Dec
30
2009
Followup to Shift Happens
Author: RobertinSeattleAnd for those of you who may have missed the original Shift Happens:
Archive for December, 2009
Dec
29
2009
Gravestone Generator
Author: RobertinSeattle
Want to put 2009 to rest? Someone you’d like to send some ill will to? Want to go underground?
Check out the Gravestone Generator for some year-round fun!
Dec
29
2009
Oh Boy! Weekly World News Now on Google Books!
Author: RobertinSeattle
The headline says it all! Weekly. World. News. Now available on Google Books. This stuff never gets out of date! Wow!
Dec
28
2009
The Polaroid SX-70 and Some Old Cameras
Author: RobertinSeattle
I still remember when I first bought my Polaroid SX-70 Camera in the early 70′s. It was a big breakthrough at the time for the film industry. Instead of the old peel-apart Polaroid pictures of earlier decades (which were pretty cool in themselves), this camera shot out a completely self-contained color picture that developed right before your eyes in about 60 seconds! I took that camera with me on my road trip across North America and into Mexico with my girlfriend, Jean.
It never ceased to be a crowd-stopper: Little kids would follow us around in the small villages and towns down in Mexico to have their pictures taken and I sure went through a lot of that expensive film (I think a 10-shot film pack was around $8.00 at the time). But it was always worth the look on their faces! Unfortunately, when Polaroid filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001 and their film finally became unavailable after November 2008. Recently, there’s been renewed talk about several new factories opening up to start producing Polaroid film again soon. Here’s hoping.
I still consider the late Dr. Edwin Land to be one of the most underrated inventors of the 20th century. For example, did you know that Land and his team were responsible for developing the advanced optics for the Lockheed U2 spy plane in the 50′s? That and Polaroid Corp. along with no formal education make him one of my personal heroes.
As a few of my closest friends already know, when we had our house fire in late 2002, we lost almost everything we owned. But amazingly, my Polaroid SX-70 was absolutely intact along with its boxy carrying case. Even more amazing, all of our family photos survived including the old photo albums with my SX-70 collection from that incredible road trip. That’s another One-of-These-Days Projects: Scanning all of those pictures for posterity.
Anyway, all this is an intro to a really cool old promotional video clip for the SX-70 shot by renowned designers, Charles and Ray Eames, for Polaroid in the early 70′s (now thankfully available on YouTube and taken down from Vimeo).
Then just last week, my brother surprised me with an old Kodak Tourist 620 camera in my mail box. The original golden tan leather case is absolutely flawless! It even came with the original instruction manual! An old family friend and neighbor, Wing Lee, passed away in early December and Albert had been putting a lot of time helping to clean out the old house for his widow after she moved away to a nursing home. Knowing Albert’s love of cameras and photography, her family ended up giving him an old classic Mamiya SLR along with this Kodak classic. This nearly-new beauty was manufactured through the late 40′s and early 50′s and amazingly, 160 film is still available. The negatives are something like 2 x 2ΒΌ in. and the film’s available in black-and-white or Ektachrome, with 8 shots per roll for around $10 a roll. I even found 35mm film adapters available on eBay! So I guess I’ll be checking this beauty out in the new year. I imagine that with such large negatives, the resolution should be remarkable. But I’m already wondering what the cost of processing will run.
Dec
26
2009
Wish High School was This Much Fun in the 60′s
Author: RobertinSeattleUp here in Shoreline, Washington (a Northern suburb of Seattle) Shorecrest High School dropped a challenge to rival, Shorewood High School in November with their video class production Hey Ya. So Shorewood video student Javier Caceres and the rest of his video class (and most of the school from what it looks like!) accepted the challenge by creating their own Shorewood Lip Dub video that’s been viewed almost half-a-million times already in the short time it’s been posted since Dec. 17th.
And it’s another Cinderella story: Javier moved here from Peru with his family just six years ago.
And here’s a short clip on how the video was made:
Dec
26
2009
Faces Aren’t the Only Thing GoogleMaps Blurs Out
Author: RobertinSeattle
Dec
21
2009
Jack Bauer Interrogates Santa Claus
Author: RobertinSeattleDec
17
2009
A Cinderella Story from YouTube
Author: RobertinSeattleVery cool story. Uruguayan filmmaker, Fede Alvarez, posted a short piece (under 5 minutes) on YouTube a month ago called “Ataque de Panico!” (Panic Attack!). It features a giant robot invasion of Montevideo (the capital of Uruguay). The entire piece was produced on a massive Hollywood budget of… $300! And it’s gotten well over 1.5 million views so far.
It was so impressive that Alvarez started getting e-mails almost immediately from Hollywood producers about some seriously big projects. And in the last week or so, Alvarez apparently inked a deal with Sam Raimi (Spiderman) to produce a full-length sci-fi feature to be shot in South America. A great story on how computers and the Internet keep changing old ways of thinking and working.
Dec
16
2009
Newest SNL Tiger Woods Press Conference
Author: RobertinSeattleI know, I know. Maybe everyone should let up on Tiger Woods. But he didn’t just lie to his wife and family about his “transgressions” even while he spent megabucks to keep his secrets hidden from his fans and the general public. Why is this significant? Because it now appears that his entire public persona was carefully developed, perpetuated and protected by a well-oiled – and completely planned – sub-industry funded out of his millions in revenues just to generate even more millions. While I’ve gone so far as to defend the man’s raw talent in golf (and I’m not even remotely a golf fan myself – in fact, my closest friends and family know I personally HATE golf), this issue has nothing to do with his talent. I see this entire drama as the public disintegration of a massive fraud. Remember the outrage at Bernie Madoff late last year as one defrauded investor after another started to come forward and confess to being duped? In short order, the trickle became a flood and then hit a tipping point where the dam finally broke. It was like a train wreck that everyone has to slow down to look at while driving by. And Tiger Woods’ situation continues to actually get worse with each passing day. The blond cuties keep piling up (what is it – 14 now?!!) and the stories get more lurid. In a word, it was all a LIE. (Not the golf term.) We were all lied to for years and it was intentional. So in retrospect, what would it really have hurt had this young and talented golfer simply revealed himself as a philandering playboy and not gotten married in the first place? Would it have really hurt his image? Probably not. With his talent, it would have been more likely he would have found himself an equal number of sponsors who would have embraced the edgy Tiger Woods and he wouldn’t be facing the problems he’s facing today. It’s hard to know which of his PR geniuses and personal handlers advised him to take on this squeaky clean persona but it’s sure time to come clean and drop the act. And maybe hire a whole new crew that knows how to deal with social networks and the Internet. It’s clearly obvious his old team has no clue on how to deal with any of this! Somehow I don’t think the old happily-married-star story is going to stick any more.
Originally posted on RobertinSeattle.
Dec
15
2009
Boeing 787 Dreamliner First Flight!
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