J. Jason Lazarus Blog

So, during Spring Break one of my previous students, the amazing Bonnie, came up from Montana where she’s taking quite a few photo classes - one of which she’s gotten to mess around with a 4×5 camera. Being that I’ve never had the opportunity to really play around with one and actually get to learn how they work, I got Bonnie to teach me how to use it (yes, how ironic it is that the student is teaching the teacher). Rather than just taking a picture of the side of the building we were in or a studio shot, we lugged the 15-20 lb camera out to St. Patrick Mine. After freezing our butts off, I got to take four pictures - my first ever pictures using sheet film. Although the result isn’t anywhere near Anseladamish, it’s still cool that I shot a camera that’s got a negative the size of most of your family picture prints are. The exposure is a bit off and I made it intentionally a bit more contrasty than it should be in photoshop, but I like it. It was a awesome experience and I’m already planning to visit a chiropractor as I’m sure I’ll be lugging it around to all kinds of oddball locations this summer. Hmm… top of Angel Rocks? Savage River? Hmmm.

On my trip down to California I picked up this awesome little camera from a antique shop in Santa Rosa - a Ricoh Auto Half SE - a semi-automatic half-frame camera. In layman’s terms, a camera that takes a half a picture and then, through a wind-up mechanism that works much like a wind-up toy, automatically winds your film to the next frame. There’s very few options with the camera but it is really neat and obscenely cute.
A 25mm lens with a surprisingly adjustable aperture (2.8-22) as well as a seemingly crude light meter (red means not enough light, yellow means enough) that works pretty darn well as long as you use low speed film. It even has a self-timer on it! What else can you ask for? 70+ pictures on a normal roll of film, compact design, retro stylin’ - is this ever worth the $28 I spent for it.
So I’ve got a few pictures up that I took with it - took a while to get the handle of it, being that I didn’t understand the light meter until I could hop online a few days after purchasing it. I haven’t blogged about the last week in California (yet - hopefully soon) but I had a few photos taken at the Petrified Forest, Chinese Camp and the Winchester House. The ones at Chinese Camp are by far the best tonally and aesthetically. Being as how compact the camera is (albeit - not light) I’ll probably be dragging it around quite a bit during the summer for quick snapshots - knowing full well that the full resolution of a full frame of 35mm film is a waste for it so I might as well only take a half frame.
Ricoh Auto Half SE Pictures
Page(s) with tons of other Half Frame cameras
Manual for Ricoh Auto Half

So, to explain last week’s lapse in posting or even being around in the real world - I was sick pretty much all spring break. From a cold/fever that lasted about four days at the beginning of the break to the violent throwing up that I had this Sunday, needless to say, I was on bedrest for a good portion of the break. I’m finally feeling like myself again.
I’ve gotten back into working out after a week’s lapse and now I’ve been working out for about 6-7 weeks at this point. No major weight loss (I think throwing up did a better job in that) but the gut is noticeably smaller. We’ll see where this goes - I am running quite the distance for a guy my size - averaging almost two miles of running three times a week. I’ve been trying to… God do I ever hate this word… “bulk up”… trying to make my muscles more than simple pieces of flesh - we’ll see if that works. Nonetheless, I am proud of myself as this is the longest I’ve ever stuck to going to the gym. As frightening as it is to say - I’m enjoying it. Shocker, eh?

Read this story

So, if you’re too lazy to read it, the basic gist is that a couple of Anchorites were dead-set on going to the West Edmonton Mall for Spring Break but apparently didn’t decide to take a map (or at least not look at it).

For those of you that don’t know your Geography well, Edmonton is right at 2000 miles away from Anchorage. Within 50 miles into their journey, the couple had already taken a wrong turn - heading north toward Fairbanks instead of east toward the Canadian border. To top it all off, it took them over 150 miles to realize they had turned the wrong way. Trying to make up for it, they turned on a non-maintained summer-only non-paved highway that runs between the two major highways in Alaska as a shortcut - only making it 15 miles into the 150 mile journey across to the Richardson Highway before their truck got stuck.

This goes so far above and beyond my wild-and-crazy (read: stupid) Arby’s Runs back when I lived on campus. Driving down to Anchorage in one day seems reasonable - driving 4000+ miles in a week isn’t exactly reasonable. One really wonders how much cash these kids had on hand - and, at that, if they even had passports - now, I believe, required for travel into Canada. Taking into account their apparent lack of direction, one would even have to ask - did they have Canadian Money? Did they know you needed that in…. Canada?

I’m always amazed at how ill prepared lower 48ers are when they come up to Alaska - wondering why there is snow in April, wondering why it’s dark at 3pm, falling for the “do you have Alaskan dollars?” question, assuming they can drive anywhere in the state with their 44ft motor home, not planning for any potential disasters at all - I expect this from Lower-48ers. But our own? Man, my perception of Anchorites being “true alaskans” has really changed =P Naw, just joking - just makes us realize that we really do have to explain the obvious to people - cause even the most obvious - it’s winter and you might want to have some winter gear in your car - doesn’t translate to 90% of us. Just thank God this didn’t end up any worse.

Yeah, so, decided to take note of how many games I have and I guess I’ve got a lot more than I actually thought I had. Over 200 Console games… yeesh. Some systems really do have a paltry selection of them mainly because of haven’t yet gotten the system working (Sega CD) or that I just got it running (Saturn). Some say this would be obsessive, but seeing that I only play games excessively *read more than 1 hour a day* once or twice every two weeks, this is more of a collection. Nothing at all like those WOW addicts that do 4-12 hours per day.

“Peaked” or “Piqued”… yes, my spelling was called into question on my own website. I’m sure that there were golden intentions and, in the long run, I do appreciate it. In fact, the way they did it doesn’t bug me at all because it’s not at all like the rant that I’ve got in store for you - a completely different situation. But it’s managed to strike a chord that’s probably one of my biggest pet peeves - people who publically correct people’s mispellings on For Sale boards all over town.

*sigh* you know, I really know that there’s something else in life for English connoisseurs to do, but why is it that people have this insatiable need to point out other people’s spelling errors publically? I completely understand where they come from - so many of the forums I frequent blatantly showcase how belligerent today’s youth is to learn anything that closely resembles proper spelling - what I don’t get is why someone, hell, anyone, thinks it’s their duty to consistently point out someone’s spelling errors - especially when it deals with easily confused antonyms. All across campus I see constant reminders on how prevalent this perplexing desire is - there’s rarely a day that flies by without me noticing that someone has edited someone’s spelling, grammar or punctuation on their poster as if this is somehow going to make the person learn something about any one of the three. In fact, in my not-so-humble opinion, it only adds to the editor’s overall feeling of smugness and holier-than-thou-ness. Yes, I made up a word. Deal with it.

Seriously, there is no reason at all to correct someone on their poster - they’re potentially never going to see it, you’re not helping them correct their error and, in all honesty, you’re just openly and publicly insulting this person.

There are higher paths in life. Live and let live - let them make the mistake - let out a passing chuckle when you see it - share it with others, but don’t correct it. That’s as bad as running up to a 15 year old with their homey-G pants down to the floor in the mall and helping him pull them up and reposition his belt so that they continue to stay up. It’s like telling the obese person at the beach that’s wearing a two-piece that they could be likened to a whale and should cover up. Seriously, folks, people have bad spelling - period. You’re not going to help them realize the error in their ways - you’re not going to be the light at the end of the tunnel of a lifetime of spelling errors and the insurmountable regret behind each and every one of them.

Hell, I’m going to have to spell check this entry already just so that I don’t get the sarcastic, snide comments pointing out my flaws!