LaserBlog.com

Have you Phooned lately?

I want to get an Image Tank or something like it before my next trip anywhere. I fill up CF cards fast and it’s be great to have a place to download them to without bringing a laptop. Any suggestions on where to get one cheap, or another brand of the same type of thing?

I’m thinking w/ this SARS hype, now’d be a great time to take a trip to Toronto! =:D No… for real.

We got a Tivo! I had no idea how cool it was. I figured “oh, just a digital vcr”, but now that we have satellite I needed a way to tape one show on one channel and another show at another time on another channel, and tivo was the best (only?) way to do it. Now I find that it has the ever-cool channel guide (like satellite does) and when it saves stuff for me it’s more like tv on demand than a stack of video tapes. I’m really liking it.

I’m so happy, I got my new scanner. It’s the HP 5500c. The slide/negative adapter is awesome, and my favorite thing about it is that it has a stack feeder. You just stick a stack of photos in the feeder, press a button, walk away, and it scans each of them one by one and saves each one. It’s awesome. It’s everything I’d hoped it would be. That may sound gay, but SO often I buy technology that doesn’t live up to it’s promises. This’ll be great cuz I’ve been digital for a while now, and going back to film (LOMO) has been hard enough and my “old” scanner was just fine, just slow (serial) and had no stack feeder. This’ll be great.

I love online jigsaw puzzles. Thanks for Cisley for this link.

Oh my gosh, I’m watching this “most smartest animals” sort of show on animal planet. Crows have figured out how to use passing cars to crack open the nuts they want to eat by dropping them in an intersection, and waiting for a car to drive over it, AND THEN they fly down from the wire to the sidewalk and face the intersection and WAIT for the green crosswalk WALK sign to light up before going out into the intersection to pick up the contents of the nut. WOW.

We were going to go to a star party tonight, but it turned out to be waaaay too cloudy… (Pencam photo)

UPDATE: You can find a list of astronomy clubs here… www.sky-watch.com/links/clubs_us.html … and attend a star party of your own.

I should keep my pencam around my neck at all times, regardless of what other camera is in my bag.

I was at the Comcast booth in the mall (where u sign up for cable modem) and this old man, respectible looking in pressed slacks and a nice polo shirt (oh, sorry, it’s ‘GOLF’ shirt nowadays)… and he had his pinkie finger shoved UP HIS NOSE to the SECOND nuckle. Digging. Wiggling. Digging. All while reading some sign on the wall at the end of the kisok. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, so he then shoves his index finger up his nose to the first nuckle. Digging. Wiggling. Fishing.

I wanted to get my Lomo out of my bag and aim it at him, but he was done by the time I thought it. If I’d had my pencam around my neck I might have got the shot.

People like this touch the same doorknobs we do.

Sick.

What is it about older men? They seem to not know that it’s rude (and disgusting, if I may add) to place their ass in your face. Once while sitting on a bench, this old man decided to stand right in front of me, ass in my face. AND consdiering that most older men don’t even know when they are FARTING, this is a scary prospect.

It happened again yesterday. My better half and I were sitting in a booth and a crowd of older men got out of the neighboring booth. Two of them stood there with their asses in my face. I said to MBH quite loudly: “don’t these people know how disgusting it is to place their asses in my face?” and MBH responded, loudly: “well, you’d think they’d get to know you first!”

Keep your asses to yourself.

I’ve uploaded some photos from my last batch of lomo photos. These are snapfish scans, so I only had so much to work with (low res and unsure about the quality of their scans). .:PHOTOS:.

UPDATE: and of course in my LomoHome as well: www.LomoHomes.com/laserone.

I’m just going thru the snapfish online scans and picking which ones I want to put online and I’m pretty excited about the nighttime downtown shots. (Downtown around here does not mean what you think. It’s just old architecture w/ some restaurants and clubs. This aint no Toronto.) But there are some neat colors and stuff. Thing is, I have no idea which film produced which results (I tried different types of cheapie film). I hope that when they come in the mail I will be able to tell from the negative.

I got my physical photos back from Snapfish today. (You ship them film, then first they put the photos online for you to see, then they mail the photos). I found that the photos that arrived were WAY better than those online. Perhaps the scanner they use to put your photos online needs to be calibrated. But the photos that came in the mail were much more colorful than the online scans. Only complaint is that the photo paper is thin, but frankly I don’t really care.

UPDATE: ok, one more complaint: they don’t put the negatives in any kind of sleeve.

Bad Bunny! (this link via jish.nu.)

This Mayday Project looks like a lot of fun! Check it out! (this link via GeekyChick.net)

Some people’s Lomo photos are so unique. For example, these photos at a.lifeuncommon.org are so awesome. They are so colorful and contrasty. I thought they were cross processed (where you shoot slide film but have it processed in C41 chemicals [as if for print film] and then printed onto photo paper). But the photographer commented it’s easier to use expired film and play w/ the ISO settings. I have a lot to learn.

It may not be new to you, but I just discovered www.TinyUrl.com. When you have a huge, long, url that you want to post in an email or post, and it’s so long it’ll “break”, you go to TinyUrl.com and enter it in, and they will generate a smaller url for you to use. It’s free and u don’t have to sign up. Cool.

I want to get this scanner, as it has a stack-feeder and is way faster than my serial scanner. You can put a stack of 4×6 or 5×7 photos in the feeder, walk away, come back later and it’s scanned all the photos. It also has a slide adapter and negative adapter, but depending on who you talk to (or what site you read) none of those adapters are worth sh*t, and that even @ their highest res the imgages are not sharp, that you really need a dedicated slide/negative scanner. I wonder if that’s true. But either way it’d be faster than what I have. And now that I’m used to digital, I’ll want most of my photos scanned.

My next batch of Lomo photos I sent off to SnapFish.comare in and I have uploaded a few of them:   .:PHOTOS:.

They’re also in my LomoHome: www.LomoHomes.com/laserone

I like snapfish because I don’t have to drop off and pick up film, and for about $4.50 a roll (w/ shipping) I stick it in my own mailbox, in 5 days I can see them online, download them (low res, which is all I need to share them online anyway), and then 5 more days later I get the prints in the mail.

I can’t stand it, this picture is so cute! (kitten picture)

UPDATE: and this one!

I can’t believe how stupid some people are. I watch this “animals funniest videos” kind of show, and they will sometimes have a video of an animal who is obviously (to me, anyway) a victim of something, and everbody just LAUGHS and the show allows this clip to run.

One time they had a cat who they SAID didn’t like her sweater, she hated it so much she just kept falling off the piano. What was REALLY going on was that cats, if you squeeze them in their middle (not alot, you can do it with one of those cloth, fluffy, hair scrunchies) they naturally go limp. It’s a survival reflex. They have no control. So some stupid bitch put a too-tight sweather on a cat then propped her up on a piano and laughed as she fell, hitting the keyboard, then bench, then floor, helplessly. Nobody caught this, and they let it run on tv. I was in tears when I saw it. Fucking morons. I just hate people today.

Just now they showed a baby chick who was so dizzy it was either spun around inhumanely or sick. Neither of these two things are something to laugh at. What is WRONG with people!?!

I scanned in some of my first Lomo photos. I put them up in a LomoHome: www.lomohomes.com/laserone…

Or u can look here: .:PHOTOS:.

LomoHomes are weird: the images are small, and they refuse (for whatever the hell reason) to put everything in Landscape mode, and that collage they make you fill in is weird. But it’s free, and it’s a community of Lomo people.

People Suck. Right after I post how wonderful the internet is that people help eachother out and share ideas, I get some nasty email from a total fucking stranger. I posted to a lomo board and asked a question, and this is what I got from LoCkeRx12@aol.com:

“why are you such a poser. i hate all the posers on this email list. throwing all these terms out like you wanna be cool or something, get over it. it’s just a stupid camera, go master some real photography instead of being such a poser artfag.”

This LoCkeRx12@aol.com guy sounds real intelligent. It’s people like LoCkeRx12@aol.com that ruin the beauty of the internet. LoCkeRx12@aol.com sounds like a thirteen year old, and his “artfag” comment sounds like somebody whose questioning his own sexuality and is totally homophobic. LoCkeRx12@aol.com better not mess with me again or I will make his life a living hell.

UPDATE: I found out who this person is. I have a name. They best back off.

Heard today: “How is he doing? I haven’t seen that wide load in a while!” (coming from a man who is fatter than the guy he is talking about. Nice.

Overheard: “Him and his wife with that JUICY ass. She’s got the best ass. She’s a witch but she’s got the best ass in town.“

Any Hockey fans out there? It’s 11:39pm and the Toronto Maple Leafs are in their THIRD OVERTIME still! Geez!

It’s really hard for me to go back to film after digital. I want feedback NOW. There’s a new Eckerd’s near(er) to my house, but I had a HUNCH that I could not do 1-hour in spite of the signs in the window. I just get hunches about things. Maybe I’m psychic. But anyway, I go, and sure enough, no 1-hour. There was NO reason to suspect this, except that they are new and may not have their act together.

So I would have had to come back in rush hour traffic for the film so I figured I’d do “next day” instead. But that was a dollar more because they “throw in” double prints. But I don’t want double prints and I certainly don’t want to pay more.

So I said “forget it” and went across the street to the grocery store where I had to go anyway, and figured I’d do the next day film there.

Nope. No way. If u do it there it’s “2 days”. After being digital and getting instant feedback, I don’t want to wait two days and come back in all this damn tourist traffic to pick it up. I’d rather do longer developing and not have to drive back to the store.

So I sent my film into snapfish. That way, in a few days, I can at least view them online and have lo-res versions to share online. Then the film will come in the mail a few days later.

I like snapfish alot. I’ve used them to reprint old photos and do prints of digital photos. I have a great photo printer at home, but ink-jet is not archival, it fades over time, esp. if the photo is in a frame or on a wall w/ any sunlight at all hitting it. So when I want to give a print to somebody whom I don’t want to have to keep reprinting ink-jet photos for as they fade, I upload them to snapfish and have the prints sent to them. It’s cool.

I just love my new Lomo. It’s small and cute and fun and quick (don’t have to fiddle w/ lensecaps like on SLR’s and mechanical parts on “boot up” like my elph). I’m actually amazed at the photos. So many lomo photos are tined, vignetted, blurry, artsy… mine are: Fine. Perfect. Colorful, criso, as good as any high quality camera. I guess I’ll actually have to fiddle w/ it to get those “lomo-like” images. Maybe it’s because I have it on Auto? I don’t know. Guess I’ll hit the boards.

Here are some links to some Lomo Message Boards:
Lomo.org
Lomo.us

for Lomo Kompakt Automat, Lomo LC-A

I’m a little upset.

Regarding my new Lomo LC-A…

The third roll of film I took, on the way home from Eckerds, got chewed up during rewind. How common is this? What did I do wrong? I’ll have to hit some message boards. I hope the film is developable.

I pushed the pin in and turned the knob like before, and the knob turned then stopped (unlike the last two times). I couldn’t turn it anymore. So, I pushed the pin again and turned again and it stopped again. I tried turning it while holding the pin in, and I just heard this chewing sound. But if I DIDN’T hold the pin in, the crank would NOT turn… I felt I had no choice but to hold the pin in.

When I opened the camera, the film had been rewound, but there were little square bits of film inside.

This sux because I don’t think they can develop film that has been stripped.

I hope I can figure out what went wrong so I don’t do it again. Shit.

I got my Lomo today finally. It came yesterday when I was out. So I had to go to the post office (yes, on April 15th w/ all the late tax filers!) to get it.

Click to read more…
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Well, I finally found an english Lomo LC-A manual online here.

Special thanks to Lucas Thompson for pointing me to this one. He said he’s mirrored that one on his blog in case it disappears. That’s a great idea. Maybe I’ll mirror one here as well, as they seem to come and go and I know that people are always in need of such a thing.

I must say, the internet never ceases to amaze me. People can be so generous. A few inquiries here and there and now I have a whole slew of English Lomo Manual links. Here’s another one. I love the internet.