16-1-31

16-1-30

16-1-29

 I start and finish work a block away from this building so it's a bit of a feat I don't take more photos of it. It's situated in just such a way that it rips late afternoon sunlight out of the sky and collects it in a magical way. There are very few buildings in Vancouver with this much character and I'm lucky to see it as often as I do.

So much rain lately. The sun is a welcome visitor.

16-1-28

16-1-27

The rain. The rain.

16-1-26

If only more things in life cost $2 and let you play until you win.

16-1-25

Took this kid to school this morning. She punk rocked her hair. I don't think I understood it. I guess that makes her the next generation and me old. My neck is sore. I'm tired. And falling behind. And tired.

16-1-24

I found this bike in the trash. And it probably is trash. That handlebar is titanium and sold for $129 new. The shifters are XT thumbies, I think, sold for $149 new. They still fetch over $75 on eBay. And the Ritchey Logic brake levers were coveted items in the day too. They are all attached to a Kona steel mountain bike frame that was quite respected in the day. There are a couple of period XT derailleurs on the bike adding to its lineage. Trash.

I pulled a Jorg and Olif frame out of the garbage too. The one on the right with two top tubes. Starting at $900 complete, mine was just a frame, fork, headset, bar and stem. I held on to it for a couple of months thinking I would make it a beautiful bike again but, well, who has the time?

I have a plane for the thumb shifter and rear derailleur. Only one of the shifters though. It's going to happen after I finish converting the garage into an effective work shop. So..... 2019. Maybe. And I only pick that year because I'm "optimistic" that it will happen this decade.

That shitty house in the first photo, if it includes the vacant lot next to it, is probably worth about $3million. I mean, this house:

half of a duplex, located 2 blocks away from the house above, is selling for just over a million.

And this cute little place:

...all three majestic bedrooms of it, a block away on a single lot, is a bargain at $2.3million. 

But at least they weren't in the trash. 

16-1-23

16-1-22

16-1-21

16-1-20

16-1-19

I'll keep taking pictures of the viaducts until they tear them down. That might not be too long.

16-1-18

It's dying. This camera is dying. The light meter stopped working. There's lots of reading on the internet and some even describes it as being fixable. I'll need to fabricate a couple of tools, most importantly a spanner for the pinned fasteners. And I know of at least one of the fittings that's reverse threaded. I do have an old compass kicking around, with pins for both points, that might work. But if I break one old tool trying to fix another old tool I'd have two broken and irreplaceable things instead of just one.

There's very little to the light meter in these cameras. A battery, which I've checked and replaced, a sensor, that doesn't wear out, a paddle that kicks out on a linkage to push a pin on the lens, which works just fine, and a couple of wires. There are a whole mess of screws and springs and washers and plates between the inside and outside of this camera and somewhere in there is a wire that's probably come loose. But I can't really break something that's already broken and things can be fixed. The 20mm Nikkor lens I bought on Craigslist didn't work so well, or at all, until I extracted all the little screws it had and twisted it apart to clean the aperture blades. Taking apart a whole camera is a little more daunting to maybe find a loose wire.

But the camera is 52 years old. The camera I took this picture with is 8 years old and one of the dials works maybe half the time and while it can be fixed, it's a thing I surely won't be able to fix.

Spanner tool. Micro screwdrivers. I don't need reading glasses yet but maybe I'll even get a pair of the googly eyed magnifying goggles with the lights built in. And I'll see if I can't get this thing working again.

If I do, you'll be the first to know. If I don't, I'll come back here and edit this post, replacing the photo with one of my cat.

16-1-17

I feel like this is a revisit to a time when I was taking photographs differently. Like this. Differently. Maybe it's the different focal length. 24mm instead of the more usual 35mm. Who knows.

16-1-16

16-1-15

16-1-14

16-1-13

"Bring a steak."

OK.

There were three different cuts, a strip loin, a rib steak, and a tenderloin. We cooked all three, along with some lamb, and watched Kilian Martin skate videos, compared them to vintage Tommy Guerrero skate videos, discusssed art, Canadiana, and at the end of it I donned my red toque, and rode a mountain bike I've owned for 21 years home through the dark streets of Vancouver. It's hard to imagine a better night.

16-1-12

Vancouver winter. This one hasn't been too bad but tonight I was reminded how Vancouver winters can be. I turned up the heat. And coped.

16-1-11

Three and a half points.

16-1-10

That window on the top left, that was where my kitchen table was. The little window is over the counter in the kitchen. The counters were ceramic tile. There's a hint of the side window that faced west, the building was just taller than the one to the west of it so that window drank in sunlight. The back of the house faced the North Shore mountains and I built a bed tall enough that you could lie on it and see the mountains. To this day, one of the most modest, lovely, amazing apartments I've ever lived in.

16-1-9

What's your status?

16-1-8

16-1-7

16-1-6

16-1-5

The old parts make me happy. Lovely things.

16-1-4

The yam. High in vitamin C, potassium, and fiber. They contain complex carbohydrates which means a slow uptake and a low glycemic index. And they are tasty too.

16-1-3

"What's for dinner?"

"Dunno. Food stuff."

"How about a potato? High in potassium and vitamin C."

"Yeah, but starchy."

"That's because of all the starch."

16-1-2

Going home.

16-1-1

iPhone pictures. It's terrible, because it's zoomed, and the crop is digital, not optical, and it becomes grainy, and an iPhone app filter makes it look like an iPhone app filtered photograph. Is that any worse than a Kodak Disc camera photo? Or a Polaroid? Or any other number of processes that affect outcome? It's new, it's digital, and it doesn't have to look like this, but it does. And it does because I zoomed in to a focal length that I wanted for the composition I wanted. Does the means justify the deterioration? When I squint I like the photo a lot. When I consider how much better the photo might have been if I had my big fancy camera with the big, long lens on it I think it's terrible, but no worse than any other terrible photo that gets heralded on Instagram. It's no worse than a Bob Ross painting, and a Bob Ross painting is amazingly awful. Or amazing despite. Or just amazing, regardless. Bob Ross was prolific, but not brilliant, but I'd hang one of his paintings on my wall. And I guess I'm posting this photo, so...

But I'm posting this one too:

Because it's better. It's a metaphor, it's an analogy, it's literal and allegorical. It's a photo of two trees, or parts of two trees, side by each, paired but independent. And more.

Or it's just two trees. Literally, that would be true.

But that would be boring.

15-12-31

Last picture for a year.

15-12-30