Strange Pulse

Like I could resist this one! Got it from LA Daddy.

How many total songs?
As of right now…drum roll, please…32,199 songs.

Sort by song title - First and Last…
“‘39″ by Queen
“ZZ Top” by Asleep in the Desert

Sort by Time - Shortest and Longest…
3 secs: “Right Here!” by Scooby Doo (clip from the show)
1 hour, 13 minutes: “El Mundo” by Corrupted

Sort by Album - First and Last…
#1 Record - Radio City by Big Star
Zure Botoa by Solbakken (a dutch band)

Sort by Artist - First and Last…
10,000 Maniacs
Zozobra

Top Five Most Played Songs…
These are never accurate—iTunes isn’t very good with playcounts. But here’s what it says:

32 times - “Hopeless Case Of A Kid In Denial” by the Hellacopters
28 times - “MHAGD” by The Next Hundred Years
24 times - “Apologize” (Feat. One Republic) by Timbaland
22 times - “Carousel” by Iron & Wine
22 Times - “What It Is” by Pride Tiger

Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Sex: 108
Death: 298
Love: 1,621
You: 3,050
Home: 309
Boy: 1,027
Girl: 508

Apparently my library is sexist.

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle…
“These Girls” by Ryan Adams
“Pigs (Three Different Ones)” by Pink Floyd
“Black Flower” by Spirit Caravan (doom metal! yay!)
“Top Jimmy” by Van Halen
“The Ghost of You Lingers” by Spoon

Play along if you like, on your blog, or in the comments.

Which makes you wonder just how central either one is.

Actually, I think they might be the same park, connected somehow, but my friend says they’re not. It’s weird, because both of them have manmade lakes in them. I went for a walk there with my friend one day, and the lake in one was completely drained away. That was odd and made the place even more surreal.

All these pictures were taken in Central Park, except the first two.

This is my shadow in a parking lot in Irvine:

My legs, at least. Weird how my torso is gone, huh? Can you spot my shadow in any other pictures? It’s visible in two more.

A plane coming in to land at John Wayne Airport in Irvine:

I bought a bulk roll of black and white film, 100 ft for about $30. It’s cheap stuff, but it saves me a ton of money over buying individual rolls. I got a bulk dispenser w/some ebay stuff awhile ago, so I can load up a film canister with as much film as I want and shoot it. And develop it myself. Presto, very inexpensive film!

Anyway, the cheapest stuff I could find was 400 ISO. I normally use 100 ISO, because the light outside is so bright here. Plus, on one of my old 35mm cameras, I have to just guess at the aperature/shutter speed, I don’t have a light meter, and it doesn’t have one built in. So I use the sunny 16 rule, which is: Set your shutter speed to whatever your film ISO is, and set your aperature to 16, if it’s sunny out. You can adjust from there—if you want a wider aperature, adjust your shutterspeed accordingly, or vice versa. Problem is, with the lens I have on this old camera, I’d only be able to shoot at one aperature if I set the shutter speed to 400 (=500, on this camera) for 400 ISO.

So, I tried shooting the film as if it was 100 ISO, and then developing it as if it was 100 ISO. Because the film speed is 400 ISO, that’s called “pulling” the film. Mostly what you hear of is people “pushing” the film. That means going the other direction—for example, shooting 100 ISO film as if it’s 400, and then developing it like it’s 400.

Anyway, my first attempt didn’t come out all that great—over exposed, mostly. And because I’m not sure I had the exposures exactly right in the camera—using the sunny 16 rule can be tricky, especially with my brain—I don’t know if I messed up the development time or not. It’s going to take a few tries for me to get it figured out, I think.

These were taken with my Zenit-TTL, an old tank of a Russian camera. I went for a walk around Central Park, which is a park just down the street. There’s a man-made pond or lake in it.

There’s weird trees in California:

Too bad you can’t really see all the ducks in the water. The lake was overcome with them:

Those last two had the best exposure. I think most of the problem was me overexposing the film in the camera. I may have developed it a bit too long too.

It’s this trippy place just south of Newport Beach, north of Laguna. It’s a little vacation spot, with old cabins from the 30s-50s. It’s a hidden cove, surrounded by cliffs. A really cool spot.

Most of the pictures I took didn’t turn out so well—overexposed.

The beach there is really hard packed sand, and really flat—great for skimboarding. Also great for playing stuff on—frisbee, volleyball, etc. There were tons of people there—for the holiday weekend.

There’s also a really rocky area, with cool little tidepools to explore. Big sections of the rocks are completely covered in muscles, it’s trippy.

Eljiah took this one:

Muscle-covered rocks:

A strawberry farm.

Actually, my grandparents rented some farmland and had a U-Pick strawberry field, which is where the above pic was taken. My parents helped out with it every summer, so when we were small, we’d spend a few weeks in June with my grandparents.

A few years later, my grandparents stopped doing that, and my Dad started doing it near our house. He rented farmland right next to the Green River. My childhood is full of memories of dirt, weeds, weeds, dirt, and fishing or swimming in the Green River. (You know the one…with the dead bodies.)

When I was in 6th grade, we moved into an old farmhouse. At one point or another, we had dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, sheep, even a small pony. We also lived on about 2 acres, and on the back patch my dad planted raspberries. One summer I spent all of July running a small U-Pick raspberry field in our backyard. (The most boring summer of my youth.)

We also had blueberries. To this day, I give people a litmus test: Which do you like better, blueberries, or strawberries?

Well, sort of. All the songs have “thank” in the title, anyway.

All We have To Be Thankful For (The Sitting Room) - Anne Clark
Be Thankful For What You Got - William DeVaughn
Give Thanks And Praises - Bad Brains
Is That the Thanks I Get - Wilco
So Long & Thanks for All the Fish - Hilary Summers, Kemi Ominiyi & The R’svp Voices
Thank You - Bonnie Raitt
Thank You - Dido
Thank You - Led Zeppelin
Thank You - Robin Thicke
Thank You - Tori Amos
Thank You Boys - Jane’s Addiction
Thank You Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin - Sly & the Family Stone
Thank You For Calling - Jo Stafford
Thank You For Patience - Dove
Thank You For Sending Me An An - Talking Heads
Thank You For This - Mastodon
Thank You Louise - Ryan Adams
Thank You Love - Stevie Wonder
Thank You Raishun - Downy
Thank You World - World Party
Thankful - Josh Groban
Thanks - Scott Reeder
Thanks A Lot - Neko Case
Thanks to You - Flaming Lips

Posted on the radio.blog.

Most people would probably think they’re crap, but I’m really liking this.

From my cheap plastic Panoramic with a flipped lens.

Pay phone down the street—the sticker on it says “THIS PHONE IS TAPPED.”

Video store across the street:

Accidental double exposure at the Bolsa Chica wetlands:

More at the wetlands (these next three are my faves):

Notice how grainy the pictures are? At first I thought it was because of my cheapo film, but now I’m thinking it might have something to do with the temperatures of the chemicals/water I used to develop the film.

But I’m learning a lot about developing film at home. Like, what agitating the film while the developer is working does—makes the highlights brighter. I think I over-agitated this roll.

This is Daniel surfing (falling off his board):

He hadn’t been surfing in ages. There were dolphins right near the shore, too, but they swam on down the coast.

Of course, can’t go to the beach without something flying by overhead advertising something:

I used to see the Goodyear blimp everyday, driving home from work. Didn’t know Metlife has one too.

We used to have one of these, and plenty of other VWs, as well:

Except ours wasn’t in that good of shape.

Daniel showering the sand off his board:

Actually, this is his friend’s board. Our friend Dave took a trip to Hawaii, called Daniel up and said, “I’m shipping you a board.” I’m assuming Dave just sent it to Daniel because Dave couldn’t send it to his own place, no one being there. But Dave’s always giving Daniel surfboards, so who knows.

Cat and I went down to the swap meet this weekend, but the only old cameras I found didn’t work. It didn’t help that we got there just as everyone was taking everything down. It usually works out that way.

Can you tell she sometimes gets tired of the camera?

Can you tell I’m more comfortable behind it?

You know how the best haircuts are the ones you accidentally stumble into? And then can never get anyone to recreate again?

Here’s what you do. When you get a haircut you really like, take pictures of it. Then, next time you go in to get your haircut, bring the pictures along.

I did this yesterday. I had a rather poor photo of a haircut I really liked from a year or two ago. I showed it to the hairstylist at Supercuts, and she did rather well. I told her she could go a little shorter than in the picture, because my hair grows fast, and I hate getting it cut and then two weeks later feeling like it’s already grown out of the cut. So my hair is shorter than I wanted, but it’s what I wanted. If that makes sense. Once it grows out a bit, it’ll be perfect.

I can’t believe next week is Thanksgiving already. I have no idea what we’ll do. We were hoping to go out to the desert for a couple days over the weekend, to go dirt bike riding. I want to get out to the Salton Sea and take pictures, it’s not too far from where Daniel likes to dirt bike. But we don’t know yet if we will.

• You choose to stay home and watch NUMB3RS rather than go to a show. A show by your favorite singer in the world. Who you’ve never seen live before. (The pain, the pain!)
• You’d rather watch documentaries than Adam Sandler.
• Your kids are in HIGH SCHOOL.
• Sitcoms are boring. And in many cases, unbearable.
• You don’t like any of the latest fashion trends. And I mean any.
• You don’t recognize anyone on the Grammys.