Point the figure-head at the glass. Smash! Smash! Into shards.

[reddragdiva]

B-Movie was the Night of the Living Ixus. I took the Ixus 50 to use and the Ixus i to show people (goth_twiglet was really quite taken with it). hazyjayne or someone near her had an Ixus 750, which really is very 'l33t and the huge LCD is actually useful. kjersti bitched at length about her crappy Casio and wished she had an Ixus again. I severely tempted hsw to just get an Ixus 30/40/50. eyeliner297 was going wild with her shiny new old Ixus v2 as well. Hey kid, yer first Ixus is cheap!

This person was heard to claim, wearing this outfit at this club, that she really wasn't a goth.

I was doing a lot of continuous shooting (hold the button down to get several shots), which worked really well at ISO 400 outside. I got somewhere over 200 shots, will probably put up about 100-150 and am increasingly concluding that flash just plain sucks and should be avoided as absolutely far as possible. The pics won't be up for a while — the host reddragdiva.co.uk was on is still offline, and I want to move it to the new server properly then start adding new stuff. (I have all the pics on hand, but not a backup of the MySQL data.) Actually, I should just switch to the new host and put a "restoring soon" notice on it. Hmm.

Everyone stayed home to avoid the stifling saunalike heat ... what this meant was there were few enough people that the sauna effect didn't happen. Mind you, I spent most of the evening outside anyway, with Abi and secretlondon. With vampwillow and abigailb in attendance, helping represent the Wikipedia Cabal.

Tonight is Swarf at Slimes and Antilight. arkady is still completely buggered from the heat, so I fear Antilight is looking much less likely. But I am about to start getting ready properly for the gig. How did it get to be six already, and why is it still so buggering hot?

Update: Liz is too unwell to be left tonight, so I'll need to stay home. Ah well.

Comments

[goth-twiglet.livejournal.com]

I think it's far too hot to Antilight, which is a shame because we haven't made it there yet.

It was good to finally meet up with you and your shiny tempting camera.

[reddragdiva]

Antilight is actually pretty good in this regard - it's air conditioned. Holy shit, you can breathe and stuff! The bottom level (the dancefloor) is a bit warm, but the upper levels are lovely.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately in order to get to the nice airconditioned venue, you have to brave the woefully non-airconditioned world outside - particularly the tube.

[reddragdiva]

Oh, the taxi is nearly as good! Particularly when it gets stuck in a traffic jam, as it did last night ...

[goth-twiglet.livejournal.com]

Oh god!
make it stop.

It's just too hot to even think about getting dressed

[reddragdiva]

I am wearing silk boxers and that's it. And only so I could get the clothes in off the line.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

I've been effectively trapped in one room with the fan on full for the past couple of days. My body doesn't tolerate heat at all. I doubt it's going to cool enough in the next hour for me to even contemplate going out - and definitely not in my customary trad gear.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

This is probably going to sound patronising but: a couple of summers ago when it was 37 degrees in Cambridge and I was working in front of a very hot piece of equipment all day, I found immense relief by braiding my hair and tying a wet bandana around it, and re-soaking the bandana at regular intervals.

[vampwillow]

I am *not* a member of any cabal!

(well, that is my story and I'm attempting to stick to it ...)



ps. I'm not a goth, either ;-P

ps. I'm not a goth, either ;-P

[goth-twiglet.livejournal.com]

None of us are!

[reddragdiva]

I'm not, and so isn't my wife or girlfriend.

Re: ps. I'm not a goth, either ;-P

[gothgeekgirl.livejournal.com]

I just play one on weekends.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

To coin a phrase, There is no .cabal (http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-existent_top-level_domain_names#.cabal)

[notintheseheels.livejournal.com]

I hope you manage to make it to Antilight, it would be good to see you. I haven't even started getting ready yet. It's far too hot, I'm wondering whether I'll die if I wear my new corset. The difficult decisions I face!

[reddragdiva]

Oh damn and blast, I was going to give you cigs. WELL YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO VISIT US WON'T YOU!

[gothgeekgirl.livejournal.com]

Drink water. *Lots* of water. Sweat and a full bladder are Good Things in the heat. feanelwa's suggestion of a wet bandana (in stylishly goth black, of course) is also a good one.

(I'm one of those USAnian lunatics who does 16th century reenactment in the southern California heat. Full Elizabethan middle class dress when it's 37C. Then go do country dances in the sun. Madness doesn't even begin to cover it.)

[zotz]

feanelwa's suggestion of a wet bandana [ . . . ] is also a good one

One of my icons was taken by someone working for the BBC on a weekend when it went past 38 in the shade lots of places, very probably including the shadeless field I was working in all day. We had dayglow tabards to wear, so we kept cool by making sure the Tshirts under them were wet. A litre of water is good for nearly an hour in high-thirties heat. It's an enormously sound tactic.

[zotz]

You just need a better flash.

[reddragdiva]

No, I need a camera with a bigger light bucket on the front. Sadly this is not presently compatible with compactness.

[zotz]

Given your problems, I would have thought a bounce flash was the immediate solution.

[reddragdiva]

This would be a PITA for actual clubbing — I only appear to live behind the camera, so I carry a tiny tiny camera that doesn't include such things as a hot shoe.

[zotz]

Yes, but it wouldn't take any extra space to put a bounce flash in a compact - therefore, what really sucks is the manufacturers' decision not to do so.

Their decision may be a good one commercially, of course. Photographing clubbers may not be a big market.

[reddragdiva]

Many larger 'compacts' include a swivel flash, but this definition of 'compact' is getting toward being "not SLR." The cameras I'm talking about are really rather small.

Clubbability is actually an increasing market for these things - almost any digital ultracompact does fine in daylight, but low-light performance is markedly different between models. However, the clubbing market requires a camera to be tiny.

In any case, anyone can do well with a great big light bucket on the front of their camera. There's hack value in getting the often really rather nice shots I do with something small enough not to piss me off ;-)

[zotz]

There is a fairly inherent conflict between a camera being small and having good low-light performance - the obvious exception being making the flash head swivel upwards. I can see that it's not something that makes a big difference to manufacturers, but it's the easiest way to make it easier to take good pictures in the dark without making the camera bigger or vastly more expensive.

The other two ways are to increase the width of the optics (expensive and bulky) or to increase the quantum efficiency of the sensor (also expensive, but without the size penalty).

[reddragdiva]

The sensors are getting better. The latest Fujifilm sensors have usable ISO 800 and claim usable 1600 and 3200. (Noting of course that it's "ISO emulation" by just amplifying the CCD output.) ISO 1600 in a club, I might never need flash again.

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't join any cabal that would have me!

[reddragdiva]

In Soviet Wikipedia, job finds YOU.

[latexiron.livejournal.com]

Kjersti has an Ixus again - she bought it two weeks ago in New York. I suspect she forgot. And she gave the crappy Casio to me. She's right. It is crap. I think I will just swap the labels over...

[reddragdiva]

Heh. Which models are they?

[latexiron.livejournal.com]

Don't know. But am currently in Washiongton and intend to buy an SD550 as it's the next model up from Kjersti's.

[reddragdiva]

I suggest you hop straight to the 800 IS - the optical image stabilisation actually makes it a qualitatively better camera than the previous Ixuses. You'll be able to get embarrassing club pics in remarkably little light!

[reddragdiva]

Er, that's the SD700 IS in 'Merkin. Same camera.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

This person was heard to claim, wearing this outfit at this club, that she really wasn't a goth.

But-but-but...
You're just not getting this, are you?

[reddragdiva]

At least you're not an indie-emo kid.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Been there, done that, got the pink striped wristbands. Of course, I started wearing colour again after I Found Jesus. Actually, it's that phase that the eyeliner came from, it's a habit that lasted rather longer than being an evangelical charismatic Christian did.

[reddragdiva]

I think being a fairly sensible one is probably a better idea for all. And then you can keep the eyeliner.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

Balance in all things and all that!