Last week happened. I think. I had a sinus headache on Saturday that made everything from earlier in the week seem vague and hard-to-remember, so I’m stuck looking for pictorial evidence.
This is a sketch I made on my phone (using Brushes) at the pdx.rb meeting while Igal was talking about why he uses rcov. His code example involved kitties, so obviously kitties love rcov too.
This is a polaroid I took while walking around my neighborhood on … Thursday? I finished off the Artistic-TZ film pack I had in the SX-70, so next up is a pack of Fade to Black film, which does exactly what it sounds like, over a 24-hour period after the photo is taken. The scans I’ve seen online are pretty neat, so I’m excited to try it out for myself.
I also did a few things like go to the Open Source Bridge work session, and fix a couple of setup instructions in OpenConferenceWare that I found confusing. And I watched the Superbowl with friends, though honestly I’m a much bigger fan of Puppy Bowl. I think the mass appeal of watching puppies and kittens run around in circles must say something about human nature, or western civilization, or something like that. But I don’t know what.
Categories: art · photography · weekly report
Tagged: brushes, drawing, photos, polaroid
1. Get at least two packs of film to start off with, so that you’ll have plenty of chances to learn what you’re doing.
2. Squint at the included directions for attaching your new Polaroid back to the Holga camera. Squint even more at the directions for loading the film. Make a guess as to what the photos are indicating, and fiddle with it until everything appears to be in place.
3. Take a picture of your cat in what you hope is bright enough light for the film ISO. Pull the photo out of the camera in a complicated process involving a little paper leader strip, and a film door that’s hard to pry open even with fingernails.
4. Remember that using peel-apart film probably means that there’s an optimal length of time to let it develop before opening, and fumble for the film box to find out what that is. Glance at the time. Try to guess how long it’s been since you removed the film from the camera. Give up and open it a minute later.
5. Wonder why there is no cat in this photo.
6. Decide that low light levels are probably the culprit, and sprint outside as soon as the gloomy winter weather breaks into sunshine.
7. Fail to pull the film out smoothly, feeding it instead into the little slot the paper tabs (which tell you what number print you’re on) are supposed to come out of. Open the camera to clear the jam, crossing your fingers you haven’t exposed the entire film pack to light.
8. Hope that aggressive cropping will be enough to keep the picture from being a complete waste.
9. Spend some time reading Flickr forum threads for tips. Decide that you’ll just try to get over the minimum development time and not worry after that, since it’s the only way you’re going to be able to take pictures outside (needing to let the opened prints dry flat on a clean surface is kinda limiting).
10. Go outside and take more pictures.
11. Conclude that no amount of wishful thinking will convert “bright overcast” into “direct sunlight”.
12. Watch the weather forecast anxiously, hoping for actual sunshine to occur.
13. Run outside during the next available sunbreak. Finish off the pack of film.
14. Admire the imperfect, unexpected results.
Categories: photography
Tagged: film, holga, holgaroid, learning, polaroid
Dog spotted while grabbing lunch last week.
This is the 17th week in a row I’ve managed to do some sort of review post. Last week I went through and put all of them in their own category, so you can skim back through if you’re curious.
It’s been a somewhat busy week, too. I went to a Blazers game, photographed the Open Source Bridge 2010 Town Hall meeting (I’ll put the pictures in their own post), tried to get the hang of Polaroid pack film, and finished my first sweater in over, um, two years.
I’m also plotting a major reorganization for both this blog and my main website, focused around doing a better job of showing off my work and projects. Still working on the details—I think I want to combine everything under one domain, but I don’t really know what it should look like, yet.
So it goes. Busy. Now back to work.
Categories: weekly report
We drove past this a couple of times before finally giving in to curiosity and stopping to check it out. A few sites I’ve found label it as Golf Ball House, but given the alien figures in the windows, it’s clearly a UFO.
Right on Highway 40 in the otherwise abandoned-looking town of Yucca, the house is surrounded by a number of metal saucers and other sculptures. And a mini-mart in a trailer, if you need to get something to drink or a package of beef jerky.
Plus a couple of aliens on a road trip. Though I think they’d be creamed by the trucks out there.
Categories: photography · travel
Tagged: aliens, arizona, desert, house, photography, photos, roadside attraction, ufos
Re-entry from vacation is always a little tricky. There’s work to return to, at the same time you’re trying to sort out all of the photos and memories and ideas from the trip. After last week’s trip, I came back to a client project launch, Calagator’s birthday, rapid-fire CrisisCampPDX planning, new photo equipment to play with—just to start.
We had about fifteen people come out for Calagator’s 2nd birthday party at Bailey’s on Friday night. Low-key, casual meetup, with brownies from Joe Cohen, lemon bars I made with the roadtrip lemons, plenty of beer, and food from the taqueria across the street. I’m sad that Igal, who has been instrumental in keeping Calagator going, was sick and couldn’t be there with us.
On Saturday, about 60 people met up at NedSpace for the first-ever CrisisCampPDX, a quickly-organized branch of a project that’s been bringing people together around the world to provide support for relief efforts in Haiti. This wasn’t just the regular Portland tech scene at work—we had a wide range of participants, from developers, to GIS specialists, to French and Creole speakers, to people who helped with data entry and sorting. I was really impressed with the energy and focus everyone brought to this work day. I helped with a hospital data project using Sahana, a disaster-management system. We hit a few bumps as people tried to get up to speed on different projects, but on the whole I was really impressed with how much we were able to do, for such a distributed set of projects.
And now for something completely different.
I have a small but growing collection of cameras, which has now expanded to include some Polaroid equipment. The middle of winter in the Pacific Northwest is not the best time to be running around shooting ISO 100 film, but I did manage to get a few shots off last week with my new SX-70 Sonar camera. (This is not the only new camera from the last couple of weeks, but you’ll have to wait to hear about the rest.)
You may be wondering, “didn’t Polaroid stop making instant film a while back? Why would you pick that up now?”. There’s a group known as The Impossible Project which has spent the last year and change developing new instant film for Polaroid camera formats, and they’re expected to release the results of that work next month. So I just have to pace myself with my existing film supply for a few weeks.
Last but not least, I updated the blog’s header with a new photo, from the road trip. Click through and have a look if you’re using an RSS reader to view this. I have a habit of leaving the header picture the same for long periods of time, but once in a while the blog design changes, and there’s often new links in the sidebar to check out, so it’s worth taking a peek.
Categories: events · photography · projects · weekly report
Tagged: calagator, camera, cchaiti, ccpdx, crisis camp, film, impossible project, open source, polaroid
January 23, 2010 · 1 Comment
Here in Oregon in the middle of winter, eating local/seasonal is heavy on root vegetables and other things that store well, like potatoes and onions and cabbages. But in California, they’re right in the middle of citrus season, so as soon as I saw the trees I started plotting to acquire some oranges of my own.
We made two fresh produce stops, and a third one for olives.
First was California Fruit Depot, in Edison. It’s right next door to an orange grove-turned-RV park (free oranges if you stay there?). Lots of samples, but they primarily sell oranges, and dates which the employee said are grown to the south of there, in Indio. We bought a bag of Minneola tangelos and two kinds of dates.
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Our second stop, on the way back through from Vegas toward Bakersfield, was at Murray Family Farms. They grow a bunch of different things, and the farm store and grounds are nicely set up for visitors, with a small petting zoo and picnic area. We bought Meyer lemons, pistachios, avocados (we hit the tail end of their Zutano crop), and a couple of satsuma oranges. I’ve been snacking on the bag of pistachios all week—it seemed like a splurge at the time, but now I’m wishing we’d bought more, because when this runs out I will be sad.
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Our last stop, heading back up I-5 in the rain, was at the Olive Pit in Corning. This is another place with great samples; there’s a couple dozen types of olives and olive oils to try. Corning is apparently “Olive City”, complete with an annual Olive Festival. So if you like olives, this is a good place to stop.
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Our route took us through a number of different growing areas, from rice to olives to citrus to rangeland. I really enjoyed being able to stop at even just a few places to taste things, and close the gap between “food that comes from somewhere” and “food that comes from a plant I can see right there”. If you have a little extra time on your own drive, I hope you’ll do the same, whether in California or some other part of the world.
Categories: food · travel
Tagged: california, citrus, local, olives, oranges, road trip, seasonal
January 21, 2010 · 1 Comment
Route 66 through Arizona is a fascinating mix of tourist nostalgia, run-down and abandoned buildings and towns, and open desert. The Hackberry General store is the best of the first category, a gas station-turned-gift shop and collection of curiosities.
More pictures from this visit (and a previous one, in 2007) on Flickr.
Categories: photography · travel
Tagged: arizona, desert, hackberry, photography, photos, rest stop, route 66
photo by Reid Beels, from Calagator's 1st birthday celebration
Two years later and you’re still going strong.
Join Calagator developers and users for a birthday party this Friday, 7pm, at Bailey’s Taproom. Bring a dessert to share, or just stop by for a drink. We’d love to see you there.
Categories: events · technology
Tagged: birthday, calagator, calendar, open source, party, software
As I write this, I’m in a car on I-5 in the pouring rain, at the end of a six-day road trip from Portland to Kingman, AZ to Las Vegas and back again.
I don’t drive, so I’m just here to take pictures and chatter while Lucas negotiates the traffic. I’ve also been using my phone to plot rest stops, including some at local food providers’ shops, so we now have oranges, lemons, pistachios, dates, olives, and avocados, all from farming areas we passed through.
In addition to visiting family, we’ve had a solid dose of sunshine, seen a house shaped like a UFO, posed for photos by the (relocated) London Bridge, and passed by a lot of cows. Which are smellier in the rain.
About the only thing we need to make this perfect is the power to give stiff fines to the numerous crazy bad drivers also on these roads. Or perhaps a rocket launcher.
Categories: travel · weekly report
Tagged: road trip
