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Jan. 23rd, 2020 04:35 amThe room I have my proto-layout in is largely unheated. Yes, I know I said I'd put this in the basement. There is a gas fireplace thing along the wall. I tried to start it up and it refuses to. There's gas flowing, I can see a spark when I press the ignitor, but the pilot won't light. I can't find any brand, or model number on it, so I can't find any kind of documentation or any parts. Y'know what? I ain't playing this game.
I picked up a book about retro cameras. It's interesting, and at the same time, makes me appreciate the features and convenience of digital. If anything, shooting a lot on digital allowed me to freely experiment and instantly see results with no penalty, ultimately giving me some experience. That experience is helpful for when I take pictures on film, so I'm not just wasting it. I've always felt that film allows for a certain creativity, and older film cameras beget a creativity on top of that. But film cameras, especially the older manual focus ones, are very harsh teachers, unforgiving of mistakes.
The physical film itself also has some fragility to it; it's supposed to be used and processed by a certain date, usually 6 months to a year after being made. (Meanwhile you can put an SD card in a digital camera and it'll be fine for the life of the camera.) I've found that some films fare better over time than others. I had some 20 year old rolls developed: The Kodak 800 tended to darken and lost a lot of contrast, the Fujicolor 400 lost some contrast but was passable. I think going over by a year or two it should still be ok. Film is also vulnerable to heat and X-rays. The SD card? Unless you put it in the microwave, it laughs that off. As an aside, pictures taken on old/expired film lend themselves to have that pre-aged look, like a picture that was stored in a shoebox for years. So, I still have a few unused rolls from before I got a digital camera, and that's why I didn't throw them away. Going for that aesthetic is also why there are people selling expired rolls on ebay.
Or, another way of looking at it is with the Bigfoot photography paradox. Supposedly, if cameras are so much better than they used to be, and more people have them, then we should have solid proof of Bigfoot now, right? Surely someone must have snapped a high-quality picture by now. Or not. Consider this, if we roll back about 40-50 years, to when film cameras were the only game in town. Someone would take a picture of something they thought to be interesting, but they only had some manual-focus potato of a camera that they didn't really know how to use, and it was loaded with a roll of B&W film that should have been used up years ago instead of being left in the back seat of a car over a few summers. Take a picture with that and ANYTHING will look like a monster.
Nowadays, everyone has a phone with a camera, and some of those cameras are surprisingly decent, or if one has the coin, they can get a DSLR with a sensor bigger than a postage stamp and an upgraded lens. Even the point-and-shoot cameras in the middle have come a long way, and they all have much better focusing and low-light response. Take a picture of the actual Bigfoot with either of those, and most people would think you just took a picture of a big dude who hasn't had a shave or haircut in a long time and just looks a bit off. These days, even Bigfoot could be a photogenic star on the internet.
I also got a book about truck stops and their history. It's a neat read, in a nostalgic sense, showing how some of the places looked back in the day. For example, there was a really old picture of the Gateway in Breezewood. Same place, same name, entirely different structure. I have fond memories of that place; when I was much younger, we would sometimes stop there when on the way to visit our grandmother. I've mentioned this before, that truck stops are liminal spaces, and liminal spaces in general fascinate me.
Other books: "Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them", and "Rusty Knuckles and Busted Tractors". Picked these up while harvesting used music CDs. While I do not have farm tractors and likely never will, these books have some zen, advice, and wisdom about dealing with various metal parts and fasteners that have taken on too much oxididation.
"Ishuzoku Reviewers" ("Interspecies Reviewers"): It's a fantasy-world themed anime, about a bunch of adventurers who do reviews of various monster-girl brothels in the Succubus District. It's raunchy, it's perverted, it's lewd & crude, and I haven't laughed so hard at an anime since Konosuba.
The oddbox semi-retro computer build seems to be quite stable so far. Thanks to the miracle of ebay, I'm able to get additional parts for it for cheap, such as more RAM and a proper sound card. I've taken to putting sound cards in some of my computers, because there's something about the onboard sound that's kinda weird. In this case, if I plug in external speakers that charge via USB, there's some kind of signal that bleeds through and becomes audible, especially on older boards. In my experience, sound cards tend to eliminate that noise.
I have a craving for greasy diner food. It's not a particularly strong craving, and it comes and goes. Most of the time, a frozen dinner is enough to take the edge off. Probably because frozen dinners have a lot in common with diner food.
That said, have you ever experienced the surrealism of seeing a Waffle House that's closed for the night?
I picked up a book about retro cameras. It's interesting, and at the same time, makes me appreciate the features and convenience of digital. If anything, shooting a lot on digital allowed me to freely experiment and instantly see results with no penalty, ultimately giving me some experience. That experience is helpful for when I take pictures on film, so I'm not just wasting it. I've always felt that film allows for a certain creativity, and older film cameras beget a creativity on top of that. But film cameras, especially the older manual focus ones, are very harsh teachers, unforgiving of mistakes.
The physical film itself also has some fragility to it; it's supposed to be used and processed by a certain date, usually 6 months to a year after being made. (Meanwhile you can put an SD card in a digital camera and it'll be fine for the life of the camera.) I've found that some films fare better over time than others. I had some 20 year old rolls developed: The Kodak 800 tended to darken and lost a lot of contrast, the Fujicolor 400 lost some contrast but was passable. I think going over by a year or two it should still be ok. Film is also vulnerable to heat and X-rays. The SD card? Unless you put it in the microwave, it laughs that off. As an aside, pictures taken on old/expired film lend themselves to have that pre-aged look, like a picture that was stored in a shoebox for years. So, I still have a few unused rolls from before I got a digital camera, and that's why I didn't throw them away. Going for that aesthetic is also why there are people selling expired rolls on ebay.
Or, another way of looking at it is with the Bigfoot photography paradox. Supposedly, if cameras are so much better than they used to be, and more people have them, then we should have solid proof of Bigfoot now, right? Surely someone must have snapped a high-quality picture by now. Or not. Consider this, if we roll back about 40-50 years, to when film cameras were the only game in town. Someone would take a picture of something they thought to be interesting, but they only had some manual-focus potato of a camera that they didn't really know how to use, and it was loaded with a roll of B&W film that should have been used up years ago instead of being left in the back seat of a car over a few summers. Take a picture with that and ANYTHING will look like a monster.
Nowadays, everyone has a phone with a camera, and some of those cameras are surprisingly decent, or if one has the coin, they can get a DSLR with a sensor bigger than a postage stamp and an upgraded lens. Even the point-and-shoot cameras in the middle have come a long way, and they all have much better focusing and low-light response. Take a picture of the actual Bigfoot with either of those, and most people would think you just took a picture of a big dude who hasn't had a shave or haircut in a long time and just looks a bit off. These days, even Bigfoot could be a photogenic star on the internet.
I also got a book about truck stops and their history. It's a neat read, in a nostalgic sense, showing how some of the places looked back in the day. For example, there was a really old picture of the Gateway in Breezewood. Same place, same name, entirely different structure. I have fond memories of that place; when I was much younger, we would sometimes stop there when on the way to visit our grandmother. I've mentioned this before, that truck stops are liminal spaces, and liminal spaces in general fascinate me.
Other books: "Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them", and "Rusty Knuckles and Busted Tractors". Picked these up while harvesting used music CDs. While I do not have farm tractors and likely never will, these books have some zen, advice, and wisdom about dealing with various metal parts and fasteners that have taken on too much oxididation.
"Ishuzoku Reviewers" ("Interspecies Reviewers"): It's a fantasy-world themed anime, about a bunch of adventurers who do reviews of various monster-girl brothels in the Succubus District. It's raunchy, it's perverted, it's lewd & crude, and I haven't laughed so hard at an anime since Konosuba.
The oddbox semi-retro computer build seems to be quite stable so far. Thanks to the miracle of ebay, I'm able to get additional parts for it for cheap, such as more RAM and a proper sound card. I've taken to putting sound cards in some of my computers, because there's something about the onboard sound that's kinda weird. In this case, if I plug in external speakers that charge via USB, there's some kind of signal that bleeds through and becomes audible, especially on older boards. In my experience, sound cards tend to eliminate that noise.
I have a craving for greasy diner food. It's not a particularly strong craving, and it comes and goes. Most of the time, a frozen dinner is enough to take the edge off. Probably because frozen dinners have a lot in common with diner food.
That said, have you ever experienced the surrealism of seeing a Waffle House that's closed for the night?
