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I was recently provided with the opportunity to review a SaalDigital photobook. They graciously provided me with a free book of my own photos to help form this review. 

The first step is to install the software. I’m working on a Mac and the first time I ran the software it crashed, I sent a report and the second time it worked a lot better. 

They ask you to choose from a range of high-end options, including black leather and satin first. There is also the option of a slightly pricy display box to match the cover. You can adjust these options before you finalise your order at the end. 

The software will provide templates which you can use to very quickly design a photo book. This system works well, the slight hiccup being the lack of obvious support for the Mac photos app. It’s a lot easier for example to use the Mac photos app to make a folder of pictures you would like to use and then transfer this over. A nice feature is that the program will estimate the quality of the image on the printed page. Simple designs are easy to do, although some of the stock templates are a little cringy and a little ‘hallmark’. I would have liked to have seen some more modern designs. You can use whatever font you like, but a few modern and smart templates would be fantastic. I was a little hesitant about downloading dedicated software, especially for a product I wouldn’t likely be using very often. But if you are a professional photographer you may be used to this kind of system. The dedicated app, over say, a web app, allows for greater freedom and there are plenty of settings to play with, although most will find the snap-to-template system more than adequate for most needs. I only ran into a few formatting issues whilst playing around, all of these were easily fixed. 

The actual book feels premium, the full-colour pages are fantastic, although lighter images work much better on the matt finish. The fact the book can open out flat is fantastic. It does look very smart on the table and it has already become a talking point. The print quality is fantastic, and the acrylic cover is a nice touch. They are aiming at a professional market and I think most would be satisfied with the product. It would also make a nice high-end gift to commemorate a special occasion. I personally filled my review product with images I’d taken in Japan. Some of these were simple iPhone snaps, and they came out just as nice as those taken with more dedicated camera set-ups. 

So in summary: 

Pros

• Very nicely presented, binding is high quality
• Produced and delivered quickly
• Matt printing looks great on bright colours
• Available for Mac and PC.
• Overall product is very nice. 
• Instagram friendly ‘square’ printing is a nice option. 
• The book lies flat when open. 
• Acrylic cover is very nice. 

Cons

• Software presentation is rudimentary and not necessarily beginner friendly crashed on first use. 
• Presentation box costs over a third of the price of the book itself. 
• Other additional options can get quite pricey quickly. 
• Outdated text templates.

#saaldigital

There are more than a few examples of courses that claim to give a good understanding of a language in three months and a few more that claim fluency. The latter would seem to be a bit of a stretch. Languages are life, not just a season. But three months, for many skills, is a reasonable amount of time to become relatively familiar with a topic, I think.

I have a bit of a history with languages, I have a reasonable amount of Japanese, a slightly less reasonable amount of Scottish Gaelic, even less Swedish and a micro-measure of German. My French from school is functionally non-existent. I like learning languages however, I see it as a useful skill and the way words interact and sound will always be interesting for me. I love learning new words with certain subtleties, I find this a lot in Gaelic. And in Japanese, with the language being so far removed from the European context I grew up in, most words carry a meaning that’s difficult to apply directly to the European mindset. Verbs aren’t often used in the same way and are much more rigid in their use. It’s this aspect of Japanese that makes it difficult for Japanese English learners sometimes. Europeans use their verbs in often much wider and illustrative ways. It’s learning a new thought process which I enjoy most of all.

I have chosen to embark on a short project to see how far I can get with a new language in a few months. I’ll be keeping up my Gaelic and Japanese study in the meantime, but I want to experiment with something new.

I’ve chosen Norwegian as my experiment language of choice. Partly because of a slight familiarity with Swedish, its ease of understanding for English/Germanic speakers and because of recent exposure to it from a close friend, who described the language as like rain falling on a tin roof. I Can’t get that image out of my head, and I want to see if it’s true.

This is the first post of what will be hopefully weekly updates for the next 12 weeks. I’ve been doing a prep-week, looking at some grammar examples and a few of the revision exercises on Duolingo. I think Duolingo is a powerful revision tool, but often not the best for learning a language from scratch. I’ll be using this website, along with an Anki deck and a copy of Norwegian in 12 Weeks which I’ll post more details of next time.

That’s the plan. This is the obligatory week zero post to keep me honest. Follow updates on Instagram too under @coinneach_ken.

Takk for at du leste.

Short video of some scenes from a series of dives in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. March 2018

Short video from recent dive trip to Kikaijima, I have so much footage to work through and I have no idea where to start! Who knew editing would be so hard.

It was a true amazing trip, I’ll post a full blog about it soon. So happy I got to see a part of Japan rarely seen by foreigners.

Short video from recent dive trip to Kikaijima, I have so much footage to work through and I have no idea where to start! Who knew editing would be so hard.

It was a true amazing trip, I’ll post a full blog about it soon. So happy I got to see a part of Japan rarely seen by foreigners.

 

 

 

Visited Karatsu again. This time for another weekend of four dives. Visibility was low, which was a little disappointing. But it was an excuse for me to practice and to try recording with the GoPro.

After making more than a few beginner mistakes (no fog filter, didn’t clear all the space off the memory card) I eventually got to grips with recording. Sadly most of the interesting fish had disappeared by that point, but I was still able to capture some of the undersea features littered about the shallow waters. One interesting feature is a sunken buoy at the end of the video. I also enjoyed swimming around the rocky coastal area, but sadly not footage of this.

English below.

先週に長崎市へ行きました。楽しかったです。私は電車で長崎まで行きました。電車は八時に乗りました。あそこに友達は会いました。

私たちは電車後にコーヒーを飲みて、昼ご飯で中国の食べ物を食べました。おいしかったでした。でも、肉まんのぼうがちゃんぽんよりおいしいです。

次、グラバー園やきれい長崎の海を見ました。グラバー園から長崎のすべてを目えますよ。

私たちは夜に稲佐山を登って、温泉行きました。朝の日曜日にトラムで平和公園まで行きました。平和公園はかなしいです、でも重要です。北九州に戻ってくる前して、私たちは晩ご飯がインドの食べ物を食べました。でも、辛くないでした。

私は長崎が大好きです。休みの後は眠いでした。

長崎に帰りまたいます。

Last week I visited Nagasaki. I really enjoyed my time there. I took the train along the coast, leaving the house at 8 in the morning. I met up with my friends when I arrived. After taking the train we got coffee and then went to visit the Nagasaki China Town for lunch, I had steamed pork bun (nikuman) and Champon (noodles with loads of toppings), both were nice, but I much preferred the simple pork but. Champon had a wee bit too much going on for my liking. Next, we visited Glover Gardens, and the sea near Japan. Glover Garden has amazing views of all of Nagasaki, I really enjoyed it, and not only because it’s a small slice of Scotland in Japan. In at the night be climb Mt. Inasa, and took an onsen on the mountain, which was amazing. Beautiful views of the city below, and the sky above. On Sunday morning we took a tram over to the Peace Park, which was a sombre, but important place. It was certainly interesting. Before returning to Kitakyushu we ate at an Indian restaurant, but the food wasn’t that spicy. I really liked Nagasaki. I was very tired after my trip. I want to return to Nagasaki.

It’s still winter, despite the change in season creeping along slowly. Christmas now seems as distant as it did in in July. I’m happy to see the back end of it. When I reflect mostly on my Tokyo trip the sensation I feel is mostly one of numbness, mainly for the season, but also for the sensation of feeling lost. Even now six months in, and I fail to recognise the skyline, or the shapes the roads make between my home and the supermarket, my school, the Starbucks by the castle.  I’m determined to escape more, to walk around on foot. I’ve done so little of that since coming to Japan. There should be so much here that I can see, yet I’ve done so little of it. I want that to change.

Personal projects though are moving. I’m writing a fantasy novel as a kind of exercise. ‘Straight’ fiction will have to wait, when I write I write grey. But with fantasy I want to let loose. But even then, I feel the prose beginning to take itself too seriously.

Music too is progressing, I’ve written tracks, and I’m starting to develop and idea in my mind for a concept nihon no tenki, I may purchase a field mic soon and go collecting. Very recently I’ve been listening to the music of Bonobo, it’s from him I’m taking inspiration.

Always endeavouring.

Ken,　北九州

I decided, somewhat late into December, to book a trip to Tokyo over the Christmas weekend. With the majority of my friends going abroad or visiting family on that weekend I felt I didn’t really want to be left behind in my cold flat alone over the Christmas weekend. I decided in the end that it would be much better to be lonely in Tokyo, with enough bright lights and distractions to keep myself occupied than it would be in Kokura.

I had to travel to Fukuoka for my flight, a short Shinkansen ride to Hakata station. I left the night before my flight and booked a cheap hotel. Fukuoka is a city that I’m now familiar with, though not always comfortable in. A few of my friends who live there have a good knack for finding the interesting secrets and good places to hang out and dine, but I haven’t quite managed that yet. The flight itself was unremarkable, apart from the fact I decided to walk to the station (strong winds causing trouble on the subway line). When I arrived, I found myself on the wrong side of the airport, and so I had to catch a taxi to the domestic terminal. I arrived with fifteen minutes to spare.  But other than that, I arrived in Tokyo Narita without much incident. That was the first flight I had taken by myself.

I took the Narita express train (expensive, but direct) to Tokyo Station (東京駅), and after eventually finding the exit (train stations in Tokyo seem to me more like subterranean rabbit warrens than anything else) I emerged into the cold, windy air of Chiyoda. I still had most of the day to wait until I could check into my hotel (an up-market capsule I found in Asakasa), hungry and tired I went searching for food. The buildings surrounding Tokyo Station (東京駅), and the Imperial Palace area strange mix of the modern and the not-so modern. I’ve found little European-style stone architecture in Japan, but here in Tokyo their seemed to be a fair share of buildings (mostly governmental department headquarters, or banks, or older companies) that used a red brick. Next to them of course are the towing office buildings with their surprisingly good selection of restaurants and Izakaya on the bottom levels. The sheer size of the buildings still gets to me, nothing in Japan makes me feel more alien than looking up at those gigantic buildings. It feels strange to me that Britain has shown such little desire to build upwards, or to even build much at all. We seem to prefer horizontal space.

 

Later, after probably one of the worst foods I have had in Japan (Nikudon, with cheese チーズ肉丼), and after a much better bowl of udon (うどん), I found my hotel. The First Cabin in Asakasa was the third capsule hotel I have stayed in whilst living in Japan. It’s less a capsule, than a bed in a dorm however. You separate yourself for the world by a curtain you pull down. The ‘room’ contains a bed, air conditioner, two (!) electrical sockets and a television (which thankfully didn’t run 24-hour pornography, unlike my first capsule experience in Osaka). I found it very comfortable. It reminded me of when I moved into my own bedroom at my parent’s house, which was the smallest room, barely room for a bed plus me.

 

That night I decided to visit Shinjuku, the area of Tokyo I stayed in when I first arrived in Japan. It’s bright, busy and loud. I spent a good time wandering, Shinjuku is home to a few interesting sights. My favourite is the large Godzilla statue looming over the Shinkjuku Toho building. A favourite stop here is Don Quixote, a store that sells everything and nothing at the same time. This is the place where I imagine a large number of the ‘weird Japan’ stories emanate from. On five or more floors, you can find t-shirts, food, cosmetics, sex toys, mobile phone cases, costumes and an endless assortment of the strangest things. It’s all tat, but unique tat, tat that doesn’t seem to want to impress anybody. Cool tat.

Shinkjuku is home to a large number of bars and Izakaya, being close to Christmas most seemed to be stuffed to the brim. However, I found a Mexican place, with live music playing. For my final meal of the day I had nachos, and a tin of Sapporo that cost far more than it should have.