KINOGRAPH: The Open Source Film Digitization Platform This may be overkill or beyond my capabilities but once I’m finished converting the 8mm GRAMC films I may look into this Kinograph for the 16mm work.

I’m going to go ahead and say it. When it comes to my heroes, Elon Musk kicks Steve Job’s ass1. Spaceships > Portable music players Electric cars > Smartphones High speed travel > Super thin computers Having a sense of humor > Being kind of a dick No, it doesn't really make sense to compare them, but I'm doing it anyway. ↩

I change my mind about gear quite often. This means I end up with things that I no longer need. What I should do when that happens is sell those things. I hate selling stuff. It’s not that I don’t want to part with things, it’s that the process of selling is typically awful. For example, I recently decided to sell all of my Canon gear. It’s all high-quality photo equipment and I priced things fairly and was generous in my descriptions.

I’ve always hated scanning color 35mm film. It’s fiddly to work with and no matter what I’ve tried the color is always off. Then I met the Kodak Pakon F-135 Plus Film Scanner. Kodak Pakon F-135 Plus Film Scanner I started to see mentions of this scanner on various forums recently. Seemed too good to be true. The claims were that it could scan an entire, uncut roll of color 35mm film, with Digital Ice, in 5 minutes.

When my grandfather left me the entire Grand Rapids Amateur Movie Club library I promised I would work to preserve them and some day transfer them to digital. As you can see, there are quite a few films, in both 8, Super 8, and 16mm formats. Cabinet containing most of the GRAMC films A few years ago I made my first attempt at transferring them using movie mode on a digital camera pointing at a projection screen.

Canon gear for sale Eighteen months ago I asked myself if I should Keep the Nikons or the Canons. Turns out that I’ve kept most of both. Time to decide, so I’m unloading all the Canon gear. This wasn’t an easy decision, mostly due to the EOS-1v, which I love. The 1D Mark III is also terrific, and would be perfect for any “serious” work I might do. Trouble is, I don’t do any serious work.

I’ve been all-in on the command line for a while now. I basically live in a complex set of tmux panes. If you’re interested in doing the same, here’s a list of the apps I use regularly. tmux – tmux is a terminal multiplexer. Ties everything together. Mutt – There’s no better way to handle email Vim – The perfect text editor VimWiki – I’ve fallen in love with vimwiki.

I got my first Hobonichi Planner in 2013 and it quickly became a favorite. I’ve carried one with me ever since, and I plan to continue doing so in 2015. Hobonichi notebooks I use mine mostly as a calendar and appointment book. Yes, the iPhone is better at those things but what fun would that be? I also like to draw quick sketches representing the day’s events. I try to do this every day but realistically it only happens a couple times a week.

I promised myself I’d never switch blogging tools again1. Then yesterday I ran across Hugo. I’ve tried static blogs before using Tinderbox, Octopress, Second Crack, Blosxom, etc. They all work, some more easily than others, but they all took too much effort and could be a dependency nightmare. Here’s why I’m trying Hugo and finding it so encouraging: Speed. Octopress/Jekyll took around 7 minutes to render my blog.

My grandfather, Richard Baty, was part of the Grand Rapids Amateur Movie Club for many years. He used to tell stories of the club’s “One Day” competitions, during which they would split into teams and each team had one day to plan, shoot, and edit a short film. This would be easy today using an iPhone and iMovie, but in the 1950s it was way more work. Here’s a home video of my grandpa creating titles for one of his films:

I don’t like Instagram. Never have. Why? Too mobile-centric. I spend way more time with photos at a computer. Why shouldn’t I be able to post something from there? The instagram web app/site is basically useless. Tiny photos. Looking at photos on a tiny phone screen is the worst. And the app won’t let me zoom. I hate that. Square format. I shoot a lot of 6×6 film and I love the square format.

Cashews (2014). Olympus OM-1n. Fuji Pro 400H. Self-processed. I had finished my usual end-of-roll plinking with the OM-1n. I felt like spending some time in the darkroom, so I shot a bunch of nonsense at random. When I opened the camera I discovered that it had been loaded with color film rather than my usual Tri-X or HP5. So I had an exposed roll of Fuji Pro 400H to deal with.