Film Negatives circa 1982

A while back, I wrote about some film negatives that I had in my posession. Well, I'm finally writing a post about them.

The story: I was browsing a thrift shop, and found a camera with an exposed roll of 110 film in it. I figured what the hell, and bought the $1 camera with the film in it. In case none of you know what 110 film looks like, here's a picture:



Upon examining the film enclosure, I noticed an expirey year of 1982 on it. I then immediately took it to Walmart to be developed.

About two weeks later, it was finally ready. Unfortunately, they said that the film was blank. They charged me nothing to develop it, and gave me the negatives which looked black in color.



However, when I held one up to light, I could see some faint images. Not all hope was lost! So I took them home and waited for another day to play with them. I thought about using my slide projector to see if I could get anything off them.

But, before I did that, I threw them on my scanner. Now, my scanner (which I got free at a garage sale) has the ability to scan transparencies. So I scanned, and got a picture of a nice black negative. I loaded the picture up in The Gimp, played with the brightness, contrast, color, and inverted the color, and voila!



The images are REALLY grainy, but you can still pretty much see what they are. Looks like someone took pictures of their vacation. I left out the shitty scenery pictures.

  

 

 

 

I have another old roll of film I want to get developed, but Walmart won't take it. It's an old roll of 126 film. I may try to develop it myself, but I'll try exhausting other professional options first.

Fun with Postage Paid Junk Mail Pt. I

A while back, I read about sending junk mail back to companies who send you postage paid envelopes. I thought it was a great idea, and I've done it a couple of times. However, the joy just seems to fade after doing it twice, and I started thinking about other (legal) things I can do with these postage paid envelopes.

While I was driving home from work the other day, It hit me. Why don't I entertain the people who open these envelopes with interesting and funny letters? I personally don't like doing mean things to people who are just there to do a job. I really hate being rude to Telemarketers, because hey, they're only trying to make an honest living just like the rest of us. Nobody wakes up and says, "Hey, I'm gonna be a telemarketer and piss people off!"

Anyway, back to the junk mail. After I got the idea to write them letters, all I needed was some postage paid envelopes. As luck would have it, I got one of those junk mail envelopes with SIX postage paid postcards inside! They're not envelopes, but that's nothing a little glue and paper won't fix.

So, I wrote some fun postcards. I tried to somewhat make them stay on the subject of whatever the company was selling. I also made sure I put my blog URL on them. So here they are for your reading enjoyment! I'll be mailing them later today.

Now, after doing a bit of searching on the net, I've found a few more interesting things about mail. First of all, in the US, you can attach an item weighing up to 72 lbs to a postage paid envelope! Here's a guy who sends them his old car tires. Many other people have mailed bricks to junk mail companies, as the heavier the object is, the more it costs the junk mail companies to mail it.

Here in Canada, apparently it's free to send mail to your Member of Parliament. Apparently, some MPs have been the recipients of unwanted junk mail. If you'd like to find out who you're MP is and maybe send him a cookie, click here.

Please note: I DO NOT endorse sending things like death threats, hazardous material, or anything else that would pose a threat to another human being. But I'm all for putting a smile on another person's face!

Used SD Card with Video

Of course, there's a story behind this one. I bought myself a Palm m130 at a second hand store for $4. It was broken, but I got it to work so I'm all happy. Anyway, I wanted an SD card for it so I can put some ebooks and games on it. After seeing the prices of the new ones, I decided to try Cash Converters and see if they had any used ones. I bought myself a nice 512M card for fairly cheap.

When I got it home, I stuck it into my computer (booted in Linux) to make sure there wasn't any goofy software on it (like the USB Flash Drive I bought last summer). There was no software, but there was a bunch of video clips and two pictures!



The first video medley is a bunch of kids acting.... well, like kids. The one singing Batman seemed to be the owner of the Camera (and the SD card that was in it). Is it me, or do these kids' parents have too much money?



The second video is the family at Mt. Rushmore.




There was also a 56 minute video of the camera left running on the dashboard in the car, but the only thing interesting in that video is the good looking woman who pulls into the driveway with her friend. If I get requests for it, I'll post an edited down version of it.

Documentary on Farts

Since I haven't posted a video in a while, I figured I would. This was another one of those moments where I was scrambling to find a videotape to record on. Here is a documentary on Farting that was aired on CBC either in the late 80s or early 90s.

Bastardized English

So, Christmas is finally over and we're all enjoying the gifts we got. Many have recieved an MP3 player, including myself. Unfortunately, I think we're all in trouble as we advance technologically. Don't get me wrong, the MP3 player works wonderfully, but the manual that came with it is nothing more than a good example of how well Babelfish does translation. In fact, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that's what our friends over in Japan use to make our instruction manuals.

I've recently been saving examples of poorly written english. All those years we practiced writing coherent instruction manuals in high school have been put to waste.

Here's a scan of one page from my MP3 player manual.



(click here to download the entire manual)

Surprisingly, this is Version 2.0 of the manual. I wonder how much of a disgrace Version 1.0 was? Here's a few gems from the manual:

"Do not use this player when driving, riding, or operating any other vehicles as it may lead to traffic accidents, which is illegal in some regions."

"Press power/stop button to turn it on while the player is off."

"Expect in record mode, long press power button until the letters of "Bye Bye" appears and the screen will turn dark, the player will be powered off.

Fortunately, although this manual is written in bastardized english, it's not too hard to decipher what it's trying to tell you since it includes screenshots, and the selections on the player's display makes it pretty self-explanitory.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for one digital camera I purchased. This is a camera I keep in my truck in case I see something interesting to take pictures of. Here's the "Frequently Asked Questions" section:



Some of the questions include:

"How to use photo impression down all the photos to photo impression."

"restart the computer after finish the installation of the software. The page which enable you to set up the installation path will be displayed."

I may be wrong, but those don't look like questions. I had one hell of a time trying to get this camera to work since the LCD only displays numbers and icons and the manual was obviously no help to me.

Unfortunately, it's not only instruction manuals that fall victim to bastardized english. Here's the packaging for a baby's pacifier:



After it claims that the item "is not a pacifier or a toy", it warns you not to tie the pacifier around the baby's neck. Somebody will eventually get sued for writing incoherent instructions to accompany their product.

And finally, I bring you a fortune I got in a fortune cookie. I keep this in my wallet and read it when things are making too much sense.



Just for the hell of it, I approached the chinese guy at work to help translate the message this thing is trying to convey. The scary thing is he understood it perfectly and was puzzled by the fact that I couldn't understand it. Go figure.

If you'd like to read more examples of bastardized english, check out http://www.engrish.com