Jack’s Old & Busted Blog

I am proud to be probably the only website to feature the Walter Drake product search option (for amusement purposes only).

The Junk Mail Fairy brought me a “Walter Drake” catalog yesterday, addressed to a previous occupant. I remember this stuff from newspaper inserts of yore, when I would be fascinated as a child by their ads for rotary nose-hair clippers or the Foot Valet.

I had no idea this company was still in business, or that they carried such a variety. They even sell appliances (or what appliances looked like 30 years ago). It’s sort of a white-trash Sharper Image catalog, but tons of fun to read. Most catalogs feature really modern, fresh looking sets and backgrounds. Everything in Walter Drake looks well-used, like visiting your grandparents’ house. And you can get practically anything monogrammed.

Hey, I can’t find the nose-hair clippers?

Boom-tap-boom-tap-crash!

I bought Colli a brand-new set of Roland V-Club electronic drums. She has a great drum set already, but it has languished disassembled in her office for years. Now that we have more space, it only makes sense that we should fill that space with things that make life more interesting and fun.

Thanks to Steve J. for sending me down the right path as far as electronic drums. Seems there is Roland and then everyone else when it comes to these instruments. Now they aren’t as swanky as the more-expensive V-Drum line, but they are fully compatible if you want to upgrade. These do a few things that the V-Drums won’t, too, from reading the user reviews. They packed a lot into this kit.

After assembling it last night, we had big fun banging on them and hearing all the interesting noises. Ash has a Casio keyboard with MIDI, so I may have to learn something about that.

Okay, so I want a new . But if these things aren’t waterproof and made of rubber coated titanium, it ain’t gonna happen. I’m notoriously rough on gadgets like this, as my year-old Rio One player can attest. However, the Rio is made of cheap plastic and has no moving parts. It’s also a pain-in-the-rear to load up with music, which guarantees that it will last forever.

Looks a heckuva a lot like the iPod, eh? The original model, which was black, came out about four years ago. Apple obviously took some cues from the competition in terms of styling.

What I said to Apple today:
Let me be among the first of 10,000 today to express my displeasure about being extorted $49.99 to keep my mac.com address. If you want to charge for additional features and services, that’s fine. However, to make me pay for a free email address is absurd, and amounts to bait-and-switch on your part. I suspect this will change as you understand the error of your ways, and as enough lawyers begin to see the giant “bait-and-switch” target on you.

How did this one slip by marketing? Bean-counters doing your research now?

By the way, OS X is still slow. How much will it cost to fix it? $129? No problem. right.

Ooh, looky. BMW Motorcycles has a new Luxury Cruiser. I’m not a big fan of this breed, but I sat on a Honda Goldwing this weekend and have to say it was kinda fun, in a two-wheeled winnebago kind of way. I like simple bikes. You shouldn’t need a reverse gear on an MC.

Spent all day in the studio taking pictures of some guy holding a moisture sensor against a pig piece of raw pork. No, really, it wasn’t as glamourous as it sounds. did find out that pork (and most meats) are graded by color and my marblicity (marblitude?). This guy even had big flash cards labled with about half a dozen grades for each.

I’ve changed a lot of how the studio works. We’re still tethered to the laptop, but I read the software instructions (imagine that) and found a different way to shoot using the on-camera shutter. Now, I can shoot more naturally without having to go back and forth to the laptop between each shot. I also ditched the tripod, mostly. It’s OK for gourmet shots where a precise angle is required, but pretty worthless for other stuff. It’s not like any natural light is showing up on the frame, what with something like 2400 Watt-seconds of juice going through four flash heads, so there’s no additional sharpness gained with the tripod.

I’m ordering a new softbox, too.

After the exciting pork shot, I shot cardboard boxes. There were three other people on the set arranging the boxes. That about sums it up.