State of the Garden May 2013

Our friends Gina and Evan had us round for dinner the other night and showed me their dual lens camera. Since they don’t make film for these things any more the idea is you take a picture with another camera Through the Viewfinder (Ttv) of what it sees. You end up with slightly distorted, vignetted, dusty, square images that are really pleasing to the eye. I was inspired and bought the first camera I saw on eBay. It’s been a while since I used eBay and my original bid of 5 dollars was soon outbid and I got caught up in the competitive bidding and finally snapped it up (pun intended) at the last second for 20 bucks and it arrived today. You can probably get them cheaper, but what the hell…

The next step after cleaning the lens and mirror a bit was making it light proof, there’s a tutorial on how to make a perfectly fitting tube, but I couldn’t be arsed with all that… I ripped up the box it came it and went into a sellotaping frenzy… 10 minutes later… behold!

Next step is wandering around seeing things from a waist-high angle for a while and getting used to the mirror image while Drsita and Atticus look on bemusedly.

Here’s the set on Flickr from today and here’s me favourite below:

To make a long story short, I’m very happy with me new toy.

Other news… we’re looking forward to Sally and Martin’s visit in a few days. Had a lovely weekend and met the neighbours properly. And still no major news on the work front.

Thanks to Flickr, and specifically El Charro Negro, we heard about a mariachi competition in the centre yesterday and arranged to meet up in La Fuente to go and see the spectacle. It fully lived up to expectations. Each band came and played just one song and then wandered off. Groups came from all over Mexico and most wore the traditional local dress. I still haven’t got the hang of the settings on me camera. Sachiel pointed out that the ISO’s too high on most, I didn’t even know how to change it. Still I’m extremely happy with me zoom lense. Well, the set’s over at Flickr and here are some faves, that will probably end up in the photoblog…

Sita introduced me to Cash’s music only 5 years ago and I knew little about his story. This film whetted my appetite to know more since many reviews say it only hints at the real darkness in his life. The Spanish title is Johnny y June: Madness and Passion. I wholeheartedly agree about the passion aspect, Joaquin Phoenix is nigh on perfect as Cash from his stance, speech patterns to his on-stage persona, but we only see flashes of the madness (a few amphetamines too many, a Zeppelinesque outburst in his dressing room and a mano-a-maquina with his Massey Ferguson). The relationship with June is very well developed- and though not knowing much about June- I can only say that it’s a perfectly believable love story. The music throughout is well chosen and this morning I woke up with Ring of Fire echoing around my mind (which makes a pleasant change from ‘Can’t get you out of my head”…). If this doesn’t spark yet another Cash revival I don’t know what will. Fantastic performances all round, a great soundtrack and a gripping story make for a very memorable film. I hope we see a sequel as the closing credits’ ‘They toured for 30 odd years then died” doesn’t really do justice to the rest of this incredible man’s journey. Next time I’m near an English language bookshop I’ll be looking for the autobiography to find out more.

of Kingston in the snow, gorgeous they are:

http://flickr.com/photos/digameuk/sets/72157613433876234/

Though the colouring of some of the faceprints is a bit disturbing.

Just played my first game with the new SOWPODS Scrabble dictionary. I managed FE and ZA just now and still lost. So to play ZZZ, you’d need the Z and two blanks… I won’t rule it out. My scrabble rating’s through the floor at the moment, in some ways that’s OK cos the pressure’s off, but I enjoyed my time in the dizzy heights of the 1100s.

I’d like to know what these new words mean mind:

New 2-Letter Words
FE JA KI ZA

New 3-Letter Words
AGS AHI AKA ALF APO APP AUA AUE BES BOI BRU CAA CAG CAZ DEG DIF DOF DOY DUH ECO EDS EMO EVO EXO FAA FAE FEG FES HOM IGG IWI JAI JOL KAK KIS LOU MEE MIC MYC NEG ONO ONY OUS PAV PLU REO SAV SIF SIK SOM TEC TEX TIX UMU URP VAG WAI WOF YAD YAE YAG ZAS ZEP ZOL ZZZ

Wordlist via: TileFish

..but since I was talking about camera settings yesterday, note what a difference there is when you take a photo without flash and then with… I’m tempted to do one with Mrs. Bristow…