Weekend Assignment Results: Awards Awarded

My one-day extension on Weekend Assignment #228: Design an Award!, in which I ask your to create a bogging award and give it away, has netted us another participant, namely our good friend Mike. The complete list of awards follows:


From me:

• The Golden TARDIS Award honors one blog that is of interest to Doctor Who fans, but covers a variety of subjects with humor and insight. Its recipient, television and comics writer Paul Cornell (of Paul Cornell's House of Awkwardness) wrote, "Thanks all, and particularly Karen. I humbly accept your lovely award!" He's a very nice man, as gracious as he is talented, which is saying a lot. He did not win the Hugo Award he was up for last weekend, but placed a strong second in the voting.
  

From Julie:

• Her award, "Standing up for photographer's rights," goes to the War on Photography blog.

From Mike:

• "Time Management Award", which goes to Unfocused Me.
• "Still Having Fun" award, which Mike gives to Dave Barry.

Thanks, folks! Those are very worthy honorees!

I realize I still have more to do on this topic, but not tonight, eh? The new topic will be posted shortly.

Fun With Fireworks

Last night I tried to do one of those composite fireworks photos - you know, the kind in which you paste a bunch of bursts into one picture and pretend that the fireworks show was much more impressive than it actually was. Heck, the fireworks I saw last night were the regular Friday night promotion of a AAA baseball team. How great could they possibly be?

Actually, they weren't bad. Having grown up on some of the most boring fireworks since the invention of gunpowder: (ten red ones, ten blue ones, ten green ones, all the same shape; plus the boom of the duds) I'm lucky there was so much variety of shape and color. They certainly aren't expected to fill the whole sky as well!

But I'm not terribly good at this particular kind of photo editing. On my first attempt last night, I ended up with this:



Oh, yeah. That's convincing.

But Marie has an amazing one on one of her blogs right now, the kind of sharp, perfectly defined fireworks my camera simply cannot capture. Even so, her sucess inspired me to try again, this time taking care to overlap images where possible rather than arranging the bursts like furniture in the sky. That came out much better:


(Ack! That looks pretty good on my laptop using Firefox, but at work in IE it's horrendously oversharpened. Got to watch out for that!)

Okay, then, let's see if I can salvage last night's composite. Two hours later, it's not perfect, but it's better!


Here are a few more pictures, less heavily edited. This one reminded me of something from Hubble:


And here are a few fireworks that haven't been artificially crowded into a single frame:



And from relatively authentic (the ones above have the sky darkened and the colors boosted a bit), here's a major special effect. This is the shot above, with the frost effect and solarization applied, and then lightened:

Cool!

The Hugo Awards were handed out tonight in Denver. Our buddy John Scalzi won for Best Fan Writer (odd category, that, given than a working professional sf writer can win it; but who's complaining!), but not for Best Novel. I was rooting for Paul Cornell to win Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form for his amazing Doctor Who two-parter Human Nature/The Family of Blood, but Steven Moffat, the new series' new showrunner, has been completely unstoppable this year whenever awards have been handed out. His episode Blink is probably the most honored Doctor Who story of all time. It legitimately is great stuff - an episode in which the Doctor hardly appears, and you don't miss him because of Sally Sparrow, sinister statues and all the wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff going on - but my heart was with Paul's episodes. Any other lineup of competition, and he would easily have won for his story of the man who doesn't want to give up his life and love to be the Doctor.

Karen

Weekend Assignment #228: Design an Award!

As you can see from my previous two entries, Florinda of The 3 R's: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness recently received a "Brillante Weblog" award, which she then awarded to Mike of Everything Under the Sun (among others), who in turn awarded it to Carly and to me (among others). These fun recognitions make the rounds from time to time, and I think it might be interesting to shake things up a bit. To wit:

Weekend Assignment #228: Design your own blog award, recognizing one particular virtue found in some blogs (e.g. political savvy, humor, an engaging prose style, a particular kind of photography, etc.). Award it to one - and only one - blog, and explain your choice!

Extra Credit: Who is your runner-up for that same award?

I've been at this blogging thing for a while now (since March, 2004), received several recognitions of one sort or another (always a bit of a thrill!), and have had a number of opportunities to recommend other blogs I enjoy. This latest award thingy calls for me to award it to seven other blogs. My sleep schedule being what it is, I won't have time to do that properly until the weekend, especially since I'm determined to choose blogs I haven't given similar honors in the past. So for tonight, let me just design and present a singular, specialized award:


The Golden TARDIS Award is designed to recognize one blog that is of interest to Doctor Who fans, but transcends that category by covering a variety of subjects with humor and insight. Believe it or not, a number of blogs exist that fit those parameters!

On my sidebar is a section of links entitled Who Blogs? The blogs on it are by people who write for Doctor Who, write about Doctor Who, or both. (One of them played the title role in Doctor Who.) From a writing standpoint, my favorites are the ones by Who scripters Paul Cornell (of Paul Cornell's House of Awkwardness) and James Moran (The Pen Is Mightier Than the Spork).

Some of the people who write about Doctor Who specialize in just that on their blogs, which is perfectly fine with me. But the working professionals, especially Cornell and Moran as well as actor Colin Baker, cover more territory than that. Baker writes (when he blogs at all) mostly about his current acting gigs, and Cornell and Moran write about their various and sundry writing gigs, the writing process, awards, travels, and a little bit about their lives. In May of this year, Paul Cornell wrote a truly harrowing (yet strangely amusing) account of a serious car accident that he and his wife fortunately survived with minor injuries. Amazing. I guess what I'm saying is, come for the Doctor Who tidbits, stay for the insights and the great writing.

Paul Cornell is at Worldcon this weekend, up for a Hugo Award for his wonderful Doctor Who story Human Nature / The Family of Blood. Even if Steven Moffat wins instead (for Blink, which is also quite good), Paul doesn't need my silly little award. But tough - he's getting it anyway. And my runner-up, James Moran, will no doubt be up for some major awards of his own in years to come.

Your turn! Come up with your own specialized blogging award, award it, and tell us about it in your blog or journal. Don't forget to link to the honored blog as well as back here, and don't forget to link to your own entry in the comments below. I'll be back with our own little award ceremony a week from now!

Karen