Month: April 2006

the buzzing sound

I have been looking for help Fixing iMic Hum. I sold my old G3/4 so I no longer own any modern Mac hardware with an line in (I do have an old iMac G3 but I haven’t tried using it for this — yet). And my old technique, using gramofile on my FreeBSD machine, no longer works: I rashly removed gramofile and it will no longer build due to some changes in the legacy system I am using. The SHM_LOCK issue didn’t crop up in older releases of FreeBSD 4.x. 

shmbuf.c: In function `init_shm':
shmbuf.c:157: `SHM_LOCK' undeclared (first use in this function)
shmbuf.c:157: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
shmbuf.c:157: for each function it appears in.)
gmake[1]: *** [shmbuf.o] Error 1

So I am using the iMic II with Final Vinyl with limited success. I get a lot of hum (I assume ground loop hum) but when I drop the needle, it goes away, and I can then hear a much more faint buzzing sound that gets worse with more gain. I think the unshielded iMic is at fault.

I suppose I could try Audacity as well, to eliminate any software-related problems. As noted in the link above, this gets more complicated: I have never used the the Audio MIDI control panel before, not that it helped.

Any ideas on how to add some shielding will be welcomed.

of what is growth indicative?

The profs at Marginal Revolution sink further in my estimation, assuming they cite this being consistent with their opinions:
Ed Glaeser reviews Richard Florida:

But while I agree with much of Florida’s substantive claims about the real, I end up with doubts about his prescriptions for urban planning. Florida makes the reasonable argument that as cities hinge on creative people, they need to attract creative people. So far, so good. Then he argues that this means attracting bohemian types who like funky, socially free areas with cool downtowns and lots of density. Wait a minute. Where does that come from? I know a lot of creative people. I’ve studied a lot of creative people. Most of them like what most well-off people like—big suburban lots with easy commutes by automobile and safe streets and good schools and low taxes. After all, there is plenty of evidence linking low taxes, sprawl and safety with growth. Plano, Texas was the most successful skilled city in the country in the 1990s (measured by population growth)—it’s not exactly a Bohemian paradise.

So why do creative people live in New York, LA, London, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle? Because those places represent rich concentrations of talent, skill, resources, and the social infrastructure that lets innovation and creativity blossom. I just looked over the Plano, TX, chamber of commerce and wasn’t overwhelmed by what I found. Maybe not the best place to look . . .

I found one computer software/consulting shop, five ad design/graphics shops, one art/theater studio . . . maybe they don’t all sign up with the C of C?

As for “big suburban lots with easy commutes by automobile and safe streets and good schools and low taxes,” yeah, so what? Sounds to me that they like stuff — safe streets and good schools — that they’re not willing to pay for — low taxes.
As for sprawl, this sums it up for me: Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. I won’t say I agree 100% with Kunstler’s gloomy view of the world, but nor do I think sprawl and everyone to his own 3000 sq ft mini-mansion on an acre of land 30 miles from their job is a great idea. You’d think people would figure out it’s not sustainable.
Continue reading “of what is growth indicative?”

overthinking

I’m starting to doubt whether buying a light meter was a good idea.

I can’t make much sense of it, given the glacial exposure times I am working with. What I would like to find is a reliable way of converting EV or LV measurements to times, given a fixed aperture and shutter speed. I only have one variable to work with, after all.

I went to take my weekly picture of the local P-Patch and the meter had some outrageous value (4 minutes) where my crib sheet I have been using was just a bit lower.
Cribsheet

Working from that, I went with a bracketed approach of 7 and 20 seconds. It was getting toward dusk and pretty cloudy but after the blown out two minute exposure I took last week and my research into the reciprocity characteristics of Fuji RVP (it has no reciprocity failure until after about 2 minutes), I decided to go with what has worked before. Yes, the two minute time came from this sheet, so it’s by no means fool-proof. Or perhaps I’m not the fool it was tested with.

I think I should test this out and if it works, I’ll sell the meter and go on my way.

do Depends come in camouflage?

A little perspective, perhaps?
The Belgravia Dispatch: Trust But Verify:

How is it that the nation that defeated Hitlerism and Japanese imperialism, and then stared down Soviet Communism, is now supposed to quiver over a nation whose economic output is about half of Spain’s? Our current crop of war enthusiasts have awfully poor bladder control….

the stuff they say and do

My daughter, 7 going on 17, is making place cards for Easter dinner tomorrow and on the way to doing that, she made some small tokens of her esteem for her family.

Mine is a small image, about the size of a 35mm frame, with concentric rectangles in different colors, framing a bright yellow flash with the word “click” under it. She says it’s my pinhole camera with the bellows thingie. I’m tickled.

documentary

The first installment of my large photo-documentary is online.

This was a several month project where I followed the progress of a Habitat for Humanity house being built by a coalition of women’s groups in Atlanta. The work took place in early 1992.

So far I have 143 images scanned, not quite half, as best I can tell. Some of them are pretty mucky and will need to be re-scanned once I get the waterspots and cruft off them. But I’m pleasantly surprised at the quality of the development and the density of the negatives. These were all done by hand and I had very little experience at it. They may lack the dynamic range of Ansel Adams but hey, you can see what’s in ’em.

For the cognoscenti, the film used was Ilford HP5 or Delta 400, most likely shot as rated. If memory serves, these were all shot with my Nikon FM2. Still have it. They were scanned on my Nikon Coolscan (LS-50) at 4000 dpi as 14 bit images.

The plan for all this is to clean it up and make a gift of it all to Habitat, the Junior League of Atlanta, and any other coalition members who want it. I have no idea if the homeowner on whose behalf this project was done still lives in the house, but I think a copy of it all would be nice to keep there. I think this is the place, as Joseph Smith said.

new experiment

Polaroid pinhole camera:

To do this, all that is needed is a Polaroid Land camera, some small screwdrivers, and a small sheet of thin metal. These cameras can be found on eBay, or better yet, at yard sales. It will be made into a pinhole camera with several pinholes that can be switched into place, for use in various light conditions etc.

Hmm. I just managed to load film into this beast (not as complicated as it looks but fiddly enough, to be sure). Now I find this. <sigh>

I guess I can work through the 10 sheets of film and see how it works (at $2/sheet, yuck!).

more new toys

My birthday present to myself — a Gossen Luna Pro light meter. How insecure of me.

Of course, it won’t be very useful until I figure out how to transpose the normal exposure ranges it covers to the elephantine exposure times required by pinhole cameras.

But there are crib sheets and HOWTOs for that.