Life of Brian

Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show

Because you really need to experience the joy that is the Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show in all its Asian glory . . .

Having lived in Taiwan for twenty years (yes, I've been on this happy island for two decades), I have been in situations that have felt very close to exactly what Rick Pope (aka, Lick Poop) probably feels like in his interview from hell experience.  I kid you not.  If you are reading this post via a stream on the likes of Facebook or elsewhere then you are missing the video goodness so go to http://briandavidphillips.typepad.com/brian now for the original post.

You can see more Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show episodes at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=D39A217C4B8CD62C.

All the best,
Brian

(If you are reading this blog post via a stream, go to http://briandavidphillips.typepad.com/brian/ to access the full post with any videos or photos included.)

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Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com]
Hypnotist, Hypnotherapist, Intuitionist, Trance Wizard
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan

Games Convention 2007 . . .. . . Booth Babes Montage

Comic World Taiwan 16 . . . cosplay!

Last weekend, Aug. 11-12, 2007, the Phillips family headed off to the Comic World Taiwan 16 comic book and cosplay convention held at National Taiwan University in Taipei. Kaye went with friends on both days while Lorraine and I were there just the Saturday.

Kaye cosplayed as a character in the manga/anime Reborn and spent most of the time with a couple of her friends.  The friends were supposed to also be in costume but once again did not get them.

See the complete gallery of images we took during the weekend, go here.

For more of these images from Comic World Taiwan 16, go here.  For more Life of Brian cosplay images, go here.  For cosplay news in Taiwan from the good folks at Cospho Up Commision, see here (the next big event is Aug. 11-12).

All the best,
Brian

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Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [phillips@nccu.edu.tw]
Certified Hypnotherapist
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
http://www.BrianDavidPhillips.com

Fancy Frontier 10 . . . cosplay!

Last weekend, July 28-29, 2007, the Phillips family headed off to the Fancy Frontier 10 comic book and cosplay convention held at National Taiwan University in Taipei.

Kaye cosplayed as a character in the manga/anime Reborn and spent most of the time with a couple of her friends.  The friends were supposed to also be in costume but didn't get theirs in time.  Next cosplay, there should be a group of 'em in costume though.

This was a big event with over 33,000 people in attendance.  Yes, that many folks.

See the complete gallery of images we took during the weekend, go here.

IT'S GOOD TO BE KING

A couple girls ran over to me and asked to take a photo with me. One of them demanded that I let her kiss me for the photo because I'm so "cute" for some strange reason, when asked by a pretty girl to be kissed I have this odd habit of consenting.

REBORN

My daughter Kaye in her Reborn costume doing her Death Note pose.

MOTHER KNOWS BEST

My wife, Lorraine, and my daugher, Kaye, take a breather in the hot sun of the first day of this weekend-long event.

THAT'S A LOT OF HOT SWEATY BODIES

Since he was visiting, we dragged our good friend Joshua Samuel Brown (yes, the internationally reknowned author [web]) to his first ever major cosplay event. Josh is usually as carefree and easy going as a human can be but even he found certain aspects of cosplay convention culture to be well beyond the pale.

PHOTOGRAPHER MADNESS

While there were a LOT of cosplayers out there, at certain times, it seemed that the number of photographers far outnumbered the cosplayers. In fact, at times, it seemed that the photographers were moving in swarms. This was particularly true if the cosplayers happened to be beautiful women in rather . . . er . . . hot not because of the weather . . . costumes . . .

For more of these images from Fancy Frontier 10, go here.  For more Life of Brian cosplay images, go here.  For cosplay news in Taiwan from the good folks at Cospho Up Commision, see here (the next big event is Aug. 11-12).

All the best,
Brian

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Hypnosis Shows, Sessions, Training . . . and MORE!
See http://www.BrianDavidPhillips.com for details!

Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [phillips@nccu.edu.tw]
Certified Hypnotherapist
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
http://www.BrianDavidPhillips.com

Girls of Comic Con 2006

Wildest Dreams . . .. . . coming soon

Check out one of the "trailers" for the upcoming performance of Wildest Dreams, the senior graduation play for my students in the English Department at National Chengchi University to be performed Dec. 14 and Dec. 15 at the university (be there!) . . . the play is about a group of friends who play role playing games (RPGs) to the point of the games becoming their escape from reality . . .

The students have gone all out and created a film that will be used in conjunction with the on-stage drama . . . the characters on stage will "play" the table top game with their fantasy personae manifested within the film. I am the faculty advisor of the play for which I am quite qualified (my doctoral dissertation is in interactive drama (live RPGs), I have advanced degrees in theatre, I deal with reality levels in my hypnosis work, and I played more RPGs than a human really should play).

See the official blog for the play here and the fullsize versions of the trailers here (download links for the mov files are below the embedded player).  Venue information is on the blog.

Koolness.

All the best,
Brian

Cosplay this weekend!

There is another cosplay event this weekend, Feb. 4-5, at National Taiwan University in Taipei. We are planning on going. Kaye, Susan, and Gareth will once again be dressed as characters from Naruto and I will be using my new 3D rig for the first time at a major cosplay event to see how it works. If you're interested in other cosplay posts and links to more photos than a human should see, then see the past entries in the Life of Brian: Cosplay category.

New 3D Rig goodness . . .

Well . . . we now have a new rig for digital stereo photography . . . two Sony V3 digital cameras on a twin-rig, external flash with sync, using a LANC Shepherd Pro to control the cameras. Been wanting one of these rigs for some time. Got the LANC Shepherd Pro from Rob Crockett and have also ordered his twin rig support which I'm told is entering the mail in the morning . . . see his pages at Ledametrix.Com - Digital Stereo Photography for details on those fine products.

Originally, Lorraine thought we'd just get the Sony V1 cameras for the rig as they are plentiful and cheap right now in Taiwan. However, she changed her mind and started looking around for the Sony V3s as they are much nicer cameras and support compact flash which we have been using with my Canon rig.

The LANC Shepherd Pro allows one to monitor sync between two Sony cameras that support the LANC protocol (not all do this so you have to check the list of compatible cameras) and also allows one to get sync for flash photography, something that is difficult to achive with twin camera rigs without having to chop 'em up and mess about with the electronics. The LANC Shepherd allows one to get near-perfect sync without modifying the cameras . . . something very important to me as I don't want to lose my warranty and I am an idjit when it comes to such things.

Well . . . I have had my LANC Shepherd Pro since before Christmas but no cameras to attach it to . . . we finally managed to track down a pair of new Sony V3 cameras in Taipei a few days ago. For now, we've mounted them to a twin bar side by side with an external flash connected to a cold shoe on one of the cameras so we're good to go. Happy happy joy joy!

The distance between the lenses is a bit too wide and creates a hyper effect I don't like as I really love to take stereo portrats. However, we'll replace the bar when the new one comes which uses a portrait orientation with good lens spearation as seen in the image at the start of this post.

I posted my first few photos to the 3D Stereoview Exchange which some of you are members of and am quite happy with the rig thus far.

Water Boy . . . . . . We were visiting a couple friends in Taipei and took along my new twin rig to give it a bit of a try. The complex at our friends' place has a beautiful courtyard filled with statues. Of course, when one sees a little boy pissing into a pool, one just has to catch it in 3D. The shot has a little ghosting in the anaglyph (red-blue 3D glasses) here but the parallel looks beautiful in 3D.

Celebrity Dog . . . . . . Last weekend, I hosted a hypnosis workshop in my home and one of the last minute attendees brought her dog with her. My wife, Lorraine, took a bunch of photos of the dog with our new rig as she and my daugher, Kaye, love animals. This particular dog also happens to be a celebrity in Taiwan and often appears on television programs or does special appearances. This is the first dog in the seeing eye dog program in Taiwan. She is retired now (had to retire early due to hip problems as her previous owner that she worked with lived on a fifth floor walkup with no elevator). She is old but affectionate and a bit energetic in her friendliness and is extremely gentle.

Dear Friends and More . . . . . . One of my hypnotist friends in Taipei is a reknowned psychologist, neruolinguistic programmer, hypnotist, and astrologer, Deepak Vidmar. With anyone else who combines psychology, trancework, and astrology, I would think they were over the line into the touchey feeley no critical thought territory of lala land but Deepak has a very critical understanding and knows whereof he speaks with the data to back it up. We visited Deepak and his wife Ming-Yng, a former Buddhist nun who is as gentle as they come, the day before they were set to head to India for a few months. You can check out his webpages at Astro-NLP - therapists will want to take a look at his calm ball process for panic attacks and more. This is an anaglyph (red-blue 3D glasses) so the red shirt comes off a bit harsh but the pair works well enough. From left to right: Lorraine Phillips, Dr. Brian David Phillips, Dr. Joseph Deepak Vidmar, Ming-Yng Vidmar (yes, the ladies are indeed much prettier than the men).

You can see some of the other shots in anaglyph and parallel format here.

I had never used Stereo Photo Maker but followed John Hart's descriptions for batch processing and everything seemed to work wonderfully. Now, if only I could figure out how to get it to batch and adjust things a bit more intuitively or at least find a way to adjust a bit better to eliminate some of the viewing issues or the non-common photo space without having to crop and adjust every image individually (I tend to take hundreds of images when I'm shooting - just taking the rig out for our initial test shoot/walk around our neighborhood I took 150 photos - so batch processes are my friend). I typically would use Anabuilder as it has a nice window setting effect for batch processing but it is extremely slow on my machine so an alternative would be nice.

BTW, in John's SPM tutorial, he mentions that you may need to adjust one image in the batch process by a few pixels to take into account mounting differences for the lens in the body. Could someone describe in extremely simplistic and babytalk terms just how I can determine what numbers to put where so that I can deal with horizontal or vertical alignment issues caused by the setup? I may have a PhD but I sure ain't all that smart when it comes to some things and this is one of those things.

In any case, I am a happy camper and while I won't be retiring my Canon 300D + Loreo LIAC setup forever, it will see a LOT less use in the future.

All the best,
Brian

More 3D news here.

Rainy Day Cosplay . . .. . . Comic World Taiwan 11

As previously posted on Forumosa . . . Cosplay and Comic Fandom Convention this weekend at NTU.

The weather sucked for the cosplay . . . big time.

So, most of the cosplayers went indoors to the CW proper.

We ended up not even going the first day but went in the afternoon of the second day.

My wife made costumes for our daughter and two of her friends . . . based upon the Naruto anime. Didn't get the hair colors right for two of them but decided we will tweak them for the next big cosplay in Taipei this coming February 4 and 5.

Pictured from left to right . . . Gareth Cheng (Uzumaki Naruto), Kaye Phillips (Uchiha Sasuke), and Susan Oscar (Haruno Sakura).

I made the large blade thingie my daughter is holding while the boy's father, Michael Cheng, put the finishing touches on the knives. The kids made the throwing stars themselves. Lorraine, my wife, put in very long hours on the costumes and will probably be tweaking them even more before the next event.

For those with an interest, I have some other photos at . . . my fotki . . . they are uploading right now so I haven't had a chance to tweak image rotations and the like. Will probably not get around to that until Monday or so.

Anyone else actually go?

Cosplay is Costume Roleplay and is basically what all those kids dressing up as comic book characters are doing. It is loads of fun and the age range for participants range from children to post-graduate school types. Actually, young children are pretty rare but every once in awhile you will see them.

There are some relevant links from a previous post below.

If you or your kids like to dress up as comic book or game characters, they'll love it . . . or, if you like to take photos, this is a great event.

My daughter is eleven and has been cosplaying regularly since she was four years old (I've been the doting father for longer and have been taking cosplay photos the whole time . . . see my cosplay albums for an idea. Although my daughter has been doing it since she was tiny, it is more popular with college age folks so you will see a very wide variety of costumes and the like.

The event is a comic book fandom convention but the cosplays are definitely an important part of it. If the weather holds then a lot of the cosplayers will be outside in the sun for photo opportunities (they pose and also run around taking photos of one another with many folks there to take pictures as well). Quite a few will be outside the gym sports center complex (the convention will be inside that building) and others will head over to the lake on the NTU campus. If it rains, then they’ll go inside to designated spots for photos but then you will need to pay the entry fee.

If you aren't familiar with cosplay, go to the cosplay category here and read some of the back posts.

I used to get cosplay annoucements vanished and has only just come back online http://cospho.dyndns.ws/~zordius although he doesn't yet (if ever) have his old English calendar back up (perhaps if enough folks request it, he'll restore it). He has tons of photos.

All the best,
Brian

Looks like no cosplay for us this weekend.

There's a typhoon pounding the island this weekend. We couldn't go to the big cosplay event at NTU today as we had guests over for lunch and wiled away the afternoon chatting with them (as one of them will be headin' stateside for a year, we wanted to get a chance to visit). The typhoon is dumping rain and the like so even if the cosplay event is still held (doubtful as the typhoon will probably shut it down), we probably couldn't get any good photos. C'est la vie. Will have to make sure we get to the one in December and go full force.

Game Show and Cosplay Convention Cuties . . . . . . fleshbot discovers

Looks like fleshbot has discovered cosplay . . . Game Show and Cosplay Convention Cuties . . . lots of photos in the links. Speaking of cosplay, there will be a big one in Taipei this weekend at National Taiwan University . . . hopefully it won't be too rainy so we can get some good photos. If you don't know what cosplay is, you should . . . go read all the posts here.

Cospho Up Commission . . . back online!

Good news for folks in Taiwan who are interested in the joys of cosplay! Zordius and his wonderful Cospho Up Commission is back online!

He's using a dynamic page set at http://cospho.dyndns.ws/~zordius which will get you to the site.

Hopefully, if enough of us bug him about it, he'll bring back his English calendar pages for upcoming events. For now, the galleries are back up as are the Chinese forums. This site is a gold mine for cosplay information related to Taiwan.

Be sure to check my own cosplay posts at Life of Brian: Cosplay and don't miss out on taking a gander at my huge collection of my own cosplay photos in my cosplay galleries.

Good stuff.

Hypnotic Hypnotist Fansign . . .. . . from the Con of the Dragon . . .. . . with a plethora of fansignish goodness!

Some of my hypnotist friends went to DragonCon (Sept. 1-4, 2005) in Atlanta and decided to say hello to me in a vey very special way . . . with a fansign!

From left to right Aaron (hypnofocus), David (idav5d, front), Lane (S.LanePierce, rear), and Susan (prismfire). I am told David (my friend and very competent and gentlemanly co-moderator at the Hypnosis Technique Exchange, is the primary culprit for the set. Click on the photo to go the page with the larger version and then browse the rest of that gallery for more. These folks not only sent me their fansign, they then ran around the convention and forced other happy people to hold up the sign. It is a fansign cornucopia! Of course, by showing me all the kool people and nifty events and blathering about them on their own blogs (including tasty tidbits about double handfuls of the articulate, intelligent, and rather hottish Jewel Staite's ass - I so envy you folks who get to see Serenity when it opens as we have not seen a single peep about the movie over here . . . my frustration doth overwhem mineself), they're also letting me know what an incredibly neat event I am missing and that we just don't have incredibly kool cons like that on this side of the Big Blue. Oh, sure, we have some kool events like cosplay but nothing as neat as some of the cons these folks go to. Almost makes me regret living in Asia . . . almost. It was nice to see that David's kids enjoy cosplaying as well. My daughter Kaye has been cosplaying at comic conventions here since she was four years old.

Wow. Good stuff.

Thank you, my friends . . . thou hast fed mine ego most heartily! That is a WONDERFUL set . . . just plain WOW! You folks are just plain grrreeat!

See all the fansign posts here and see the full gallery here.

3D titbits . . . er . . . tidbits . . .

I LOVE stereoscopic 3D photography and film. Really, I do.

Well, here are some bits that I wasn't expecting to find surfing the great webspace . . .

3D Living Dolls . . . 3D photos and the like of ultra-realistic sex dolls.

The Stewardesses . . . a classic pornographic film comes to you in 3D. Be sure to check out the links section as well as the photos.

Some of the material is NSFW, so be forewarned.

Hmmm. Well, for less "colorful" 3D photos, check out my main 3D gallery as well as my Cosplay 3D gallery. Of course, my posts on the topic here can be found in the 3D category. If you're interesed, join the 3D Stereoview Exchange, a group of 3D photographers from all over the planet who share their work with one another.

All the best,
Brian

Cosplay this Weekend!

A query via email that's worth repeating as the info may be of use to others here on our beautiful happy island . . . with personal info removed:

Hey

Hello to you too. Hi, ___, nice to meet you. :-)

I came across your website while looking up CosPlay in Taiwan.

May I ask which of my umpteen-million-ish websites did you find? I have more than one that mentions cosplay.

I too am a photographer and would love to shoot one of these events. My students told me awhile back that there would be another festival at Tai-Da University in February and I'm wondering if you have any information about it. It would be greatly appreciated.

Well, you almost missed it! :-)

There is a big Cosplay event this weekend Feb. 19-20 at NTU in and around the new gymnasium there (the lake also has potential on non-rainy days). When it is not raining folks will be outside for photos and inside for the comic book convention. If it's raining then photographs will happen inside the gym in the upper levels while the convention mall is in the court. This weekend's event is a combo with both Comic World Taipei and FF so it should be worthwhile. The last one has poor attendance but as students will be back in town from their holiday and it's two major conventions in the same venue, this one should prove worthwhile.

Our daughter Kaye will participate along with a friend. It's a great activity. Our daughter has been participating since she was a tyke . . . albeit, most of the cosplayers are a bit older.

I have a TON of photos at http://public.fotki.com/briandavidphillips/cosplay/ and if you check http://cospho.dyndns.ws/~zordius every so often, you can take a peek at the albums and the calendar that Zordius keeps online there. It's pretty much the best (only) English-language calendar of this type (if you can read Chinese, that version of his page has more info but I am illiterate and have to make due with the English). There are usually links in the Chinese forums to the local sponsorship pages so you can check those as well (or have someone check for you). I also periodically will post the big event announcements on my blog at http://briandavidphillips.typepad.com/brian/ although that won't have the smaller events (we pretty much just go to the CW and CWT events in Taipei as they are the largest and most easily accessible).

If you're going, say howdy to me if you see me . . . I will be the big goofy looking white guy with a large gut and bushy beard and curly hair.

BTW, as I don't know you . . . where do you teach? How long have you been in Taiwan? Married? Kids? We're always on the lookout for potential playmates for our daughter if you and yours fit the bill . . . if not, that's okay, nice to meet you anyway. :-)

All the best,
Brian

Cosplay . . .Comic World Taipei 8

Last weekend, the Phillips family along with Gareth and Michael Cheng attended the cosplay at Comic World Taipei 8 held at National Taiwan University. Kaye and her friend Gareth went dressed in Quidditch uniforms from Harry Potter that Lorraine picked up during her Cannes trip this year.

Kaye Phillips, Michael Cheng, Lorraine Phillips, and Gareth Cheng

Pikachu and Kaye Phillips

Watch out where you point that thing!

Lovely and Deadly!

For some reason I took a ton of photos of this girl.

The regular photo gallery of our pictures from the event is here while the 3D photos are here.

Good stuff. There were some wonderful costumes, although attendance was down. We suspect this was partly due to increased cut-throat competition among cosplay venues of late but mostly due to the national elections held this weekend. A lot of folks who normally would have come were probably out of Taipei and in their home towns so they could vote.

After the cosplay, we went to a Magic Night performance at National Taipei University hosted by their magic club. There were folks from a number of other university clubs there as well (including NCCU, the university at which I teach). Kaye and Gareth are attending performance magic classes together and so it was particularly nice for them to see university students performing some of the tricks they both know . . . reinforcing the idea that it's not just the complexity of the trick that matters, but in the artistry and context created within the performance. For instance, they both know how to perform the Chinese rings but it is still nice to see someone perform them with skill and beauty. The dove production performance was the hit of the evening as far as Kaye was concerned.

Rumble Roses . . .

Picked up the PS2 game Rumble Roses . . . a bit of a guy title with hot babes wrestling one another . . . good stuff . . . take a look at the cosplayers at the UK premiere . . . Rumble Roses Premiere . . . even more good stuff.

Cosplay . . . DragonCon 2003

Some great DragonCon costumes . . . DragonCon 2003 . . . cosplay!

Anime Expo 2004 . . . wow

Hello Kenney has some great shots from Anime Expo 2004 in his galleries at Cosplay Universe.

Wow.

Now, why don't we have more cosplayers like that in Taipei?

Comic World Taipei Seven

I submitted a full-frame non wobble version of this image to the 3D-StereoviewXchange.

Comic World Taipei 7 was held Father's Day, Aug 8, 2004 - the Chinese numbers 8-8 are homonyms for the Chinese word for Father "BaBa" - at National Taiwan University. We only went to the one day for a couple hours. I used my Canon Digital Rebel and the Loreo 3D-Lens-in-a-Cap attachment. I then batch processed the images that survived with Anabuilder. This image is of a couple girls in cosplay dressed like two of the female characters from the Dynasty Warriors videogame which is based upon the Romance of the Three Kingdoms classic Chinese novel. The rest of the images are in the gallery here.

Alisa's Cosplay

Alisa's Cosplay site has some wonderful costume concepts and photos alongside artwork from the cosplay inspirations from Alisa Marie Farrington. The site deserves the spot at Top Lady Cosplayers.

Cosplay

Evidently, the Taipei Times has FINALLY discovered cosplay.

See my archives at http://public.fotki.com/briandavidphillips/ for event information go to Cospho Up as the list maintained by Zordius is much more up-to-date. The galleries are nice as well.

New Galleries Up

I may be offline for a couple days, but in the meantime, I have uploaded a few more Cosplay and Interactive Drama galleries in my
Fotki Galleries.

I will upload a lot more when we get back up and running.

From my initial impressions, it seems that Fotki may be what I'm after for an image server. I will play around with the co-branding features in the next week or so as that's something I really want to have.

Most likely, I will move my Typepad galleries to Fotki as I want one central space for my galleries I'd like to keep the Typepad space open for journal-related files - besides Fotki's premium service allows blog posting of images.

Fantasy Frontier and Comic World Photos Online

I put the recent cosplay photos from last weekend's combined Comic World and Fantasy Frontier events in Taipei up on my fotki page at http://public.fotki.com/briandavidphillips/ - I will put more up as I get time. I am trying the fotki servers out to see how I like them. My personal server kind of sucks and the other webspaces have limits on how much storage you can use that make them impractical for what I do. BTW, you can dowload the original file if you are a fotki member if these views are too small for you - you can set the albums to allow follks to order prints as well but that's not as pertinent to our needs here. A nifty thing that fotki has which many of the other servers of this type don't have is co-branding which lets you merge the fotki page with your regular pages so the photos are hosted at fotki but displayed on your regular page which will help me in upgrading my rather pissy server's galleries.

Most likely, the interactive drama photos for our classes and for the Taipei-ITS group will go up here eventually as well.

I will put up a subdirectory for Lorraine and one for Kaye as well.

Eventually . . . that's right . . . I'll get around to it some day.

Blue White Dragon takes Flight

This is a drawing Kaye drew on a napkin during dinner at a Thai restraunt in downtown Taipei. That's her D&D character, Wolfie, an elven druid, with her Eagle companion (her other animal companion is not in the drawing, a greater wolf) and Kaye's familiar, Blue White Dragon (Blue White is the dragon's name and color - actually, it's blue with a white belly). Clidk on the thumbnail to see a larger version.

Kaye has had a dragon animal spirit guide since she was tiny when I would do guided imageries with her before sleep. She now has a few of them but Blue White is her favorite, her special dream friend.

Kaye's been getting into D&D quite a bit of late and at nine years of age is ready to become a Dungeon Master. Gareth ran a game last weekend and so this time around she wanted to run one. I recognized the plot of the game as it was based upon one of the many dragon stories she tells during long car trips.

We went to Alchemy after dinner and picked up some D&D miniatures (the plastic ones in a randomized collectible box). Kaye also wanted one of the metal dragon figures but as they are unpainted they just don't work for us (we suck at painting figures and it just takes too much time - I love the cheaper plastic pre-painted miniatures).

Go Go . . . Power Rangers?

I don't remember the Power Rangers looking quite like this. Feel free to send me the DVD.

Lord Voldemort Zapped By Hermione Granger . . . wobble 3D

Here is Lord Voldemort getting zapped by Hermione Granger and Harry Potter (well, actually, it’s my buddy Michael Cheng being magickally attacked by my wand wielding daughter, Kaye, and his son, Gareth). The image quality is not the best, actually, it’s not even close to it . . . I find my Loreo MK II has a very very weak flash to the point that even outdoor shots in bright sunlight look underexposed. This was taken with the recommended 200 ASA film (400 also comes out poorly). One has to be very close to a subject (pretty much portrait headshot distance) to get reasonable flash results. My other Loreos did not have as problematic a flash. The negative was scanned onto CD by the Fuji developers and I used both Stereo Image Factory and Photoshop to make adjustments before saving the wobble via Anabuilder.

Hermione and Harry (Kaye and Gareth Cosplay)

This past weekend was the latest Comic World event at National Taiwan University and Kaye and Gareth went as Hermione Granger and Harry Potter from the Harry Potter books (movies). Michael, Gareth's dad and my best friend, went in costume as well but none of my photos of him turned out right . . . most suckful.

Lorraine made all the costumes . . . as always . . . she worked a LOT on the suckers . . . she was up until four in the morning and got up early to do finishing touches.

It was really nice. A lot of people took photos of the two . . . they weren't the only Potter characters in attendance but they were the most age-appropriate and - in my opinion - the best.

The cold weather kept a lot of people home this time around so attendance was down . . . which is really too bad as the NTU venue is so much better than the other places they hold the events. The organizers need to have more guest artists and the like to attract fans . . . albeit, we go for the cosplay.

Lorraine will tweak the costumes before the next event in January.

Digital Rebel . . . got the stuff but no camera . . . still

Just a quick update on the woes and trials and just plain waiting and waiting and waiting for the stereodigicam kit . . . today, we went out and picked up a new 1 Gigabyte Compact Flash for use with the new setup . . . we've got that and we've got the Loreo 3D Lens in a Cap . . . but we're still missing the key element . . . the Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel . . . still waiting. For the saga of all the frustration go here and browse the previous posts on the subject.

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone in Taiwan actually is using one of these cameras . . . Lorraine tells me she's seen a few of them selling for way over market prices on Taiwan Ebay so somebody got them . . . the toadies.

The service we ordered the camera from tells us that if we see it in the stores then buy it and they will refund, otherwise, we just keep the order and wait . . . for the two months before they can get stock from Canon.

In future, I really hope they handle things better. This has been a debacle and a half. One thing that's really frustrating is the guys in the States who I told I was getting the kit way back when, the same guys who had to delay buying theirs, are now happily shooting away with their "late" kits and I was going to be the early bird on this one. Grrr grrr grrr . . . he says venting into cyberspace where the grrring will just hit a blank datawall somewhere . . . I wonder if you're posting into blogland like this if anyone really heres you when you vent . . . the old riddle about the bear in the woods has even more meaning here ("if a bear shits in the middle of the forest, does it make a sound?" is actually relevant to "when someone posts into a blog that no one reads does it have meaning?"). Well, I know I have a couple readers, random passersby in the electronic wilderness and so it's not a fair question . . . or perhaps I don't and it is).

In any case, I will not be shooting Digital Rebel stereopics at the next Comic World this weekend after all. I am either going to go chacha with the pentax (or non-stereo completely to save time) or use film in an old Loreo and have the developer put the prints on CD (Lorraine doesn't like the latter as the quality for the Loreo print cameras are way below what we get with digital and she doesn't like chachas with the Pentax as they take forever and it's a bit rude and a half to ask folks to freeze while you snap their photo, twice, with a camera that has huge shutter delay and save times that measure into the eons).

Regardless of how I shoot the shots, stereoscopic or not, I will probably go ahead and upload them to my 3D Cosplay archive - or into a new gallery here.

Ah well, eventually I will get my Dream Camera . . . albeit the 3D Digital Rebel will have to come first . . . hopefully soon, that way I won't have to keep boring readers here with my frustration and venting and I can start posting some amazing shots for you to enjoy . . . I do owe you that much.

If this little rant hasn't frightened you away completely, check out the 3D pages at Taipei Stereographic. Once I do actually have the beastie, I will post some galleries here as well. In the meantime, check out the other Life of Brian 3D Stereophotography posts and join the 3D StereoviewXchange.

Temple of the Winds . . . updates . . . yaargh

Michael Cheng and I will be running the Temple of the Winds interactive drama (freeform live action roleplaying game) by Morgana Cowling for our combined Oral Training and Reading courses in a couple weeks and are faced with the unenviable position of needing to update the scenario, that is add an additional twenty or so characters to be able to run the piece with all the students participating.

Basically, we split the work so that his class takes on the roles of two clans and one outsider contingent and my class takes on the roles of the other two clans and the other outsiders.

Adding the extra characters is a bit of a pain but since Michael did all the work on the Soap Opera piece we ran a few weeks back, I promised I would do the work for this one.

Gloom and despair right now . . . but when it's ready it should be a whale of an experience . . . excellent for oral training practice (English conversation, mostly) as well as a chance for the students to practice all the influence and persuasion skills we've been drumming into them this semester.

It's going to be a costume affair this time around so it should be a lot of fun. There are some shots of our previous non-educational run here and here.

Now that we've rediscovered the joys of tabletop roleplaying and have started doing larger pieces with our students . . . who knows . . . perhaps the Taipei Interactive Theatre Society can finally come out of hiatus and we can start running regular monthly costume roleplay games again . . . here's hoping.

Gosurori . . . Gothic Lolita . . .

Gosurori are girls in Japan who combine Goth and Lolita sensibilities. Like their Western Goth counterparts, they wear the dark and the lace and mope about death and the like but these girls are also fixated into the little girl sensibilities . . . often to the point of being dysfunctionally shy and speaking in baby talk . . . yet, they are comforable wearing their sexy little girl goth outfits on the subway.

According to Waiwai, Hirokazu Hasegawa, a Tokai Women's University professor, has counseled many gosurori kids and finds them to be a paradox:

Nearly all of the (gosurori) kids I've met are serious students who attend school regularly. But the common thread in their characters is their inability to gain joy from real life. They may be good students, but they're only top students because they are forced to be. Poor parental relationships stand out, but there's also something cold and barren about them. They can't find anything to be happy about in life, so they go off into their own world and then hang out with like-minded people who are doing the same.

I'm all for free expression of one's sexuality and fantasy . . . but the child fixation is more than a bit dysfunctional.

3D Digital Rebel . . . trials, tribulations, and more woes!

I am not a happy camper . . . a whole lot. Earlier, I posted about my ever increasing desire to combine a Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel with a Loreo 3D Lens in a Cap and all the frustration from a lack of supply coupled with lies told by salesmen about the availability of the beastie . . . well, now it gets worse.

Lorraine got a notice today from the company that we ordered the camera from . . . the folks that originally told us "one week" maximum . . . and then after two and a half weeks changed it to "three more weeks" . . . well, now they're telling us that the Canon folks have screwed everyone in Taiwan and that resupplies will come in "two months at the latest" . . . two months! I could have ordered the damned thing from the US and have been taking photos for two months already! We want to buy locally to have more convenience if there's a problem but they're making it awfully inconvenient. I made plans based upon their original assessment and passed up other opportunities as they assured us we'd get our product now they're bending us over and playing hide the baseball bat!

What really bugs me . . . well, one more thing that bugs me . . . is that I was really looking forward to going to the next Comic World in less than two weeks and taking a ton of 3D Cosplay photos with the new rig since we'd been promised it would arrive well in time. Grrr and oh, woe is me.

I'm really pissed at Canon now . . . not so much I'd give up completely on the camera and go buy something else . . . I still really want this camera . . . but enough to feel very bitter about the whole experience. They really blew it on this one. Parts of the camera are manufactured here in Taiwan, and yet they over-marketed and undersupplied. Since they don't have an office branch here yet rely on a license, they did not watch the market as carefully as they should have. Because of this, a lot of dealers are doing very well in turning unsatisfied buyers to other brand products - even more expensive products - because of the degree of consumer frustration. In fact, this is turning into a selling strategy to unload nonmoving products, some salesmen are increasing the frustration in an effort to turn sales to a readily available more expensive product.

If I can't have my Dream Camera . . . then at least let me have my Brian's 3D Digital Rebel . . . this year, not next.

If this little rant hasn't frightened you away completely, check out the 3D pages at Taipei Stereographic. Once I do actually have the beastie, I will post some galleries here as well. In the meantime, check out the other Life of Brian 3D Stereophotography posts and join the 3D StereoviewXchange.

Comic World Cosplay

There is going to be another Comic World cosplay event the weekend of Nov. 29-30. We have a dinner engagement for Sunday evening so we'll try to make it on Saturday. I really hope that I have the Digital Rebel and Loreo 3D Lens-in-a-Cap setup by then. I am super eager for more stereographic cosplay photos! Color me excited.

Cosplay is a hobby of dressing up in costume and playing the role of a character from Japanese manga, anime, or games. See the CosPho Up Commission webpages for more. If you look through the gallery archives, you will find images of my daughter Kaye at various ages, mostly in Cardcaptor Sakura or Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Dynasty Warriors) costumes. You can see more of Kaye at my own Cosplay in 3Dsite.

Cospho . . . cool cosplay in Taipei

Zordius, the brains and camera behind the wonderful CosPho Up Commission webpages, has created a wonderful resource for folks interested in Cosplay.

For those not in the know . . . Cosplay is a hobby of dressing up in costume and playing the role of a character from Japanese manga, anime, or games. There are a few cosplay events in Taiwan . . . well, actually quite a lot of them . . . and Zordius has managed to chronicle quite a number of them. The Cospho site is not just for folks in Taiwan, it is very useful for folks anywhere in the world who have an interest in cosplay . . . and it's trilingual!

If you look through the gallery archives, you will find images of my daughter Kaye at various ages, mostly in Cardcaptor Sakura or Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Dynasty Warriors) costumes. You can see more of Kaye at my own Cosplay in 3D site.

I Really MUST Have This

Ever since Canon announced it's new EOS 300D series of cheaper (read not as expensive as usual) digital SLR cameras, I've been chomping at the bit . . . not because I need a new digital camera, have two, but because I've been dreaming of having a good digital stereophotography system for a looonnnngggg time and so I'm hoping that the LOREO 3D Lens in a Cap will be compatible with my dreams. Since the 300D is evidently a feature-reduced 10D with an EOS 300 body, I am hopeful . . . particularly since the Loreo pages have plenty of good sample images of the 3D system working with both the 10D and 300 cameras. I've emailed Tony Lo and Loreo for some clarifications but I am hopeful. If I do get the system, then expect a ton of digital stereophotographs to flood the galleries here.

I have about fifteen traditional film stereocameras but find I prefer the Realist over any of them . . . unfortunately, it weighs a ton and so I find myself carting my Pentax Optio digital around instead which does have a 3D mode but I find it is too much ma-fan to bother with and I've been mostly unsatisifed with the 3D photos that I've come up with.

I've pretty much switched over to one hundred percent digital but really want to get back into shooting as much 3D as I used to (at one cosplay weekend I took over seven hundred stereo photos a couple years ago . . . I miss that).

I wish more companies would take a hint from Pentax and include a stereo mode but make it more useful and quicker than the chacha option they use.