First off- Welcome to all new readers of this site! Secondly- Thanks to all old and continuing readers. Things have changed a fair bit round here, with a new design and a new emphasis on an old direction, with still a change or two yet to come, and I thank you for sticking with me. Today’s Programming Note concerns what you can expect on this site in the future. The main announcement is that Out of Ruins (outofruins.org) will now be featuring short stories (and possibly poems) from authors besides myself (MJG). I’ve long wanted to set up my own …
Waseda HDRs
As you’ll know if you’ve been following my recent haikyo explorations, I’m getting interested in the technique of HDR for photography; essentially the process of splicing together several photographs of the same thing (using software that does it all for you) so both light and dark parts of the shot come out even. Here’s one such HDR from my balcony, shot with my Tamron 17-50mm, at 17mm. You may also have gathered that I sold my zoom lens (not useful for haikyo) and invested in an ultra-wide zoom, a Tokina 11-16mm. I haven’t used it for haikyo yet, but decided …
Haikyo Roundup
There’s been a lot of haikyoing action happening round the Kanto plain recently, with some new faces (to me) and new info on old locations- here’s the round-up: Tokyo Times– Lee’s been busy since I last updated here, going to the Underground Vault I found at Yamanakako lake and solving its mystery with the revelation that it was a Sanyo Securities hide-away. He managed to identify one of the vault symbols in the banner of a Sanyo magazine left lying around- keen eyes! Though I think he told me it wasn’t actually him that spotted it. Very honest! After that, …
Sanyo and BE haikyos, the move
Tokyo Times went to the underground bunker in Yamanashi and managed to de-bunk some of the mystery surrounding it. He found a Sanyo magazine which featured a little icon of one of the odd logos from inside the bunker. It doesn’t explain everything, but it goes some distance to removing the thought it might have belonged to a cult. Mike and I went to the BE lab in Shizuoka- I was going to post my version tomorrow but may go with something else instead- give his a bit more time to breathe before I clog the airwaves with yet more …
Haikyo @ Lakes Yamanaka and Sagami.
Misuterareta– Survivorship goes back to the Sagami Lake area, site of the Hotel Royale, and finds it now guarded by security vans and guard dogs. He ploughs on, and discovers a Pension Hotel surrounded by a wide and strange scaffolding walkway. He’s shooting with a D60 now, so image quality just got a bump. Tokyo Times– Lee stumbles upon and explores a conference centre near Yamanaka Lake, complete with funky brain-washing chairs and antique office equipment.
The Fix reviews Freemantle Mons
The Fix– Online literature review site The Fix recently ran a review of Something Wicked- the first print magazine one of my stories has appeared in. The reviewer said this about the story: ‘In Freemantle Mons The Leviathan Smile by Michael John Grist, an old clock stops, and the people for whom it is a fixture are surprised to discover that the sun fails to rise and time fails to move forward without it. In the best tale of this issue, Freemantle Mons must discover why the sun refuses to rise and what it means not just for the city, …
Tuesday’s Links
Urban Explorer Rankings– Hilarious list of the XP ‘levelling’ structure of urban explorers, including pre-requisities and special skills conferred. Level 3 (of 9) Pre-requisities: 1 x hallway photo, open doors optional 1 x apology thread, when called out for graffiti painted earlier in exploration career 1 x evidence of partaking in a media article/show where you have defined urban exploration 1 x evidence of thinking you are a ninja Level 3 (of 9) Skills Conferred Forum Owner: One gains the ability to start their own forum to further their position in in the community. Nudity: Explorer is now able to …
Weekly Links
Haikyo and photography links this week, as I’ve been off exploring the Internets for haikyo locations and photography inspirations. David LaCahappelle– Thanks to Velo in the comments for this link, hyper-colorful surreal photos that you’ve probably seen before, as he shoots famous folk like Elton John and Pamela Anderson, for their album covers and whatnot. Exploring the Paris Catacombs– Dweeb and some blokes from the UK Urbex site 28dayslater take a few days under Paris to explore and shoot photos of weird art, old graffiti, and bones. Brooke Shaden– Thanks to J-eye for the link to this one, a photographer …
Weekly Links
Gorilla Artfare– Some great apocalypse art: This same scene is rendered in four ‘seasons’ on the site. Red Bubble– Ruins in the desert, awesome: Tells a story in an image. Or begins a story… Neils Valentin– Digital matte paintings for the movie ‘Strings’- gorgeous. Now I want to see this movie ‘Strings’. I came across all these desert ruins images while Google Image-searching for good art for my story – The Book of All. In the end I settled on something more esoteric. Read the Kanji– Addictive kanji-learning page, with insistent failure-repetition algorithms. Useful.
Weekly Links
The Venus Project– Visionary site with lots of futurist ideas and art, underwater cities and cool designs. Draw Me a Sheep– Cool art/design site, featuring square trees. Rassouli– Great aspirational art, I’ve used two now for story headers- Universal Time and Cullsman #9. It’s ostensibly Christian mythos art, but you wouldn’t know that to look at it.