Practice

For many years, my friends and I have been attending karaoke nights around the city, enjoying each other's company and doing something that we like to do: sing.

We've actually become rather serious about it. Some friends have actually purchased home karaoke equipment to practice for when we meet at a club, bar, or restaurant. We've also downloaded karaoke apps, which not only let us try out a song before we hit the stage but also let us know if the song is generally available on singing platforms.

When I come up with a song that I want to sing, I'll check to see if one of the largest karaoke systems, KaraFun, has the song. I usually pick a song with which I'm already familiar, so I only need to make sure that I have the lyrics down solidly.

Occasionally, I'll pick a song that I've heard of but may not be overly familiar with the lyrics, or may not even know the words at all. In that case, I'll listen to the song several times, just taking in the vocalists tone, getting the rhythm, and of course, learning the lyrics.

I'll find a karaoke version of the song on YouTube and practice in my living room or bedroom.

But I find that there's a difference between me practicing a song at home and actually singing it on a karaoke night, in front of a live audience. It's like I'm two different singers.

At home, I tend to hold back. I rarely sing at full volume, especially when DW isn't also practicing in the same room (we alternate) or any time that Kid 1 is home. And because I hold back, I find that my voice will crack or I'll run out of air.

Plus, belting it out in our family room or bedroom makes it sound like I'm screaming.

When this happens, too often, I end up deciding that I can't sing the song and therefore won't perform it at a karaoke night.

I need a place where I can practice that has the space for me to belt it out but has as few people around to hear it, lest I offend their ears.

Last month, I met up with a longtime buddy for drinks, after work. We ended up in Bells Corners, at Conspiracy Theory Brewing Company.

I reviewed Conspiracy Theory's beer, several years ago, back when owner, Paul Card, was brewing out of his garage, in Barrhaven. Since then, I hadn't had the opportunity to visit his full-sized brew pub, especially when the pandemic shut everything down. Because my buddy, Perry, hadn't been to this brewery, we thought the visit was long overdue.

Little did we know that Conspiracy Theory runs a karaoke night every Thursday, the day that we just happened to be there.

Paul was there and I re-introduced myself, reminded him of the review I had written, and introduced him to Perry, who used to own his own brewery, Scotch-Irish Brewing Company, many years ago. Paul and Perry had a lot in common, starting from home brewers to successful brewmasters.

Perry also has a great singing voice and has come out for karaoke nights several times. But on this evening, he wasn't in the mood to share his vocals.

It was a very quiet night at Conspiracy Theory. There were only two other tables that were occupied in the spacious brew pub, and yet both tables had participants for karaoke. I thought it was a great opportunity to practice a new song.

A few months earlier, at a karaoke night in Gatineau, I had requested this song (Behind Blue Eyes, by The Who) but the KJ wasn't paying attention, and told me that I was up after the current singer, who just happened to be singing the exact same song. I had to make a last-minute change and ended up not singing this song.

I was a bit disappointed because I wasn't 100-percent sure that I had the full range for the song. When I had practiced it at home, I held back a bit and my voice cracked, but I was sure that I could get the words out if I used my full volume in a karaoke setting.

Fortunately, I was able to sing it at Conspiracy Theory. And Perry confirmed that it was within my range.

Starting this year, I made the decision to visit Conspiracy Theory, on my own, to practice new songs. I'll go in, have a glass or two of beer, sing a song (or two, if the place is quiet), and leave.

Last Thursday—the first karaoke night at Conspiracy Theory for 2025—I made the 15-minute drive out to Bells Corners and was a bit surprised to see several cars in their parking lot. On my first visit, with Perry, there was only one other car in the lot when I had arrived.

When I walked through the doors, I saw a banner in the foyer that read Happy Retirement! Looking into the beer hall, I saw lots of suits and dresses. A table had been set up with a cake, already cut into and mostly devoured. Looking toward the bar, many seats were taken. The KJ was at the back of the hall, looking at his computer screen, though no one was singing.

"Nope," I said aloud but to myself. I pivoted 180 degrees, got in my car, and drove home.

"Next week," I said, this time in my head. "I'll try again next week."

Yesterday, while checking out their Web site, I discovered that Conspiracy Theory has moved their karaoke nights to Fridays, starting today. I can't go today because it's DW's birthday and I'm all about celebrating it with her.

Next week. I'll try again next week.

If next Friday is successful, will I use this brew pub on a weekly basis to practice songs? I think so. Though I already have confidence to get up in front of a microphone and sing to strangers (and my dear friends), I don't always have confidence that I can pull off the song that I choose. This venue can help me determine that.

The next karaoke night that I'm attending—with friends, that is—is Saturday, February 8, at Stray Dog Brewing Company, in Orleans. Come on out if you want to hear some great singers (oh, and me, too).

Ira

New Year, New Face

I missed the beard.

Sure, it was itchy, grew so long that my moustache was curling under my upper lip, getting in the way with my eating and drinking. If I wanted to pluck a whisker from the 'stache, all I had to do was bite down on it and smile.

Gross, I know.

Last summer, when I grew my beard, there was no conscious decision to do so. I just didn't shave on one weekend, and on the following Monday, I awoke later than usual and skipped shaving so that I could be at my desk for when my usual workday starts.

From then, I got in the habit of not shaving; not from wanting to have a beard but out of laziness. By the time my beard filled in, I was used to it.

But I was never attached to the beard, and then one day, I decided to shave it off without giving it much thought.

Last month, I saw some of the photos that I had captured of me, with the beard, and I told myself that I didn't look too bad in it. I saw one of my kayaking videos, where I had the beard, and I actually started to miss the facial hair.

In the final days of 2024, I told myself that I was going to grow it again. I just had to get one final video made and New Years Eve out of the way, and I would stop shaving.

I haven't shaved since December 31.

It wasn't until this past weekend that DW asked, "What's going on with your face?"

"I missed the beard," I said.

"I didn't."

"This is for me."

Last evening, after work, I went to my barber for a haircut. It had been more than a month since he saw me and a trim was overdue.

"I love the beard," Andrew said. At the end of the cut, he rubbed some moisturizer into my face and beard.

I'm not gonna lie: I didn't like the smell of it and won't let him apply it again.

For my haircut, I didn't ask Andrew for a particular cut. I almost never do. I just let him go to work and trust that he'll make me look good. When I got home, I took this photo.

Thoughts?

When I looked at the image on my phone, Google suggested some AI enhancements to the photo. Ever since I installed Gemini, it's been making all kinds of suggestions for photo editing.

I thought, why the hell not?

It offered me a 3D cartoon rendering of my photo and, again, I went with it.

The photo looks more like my brother than it does me. First of all, the rendering has de-aged me to the age that my brother is: perhaps, a few years younger.

I'll keep it, and may even use it as my new avatar. With me turning 60 in less than two months, I don't want to look as old as I am.

And I'll keep using it, and the original photo, for as long as I keep the beard or until I take my annual birthday photo, whichever comes first. But for now, it's a new year and a new face.

Happy Tuesday!

The Expanse

I was yesterday years old when I learned a new trick on my mobile photo-editing app, Snapseed.

Anybody who uses Instagram to post a portrait-oriented photo knows that Instagram crops an image to no larger than 5 x 4, and that can sometimes be rather limiting. It has no problem with a landscape ratio of 9:16, but turn that image on its side and you're screwed.

Luckily, Snapseed has helped me get around that issue with a editing feature called Expand. You can take your image and add a border to it—the border can be either black or white, or you can use the Smart mode, which uses AI (I'm assuming) to determine which colour of border works best with your image.

Because I use the dark viewing style of Instagram (heck, I use the dark setting on any app that offers it), I tend to pick the black border. When I import that expanded image into Instagram and maximize the size of the image, the top and bottom borders are cut off and the vertical image appears the way I want it to.

Occasionally, I'll use the white border but to me it just doesn't always have the same outcome that I want for my IG posts.

On Wednesday, I attended an event with my Ottawa Photography Meetup group. We rented studio space and hired a gorgeous Ukrainian model, Ira Balan, who amazed us with high-key and low-key images, utilizing various fabrics, a rope, jewelry, and sometimes, little else.

So, as a warning, there are some images in this post that are NSFW.

As much as I like the studio that we use, and as much as Ira paid attention to her available space and kept within the backdrop area, the studio can sometimes be just a bit too small to fulfill a vision for a photograph. Most of the photos that I shot during our session were limited to vertical orientation and Ira filled most of the frame within the backdrop.

One of my biggest faults, after a photo shoot, be it of a person, nature, or whatever, is that I want to look at the images right away and start editing them. And lately, I haven't waited to get home or download my photos from the camera onto a hard drive, that I can use to edit on my computer, but I've instead uploaded the photos straight from my camera, via WiFi, onto my smartphone. The RAW file is converted to JPEG before I even start editing.

Instead of using my robust editing software on my computer, I've been editing the images with Snapseed, on my phone. I find that Snapseed is fine for editing images that I intend for Instagram or on other social-media sites but if I want to make the image useful on a larger screen, to print, or to give to the model, these lower-res files just don't do it.

Okay, I'm rambling a bit, but I want to give enough warning that some shots, coming up, aren't safe for office viewing.

As soon as I got home from the shoot, I started looking quickly at the images I had captured of Ira, instantly deleting files where the flash didn't fire, where there was a bit of camera shake, where Ira's beautiful face was a bit blurry, or when I fired before a pose was fully constructed or otherwise just didn't turn out.

I then uploaded a few that I really liked onto my smartphone and started editing, before I added them to my Instagram account. And it was while editing these photos that I discovered this trick on Snapseed.

Instead of expanding the portrait-oriented photos with the black border (and the white border made it painfully obvious that the high-key images didn't have a pure-white background), I decided to try the Smart mode.

Snapseed literally grabbed the edges of the image and cloned them into the space, making the backdrop appear larger that it actually was.

The image on the left is uncropped and shows the extent of space that the backdrop provides; the image on the right, which uses the Expand–Smart feature, gives just a bit more room. For fun, I used the Expand mode four times on this image to make it appear that Ira was in a huge space.

An expanse, if you will.

When we were capturing low-key images (black background and minimal lighting), one of the other photographers introduced a smoke dispenser to play with. When the smoke hit the lights, it provided a great effect.

Of course, we had only so much width to the backdrop and I didn't want to pick up the light boxes in the frame, but we still got some neat shots. Here is my favourite of the smoke shots, and this is the image that's NSFW.

After having success at expanding the white space around Ira for the high-key shots, I wondered what would happen if I expanded the smoke shot in Smart mode.

Now, I have to admit that using this mode had its problems. It cloned the smoke and repeated the pattern a couple of times to either side of the image. And, unfortunately, it also cloned Ira's right hand, which is in front of the smoke on the left side of the image.

I used the Healing feature in Snapseed to make the pattern not repeated and to remove the floating hand. And as you can see, I was able to crop the image to make it a horizontal orientation.

I hadn't paid much attention to the Smart mode on the Expand feature because, of course, you can't use it with most photos. You can only do it when there are no defined objects on the edges of your photo. But for plain backdrops, it's a game-changer.

Thanks to Ira for being such a wonderful model. She brought fun and professionalism to the studio and I'd be happy to work with her again.

I'll post more photos from this shoot, next week.

Happy Friday!

A Million by 60

If I said "thank you" a million times, it wouldn't be enough.

In June of 2011, I started this blog. It was my third blog, the first being a journal of what was going on with me and my family, intended for friends and family members who wanted to know what we were up to. I also created Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary, where I published the raw, rough-draft chapters that would eventually become my novel, which was published in 2012.

Today, only the first chapter remains available to read on that old blog.

When I was seeing more and more people reading Brownfoot Journal, I decided to create another blog that was separate from my family life—sort of—and was just an outlet for my thoughts and opinions. That other blog is what you're now reading.

The Brown Knowser blog has been my outlet for nearly 14 years, where I've shared my thoughts, photos, fiction, music interests, my YouTube videos, and more. And for some reason, my readers like what I've had to share.

Thank you!

The blog has gone from a couple of viewers per day to a few dozen, to a hundred, to 500, to sometimes more than a thousand viewers each day. Last Friday, even though I didn't have a new blog post to share, I had received almost 1,000 viewers by the time a post is usually announced on social media.

It's still early days, this month, but by current projections, I could surpass 30,000 views this month.

Overall, my blog has received more than 957,000 views. Again, thank you!

In March, I'll be 60 years old, and I thought it would be great if, by my birthday, The Brown Knowser would reach one million views. But to do that, I need your help.

If you like my posts, spread the word. Share my posts on whatever social-media platforms you're on. If you follow me on Bluesky, re-post my announcements of the latest blog posts.

Help me reach a million by the time I reach 60.

Once more, thank you for your support!