Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Instant photography rediscovered

A few months ago I read about The Impossible Project, a project to newly develop instant film for Polaroid cameras. This project was started by a group of former employees of the Polaroid factory in Enschede, The Netherlands, after the factory was closed down. Because there was still demand for instant film (to use in original Polaroid cameras) and Polaroid themselves stopped production altogether, they tried and succeeded in reinventing the production of it, resulting in film packs being available again for the various Polaroid camera series: the 600 series, the SX-70 type, the Spectra and Image cameras. There are now films for color and silver gray shades photos, with white, gray, gold and black frames. You can get them at their web shop, or in their shops in some mayor cities, where they also have a collection of original cameras and new accessories, or at photoshops. Development of films is still going on; the light sensitivity is still an issue that is going to be tackled. I've been experimenting with two cameras, a OneStep express 600 series camera and a SX-70 type camera, a Polaroid Land camera Supercolor Autofocus 3500 (shown in the picture), which has a manual focus setting too, and various films.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Social media circles

Recently I joined Google plus, already using gmail and other Google services.
I must say it has become a bit of an addiction, posting messages or photos or reading and viewing other's in various circles I have created or added ('photographers', 'writers', or just funny and interesting people), from people all over the world whom I didn't know before.
To stay in touch with local friends and family I prefer to use my Facebook account.


New social media services come and go. One time it is 'hip' to be one of them, then they become less favorable and everybody is moving to other places to connect.


I'm going to stick to the two afore mentioned, unless they become invaded by a mass of advertisements or other commercialisation.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Holy controversy circus

The controversy about Monty Python's movie 'Life of Brian' is re-imagined in a new movie 'Holy Flying Circus', recently broadcasted on BBC. 
The characters of the original Monty Python team (John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Graham Chapman) are played by lookalike actors.
For those who missed it, or can't receive BBC on their telly or on the iPlayer it's now on youtube: 
It's quite funny.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

iAm loving it (IT)

It's a shame that Steve Jobs wasn't given more time to live. For him and his family and friends of course, but also because he's done so much to greatly enhance our life with computers and the mobile gadgets that we use at home, at work and everywhere.
First he gave us a much better alternative (the Mac) to the bug infested windows.
Then the iPod was created, the digital successor of Sony's walkman.
Microsoft tried to make a 'iPod killer', as they named it, the Zune.
Apart from the stupid name and ugly colors they gave them (poo brown and such), Microsoft never had any idea about what the customer wanted. They are only good at making dull and ugly products like Office.
The Zune was a complete failure of course.
Apple's iPhone was the success of the century and the start of a revolution in design and user friendliness.
And then there's the iPad, another strike and another blow to the windows pc market.
The pc is a fossil of the 1980's.
Now again spokesmen of various companies, full of envy about Apple's success, announce the 'iPhone killer' or the 'iPad killer' but all they do is trying to copy, lacking ideas and original concepts like Apple has.
In the meantime many users of Apple's products like me are having a good time and pc users and users of Android phones or tablets (Android is so like windows 95) are suffering many annoying times.
Jobs seems to left some plans for future products and continuity in furthermore improving the products of today, so I am curious what the future will bring. I'll trust they will do it right.
Steve may now be busy revolutionizing the Divine organization up there in Heaven.
They are longing for it too like we earthlings.

Update:
On the 19th of october there was a memorial for Steve Jobs at the Apple campus in Cupertino, Ca. where all employees gathered to remember him. The new ceo of Apple Tim Cook and Al Gore gave a speech and Norah Jones and Coldplay gave a performance.
CNet managed to film a short glimpse of this event from a helicopter: link (YouTube).
Apple has posted a video stream of the whole event:
open this url in your browser or media player on your Mac or pc: 'http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/10oiuhfvojb23/memorial_350_ref.mov'
or open this in Safari on your iPhone:
"http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/10oiuhfvojb23/memorial_iphone_ref.mov"
or on your iPad:
"http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/10oiuhfvojb23/memorial_ipad_ref.mov".

Apple has also set up a special webpage to remember him, where people have posted and still can post messages in response of Steve Jobs passing away.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

United Colors Of America

Although Americans are mostly conservative they sometimes choose to try out something completely different and never done before. Like a black or coloured guy to be their president. Yes you can!
Obama can make a change, but like most predecessors he will encounter resistance.
First of course he'll need to repair some of the damage caused by 8 years of Bush.
Then there's this crisis caused by greed, overconsumption and mismanagement.
The party is over, it's back to work now, for those who still have a job.
But some still don't realise it. Bankers and others in the top management of financial companies gave themselves billions of dollars of bonuses, even though their failure is apparent.
In the meantime Obama himself creates business opportunities for makers of action figures,
'Yes Pecan' icecream and a recordcompany selling a compilation cd 'A Change Is Gonna Come'.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Year Of The Rat

This year it's the 'Year of the Rat", according to the Chinese. Rats are appreciated as intelligent creatures by them, while in the Western world and most civilized parts of the world they are considered as vermin.
Whereas dogs are popular companions for Westerners, they are popular in China for their meat.
The rotten communist regime of China, responsible for millions of Chinese and Tibetans being killed for political reasons, during the "Cultural revolution" in China and the occupation of Tibet, is desperately trying to keep the Chinese and Tibetan people in mental slavery.
Like in Aldous Huxley's "Animal farm", a satire on communism, some pigs, or rats, are.more equal than others; Although communism was meant as a system where all are equal and everything should be in the benefit of all, the communist party of China considers itself as an elite, guiding the ordinary people. This communist elite is much better off than the people.
They try to keep them satisfied by giving them the freedom of consumerism, but that won't work much longer.
Because of the Olympic Games, this year in China, the gouvernment tries to put up a facade of civilisation and prosperity, demolishing poor neighboorhoods in Beijing (Peking) with little consideration for those who live there, locking up dissidents to keep them away from journalists...
Dissidents like Lu Gengson, who got 4 years of prison for writing about corrupt politicians.
If you are a dissident in China you may end up as an unvoluntary organ donor.

A few days ago the Chinese occupiers crushed protests by Tibetans of whom maybe up to 100 were killed and others who were captured shown to the public in a humiliting way.
The Tibetans are victims of a cultural genocide, since their peaceful nation was brutally put under Chinese rule. The policy is to make the Tibetans a minority in their own country and their relegion is submit to communist rule..
The Chinese communists showed their ugly evil face once again. Bad publicity for them of course.
But the civilized world could now force a breakthrough for (more) freedom and independence for Tibet. Until now the Chinese occupation of tibet wasn't much of an issue in international politics, because - specially the Western nations - have economical interests in China.

Let's free Tibet and the Chinese people from communist slavery!

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Life / Live

Life

Some people are not satisfied with one (real) life and create a (virtual) Second Life.
But real life is more and more intruding in the virtual world.
People are making money in it buying/selling virtual land or property - Anshe Chung became the first SL millionair - and companies are exploring the possibilities of product marketing and job recruiting in Second Life.
Virtual political riots have taken place and even an bomb attack.
Musicians like AIR, Jay-Z and Suzanne Vega performed for a public of avatars.

Live

Paradiso, the concert hall in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, publishes video recordings of live concerts at fabchannel.com.
At video.google.com you can find lots of concert videos and video clips too, including historical footage of Woodstock and The Beatles for example.
If you are a jazz fan you should check out Jazz Tube.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Global Warming


In Europe we are having the warmest Fall in centuries. Is that caused by the 'global warming'?
The ski resorts in the Swiss and Austrian Alps may have a bad season because there isn't much snow, nature is confused and trees blossoming like it's Spring.


According to some scientists there's no global warming but a shift of the thermical balance between the North and South Pole; the northern part of our world is getting warmer with more rainfall and the southern part is becoming colder and dryer. Wanna see the effect of Global Warming? Get the Global Warming Mug!
Politicians in Europe suddenly are interested and worried about envirenmental issues after Al Gore's visit to Europe, where he did his presentation of "An unconvenient truth". The prime minister of the Netherlands, where I live, Harry Potter, and Tony Blair felt the need to write a letter about it, although they really don't give a shit about it.
Usually they are more interested in unlimited economic growth.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

I M 9/11 - 5 Years Later




Like millions of people all over the I saw the unthinkable horror of Nine-Eleven live on tv; the first tower was burning and then the second plane crashing into the WTC.

Now it's 5 years later and it still is in our minds, not only because what happened that day, but also because it was an introduction to years of more terror, wars, governments deceiving the people. Citizens of the free world are more and more restricted in their freedom and checked for suspicious behauvior for 'security reasons', so the islam fundamentalists who envie our freedom can be satisfied.
The press in the western world, specially in the US, was limited in it's search for objective information and got false information from governments. By saying "Either you're with us or you're against us" president G.W. Bush suggested that any critizism on his policy was suspicious.
And most of the US media were (more than) willing to comply with this rule.

These days you can read and watch many articles and documentaries about 9/11, about how it happened, what went wrong, conspiracy theories and the aftermath.
Here are some links to information and comments:

The 9/11 Commision Report
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, an educational comic strip version of the report
There was also a Spiderman and Superman 9/11 comic and Art Spiegelman's "In The shadow Of No Towers".

Joel Meyerowitz published a book, "Aftermath", with photo's of Ground Zero. In 9 months he made about 8.500 photo's of the scene. On the 5th of September he had took a picture of the Twin Towers in all their glory, from his loft-window in Manhattan.

911 Digital archive, a collection of personal stories, pictures, drawings expressing feelings and comments on 9/11.

The Memory Hole, a site with recordings of conversations of airtraffic-controllers, policemen, firefighters in the World Trade Center, radio, reports and articles.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Mobile photos

Now I don't have a normal internet connection anymore (only through my mobile phone or at the public library) I have to explore new ways to post new items to my weblogs.

One way is to use a mobile phone, with a camera built-in, and that's what I started to do recently. I've send cameraphone pictures to my photo site at Flickr and I have setup a new site at Msn Space (bilingual, English & Dutch) where I send them to also.

Friday, March 17, 2006

New Orleans - The Aftermath

Months after Katrina hit New Orleans, people are trying to rescue their homes from total destruction, by the authorities if they are 50% or more damaged.

Lots of N.O. residents still forced to live temporary elsewhere.
But the Mardi Gras was celebrated anyway, although it was a "bitter sweet" one, said the Mayor.

The Dutch connection

Civil engineers of the Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch authority on waterways and the protection of them, were invited to the US to advise on the subject of the protection of New Orleans and a delegation from Louisiana visited the socalled "Delta Works", the system of protection against flooding of the Netherlands, built after the catastrophic flooding in 1953.
Dutch architects made designs for rebuilding New Orleans

More links about New Orleans after Katrina:

Metroblogging New Orleans N.O. flickr group (photo collection)

Sunday, January 29, 2006

The World In Pictures

Still without internet connection at home (entering this post at the public library) I find some interesting links in magazines and newspapers occasionally.
Like this website that show the world's hot news in a collection of pictures.

At this date it goes back to 2004 (click on 'History') and you can choose a photo collection by clicking on one of the words from the list on the right.

Interesting concept.

More pictures that showed what was going on in the world can be found at World Press Photo, which has a yearly contest for professional photographers and recently choose a new selection of meaningful photos

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Disconnected

Hello dear visitor, thanks for dropping by. I haven't been able to update my blog lately.
Since 3 days I'm without internet-connection and before that I only had a connection through dialup. I hope to have a dsl-connection again soon.
In the Netherlands where I live you need a phoneline connected by the former state-owned phonecompany who had a monopoly for a long time, to get a dsl-connection, in most cases.
Recently ther are more offers that can do without the phoneline, but not many companies have a network that covers the whole country.
As a web-addict I miss the daily browsing, listening to podcasts online, or downloading them, working on my websites, chatting with friends.
And of course I'm missing some of the hype and buzz going on on the web.

I hope to be able to post some more interesting news here soon, so don't forget to come back now and then!

Friday, September 02, 2005

Hurricane Katrina blogging

Quickly after the hurricane Katrina disaster bloggers started posting messages and photos to the web and special web-pages were set-up for exchanging information.
People who live or happen to be in the disaster-area tell first-hand stories, show photos of the scene, or give practical information like maps, lists of survivors.

Metroblogging New Orleans

A list of where people are and how to contact them

The Hurricane Katrina photo pool (flickr)

Hurricane Katrina disaster

After hurricane Katrina another disaster struck the south of the US: inaction and incompetence of the authorities.

FEMA, the federal emergency agency is doing press-conferences while people are dying, governors keep saying military troops are send in for rescue operations and to restore order,
so where are these troops hiding? Thugs are ruling the city with weapons they looted from the supermarket, a New Orleans police office had to protect itself against them with snipers, 20 percent of police officers didn't show up for duty in New Orleans. What is this? Some third world country?

Listen to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, fed up with slow response (CNN-webpage), interviewed by WWL Radio

In the meantime thousands of people are still trapped in alarming conditions in hospitals, elderly homes, churches, and dying like animals....And many are still missing.

I'm afraid there's a cynical, racial issue playing a part in this inaction: most of the victims are black and poor.....not very interesting for politicians to care for.....

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Personal Digital Visuals

Nowadays there are many tools to digitally visualise your life, your environment and happenings and make it public.
You can put your home-movies on your web-site, or post your camera-phone photos to a online photo-album, or use tools that create maps, satellite or 3d-images to show where you are, or have been.

At the photo-site flickr.com you can see a daily refreshed collection of photos tagged 'burning man', which are posted from the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

The Google Earth tool is used to create a movie of a fly by Seattle tour, combined computer-generated images with live video. With Google maps it is possible to visualise a tour through a city or a marathon course.

Sunday, July 31, 2005

Space, Man!

Damage discovery
The Shuttle has been launched to space again, it connected to the spacestation (ISS), you can watch the live or recorded videos on NASA TV (wmp/real), but there was a nasty discovery: (small) damage to the heatshield. Which on a larger scale caused the fatal crash of a shuttle returning to earth.
Let's hope this crew gets home safely.

Update!
One of the astronauts onboard the shuttle, Steve Robinson, has recorded the first podcast from space
Update 2!
The shuttle landed safely this morning, Tuesday, August 9 2005, at Edwards Air Force Base in California!

More space-related stuff
- Google has made a photomap of the moon on which you can see the landingspots of the Apollo- missions,
- You can see Quicktime VR panoramas of the Apollo 11-17 missions to the moon,
- a 10th planet (or is it not a planet?), larger than Pluto, has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system.

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Revenge Of The Nerds

Many manufacturers of hardware and software produce stuff that is crippled in it's use and with locked features, like mp3-players that only cooperate with certain software or os's. They don't want the customer to use it as freely as the custumer wants it.
But there are clever nerds, who use their creative talents to liberate those products from their chains, so users, who paid for a fully-functional item, can fully enjoy it.
Sometimes these 'hackers' go even further and turn something in a completely different thing, with funny results.
There are special websites dedicated to this and 'Hackaday' is one of them
hack a day - www.hackaday.com _

Freedom for all!

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Update about Claude Lelouch movie

On Januari 10, this year, I posted an article about a short movie by the French director Claude Lelouch, called 'Rendezvous', showing a rollercoaster ride through Paris (France) in the nineteen-seventies, by a guy on the way to a meeting with his girl.
The link to the movie-file in that post appears to be dead, as I found out at Michael Meiser's blog. But there is another place where you can find it, in a much smaller size.

There are also some other interesting articles to be found about this movie that has a "cult" status: one is a review on a site about cult films, and another is an excerpt from a biography of Claude Lelouch about the movie (in french).