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| Corsica is trying to get closer to the mainland! Oh noes! That would have made a great headline, right? I'm not quite sure if it actually moved any closer last night but I do know that there was a 5.3 earthquake somewhere between the island and the mainland. The quake could be reportedly felt all over the coast but I can say that I did not feel it at all, seeing all the "I didn't panic but it was really scary for a second or two" stories floating in all related news articles makes me think I must have missed something. Shame. But hey, nothing was reported destroyed, no tsunami, no nothing. The coast still stands as always.  |
| (Zeiss. Kodak200.) ( +4 - watching over ) |
That and mint sauce (and possibly tea).
Jul. 5th, 2011 09:26 am| So yesterday was the 4th of July. It seems we're losing touch with celebrating everything and anything worth celebrating linked to a place we've lived. Sadly enough we even had to pause for a second to think about what one typically eats on the 4th of July. Hamburgers? Corn on the cob? Hot dogs? Strangely I associate Jell-O with my US years, as well as Thanksgiving whole turkeys and pumpkin pies. And possibly lobsters. Most Frenchies associate any kind of Jell-O and its clones with English folk though, they enjoy describing with horror their experiences of English folk offering them bits of jelly cake and how traumatised they were by the wiggly bits. It seems anyone who has ever been on a school trip or a language exchange stay to some part of the UK was scarred for life. It's something I will never understand, I think that the wiggly part is awesome. In other news, it's hot and stuffy and not too windy and therefore pollution levels lead to fun times. Ah, itchy eyes and stuffy allergy nose, how I did not miss you. And in other, other news... one day I shall get through these three rolls which were scanned back in April!  |
| (Zeiss. Kodak 200.) ( +6 with some blurriness due to the f22 requirement ) |
| I'll let everyone guess the way we were told that the train was going to be late this morning. Hint: same as on last Friday. I should just give up and trust the SNCF to always have difficulties "managing traffic" (yep, that was their excuse this morning because it is very hard to figure out that if a priority train is late then it's most likely going to make the commuter trains late). So yeah, SNCF, eff you to the highest levels of commuter transport hell. I'm not even going to go into long distance transport because that's a whole other story where overnight trips sometimes take over 24 hours (true story, happened over Christmas break). Bah. Now some pretty: |
 (Zeiss. Kodak 200.) |
Cucumbers, soja sprouts,...
Jun. 7th, 2011 04:43 pm| If there is one thing we can say about recent news events is that the average French person will now probably have a better understanding of the US/NY judicial system than most locals and that if previously most people weren't eating their 5-a-day then they're surely not eating them now. That's ok though, I try to bring the average up. And now on an unrelated note, I leave you with some photos of the sun setting.  (Zeiss Ikon. Kodak 200.) ( +4 - and down it goes. ) |
I want an industrial sized magnet.
Jun. 1st, 2011 10:44 amNo inspiration. No motivation. Bah. (Zeiss. Kodak 200.) In other news, I was all *grabby hands* when I first saw this Holga lens post for micro 4/3 cameras but really now the shine has worn off. It's not like I often take off the 20mm f1.7 lens anyway. In terms of politics, this flow chart about Sarkozy's way of getting thing accepted can be adapted to a lot of countries. If you have some extra time and an inner geek, you might want try this out. Warning: involves floating balls and magnets. And have a bunny and Superman's troubles in London. I mean those Time Lords go parking their TARIDISes everywhere... can't even find a proper phone booth anymore. |
TEH BRAIN - decipher that.
May. 19th, 2011 04:12 pm| Let me tell you about a pet peeve of mine about mechanical engineering research (and well, most research) - acronyms. Yes, everything has a witty acronym. Every single tool, theorem, method, etc. is not a name made out of words, it's an acronym made of up of random letters from some words describing the tool... why yes, the "duper super fantastic unlimited" tool would be USEFUL - dUper SupEr Fantastic UnLimited tool. It makes sense, perfectly! Obviously that example is a tad extreme but sometimes you fall on some stuff it just makes you wonder how long the guys spent working on that. All this because in the scope of my work I was told that it would be cool not to call my project "bla bla bla tool" but rather come up with a flashy name... and then later I have to find a name (read "acronym") for my future research project. Obviously I'm not creative enough to come up with anything great... so I've put the first letters together to make a pseudo word but that actually sounds nice. But I was told that when it gets deciphered (we're not researchers for nothing, we love deciphering random acronyms) the "early" aspect doesn't appear. So I just added an "E" at the front. If you've read this far and have understood a bit of the content, bravo. Just rereading the text made me cringe at the confusion it generates in my own head and I'm supposed to understand myself. Argh. Let's move on to something that destroys my mind a bit less... the Zeiss. Yep, still totally in love with it. 1963 must have been a good year! And the colours, I love how the colours came out, the Kodak Gold is always pretty good but here it seems even better. |
 (Zeiss Ikon. Kodak 200.) ( +5 - but alas some blurriness was inevitable ) |
 (Zeiss Ikon. Kodak 200.) We shall be back to our regularly scheduled activities soon. First unpacking a bit and putting all tickets and receipts together. |
1963 - the Zeiss year.
Apr. 22nd, 2011 06:42 pmPlease say hello to a new addition to the family, the Zeiss Ikon Contessamat SBE. A rangefinder from 1963 and this is the first photo I took with it. |
| (Zeiss. Kodak 200. I love my ego.) |
I am rather happy with the way the photos came out overall considering that the iris is stuck in f22. Yes, f22! It was quite hard getting my head around that as I'm usually stopping at f8. Taking photos with this camera showed me just how much I still relied on the "automatic" aperture/shutter speed calculations on the Chinon and Zenit. Here, although there is a primitive calculator that shows you when technically you're out of bounds, everything was manual. Great way to learn to work with a small aperture and to test the stability of my hands. The amount of photos which aren't too blurry is incredible even though the shutter speeds mostly went from 1/30 to 1/2. Modern cameras don't even let you use those kinds of speeds without two stabilisers... But seriously, 1963. They don't make these kinds of things these days, do they? There really is something to be said about old school Zeiss and one day I'll convince myself that I really should spend all that money on an old school Leica, one day! |
