I haven’t played around with it that much because…well I don’t know! I guess without Kate around I feel less of an urge to show off aforementioned camera. That and I am waiting for Elnore to come back home. I will show something of her later in this post.

But I did take a quick comparison!

Without Flash

With bounced flash

I love what it did with her hair. Also, I hate her eyes.

Also also, Elnore will be shipping home soon! She is finished with her new faceup and looks lovely. She still looks like Elnore to me, although maybe all Dilluis look like Elnore to me. :V

For reference, her old faceup.

Oh. My. Sweet. Jesus.

Caraline

The Twins:

...

Katsuro

This is so painful

Ayleena

Elnore:

What a lovely printer

Elnore

I’m rendered speechless by my own lack of talent. Holy Jesus! Somehow those old pictures are worse than I remember. Amazing what a difference brushing your doll’s hair makes! Although neither that shot of Ayleena or Elnore was really ever meant for anyone but Kate to see, it doesn’t really excuse it. And there is no explaining the blur effect going on with Caraline. Too excited to care at the time.

Over the course of two years in the hobby I learned how to take decent pictures with my old camera, which is the primary reason why there are no “before and after” shots of the tinies. Over the last I don’t know how long…four months, I’ve began wanting to actually experiment a bit thanks to now having a dslr. Might as well get my money’s worth before Jan steals it! I’m finally starting to feel more comfortable being in full Manual mode (although for quick snapshots I’ll probably still go Auto for now *lazy*) and I think the next thing I’ll want to play with is off camera lighting. Well that and filters.

I know it sounds like tooting of my own horn or patting myself on the back, but these days every now and again I’ll take a picture and be like “oh snap! awesome! ”

The things that help?

1. Tripod
2. Controlling the background/props
3. Tripod
4. Lots of light
5. Tripod
6. Paying attention to the rules of composition

I haven’t been working on my Civilization mod for awhile, mostly because I’m trying to become better at the Warlords difficulty setting. Not that I have been playing all too much either recently.

I have begun my WOT reread. It’s not going too fast, or as fast as usual, but that might be because a) I’m not reading every day and b) when I do read I’m doing a more close-reading a là college cramming. The other problem might be out of the whole series New Spring and Eye of the World are books I’ve read more than the others.

Changed hosts. My new host uses DirectAdmin instead of cPanel, which might take some getting used to, but so far it is fine. One thing I really like is that each domain gets its own folder. With cPanel you needed WHM to do that, which usually cost more than regular cPanel. Even so, I still need to have a moiraine.meandraine.net subdomain for now, otherwise my redirect rule via .htaccess won’t work: it’ll just show an error page.

For some reason my vBulletin database is larger on this host than the last one. Don’t know why. Also, my disk usage meter has close to 40mb of data I can’t account for. I’ve waited a couple of days before sending in a ticket to ask about that. My other tickets (one for sales, others for transfer) have gotten answered nice and fast, so hopefully the same will be true here. So far, I am very happy with new host.

Also, MW forums aren’t down every 30 minutes. This is a nice change.

I’m kind of rambling here….

I need to find boxers for Elnore for two reasons: 1) It’s a part of her character, and 2) They’ll help keep her pants up. Caraline needs a new wig, and there is one girl who makes fur wigs that I like, but of course she is closed!

I want to go to Europe.

I have also ordered my next doll. I did think about getting a PS3 but then I’d have to buy games and crap so it really wasn’t all that cost effective. I also thought of a PSP (why yes I am a Sony fanboy) but again…games. I suppose I could have bought nothing at all, but this is the last time I can buy something stupidly expensive without the worry of bills. And it is my graduation present to myself. She should be here when I go back home. She’ll either be waiting for me or will come right before the big day. *crosses fingers*

Katie’s doll is also on her way. If her doll comes next week, mine would be shipping out the following week at the latest, and then that following week will arrive. It’ll be like a month of dolls. Dolls to torture Niklas with.

Well, I recently jumped onto a group order (first ever, oooh deflowered!) and bought the shoes for Caraline off my dollie wishlist. I should really think about adding the other things I want/taking off what I no longer want. Yeah, one day. It’s a list for me, so who cares if I am lazy?!

I also ordered a custom shirt for Katsuro, since Becca was a little heifer and didn’t actually send out anyone’s orders. *dramatic sigh* But at least finally he’ll have a shirt on him. It’s not that I wasn’t able to find other shirts/outfits that I would like on him, it’s that he has orange/white shoes. And well, I wanted him to match. So yeah, shirt for Katsuro!

Soom getting rid of free shipping really irks. I understand why they did it, but it still sucks! I calculated the total of Elnore+custom faceup+shipping and it’s about $640. Thank god her and Caraline can share a wardrobe.