Journal entries for January, 2006

I discovered a really interesting photographic process last week called Bromoil. It's a process applied to a black & white photographic print wherein you bleach out the silver (which is what the black parts of a print are composed of) and then treat the paper in a chemical that tans it and causes it to harden in varying degrees, depending on how much silver was originally deposited in that particular spot. In places where the paper is harder, it's less receptive to oil-based ink, so when you apply ink to the paper, the parts of the paper that were dark when you started absorb more of the ink, whereas the parts that were lighter reject it, and it gets wiped away. So you end up with a sort of painting of your photograph, and the result looks awesome (some examples I like by Gene Laughter, Rene Smets, and Jurek Karwowski). The technique was most popular around the turn of the century, but has been kept alive by a small group of artists.

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Cat sent me her pictures from the trip to New Orleans two weeks ago, so this seems like a good time to finally write about it.

I arrived on Friday evening, and, after some brief discussions of geography, we immediately set to drinking.

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I've noticed an interesting psychological phenomenon. You know how, when you step into a dark room from a brighter-lit area, it takes a minute or two for your eyes to adjust so you can see? I've found a similar thing occurs when I go out looking for small things to take pictures of.

At first, I'm looking around intently and I don't see any bugs or crawly things, and I think the outing is a waste. But if I sit quietly and look around for a few minutes, I start noticing them and I realize there's actually lots of them flying around among the plants. It seems the mind is just used to tuning out things on that scale, and it takes a few minutes for it to adjust and start recognizing them. I don't think they're hiding when I come out and then taking wing again once I stop moving. It's a definite feeling of seeing nothing and then suddenly realizing, "Oh, wait, they're actually everywhere."

I don't understand why everyone seems to be so averse to mounting a roll of toilet paper. It seems that I often enter a bathroom and find that the previous occupant finished the last roll, opened and used the new one, and then set it on the top of the tank. Really? You couldn't spare the eight seconds to mount the new one on the holder? You shouldn't be in that much of a hurry at the end of your bathroom session, or you didn't do it right.

If it's in someone else's house, I could maybe understand not wanting to violate their sensibilities by mounting the roll the wrong way. In some households, that kind of thing would make sure you were never invited back. But if you finished the roll, then you saw how it was mounted when you came in. And if the roll was already empty when you got there, then I'd wager they don't have particularly strong feelings about it one way or the other.

It's not that it particularly bothers me to find an unmounted roll, I just really can't imagine what causes people to avoid doing it.

Hey, the lost lens turned up. I searched again in daylight and found it under the passenger seat of my car. I looked there though...

It's good to have it back, but it's a bittersweet reunion. I had just about resigned myself to its loss, and had started eyeing the Sigma 10-20mm as a replacement... Now it feels like I'm stuck with this crap lens again :)

I think maybe I wouldn't make a good father.

Today I finally developed my first roll of film. It took much longer than I expected; based on what I'd read, I was expecting to spend about 30-45 minutes. Actually, I started around noon and finished at 6:30pm. Of course, about four of those hours were spent mixing the chemicals from their initial powder form, which only has to be done once every few months. Also, I took my time with every step, carefully washing every container and funnel between each use to avoid contamination, and rereading instructions repeatedly to avoid mistakes. I guess it's similar to the way my first engine swap took me three weeks to complete, but the second one was done in a weekend. I imagine the next roll of film I develop will go much faster.

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I think I managed to lose another lens today. This time it's the small 18-55mm lens that came with the camera. But I wasn't hiking through foreign countries this time. I was walking from my car to my house. Somehow, between those two points, I managed to lose track of it. My camera bag was partly open, and apparently it took the opportunity to make its leap for freedom. I searched the front yard extensively, of course, but somehow, it's nowhere to be found.

If I had to lose one, I'm glad it was my cheapest, crappiest lens this time, but it was a useful lens too. Now my only choice is to carry around the behemoth. Awesome.

Gah, that was creepy. My family is out so I'm alone in the house. We're out of good cereals out in the kitchen, but we keep a few other cereals in the hallway by the bedrooms in the back of the house, so I went back there to see what we had. As I was looking through the cereals, I heard a noise in my dad's office, but since everyone is out, I assumed it was my dog, Chelsea. But it sounded like someone rummaging around through files, so I went into the office to see who it was. Oddly, there was no one there, not even Chelsea.

I then walked back out into the hallway, and I turned to find Chelsea standing at the end of the dark hallway, regarding me quietly.

Now, there's no reason for that to be scary — Chelsea is 15 years old, arthritic, deaf, and suffers from liver problems. In her current state she'd have trouble causing damage to a quadraplegic, masochistic doormouse. But to suddenly find her staring at me silently, almost maliciously, it felt just like a scene from a Stephen King movie, like Chelsea was about to make a leap for my jugular and I'd have to run and lock the door behind me in terror. It was totally one of those moments from movies where someone turns to see what's behind them, and it's nothing, and then they turn back and the bad guy is standing right in front of them and the soundtrack suddenly gets loud and you spill your popcorn.

I now have all the lights on.

You find yourself in a 15mph race that ends in your untimely yet quite anticlimatic death.

Back in 2002, to combat the increasing popularity of illegal street racing in Puerto Rico (known as "La Fiebre", or "The Fever/Illness"), the government commissioned a movie to be made (called, simply enough, La Fiebre). The relatively low-budget film was sponsored by Pep Boys, Armor All, and Shell, all of which are featured prominently in the movie (and if you're anything of a car geek, you know why it's funny that Pep Boys sponsors the film).

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OK, my standards seem to be getting pretty low as far as what I'm willing to post here. Soon you'll start seeing surveys about the number of people I've kissed and "What type of pasta are you?" quizzes. But these make me laugh and, ultimately, that's one of the few goals I strive towards here.

Q. What do you get if you cross a pig and a sheep?

A. A vector with magnitude (length of pig * length of sheep * sin θ) in the direction mutually perpendicular to the pig and the sheep determined by the right hand rule.

Q. What do you get if you cross a mosquito and a mountain climber?

A. You can't; a mountain climber is a scalar!

A policeman pulls a guy over. "Do you know that you just ran through a red light?" he says.
"I didn't run a red light," the guy says. "I saw the light, and it was green."
The policeman says, "Well, then I'll have to write you a speeding ticket!"

Q. What is the physicist's definition of a vector space?

A. A set V satisfying the axiom that for any x in V, x has a little arrow drawn over it.

It's looking like Andrés will be borrowing my Civic (apparently featured in a popular yet surprisingly unfunny video on streetfire.net) for the six months or so he's going to be in South Carolina. Heh heh, sure, everyone makes fun of me for owning so many cars, but when someone needs something to drive, it's a different story, huh? :)

Have you ever debated whether or not you should date me? Come on, you know you have. To help you make your decision, a kind soul on CraigsList has done a good job of enumerating the reasons geeks and nerds are worth it. The ball's in your court...

Last week Marc, Andrés, and I went over to Michelle's house to see the four short films she made last semester at NYU. These were her introduction to shooting on film — all her projects so far have been shot on video. This semester she was allocated eight rolls of black & white 16mm reversal film to be used over the course of the semester. All of her films were really good, but I especially liked the one she made for her final project. She really has a lot of talent and great creativity. I'm constantly impressed with the ideas she comes up with for her movies.

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Sunday night was quite an adventure. After a failed attempt to go ice skating with the family, Michelle brought her boyfriend Billy, her cousin Kyle, and her friend Johnathan over. After some brief hanging out at our place, Billy wanted to go to bed and Michelle wanted to play pool, so we dropped Billy off and then headed out to San Juan.

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So today is Three Kings' Day, the day when the three wise men come and leave presents under the tree while you sleep. When I left for work last night I saw the box of grass Natalia had gathered for the camels, and when I returned in the morning there was the inevitable trail of grass clippings leading out the door (it is a little known fact that camels are inconsiderate, messy eaters).

It has always surprised me how blithely children accept this holiday. Shouldn't it trouble little girls to know that strange men can just walk into their house uninvited while they sleep? Maybe I've just lost my innocence.

This morning when I got out of work I stopped by the photo lab to drop off some film, so on my way home I took Expreso De Diego, a large, four-lane highway. At one point, I found myself in the left lane, and there was a large garbage truck in the right. As I passed by the garbage truck, a rat leapt from the truck and tumbled a few times on the road. Just before he passed out of my view, I saw him find his feet and start scrabbling madly — still sliding, but somewhat in control. Of course, he was sliding across a large, relatively busy highway, so in spite of his impressive landing, I don't think his odds of survival were high. Still, I certainly couldn't have leapt from a speeding truck and fared so well, so I suppose it's possible he got lucky and managed to slide unharmed to the side of the road. I wonder how that turned out.

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You may or may not have heard about the WMF vulnerability that was discovered a few days ago in Windows. Odds are, you haven't. The media isn't really talking about it yet, which is unfortunate, because this is a pretty big one. All versions of Windows are affected, there are already dozens of different exploits in the wild, and Microsoft has not released a patch, nor is it likely they will for another week or more. I hate posting something here that feels a lot like those 'virus warning' forwards you hate getting from your more wide-eyed friends, but this is important and nobody seems to have heard about it. There's a FAQ available here.

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Ever since high school I've always wanted to learn to develop my own film, but the interest was always relegated to the back of my consciousness. But a few months ago, on a trip to Charleston to visit Jessie, I spent some time talking with her friend Kevin who's got a darkroom in his house, and he really revived my enthusiasm about processing my own film. Now that the construction at home is nearing the end, and the use of my bedroom (and, more importantly, bathroom) are restored to me, I'm revisiting the idea.

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