Month: August 2006

US rice supply contaminated with GM rice:

“Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced [last week] that U.S. commercial supplies of long-grain rice had become inadvertently contaminated with a genetically engineered variety not approved for human consumption.” Is anyone surprised by this?

Corn, now rice. What next? Wheat?

Would that the contamination of a nation’s food supply — perhaps better thought of as the world’s — merited the same attention as stem cell research.

dispatches: Mimicking the look of silver:

One of the problems I have with digital output from film is the chalky look from a scanned image. In making my silver prints I use a cold light head on my enlarger, which gives a soft, creamy look to the highlights. It is extremely forgiving to grain. When I see an image from a scanned negative, either from a drum scan or from my Nikon 9000, it looks like a print made with a condensor head enlarger. The grain is hard and granular. The highlights are contrasty and blocked up.

But I think I’ve figured out a way to get that creamy cold-light look.

I just got a flatbed scanner — lacking a power cable, sadly — so I’ll taking a look at this.

I was poking around in The Guess Where Seattle Pool on Flickr — submitted an image I’ve posted here that people will recognize quickly — and some of the shots were taken with one of these.

Apparently, this is a very close approximation of the legendary (and heart-stoppingly expensive) Leica M rangefinder. Costs less than a 10th as much, however. The benefits of the rangefinder (you don’t compose through the lens but through the small window at top right) are mechanical simplicity and bulk since you lose the flip-up mirror and accompanying pentaprism.

This makes it smaller than an SLR and quieter, allowing the camera to be insinuated closer to its subjects. It’s long been a staple of the masters of the small camera (cf Magnum).

I can almost feel one of these in my hand, it seems so well-designed (even if it’s not an original design). A camera with immediacy of digital and simplicity of a well-designed rangefinder would be a fine thing. Apparently Epson agrees, but at a Leica-style price. Made with some help from the company that makes the Bessa . . . interesting.

Gary gets his knuckles rapped for calling attention to his AdSense real estate:

it does seem that I’d let myself slip into some sort of google-ads purgatory:

Publishers are not permitted to encourage users to click on Google ads or bring excessive attention to ad units. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as “click the ads,” “support our sponsors,” “visit these recommended links,” or other similar language that could apply to the Google ads on your site. Publishers may not use symbols or misleading images that direct attention to the ads on their sites, and publishers may not label the Google ads with text other than “sponsored links” or “advertisements.” [ AdSense Policy ]

That tagline I had over mine — 5¢/day — represents just how much revenue I see from this program, based on its performance from January 1 to the present. What remains obvious — and non-remunerative — to me is how hard it is for the dark satanic mill that is Google AdSense to find ads that fit. You’d think a post with words like focus, vignette, or Holga would pull up some photography-related ads. Checked it again: now it’s down to 4¢. I’m taking it off just so I don’t get annoyed when I see it.

/me tests this out as a keyword search.

Would you believe the ad space at Google is blank for those three words? Holga as a search query pulls a sponsored link for FreeStyle, since they sell them. I guess I am all about non-commercial content. Go, me.

So I can’t actually ask/suggest/importune that anyone click on those ads: they’re just supposed to be compelling enough on their own merits.

Quite a few references to the “22 panels that always work” over the past couple of days. Looking them over, you know you’ve seen them.

Amygdala:

WALLY WOOD’S 22 PANELS THAT ALWAYS WORK. A cheat sheet from the great comic book/strip artist, Wally Wood.

Story of how Larry Hama, one of Wood’s eight billion assistants over the decades, created the original. Via Mark Evanier.

I’d like to see someone do some pages just using these panels.

Continue reading “hmm”

Summer Holga explorations

Originally uploaded by paulbeard.

I keep looking at this picture. Can’t make up my mind if it’s something I need to re-visit, or if I like it as it is. I like the vignetting, how it focuses the attention on the empty bench. Also like the repetition of those verticals: that’s what drew my eye at first. Is there an empty bench behind each one of them? Is it turtles all the way down?

Just for grins, I’ll edit this to add some more keyword fodder. I’m not gaming the system, am I?

I used Kodak T400CN C41 B&W film in a Holga 120.

Another run through GarageBand. The mini really struggles with it. Trying to lay down a second track just gives it fits. The monitor cuts out, which makes it even less musically enriching.

Worked through the Buzz Feiten tuning methods and reached the conclusion this beast has a really bad intonation problem. Old strings are not helping, to be sure, but I think the fix is more than $5 away.

Messy run through but I was making it up as I went and then forgetting it as I wrestled with recalcitrant equipment.

Well, as a proof of concept, it’s a go. But soldering those itty bitty connectors is not. I’ll tell the youngsters to go ahead and use the cameras and I’ll get the pictures out one way or another.

The smart move seems to be to get a Palm m100 Hotsync cable and hack it to fit. The connector fits into the camera’s USB port and you easily rewire the other end with the USB connector of your choice. So I’m looking into that now. Dollar stores are allegedly good places to find these, but eBay and Amazon have them as well, at 99¢.