Craft Project :: DIY Lightbox

I’ve been meaning to build one of these for a while, but upgrading my camera and my wife starting her etsy store and needing me to photograph stuff for it gave me the impetus.

Some cheap wood, a scrap of PVC sheeting, a $4 white sheet from the thrift shop and here’s what I’ve got so far:

I’m not getting enough light, and since I’d broken a few bulbs in the past few days I had 3 different types of bulbs in the 4 lights.

I clamped the sheet on because I’m not sure of the best way to secure it, or even if that’s the right kind of sheet to use. The point is to diffuse the light, but I don’t want to block too much of it either.

I may need to partially cover the front of the box  to bounce some of the light back in.

Raising the dead…

Background HERE. Post informed guesses as to years/location in comments below.

 

UPDATES/OBSERVATIONS:

Coop thinks the Model T’s are from 1915-16 and 1917-18. I hadn’t realized they were even different cars.

Picture 2 of 28 – “This is a 1915 or 1916 Model T.”

Picture 3 of 28 – “This one is at least a ’17 or ’18 Model T, but I’m not schooled enough to spot the minor differences, and they were pretty similar year to year. The main difference from the earlier T in the other photo is the embossed grille shell, stamped fenders and the rounded hood.”

Scott Huffhines “digs up” the following:

Re: the graveyard shot. Definitely from Maryland since she was referenced in a 1944 Sun obit (which I didn’ want to pay for).
http://tinyurl.com/claraditman
My guess the obit was for one of her children or relatives but not for her.

Rob Sherwood:

Number 3 has a license plate, which reads “OHO 256825 1920″ I think. I’m researching that, assuming that OHO refers to “Ohio” and 1920 is a date.

Looking at “http://www.worldlicenceplates….“, the OHO is common in ohio but a 6 digit plate number is only listed on the 1921 license plate.

Christopher Mealie:

What a great find. Nice scans too. From clothing and autos they seem to be 1910s.

 
A reader named “Jack” that wasn’t able to post for some reason peels a sharp eye on the scenes:

I’m sorry to get this to you via email, but I was unable to post comments when I logged in. These are interesting. You may have already noticed these things, but…

I think the woman in photo 20 is the same woman years later in photo 23 who is sitting on the right. She has the same mouth and the same hairdo. Although the hairdo was probably common back then, the facial similarities seem convincing.

The dog in photo 23 appears to be the same one sitting next to the boy in photo 19. The boy in photo 19 looks like the toddler in photo 27.

The man sitting on the left with the woman’s arm around his shoulders is the same guy standing in the middle in photo 24. Judging by that dimple on his chin and his overall looks, he is also the same guy wearing the hat in photo 11. That could also be him on the horse in photos 13 and 15.

The same little boy appears in photos 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 12. There may be some more repeat subjects but I’m not sure.

The rustic wooden bench in photos 20 and 21 is interesting. That would be a cool heirloom to have, eh? This isn’t really important, but the bench seems to have moved when you compare it’s position relative to things near it on the ground such as twigs, holes in the dirt, etc. Based on the way the man and the woman are dressed in those two shots, I’m thinking they may have gone to church that day. If so, then the paper leaning up against the leg of the bench may be the program for that day’s service. I’m not enough of a historian to know if churches could afford to do that back then though.

 

Nerd Project No. 1920 :: Analog + Digital = <3 (scanning glass negatives)

It’s been a little while since I posted a project. The last one might have been my Accordion Box that I refurbished. Yesterday I found three boxes of 5×7″ and 4×6.5″ glass negatives at a local junk shop that I stop in at least once a week. The place mainly deals with estates, so you never know what’s going to come in the door.

Being, well, me… I looked quickly at a few of the slides, asked for a discount on all three boxes (they were marked $4 each, but they gave ‘em all to me for $9) and then spent my Saturday morning scanning them and then doing a small amount of color correction in Adobe Lightroom, and now this afternoon putting them online.

The photos themselves will go into a post by themselves, but I did document the process a bit for here.

I WOULD like some assistance, if you’re inclined, in dating and locating these images. There are a ton of clues in the images for the keen observer. Please use the comments section to make suggestions (and give reasons).

Being the weirdo I am, I own a few bags of cotton gloves for occasions just like this. I also have a few other things laying around that I used in the process, as I’ll detail below.

Two of the negatives were broken, and many had deteriorated  or had some decay going on. I did my best to wipe off the dust and smudges on the glass side, and did a gentle wiping of the emulsion side. I suppose I could have looked online to see what should be done to clean these properly, but I didn’t. I did quite a bit though.

I tool some thick matteboard and cut a template out so that I could place the negatives in the scanner consistently.  I know I’ve got some plastic templates that they provided, but had no idea where a “cleaned them” to last time (to the spot I’m sure I thought I’d never forget).

 

There are three boxes, but the third wit the smaller negatives had no printing like these.

Here is one of the negatives on the scanner with the template. The template needs to be removed before the scan starts.

Just because, here’s the top of my scanner.

Holding up a negative, in case you’ve never seen such a thing.

Once the negatives were scanned, I took some packing sheets and cut them down to size to insert into the top and bottom.

 

Then I took some archival storage bags and put the boxes in them.

Now that I have everything scanned, I’d be willing to donate the negatives to either a museum, historical society, or the living family. One of the photos is a grave marker, so there’s a name to go on. If I can figure out a region, that’d narrow it down.

Oh, and the “1920″ in the post title isn’t really a guess, but it sounds good.

Book Scanning…

I’ve scanned a LOT of books. Page by page by page on a flatbed scanner. Occasionally, over the past few years I’ve used digital cameras to photograph sections or a short number of pages.
At some point I ran across various websites for folks building digital camera based book scanners. This is an amazing collision of things I love – building shit, culling great shit from old books and magazines. Anyway, if you’re remotely interested at all, I’m starting this post to collect some URLs on the topic…

http://bookliberator.org

http://diybookscanner.org

http://bkrpr.org

Over the next year I’m going to start on a build.

Craft Project :: Accordion Box

I haven’t posted a craft/design project in a while. I built a nice deck in the back yard, but I’m not posting any photos of that.

I’m not  a musician, and it’s questionable if anyone will see me playing an intrument in public, but a few months ago I purchased a 12bass accordion at a Flea. It was in surprisingly good shape, all the notes are correct, but there are some flaws (the bellows aren’t airtight, etc.). So while I am going to try to learn this damnable squeezebox, my need to customize kicked in and I went to town on the worn down case…

I started by taking all the measurements and creating a design for the top and bottom. Figuring out exactly how many different peieces and how they’d be applied was the most difficult part.

I based the design around an ad from the Johnson-Smith catalog of 1929 (reprinted 1970).
Love the ad and illustrations for too many reasons to list here, but I did want to acknowledge the source.
One point is the old-world immigrant look of the two figures, and that the accordion itself has an old-world look to it.

The top was completely seperated from the case, but not cleanly.
The rear panel was still attached to the bottom by the rusted hinges.

I stripped the lining from the box.

Broke the hinges off. I tried drilling out the grommets holding the hinges,
but I ended up breaking 3 drill bits doing it.

I used PVC sheet to reline the box and wrap in new fabric.
The fabric was in a dumpster from a place that does upholstery and window treatments.
I work in the same building and smoke on the loading dock, so I peak in occasionally to see what’s there.

I don’t expect many readers to have access to a 54″ printer, but I do. I printed 2-up andthen applied a gloss laminate over it.
I was going to do a matte lam, but the gloss was loaded up and I was feeling lazy.
Once the design was applied to the lid, I decided I wanted to keep the worn look on the bottom half, and didn’t print the design I’d made for it.

Cut down more PVC to size for the inside of the bottom part of the box.
Wrapped it all in a different fabric (also from the dumpster) and glued it all in place.

Over a few days after work, my fancied up accordion box is done!

New brass hinges and fancy protective corners for the bottom.

Slaughter Family Band

The accordion fits pretty snugly, and it looks as I imagined.

Now, if I don’t learn to play it, it’ll at least look good sitting in a corner.

TechNerd :: Field Recording Notes

My blog will often feature commentary on what I’m doing with Underworld Amusements. I don’t want to fill the UA blog up with non-essential materials, but that’s part of the reason why I started this. The total listens to the podcast over there is just over 3,500 – with the “test episode” having over 1,000 listens alone (a couple of days after the posting of the HR Giger episode, it has only about 180 listens). I considered pulling it down, but there’s some good stuff on it.

I recently recorded two interviews in the proverbial field (i.e., not over the phone) for UAVH, and figured I’d offer some sound samples and notes on what gear I used. I hardly know what I’m doing. I’ve done a bit of audio recording, but I’ve never had any kind of training or done any serious work with it outside of the few projects I’ve worked on over the years. My ears are as sophisticated as anything not sophisticated at all.

DSCN3196

Below is a quick and dirty edited audio introducing recordings for two sound sources.

The first sample was recorded two ways. The first half is the Samson CO1U USB Condenser Mic connected to my 9″ Dell Vostro running the free audio recording program Audacity, the second half using the Blue Microphones Mikey connected to an Apple iPod Classic. The interviewee was speaking directly into the Samson, and the iPod was there as a backup recording just in case. It’s times like this I realize I do live a dysgenic life, forgoing children to buy electronic junk to record podcasts that few people listen to and hardly benefit mankind. Hah…

The second sample is a babbling brook recorded in the mountains of Pennsylvania. It was recorded with the Samon/Netbook but using Adobe Audition.

The netbook/Samson mic is a pretty great portable set-up, but that stand/Shockmount is a real pain in the ass to carry around. It doesn’t really break down into anything portable, and the base IS a big chunk of metal after all.

The big drawback to the CO1U is latency. I’ve installed ASIO4ALL to try to reduce it, but it doesn’t get it to where I can talk and listen with headphones at the same time. This tends to be pretty frustrating, and makes getting recording levels right a bit longer, or I end up not checking them and hoping I can fix them on the back end…

My very own blog…

It's me.

I’ve archived here years of myspace blogs, the last few months of facebook notes, and I’ll be adding a few things here and there – dated to the time it occurred.

I’m now porting this blog over to my personal facebook account, and it should show up on my twitter feed, though I don’t like twitter, other people I like DO, and I want them to know I’ve posted something here. I’m on freindfeed as well, but it’s all too much and since it has my twitter, facebook and blog feeds, it’s going to be very very redundant.

I’ve put everything in a category, at least one. “MySpace Archive” and “Facebook Archive” are self-explanatory.

As of this writing, I have the following categories:

Archivalist : Stuff I scan/document.

Arty : Um, art stuff. Things I or others do.

Bibliophile : I, book nerd.

Blog Notes : Just shit like this – who fucking cares.

Boorish : Me ranting, i.e. “commentary” and “sophistry”.

Crafty : Projects around the house. Sewing, sawing, silk-screening, building.

Design : Design projects for Underworld Amusements, freelance design that won’t scandalize the client, etc.

Outside My House : Vacations, events, etc.

Quote : Things other people have said, with or without commentary.

Skeptic : Things having to do with skepticism, atheism, critical thinking.

Slaughter House : When I pretend to be a professional photographer.

Two Cents : Much overlap with “Boorish”, but quieter.

Underworld Amusements : Notes on my projects that aren’t important enough to go on that site.

I suppose if I start adding things from the past, I’ll add a category called “Historical Revisionism“…

I’ve “tagged” only a few of the posts here, I suppose future postings will have them, and maybe I’ll get around to the backlog of items. I’ve always been terrible at documenting my work. I’ve had one or two websites about me, but nothing public. It’s been a tightrope walk, owing to the fact that I do freelance work and have a “straight job”.  I haven’t gone out of my way to hide my opinions, I just haven’t gone out of my way to publicize them in a public way like this. Take, for example, the description of  “Design” above… I won’t be posting all my freelance work here because some of my clients wouldn’t like it. Some of them have had no idea of my interests outside of graphic design. That’s a good thing. It may not be a secret, but most politically vocal graphic designers are on the left.

Obama X-Press - Snow Balls, Food Stamps, Newport

Obama X-Press - Snow Balls, Food Stamps, Newport

I consider myself a secular conservative… a “little ‘l’ libertarian”. I disagree with libertarians on a few points – death penalty being one of them… it’s not used enough.

Well, we’ll see what happens. This way I have control, and I can push my thoughts out from one location.

I will do my best to restrict posts to something worth sharing. You may disagree, but luckily for you it’ll be really easy to ignore it all.

This is me, some 13 years ago. I was in an industrial/performance group called URILLIAsekt, and the performance was called “Lycanthropy Ritual”. I don’t know if I’ve gotten more weird or less.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn0be_CXIT0

This blog is found at kevinislaughter.com, but .net and .org get you there as well.

It’s Curtains for Ida


Literally….

Ida came home with this vintage fabric and wanted curtains made.

ItsCurtainsForIda-UncutFabric

She wanted to cover the windows in the study.

ItsCurtainsForIda-TheWindows

So that’s what I did.

ItsCurtainsForIda-Panels

I worked on two separate days because I didn’t have all the fabric and the right color thread I needed

ItsCurtainsForIda-SewnPanel

I cut and sewed the four panels, and then photographed one of them so I could mock-up in Adobe Illustrator what I wanted them to look like when I was done.

Curtains for the Study - Mock-Up

When I finally got near a fabric store, it was unexpected and I had to pick thread and fabric colors by memory. I did a decent job of that, though I bought two colors of thread just in case.

ItsCurtainsForIda-Me

ItsCurtainsForIda-SewnTab

It was snowing last night and all today. I stayed home from my straight job, I figure I’d finish off these curtains and then get some Underworld Amusements work taken care of.

ItsCurtainsForIda-BottomPart

ItsCurtainsForIda-IroningCreases

The dark sections on the left side panel (below) is water that I spilled when filling up my iron.

ItsCurtainsForIda-Done1

The second day took me about 8 hours to cut and sew those tabs and the bottom panel. What the fuck?! I thought MAYBE four hours… nope…

ItsCurtainsForIda-Done2

I didn’t sleep well last night and had a big weekend, so with all of that, I was tired as shit (and pretty bored quite frankly) by the time I was done with the curtains.

As you can see, the final curtains have 4 tabs instead of 5. It was better for me to sew 16 of them instead of 20.

ItsCurtainsForIda-Done3

They’re done, and I must say I think they look pretty good. Guess I could have taken a photo with both of them hanging, but, you know.. they’re the same on the other window.

I wouldn’t try sewing any kind of clothing, but for shit like this, I’m getting much better.

Belief, authority, science… plus a small project…

I’ve had this line of thought for a while, about science and belief, etc.
This is the best I’ve come up with so far:

“While the scientific method is the better than other methods of interacting with the world, that doesn’t mean that the results of scientists should be trusted explicitly. Because we cannot all be scientists, and moreso we still have trouble with literacy, much less widespread use of logic, a large majority of people will never have the ability to confirm scientific theories. This means that, by and large, even if we reached an age where the average person made decisions “gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning”, anything outside of their own limited and specialized experience will rely on accepting any theory on the basis of belief and a sort of faith that the purveyor of that theory has accurately and thoroughly confirmed using the scientific method, and has no motivation for providing you with falsehoods.”

Maybe not the most terse, but I’m getting there…

———————————–

Also, a few weeks ago I peeper-proofed my bathroom that had three windows. This was done with a vinyl that’s made for the sign industry that gives the etched glass look.

I only covered the lower half of the window, as someone outside would have to be at a high angle to see in, and it’s nice to look out and see sky and trees. As you can see from the first photo, it’s nice to block out the view of neighbors sheds.

Making my bathroom peeper proof..

Making my bathroom peeper proof..

Making my bathroom peeper proof..

Home Office – Desk/Shelving Build – Day 4 through Fuck

Since a couple of people who haven’t commented on previous posts mantioned when I saw them they were following the desk blogs, I figured I’d post a quick update.
The desk has come along quite nicely. I’m going to wait and post photos for another week, as it’s all almost done.
The day before yesterday, when I was getting my office computer up to speed, I decided to add an extra hard drive that I’d found in my stuff. Well, there was a reason that old HD wasn’t being used – it was fucked. Not only that, in trying to get it to work, I fucked my system up. What’s worse is the DVD drive on my other computer wasn’t reading the type of DVDrs that I owned, and it took me a day and a half to realize that I could probably use Ida’s laptop to burn the disc I needed to try to rescue my system.
the biggest loss was time, since I’ve taken to putting all my important stuff on the external hard drives, and using Live Mesh to make sure there’s a duplicate copy on another drive.
Hopefully I’m going to get a 4th external drive for a double-redundant system.
I sit typing from a fresh install of Windows, the third morning after it crashing.
With the wonders of Digsby and FoxMarks firefox plug-in, much of my online experience was brought up to snuff quickly.
More photos next time I post.