Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

I was taken by a photograph of you

by

I hope you don’t mind if I talk a little more about Oscar during his birthday week.

During Oscar’s last winter here on this side, I was taking a couple of classes at DePaul University hoping to finish the degree I started a very, very long time ago. I didn’t accomplish that goal, but I did earn some credits from a wonderful class.

Since the class was centered around instant photography, I don’t think it’s offered any longer, at least not in the form I took it. You can still see the syllabus online.

At the time I did the second assignment for the class, I had no idea we’d be losing Oscar just a couple of months later. He was going through radiation treatment after surgery to remove his right eye along with the malignant tumor behind it, but he was handling it well at that time.

Oscar was the most willing subject in our household and was happy to go along with whatever I wanted him to do for my portraiture assignment. I decided to pose him in front of a variety of different open and closed doors, mostly at our house. To get the ten photos I submitted, I shot twice as many Polaroids. Shooting film, and especially instant film, makes you think about what you are doing.

Note: Some of the photos in the linked Flickr gallery are a little rough to look at, especially if you have or had a pet going through radiation treatment.

If you choose to click through and see Oscar and the doors, thank you. If not, I do understand. Either way, thanks for listening.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’10: 7 of 31)

Gadget time: Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Printer

by

My husband is great at gifting me with cool gadgets that I didn’t even realize I wanted until I was happily playing with them. His latest pick for me is Polaroid’s ultraportable PoGo Instant Digital Printer. This one is going to be a lot of fun!

This printer is extremely portable. Small and light, it’s not much larger than my smartphone. Standard color is black; red and pink are available for an extra charge. The extra charge for the pink one supports breast cancer research. The extra charge for the red one just goes to make me happy. You all know how much I like the color red for my personal electronics.

There is a nice neoprene case available with a pocket for extra photo paper or a spare battery.

The photo paper is 2″ x 3″ with a peel and stick back. It uses ZINK Imaging’s Zero Ink technology. Heat from the printer activates dye crystals embedded in the paper. The print emerges dry to the touch and is supposedly waterproof and smudgeproof. The printer holds a 10-pack of photo paper and must be empty before you can load another pack.

The photo on the top is from my BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone and the photo on the bottom is from my Nikon Coolpix S50 digital camera. Since these are photos of photos, you won’t really be able to get a good idea of photo quality, which is acceptable for prints of this size.

Getting set up to print via Bluetooth from the BlackBerry was very easy, using the BlackBerry’s Bluetooth settings menu to discover and pair with the PoGo. Then it was a matter of selecting a photo, selecting “Send Using Bluetooth,” and selecting the printer.

Printing from the Coolpix camera was even easier, but a little more cumbersome since it uses the USB cable supplied with the camera. Once the two devices were connected, the PictBridge print option was automatically displayed along with on-screen prompts to help select and print a picture.

Sizing of the photo to best fit the 2″ x 3″ print area is automatic. You can print from any device that has Bluetooth transfer capability or that is PictBridge enabled. There is a compatibility guide on the Polaroid website. Sorry, iPhone users: even though you have Bluetooth, you do not have the transfer capability needed to print.

So far, I’ve really had some fun with this printer. Since the print size is so small, it does not replace a desktop photo printer. Unless you use an outside service for all of your photo printing, you’ll still want to have a desktop printer. But the PoGo’s extreme portability makes it a natural to accompany you anywhere. There’s something about having a paper print in hand, and this will be fun to have at parties and other gatherings, just like it was always fun to have a Polaroid camera around back in the old days when all cameras shot film.

I have not received compensation for this review, and I have no connection to Polaroid. The printer was purchased by my husband as a gift for me.

(NaBloPoMo | January ’10: 21 of 31)

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

by

And to think I believed the biggest change in my world in December 2008 would be the closing of Maurice Lenell Cookies in Norridge. This is still a big change, although one that I have been resigned to since the bankruptcy organization and subsequent sale of the bakery to an Ohio company earlier this year. Thankfully, the company store is still open for this year’s holiday season, and thus my annual trip to get cookies for the office and my husband’s firehouses went as planned. And the cookies still taste the same as I remember from every single holiday that I’ve lived in northern Illinois. No wonderful bakery smells when I drove up to the store though and that was truly sad for me.

But enough about the cookies.

Remember I wrote back here about corrupt sleazebag Illinois politicians? Well, this morning I wake up to the news that Governor Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff have been arrested on federal charges, including alleged attempts to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. The sad thing is that no one I’ve talked to about it is surprised. Or if they are surprised, it’s only at something like the timing, or at the specific charges being emphasized by the media.

One of my other earlier concerns, that of Obama bringing Illinois machine politics and corruption to Washinton, might not be so big now, though. Here is a quote from one of the news releases:

In a conversation with (chief of staff John) Harris on November 11, the charges state, Blagojevich said he knew that the President-elect wanted Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them.”

Lots of stuff to read on the whole sorry mess at the Chicago Tribune site.

Speaking of the Trib, there’s another big change. They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. Again, not a really huge surprise in light of trends in the newspaper industry all across the country for some years now. Sad to me as a former journalism student, even though working for the Tribune has not been part of my personal dream for decades now.

And one last change, another one that’s obviously been coming for a while, but something I didn’t really think would happen just so soon: no more Polaroid instant film. I’m not one of those “loyal and passionate” Polaroid followers described in the CNN article. I didn’t have a Polaroid camera as a child, although I remember whining for a Polaroid Swinger (and now the commercial jingle is stuck in my head, beware the YouTube link within the Wikipedia link!) and getting a Kodak Instamatic instead, and actually being okay with that.

I do have a Polaroid OneStep camera still in good working condition. I bought it a long time ago – early ’90s, maybe? – to take pictures of our few “nice things” for insurance purposes. I like to take pictures but I’m not a great, or even good, photographer. Hence, the Minolta Maxxum instead of a Nikon or Canon film camera, and on the digital side, old and new Nikon Coolpix point and shoot cameras instead of a digital SLR.

But as usual, I digress. Back to Polaroid in my life. Every so often I go back to take classes at DePaul University’s School for New Learning with the idea of eventually finishing the B.A. I started umm… a very, very, very long time ago and for which, in my defense, I have not yet had a need for. I had some arts requirements that needed to be fulfilled, and in Winter Quarter 2005-2006, one of the classes offered was “Artistic Issues in Instant Image Photography.” This was one of the most enjoyable classes I’ve ever taken, despite having to go out in the dead of winter to take pictures, and as anyone who has ever owned any vintage of Polaroid camera, cold and instant photography do not mix well.

The syllabus for the class is online in case you’d like to see:

http://www.snl.depaul.edu/WebMedia/People/AI_333.pdf

And so are my 10 photos for the final assignment, Landscapes (Urban/Rural):

http://www.flickr.com/gp/89937445@N00/D3Zk4c

I really should put those in Polaroid style frames, and maybe I will, but not just this moment.