Dirty World News

I was speaking with my co-worker Meredith today about my Twitter usage and SMS messaging in general, and I mentioned to her that I don't really text all that much. Though the technology is useful and relatively cheap, my cell phone has the tiniest of keypads and it's simply easier to wait until I'm in front of a real keyboard if there's something that needs to be typed.

The conversation turned toward the popularity of texting among teens and, at one point, I actually said that "these kids today love texting to each other among their circle of friends."

And it was at that exact moment that I realized (perhaps with a bit of disgust) that I'm old. Maybe not old old, but certainly sounding a bit too much like a soulless marketing consultant and fully formed adult instead of the man-child I've been masquerading as for the past decade.

So I think I'm going to leave work early today. I'll be crying myself to sleep under the electric blanket if you need me, so I'd appreciate it if you could please turn off your fancy ringtones.

And get the hell off my lawn.

Posted by Doug at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've spent the past half hour playing around with an old 16mm Bolex camera that my brother Tom gave to me last year as a gift and, thanks to the enormously resourceful Bolex Collector website, I've tracked down the serial number (#58725) and identified the model as a 1950 model H-16 Deluxe.

Actually, that should be "I think I've identified the model." According to vintage camera buff Michael Tisdale, it's incredibly difficult to differentiate between the H-16 Leader, Standard and Deluxe models:

These terms were only used to differentiate between models that included different styles of viewfinder accessories. These viewfinders could be purchased or installed later; a fact which, today, makes it nearly impossible to identify early H cameras as Leader, Standard or Deluxe.

Though I used a Bolex in one of my college film classes about a dozen years ago, I haven't actually shot anything with this one. As much fun as that might be, it's just too damn expensive to shoot 16mm these days. But I do enjoy playing around with it, if only as a reminder to dig out the rest of my vintage film cameras and identify them as well.

Posted by Doug at 05:02 PM | Permalink