ianjs - Not nerdy

The grandkids are playing around with my old Pentax ME film camera.

It’s a great opportunity to explain how cameras work. Open the back to see the shutter open. Take off the lens to see the mirror flip away.

“But how do you see the pictures?”.

I explained the process of taking up to 24 photos, rewinding the film, sending it to the chemist, they send it to the lab, wait a week, find out everyone was blinking.

Quote of the week: “wait… you had to pay to take pictures…???”

→ November 23 2024

Vietnamese restaurant in Balaclava, Melbourne.

One wall is the remnants of an outside wall with the posters still on it.

Cigarette advertising was banned in Australia in 1976 so that, and the price-tag of 35c for a packet, dates it to around the early seventies.

Dammit. That’s nearly half a century ago and I remember all of these.

→ February 5 2024

The five second time machine

I was walking along the Warburton Trail the other day and I passed through a grove of pine trees. There was a breeze and the pine needles soughed in the wind. For an instant, I was ten years old again at my grandparent’s house and I could glance around in 1967. I tried to grab at the memory… It's a blustery, overcast day. My brother and I are in the top paddock and there's a windbreak of pine trees rustling in the wind.
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→ December 16 2023

I can’t seem to find Elon Musk’s Mastodon handle to follow.

Please advise.

→ November 26 2023

Merlynston Primary School, 1942-43

My dad, Edgar (Ted) Slinger, found these photos and thought they would be of interest to anyone who attended Merlynston State School in the 1940s. This is from 1942 when he was in Grade 5. … and this is 1943 in Grade 6: Grade 6, 1943 Here are some of the names he was able to dig out of his prodigious memory: Boys Girls David Barr Eve Madden Terry Collins Shirley Griffiths Jim Hewes Barbara Phillips John Ocolwitz Olive Oliver George Powell Mafanny Crisp Ron Muir Joy King Owen Lawson Betty Yarwood Gordon Anderson Jim Whittle Kevin Stubbs ?
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→ November 8 2021

❝And, in the end...❞

Yes, that’s us. Sometimes it feels like I’m still living in the seventies. Well... a bit. My adult life has roots in that glowing decade in my mid-to-late teens. The world was opening up to friends, music, politics, science, learning a trade and, by the end of the decade, starting a family. Time went slowly because everything was new and novel. It’s still the most vivid period of my life.
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→ August 2 2021

An Autumn day

It’s Autumn and it’s a Friday. In Melbourne that can mean a dreary end to the week, but sometimes it’s a surprise; cool but sunny. Being a Friday, grandchild #1.4 is over for the day. She’s two, so if I suggest a walk she’s up for it, because everything is an adventure when you’re two. We head out the door and we’re dazzled by sunshine and blue sky. I really have to grasp at these moments; they’re lost if you look away for a second.
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→ June 3 2021

Mount Buffalo Chalet, 1952

My Dad asked me to scan some photos taken when he was working as a maintenance carpenter at Mount Buffalo Chalet in 1952. He was employed by the Victorian Railway and in those days they owned and ran the Chalet. I guess that explains the holiday posters I used to see on the Red Rattlers. He was 21 and had just hooked up with a hot waitress who also worked there.
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→ September 9 2014