2011 » Alex Snelling

Snow in Eskişehir

Dec 102011

With the weather forecast constantly pulling our legs, it finally kept its word and snow fell on Eskişehir.

Well one does miss the snow, in the last 8 years it only snowed for 7 or so days where I live in Spain. Of course, snow can be a pain (what about England a year ago?) but its never really Christmas until it snows. And doesn´t everything look beautiful with a layer of snow?

No, I am not asking for snow every day, but for a week or snow at the end of the year would be great!

That said, this snow has already gone, but it will be back, it will. I am told that it is unusual for us to be well into December here and not have snow, well it´s not surprising, the weather is changing everywhere. However, with the temperatures still falling and another 2 months at least to go before it starts warming significantly again, I except we shall get another coat of the pretty white flakes!

Forecast

Univerisity Entrance

University Train

Snow Capped Mountains in the Distance

Snow in front of the Faculty - Invites walking on, I am not the first!

Off to class

Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, Anadolu Üniversitesi

Eskişehir No Responses »

Dec 062011

A stroke of luck introduced me to the Atatürk Kültür Merkezi at Anadolu Üniversitesi. Of course I have been studying there for a couple of months now, and walk past the building almost every day, but never ventured inside. However, having heard that there was a classical music concert on the same day it sounded like the right time to take a look.

What I discovered was some great talent and enjoyable music, and a spotless elegant looking building. Will definitely have to follow the calendar of events for the future! Concerts, theatre and art exhibitions are all held here I gather.

Entrance

Inside Entrance

Inside Hall

Stage

Playing the piano

Piano

Intermission

Balcony

The End!

Sazova Park, Eskişehir

Eskişehir, Photography No Responses »

Nov 272011

For a planned outing one weekend in Eskişehir, we took some bikes from a rental shop and cycled across the town to one of the parks around the city. Unfortunately, the bikes were not the best and it would have been a good idea to take some gloves along as most of the other students did, and of course the members of the cyclist club that joined, due to the single digit temperatures! But the sun was out, and it soon warmed up enough.

The park is reasonable far from the centre, rather inconvenient for a park, and perhaps some of the greenery was suffering the onset of winter but nevertheless it was an interesting trip, as having never seen the park before it was a good opportunity to find out what it offered. And ride bikes!

Well, for anyone that doesn´t know what Turkish traffic is like, it´s an adventure in itself cycling across any part of town, rather like trying to walk through the middle of a paintball game with no reflective vest. Great fun!

After reaching the park we stopped for a little while, just to walk around and take a look. Approaching December (winter is coming!) it seems most activities are closed. In fact some work is going on to complete a fairy tale castle and a science centre.

Ok, so the park is not perfect (doesn´t match the size, central and green nature of Hyde park in London for example). But it does look like a great place to go for some fun in the warmer months. Especially for children. There are many activities around, the narrow gauge train, artificial lake with zip wires, row boats and a life sized reproduction of the Santa Maria sailing ship Columbus used when he discovered America, the fairy tale castle, many play areas, and various restaurants. Of course it still has open areas of grass for those who just want to sit down and relax for a bit.

So here some pictures from the park. Objective: Return when it is warmer and relive childhood memories pretending to be Peter Pan on the ship!

Fairy Tale castle from a bridge, approaching the park.

Edge of the park and narrow gauge railway.

Dinosaur slide

Santa Maria replica

Narrow gauge train

Narrow gauge train

Wonderland?

Train Station

Stop!

Shooting a Short Film

Audiovisual No Responses »

Nov 222011

The latest university project, a group short film of only a couple of minutes just to demonstrate different types of shots. We could only use the faculty, so the basement became our chosen location. After collecting the material, we had a couple of hours until the actors would arrive to set it all up. We did have a camera available, which we did take, however only to record the audio as a group members DSLR would give us superior image quality and ease of use. My role? The Sound Technician.

Setting up and testing the Lighting

Setting up the lighting at the second location

Adjusting the lighting

Spotlight

Actors are here - Final adjustments

Actors - Practising the scene

Sometimes you need to work with what you have and improvise!

Finished - Some pose for picture

Editing still to go…

First encounters with the Internet

Online Communication No Responses »

Nov 202011

Timeline of first encounters with the Internet

Do you find yourself using these channels in the same way as when you first encountered them or has their utility changed with time?

I would say that my usage has changed with pretty much every channel. My first email account on yahoo is no longer used, in favour of the newer hotmail (windows live) and Gmail accounts. Each account having a specific usage, hotmail for more casual communication and Gmail for more formal contact.

Another example is instant chat. MSN used to be the primary channel for me, however its use declined in favour of Skype and Facebook due to the nature of the communication.

While I did create social networking accounts such as Facebook and Tuenti, these were barely used at all until a couple of years after, when they became necessary to communicate with new aquaintances from far away places. Tuenti, the spanish social network site was used more after beginning university, as most uni friends used it, while Facebook gained use in the same year after visiting an international camp, to keep in contact with friends made there.
In later years Facebook has won over Tuenti, which I use less and less.

Deviatart suffered a brief use, and while youtube has very frequent use even now, it is more for watching than contributing, although every now and then I upload a video of something or other.

Online gaming and the associated programs (VOIP etc) are used less now, due basically to business in “real life”, work and lack of access to the gaming computer. Mostly replaced by forum usage and reading online articles, blogs and looking at various webcomics.

Twitter was a new addition, and at present is almost exclusively used to follow interesting profiles and the odd news update.

Like with everything my usage changes and in the future I see a greater use of Twitter and Blogging, perhaps youtube and regarding Facebook, not so much change for the forseeable future.

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