Crept Up And Slipped Away With Her

Coming soon...

 To my mid to late 2003 entries.

It's Been A Long Time Since The Book Of Love

I was going through an old hard drive a while ago and came across, among other things, a blog document.

It was from 2021 and covers the end of my UPS Store career through to The Sickness.

I also found scans of the handwritten code for a computer game I was trying to make work, along with scans from the original book for a different type of computer.

I should let an AI bot try to update the game for me.

Anyway, I'll go through and add the 2021 entries, which I'll tag "Moral Star Part 2" since that is what the file is, for some reason, named.

I'll also add the game code scans into 2003, where they belong. 

I Want To Fly High Oh Free Bird

Today I went back to the Children's Museum.  It is always a great place to visit. Did I take pictures? Sure.

Did  I take pictures without people in them? Not really, not this time. I did make it up to the overlook today, which looks down on the dinosaur exhibit. That was pretty cool. Also, random stuffed bird.

There's A Big Gold Dollar Sign On The Sunset Strip

I was listening to The Presidents of The United States of America this evening at work, and all I can think is that the song Naked and Famous seems to do a pretty solid job of describing the occupation of "Content Creator." Or, at least, what most people tend to associate with that occupation, at least post Covid.

Really? Covid isn't a word in the Firefox spell check database? That actually surprises me. 

Somewhere In Time And Space

 Also the Sci-Fi Channel cast of MST3K is about to get back together and throw out four new episodes under the MST3K brand?

What fresh hell, 2026? What fresh hell? 

You Can't Take The Sky From Me

Apparently Firefly may get the chance to exist again in an animated format.

Huzzah for that...I think? 

Slap Me With A Splintered Ruler

Took the Sprocket Rocket and ran a roll of film through it this afternoon.  I'll develop it one day this week, I hope.

I'll be interested to see what sort of nonsense I ended up with.  I should have a couple of pictures of the same person in three different places in the same frame. I suspect the next time I try that, I'm going to need a tripod, but whatevs...It's all about the experimentation, right? 

Nice Shot, Return To Base

Decided to play a C&C Red Alert skirmish game a few minutes ago.  One of those doesn't usually take longer than 15-20 minutes.

Not this time!

 I had to take care of an awful lot of enemy units in this one.  The computer learned how to work with practically infinite money.

You're Gonna Have To Face It, You're Addicted To Spuds

I finally came across something that my current desktop PC cannot run that isn't Windows 11.

Apparently the raw .mkv file ripped from a 4K Blu-Ray is too much for that thing to handle.  I'm guessing it's the GPU, but who knows.  I'll circumvent the problem by continuing to not buy that type of disc, unless absolutely necessary, and encode the .mp4 before I go and name whatever video I'm trying to get, instead of naming before encoding.

Tragic. 

I'm Sitting Here Waiting, The Gun's Still Warm

 

It's two am.

I'm sitting here writing.

Because why the heck not?

 

What am I thinking about?

The food I plan to make this weekend, of course.

Egg casserole, pineapple cheesecake, jambalaya, pepper lime chicken, probably some chicken fajita. Hamburgers. Maybe chili or meatloaf? I don't know.

What else do I need to do?

A bunch of laundry, clean the bathroom, probably clean the house, <Pause to play a quick game of RA2> fix some damn thing or other, blah blah blah.  That's the way of the day. Lists and things. Ideally write. Maybe I need to color something? I don't know. 

Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers

Ugh.

This drama at work is seriously cutting into my time to just exist.  I was there until around 2am writing emails, making signs and making sure people clearly knew what they were walking into at 6.

It's been unpleasant, but it is what it is. 

My Head Grew Heavy And My Sight Grew Dim

My PC 20 years ago had the following specs:

"Windows Vista irritated me to no end. 
An AMD Sempron 1.61 ghz processor, 512 MB RAM, 80 gb of hard disk space, and a 128 MB ATI Video Card were not enough."

I wonder how hard it would be to replicate those specs and try running the Windows Vista Beta again.  I can match the ram, hdd and probably the graphics card without any issues virtually, but I'm not sure about the processor speed. I'll have to look into that, but it sounds like a fun project to revisit...Twenty years later. 

And We Lived Beneath The Waves

Okay.  After several failed attempts, and a little bit of research later, I've finally gotten somewhere with the DigitaLiza sprocket scan mask.

 

 

Clearly, I have some more work to get done, but I now have a recognizable image, along with the sprocket holes.

I'll be the first to admit, this is probably not the best film to test this with, since I don't have a reliable color profile/memory to work with.  It is the dubblefilm jelly. Which is a bit odd...

 There is the original scan with my normal settings, for comparison.

I'm pretty sure I know what needs to be done, so hopefully I have something acceptable fairly soon. I'm out at a place I took some photos a while back, and I brought the Sprocket Rocket, but I kind of forgot the film and I really don't feel like going to get some anywhere. 

I'm A Mechanical Man

Apparently the drama in the Middle East is directly affecting my job...In an extremely negative way.  This looks to be the first in a series of very unpleasant days.

In other news, the Sprocket Rocket camera and scanner mask are now a thing. I'm hoping to be able to use the camera soon.  I'll try to figure out the scanner mask later this evening or in the morning though. 

In The Town Where I Was Born

Here is what I ended up with from the Revolog Echo film:

 

I used my Nikon FE, which has a functional light meter along with the super clean 50mm lens that it came with on a super nice day.  I went to a local park Sunday afternoon and had some fun. 

Unlike the jelly, this one I'll probably buy again.  I can think of a few interesting ways to use it, and the effects aren't overdone to the point where they take away from the images, unlike the jelly.

Admittedly, I was using an untested lens for that one, but it still seems like it would be too much. 

Till We Found The Sea Of Green

I bought a couple of rolls of effect/experimental film on Friday and used them both over the weekend.  The first one I shot was the dubblefilm Jelly 200.

I am not thrilled with the results, at first I thought it things came out looking like they do because I hadn't done a normal roll of film in good light with the lens, but it looks more like that is the intended look of the film:

While I appreciate the look it is trying to go for, the effect is just too much. I assumed, initially that my exposures were way off. But after looking through the sample images on the website, I'm guessing I wasn't too far off with my metering. I could do a little messing around and do a series of under/correct/over-exposed images, but I really don't want to spend another $17+tax on a roll of film I wasn't thrilled with.

I really hope the other roll I bought turns out a bit better. 

Well, We All Have A Face That We Hide Away Forever

It's interesting how something always comes up that falls into the category of "situationally appropriate" when I'm reading or listening to music.

My iPod usually lives on shuffle mode these days, and for whatever reason, when it is playing, whatever song happens to be playing at the time accurately describes shenanigans that are currently happening. Same thing with books. Usually, whatever I'm reading has something to say about something that is on my mind.

I've been thinking quite a bit this last week or so about how I feel like there is a huge part of myself that I need to keep hidden from the people that I live/spend time with, and the following bit from the book  I was reading this week comes up:

"That attitude, that we had to wear a mask, even toward our family, it was one I could never understand. A lot of people, men and women, thought like that, and I didn’t get it. And now I was afraid Donut had inherited that same attitude directly from Bea and her mom." 

I realize that tends to be a topic that is pretty heavily discussed in books, to some degree, but that just hit me on Friday. A day I was doing a lot of hiding from reality and just trying to be me for a while.

When The Wind Comes Right Behind The Rain

I went to the camera store expecting to make an ill-advised purchase, and I surprised myself by not, in fact, doing any such thing.

I ended up picking up two cheap lenses:

A Tamron 70-210 AF for a Nikon (AF doesn't work on my DSLRs because they don't have screw-type AF, but whatever) and a Soligor 35-70 + Macro lens for my Minoltas.

 

I also picked up a 3 pack of Fuji 400 film, along with a roll of dubblefilm Jelly and dubblefilm Echo, both 200 speed, both look like a lot of fun.  

I used the roll of Jelly when I was walking on the canal, and I took the types of photos I normally would, so this will be interesting when I develop it later.  I used a roll of Fuji at the same park I posted pictures of from the Tamron lens, I'll be interested to see what the difference is from manual and metering vs what I get from the automatic mode on the D3100.
 

When I Jumped Out On That Road

Okay.

Here's the D3100 with a known functional Nikon AF-S lens:

Everything looks about right, but it was super dark, and over exposure would be kind of helpful.

I guess I'll try it again during the day.