Don't Look Behind the Curtain

After a few comments and questions about how I copied the slide for the old photo, here's a behind the scenes explanation - Heath Robinson will be spinning in his grave!

As I said before, I got a piece of cardboard tube. Then I got a piece of white card and cut a slightly smaller than slide sized hole in it (and folded a little shelf) and stuck that to the front of the tube. Then I got a piece of tissue (two ply - for the record) and stuck that to the back of the tube - hey presto!

Now that you've seen the images, you'll obviously be recoiling at the extremely amateurish nature of the device, but...

Stick the tissue side towards the light source (natural light so it doesn't fool the camera's white balance), prop a slide up on the little shelf, and point a camera in front of the slide (use the macro mode or macro lens).

Snap away and you're done - simple eh!

Do you think there's any chance I can patent this??

Sunday Adventures

The weather here this weekend has been a bit unusual - we had an offshore flow, which means it gets hot inland and really nice at the coast.

That was the case this weekend too, Saturday was really nice - so much so that I spent too long outside and got a little "pink" around the edges.

My original Sunday plan had been to go ride the Ducati during the afternoon, but I feared it might be too hot, so I decided to go first thing Sunday morning.

Funnily enough, even though it was already in the 60's at the house at 8am (which for the record, means it's going to be a warm day!), it turned out that this unusual weather pattern caused massive amounts of fog on Highway 1 south of Carmel.

I'd opted to wear the cooler of my motorcycle outfits, and I ended up being cold and damp as I found myself in the fog about 10 miles into the ride. I kept hoping I'd get out of it, and even though I did here and there, for the most part, I was totally in it.

The plus side, there was zero traffic, so I did get to enjoy some of the twisty stuff that's normally full of tourist traffic at this time of year.

I did snap the following shot on the way back - one of the few places that was clear, and therefore somewhere for me to stop and warm up!

Back home, it was hot (for Monterey - almost 80 degrees) so I was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the day. I didn't want to go hang out in town again given the vague sunburn from the day before, then it hit me - go do the Partington Cove hike that I've been meaning to do for a while - it should be covered in fog, therefore a pleasant hike, and so it turned out to be.

It's an easy hike (half a mile down, half a mile back up again) to a cove that was used back in the late 1800's to load tanbark on to boats, and later used to smuggle illicit booze during the prohibition years.

They even made a tunnel through the rocks to complete the route for the tanbark to make it to a deep water cove where boats could moor.

It was a nice easy hike down and once through the tunnel (which is wood lined - very cool) you arrive at this small cove. It's quite scenic and very peaceful, with just a few old remains to remind you of its original purpose.


All in all, a very nice way to spend a Sunday.

Old Photo

I think it was the last time Mum came out to stay that she dropped off boxes of slides. I haven't had much chance to look through them, but this week, I did have a quick look through.

Once I realized there were some cool old photos from back in the day, I "created" a slide copier that Heath Robinson himself would have been proud of - a slim cardboard tube with a shelf to prop a slide on to, backed by tissue paper to soften the light.

Then it was time to stick slides onto this contraption and photograph them with my current digital camera.

Given its cheapness and amateurishness, it worked surprisingly well as can be seen below.

Law of Averages Finally Kicked My Ass

Yes, after over two and a half years of defying the odds, they finally caught up with me. After spending many an hour and mile wandering the local coastline, the inevitable finally happened.

I got hit with bird poop.

Thankfully, it was on my shoulder rather than my head, but it was a significant dollop, so I have to suspect seagull. Well, the main hit was on the shoulder, I got some on the sleeve and front of the fleece too.

Of course, it was made more obvious by the fact that the poop was white (and green!) and the fleece was black.

After removing the fleece and wiping the worst of it off, I wandered home hoping folks weren't paying me too much attention.

Weekend Update

Nothing really deserving of a blog post by itself, but a couple of interesting things happened over the weekend.

Firstly, on Saturday, I came across another snake on the trail when I was mountain biking - this time in the morning, but the weather was already warm. This is a California King snake - harmless to us human types, but it shook its tail at me trying to spook me - it failed as this snake looks (and sounds) nothing like a rattler.

I came across it on one of the funner pieces of downhill single track - thankfully on one of the flatter bits, so I was able to stop before I ran it over.

Later in the ride, when I'm flying down a steep downhill trail, I realize there's another snake (a gopher) trying to get off the trail - I had no chance to stop for this one, so I did my best to hop over it as I passed - I'm pretty sure I didn't hit it.

Then this morning, as the good weather continued, I realized there's a cruise ship docked in the harbor.

However, I later learned that this isn't your traditional cruise ship - it's an ownership ship - the folks own their cabins and travel around the world (some full time, some here and there renting their properly out the rest of the time) - it's here for three days by the looks of it.

An interesting concept - looks like they were in Mexico, are slowly making their way up the coast to Alaska and will eventually end up in Hong Kong by year's end.

You can read all about it at their web site.

That's pretty much it for the weekend update - we had a great weekend's worth of weather (especially for June - typically the foggiest month of the year) and I took maximum advantage of it, mountain biking and vegging at the beach on Saturday and cycling on the road followed by motorcycling on Sunday.

The only downside - no Condors on the motorcycle ride!