I’ve recently acquired a new hobby, collecting vintage cameras, repairing them and taking pictures with them then burning the negatives into digital. It started when I was posting some pics on my Pinterest account/board. I saw someone had posted some pics of an old camera. I followed the link and did some reading up on the subject. Apparently there are many “pro’s” out there that believe the image results are equal if not better shooting film than digital, and there are certainly many things you can’t get away with shooting digital that you can with film, like better detail in a back-lit subjects.

  Argus C44 1956. Made in USA

I Updated my website with new pages about my collection and some fixes. Stop by and get nostalgic. there are some links to other sites about the subject. Also I explain how I fixed the above Yashica Electro 35 GSN, it was quite a task.

Windows Xp

1. Open ‘Notepad’ and create your note and save it to where ever you want but remember where you save it.
2. Now go to Add Scheduled Task (Start>Control Panel>Scheduled Tasks>click ‘Add Scheduled Task’) click ‘Next’, (it might take a few seconds to open next page)
3. Click ‘Browse’, find your note you created and double click it, choose your schedule, daily, once etc., click ‘Next’,
4. Choose time and date you want it to pop-up, click ‘Next’
5. Leave the user name alone (it should be on the correct user already) put in your password you use to log on (leave blank if your computer is not set up with a password) click ‘Next’
6. Click ‘Finish’ or if you’re on a laptop check “Open advanced properties for this task when I click finish” then click ‘Finish’
7. Click the ‘Settings’ tab, un-check the two battery options in Power Management section at bottom, click ‘Apply’ then ‘Ok’

Probably old news and most people have Windows 7 by now so follow these instructions for Windows 7. Totally different procedure but the little pop-up you get is cool

Windows 7

Follow this link to learn how to create a pop-up reminder on your Desktop if you have Window 7

An “added bonus”, since we knew nothing about the festivities in advance, so we kept our original agenda of relaxing and playing it by ear (sort of, I always have some plans in mind) We got started later than usual, Friday at noon after Cheryl got off work. We went straight through Reedsport in stead of stopping to make dinner at Mo’s in time. Besides, one of our favorite antique shops had closed and that would have been our only stop anyway.

We got to Florence around 3:30-4, got checked into our room and went down to” Old Town” along the river. We did our shopping before going to dinner at Mo’s, a twist for us, as we usually have a lunch at Mo’s, then shopping. As usual, there were a few new shops and a few missing shops.

Here are some pics of the Old Town area:

We did some antiquing the next day before leaving Florence, then on our way to Bandon we stopped at Winchester Bay so I could pick up some smoked salmon. I couldn’t resist so I got a crab cocktail while there, OMG! It was the best crab cocktail I’ve ever had and I consider myself quite the crab critique…

Just next door to Winchester Bay is the Umpqua River Lighthouse and USCG barracks with the old USCG admin building, now a museum…

In Bandon we walked around the Cranberry Festival and shops till we dropped. Later we went to the Coquille River Lighthouse as the Sun was setting and to Face Rock to watch the Sun sink into the ocean.

The last day, on our way home we stopped at Misty Meadows and got more food souvenirs and we stopped at the West Coast Game Park Safari to see the baby Tiger and Leopard. Billed as the nations largest petting zoo, there are lots of deer and goats and other critters roaming freely about the park.

If you like, I have all the pics from our weekend HERE at 

Around the Rogue Valley, web clusters looking like Halloween decorations gone awry are filling trees and jamming the Grange Co-op phone lines with requests for advice and remedies.

The creepy-looking fall web worm nests, generally found in outlying areas and madrone and oak stands, have shown up en masse in urban trees, even vineyards, this summer. The worms feed off the host trees, destroying foliage and branches.

“The last 10 days to two weeks, we’re getting at least 50 to 75 calls per day and that tells me there is an issue,” said Steve Soderlund, Grange Co-op store manager on South Pacific Highway. “We’ve sold out of Thuricide, which has an active ingredient called Bacillus Thuringiensis — a 24-hour concentrate.”

Dave Keiry was outside helping a neighbor Saturday morning when someone showed him the cluster in his ornamental Japanese plum.

“I went to the Grange and the clerk told me I was the 35th or 40th person to get the same stuff,” Keiry said. “As I drove home, I saw the trees were covered along Biddle Road, past the airport and into Central Point.”

The creepy crawlers have been called a variety of things, ranging from tent caterpillar to the ugly nest caterpillar, but Rick Hilton, an entomologist with the Oregon State University Extension Service, said there is no doubt about this pest.

“There is another moth where the caterpillar makes a similar tent,” Hilton said. “But we’re dealing with fall web worms.”

When these caterpillars emerge from their cocoons, they are plain white.

“They are generally found in the mountains and hills,” Hilton said.

The theory is that the invasion was spurred by two years of wet, cold springs and late summers.

“The wet conditions and late summer threw things off so the predators and parasites that control them were not active,” Hilton said. “We saw them last year in the organic orchards. There was a big population last year and so there was a large population to start with this year,”

The arithmetic is simple for Soderlund.

“Thuricide is an item we commonly carry and it wouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “Except when every third body walks in with a tent caterpillar issue. You don’t normally sell 20 bottles one year and 200 the next.”

The active ingredient in Thuricide, Bacillus thuringiensis, often is called Bt. It’s a biological pesticide that occurs naturally and is considered safe for people, pets and wildlife.

Hilton said the OSU Master Gardener’s program has reported the highest volume of calls ever received as a result of the web worms.

Hilton said as soon as the eggs hatch, the webs show up.

“They feed on anything from 90 to 250 plants,” he said. “At first it’s just a leaf and then it grows. The webs usually have at least 100 eggs and the worms grow to an inch long. When you have 100 caterpillars and they start getting bigger, they need a lot of food. That’s why a web can take up a whole branch. The sooner you get to it, the better.”

I fixed the problem by un-installing the damn service pack. I don’t know what we will do when we “have to ” have the service pack installed later down the road, hopefully it will be resolved by then. In the mean time, do yourself a favor and stay away from the service pack 1 update for a while

I was looking through the magazine, mostly at the cool old ads and came to the Kennedy article. Even though I just turned 3 years old, I remember seeing this on TV. Then I came to this:

…after 47 years I still get all choked up at this  image which, after searching google, there are several taken from different angles, all equally as heartbreaking. I believe this image(s) will live on in history as one of the most iconic images of our time.

Some years later, when I was in the ARMY stationed down at Fort Ord, CA. we watched the movie extensively, trying to figure out all the “bricks” in his (Pink) life that led to his mental collapse.

As I am watching David Gilmore on tv, I am looking up Pink Floyd and various related material on wikipedia. I’m thinking to myself that David is on my personal list of the top 5 guitarists of all time. (Personally, I put him at N0. 1 followed by Jeff Beck, Robin Trower, Jimmy Page and Joe Perry.) So I look for various lists on the internet of the “top 10″ and “top 100″ and David comes in the top 10 of some lists which are mostly just opinion as is my own list.

I found out on wiki that Comfortably Numb has been voted best guitar solo several times and it is one of Pink Floyd’s best 5 tunes of all time. I had to run in and download the ‘Wish You Were Here’ album on iTunes and throw it on my iPod with the rest of my Floyd collection, as well as the Live in Gdansk album I got from Amazon.

The night before my trip, I emailed a fellow, Robert “Photobob” Morris saying I was going to be in Dunsmuir area and hoped to run into him. Well the next day as I was driving through Grenada, CA, a very small very old farm town along the Siskiyou line, I noticed a strange looking old Line-shack I had never noticed before. There was a road leading right up to it. It was an old but still usable ”in-Motion” track weight scale used for the farmers grain cars.

As I was checking it out, up pulls Robert and his wife to take some pictures as well. Small world… We were both surprised that, after many many years, and being in a small town with high unemployment and basically nothing for the local kids to do it was in such pristine shape. There wasn’t a single bit of graffiti or vandalism, there was expensive but primitive electrical equipment inside behind unlocked doors. I have some pictures at my Picasa site. The first few are of the scale, shack and the old Southern Pacific concrete line shack.

There are a few images of my other discovery that day. An old section of road with a cool old trestle going over it. Thought it would be a good future photo-op location if trains ever return to that section of track again.