Just like that, Christmas is over.

[plonq]

This was a good Christmas, in part because I managed to squeeze ten days off work over the holiday season. I needed that time away, if only because I was starting to feel a bit stabby around some of my co-workers. If I am going to go out with a bang, I would prefer it to hit the headlines as "Man Spontaneously Turns Into Antimatter; Earth Destroyed" rather than "Man Goes All Stabby At Work But Only Manages To Off Himself In A Very Humiliating Manner."

If I have not mentioned it here yet, it is worth noting that I am envious of the view from my brother's apartment:


The apartment itself is nice, but small. My brother, his wife and their big dumb (friendly, but dumb) labradoodle share a living space that can't be much more than ~400 square feet. It's ... cosy.

Against my better judgement, I have decided to tackle a Picture a Day project again this year. It has been long enough since my previous attempt that my brain has sufficiently numbed itself to the strain of trying to take at least one decent picture every day for 365 - ack! There are 366 days this year! What have I done?

Here is the first:


I am hoping that it will be a bit easier and less stressful this year than in past years because I have a phone with a decent camera now, and I seldom leave the house without it. Part of the challenge the first year I did this was having to pack my DSLR with me everywhere I went.

On the subject of my phone, I have noticed that it adds a very slight blue tinge to darker areas of the pictures. I can compensate somewhat by adjusting the colour balance in post-production, but it is still slightly annoying. I have heard of other phones that experience this problem, so I know it is not unusual. Fortunately it only manifests itself in pictures where I've had to boost the exposure level to bring out detail (like this one). You can see it in the lower left corner of this shot, though I managed to compensate for it a bit by adding some vignette to the shot.

Comments

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

If you turned into antimatter it would not destroy the Earth. Back of the envelope: annihilating 100 kg of antimatter (being generous there) with 100 kg of matter liberates 200 x (3 x 10^8)^2 = 1.8 x 10^19 J, or the equivalent of about 4 gigatons of TNT. This would make a nice big crater but it wouldn't be world destroying. I have neglected 14C pollution from liberated neutrons interacting with atmospheric nitrogen.