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by doug | May 2nd, 2010 @ 8:59 pm
 This weekend has been surprisingly productive.
I began the construction of my first pinhole camera yesterday afternoon (while keeping an eye on the Derby – my pick came in seventh) and completed it this morning. It started life as a coffee can, but now it is officially Grammo-Cam 1. Following the directions found in Brian Krummel’s book, I basically painted the inside of the can with flat black spray paint, made a hole in the center with a hammer and nail, made a pinhole in a sheet of aluminum (from a Coca-Cola can, if you must know) with a sewing needle, electrical-taped it to the inside of the can, and affixed another 2-inch length of electrical tape over the hole as a makeshift shutter. That’s it. Insert photographic material and start experimenting.
 Now all I need is a darkroom – without which I can’t even load the camera, much less develop the pictures. So this afternoon, prior to the thunderstorms, I initiated the transformation of my walk-in crawlspace into a black & white darkroom. Step 1: make space. Nearly completed that task today. The best part was finally having an excuse to throw a bunch of crap away that has been sitting down there mildewing for months. The worst part was the discovery of the dead bird. Ugh. Anyhow, here is a ‘before’ pic. This place will never be clean and dust free, so I’m thinking that aside from the chemicals and instruments I am tracking down, I will likely need some sort of airtight container to store all of the supplies. The crawlspace itself will also never be completely sealed – there is an abundance of cracks and holes where light will always seep in. So it looks like my photo processing will be done at night. I’m okay with that.
Tonight, and this week, I promise to try to get the photography site up and running.
Book-wise, I finished The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll… finally. I even found time to read Bolano’s Antwerp (hold your applause – it’s only 55 pages long). Now I am starting in on Jim Krusoe’s Iceland. Compared to tax season, I’m positively speed-reading!
by doug | December 6th, 2009 @ 7:20 pm
weight: 142.8
exercise:
200 pushups
75 sit-ups
books read: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (stunning… beautiful… highly recommended!)
blogs written: 0
photographs edited & posted: 0
christmas presents purchased: 0
pig slaughters I can feel directly responsible for: 1
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Hambone, hambone. Have you heard? The Crimson Tide is heading to Pasadena, CA to play for its 13th national championship. Here are three early observations: 1) while it was satisfying to watch Tim Tebow get knocked down to earth, it wasn’t really necessary to keep showing him crying on the sidelines. He’s been humbled. Let’s move on. 2) there will be hype… do not buy in to it. The Longhorn team we saw against Nebraska last night will most certainly NOT be the Longhorn team we play at the Rose Bowl. This is a tough team with tremendous athletes on both sides of the ball – especially at quarterback and receiver. 3) that being said, I wouldn’t wait until the last minute to start tidying up Coach Saban’s spot on Bryant-Denny’s walk of champions. Roll Tide Roll!!!
 Speaking of hambones, this week I discovered that a small Honeybaked Ham will feed two people for a week – without getting boring! I bought it on my Monday lunch break. We rotated different vegetable side dishes for the first three nights: turnip greens, corn, field peas, etcetera. On Thursday we made ham sandwiches with french fries on the side. Friday I cut off the rest of the meat and made an always-awesome ham bone soup. That was more than enough meal for Friday night and Saturday’s lunch and dinner. Hooray for ham.
I also didn’t eat as many obviously bad-for-me things this week. As you can see, that plus the pathetic amount of exercising I have done was enough to stop the ballooning but not enough to reduce any of my extra winter bulk. It looks like I will need to go to the gym for that. Good thing we pay for that membership every month!
by doug | November 22nd, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
weight: 138.8
exercise:
300 pushups
30 sit-ups
140 side bends
2 ‘other’ cardio activities
books read: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (page 591; continuing)
blogs written: 0
photographs edited & posted: 1
cups of coffee: gave up counting when I started having lattes for lunch
christmas trees erected: 1
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The theme of this week’s report card is: admitting defeat.
I have hit the NaNoWriMo wall and cannot bust through. Yes, I know I am supposed to just rattle off words and not edit myself or worry about how good it is and so forth… but there is just no solving the problems I am having. I have no story. There really is no way to get my protagonist, Benny the Troll, from point A (a medieval setting where Benny makes his living as a traveling musician) to point B (Benny gets gunned down in a back alley of a modern city by a jive-talkin’ pimp named Cinnamon Brown). The plot is really just a running joke that got started between my wife and I — when I threw together two characters from altogether different story ideas. It works as a joke. Not so much as a novel. I cannot sustain the humor for that long. In fact, I cannot sustain the narrative for that long. And what is worse: it’s not that I’m blocked (even though I am), it’s that I am bored. Bored to death with the whole story. It is simply not interesting to me anymore. At the same time I am reading a truly fascinating piece of literature that, while time-consuming, is by far the most intellectually stimulating book I have read this year. So when faced with committing what little time I have in the evenings to either writing a gibberish ‘novel’ that will never see the light of day or reading a newly-discovered modern literary masterpiece, my heart longs to read the masterpiece while my mind urges me not to give up on the writing contest. This week, a friend finally gave me permission to stop worrying about Benny. Life’s too short, he said (I’m paraphrasing), to spend it doing things you don’t enjoy… especially if you’re doing it just to say you’ve done it. So, unless I hit some tremendous second wind during the coming week, I think I may be done with NaNo until next year.
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This weekend has been surprisingly productive. 
Now all I need is a darkroom – without which I can’t even load the camera, much less develop the pictures. So this afternoon, prior to the thunderstorms, I initiated the transformation of my walk-in crawlspace into a black & white darkroom. Step 1: make space. Nearly completed that task today. The best part was finally having an excuse to throw a bunch of crap away that has been sitting down there mildewing for months. The worst part was the discovery of the dead bird. Ugh. Anyhow, here is a ‘before’ pic. This place will never be clean and dust free, so I’m thinking that aside from the chemicals and instruments I am tracking down, I will likely need some sort of airtight container to store all of the supplies. The crawlspace itself will also never be completely sealed – there is an abundance of cracks and holes where light will always seep in. So it looks like my photo processing will be done at night. I’m okay with that.