the inner curmudgeon

Jessica’s Camera

Jessica is with her grandparent’s this weekend and will possibly be visiting her cousins in Horsham. She wanted to take her camera so she could get some photos to send to her Mum (currently in New Zealand). Unfortunately the camera, an old Olympus C300Z (aka D550Z) took a nosedive off the kitchen bench. As you can see from the photo, the outer housing of the lens barrel is cracked and the lens is jammed. I puled it apart to see if I could unstick it, but to no avail.

Jessica was initially distraught, but got over it quickly as the excitement of her trip with Poppy and Grandma took over. While she did like having a camera, I suspect that the lingering heartbreak over it’s loss will be mine. Not about the camera itself, of course. It is after all only a thing and in the end its general clunkiness annoyed me so much that I upgraded to a new camera a few days into our Canada trip last year.

The real loss to me is that I liked that Jessica had a camera. I liked seeing her having fun with it. It reminded my of the fun I had with my father’s old Box Brownie when I was her age, and it made me go all hopelessly mushy inside when Darrell told me how, on a recent outing to Williamstown, Jessica was watching me with my camera and imitating me: framing shots, trying different angles on subjects and so on.

A word of caution: if you ever dismantle a camera, watch out for the flash capacitor. They bite!

Mobil Sucks

I have mixed feelings about rising petrol prices (currently around AUD$1.35). On the one hand, it puts pressure on people to use less petrol by buying more fuel efficient cars, or using public transport .. or both. That’s all good for the environment (or less horrendously bad anyway) and I am all for that.

On the other hand, I drive to work every day. I tried public transport and it just doesn’t work for me. Partly because the pricing structure is insane, partly because it is unreliable, and partly because it takes an unacceptably large chunk out of my day.

I live in Melbourne’s “Zone 2″, which means that not only do I get fewer public transport options and less frequent train services than those in Zone 1, I also have to pay something like twice as much for the privilege. To the extent that driving in by car is not much more expensive than taking a train, even with the ridiculous price of petrol at the moment. Also, because I don’t happen to work in the CBD, the closest train is a 20+ minute walk from work. If I bought a bike, it would cut the travel time down to something reasonable, but we are discouraged from taking bikes on trains during peak hour, and the trains are getting more crowded, so even if I am allowed to take a bike, it may just be impractical.

Anyway, I think public transport should be free. The whole user-pays thing is a crock. Even if you discount the environmental costs, we drivers do not pay the full costs of our road use, and cost recovery for public transport is a mug’s game.

/rant

Son of Spooky-Eyed Cow

When I first started coming to the Napier they had a mural depicting the ascent of man: from hunter gatherer, through agriculture, bronze age, empires, enlightment, industrial revolution, world wars and the modern era before ending with a speculative flourish concerning mankind’s future. It was bright, colourful and really, really hideous.

The owner at the time refused to paint it over, but would not say why. So for years, the Feral Women, the Rococo Pops and countless other bands played under the watchful gaze of the spooky-eyed cow.

Some years back, after a change of hands, the mural was finally, thankfully, painted over. So I went in yesterday to take a couple of interior shots for my Fitzroy project, I was very surprised to see that the mural had been disinterred. I was even more surprised to find that it looks great in it’s present, muted form. I’ll be going back for some more shots soon.