sun and moon rise times and azimuth angles in Melbourne, published times not adjusted for summer daylight saving.

Photographs

Drove 454 km through freeways, sunshine, coastal highways, cloudy weather, mountain roads, hail, traffic jams, severe cross wind, farm land, dusk, urban grids and night. All within 12 hours.

Strong winds and hail causes little ice spheres to slash diagonally across the landscape. The projectiles cause a surprisingly large amount of discomfort and fear, especially if they explode near one’s eyes.




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Image spans ~90 degrees




Right...



A brilliant end to a day trip:

I dropped her off, put Vanilla Ninja on the player, turned the volume up to ‘daft’ and drove home through the empty city streets.

And then sharpened and honed a kitchen knife. Right now, it will cut through anything- onions, celery, quadriceps….



Photographs

Interesting reads

This started off as an aimless rant. But i found something that changed my mood.


OMG OMG OMG, I just found something that would make life easy for this nerd blogger. Observe the following characters (not images)

∀ x ≠ 0, x ∈ ℜ, ∃ y ∈ ℜ, y = 1/x
For all x which are non zero and real, there exists a real y that satisfies the equation y = 1/x

A few more interesting symbols:
ℵ - Aleph, used to denote the cardinality of various infinities
∂ - partial differential of
∫ - integral
≅ - is congruent to
≈ - is asymptotic to/ is almost equal to
≡ - is equivalent to/ is congruent to
≥ - is greater than or equal to
∝ - is proportional to
∞ - infinity


<rant>

Can you just feel the personality of this blog sapping away? That's not the important thing; but it implies that I am losing my edge/ mind. Where are the stories, the descriptive narrations, the Chinese posts?

If it's not photographs, it's some mad-scientist entry. The next entry will probably be a fusion of statistical thermodynamics and a pinch of chemistry. Goodness, who the hell blogs reads quantum physics and statistical thermodynamics posts anyway?

And have you noticed how I can never be satisfied with my state of mind? Sometimes I weep at my lack of Chinese proficiency, then I complain about my decline in technical articles, or I bitch about too much bad photography, now I'm ranting about too many technical articles.

Not too long ago, I was lamenting that I had not written anything technical. If past trends can be used as a guide for future behaviour, I think I'll get my muse back in a few months and produce loads of half decent writings. Then I'll probably go on about my lack of photographs...

</rant>


Anyway, here's a photograph. I discovered that it was extremely simple to climb onto the roof of my block of flats. With a tripod and some copyright infringements, I produced a 360 degree panorama.




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