So I whipped up a goofy shirt a few months ago after my XBox 360 died The Death of Three Lights and stuck a link to a CafePress shop selling it on this site. See it there, on the right? Anyway, I hadn't gotten any email from the Cafe, and so figured nobody was buying it. A little bummed, but I really hadn't invested much in it. Still...a little bummage happened.

Today I check the mail (real mail, not electronic foolery), and hey...something from CafePress. Wait, what the?!? A check! I sold something? Read more

So apparently there was an accident or somesuch along my commute to work today, and 19th Ave through Golden Gate Park was closed off. Everyone was getting detoured down Fulton and trying to squeeze through all the little streets to get to the other side of the park.

I duck down one of these streets and end up driving through the beautiful, treed heart of Golden Gate Park, and I realize...wow, my morning commute is some people's dream vacation.

Hey, maybe this delay isn't so bad after all.

Wort on the stoveHad a couple friends over for Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day on Saturday. We brewed up a baltic porter using some yeast from a previous baltic porter. Yeah, I forgot to check that I wasn't brewing two of the same thing back-to-back.

Things went well, which means only one thing went haywire. I racked my first porter into secondary just fine -- then I noticed the spigot was leaking a bit. Man. Read more

Just mixed up my first batch of Photographer's Formulary 130 paper developer (aka: GAF 130, ansco 130). Nobody told me the glycin foams up when you add it...a tiny bit alarming, but the mad scientist in me loved it. What's mixing chemicals without some foaming, bubbling, or color changing?

Tomorrow I hope to finally get a break from cleaning the place to do some printing.

So with the passport issue going nowhere fast. we went to Representative Lynn Woolsey's office and told them what was up. They got right on it, and within a few days got everything straightened out -- daughter has a passport on the way! Just wanted to pass on the info the Woolsey's people really know what they're doing. Thanks, guys!

I just love it when a company goes the extra step to make it's customers happy. I recently had the chance to see two such instances of this happening.

First, there's Stone Mills Company. I was looking for some enlarger bits and pieces, and found what I needed at their site. Unfortunately, one of the things I needed was twice the price of another website. I told Stone Mills "I'll order everything but that one thing", and they asked me "Is it the price?" Read more

So my wife and I have been working for months, trying to get our daughter a passport. The Department of Homeland Security won't let her have one, though. We have a birth certificate. Not good enough.

Ok, how about school records? Not good enough. Government loan for college? Not good enough. Drivers license? Not good enough. Registered to vote? Not good enough.

No, what Homeland Security wants, the one piece of documentation that will allow them to issue a passport to my daughter because it proves better than any other document is...a baptismal record. Read more

I asked around about my negative issue (see the previous post), and got some good pointers at APUG. I tried them out and here's what happened. Oh, and each image here also includes a little bit of fully-exposed film tongue to check density with. Read more

<

p>So I finally developed my first negatives since high school, some 18 years ago. I have three different developers: pyrocat-HD, rodinal (or at least Photographer's Formulary paraminophenol), and some D-76 (well, close...Lauder Chemical formula 76). Wanting to run before I could crawl, I'd decided to do some stand development with the pyrocat and the rodinal. Read more