h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

az

You can use the purple cape ones - I'd forgotten you had those

They are already on the web, somewhere, and they are not particularly recognisable

Jez

Jez,

Shall I only use the ones where your face is turned away? There is one of you in the 'arch' where you can see your face from the side. Let me know.

az

az

I don't mind - like I say, it's a fairly innocuous selection - and Arthur is far more recognisable than I am

Jez

It's looking good so far az! Great idea.

I hope the sticky downloads don't frustrate you too much. It seems the data is in there because the captions show up, but maybe the server can't handle the volume.

Those little 'x's in the boxes are a default display when a picture or graphic fails to display. As you saw a couple of days ago, my own page of Santa pics at h2g2 has three pics and often one, two or all three only display the 'x' box. But they are there. They just don't show up when the server is busy.

So who's this Jane Austin chick and does she always only half wear her coat or did you catch her coming in or going out?

Noggin has more Dalmation and Bloodhound than I expected but his calm and calming demeanour is true to his online character.

I hope when mine is visible it will prove to be a true 'realisation' of what people imagine.


~jwf~

hi jwf,

Wow, you haven't yet seen Jane looking all elegant and sexy (the second photo) and you're already drooling?

Thing is, I have never had this problem before. When I made the cat album I uploaded about 90 photos in one afternoon and all of them showed up. And when I first uploaded the h2g2 album everyone also showed up, but then I moved things around a bit (not enough girls, tried to balance it out) and that's when photos started not appearing.

<>

Yeah right,

az

More like an Airedale, I thought. It's a bit close up, unfortunately. I look better from a distance

Noggin

Isn't it strange how we have conversations and develop friendships with online folks and never know what they look like. You'd think the demand for picture sites would be overwhelming. (Maybe it is, what do I know, I never crawl out from under my hootoo rock.)

I have to confess that a few of the first h2g2meetup picture files I saw left me shocked and stunned. I knew from experience that realisation is often not what was imagined and a sense of disappointment ensues. But when I caught my first glimpses of h2g2 stars and giants I was agog. None of the people were the giants and gods I had imagined them to be. They were just plain folks. Many younger than I had imagined and most paler and smaller than gods, but definitely more animated than the average geek one sometimes sees scurrying to the shops.

This shocking revelation tempered my expectations and I have since nurtured a more generous and realistic expectation of people's appearance.

So I am curious to see what people will say about this collection. Many of the people will be (like zoomer and I) from distant parts who might never get to a meet up. And unlike the real life meet ups there will be no chance to get used to each other's appearance as the beer soaks in. (Unless you put up a warning that people should get drunk before, during and after viewing.)

It will be interesting to see if people comment on each other's appearance. In real life they might, but online people tend not to create controversy or pass judgements, especially based on two dimensional representations of four and five dimensional souls.

But I must say, your picture is a pleasant surprise.
You must feel quite at liberty in your Spanish environment and often pass as a local. While I would stand out as a typical 'pale-faced, old, overweight "American" white male', you look like part of your environment.

This is partly due I'm sure to living there and absorbing that wonderful sunlight but it also compliments your 'natural' appearance and brings out that 1/8th (or was it 1/4 ?) of your heritage that ain't pale white. Did I hear you once say you were doing some of that Moroccan belly dancing?


~jwf~

>> It's a bit close up.. <<


Yes, thank you.
That's what I was really thinking.

Anyone who has ever tried to snap a photo of their pet has probably experienced that they either run off, roll over or stick their noses right up to the lens just as you click the shutter. It's what they do, they are just being curious and sniffing the magic box.

In this case the camera came too close to you and you were obviously being patient and politely hiding your concern that camera optics are such that at close range there is a bit of a fun-house mirror or fish-eye lens effect.

cl zoomer is a professional videographer and could probably explain the technical thing that happens when a camera gets to close to a subject and distorts the perspective. In any case, glad you took no offense at my comment. I was confident you wouldn't because your nose looked wet and your tail was obviously wagging.


~jwf~

Obviously pictures of jwf and myself on one page was too much for the server so it's intestines leapt out of it's own body and throttled it.



Do you really want me to go into a long, boring comment on focal lengths of lenses and aspherical distortion? I don't. I'll just say what I say to students. Too close to lens, bad because of distortion. Medium length from lens good, because of ease of focus. Long length from lens better, because of reduced depth of field. Sounds contradictory but if you think about why, it makes sense.

hi jwf,

Hmmm, I've never been left shocked or stunned after receiving photos from my hootoo friends. Though I have been surprised by voices.

Meanwhile, I actually don't look Spanish at all. Though sometimes non-Spanish people think so because I usually wear my hair pulled back.

As for belly dancing!!! um, no.

Still wondering if I should *disqualify* your photo . . .

az

Frustrating with the server eh?

Still, liking the hair, blickybadger!

There are few good photos of me in existence, I'll try and get the one off my Uni card because that is my favourite photo of me but there's also one of me on a theme park ride which I'm rather fond of, I'll try and get to a scanner tomorrow.
Az, for the first time on hootoo you actually look like what I imagined you to look like, when I've seen photos of everyone else its been very wierd because no-one looks as I expect them to

I'm sure noggin and my family had same man

Why do you say that?

First glance it looked like me with more weight on.

Ok then.

This post has nothing of substance in it.

and less hair . . .

az

Crikey it is pretty interesting putting faces to names; and how people look different from how you expect them to...

Yeah I was really surprised by blicky. He's not half as old or black as he claims, nor as tall and overweight as I had imagined based on stories of football riots, beer cosumption and curry eating contests. And he's actually smiling. So azahar's plan is working quite well and I am thankful to put away the mental picture I had of blicky forever. He doesn't look one bit like Idi Amin.

~jwf~

Oh and before anyone starts worrying about anything I might say in this thread I will direct your attention to the subject line where the operative word is 'friends'. Any presumptions I make are based on that assumption.

zoomer might be right about having two heavy weight canucks that close together. In real life we are 4000 miles apart. Try moving me to page two. There's more room to breathe there.

~jwf~