It’s 10:43. I’m in Adelaide, sitting in my office. I can hear muffled traffic noise, Dawn of Midi playing on Spotify, my keyboard, and my colleagues keyboard. It’s cloudy, and there’s moisture on the ground. But all in all, days are getting longer.
I saw Fernando Gros talk about it on Twitter a while ago, and I liked the concept, and I decided I should do it as often as I remembered to. I didn’t realise that it’d be this long between rememberings. But here we are, 344 days later, and it popped into my mind again.
I’m not sure if it’s a mindfulness exercise, or just an exercise in paying attention to your surroundings, but either way I think it’s an excellent idea to spend a few minutes thinking about what your senses are doing. What they’re telling you. What you’re telling them.
So, anyway here goes:
It’s 00:30, and it’s far too late. I’m at my desk, in my home office. I’ve got an acoustic album by, the usually loud, Strung Out, playing. I can barely hear my keyboard over the music, but the rest of the house is completely quiet. It’s pitch black outside, aside from a lonely light under the neighbour’s verandah.
I had a feeling it would be fun. I had a feeling it would fit right in with my current attempts at slowing down.
So far I have printed 14 postcards. I’ve sent three cards overseas: One has gone to Anchorage, Alaska in the USA, one to a village near Nagano in Japan, and another to Malmö in Sweden. Some are for old friends. Some for new ones. None to random people. Yet. I’m looking forward to my first postcard to someone completely random. I have a few more to print, but that will have to be a job for this weekend.
❤
Above is the response from a friend (an old one, whom I see far too infrequently). I have to say that this response is exactly what I wanted from this little project. A bit of joy in somone’s mailbox. Something different in amongst the bills…that’s not an expiation notice. I look forward to getting more snaps from people when they receive their tardigram.
If people start sending me random photographs in the mail that would be even better. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Let me know if you want one. Somehow. Try @techoglot on Twitter or @TechnicalKO@aus.social.
In passing, I mentioned to my Father in Law that I was hunting on Gumtree for an enlarger and other darkroom paraphernalia. Turns out that he has (or had, now!) a box of such paraphernalia in the garage, and would be happy to get rid of it.
Expiry: 1981
I didn’t quite realise just how much stuff he was going to bring around. In addition to the Durst F30 enlarger, I got three Paterson 8×10 developing trays, two Paterson developing tanks (the old, non-Super-4 model, but they have spools in them, which is great), a bulk film loader, a safe-light, some old ID-11 and Microphen developer powders, a bunch of 5×7 and 8×10 papers, and a full 33m spool of Ilford FP4 125.
Paper and chemicals
Aside from needing to make the electrical switches safe, and acquiring paper devloper, some tongs, and a new bulb for the enlarger, I now had everything I needed for the dark-room. Except for the dark room.
To seal up the doors, I got adhesive foam strip designed to seal doors, so that bit was easy. There is still a bit of light leakage around the bottom of the doors, but that would be easily fixed with a couple of door-snakes.
Sealing the window was a bit trickier, and needed a piece of MDF cut to size. Good excuse to get the table-saw fired up.
I gave it a crack this morning (see previous post about Project Tardigram) and it was a great success. The old 5×7 paper curled quite badly, but the modern 8×10 paper dried beautifully. I think I need some filters for the enlarger to improve the contrast of the prints, but aside from this I’m exceptionally happy with the darkroom.
I do need another shelf to stow the enlarger properly, but for now, I’m set and ready to print!
I don’t often have projects. I always have plans for projects, but rarely do I actually get around to starting those projects. I was a bit worried that this “Opposite-of-Instagram” was going to be the same non-starter.
But here we are. I just wet-printed my first piece of paper. Dried it. Wrote a message on it. Affixed a stamp. And popped it in the post. It’ll be picked up tomorrow after 3pm, and should arrive in Yarraville sometime in the coming week.
It’s exciting. Probably because it’s so slow. And smells. And is so tactile. In today’s sterile electronic and online world, it really feels like a breath of weird-smelling air.
The project needed a better name than “Opposite-of-Instagram” so I’ve decided to call it Project Tardigram. If you would like to be part of Project Tardigram, as a recipient, drop me a line with your postal address and I’ll send you a picture. If you’d like to be an active participant, Tweet/Toot at me, or something (I’m @techoglot on Twitter, and @TechnicalKO@aus.social on Mastodon) and show me what you’re doing.
I like new stuff. I think most people do. But I also adore old stuff. Stuff that maybe doesn’t work as well as it should, but has the potential to be great again.
Archaeological Find
Our farm sold recently, which meant that the stuff I had stored there had to go…somewhere. Nearly everything went into a skip – I hadn’t seen it for 20+ years, and hadn’t missed it, so figured it was best to just dump everything without looking at it. Some boxes, though, triggered memories, and I figured it was a good idea to have a peek inside.
One of the things I found was my Walkman. It didn’t work. But it made most of the right noises, so I figured it couldn’t be too broken. Armed with a small #000 Phillips head driver, I opened it up to have a look. It was surprisingly easy to pull apart. Four screws, and the back came off without any plastic tabs to accidentally break off.
Inside was the drive-belt. Stretched and broken.
I had a look on ebay, and quickly found a supplier of new drive belts for the Walkman, and for under $10, one was on its way to me from Slovenia.
It arrived a couple of weeks later, and now I have a fully functional Walkman again.
