maandag 14 december 2015

Star Wars : The Force Awakens

One more day and then Belgium will host the first official screenings of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Here some pictures i took at various Star Wars fan conventions.

donderdag 19 november 2015

Tested for you: PortraitPro 15

Imagine you have a whole bunch of photos of the family but when you look at them you see that you’ve accidentally highlighted your mum's wrinkles and your dad looks like an eggplant.

No worries. Load up Portrait Professional 15 and within a matter of minutes you will have your parents look young and fresh again. You can even give them a bit of make up.

Of course, this software isn’t limited for use with your home photos. If you happen to be designing a fashion magazine cover and the photographer’s model is looking a little less than perfect, you could either spend a few hours tweaking the photo pixel by pixel in PhotoShop or you could let Portrait Professional automate the process in a fraction of the time.

This is how it works. You start by loading up a photo. Portrait Professional takes a few seconds to identify the face and draw lines over the principal elements – eyes, eyebrows, nose, lips, chin. Now you click a button to tell the program to treat this face as a male or female, adult or child. It applies some standard enhancements to the photo and shows the original in one half of the screen and the enhanced image in the other. If the standard enhancement looks OK, that’s it – you can save the new image to disk as JPG, TIFF or PNG file. But the chances are that you’ll want to make a few adjustments to optimise the image processing first. If the image elements were not perfectly identified you can drag the lines to reshape the eyes, chin and so on. Then again, maybe the standard options don’t make your model look glamorous enough. You can apply a different set of parameters just by picking a different ‘preset’ from a panel – ‘Female Glamorous’, for instance, may make a few more adjustments to the shape and proportions of the face than ‘Female Standard’. There are presets for women and men, girls and boys.

And if that still doesn’t give quite the effect you are searching for, you can go on to set individual parameters one by one, using a set of ‘portrait improving’ sliders which give you a finer level of control over things such as the amount of skin smoothing, how wide the eyes are (are they fully open or partially shut?), how plump the lips are and so on. Using these controls you can substantially change the appearance of a face and you may need to exercise some self-control. After all, you probably still want Cousin Alfred to be able to recognise Aunty Bertha! Smooth out too many wrinkles, narrow the nose too much, make the neck too long and add a bit too much blusher and she might not even recognise herself!

The plain truth of the matter is that Portrait Professional lets you make adjustments that range from the subtle to the grotesque. Most of the time, you will probably aiming for the subtle end of the spectrum but, ultimately, the choice is yours.

This is a great program that really makes light work of doing everything from removing small imperfections and skin blemishes to transforming rather mundane portraits into magazine-ready ‘glamour’ shots

maandag 26 oktober 2015

Beyond God Live in Diest

Het vroeger legendarische muziekcafé The Borderline in Diest is al meer dan een jaar omgevormd tot de rock- en metalclub Moonlight Music Hall.

Gisterenavond stonden daar twee metal bands op de affiche die één ding gemeen hadden: ze waren beide "female fronted", zoals dat heet in het jargon.

Tweede groep op de affiche was Beyond God uit Nederland, een symfonische metal band die je enigzins kan vergelijken met Within Temptation. Mooie zang, melodieuze songs en een dosis theatraal spektakel (niet negatief bedoeld).

Eind november komt hun eerste CD op de markt, en daaruit hebben zij een selectie gespeeld in Diest.

Setlist
1. Destination Darkness
2. Sail Away upon a Cloud
3. Helios
4. Memories
5. Prince Creep
6. Sonambula
7. Cursed
8. Nocturne
9. The Collector
10.Passion

Line-up
- Ferry Guns - Drums
- Twan Smolders - Guitar
- Lukasz Kubaszak - Bass
- Meryl Foreman - Vocals

zondag 25 oktober 2015

Splendidula Live in Diest

Het vroeger legendarische muziekcafé The Borderline in Diest is al meer dan een jaar omgevormd tot de rock- en metalclub Moonlight Music Hall.

Gisterenavond stonden daar twee metal bands op de affiche die één ding gemeen hadden: ze waren beide "female fronted", zoals dat heet in het jargon.

Eerste groep op de affiche was Splendidula.

Het is niet makkelijk om deze groep in een hokje te plaatsen. Als je puur kijkt naar de samenstelling en de sfeer, zou je kunnen zeggen dat ze Gothic Metal brengen. Maar de variatie in de nummers dekt deze lading niet volledig. Het gebruik van het brede stembereik van zangeres Kristien Cools en het stevige drumwerk van Patrick Vanderhenst tillen deze groep een niveau hoger.

Mijn favoriete stukjes waren Dollywood, Overshadow en Too Close to Me.

Setlist
Dollywood
Waltzing Sixteen
Overshadow
Insanity
Drogen für Leichen
Aturienoto
Isolation
Too Close to Me

Line-up
Dimitry Vermeire - Bas
Patrick Vanderhenst - Drum
Adriaan Paszewski - Gitaar
David Vandegoor - Gitaar
Kristien Cools - Zang

zaterdag 19 september 2015

Quiz: Dance Movie Quotes

A little trivia quiz to keep you occupied.

Below you will find 10 quotes from famous dance/musical movies. Do you know the names of the movies?

Please only one answer per person, so that everybody can get a crack at them.

There is nothing material to win, just fame and a good feeling :)

Oh, and no cheating please :) no googling, Binging, etc...

1. "What's the loveliest word in the English language, officer? In the sound it makes in the mouth? In the shape it makes in the page? "E-L-B-O-W"

2. "I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do! I do! I do! I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do! I do! I do! I do!"

3. "We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline."

4. "The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries"

5. "You know when the camera goes really big and it comes up out of the roof, and you just know that it's gonna end? I hate that. "

6. "There's nothing more irresistible to a man than a woman who's in love with him"

7. " The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated."

8. "I have sailed the world, beheld its wonders, from the Dardanelles to the mountains of Peru. But there's no place like London."

9. "Never fall in love with a woman who sells herself. It always ends bad."

10. "Oh, come on, ladies. God wouldn't have given you maracas if He didn't want you to shake 'em. "