epiic (SpookyElectric)

Busy week. I'm behind in reading posts. I hope to catch on reading up before PMX.
I'll be at Yaoicon this weekend. Finally wearing Nyx.
I'll be at PMX too. Anyone looking for photoshoots?
No AUSA, as much as I'd like to.
I will be visiting the east coast briefly in Dec though.

Broken Lane performing at Anime Expo

B&W processing is expensive O.o! Too bad my developer tank & D-76 is on the other side of the country and probably long since expired.

Mikomicon Cosplay & Concert Pictures are up. Only one month delayed.
Slideshow mode was broken for some browsers. That should be fixed now.

Too busy to write up much - go check out the gallery, there's some cool stuff in there.
Con Summary: Con was good, but hot. Wish I woke up earlier and could stay later to beat the heat. Still, got a lot of good photo time in, just had to deal with 90-some degree heat.
Also, CVS Fails: They cross processed a roll of E-6 35mm film as C-41, which for some Holga shots, worked nicely. But for my SLR ones that I wanted correct colors, I had to fiddle with curves to revert the effect - one such image.



Fanime... shortly after Yaoicon probably. Gotta work on cosplay.

( various questions (lj-cut since it was a little lengthy & not typical subject matter) )

Sorry this is kinda lazy - asking rather than really researching. But I'm curious, and figure some of you may know.

Anime Expo 2009 Cosplay Photos

( Misc. Highlights )

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Next will probably be Mikomicon then Fanime.

I read about an outdoor movie night this Friday in Little Tokyo from super_no_1. I'm not so into Leiji Matsumoto, but may go an an excuse to grab dinner around there. Anyone want to grab something to eat together before hand?

I've uploaded a small collection of photos from recent small summer events: Summer 2009

anime_chef's icecream / beach gathering:



A few weeks later, tsuzusushi invited me to take pictures of her, chiharu_octavia & krispy_kream in their Professor Layton costumes. Unfortunately, when we started shooting, I had already been up almost 18hrs. I also wasn't very familiar with the game.

There are better focused pictures of chiharu_octavia too, but I wanted to keep with the Holga theme. A video was made as well - I played the roll of the tripod.
Now that I've played the first game through, we'll have to try again when I'm awake.

Following weekend was _shiya_wind's birthday.


Latest outing (no pics yet) was yoshikochan's anime marathon party. It was a fun event (thanks for organizing it).

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Next Event

I'll be at Mikomicon definitely on Saturday, probably on Friday (depending on how work goes) and probably not on Sunday. My primary goal for the con will be taking pictures. So feel free / encouraged to ask me to take pics.

More Pictures

I joined teddybeartensai's 365 photo blog: locketheart ♥ daily photos. (just mine) Basically the idea is to take a picture every day. I've been tempted to engage in such a project for awhile - I think it could be valuable, but it's pretty daunting. I expect there to be a lot of pictures of food.

envirion mentioned a recent trip to Franklin Institute, a science museum in PA. I used to love going there. And that has me randomly wanting to visit a science museum. Or really any large museum.
What cool museums are there in LA or OC? Any that you guys recommend? I know of LACMA - I have yet to go there but have been meaning to. And I assume Griffith Observatory has some sort of museum/tour/something associated with it.
Anyone want to go on a random museum trip? either the 13th, or maybe the last weekend this month? (or other date that fits the schedule of anyone interested?)


Unrelated, if anyone is curious the conclusion to my computer quest was buying a Sony TZ195N/XC. Older, but therefore in my price range, and still more capable than the higher end netbooks. A little bigger than I wanted, but small enough. And battery by my tests can be stretched to last 9.5hrs. But realistically is ~4.5-5.5. I was hoping for more, but not low enough to inspire me to buy the extended battery. Solid State Disk is pretty nice - some work related stuff goes faster on it that my desktop.

( (lots of) Pics, People, and Stories )

tweetychick630 in her Odori group, Kyo no Kai.

All pictures

SpookyElectric's Comic Con International Cosplay Photos

As a reminder, there's a slide show option. Just four costumes - Tabris (Kaworu) (Chromosome XX ver) from Eva (so many shots...), Linali from D.Gray-man, and Sniper Wolf & Otacon from Metal Gear Solid.

anime_chef's ice cream beach thing last weekend. Thai Tea ice cream! A sandcastle was built. With a graveyard. People I affiliate with are awesome. Photos are on film, so who knows when I'll post them.

Next weekend I'll be heading to Little Tokyo for Nisei week activities. I plan to be there most of Saturday. Sunday is iffy.

The following weekend, I'm tempted by The ALA Picnic. Anyone else going? (I'm guessing no, in favor of private shoots elsewhere?) I also may drop by Blizzcon in Anaheim to see some friends.

Then there's Anime Vegas. wintressrain wants me to go. I'm not too keen on Vegas. But it sounds like it'll be fairly cheap, and maybe I can give the town a second chance. But, I need to make sure I get a competent portable computer first.

Later in September, I'll be attending Mikomicon @ CSU Northridge. (Nice place for taking pictures.)

And I'm probably attending Yaoicon. And also PMX.

If any of you are interested, I'd really like to do more non-convention shooting.

Also, if you ever feel the need to repay me (you don't need to), I suggest food. geronkizan sent me some Banana bread he made that I'm snacking on right now. mmm. thanks.


Still working @ Fanime pics...

(I think qcamera directed the pose)

SpookyElectric's Otakon 2009 Cosplay Photos
( blah blah / pics pics )
...and perhaps my favorite pictures for in-characterness:

Bak (D.Gray-man) is the founding member of the Dark Order's Creepy Photographer Brigade. ( + )

Next are ComicCon pics (few days? probably less than a week), then probably Fanime then AX.

So, there was this little event in San Diego last weekend. I went. Sort of:

- Arrived Saturday Night, later than I planned (~8:30pm vs 7pm), met wintressrain

- Lightrail/Trolley to room to drop stuff off. wintressrain wrapped up making her Tabris/Kaoru cosplay.
- At stillvisions panel at Otakon he mentioned bounce off colored walls is a problem. I don't really agree. Colored bounce can be fun. Flash bounced off red railcar in first pic. With white balance, the background/shadows can be the interestingly colored part. (2nd pic)
/
- Photoshoot of Tabris. Covered ~4miles of territory in the pictures.

- Wrapped up the shoot finally making use of the NERV projector slides I made for Otakon, with help from dust_eden holding it while I shot wintressrain. dust_eden wanted a pic with it too:

(If any of you are curious about how that works, see my post from last year's Code Geass shoot)
- Back to room. Circuit breaker tripped. Left dark room for ~3:30am dinner @ Denny's

- Sleep ~5:00a, Wakeup ~8:30a, shower / get into Cross
- Off to con, shoot some of wintressrain's Linali
- Discover tweetychick630 while going in to the con center.
- Back out for D.Gray shoot by Eric. Encountered some friends from SCU on the way. (Shiaw-lin, Loretta)
- In to Mariott to cool down. Try to collect people for lunch. No luck.
- wintressrain wants to leave. She left to hotel. Realized I have her keys, and had to head back too.
- Back to con, found themarchingoboe who I haven't seen since we met at PMX. Chatted, wandered exhibit hall. She had to catch a train.
- More wandering, bumped into tweetychick630 again (well, literally bumped into a friend of hers she was with), then met up with dust_eden, our other roommates, and others.
- Off to MSG shoot w/dust_eden. Both of us had some gear failures. Got a few shots before leaving to dinner.
- Dinner @ Yard House w/ dust_eden, tweetychick630, and two of her friends (Ryan, and R???). Encountered blanklogo there as well. The dinner there and hanging out with them was probably the highlight of the weekend. (Next best part was the Sat night shoot)
- Had to leave because Internet Explorer sucks and a security feature of ours caused IE8 users with certain plugins to not be able to use our site. Lack of competent laptop means I couldn't stay in SD and take care of it remotely. (grr... I think I'm going to have to buy one soon for my sanity)



Thanks to ktmonkeyj for not going, so I had a badge to use part of Sunday :)
I wish I could have seen more people, but at least I think the people I missed are all ones I see more frequently anyway.

Otakon & ComicCon pics in ~1wk. Fanime & AX Pics ~2-3wks?

I'm in New Jersey. Will be till Thursday for Otakon.

My Fujitsu laptop died a few weeks ago, so I'm left with using my sister's older PowerBook G4. Gaah. 512M ram is barely enough for the way I do web browsing. So, I'll be getting even more out of date on reading LJs & blogs. And speed/memory are very inadequate for RAW photo processing. So, it seems I won't be doing anything with the thousands of photos I have to sort though until after Otakon. And probably won't be posting any until after SDCC. To hold you over, some eyecandy:


For Otakon, I don't have a scheduler per-se, but in general, my priorities are (in order):
1. Kanon Wakeshima Concert
2. Evangelion shoot(s) w/ Maria & Amelia
3. MELL Concert
4. Cross w/ Cloud 9
5. Any photos other people want

Hey...remember that con a few weeks ago in San Jose? I have more pictures!

( more Neo Angelique... )
Next set to get through will be wintressrain as Lilith from Anima Mundi

This past Saturday was a pretty lousy day, where something that was supposed to be less than 2hrs, ended up taking essentially the entire day due to everything imaginable not working right and then some. Sunday however was an excellent day. tsuzusushi came by for a late breakfast. We hung out a bit after. She was looking for pictures, so I took some. (the one I thought cutest, and a few others to the left / on flickr) Then yoshikochan came over, we had lunch, worked on cosplay (mostly electric waves girl from Furuba for her, Nyx for me), had dinner. Made decent headway I think for the time I spent on it. Though I probably should have spent more time.

This is partially a note to myself, but several of you may find it useful as well.

Exploring the FD today, I found a really expansive zipper store. They sell other fasteners and trimmings too, but they are primarily zipper oriented. Personally, this is exciting, because I was missing a place to rival NYC's Active Trimming Co (website, seems to be timing out... my catalog from them says 250 W39th, but google search says 247 W38th... so I guess one of those if they're still in business).

The LA place is Zip-Up Zipper: 829 Wall St., LA CA 90014 / http://zipupzipper.com

So, you you're looking for zippers with say a more unique pull to match Range Murata's designs or something, that seems to be the place to go in LA.

Unrelated, Pika Pika Light Painting Experiments. (discovered by a recent post from digikoomi)

Mitto.com: The best Safe, Secure, Buzzword, Synergy, Online, Web 2.0 Software as a Service for Password Management and Sharing and Ultimate Enlightenment
Mitto is my company, started as a spin-off of an internal project at my previous employer. We are now initiating a push to widen our user base beyond the initial testers. As such, I'd appreciate it if you took some time to check it out, and relay the message to anyone you know who may be interested. And if you want some random YouTube content to explore, watch Mitto commercials.

( A spiel on what Mitto does, what I do, etc )

Oh... and if you want free stuff, like Netflix, Southerwest, or Amazon gift certificates, you may be interested in out one-day only promotional contest. Get others to sign up and list your E-Mail address when they do, and you can win stuff.

Regularly scheduled programming of photos, cosplay, and random outings will resume when I get some more photos processed. I promise I won't spam again any time soon. On the subject of cosplay, I was meaning to visit FD Friday or Sunday, but neither worked out, so my next plan is visiting FD this Friday (or *possibly* Thursday). Anyone interested in meeting up? Maybe for lunch around there?

It seems pictures on my site had a weird pixel aspect ratio issue. So for some people, my pictures ended up looking stretched when opened in some software. The resize & label script has been revised with an extra step which solves that problem. (Not sure what caused it, but saving it as a different format & resaving as JPG fixes it) So, all future image should be fine, but if there are any already posted pictures that you had problems with, let me know, and I will re-save them for you.

No Neo Ange pics yet. Too busy. Enjoy tsuzusushi and her friends' Star Trek: TNG in the mean time.
( + )

Related to being busy, my company is looking for unpaid interns. Position is slightly technical - requires some basic understanding of HTML, but not much beyond that. Does require working in West LA, not telecommuting. If you think you might be interested, let me know, and I'll get you more info.

Also related to being busy, wintressrain is looking to coordinate some cosplay sewing parties before AX. First being this fri and/or sat (her post). Then possibly again around the 20th. Location would be in Corona. If you're interested, I guess post in her LJ, or let me know.

My desktop looks like this because I've been too lazy to change it, only stretched across too screens (also not feeling like taking a screen shot). My older desktop is more interesting.

wintressrain was bugging me about Fanime pictures. Waiting for stuff to recompile, I did this to hold her over.

(Shininess is playing around in post, not optical filters. I don't think this is a good picture. But I wanted to try out that Star Trek look, and this had suitable in-frame light sources. Not sure it makes any sense here. But might be cool for something sci-fi-ish, if anyone is interested in that sort of look.)

Neo Angelique shoot up in a week maybe.

While waiting, you should practice Spiderman para-para.

tweetychick630 completed a successful chimera.

Shana (Jessica) is now part moose.

SoCal Cosplay Spring Pictures

Picnic was fun. Arrived with wintressrain and dramaelf. Spent most of the time with them, tsuzusushi, krispy_kream, chiharu_octavia, legally_scarlet, hyper_sam, daoutlaw, and Jared/Erudito. And not nearly enough time with everyone else. And I think some people I managed to completely miss. (Sorry)

I wore my Last Exile mechanic uniform. Mostly since I felt everything else I had worn too much. And with that one I could get a tiny bit more sleep by skipping shaving. I'm amazed how many people recognized it. I think more than when I wore it to cons (~2003-2004).

Being a little burnt out from work, I wasn't feeling too inspired photography wise. So very few pictures. (Despite having three cameras) The cat is dramaelf's.

Trip back was a bit of an unwanted adventure. Plan to take the train kinda failed due to getting the train in the wrong direction. Thankfully wintressrain saved me by giving me a ride back. (Since there were no more trains North from where I got stuck.)

Next up - UCLA cosplay picnic tomorrow, and then something in San Jose all too soon.