New Pictires Another Old Camera

Today I used an old Kodak Brownie Target Six-16 made 1946 to 1951 an since they don't make 616 film anymore I had to tweak the camera so it would accept the still available 120 format file, But check out the height/length ration. It wide screen photography. And you only get 6 or 7 pictures per roll. I developed them but still just took a picture of the negatives and worked on them with my laptop.

New Development: 1919 Man with 1917 Camera

Last weekend I visited my father for his 93rd birthday party and I decided to try and take some pictures with a camera that was made before he was born (sometime before 1918). Somewhere along the way I acquired a Kodak Brownie No. 2 Model D box camera and from some other camera purchase I got a roll of film that would fit it. Unfortunately the film was made for a modern camera with a much faster shutter speed and smaller aperture openings, but I plunged ahead and hoped to fix the mis-match during the developing process. Here is my 93 year old dad. The first picture on the reel.

I may try some more pics with more appropriate film since I had to do some tweaking after I took a photo of the negative. I used my video camera and took a picture of the negative that was displayed on my small light table, then I used software, free software, to invert the image and change the contrast. This is the first roll of film I have developed in over 30 years, and with a 95 year old camera using the wrong type of film. All in all I am pleased.

You Are Reading This Now Because of the People in This Book!

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet by Katie Hafner

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Books like this and others such as The Soul of A New Machine, Accidental Empires and even Hackers are all all fine books. They show the excitement that comes from joining pure science with engineering at a time when knowledge and technical advances allow production of cool new products.

But the downside of these books for me is that they show that the thrill of discovery is real, but it is the nature of technological advances that they never end, so the story can rarely finish with a dynamic crescendo. The idea and development of “packets” as a way of transferring data over large networks really is a cool and innovative way to achieve a goal. But after the fascinating struggle to get a proof of concept with the first ARPAnet connection, the steps to the modern Internet is a tale of diminishing storytelling returns.

Good story, so many characters it is hard to keep track sometimes, but it mostly focused on a telling of specific technical advances in a fairly “reporter like” fashion.

Final note: if you tell people you you are reading a book about the history of the Internet, they almost always bring up Al Gore. So yes, he is mentioned in the book, just once, when there was a celebration on the 25th anniversary in 1994 of the first connection, and Gore was invited. This was written in 1996 before the “Al Gore invented the Internet” wackiness was with us. The point being, those who DID invent the Internet thought his legislative contributions were enough to get a ticket to the party.



View all my reviews

Another Book, Another Review...that is all

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I read this because I wanted to read another book. Now that I think about it that may not be the best reason to read something. I wanted to read Beautiful Ruins also by Jess Walter, but there were no copies available at any local store and for some reason I was unwilling to purchase the kindle version...sometimes I just don't understand myself.

Anyway I got Financial lives at less than half price so I bought it hoping I was on the first stage of discovering a new favorite author.

Long story short, I have decided to not bother reading Beautiful Ruins so this will be my last Jess Walter book. Financial lives is well written and had characters I was interested with but even with some clever insights somehow it didn't make me feel like it was bringing me to the brink of total spiritual enlightenment. This is something else that in retrospect may be asking too much, but sometimes you read a book and you feel so close to the story there is a palpable sense of transcendence. It may not last long but when you finish you feel exhilarated. For me, not this one though.

Good book, well written, solid characters but it won't change your life, even for a few minutes.



View all my reviews

There is No Stigma with Stigmata

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My second Philip K Dick novel in a month...now I am really confused, scared, paranoid and unsure what is real and what is not. That is what reading Philip K Dick can do to a person.

He wrote many more novels and surely he could not have kept up this level of weirdness for all those years. These two novels (Ubik and Peter Eldritch), are pretty spectacular. Almost unreadable, but spectacular.

OK, that is an overstatement and they really are readable, but it is just that somehow he manages to make me feel like finishing it is a little bit of a slog, and I am glad when the story plays out so I don't have to read more to finish the book.

I did it again (overstated the case), I enjoyed both stories but again there is some crucial storytelling component that is just not laid on thick enough to make me really long to pick the up the book again during reading breaks.

That said, the PKD atmosphere is so thick it stays with you all day. And I am really glad I read them, but for now I have my Philip K Dick appetite satiated. But everybody in the world should read this book, that is my real recommendation.

View all my reviews

UBIK

Ubik by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ubik starts with pretty standard Sci Fi and Dick-ian elements. The US is now the North American Federation but I don't see how this particularly matters except to emphasize the slightly future world is different. The more interesting change is that your front door, toaster, TV all have to be fed money for each use so that if you don't have any change you can't leave your house.

Anyway, the world now hows gift people who have different skills like mind reading and precognition (seeing into the future). And then there is the group featured in the book, a company of “inertials” who are not so endowed but manage to nullify the psychic powers. It seems one some businesses will hire the psychics to gain information about the competition and the assailed company hires this other group of anti telepaths to prevent this.

But all of the is just a tool to get to a scenario where the characters end up in a world that somehow begins to devolve in a surrealistic manner so that the reader doesn't know what is going on and the people in the book struggle to identify the currents that are ruining their existence.

As an example of science fiction I don't think it fulfills the traditional goals of the genre and aside from the key three or four characters I had trouble remembering who was who. But as a metaphor for a life of existential uncertainty it is spot on.

I read it because while reading Gibson's Nueromancer I thought it reminded be of Ubik which I read many years ago. But the only real connection is of atmosphere and maybe a slight similarity of pace in a few scenes.

Aside form these superficial likenesses of some parts, the fundamental difference is that aside from the gritty atmosphere of Neuromancer, the ultimate worldview of the characters is upbeat and positive. Even the drug addict feels good about himself in the end and the assassin is at peace with her profession. But PKD being PKD creates a world of uncertainty and suspicion about what is “real”.

It may be a possibly sad insight into my psyche (not psychic), but I find myself relating much more to the unease of the Philip K Dick world than the masculine certainty of Gibson's cyberpunk approach.

One recurring feature of the story in Ubik was that the items people handled would strangely be old and worn out even if purchased moments before, things were stale, yellowed. Anyway, after I finished reading and thinking about Neuromancer vs Ubik it realized that I read a digital version of Gibson's book but my copy of Ubik was from 1977 and was old, yellow and some of the pages were brittle. So I am kinda proud of my self for accidentally reading each novel in an appropriate format.

Neuromancer

View all my reviews

Goodbye McTavish

McTavish is gone now...

A good boy cat
He always used the litter box,
never bit a human,
never fought another cat

Harpo remains,
See the perplexed cat
In the background
Never reliable
In the categories declared