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I'm a bit of an eclectic mess 🙂 I've been a programmer, journalist, editor, TV producer, and a few other things.

I'm currently working on my second novel which is complete, but is in the edit stage. I wrote my first novel over 20 years ago but then didn't write much till now.

I post about #Coding, #Flutter, #Writing, #Movies and #TV. I'll also talk about #Technology, #Gadgets, #MachineLearning, #DeepLearning and a few other things as the fancy strikes ...

Lived in: 🇱🇰🇸🇦🇺🇸🇳🇿🇸🇬🇲🇾🇦🇪🇫🇷🇪🇸🇵🇹🇶🇦🇨🇦

Fahim Farook

My wife pointed out something a couple of days ago that I hadn’t actually noticed myself — that we’ve seen a number of Indian movies and TV shows that dealt with the pandemic, but that there were hardly any shows from the west that incorporated the pandemic into their story.

It’s almost as if the pandemic does not exist in the fictional worlds of western movies/TV 😛

In fact, the only show I can think of where I remember the pandemic being dealt with extensively was “All Rise” … and there was a movie called “7 Days” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14494586) but it had an Indian director and Indian cast (but the movie was in English) and so I think it only counts as half a point 🙂

And that was since the pandemic began!

Compared to that, just in the last week I’ve seen at least 2 - 3 Indian movies which centered around the pandemic and wasn’t just referring to it as a passing thing.

I just find the contrast interesting …

#Pandemic #Movies #Reflections
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My first attempt at

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Edited 1 year ago

Hi fedifriends - hope you can help.

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Retoots, boosts, retweets, hell whatever you prefer to call them very appreciated!

🌍💚

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This tree is known as "Árvore grande", or Big Tree. Was planted in 1856 by the Viscount of Alijó.

Species is Platanus hybrida (planetree)

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Laurie Ashton Farook

Ogopogo

2023 03 29-30 day 279-280 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

I followed a Tatyworks tutorial, but went a wee bit rogue.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/ogopogo/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
A very crooked and bent tree wi…
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Laurie Ashton Farook

Moons and Meteors

2023 03 28 day 278 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

This is loosely based on a Joel Create tutorial, but in my head, the dinosaurs were having a bad day, back when Earth had a few other much, much, much closer planets hanging around. Or maybe this is a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. Either way, I’ve got it covered.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/moons-and-meteors/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
Earth-like terrain in the foreg…
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Laurie Ashton Farook

Red Field

2023 03 22, 26-27 day 272, 276-277 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

No tutorials. Just me and Procreate and my trusty Apple Pencil.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/red-field/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
A digital painting. A field fil…
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Laurie Ashton Farook

Stylized Owl

2023 03 24-25 day 274-275 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

I followed a Tatyworks tutorial, but went rogue. Of course. I’m not entirely happy with it, but whatever. It’s done.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/stylized-owl/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
An owl in greens and blues with…
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Laurie Ashton Farook

Edited 1 year ago
Iridescence

2023 03 23 day 273 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

Today, it’s a Joel Create tutorial. It was fun! A bit tedious in some respects since there’s a fair bit of repetition in the steps, but it was all necessary to get this effect.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/iridescence/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
A fish, black everywhere except…
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Edited 1 year ago

Egg with a pearl earring.

The artist is Aravis Dolmenna.
https://instagram.com/aravisdolmenna

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It's a beautiful day here today. Here are some flowers from the yard. Wild violets (which grow everywhere here) and tulips.

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Fahim Farook

A Telugu movie I watched recently has had me thinking about unreliable narrators …

I can see how an unreliable narrator would work easily in fiction — if the book is in first-person perspective, then we rely on the narrator for all the information we receive and so, if the narrator misleads us (either intentionally or unintentionally) we’d be none the wiser.

But in movies, while the whole movie might follow a single character, we still get a slightly more omniscient viewpoint — while we do see what the character sees and who they interact with, given the medium, I’d expect the reactions of others to be not filtered through the character’s own viewpoint.

The most memorable unreliable narrator movies that I can think of are “The Sixth Sense”, “Fight Club”, “The Usual Suspects”, and “Memento”. And most of these work because the narrator themselves does not know that they are unreliable — what we see is what they “know” at a given moment. The only exception would be “The Usual Suspects”, but since the story there is narrated by someone, what we see is what they say. So that works.

The movie which prompted all these thoughts had somebody being portrayed as a kind and generous human being — they weren’t motivated by money, they help people, they don’t drink or gamble, and so on. But later on, we learn that the person is not at all what they seemed originally.

Now, I do realize that people sometimes hide their true-selves. They show one face to the world while hiding who they really are. But I would expect there to be some clues if you look close enough — especially in a movie since that involves the viewer more and makes them feel satisfied at having spotted the clues when the big reveal comes 😛

For example, if somebody pretends to love a person, of course, they’d call that person and declare their love all the time. But unless they both had a common circle of acquaintances, I wouldn’t expect the person pretending to be in love to go around telling everybody how much they are in love. That’s just too much work in my opinion 🙂

This particular movie had certain elements like that which made no sense later on when the big reveal came. They positioned one person as good, as somebody who wanted to help people. They positioned another person as bad, as somebody who would do anything for money. And then at the end they just go ahead and say, “Oh, the good guy is bad, and the bad guy actually would do anything to help someone in trouble.” It just didn’t work for me …

Yes, this might not make much sense to anybody reading since some context is missing — it probably is just too much of a stream-of-consciousness thing. But since I’m thinking so much about it at the moment, I figured I’d just jot it down … 😛

#Movies #Structure #Reflections
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Fahim Farook

Of the various sub-genre of love stories that you find in Indian cinema, the they-fall-in-love-without-ever-having seen each other is one of the rarer ones. I like this genre because it’s harder to tell a story which is is believable for this scenario. And yet, some manage to do it …

“Butta Bomma” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23490324) appeared to be one such movie. The last such movie I recall seeing is from the ‘90s when mobile phones weren’t prevalent and the love story was built around letters.

This one makes full use of modern tech (or at least, somewhat modern tech since some of the plot revolves around not having a smartphone with a camera) where the love story developes between two people via phone.

The first half is a simple, sweet love story where two people find each other against odds. And then it all changes in the second half …

Revealing the rest of the plot would spoil things and so I’m not going to, but all I’ll say is that it takes a much darker turn at this point and diverges quite a bit from the sweet love story I’d expected. If you want a love story, this is not the movie for you, but if you want to be surprised it might work.

How the story goes is probably closer to life than the love story (and there is a somewhat happy ending to at least one love story in the movie) but if I wanted real-life, I’d watch the news instead 😛

#MiniReview #Movies #Telugu
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What impresses me the most about Avalanche Falls is the power in which tit flows through the small gorge. You can really get of feel of it when you stand on the platform that crosses the river.

"Avalanche Falls"
https://1-mark-kiver.pixels.com/featured/avalanche-falls-mark-kiver.html

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possibly the best wildlife picture I’ve ever taken

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