The Brown Knowser

Because we're supposed to stay home with the latest pandemic lockdown, and because the cold weather has finally come to Ottawa and has not made me want to go outdoors, I've been giving my cameras a bit of a break. But because I've been getting used to new photo-editing software over the past month or so, I've been going back to photos I have already processed, going to the original RAW file, and re-processing them. Exploring the features in Luminar AI, I've discovered a portrait AI tool that lets me quickly retouch my model photos. When I edit my model photos with PaintShop Pro, it can take up to 10 minutes to give my subjects more glow, to bring out the colour of eyes and lips, and to remove any unflattering blemishes. With the Luminar app, the AI automatically corrects shadows in the face, smooths the skin and hides blemishes, and even lets me artificially slim lines—which I personally would never do to my subjects. I looked through my photo library and decided t...

I originally wrote this post 11 years ago, in my now-defunct blog, Brownfoot Journal . Because my brother's birthday fell on a day where I had intended to post a Throwback Thursday piece, I thought I would combine the two by adding a past post that was a birthday greeting, too. I've updated the post to account for the time difference but the message is the same. My baby brother turns 42 today—Happy Birthday, Chris! From the time he was born until his teens, Chris was known by the second-half of his name, Topher . Our family thought it was original at the time, but since then I've heard the name used a couple of times, most notably with American actor Topher Grace ( That '70s Show , Spider-Man 3 ). Our Topher changed his name to Chris in high school. As a kid, Chris loved to dress up in costumes, be it a tricycle racer (see photo), cowboy, clown, centurion, superhero, or terrorist (seriously, there's a photo somewhere of him wearing underwear, Billy boots, and ...

There are days when I look at The Brown Knowser YouTube channel and wonder if I'm going to keep it going. After all, I'm a writer, not a videographer, and I take far better stills than I do of video. I also hate how I look and sound in front of a video camera. Still, I persevere because I would like to know more about recording video and I do still enjoy reviewing beer, which is what I largely do on this YouTube channel. At least, until I can get back into my kayak. On Sunday, I set out to record another Beer O'Clock review. As with all other beer videos, I start out with a beer that I've already tried, one with which I've already made notes about the flavour profile and have already formed an opinion. In the recording, I try to appear as though I'm trying the beer for the first time. Is that dishonest? Anyway, as soon as I've selected the beer, I start thinking about how I want to present it. What I want to say about it. I try not to babble too much, as ...

For more than a decade, it's been a lunchtime ritual. Except for today. Lunch would start with a pint of Scottish ale. A small snifter with a dram of whisky would also be brought to the table but I would keep that aside, to wait for a toast. An amuse bouche of haggis on a crust of bread would be offered. I would accept it, happily. There was no question about what the lunch would be. On this twenty-fifth of January, it would be what it always is: a small bowl of Cock-a-Leekie soup; for the main course, a plate of haggis with mashed potatoes, mashed carrots, and mashed turnips, with a mushroom gravy generously covering it all. I wouldn't touch the actual mushrooms: they were the only thing on the plate that turn me off. Throughout the soup, the piper would play his bagpipes, just as he has done since I've first attended this tribute to Scots poet, Robert Burns. The owner of the restaurant and host for the event, Ken Goodhue, would welcome his patrons and have us raise a glas...

The following is a draft excerpt from my novel, Gyeosunim . If you haven't read my previous novel, Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary , be warned that while there are no spoilers, you may be missing some context.   June 1, 1988 “The same damned clothes? Are you bloody mad, Moore?” “Easy now, Charles,” Sir Harold Kent cautioned. He was not a man who seemed accustomed to raised voices. He was sitting at the head of the boardroom table, which was made of thick, shatterproof glass, suspended on a chrome, tubular frame. The chairs were a black leather, supported by similar chrome tubes. Sir Harold was dressed in an oak-brown Herringbone Tweed three-piece suit with a crisp white shirt that had barely distinguishable brown pinstripes, and sported a dark brown Savile Row bow tie to complete the look. He flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette into the glass ashtray that appeared to be suspended in air. “Berlin is Nigel’s territory and therefore, quite rightly, the plan is his decision. You’...

In 1996, a friend of DW's and mine (she's practically a family member and I often think of her as a sister from another mister) learned of our plans to travel to Korea to teach English, and she was intrigued. She had recently divorced from her first husband and was at loose ends, and thought this would be a good experience. She researched various cities and institutes from which to teach, and having found one that was much more organized than the one that DW and I chose, found herself in Korea two months before DW and I left, at the end of February in 1997. Our friend was living in the small town of Ichon, about an hour and a half or so southeast of Seoul. The town is famous for its unique ceramics. In 1997, it was one of those small, obscure towns where if you blinked, you'd miss it. From Google satellite imagery today, it looks much bigger than I remembered it. Shortly after DW and I arrived in Chŏnju, we reached out to our friend and met up with her in Seoul. It was our ...

Photo credit: cyano66 We rarely go for long walks anymore: usually, it's a brief walk around the three streets that make a circuit around our own. It's a 15-minute jaunt that DW and I take at the start of our lunch break, before we make something to eat. Conversations are usually about the pandemic, about the government, about politics, and about current affairs. Sometimes, we talk about future plans: where we want to go and what we'd like to do once the pandemic has ended. Or where we might want to end up living when the kids have left the house for good. Rarely do we talk about silly nonsense, but that changed on yesterday's walk. DW: "Last night, on my walk" (sidenote: DW has resolved to reach 10,000 steps a day and often goes for evening walks to attain that goal) "I passed a house and I could smell weed." Me: "Somebody on his or her front steps, blazing up one?" DW: "I think so. I didn't see the person. Anyway, it got me think...

Image credit unknown: Google I'm moving at a snail's pace, these days. What typically takes me a few minutes to complete can now take about an hour; what usually can be done in an hour or two will take me most of the day. My energy levels are at an all-time low. Even sitting at my desk, banging out this blog post, I could feel gravity pulling me lower and lower into my chair, the weight on my fingers making me struggle to hit the keys on my keyboard. Every winter, I feel the blues, but with the COVID lockdown in place, the many grey days of January, I feel it all the more. Each day is another battle against myself. I struggle to get out of bed in the morning. My alarm goes off at 6:30 and the cheerful sound of Bixby tells me in a British woman's voice the time, the current temperature, and the day's forecast. No matter how cold, how cloudy or foggy, she ends the morning announcement with "Have a lovely day!" Fuck you, Bixby. Since I've returned to work—a...

The following is a draft excerpt from my novel, Gyeosunim . If you haven't read my previous novel, Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary , be warned that while there are no spoilers, you may be missing some context. Photo: Google Maps street view Though my friends worked in the downtown district of Myeongdong, which is on the north side of the Han River, their company placed their residence on the south side, in Gangnam-Gu, a swanky part of the city. Modern highrises were clustered together in this newly renovated part of the town and was one of the cleanest neighbourhoods that I had ever seen in Seoul, if not all of Korea. Judging by the Porsches, Mercedes, Land Rovers, and Maclarens, this type of resident would not stand for burning garbage on their streets. As our taxi headed to their apartment, I even spied a Lamborghini dealership. Money, indeed. “We live right by a subway station for a line that takes us to Myeongdong and even has a stop just to the north of Insa-Dong,” explained Br...

Photo: DD19

If your dreams are anything like mine, these days, they quickly turn nightmarish when either someone gets too close to you or people aren't wearing masks. Just the other night, I dreamt that some of my coworkers gathered in my backyard for happy-hour drinks, much like we do, virtually, through Google Hangouts. But in this dream, I started to get stressed when my colleagues started filling my backyard and I noted that some of my colleagues, who live in Québec, shouldn't have crossed the border to be with me in the first place. The most distressing part of that dream was when I discovered that my beer fridge was nearly empty, and the remaining cans were seriously dented or half-crushed and could not be opened. Yeah, a real nightmare. All of my dreams of late seem to be COVID-related, where my personal space is invaded or that once-familiar environments are seriously altered such that I can't find my way around. The other week, in real life, I searched the LCBO Web site for n...

When DW first told me how much this was going to cost us, I balked. "Thirty dollars a trek! I've never paid that much for an app." The smartphone program, in question, is The Conqueror Virtual Challenges . The app tracks any distance that you cover—be it walking, running, cycling, swimming, rowing, or whatever. You can sync the app with your Fitbit, Garmin, or Apple watch, or with other fitness apps like Strava, Runkeeper, Map My Run, Fitbit, or you can even enter your distance manually. The app is free to download. But to use it, to add a challenge—one of more than a dozen world treks—you pay for the route. DW wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail, which is more than 770 kilometres and runs from Saint-Paul-Pied-de-Port, in Southern France, crosses over the Pyrenees Mountains, and finishes in Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain. I wanted to complete the trek that runs the full length of the UK, starting in Lands End, in southwest England, an...

I used to say that I loved overcast skies when photographing the outdoors. The clouds are a great diffuser, eliminating unwanted, harsh shadows from your subjects. But what if the sky is the background of your subject or is, indeed, your actual subject? There have been countless times that I have shot subjects to find that the sky is either blown out from harsh sunlight or, in the case of overcast skies, flat and lifeless. In post-processing, I have used highlight recovery features in attempts to bring some definition to the sky. I have also pulled back on highlights to do the same thing. But rarely to I get the results that I've wanted. On Monday , I wrote about how DW bought some new photo-editing apps: some, for herself, so that she could play with the competition to her company's software. But she also bought an app for me, for Christmas, to add to my arsenal of editing software. In Monday's post, I showed the different results that I got from our various apps—Affinity ...

sedition (n)     Conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch* treason (n)      The crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government* insurrection (n)      A violent uprising against an authority or government* I haven't tuned into a live broadcast coming out of the United States since September 11, 2001. On that sunny day, I started my day like any other. I was in the office, just beginning my day, when DW called me. She was at home, on maternity leave with our first child, and she had been listening to CBC Radio. After initial reports that an airplane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center, in New York City, she switched on the news to get a clearer idea of what had happened, and then phoned me to let me know. When I tried to search the information for more news, my Internet slowed down and I couldn't get anything, so I ...

 

It's the only New Year's resolution that I've ever kept: more than 25 years ago, I resolved to never again make a New Year's resolution. In January of 2020, I decided to participate in Dry January, where I would refrain from consuming alcohol for that month. It wasn't a resolution to reduce my alcohol consumption, which is not a problem. I simply wanted to take a break from it. In doing so, I managed to find some really good alcohol-free beer , so it was a win-win situation. But my month-long abstinence from alcohol wasn't a resolution. And, as 2020 turned into the nightmare from which we still haven't quite awaken, my alcohol consumption actually increased as I began ordering my beer online and having it delivered to my doorstep. (Hey, I was making an effort to support the breweries and keep them afloat!) I've been considering whether I should try Dry January, once again, this year, but I've been on the fence. On one hand, I've already done it. ...

For years, I have been editing my digital photos with software that I have acquired through DW, who works for a company that makes this very software. Because she works for this company, she receives the latest and greatest versions of this software for free. I knew I married her for a reason. Because of my good fortune, this is the only software I have used to turn my basic photos into half-decent images. As I became more familiar with the software, I moved from shooting in JPEG format to shooting in RAW, and the quality of my output improved greatly. Of course, I've also used photo-editing apps, such as Snapseed and Prisma, among others over the years, but I've only used these when editing photos from my smartphone or tablet, and rarely did I keep these edited photos after posting them on social media apps. Last fall, DW began investigating some apps, as she usually does when she was comparing her company's product to the competition, and she decided to show a couple of t...