Over the course of a few days, I recorded macro footage of flowers, then picked the best sequences, edited them and set them to a nice, soothing soundtrack. The end result is this — a short video that should get you nice and relaxed. It goes along nicely with my video of garden insects, also filmed in macro mode.
You can see the video at blip.tv, Vimeo and YouTube. There are a few photos that go along with this as well.
Post-It Love
Gotta love this short film, it’s awesome. It’s about a man and a woman who find love at the office. Their romance blossoms through Post-It note designs they make for each other.
In March, we crossed the Carpathian Mountains in the county of Harghita, Romania, as we drove from the city of Bacau to Medias. The route was scenic and there were lots of beautiful places to stop and admire the view. Snow still covered the mountain peaks, and it covered the ground as well at higher altitudes. The roads got pretty bad at times, as is quite often the case in Romania, but they were fairly decent about half the time, which is something — for Romania. At any rate, the places we saw are among the more beautiful in the country.
I recorded a short video clip as we drove through the high peaks of the Harghita Mountains, and stopped in various places to take photographs. The video clip is embedded below. If you’re reading this on my feed and it doesn’t show up, then you can see it in my Video Log set.
The white line you see at the top of the abrupt mountain slope above isn’t a lens aberration. It’s snow. It covers the other side of the mountain. The visible slope is too abrupt and windswept for the snow to keep, so all that’s left is some dry brush and a few trees.
Here we begin to approach the tops of the peaks, and snow is more abundant.
The road hugs the mountain side closely as it curves upward. I love the wooden fence alongside the road, it’s so well suited to the place.
A small mountain cabin holds onto the top. It leans to the left, either because of the settling of its foundation over the time, or because of the strong winds at that altitude.
This is the road where I recorded the video clip you see below.
This mountain brook wound its way through a conifer forest. I think its color is either given by the mud in that region, or by iron ore deposits in the brook bed.
Here’s the video clip, recorded from our car, while driving.
See this video at YouTube or SmugMug.
While traveling through the southeast corner of Romania one day, very close to the Black Sea, we decided to make a stop on the beach between the seaside resorts of Saturn and Venus. I have fond memories of these places, as my family and I vacationed there during my childhood.
This particular beach where we stopped had a wide swath of sand accessible from the main road. Since it was still spring, and still quite cold and windy, the beach was deserted. During the tourist season, cars aren’t allowed to park on the beach, but when we arrived, nobody seemed to mind — nobody was around to mind things, anyway. So we pulled our car right next to the sea and spent a bit of time walking up and down, breathing in the fresh sea breeze and taking in the scenery.
I recorded a short video clip, and took some photos of the beach and of my wife. I had quite a bit of a throat cold at the time, so you’ll hear a pretty hoarse voice on the video’s audio track. You can also see the video below, or in my Video Log set at SmugMug.
See this video on blip.tv or at SmugMug.
When the Duke Nukem series came out in the late 90s, I was a huge fan. There was a time when I played it every day, and I knew almost every trick on each level. I even bleached my hair once to get the Duke Nukem look. Given that I was also working out regularly back then and had some fairly serious muscle on me, it was a pretty good approximation.
As with all such phases, my obsession with the video game passed on, but I still looked forward to the sequel, called Duke Nukem Forever. I waited, along with countless others, since 1997, only to find out last month that 12 years later, in 2009, work on the game stopped altogether.
It was, by all means, an expected conclusion to what had become a game industry joke and clichĂ©. Still, when I see the trailer for Duke Nukem Forever, released in 2007, I still feel regret for the promises made so many times that never came true. I’d have loved to play the sequel, if only for nostalgic reasons. This should have been awesome. Instead, it ended up in the crapper. What a shame.
[Video from Don MacAskill’s Duke Nukem Forever gallery at SmugMug]
Raoul Pop 