Storms!

So I'm sitting here with Mister C watching some show he recorded about Ronald Reagan and listening to the rain pour down. We haven't had a good storm in a while so I'm thoroughly enjoying hearing the thunder pound and seeing the lighting. However, I wasn't so thrilled forty minutes ago when I was on my way home from the store and the lighting started in force. Mostly because when I left for the store Master J had planted himself on a blanket inside the chicken coop to feed to feed them some tomatoes. Yeah, my only child sitting inside a metal cage in a lighting storm, awesome. But once I got him inside, and moved the babies to the garage so they didn't get wet, I could enjoy the storm. And now the hail has started pounding the garage door so hard and fast that it sounds like two drummers competing on Caribbean steel drums. It really is an enjoyable change of pace from the heat.

Pinhole Camera

So this is my pinhole camera.



I chose an old container that originally held pork chitterlings. For anyone that is fanning themselves in horror at my abuse of a "vintage" item, get on with the fanning because this thing smelled like an old bag of pork rinds when I bought it. And, at least I'm using it for something. Blah, blah, blah, keep fanning.

Anyway, the first thing I did was to use a matte, black spray paint to cover the inside. Since it was a thousand degrees outside I decided to do this part of the project inside. In my kitchen. Now, in my defense, I did lay down a painting tarp on my kitchen island and I did work very carefully in order to not get over-spray on anything. And I did a really good job with that because not one black spot appeared anywhere except where it was supposed to (and my hand but that's washable.) However, did you know that the fumes from spray paint are kind of noxious? And that even if you turn the stove vent on super high and leave it on for an hour, it still kind of smells? Hm, learn something new every day.

Here's my camera all painted up. The tape in the lid holds the paper.



Then you need a lens of sorts. This is created by cutting a small hole (about 1/2 inch square) in the very center of the end of your container. Then, you take a piece of aluminum (or something equally sturdy) and you poke a pinhole in it (hence the name). Now, the exact size of the pinhole depends on the size of the container. There's a whole calculation involving the length of the container but basically in my case, the pinhole needed to be somewhere between one half and one quarter of 1/16th of an inch. So, in highly technical terms, small. After you've got a pinhole in the aluminum, you line it up to be exactly centered on the hole you centered on your container. For a "shutter" you can use a piece of black electrical tape.

In my case, the bottom of my container became the front of the camera and it looked like this...



The light sensitive paper goes on the opposite side, in my case this was in the lid and I attached it with tape. Because you're working with light sensitive paper you have to "load" the camera in complete darkness. So I shut the bathroom shades and barricaded myself in my closet with towels stuffed under the door and blocking the vent. Unfortunately I have a round camera with no obvious "top" and I really needed to know which was going to be the top so I could load my paper properly and in the dark this would be almost impossible. Lucky for me, one section of the lid had a scuffed area that I could feel and this became my top.

Once the paper is loaded and the camera is closed back up you can leave the dark and go find your subject. You set up your subject and your camera and when you're ready, you remove the black, electrical tape shutter and start timing. Since each camera is different, the exposure time will be different. I tried one minute, two minutes, four minutes and six minutes for each subject. When the time is up, simply slap the tape back on the pinhole, barricade yourself back in the dark and switch out the paper.

The biggest issue with this camera is that I don't have a true dark room with all the chemicals so I can't just develop each picture as I take it to figure out if it worked or not. I had to wait several days after taking the pictures to get back to the lab and develop them. What I figured out was that with my camera, the longer exposures were too long. The first three worked well enough that I could have printed a picture, but six minutes basically came out black. After all of that, when you go to the lab to see what you got you will end up with a negative of the subject.

You pick the best negative and then head back into the lab to produce the picture. The easiest way to explain it is that you take the negative and put it face to face with another piece of light sensitive paper, put glass over the top and then expose it to light. Then, you go through the chemical process again to create your picture.

Now, a couple of things should be noted here. Firstly, the pictures are obviously in black and white. Secondly, they are not razor sharp like regular camera. But, considering that there are no mechanics and it's really just a container with a hole in it, I think they came out pretty cool.

The coop.



Master J reading.



Not bad for an old chitterlings container and some tape.





*side note, the pictures had to be scanned in and sent to my desktop in order to get them on this post.

New abode for the Flockers

The chicken coop got delivered today!



It's not huge, only 4'x 6', but since I plan on allowing the girls time out of it every day it should be fine.



You can't see them but all six babies are in the coop, most likely huddled in horror in one corner. About an hour after I moved them into it they were roaming around picking at the dirt so I think they kind of like their new digs. I certainly think I'll enjoy not having to sweep off my patio every five minutes.

Fourteen Years

This is the only picture I could find of the two of us from around the time we got married, probably about six months in.



Note the bluish eye shadow on just one eye, evidently this was taken at the end of a long day.

Happy Anniversary Mister C!

Chickens!

Mister C and I have talked extensively about having some chickens around and up until recently the consensus has been that we don't have enough space in our yard and a coop would take up too much of what little we do have. Today we stopped by the local feed shop "just to ask about chickens" and what they require. It turns out that they don't require as much of a coop as previously thought so long as you can let them outside of it every day. And since our yard is surrounded by a six foot block wall...well...

Meet the girls....

(Clockwise starting with the brown one on the far left:
Leia-an Ameraucana; Rocky-a Barred Rock; Red-a Production Red; Wedge-another Ameraucana; Peaches and Cream-the two white leghorns.)



Yeah, I know, they're just chickens. And chickens are for eggs and eating and all that. But these are babies. And babies of any species are adorable. Especially when they fall asleep on you, which Leia did to me twice and to Master J once. The coop won't be delivered until Wednesday, so in the meantime, the girls are hanging out in a bottomless guinea pig cage. We're alternating them between the patio during the day and the garage at night (just in case of a wandering coyote.)

And of course Master J is just in love with the girls. Especially after I told him that chickens eat bugs. Even more so after he saw Peaches snag a spider and gobble it up in about two seconds flat.

I'm a bit slow

So Master J just finished his third week of school on Friday...and I'm just now getting around to putting up his picture from the first day. Meh, it's just been that sort of whirlwind of chaos around here. Better yet, the picture below was not actually taken in the morning before his first day. No, I finally thought about it some time right before dinner. I'll be honest, I'm not even sure that's the same shirt he was wearing at the start of the day.

September already?

So yeah, I've been out of touch with my blog for several weeks now. It's not that I didn't want to update, and really it's not that I haven't had time, it's just I haven't been motivated to do anything with it. I'm sorry. That's just pathetic. I know. So, I'm regrouping. I'm starting over. In more ways than one.

So real estate kind of sucks right now. I haven't been happy in it for awhile now and I think I've finally hit my personal wall as far as how much more I'm willing to do. I'll be honest, I'm not the best agent around. I don't advertise. I don't try to find and follow leads every day (or any day truthfully). I don't call on past clients to see if they have any "real estate needs" or if their friends and family do. And I don't push buyers into buying a house just so I can close a deal. In the past two weeks, I went from having one offer in escrow, one client writing offers and one that was coming in to town ready to really buy this time (I swear), to no offers in escrow, one buyer that wants me to write offers at eighty three percent of list price (seriously? WTH?) and my out of town buyers back out of town without offering on anything. So I think I'm done.

I've had it with some other agents having an attitude of arrogance. I called a listing agent about a house two days ago because I was out showing to a client and could not find the property. Literally, his directions led me to a house that was not for sale. So I called. He said (and I am quoting verbatim here) "I don't know what mls you're using because the directions are fine. Plenty of other agents have been able to find the property." Really? Okay, that's pretty shitty but maybe I am being dumb. So, seeing a guy a few doors down walking out to his truck, I pulled up and asked him if he knew where the house was. Turns out I was in the wrong neighborhood, because the agent's directions were wrong. So I followed the neighbor's directions to the correct neighborhood and showed the house. Then I called the agent back and left him a message. In it I said that the directions were in fact wrong and gave him the correct directions. It was polite. I never heard a word from him, but he did change the mls listing. Idiot.

I've had it with investors who want to make HUGE profits on houses that they've done a minimal amount to. They buy it at auction, slap some paint, granite and new carpet in and list it at twice what they paid. And then try to put a clause in the contract that says the purchase price has to be paid regardless of what the house appraises for. Um, no. I am not going to have my client sign a contract that could potentially screw them out of tens of thousands of dollars. But it gets better, because I'm pretty sure at this point that because I advised my client not to sign that potentially expensive contract, she isn't returning my calls or emails. I think she's upset that she didn't get the house and I'm to blame for trying to protect her interests. Guess I should have allowed her to go ahead and sign away her rights so I could get my commission. See, I told you I'm not a good agent.

Moving on.

I started another photography class last week. This one is a black and white film and digital class. I'm really more interested in the film part but I'll do what's required from the digital side as well. Last night we made pin-hole cameras, took a picture of a vacuum cleaner and developed it. Dude, it was awesome! I can't begin to tell you the feeling of dropping what looks to be a blank sheet of paper into a vat of chemicals and watching something develop. It was magical. This is what photography is about, it's incredible. So our assignment before next week is to take a bunch of pictures with our pin-hole cameras so we can develop them in the lab after Labor Day. The one drawback to this type of camera is that it takes time to get the picture so I'm fairly sure I won't be able to get any photos of my dogs or anything animated. Hmm, I could probably get any of the cats though. Anyway, I'll give a better description of the camera itself and show the results next week. I'm so excited about this!

I think I'll end on that happy note. Glad to be back, thanks to you that checked in regularly to see if I had anything new, I appreciate your loyalty. All three of you ;)