The Chat Thread

[comet]

If you can get the serious message across with at least some humor it is easier to swallow.
This family is from New Zealand.



There is another with lyrics by Chris Franklin, I won't post the link..

[Libby]

Hmm... a bit clever.

The ultimate comedic parody artist, Weird Al Yankovic, who has been around about 40 years and going strong, recently released this video due to the recent current events, a song called Germs, from more than 20 years ago! It's a style parody of the band, Nine Inch Nails. I have never heard their music, but I'm currently obsessed with this song. And not just because of the virus; I have been a fan of Weird Al for several years now. Although, I am told when I was very little, I once yelled "Eat it!" to some deer who were eating some grass, and it scared them away. That was all because of Weird Al's most famous parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It", "Eat It", which just so happens to have come out the year I was born, 1984! So of course now that I mentioned it, I'll have to post that one, too, so nobody will be confused (if anyone's even interested LOL).

[comet]

Thanks for the laugh about Eat it, We saw Michael Jackson use a jet pack to leave the stadium stage at Landsdowne Road, Dublin after a concert in Dublin about 1992 before YouTube when he was the King of Pop.

[Libby]

Yes, Eat It is by far his best parody. The one that was the most successful on the billboards was White and Nerdy, a parody of what he calls a "gangster rap" song, originally Ridin' Dirty (by Chamillionare). He's really good at rapping! LOL

[Joe]

Mar 24, 2020 21:53:13 GMT Libby said:

Well, I just heard today that the summer Olympics WILL be postponed... but they do not have a date for it yet. They did say it would be "no later than next summer", so it appears they are considering moving it to next summer. 

It was announced today that the Tokyo Olympic Games will open on July 23, 2021...postponed from July 24, 2020.  The branding “Tokyo 2020” will be kept.  

Then about six months later Beijing will have the Winter Olympics! 

[comet]

I see that Photobucket have watermarked the photos again even though I am paid up for another 9 months or more.

[comet]

If I view the forum on a phone the photobucket logo is not showing on most of the photos and avatars,
If I view the forum on a windows based laptop the photobucket logo is all over avatars and banners and photos.
So if you want a photo without the watermark download it with your phone

[comet]

Watching One World: Together at home.

In Ireland

WHO else ? Where?

[Joe]

Apr 19, 2020 18:11:18 GMT comet said:

Watching One World: Together at home.

In Ireland

WHO else ? Where?

I only watched the Rolling Stones play ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. The three presenters kind of put me off, tbough.  I will try and watch more of the performances on YouTube. 

[Dave]

I did start watching it with my daughter but we weren't overly impressed with the BBC's highlights so after 20 minutes or so we switched off. Perhaps we were all spoiled following the amazing Ariana Grande charity concert a couple of years ago, or perhaps the video-link setup with a lot of talking in between the acts can just never match a live concert? So not really a fair comparison, I hope it raised a lot for charity though.

[comet]

There is an old saying "Be careful what you wish for". at the start of the lockdown here in Ireland I wished I had a 35mm negative scanner for old film we used over the decades, I knew there were negatives stored in biscuit tins about the house and it would give me something to do during the lockdown that I thought might last a few weeks or maybe even a month. Still in lockdown here. I did order and get a scanner within days of saying I wished I had one.
It took a day or two to get used to it (A plustek 8100) I put my slowness on it down to the steep learning curve of using the multitude of available settings, it can do wonders with over or under exposed film, you can crop or rotate your new image to put buildings back up straight (Pisa) or put the horizon back in the horizontal position.
If it is a well taken shot it can be scanned at 7200 ppi which is the highest resolution on it. The result can be pretty impressive. In reality you get another chance to take the picture and better. Weddings, birthday parties, Christmas parties, Summer Holidays, wonderful memories and people long forgotten re appear on the screen before your eyes. A miracle of sorts.

But the prescan, colour and exposure adjust and final scan and processing takes about 10 minutes per single negative. that means a roll of 36 shots takes about 360 minutes, a full six hours which is pretty much a full days work. I used to be able to get 39 shots on a roll by careful loading of the film which adds another 30 minutes.

So that's one roll of film per day, a biscuit tin of negatives might have up to sixty or more rolls of film in it, that's two months per tin, there are tins appearing out of drawers and the bottoms of wardrobes and from under benches and beds, even if I do one roll a day I won't be finished by Christmas. I could reduce the quality of the output images but that is something I might regret later, so I'll keep going for quality over speed.

[martindn]

Hi Comet,

I have been busy on my (similar) photo project for over 5 years now. I am nearing the end though. This involves scanning negatives, slides and prints, and trying to catalogue them along with the more recent electronic images of variable quality. Some of mine go back 100 years or more. Problem is that there are a sizable group that I cannot place as I have no idea when or where they were taken. Sometimes it is hard even to identify the decade. But I'm still trying!

[Dave]

What lucky fellas you two are, if old negatives slides and prints was my main problem, I'd be laughing!

My problem? 15 undeveloped rolls of 35mm film from the 1990s! I have acquired the necessary daylight developer tank (an old Agfa Rondinax 35U made out of bakalite in the 1950s!) and chemicals, and now I must re-learn the basics of temperature critical colour film development (kept to +/- 0.5 degrees C) and run a test to see what if anything can be recovered.

Should be a fun afternoon in the bathroom when I eventually get started on my first roll...

Dave

[comet]

Hi Dave,

Would you not just take them down to a local chemist or One hour photo and have them developed.
I suspect I have rolls of film left in old SLR cameras, I did take the batteries out to stop them leaking in the cameras, I just hate corroded contacts rendering a device useless.

[Dave]

Hi Paul,

Well yeah, but where's the fun in that? And with such old films, I don't really trust your average film developer with them for such old films, I have read horror stories of them taking a quick look at what will likely be poor quality images by now and returning them as unprocessable or 'failed' etc., so I will do one, see the result, and tweak the timings for the next film accordingly as there's a lot of information around on the internet about how to make such developing adjustments.

Wish me luck, I shall need it !