Darktable Negative Inversion

Blog, Photography

We took a trip to Italy recently and I brought along my Ricoh XR-7 and ten rolls of film. During the trip, I ended up shooting eight and a half rolls (three color, five black and white). At home, I had three rolls of color film I was holding off on developing until after the […]

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Zenobia Camera Test

Blog, Photography

Picked up a small 120 folder for cheap at a thrift store and put a roll of Kentmere Pan 400 through it to see if the 75-year-old camera could hold its own against my fleet of cameras.

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37

Blog

Thirty-seven didn’t turn out to be the year I expected it to be, in some ways that was good and in some ways that was very much not good. Leading off with the bad because it really felt like a dark cloud over the year, work drove me to some dark places. For me, I […]

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Photographing a Lunar Eclipse on 35mm Film

Blog, Photography

If you were to ask my wife why I do all of the hard things I do, she’ll tell you that it is because I can. And she isn’t wrong. I genuinely love to find out about something new, or old that I should be able to do and then spend days and weeks researching […]

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36

Blog

Six sixes. Four nines. Three twelves. Two eighteens. One thirty-six. The past year started out with my baby girl turning one. It’s hard to think she’s approaching two so quickly now. We threw her a big bash to ring in the whole year. Two months later she started walking and has been getting fast and […]

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Big Chocolate Ice-cream


Peace Corps

This summer, we’ve been going to get soft-serve ice-cream in the center. I’m not really sure why we didn’t do it last summer but what matters is that we are now. I have a standard order of, “Big chocolate.” Usually this rolls in around 200g (0.44 lbs) and it costs me 8 UAH ($1).That’s not […]

August 27, 2012

A Disappointing Independence Day


Peace Corps

Yesterday, August 24, was the Ukrainian Day of Independence. I had looked forward to it because there are celebrations in the center for holidays. At celebrations, there’s almost always shashlik. Shashlik is delicious. It’s grilled meat but not like grilled meat I’ve had in America. I wish I knew how it is different, but I […]

August 25, 2012

Highlights of Teaching


Peace Corps

For the last two weeks of summer, I was asked to work with some of the students one-on-one to prepare them for the National English Olympiad. It’s been fun, and I’ve talked about my approach to teaching already. Today, I want to share the first week results of my method. While most of the time […]

August 24, 2012

Teaching One on One, Again


Peace Corps

School has me coming in this week and next week to work with some select students. There’s a handpicked group of six or seven they want prepped for the English Olympiads well in advance, and while I’m still here able to help. While I certainly could argue and put up a fight about having to […]

August 21, 2012

Side Hustle


Blog

Hey spammers, stop doing what you do best and stop spamming my websites. I don’t like having to clear spam. [Update 8-20-12 23:22: Within five minutes of posting this, there was a spam comment on an old post.] On to more exciting news. I’ve decided that I’m going to start a side hustle. The Art of […]

August 20, 2012

Writing Short Things Again


Blog, Writing

I haven’t been doing a lot of writing lately, novel or blog. I don’t have much of a reason other than I’ve been going into school for a few hours this past week. Actually, that makes for a great excuse. If I’m going in to school, I’m not going to drink coffee which is essential […]

August 19, 2012

Operating System Switch Considerations


Computers

Guys, the release of Windows 8 is looming and I’m starting to panic only a bit. I do things like this for things like this. Get used to it. I’m usually be pretty excited for a new version of Windows (hell, I got Vista when it came out. AND. LOVED. IT.). Windows 7 was the […]

August 16, 2012

Missing Flights


Peace Corps

You don’t know this, but I should have a bunch of photos of Berlin to post here for your eye-candy enjoyment. I don’t because I’m a dummy. There would have been photos of the Wall and beer and pretzels and possibly me riding a bicycle. Oh the joy to ride something with two wheels again […]

August 14, 2012