So anyways, the world didn’t end on December 21st. Or on the 31st. Or even on the 25th.

The whole apocalypse thing was a complete bust.

Everything just kept on keeping on, same as always.

It’s the one scenario I was completely unprepared for, too.

Now to top it off, I’ve got some kind of coldvirusbugflu thing that’s kicking the crap out of me. I’m feeling dead sick, dead tired, and the world continues to exist with all its demands and responsibilities.

Being sick and still having to face all the pressures that didn’t go away when the world didn’t end, is starting to slide me back into that dark pit of depression again. Not sure I ever got fully out of it, but for a little while there I wasn’t feeling it so heavily.

Hence the lack of updates here. Not counting this one.

The other day when I took my Kodak Bantam out for a walk, I shot a few more pics than just the Ghostbusters car.

The walk took me past an old schoolhouse building, and its playground. The school was built over 100 years ago, and while it’s no longer used as a school, it is still busy there – though I don’t know what they do exactly.

The playground sees a lot of use in the summer as a cricket pitch.

p.s. Hey look! A photography post!

I took my plastic Holga camera out on the Summer Solstace last week. We were having a family get-together and it seemed like a good excuse to expose some old B&W film.

The Holga is a cheaply-made plastic camera with a plastic lens, a fixed aperture (roughly f/11) and a fixed exposure (roughly 1/100th). It’s known for light leaks and double exposures. Mine requires a rubber-band to ensure the back doesn’t fall off unexpectedly.

I say cheaply-made as opposed to just cheap, because the Lomographic Society International will happily sell you a Holga for at least 3x what it’s probably worth. I have mixed feelings about the LSI – I do enjoy shooting film (they’re all about analogue photography) and I can & do appreciate the joy of the occasional unexpected serendipidous results… Where I take exception is that they seem to be making a fortune selling junky cameras at insane prices.

Anyways, this wasn’t supposed to turn into a rant against Lomography… just a brief intro or explanation about the culture of embracing crappy pictures as their own artform. Which is what Lomography means, sort of.

Back to the pics – there are two pics from the summer solstace and two pics from the winter. Same Holga, same brand of film (expired Chinese black&white) but different processing results.

About processing – I still develop my own black & white film at home. The roll I did in the winter got contaminated or something. When it came out, it was covered in these little speckles.

I haven’t shot colour in a while because I think it’s too expensive to process at the labs and I haven’t found any reasonable sources of chemistry for processing at home. Yet…

It’s the Winter Solstace today. [sarcasm]Yay, winter.[/sarcasm]

Also, this:

WANT.

It’s crazy. It’s not even winter here yet. And I already hate it.

In fact it feels like I’m hating winter more and faster than I remember in previous years. It hasn’t really snowed much here yet, but don’t care so much about snow. It’s the cold. And it’s the way so many people forget how to drive when there’s white stuff blowing around.

Cold – it seems like it’s damn cold out, and in. Like, Suddenly: Deep Freeze! Yet it’s not really that cold, when you look at a thermometer. It’s only mid-December.. what am I going to feel like when we get to February and the -40′s? Actually, I don’t want to know. I want to hibernate.

Then there’s the way people drive… Oh my Gods.

We get this white shit every year. Why is it always a shock to people? Why don’t people learn to fucking drive on snow? “Oh christ there’s snow on the ground – I better go into panic mode and act like I’ve forgotten how to use a car!”

One thing I’ve made a point of doing every year since I got my license, is when we get some snowy/icy/slippy weather, I’ll find an empty road or parking-lot, and practice driving in bad conditions. It’s not magic. You can learn this stuff. It varies from car to car, and it’s good to stay in practice. All you need to do is first, learn what your vehicle feels like as it is losing traction or just starting to slide. Then you learn how to deal with it. Most of it is common sense. I’m sure there’s even places you can go, to specifically learn how to drive in poor conditions.

So here’s the deal: If driving in the snow makes you feel so scared and tense that you have to go at 10km/h with your four-way blinkers on, if you’re on the verge of panicing when another vehicle goes past you, if you can’t stop at a stop-sign that you can see 250 meters away, then stay the fuck home. If you don’t know how to drive in the winter, then just don’t do it.

Last month was about the toys, this month is about being all grown-up and doing responsible stuff. Well, mostly.

I’ve had a few slow-leaks in my car tires for the last couple months and it’s annoying (not to mention bad for fuel-efficiency) to be driving around on half-flat tires all the time, and having to keep refilling them. Plus, my local gas station started charging for air recently so you have to keep a bunch of quarters with you if you need to refill all your tires.

So I thought, it’s going to be winter soon. Rather than getting another set of all-seasons, I’ll get my first-ever set of winter tires. They’re all new and shiney and nubbly – big deep nubbly treads. Well ok they aren’t actually shiney. But they’re new and nubbly! Say it with me: nubbly.

Now I’m thinking, my mum has a set of winters and a set of regular tires, but only one set of rims. So twice a year she has to get them swapped out which takes time and money. And I’m no car expert person, but I have to think that it’s got to cause extra wear on the tyres and the rims to be swapped on and off every year, then they have to be rebalanced and all that mumbo-jumbo.

So my plan is to try and save up over the next 6 months or so, for a set of sexy attractive rims and tires. Then I can keep the winter ones on the original rims (which aren’t ugly but aren’t snazzy either) and in the summer, have some sexy sporty looking wheels on my car.

And finally, having a complete set of winter wheels (rims and tyres) means that swapping them out with winter/summer isn’t such a chore – just like changing a tire, quick and easy. I could even do it myself (in some bizzare alternative mirror-universe.)

Read more »

After all the hype last month about the winter olympics, I was contemplating maybe getting this Vancouver Olympics DS game that I had seen advertised.

I was midly interested, but not enough to plunk out the cash. So I more or less forgot about it.

Then just the other day I was over at the post office, and in the parking lot I spotted an abandoned DS cartridge! I picked it up and turned it over and surprise! It was the vancouver winter olympics cart I had been thinking of getting. Coincidence? Hmm…

Well, when I got home I popped it in my DS and then found out why it had been abandoned. It didn’t work – not recognized. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the plastic casing had a bit of damage – nothing obvious, but just a slight ‘dent’. I pried the cartridge open and pulled out the board inside, and then I could see the real problem.

The precious mask-ROM chip was cracked. Maybe the cart got slammed in a car door or something. Just enough to crack the ROM chip but not enough to really disfigure the cart or damage the circuit board.

I tried some different tools but the ROM was most-assuredly deceased. The EEPROM was still alive and accessable though, and I was able to retrieve the game saves from it. So, 222 and shadow, whoever you are, I have your game save data. The game itself though is toast.

Anyways then I was reading about the game, and found that there’s this bit where you have to try and save winter because some bad guys have stolen the snow spirits and it isn’t going to snow any more anywhere ever. The one little snow spirit who escaped is all like begging for help to save his friends so they can make it snow again…

No more snow? Yeah… see I’m kinda ok with that. Good luck though.