120degrees.com

Travis Beckham’s site, squidfingers.com has some amazing repeating background patterns. Very nice stuff!

Test your font skills with this little test: Arial or Helvetica? Can you spot the original and the knock-off? 

“I was told once that overnight processing is the only processing that can be done with no color correction which is something I demand in developing my Lomo prints.”

Having worked in a professional photo lab during college, and later in an overnight processing environment, I could really empathise with Dawn today over her overnight processing woes. Being a Fine Arts major studying photography, working in a professional photo lab during college really had it’s benefits. I enjoyed processing film for our (quite loyal) customers. We catered to their every need, processing their photos to the best of our ability. We did do color and density correction to our “premium” customers rolls of film. This amounted to correcting color and density to a “believeable” level. Not super-saturated greens and blues. When I say premium, I mean the 1-hour, 4-hour and overnight processing. In the mornings, we also did overnight (cheap-o) processing for another location, who sold their processing on quantity and pricing, not quality. These rolls of film were generally put on the printer, hit PRINT, cut negatives and shoved into the envelope.

Later on, after graduating, I had planned on moving to Arizona. The company I was currently working for also had locations in Arizona - only of the overnight processing lab type, no custom lab. So after moving, I thought I would give this a shot. Boy, was I in for a surprise. Working in a high-volume, overnight environment was nothing like working in a custom lab. Of course I hadn’t planned on it being exactly the same thing either.

Film which usually goes through a small processor in the 1-hour labs, is spooled onto large movie reels with hundreds of other rolls of film. This is all done in a pitch-black darkroom. Then, the film is fed through large processing tanks at blinding speeds and spooled up on large reels on the other end of the tanks. Once this is done, the roll of film is matched up with the customers envelope and spooled to be printed.

My first week at the facility, I was given the task of printing the “damaged rolls” of film. These are the ones where the film may have jumped the sprocket or come off of one of the reels and ripped lengthwise down the roll of film. These are also the rolls where you are told that, “your camera probably ripped it inside” or that YOU were at fault. I couldn’t believe the lack of quality control in the place from being what I was used to. That job lasted about 2 weeks for me until I couldn’t handle it anymore.

This weekend I was searching online for some FireWire enclosures when I came across this little gem. The WiebeTECH 1GB FireWire Keychain is a gigabyte of storage at your fingertips. Or maybe your keyring at least. It comes complete with an internal IBM 1GB Microdrive and a MSRP of $369.95.

Busy past couple of weeks. I’ll try to fill in what I’ve left out.

Last week was spent preparing for my trip back to Nebraska for Christmas. Along with trying to finish up a few things at work before leaving, we were also renovating/remodeling our building. We had had plans to update the front lobby with a new desk and entrance. Also in the works was replacing the carpet and painting all the interior offices.

Our “schedule” was bumped up a bit, due to a scheduled visit by the president of our parent company, making the completion date for renovations around two weeks. This includes new carpet, paint, tile, construction, front lobby desk and entrance…in a working office. Not the easiest proposition to complete. So, last week also included helping the project coordinator search for carpet, paint and office furniture.

Earlier this week, I helped my nephew with a project for Boy Scouts. Their project was to make and decorate a cake with the theme “Winter Wonderland”. My nephew had decided that he wanted to make a snowman. Also with some help from Grandma, we baked three circular cakes, each one a bit larger than the other. This made the three circles for the body of the snowman. My nephew was in charge of decorating the cake. White frosting (for snow), a top hat, bite-sized Oreo cookies for buttons and red licorace for the scarf.

Personnel records show drug use, sex abuse by priests. Thousands of newly released personnel files show the Archdiocese of Boston went to great lengths to hide priests accused of abuse, including clergy who allegedly snorted cocaine and had sex with girls aspiring to be nuns.

One priest allegedly encouraged girls to "be brides of Christ" and described himself as "the second coming of Christ" to get them to engage in sexual acts.

Ewwww….I think they could have picked a better choice of words to describe the allegations.

Being that December is upon us, I thought it appropriate to drag out the Rudolph design I created last year. I was planning on doing something else for this year, but I enjoyed this one too much to pass it up. And being that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is one of my all-time favorite movies….

During lunch today, I was sitting in Kyoto Bowl, when a woman and 2 young boys sat down at the table behind me. The boys had to be around 8 or 9 years old each. They immediately tore into their fortune cookies upon arrival at the table. The first boy opened his, and his mother asked what his fortune was. He replied, “Knowledge is your key to…./edit/…..and a major asset”. He then asked what ‘asset’ meant to the woman at the table. She replied that it was something you owned, something good. She then asked the other boy what his fortune said. He opened his cookie, and promptly replied like he was reading the fortune, “Timothy is an asshole”.:: Confucious say: Man who go to bed with itchy butt, wake up with stinky finger.