The Underground Man

Kitten update

Well, I've spent some time playing with the foursome for the last couple of days. It seems to be the key. Just to hang in the enclosed area with them and play with them with a ball of string. Aside from occasional escape attempts over the wall, it puts them at ease and even Gandalf came out and checked out the action.

Of course, most of the time she was just checking me out on the way to an escape attempt but there were definitely a few moments when she played.

I'm feeling hopeful but still worried that I leave in vacation in about 10 days and there is still some progress to be made with Gandalf and Blaze (ex leader kitty).

Using wireless flash

Finally used my new wireless flash setup yesterday. Basically, a receiver is
attached to each flash unit, which is mounted on a lighting stand with an umbrella and the transmitter goes into the hotshoe of the camera. Hey presto! No wires.

I was photographing a friend's murals indoors and there was bright sunlight outside, coming through the windows indirectly (probably a northern exposure). I was photographing in stairwells and positioned the lighting stand below the base of the stairs.

I was using my digital camera, in preparation for taking pictures on film. However, it proved to be so useful to just be able to dial the intensity of the flash up and down (I'm using a Vivitar 283 with a Varipower module) that I was soon able to arrive at good exposures. After that, it was just a matter of steadying the camera enough (no tripod) to get a clear exposure.

It worked very well and I'm hugely satisfied - this makes a lot of photography a lot easier.

I know a bit more how the pros feel though. I had only a couple of hours for the shoot and sow brought everything under the sun (except a mat to lie on and keep myself clean). Now all I need is a very versatile, lightweight and stiff tripod and I should be good.

Oh yes.. and a big roll of gaffer's tape.

Liverpool

The Premiere League starts in a few hours. Liverpool plays their first game.

I know not against whom.. I just know it isn't Man U, Arsenal or Chelsea. Thus I expect them to win in style.

In any event, I'm up to go to the pub for a 7:30am kickoff. On a weekend. What we do for our love of sports.

At least there is a free breakfast buffet at 8:30am.

Slainte!!

Kitten update

Well, "leader kitty" has become "Blaze" courtesy of my friend, Robin. It was time she had a name and its appropriate. She just cannot be picked up.

The boys, Freckles and Brownie, are doing very well and getting positively plump. Both have tried suckling my fingers which likely means that they're pretty comfortable and have taken to me as a mother-subsitute.

Lucy and Nero (definitely a boy) are thoroughly friendly and rambunctious. It's really bugging them being enclosed in small space. This evening, I opened up the door and fed all four and just left it open while I retreated to a corner of the boxed-in area. Me and my ball of string that is.

After about 20 minutes all the kittens but Gandalf were playing with the ball and Blaze even got close enough to sniff my fingers a couple of times. I didn't have too much hope of Gandalf participating but she started to play a bit after 30 minutes, reaching under the door and swatting at her siblings. This I must regard as a very good sign.

I really only have another week of socializing time with them before I must head off on vacation. Actually some eleven days. The woman who helped me rescue them will take Brownie and Freckles for my vacation but I must find a home for the other four - or several homes before I leave.

My worry is having to split them up. Nero and Lucy would manage well, but Blaze and Gandalf - particularly Gandalf - would be seriously traumatized I think.

I have Gandalf eating better of late, simply by feeding her separately from the others. She is smaller, more depressed and looks to be weaker than the others. I worry enough that I might take her to the vet for a checkup.

All that said, I should be mightily encouraged that she is starting to eat properly and actually played today. I just worry that socializing her might be a weeks-long rather than days-long project.

Patriotic Fireplug

There just might be enough fireplugs with different shapes and colors about here to make this worthy of a series. Just observing as I drive around, I've seen some decent variety in my neighborhood. Seems like people paint their plugs around here..

Here is the same plug run through a "comic" filter - a nifty little feature of ComicLife, supplied with OS X Macs:

I'm just hoping its worth a series.

The Wallet

Got my wallet back today, returned from a long odyssey through many hands.

Minus the $240 that was in it, of course. However, I realize that I would gladly have paid that for the return of my ID, credit cards, and most importantly, green card.

Last time I went for my alien registration card I had to wait in line in mid-winter (outdoors) for six hours before being admitted to the cavernous INS offices in Seattle. When in, I had to wait for another three hours until they decided to start processing my application.

Anyway, I had called the post office after learning the idiot woman at Royal Farms had put it in post box and the supervisor there alerted the carriers when they returned to look for it. They found it yesterday afternoon and sent it to the local substation where it was waiting for me this morning.

All the credit cards and ID still there.

Small miracles occur daily.

A strange and weird saga..

So my softball team is doing well. We're now 11-7 and in the playoffs and starting to play halfway well (helped by having a great shortstop). Never realized how important they are to the game until I saw this fellow make a ton of plays.

Anyway, my saga begins on my drive to the games last night. I stopped at Royal Farms (a 7-11 equivalent that sells gas) to buy some water and cashews to last me through the game and when I got back in the car, apparently my wallet slipped from my pocket onto the ground. With my green card, several credit cards, and my driver's license and $200+ in cash.

Didn't discover this until about 10:30pm last night, and then spent a frantic few
minutes reconstructing my evening and realized that it must have dropped at Royal Farms. So I call them before going to bed and was told that "Yes, indeed, a wallet had been turned in." No, they couldn't find it, but it was probably in the safe and I should call "Ahmed, the manager" in the morning.

So I call Ahmed at 7am and am told that "No, we don't have any wallet." After a minute or two of frustration, they put someone else on the phone and I explain and ask that they call the folks who were on the night shift and ask where it is.

When I call back an hour later, I'm told that the story goes that the young woman who got the wallet took it home with her and dropped it in a mailbox on the way home. Supposedly one close to Royal Farms.

So I go down to the substation this morning and get the number of a supervisor and call her. They're going to try and "capture" it at the time of pickup from the boxes and call me if they succeed. Failing that, it will get mailed to me at some address (only thing I have with a local address is my business card in there) and who knows when I would get it then.

If the carrier succeeds in capturing it today, I should be able to pick it up tomorrow at 11am.

Boy.. it's going to be very stressful until they call me (I hope they call me) and tell me that they've found it. I'll likely have to go by the Royal Farms again late this afternoon and see if I can find the girl who actually put it in the box and figure out what box it was.

This is so weird. I should be grateful that they were honest enough to put it in the box. I really don't care about the cash, or even the credit cards. Just the green card. The law says I have to carry it with me at all times. But from now on, it's staying at home in the fire safe. If I get it back.

What a day.

At least we won both our games last night - and I stopped a softball with my jaw. Boy.. it seems like every game I get a small injury. I guess that's the definition of getting older.

Kodachrome

At my uncle's suggestion, I just bought "Kodachrome: The American Invention of Our World, 1939-1959". Wonderful book, well written about by many others. I highly recommend it.

What causes me to write, though, is Gjon Mili's photo of Pablo Picasso painting with light in his prime, 1949. Incredible when one realizes that Picasso is creating a piece of art that only he could see and that would have been completely ephemeral without the camera.

What is compelling about the image is how well lit it is. I'm paying a lot of attention to that sort of things in photos these days and I have some small inking of how difficult it was for Mili to both envision and then execute on this shot.

I'm looking for it on the internet so that I can add it to this post to show you just what I mean. Quite rare, as it is an early Kodachrome photo - and all the more powerful for it.

digital with off-camera flash (again)

I've been able to figure out that my little digital shoots at a fixed 100ASA. Just
perfect.. I can use Kodachrome, Gold 100, Velvia/Provia and still be within an
acceptable range transferring my settings to a film camera.

Now I have to find a subject to light and photograph in peace. Preferably a dimly-lit subject with some brilliant colors.

Progress a kitten at a time..

I suppose I need to put up some pictures of the kittens shortly. It's hard to capture the four musketeers 'cause they stay in their carrier most of the time but there is no real excuse not to post pictures of the Terrible Duo&tm;.

Brownie is coming along nicely, now jumping up on the bed beside me and watching Freckles get the lovin'. I can sense he wants to participate but he still feels scared when I reach for him. Still, he's managed to recieve a few pets in surprise moments.

Last night, more movement .. Nero now responds to being petted with loud purrs, joining Lucy. Of course, I'm not even sure what sex Nero is yet. What's nice is that with two purring kittens in a bundle of four (they largely sleep on top of one another), the others are getting a little more curious and a tiny bit less scared. Wondering, as I had hoped, as to why their siblings are purring and not terrified any longer.

Now Nero and Lucy are first out of the carrier when food arrives and I actually managed to pet leader kitty (must find a name for her) while she ate this afternoon. I get more hopeful each day thought it gets harder also to keep Nero and Lucy confined since they are less fearful. Harder on me that this - I want to let them out but they need to hang with the two scared ones to help them along.

Progress, anyway.

My plan is working..

Moo ha ha.. Lucy, one of the four kittens on the main floor, is very responsive to people and breaks into purrs after a minute of petting.

The other night I transferred the kittens to a medium-sized closet, equipped with litterbox, food, water and large cat carrier. That's a story in itself. Basically, my feral cat notes (provided by a friend) have suggested that this is a much better way to socialize them then leaving them in a huge living room to hide under furniture (Plan A).

So I've moved them in and now I can reach in and pet Lucy in the missing of a bundle of hissing kittendom. Lo and behold - this morning after a couple of minutes of this both leader kitty (as yet unnamed) and Nero started sniffing at my hand wondering why their sibling wasn't terrified by me.

First positive movement I've seen in a week.

I'm very hopeful now that all four can get socialized properly and moved on to foster homes before I head out on vacation at the end of the month.

Off-camera flash

I hate flash. I've always hated flash. Either too bright or too dim, or red-eyes or washed out, overexposed centers. But I'm just beginning to learn that that is not the way it has to be. I've been reading Strobist and starting to collect flash-related gear. First purchases, at my uncle's direction, were a couple of Vivitar 283 flashes. Workhorse for a lot of amateurs, they have all kinds of options, and they're cheap! I bought a sensor on a cord for one, allowing you meter within the scene (the cord is 2 metres long), a power-setting dial that replaces the sensor for the other - so that one may use it as a fill flash with a set power value, and the piece de resistance - a wireless remote trigger setup.

Basically, one installs the transmitter on the camera. Little thing about the size of three or four matchbooks stacked on top of one another. Then one connects the receiver/s (up to five or six I believe) to a special hotshoe with a 1/8" mini-plug jack in the side. Then mount your flash in that special hotshoe on a lighting stand or a spare tripod.

You now have an off-camera flash.

But even cooler.. I use film. I have an old semi-pro digital with the capability to be programmed (it was very sophisticated for the stone age of 1999) and it is capable of turning off its internal flash and using external flash. (Not revolutionary now, I know, but so tomorrow in 1999. Plus the darn thing has a scripting language so you can write programs for it and talk to it via USB. State of the frigging art in '99).

So I plug the transmitter into my little digital, work through the menus to set the aperture at f4 and then bang away. I can see the results immediately and change the angle and intensity of the flashes as necessary to light the scene properly.

Then transfer the transmitter to my film cameras, match settings, and have guaranteed good exposure and lighting control. I love being able to use the old tech with the way older tech.

With lightboxes or a Stofen bounce unit on the flashes, or umbrellas, it should be no problem to properly light most smaller indoor scenes.

I'm even comtemplating using three triggers and flashes to light outdoor scenes - say in the redwood forest in a few weeks.

Brownie and Freckles

Freckles and Brownie are definitely coming along. Freckles thinks I'm his new mom, and Brownie has been wondering why his brother isn't scared of me. He's getting comfortable enough to play with Freckles within a couple of feet of me and last night actually came up on the couch and fell asleep three feet away from me, next to his brother.

So I'm confident that both of them will do well, whether or not I ultimately adopt them.

I'm less confident of the quartet in my living room. They are still very shy, though Lucy, whom I retrieved from the vet last night is almost as friendly and receptive as Freckles when I can reach her. She seems to have picked up some reticence/scaredness from her siblings last night but I'm quite hopeful that she will play the role with them that Freckles plays with Brownie.

Pictures soon.

V for Vendetta

I finally got to watch V for Vendetta last night, courtesy of Netflix. It just rocked. I don't know who convinced me not to see it on the big screen but they had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.

It was a compelling film and compelling message. Nicely choreographed and a pretty modern take on the 1984-ish state. A Wachowski brothers film and strongly recommended by me. Their are historical references, Shakespeare, witty banter, good fight scenes, and a pretty girl.

Cook up a little popcorn, sit back, and enjoy.

out of the frying pan..

I've agreed to foster six more kittens (an entire litter) over the coming weekend. My friend at the agency has just found this litter and will try and trap them tomorrow. She will deliver to them to me after a visit to the vet and I'll keep them over the weekend.

Two more people from the agency have agreed to take four of them on Monday. So I'll foster the remaining two for a few weeks until they are strong enough to be adopted out.

Good thing I've got quite a few rooms..

Fostering kittens

So I helped a secretary in my office, who is an animal lover, rescue a pair of Siamese kittens this morning. She found them hiding in an abandoned garage near our workplace and I got fairly grubby digging the second one out of a cinderblock wall.

Quite nervewracking as there looked to be a good six-foot drop behind the 5-week old kitten and I was afraid she would slip and fall as I reached for her. Fortunately, she didn't - though she let me know her displeasure with teeth and claws. She screamed a lot when I took her out of the wall - I had to do it slowly to make sure I didn't hurt one of her limbs. Whew.. never so glad as when she came out undamaged.

She and her brother are now at the vets getting treatment (flea bath, test for feline lukemia, etc.) and I'll be taking them home tonight. I expect to have them for a couple of weeks and hope that we can find a real home for them.

I'm not quite prepared to take full-time responsibility for them but I'm looking forward to getting them settled down and used to a person.