One of the amazing things about the world of Harry Potter is that no matter how many times you read the books or surf the web for HP related content, there’s always something new to discover. My HP “discovery” of the week is J.K. Rowling’s website, and although it is neither new nor obscure, it is well worth checking out if, like me, you’ve never found your way there before.

Rowling’s website is unique in that it isn’t just a tool for spitting out a montage of boring facts and dates, but in true “Dumbledorean” fashion, is a multi-layered puzzle that must be worked through and solved to access the whole of its content. Of course, most of the site is very straight-forward, but the puzzles unlock extra features, usually in the form of copies of handwritten early drafts and drawings from the HP series, which are fascinating to look at.

If the task of solving a series of puzzles sounds daunting, but you would like to see the extra content, this forum is extremely helpful. It has instructions for solving each of the puzzles.  Another fun aspect of the site, which also includes a series of puzzles (via Time Turner), is the Room of Requirement. Helpful information for solving this series of puzzles can be found here.

Click this link to apparate to J.K. Rowling’s website.  Happy puzzling or browsing, whichever you prefer.

I know I am a bit late in the game, but I watched Black Swan tonight and it turned out to be a great way to spend an hour and forty-five minutes.  The movie is a piece of artwork.  From the first scene to the last, my eyes were glued to the screen.  The camera angles, the ubiquitous use of the mirror, and the lighting gave the movie a dramatic and hypnotizing effect.  The cinematography is incredible.

The color palate is mute because the movie circles around images of black and white.  What happens by continual scenes of black and white is that the play of the light is extremely important and extremely visible.  The director is not concerned with directing color in his images, but controlling light, which juxtaposes shading, brightness, and haziness from one scene to the next, dramatizing the bipolar distinction between black and white.

Black Swan is broken down into formal elements in order to cast the correct mood and energy in each scene.  The director and cinematographer paid close attention to angles, line, form and movement.  The scenes are always shifting quickly from one angle to the next, consuming the viewer with different perspectives.  These different perspectives opens up the world into the black swan white swan dichotomy, shifting so quickly from one point of view to the next leaving the viewer uncertain of who’s who.  Line, form and movement play equal parts and are seen most heavily in the dancing by the ballerinas.  The dancers are moving eloquently and we as the viewers see their forms as linear gestures through space.  Their bodies are graceful and flowing, almost like a brush on a canvas.  This movie actually reminds me a lot of Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm.

Pollock’s painting is a world of tangled lines and movements that look chaotic, yet there is something about these movements collectively that make the canvas appear as one solid entity.  The cinematography is shown in this light because it takes from so many different angles and shows layer upon layer of images in the mirrors, yet through this bustle and noise the viewer still sees the soft motions and beauty through the grotesque.

Oftentimes, a long exposure (or slow shutter speed) is unintentional (it’s too dark, so your camera keeps the shutter open longer to compensate) and undesired (results in blurring, too much light, blurring, graininess, blurring). But you can use it to your advantage. Most cameras have a mode you can control shutter speed in, usually marked S or Tv. Don’t worry about anything else; the camera’ll take care of most of it. It’s quite straightforward: 1/200 is 1/200 of a second, for instance. 2 is two seconds. We’ll want something closer to the latter, but it all depends on the situation, and even then experimentation is the way to go.

Keep in mind that you will not want your camera to move, at all. Set it on a wall, in a tripod, on a box, suspend it from a banister if you must (though this is not recommended). Let’s proceed.

1) Traffic

It’s all about moving points of light blending all into one continuous stream. This works best at night, around twilight, any time of low light. Point your camera at the street, preferably not directly from the side/perpendicular to the traffic flow. We want to see headlights and taillights. Looking down at a busy overpass or road from above, if you can get it, may prove even more interesting. And there you are, a smooth river of red and/or white light, full of glow but strangely absent of car.

2) In Broad Daylight

Smoothen out running water, blur a passing train or bustling crowd. It’s often more interesting if there’s a still subject somewhere in there, something or someone who does not move while everything else swirls all around. Panning is another option. Track the dog or the cyclist or the child across your frame of view. You are ideally somewhere off to the side of their line of movement, because you don’t want to worry about focusing on something far away and then close up. It would also help to not be barreled over. The subject will end up mostly clear while the background blurs away into abstract streaks. Trial and error is the key.

3) Snow

Snow or sand is strangely reflectively bright at night, even without help of moon or streetlamp. Alternatively, try exposing moon-lit landscapes. It’s dim, but if you leave the shutter open for long enough a sufficient amount of light will get in there eventually. Again, avoid jostling the camera.

4) Stars

You’ve probably seen startrails at one point or another. It features a graceful arc of stars sweeping across the sky. This involves leaving your shutter open for longer periods of time, like minutes or hours. Sometimes your camera’ll allow it, other other times not. If Bulb (shutter stays open until you tell it it’s done) is an option, this may be the time to experiment with it. Find dark areas with open sky and little light pollution, as even the smallest amount of light (from the lamp two streets down) might register and potentially blot out the dimmer stars. You will probably want a tripod. And a clear night.

5) Lightpainting

Find a dark place. A room will suffice. Set your camera down and get in front of it (employ self-timer or a friend). Bring out the penlights and LEDs and the string lights from last Christmas. Pretty much anything will work, as long as it doesn’t give off too much light. Try different colors. Wave it around, draw pictures, plot out and follow precise diagrams (some people build extensive rigs with which to swing about their lights- it’s an art and a science). Do not fear trial and error; it is your friend.

And that’s all for this week on Fun Things to Do With Your Camera.

Generally when one hears about a man-made object on the bottom of the ocean floor, particularly a work of art, one will assume that it made its way there by accident. And, in a typical art gallery, in an effort to minimize damaging effects on the artwork, signs are posted reading “do not touch” and “no food or drink.”  One artist, Jason deCaires Taylor is challenging these conventions in his underwater sculpture installations, although, unless you’re a fish the “do not touch” rule still applies.

Taylor’s sculptures function as anchors for artificial coral reefs – artificial in the sense that coral couldn’t develop on the locations before, because there were no surfaces stable enough to support its growth. In some of the installations, coral began to colonize the sculptures naturally, while in others, already damaged or fragmented pieces of coral were “planted” in holes in the sculptures to give them a chance at new life.

Ever-changing, each sculpture functions as a piece of “living” art – its appearance in a constant state of metamorphosis due to the organisms whose life it supports. In some of the pieces, coral growth appears sporadic and untamed, but in others, such as “La Jardinera del la Experanza” and “Hombre en Llamas,” it is clear that the artist had a fairly specific plan in mind for coral growth.

Along with his underwater pieces and utilizing the same artistic principles, Taylor has started to experiment with “living” art out of the water. His shore-bound installation consists of a hollowed out sculpture filled with soil, compost, and seeds. The piece is covered with holes that plant life may grow through, so the sculpture will be in a constant state of growth and change with the seasons.

If you would like to check out Taylor’s work for yourself, click here to be directed to his website.

As the weather continues to come in shades of grey and cold spells, my friends feel compelled to bake, bake, and bake some more.  The amount of baked goods that have gone through my fingers and up to my mouth recently has been astronomical.  Absurd, grotesque even!  At one point in time I had a cake, cookies, and even back up cookies in my possession (not including the ice cream that slept in my freezer).  I received my grandmother’s sweet tooth passed unto my father and then to me.

I have trained myself not to buy donuts, cookies, brownies, and other delicious sweets because it is a temptatious battle I know I will surely loose.  However, just because I don’t buy these delicacies, doesn’t mean that I don’t know, rather rely on people who do; thus, the result of copious amounts of sweets recently in my possession.  I would say currently, but my addiction is strong, and well, they have all been eaten.

I will end this rant with a recipe that will surely win you friends and foes alike.  It is called “Better than Sex cake.”

Better than Sex Cake

1 box German Chocolate Cake

½ (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

6 ounces caramel ice cream topping

3 bars chocolate covered toffee (health bars), chopped

1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed

1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Bake the cake according to package directions and sprinkle about a cup of chocolate chips over the batter after it is in the pan, but before you bake it.
2. Once the cake is baked, take it out of the oven and poke holes in it with a knife.  It doesn’t have to be neat.  Then pour the caramel and condensed milk over the cake, rubbing it in until it is melted into the cake.
3. Once the cake is cooled, top it with the whipping topping.
4. Lastly, sprinkle the health bar over top.

Voila! Enjoy!

There has always been a great deal of debate over what is right. We have a preoccupation, it seems, with grammatical correctness. Speaking well is a matter of using the right words, pronouncing them in a certain fashion, using proper grammar. Proper writing or speech is equated with prestige, with professionalism, with being better. We consult dictionaries, grammar books, attend classes, worry about whether we are phrasing something correctly, worry about how others might judge us if we don’t. Self-styled Grammar Nazis patrol the world over for Proper English. I myself have been rather liberal with the red pen, unable to resist marking anything from misspelled signs to exam forms. I’ve liked more than one “Using Proper Spelling and Grammar” page on Facebook.

I know I’m guilty.

In fact, this sort of prescriptivism has not always been the case. Only after English’s evolution slowed and spellings became more standardized did people start intending to standardize spelling. The advent of the printing press led to a greater distribution and greater accessibility to printed material. A middle class began to form. People desired upward social mobility, observed how the well-to-do used language, and began concerning themselves with how they themselves ought to speak.

Should the debate, then, rest not on what usages are correct, but whether we ought to continue separating right and wrong? Who sets the bar? Who determines what rules are more correct than others? What’s deemed correct is by no means the most logical. However much people like to mourn the “decay” of the English language, language change is inevitable. New words and usages that appeared a hundred years ago might have been decried and met with panic and scorn, but seem perfectly normal to us today.

Recently the Oxford English Dictionary, known for being one of the more conservative, authoritative publications, made headlines for adding several new entries. These entries happened to be slang. Predictably, some people frowned, others panicked. And it is difficult, sometimes, to think about how what we’ve labored so long to learn, to perfect, to perpetuate, might really be unstable and fleeting in the long run.

At the same time, it is still probably a good idea to keep in mind that there is a fine line between using and advocating spelling and grammar that is generally agreed to be a correct standard for practical purposes (professionalism, academia, communication between different dialects, etc) and lording the correctness over others as a form of intellectual superiority. There’s an amusing meme floating around the internet called the English Major Armadillo, which features a great deal of geeking out about language and literature, and a fair share of moaning and groaning about the inability of others to use proper spelling and grammar. For the most part, it’s all in good fun.

There was a period, though, when many of the ones people were generating had the text running across the top explaining another’s grammatical mistake, for instance, and the bottom text some violent action in retaliation. The prevalence of the attitude poses the question: is it necessary, or fair, to place the greatest value on such basic mechanics? What about content, or cohesiveness, or intent? Many times, it feels as if being “good at English” translates to “good spelling and grammar.” My standard used to be “no excuse for poor spelling or grammar unless English is a second language or you have a serious disability.” But while being able to communicate cleanly and clearly is important, as may be having a standard by which to align multiple other standards, mechanics is not the only, or the most important feature of communication. We should continue to learn, use, and implement this accepted standard, but perhaps we should also consider toning down the neuroticsm.