The Twilight Report

Somebody on The Facebook jokingly said suggested that a large owl that a friend of mine had seen might be a flying dinosaur. TO WHICH I HAD TO IMMEDIATELY AND JOYOUSLY SAY ALL OWLS ARE DINOSAURS. (Birds being less commonly referred to as avian dinosaurs).

There I go with my pro dinosaur agenda again...

— Graham (@plicease) January 5, 2017

The pro-dinosaur agenda to which I subscribe is of course to appreciate the full awesomeness of Dinosaurs, and point out where ever possible that they are not extinct in the form of avian dinosaurs. There is something about dinosaurs which make me happy, which is, I suppose, why somebody got me a Dinosaur mug for New Year's. The dinosaur disappears to reveal its skeleton when a hot beverage is poured into it. For once I am really glad that the dishwasher is borked and nobody has fixed it, because those things always get put in the dishwasher and they get ruined.

But then something even more joyously happened today, which was I read that Kodak Alaris is going to bring back E6 slide film!

• Kodak Alaris Reintroduces Iconic EKTACHROME Still Film

I cannot adequately describe how strongly I feel the urge to do the happy dance throughout the office! They are going to make it in Rochester, so I chatted with a friend of mien who lives there. When I got back into film a few years ago I was dismayed by all the films that had been discontinued in my absence. Kodak had completely stopped making E6. Fuji still made it but it has been getting expensive! I suspect the new Kodak E6 will be pricy too. But still. Happy dance! The only thing that could possibly make this better is if they had dinosaur drawings on the boxes they sold the film in. (Actually scratch that, picture of Tom Baker riding a Dinosaur on said box would +1 even that awesomeness).

I dreamed @ILFORDPhoto came in boxes with @OReillyMedia style animals on them.

— Graham (@plicease) January 1, 2017

(The weird ways in which my Film Nerd and Computer Nerd interests intersect only in my dreams).

Ironically, I had finally decided today to go full digital for my trip to Australia in February. I am going to take my Nikon D600 for the medium high res and my Nikon Df for the low light and three zoom lenses that cover everything from 17 to 200mm all at f/2.8. If Ektachrome where going to be available this month instead of later in the year I would totally stock up on E6 and shoot that instead.

I know these are just little things, and the feelings don't last forever, but it is nice to appreicate them when you feel them.

I realised that explaining to Don what steampunk is^[1] was going to be difficult when he indicated he didn't even know what cyberpunk is.

1. after watching the steampunk-esq Doctor Who chrissy speical

Today Tristan was asking me about Transformers again. This pleases me because this is the list of the things that I am somewhat expert in (no particular order):

• Transformers
• C/C++
• Star Trek
• Perl
• Doctor Who
• Photography
• Thursday Next
• Never Being Confused

Anyway, he was asking me about where the Transformers came from and I told him about Primus and Unicron, the gods of the Transformers. This is sort of how it went:

me: Primus and Unicron are the gods of the Transformers. Primus created the transformers to battle the evil Unicron.
Tristnan: Did Unicron create the Decepticons to fight the Autobots?
me: No, Primus created both the Autobots and the Decepticons
Tristan: Why did he create them just to fight each other?

I really love the questions that Tristan asks. Now, granted we are talking about a mythology that nobody believes in, but you could easily recreate this exact same conversation using a number of “real” religions that I can think of, and this is exactly the sort of abstract thinking that should be applied to the subject.

Most of the time lately I wish that I didn’t quite have both feet so firmly planted in two totally different countries. How did I wind up yearning for a life at the same time in each?

I watched 4 episodes of Doctor Who today, and one yesterday. Four were recorded from when I was in the states and one was aired on TV tonight. Two of them were really good: 42 and Blink. The other three were kind of blah. 42 was obviously a reference to Douglas Adams, who was a writer for the original series, but I think it was also a sly reference to 24, even though there was no torture involved. Blink was cool because it was one of those episodes which didn’t focus on the primary characters at all, and instead you get to see the weird havoc wrecked by the Doctor. They’ve done this once before and I think it has worked well in both cases.

Went to Aunty Joyce’s for afternoon tea today. My mum is still intimidated by her, which is kind of amusing. It’s nice to see her; I feel like seeing once somewhat estranged family fills in holes that are worth filling in. It also gives me hope. Tonight Don picked up this manual thingy and read the title: “A Practical Guide to SAX” only it sounded like “sex” to me so I asked “how practical is it?” SAX is the name of some hardware thingy that mum has at work.