First shot ... Again!

When I purchased my large format camera I was planning to use it with Polaroid film, as I posted in the original post about it. But since, I found out the Polaroid film is being discontinued, so I dusted off my old Jobo rotary film processor, ordered a 50 sheet box of Efke 100 film (this is an eastern european film made using an old film recipe, which I prefer over the modern emulsions). In order to test the process (and see if the chemicals which were stored in the garage for the last 3-4 years are still good) I made a test shot. Turns out, they are fine even though the shelf live it's supposed to be about a year.

Why festivals are great and awful at the same time ....

Last week I went to the Tango Marathon in DC. I had a great time. By Sunday afternoon I was moving incredibly well, and it seemed I reached another stage in my tango career. A week later, at the LongaMilonga, all of it was gone. I was (barely) back at my usual level.

I guess at a festival, after dancing for days/hours, one reaches the "sweet spot", all warmed up but before exhaustion hits, when they are at their absolute best. As awesome as that feels, it gets equally depressing once I get home and revert to my usual self. Kind of like drinking, fells good when you're drinking, but the headache next day is proportional with the "fun" one had. Yet I can't wait for the Yale festival next week... Nuts!

Busy weekend

The weekend started early when I left work at 3PM to drive to Yale, for the Leap Year Milonga (on Feb 29th). We made it there around 6PM, had some dinner (pretty yummy pulled pork from the cafeteria) and since a practica/exchange was going on we started dancing.

We were expecting a lot more people from NYC to show up but there was a snow storm going on and the turnout was less then expected. It was a fine evening though, I had some fun dances, even though I was kind of tired and not very perky.

Around midnight Deb wasn't feeling well, and although we had someone to host us for the night, we decided to drive back home. In hindsight that was a bad idea, as I was tired, it was snowing, the road was covered in slush and despite the 4x4 being on, the Jeep was sliding all over the place. Once we got home around 3AM we crashed just to be woken up an hour later by a call from the office about some systems not working as they should... Grrrr

Saturday afternoon Korey & Mila had some workshops at MIT, one of them on single axis turns sounded interesting so we went. I liked the workshop very much. Korey & Mila are working a lot on the technique elements of movement ( and not that much on figures or sequences) and they build it up with exercises and games. I have to say, it was definitely worth going and I highly recommend their workshops. We also went to one of the workshops on Sunday called "Small & beautiful" which concentrated on fun things done with weight changes. One of the best thing about the workshops is that they were fun and useful for everyone despite the wide range of skill levels.

Saturday night we went to "Tango Paradiso" milonga. Sadly this milonga like most other milongas in Boston lately was sparsely attended. Mila & Korey were there though and I had one amazingly fun tanda with Mila (well, it was amazingly fun for me anyway ;) which made my evening. During that tanda, at some point she slowed me down and sort of took over the lead for a couple of steps, which was awesome! I'd like to believe she did that because she thought I can handle it but maybe she was just bored ;)

Sunday at the workshop Korey lead me for a little bit to show me something. Hmmm ... so that's how leading should/could feel like ... Crap, I have a looong way to go and I'm grateful to great dancers (like Mila and many others) for putting up with my shortcomings as I figure stuff out.

About the allnighter and a rant on appologies on the dance floor

Saturday Deb and I went to the monthly all nighter in Providence. The place was livelier then it was in the last few months, not in small part because of Robin Thomas who managed to convince a NY contingent to show up.

After opening the night with Debbi as usual (we did have a lot of fun with a milonga set) I danced with Kayla, Robin's partner. Despite a cold, she was just as fun as always. The music was great, Robin is one of my favorite DJs and 3 tandas passed in a blink of eye. At some point between tandas I mentioned that in my effort to correct my posture my back tension is ... well... back. She suggested I don't bring my chest forward when I dance, but rather widen my shoulders. That's something I will be trying, as it makes sense to me.

I danced with a couple of women who despite being good dancers kept apologizing for their (perceived) mistakes. This is something I strongly discourage people from doing (unless someone got hurt of course). First, you don't really know if whatever you thought you done wrong was wrong to begin with, second, it's a partner dance, a hiccup in the dance is rarely caused 100% by just one of the dancers. It's generally a shared responsibility. Even if something gone wrong is the fault of one of the dancers, apologizing not only it doesn't help with anything, but it makes things worst. Let's say the hiccup lasted for a second or two. If you keep silent and concentrate on the dance, that's all there is to it. If you apologize you take another 2-3 seconds and then if your partner feels like they are to blame they will take a few seconds to reply. So, instead of a 2 second disruption from the dance, now it's a 10 second disruption. My advice is, don't apologize unless someone gets hurt/hit. If you feel like you really have to apologize, wait until the song is over.

Overall it a good night of dancing, we stayed until 3:30am I think.

First restoration project

The camera I used to take the picture I posted a little while ago it was in a deplorable condition. Chipped paint, oxidate and dirty metal components, moldy & ruptured bellows "fixed" with electrical tape, etc. While it was sort of usable, it bothered me (and I'm not obsessive-compulsive about cleanness and order).

Since I had a brand new workshop available to me, I took the whole thing apart and :

* stripped all the paint from all the wooden parts
* sanded and polished most of the metal parts
* sanded, treated, stained & coated the wooden parts
* fixed the broken bellow edges with textile band and painted it with flexible rubber paint (we'll see how well that holds up).
* put it all back together

Sounds simple, right? That's what I thought when I started, but it turns out, there was a lot more work that I expected. But it's more or less completed now. There are some things I might do in the future, like plate all the non-brass metal with brass and polish it (why they used mixed metals is beyond my ability to understand), refinish the wooden parts to get a smoother surface, make a new bellows, but for now, I will use it as it is. Here it is, with pictures (you can click on the picture for a bigger, more detailed image) before and after.

By the way, for the younger generation, yes, this is a camera, it uses something called "film" to record the image and there are good reasons to use such a camera ;) To give you just one of them which is easier to explain, when properly used, the camera can produce an image with detail equivalent with a 200 mega-pixel camera.

Coffee Maker open "heart" transplant ...

When my coffee maker decided to stop making coffee a few days ago I got really annoyed. It was less then a year old. It could've been in warranty but I could not find the receipt.

Without any other option, I decided to diagnose the problem. I opened it up and shortly after it became clear that the heating element was gone. Grrrr ... Buying parts for things is nearly impossible for a regular person, and even if I could, they are usually half the price of the new item. But, I did have an old an ugly coffee maker in the basement which was left by a tenant. The heating elements can't be that different, right?

So I opened that one up and sure enough, the heating elements are almost identical. Here are the coffee makers ready for the transplant.














15 minutes later the transplant is completed :














And 10 minutes later it was confirmed the patient was alive!

Guerrilla Milonga

A cool concept, everyone agrees. Pick a public place (indoors during the winter) with a decent floor surface, bring some music, and start dancing. Should the guards/cops ask you to leave, you just move to the next designated spot.

Too bad no one comes to these things. Today I had to cancel the third one in a row as I only had two other people "confirmed" (aside from me and Deb) and a couple more "maybe"s.

I'm throwing in the towel.