Author: Tom (Admin)
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Namibia: Street View
I don’t think we really have Google Street View in Namibia just yet. In fact, I don’t believe they have worked out where the different house numbers are on the streets – GPS systems just get you to the right street, and the rest is up to you. So I took a drive through Windhoek…
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Vintage Cameras in Cape Town
There’s a guy in Windhoek who teaches black-and-white photography who mentioned that there is a big vintage camera shop in Cape Town. He didn’t remember the name of the place, but as we were headed down there we thought we’d check it out. A bit of investigation on Google revealed this camera repair shop that…
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What is it with computer company customer service these days? (I’m talking about you, Toshiba and Dell!)
I’m seeing a lot of reports these days lamenting lagging computer sales, and theorizing why that might be. I’m of the opinion that a big part of the reason is customer service. These days, it seems that more and more, when you speak to computer companies’ customer service and sales departments, you’re confronted with people…
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Digitally enhancing analog photos – is it cheating?
The whole “back to basics” photography movement, with its return to analog film and (in some cases) cheap plastic lenses has a kind of purity about it that doesn’t mesh well with all of the computer-aided post-processing of photos we have come to take for granted. We have computer programs that know how to automatically…
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First photos from an 80-year-old box camera
Some time ago my oldest daughter picked up an old Kodak box camera at a yard sale, and it sat ignored on a shelf for years until I decided to get my hands on some 120 film and an old 620 film spool and see what kind of pictures the old camera might deliver. While the…
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Found Film: the Fun Begins
So in all of this business of acquiring really old cameras, here’s something I recently learned. There are lots of old cameras lying around in peoples’ attics that still have film in them. And frequently they end up on eBay or in collectible shops, without anyone checking if there is still film inside. This happened…
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Diptic: The Coolest Photo App Ever (With a Mediocre Name)
Ever want to share a bunch of photos, but couldn’t make up your mind which? Whether you post on Facebook or attach them to an email, it would be great to combine a bunch of related shots into a single image. The app, “Diptic” (available on Apple devices and Android) lets you do exactly that.…
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Camera Lucida – Get Yours Now!
What if you could use a simple device with a prism to “trace” an object on paper that was actually in front of you. Would this revolutionize how we do art? It turns out that according to theory, that’s exactly how many of the 19th Century masters created their great works of art. And a…
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Lomography: Remembering the 70s with a Ricoh Kr-5
I just got back the first set of photos from my “newest old camera”, a Ricoh Kr-5 dating from around 1975. It’s a thing of beauty, especially when I think of the cameras I personally owned in the late 1970s and the 1980s. It was a steal on eBay, coming with a “1970s brown” nylon…
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Check out Namibia’s ‘Shishani’
One of Namibia’s rising young talents needs your help! Namibian musicians have a hard time “breaking out” – primarily as a result of Namibia’s small population – just over two million, around the same size as the city of Houston! Namibia also has one of the biggest income disparities in the world, which means that…
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Um…is that an accent I hear?
Ever come across a North American accent you couldn’t quite place? Well now, there’s an easy chart to figure it out. Someone has gone to the trouble of mapping it all out, using things like, do they pronounce “pin” and “pen” the same way… It includes audio samples to help better understand the accent descriptions.…
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Found memories…and a lost roll of film
Here’s a fun mystery to try and solve. For my (recent) birthday, my kids went down to Otto’s, the local “junk and curiosities” dealer and picked out for me the newest additions to my growing vintage camera collection. In addition, my youngest was excited to have found an original box for the Agfa Billy Compur…
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Build Your Own Plant Host Drone
I recently posted about drones and how they’re being used. Here’s a much more humble drone – one that simply moves plants around your house to take advantage of changing sunlight. For the cost of $10-$15 (and a bit of know-how, which is of course priceless) you too can own one of these. Find the…
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Got Drones?
Lately there has been increasing mention of the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for unexpected purposes. For example, both India and Namibia have been experimenting with the use of UAVs to control poaching, thanks to a $5 million grant given by Google to the WWF. Here’s a video showing how it works in Namibia (here’s…
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“Pooh” Creator AA Milne’s Secret Life in Propaganda
So it seems that childhood favorite author AA Milne, who created all of the wonderful “Winnie the Pooh” stories (along with some of my favorite childhood poems), also spent some time in World War I writing propaganda for a secret British military intelligence unit. And that this is only known to us because Milne broke…
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B&W Photos from an Old Agfa
My latest hobby is drawing some ire from the “head of household” but it seems harmless enough – scouring eBay for deals on vintage cameras, and, for those for which film is still available, experimenting with photographs to see if I can master this ancient art which is quickly being lost in the age of…
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An Oshikandela, by any other name…
In our local grocery shop you can buy a couple of different varieties of yoghurt drink. Two popular kinds sit right next to each other on the shelf. I’m not a big breakfast eater; as I did when I lived in Europe, I like to take a drinkable yoghurt to work in the morning. I…
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Namibian Fairy Circles Mystery Solved AGAIN!
It’s fun to ponder those unsolved mysteries of nature we’ve all heard about from childhood onward. Last March I blogged that one of those “nature’s unsolved mysteries” was unsolved no more – Namibia’s “fairy circles.” Of course, depending on where you grew up, this may be the first time you’ve ever heard of them. The…
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My Destination’s “Biggest Baddest Bucket List” and Namibia
Here’s a great idea for a video contest: make a 3 minute video about a favorite destination, write a few hundred words about travel, and send three photos. What can you win? a six-month, all-expense-paid trip around the world, and fifty grand in cash when it’s all over (presumably to make up for lost salary?)…
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Namibia’s Dwindling Historical Archives
At 23 years and 8 days old, Namibia is starting to face the very real possibility that its historical archives – the artifacts and memories documenting the country’s long fight to achieve nationhood and defeat apartheid – may be lost forever. Most of Namibia’s original revolutionaries are now in their 70s, and when you search…
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MySpace Resurrected, Photoshop to Close
I know, right? MySpace is back. I just got my invitation to join the new MySpace and decided to go and check it out. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m not too optimistic – though the younger crowd that’s into music and music vids may appreciate it. I’m hopeful it will be a…
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Female Entrepreneur Launches Indiegogo Crowdfunding Campaign for Township Bicycle Touring Company
Here in Namibia, where income disparity is one of the highest in the world (THE highest, depending on whose figures you use) and unemployment hovers around 34 percent, small entrepreneurs in both the formal and informal sector are likely to be the biggest drivers of Namibia’s economy in the near future. This is something young…
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Vintage Camera: Agfa Billy Compur
The latest addition to my small but growing vintage camera collection arrived recently. It’s an Agfa Billy Compur judging from the name imprinted on the leather surrounding the case, and it was manufactured sometime between 1934 and 1942. It’s a pretty slick little camera, but unfortunately a manual is pretty hard to come by on…
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More Photos from a 60-year-old Camera: Relearning Analog Photography
The second roll of film from our vintage 1952-ish Agfa Billy came out much better than the previous roll. Digital cameras have been around long enough now that we’ve forgotten the lost art of taking analog photos. Note to self: no place to attach “flash cubes”? then maximize the amount of natural light for the…
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First Results, Agfa Billy I Vintage Camera
It took weeks, but we finally got back our first eight photos from the Agfa Billy 1 (mfr: 1952) we were testing for functionality (see previous blog post). The good news is that the camera works! Mostly. We know that photos have to be taken within 6 meters, because the lens, which rotates to achieve…