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Showing posts from September, 2008

Facing North

We've got a wee bed given over to weeds now, facing almost due north, and I'm planning for its future. There are some suggestions here (lemon balm? parsley!), and here (coltsfoot!).

Avoid that future shadow....

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a and c iii

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Sir Malcolm Delevigne , [link will need Athens], that's him on the left, was the British representative at Geneva in 1924/5, and at many other drug related conferences, he was an expert on the trade - and on health and safety at work. The American representatives would also repay further research: Stephen Porter and Bishop Brent. Perhaps most interesting is the man who put Indian Hemp on the table, Dr Mohamed Abdel Salam El Guindy, the Egyptian representative. As Kendell puts it: "Without the Egyptian initiative and Dr El Guindy’s single-minded determination, Indian hemp would never have been brought under the controls of the 1925 Convention." There is no doubt that the picture he painted of the effects of Indian Hemp was, as best, over-colourful. El Guindy was supported by the Turkish and Greek representatives - which suggests a joint interest in a regional economic situation connected with Indian Hemp. This too wants further research. We must also consider the rol...

a and c ii

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Linking back to the germ of this idea, here . Considering the discourse that surrounds recreational substance prohibition, and its overlap with organised crime. I'm looking at a historical perspective to get the background - I suspect that language, particularly from journalists, has been a fundamental aspect of this phenomenon. We can trace prohibition back to the 19th Century, arising out of UK imperialist and economic motives in relation to China and the opium trade. The punitive colour arose from DORA during the FWW , (that last link is to a chronology supplied by RELEASE, which has an unfortunate omission and resulting ambiguity: it refers to the first and second Opium Conferences at The Hague in 1911/12, but omits any reference to the confusingly identically named conferences which took place in Geneva in 1924/25 ). With the Great War over, The Dangerous Drugs Act 1920 formalised the situation and followed on from The Hague conference. The hullaballoo following the death ...

eye contact

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eye contact , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Here's an old one I came across.

Stoned

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In addition to Tom Waits , I think I'll also get around to re-collecting my Stones albums. Here's a discography of the albums - you need to read from the bottom. I went off them when I discovered punk in the mid 60s. Probably no coincidence that they actually didn't do anything very original after that time. So I'll collect as far as Some Girls , and call it a day... It was during a lesson this afternoon, with the students doing a substantial reading exercise, and the mind wandering, that I got this Stones idea. And it led to speculation about the etymology of stoned as in intoxicated by drugs. The OED records it in relation to alcohol intoxication from 1952, with the first drug reference a year later in ANSLINGER & TOMPKINS Traffic in Narcotics . By the 1970s, by the time the Stones were going off the boil, it had shed its association with The Drink. But there's not much clue as to its origin. This link suggests a relationship between the adjective to...

Mod 5 Reading List

So that I don't need to carry it around with me: Caldas-Coulthard, C.R. and Coulthard, M. (1996), Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis . London: Routledge. Chouliaraki, L. and Fairclough, N. (2002), Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Fairclough, N. (1992a) Discourse and Social Change . London: Polity. Fairclough, N. (1992b) (ed), Critical Language Awareness . London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1995a) Critical Discourse Analysis . London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1995b) Media Discourse . London: Arnold. Fairclough, N. (2001) Language and Power , 2nd ed. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research . London: Routledge. Goatley, A. (2000), Critical Reading and Writing: An Introductory Programme Book . London: Routledge. Holmes, J. and Stubbe, M. (2003) Power and Politeness in the Workplace. A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work . Lon...

Critical Discourse Analysis

I'm looking at the options for Mod 5 of the MA, and will almost certainly go with CDA. It's arguably the least practical option. In pure career terms, it might be better to go for Teacher Education or ELT Management. But. CDA is actually going to be interesting, and it's what I want to do for the dissertation. And I might spend months working on something turgid which, (and experience suggests things usually go this way), I will never need. So I've been having a shufty at GALT with a CDA "useful texts" list by me, and it looks as if Strathclyde would be the best place for library resources . The Mitchell will probably remain the best place for drafting in peace.

Wallace Monument 2

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Wallace Monument 2 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . That's the second roll in the Coronet. Massively overexposed, so I must assume the camera has a 1/30 shutter speed, (and f11?), because these were taken with 200iso film on a cloudy day - I had to pull them back a long way in PS.

Give Us All of Your Money...

...and then fuck off. Or, "government interference is bad for business" until the shit hits the fan when the capitalist fat-cat twats start miaowing for hand-outs - and not just hand-outs, mind, but "buying above market price" , the cheeky bastards. Naomin Klein's summed it up nicely in The Guardian . We're right in the middle of this as I blog. The political and big business establishment are stoking up the sense of crisis to hustle this thing through, and they seem to be succeeding. McCain has shown where his true interests lie , fanning the flames for his mega-rich chums. Obama's position is less clear, but it'll be interesting to see which side he decides his bread is buttered on. I agree with Klein, but doubt that there's time to mobilize before this gets pushed through...

The Mitchell Library

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This flat's a bit small for studying, and the University's library is, not unreasonably, filled with undergraduates, so I'm going to carve out a corner for myself at the Mitchell. It's about a ten minute walk, less, from St George's Cross Subway. The Library's online presence is a bit confusing. mitchelllibrary.org gets you to the photographic archive - which is great fun, but not what I'm after. For the catalogue, you need to click on the right tag in the Glasgow City Libraries site . There's also G lasgow Academic Libraries Together , which means (I think) I can probably access all of their material from the Mitchell. Anyhoo, the bottom line is, I can finish off the MA and look at future research in peace and comfort.

"The mind is its own place...

...and in itself Can make a Hebburn of hell, a hell of Hebburn". As Milton didn't quite say , though I don't believe he ever spent much time in Hebburn, in which case he might have penned a line or two on the place. We went to complete the move this weekend, getting kitchen stuff, books, Molly's toys. A trip to the Newtown cured us of any undue nostalgia, with the Chavs drinking their Fosters out of a big box, spitting, cursing and pissing in the street. What a fucking midden that town's become. A big lump of the populace are workless, hopeless, mindless child-abusing shit. Maybe it's something to do with post-industrialism. I don't know. I do know I don't want my little girl growing up there. Here ends that chapter. Turn the page.

Scanning Xpro

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Wondering about the best way to scan crossprocessed negatives. The question is, do them as negs, and have the scanner do all its auto-things; or, scan as positive, and invert them in Photoshop. The question is being discussed here, in the Flickr xpro group. This photo (above) was taken with the Sporti, Fuji Velvia 100. It was scanned as a negative, which means the scanner inverted it, and did all kinds of automatic stuff with the colour range and balance. Now this one was scanned as it was, that is, as a neg, and then inverted. I think it has a better colour range. Look at the sculpture. And the pair of jeans to the left.

Coronet 4-4: 3 out of 24

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Weird, eh? The scanner freaked out and couldn't find the frames, I had to do it manually, and then do a bit in Photoshop. Only 3 exposures, (well, 4 if you count this one as two) out of a roll of 24 - but I was only messing around indoors with it. Maybe try a roll of colour with it next? Outdoors? That's the thing, to get out a bit more.

SAD? SW Scotland? Vitamin D?

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The Libyan sojourn earlier this year means that now, nearly three months after my return, the rain is still something of a novelty. Just as well, given the SW Scotland climate - which is noticeably much wetter than it was in NE England: you understand the meaning of rain shadow when you move from one to the other. Maybe that's why Glasgow and environs have such poor health . It's a vitamin D deficiency, and all those lectures from middle-class people in Islington about diet (based on the deeply rooted belief that everyone here is munching deep fried Mars bars all day long), were misplaced. Incidentally, I notice that the BBC's "news" story looks as if it has been based on a 2006 paper , (you can't get it without Athens or a payment, but there is a less detailed open-access article on the same subject by the same author, Oliver Gillie, here ). There's the whole SAD thing to consider , too. I don't think Gillie mentions happy-lamps. You can buy Vit...

Criterion Collection

Someone in a DMU thread has just put me on to this. I need to spend a lot of time with it this approaching winter. I'm trying to wean Herself off Taggart on satellite. There are an uncountable number of great pictures we've never seen, and now that we've got a big telly and have abandoned pub-life in favour of parenthood...

Leica Screw Mount Serial Number ID

1923 - 1960

The Shittiest Thing on Saltcoats Beach

Ugh!

5cm Summicron f2

And a good job I can have a wee break from the MA (I'm not going to pick up a clever book for a fortnight...), because investigating and trying to get Leica bargains on eBay is a full time occupation. There's a iiif going with an old 5cm Summicron f2 attached - reasonably priced now with a few days to go, so it might stay within my budget before the auction's done... The more I investigate Leica lenses, the more I'm impressed by the colour quality. I mean, for example, this isn't a Pullitzer Prize winner , but it shows the potential with the colours. And I don't know what's happened here - tagged hp5 but looks more like c41 b&w, with the lack of contrast... A really sad aspect of Flickr that you get shoved in your face when you're researching a lens's capabilities is the sad fuckers who spend £100s on lenses just to take photos of them with their digital capture cards .

MA TESOL and Applied Linguistics

This is what I've been doing in what should be my free time . That's Mod 4 almost out of the way - a thousand or so words to write today on some minor assignments. And then I move onto Mod 5, and then Mod 6 sometime early next year, and then that's me, done, PSA MA. No more studying after this, unless I was able to do it full time.

coronet 4 - 4: MA

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coronet 4 - 4 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . A recently bumped thread in the Toy Cameras group inspired me to have another go with this. The first roll I tried didn't work at all - light flooding in from the wee red window, no doubt. I've read up on things now and know to tape the window up. (Actually, the thought did occur to me two thirds through the last roll. But Molly pulled the tape off. There's a whole load of tape on there this time. Putting the finishing touches to my Mod 4 portfolio for the MA. That should go in the post on Monday, inshalla. And then I can really start to obsess over photography until I need to get to grips with Mod 5. Which is the penultimate, thank God.

Lenses

Of course, there are always M39 lenses from Voigtlander .

Those Filters Again

I've got a Hoya ND4 , the nd standing for natural density. This is used for situations where you want a slow shutter speed or wide aperture, but there's bright-ish daylight. It's nuetral - not filtering any particular wavelengths. It just slows things down a bit. Handy for daylight motion blur or when you want a narrow dof on a sunny day. The rest of the filters are B+W - a brand name I've just learned. The B+W KR 1.5 is a skylight for colour. I've used one of these plenty in the past, and would leave it on the camera all the time with a colour film during the day. The B+W KB6 is a cooling filter, which, apparently, you'd use if you were shooting colour film at sunrise or sunset and wanted to make the light less red. Can't think I'd use it that much, but you never know. The third of the B+W filters has no descriptor letter and number on it. The eBay seller described it as "warming", so perhaps it's an 81A or B. That takes the blue...

Trees and sky at 720 nano-meters (IR)

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Trees and sky at 720 nano-meters (IR) , originally uploaded by One_DaveT . Flickr's a bit skimpy on R87 tags - but this photo has one. I've faved it and commented, asking for shutter speed information, etc. Felt like I was interrogating the photographer. Some people like to share technical information, others don't.

Filters!

Got a load of new 40.5 filters today. The mammy and daddy of them is an R87 for infrared: I need to get some idea of exposure times for it with SFX 200. The person selling them on eBay had others, so I got them too... I need to check them all out and what they're good for from here , when I'm sober.

Summarit 5cm v Summitar 5cm

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It really can be a mistake to wait until Herself goes to bed at night before thinking, oh aye, I'll just have a last glass of wine and a shufty at the Leica lenses on eBay... It was a mistake the other night because I made the Leica n00b's elementary blunder: confusing a Summitar with a Summarit on the basis of their similar spelling. Numptyism of the first order, no doubt, but we learn from our numptyishness. The Summarit 5cm f1.5 is the lens I blogged about the other night , the paradoxical one which is said to be soft and sharp, which is looked at askance (we are told) in Leica iconograph, but appears to be secretly loved . Look at this from a Flickr photographer called bach tran, and the rest of his photos tagged with summarit5015 . And you can see what people mean about the soft/sharp paradox. But best of all, I think, is the beautiful colour quality - the reds are almost autochromatic. With such a lens, I think I'd use mostly colour, or perhaps xpro. The Summit...

Stop The LHC!

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I'm glad that someone has the sense to see through this dangerous madness ! I found that link when my concerns led me to google this universe-crunching evil, and it's not a daft website dreamed up by a friend of mine, or anything. That's a picture of the universe, which is in grave peril from these irresponsible Swiss psychos. (I think some of them are French, too).

Meanwhile...

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molly on wall saltcoats 3 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . The old FED2 and Industar 61 can still do the business. This is with HP5, using a red filter. Lots of water spots and some dust, but I'd probably bugger up the texture of the clouds if I tried to clone them out.

All my life, etc... Leica V: Summarit 5cm1.5 (Again)

Thinking about it, you might get some astonishing xpro, with the right film... Based on the sharp/soft paradox .

For example...

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rainy golden , originally uploaded by shukuya . This was shot with a Summitar 5cm f2, on Ilford Delta 3200.

All my life, etc... Leica IV: Summarit 5cm1.5

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Of course, the sky's the limit with the price of Leica lenses. But a Summarit would be a good starting point. A couple of them going on eBay, bidding's now around £50. There's a variety of opinion at rangefinder forum , but it's 90% positive - well, one numpty thinks "it's the worst lens I have ever used", so one should be careful. I do like the fact that several people refer to its retro capabilities, sharp yet soft. A paradox. The Flickr group's here . Not much craic, but plenty of pics.

All my life, etc... Leica III: the M5

There's an M5 going on eBay, the bidding's only up to £200. But it is awfully, well, big. Look here . If you scroll down on that link, there's a photo of the M5, M6 and IIIf, all in a row. The M5 is almost as big as an SLR. The IIIf is marvellously dinky by comparison. The more time I spend with this idea, the more it looks like a IIIf is what I want. And then of course there are the lenses...

All my life, etc... Leica II: M4--2

I'm puzzling this thing out in public, here . I learned yesterday that I can get as many teaching-hours as I can handle at Glasgow, so the future is far more certain now than it was 24 hours ago. And my what-Leica-should-I-get posts are serious planning not futile fantasizing. Or something. An M4-2 was going quite cheaply on eBay.

Ship AIS Arran

It's great living by the sea. On the way to work each morning I look out across to Ailsa Craig. Ship AIS means that I can identify any ships out there. The Tango has been at anchor on Irvine Bay for nearly a week now - that must be getting a bit tiresome. And when you google the IMO you see that there's a whole website dedicated to posting pics of ships in the Firth of Clyde, and, Hey Presto! Tango is the belle of the ball this week! (After four weeks offline, I'm loving this connectedness). The Firth of Clyde mazoom site even has a category for pics taken from Saltcoats harbour . I've never seen HMS daring, a new Type 45 Destroyer , but she's been out there on sea trials since April , apparently.

When I've Finished This Bloody MA... (a and c)

...I had thought to read for a PhD. But I've had enough of lost evenings and weekends. I would do it if I could get paid to, but not part time. I do, however, have another reading and writing idea, both academic and creative (hereinafter a and c). And this looks as if it might come in handy .

XPRO: Tip

This will be worth trying . Essentially, you scan it as a positive, and invert it in Photoshop.

Driech? Saltcoats?

It adds nothing to the cheerfulness of this story, incidentally, that Galloway was born and grew up in Saltcoats, on the Ayrshire coast. The adjective “driech” is not actually used (Scottish meteorological term for slit-your-own-throat grey and drizzly), but driech conditions are what Saltcoats is principally known for. Hmm. I had already decided to deploy the Anti SAD Lamp as soon as we passed the equinox, and this has reminded me to dust it off. And as for the Galloway book. I've never seen the point in misery memoirs - why spread it around? But the review says there's more to it, so I'll give it a go - hopefully the Saltcoats library will be stocking up with plenty of copies.

Woman in floral silk robe

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Woman in floral silk robe , originally uploaded by George Eastman House . Thanks to monaxle for providing the link to a shedload of autochromatic fun .

"As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to own a Leica."

Once again, the dog returns to its vomit. The FED2's great, I've learned loads from it... But... Neither of my Russian lenses, (Jupiter 8 and Industar 61) are really sharp. For the price, they're brilliant, but they could be sharper. And the rangefinder on the camera is hard to use in low light, and anyway is perhaps about 10% inaccurate with the subject a few feet away. What I'm saying is, the FED2 and the Russian lenses have been great, but I've come up against their limitations. Not that I'll be putting them back on eBay just yet, but I'm going to start to nurture my Leica aspirations again. And ponder over such things as whether to go for an M39 like a IIIf, or go the whole hog and get an M series.

Mespoulet and Mignon: Autochrome

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Ireland , originally uploaded by Albert Kahn . These two French photographers went to the west of Ireland, funded by Albert Kahn as part of his project to take photos of people around the world. Autochrome was a very early colour technique, used to great effect here in Galway where the women traditionally wore these wonderful red shawls and dresses. I love this photo for all sorts of reason, not least because the young woman here, and the other women in the photos, have bone structure just like Herself's. (She has Irish ancestors, so it's not too much of a long shot to think that her DNA in part hails from Galway). I've spent a bit of time this morning tracking down decentish copies of these photos - eventually I found that someone's given dear old Albert a Flickr account of his own. Clicking on the photo will get you there.

Carol Ann Duffy

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I'm fucking sick of hearing about knife crime, the latest thing latched onto by idiot tabloid editorial boards. Anyone can go into almost any kitchen and pick up a potentially deadly knife and stab someone with it in drink or rage or despair or all three. That's life, and it wouldn't be much of a consolation to you or your family if you were stabbed but what you going to do? Imprison all the cooks and live off soup? Unscrupulous bastards whip up ersatz hysteria to sell their sordid rags. A handful of cranks think its real. And shitty arses in suits produce their red pens. Ffs. There's no upsurge or epidemic of stabbings. There IS an epidemic of reporting of the subject. And that lead to three hysterical saddoes complaining about Duffy's poem, and a numpty-led exam board take it out of the curriculum. Now Duffy's answered the situation wonderfully . God bless her! It does make you wonder, though, eh? I mean, how do you get to manage an exam board? Is t...

And don't even get me started about Keegan and all that shit

It's not the disappointment, it's the hope I can't handle. What now? Seriously, if Newcastle weren't in my DNA, I'd think about immersing myself entirely in SW Scotland and support Celtic full time. I might do that anyway. Fuck it.

Fujichrome Velvia 100: Colour Slide Film for XPRO

Have shufty at this . Cheap. I've not tried xpro with the Sporti yet, but I will now that I know I can get it processed at Snappy Snaps. I think probably if you got the shop to push it, to 400 or even 800iso?

Billy Bathgate

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You often get puzzled glances when you ask for a Guardian in Saltcoats, but they're piled high in Byres Road so I read a book on the way there, and the paper on the way home. Stevenston, Kilwinning, Glengarnock... I'm reading Billy Bathgate . That's a picture of Dutch Shultz. It's one of those books, you want to read bits of it out loud to perfect strangers. Like the passage when Bo Weinberg, as the concrete hardens around his feet, tells Billy about escaping from the scene of a murder he'd committed, into Grand Central Station: ...people in every direction making trains, standing waiting for the gates to open, the train announcements echoing in all that noisy mumble, and I attach myself to the crowd waiting for the five thirty two and I slip the piece in some guy's pocket, I swear that's what I did, in his topcoat, he's holding his briefcase in his left hand he's got his World Telegram folded for reading in his right hand and just as the gate ope...

Molly and Lamp

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Molly and Lamp , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . It wasn't as spooky as it appears.

Jessops v Snappy Snaps

Where was I? Oh yes... Just down Byres Road from Hillhead Subway station there's a Jessops , and I went in the other week to see if they would dev 120 colour film. No, indeed: "not even colour - you'll have to go to a specialist", and the man gave me the address of a place in Cowcaddens. Then a week or so later the Subway has to stop at Kelvinbridge , (I think because of temporary flooding - it was absolutely honking it down, and the Kelvin was in a very dramatic spate), and I approached the University from the other side, and went by a Snappy Snaps - not two hundred yards from the Jessops in the other direction. I got my first ever roll of 120 done at Snappy Snaps in Sunderland, so I went in and asked them if they dev'd it there. Yes. £3.50 for one hour, £2.50 for three. The price of a pint then. (So, did the man in Jessops really not know about this other shop in his doorstep? Or was he not for helping the local competition?) It gets better. The Snappy ...

by a circuitous route...

...Pig Sty Avenue is back in the very room where it started, back in November 2004. A lot of bytes have gone over the modem since then, mind.