Tetherd Cow Ahead

For reasons I’m not at liberty to disclose just yet, I ventured today into the depths of my storage unit to retrieve my beautiful Big Briar Model 91C Theremin. I thought you’d all like to see it.

You can read about how I came by this beautiful instrument here.

And for Atlas, a sample of my less-than-perfect technique:

Since I posted about the unique Cheeky Whissstling Gnome a little while back, I know that you’ve all been yearning for more treats from the wondrous Penny Miller Catalogue. Today I present for you the Motion Activated Owl, a fit companion for the Whissstling Gnome if ever I saw one!

Yes, this owl, with its ‘menacing glow in the dark eyes’ is not for the faint-hearted. Featuring a ‘true to life hooting sound’ it joins forces with the Gnome to make sure that your garden is cleansed, not only of unwanted intruders, but of ‘birds and other unwanted animals’ as well. Penny Miller, with her Owl & Gnome Army, is evidently aiming to single-handedly demolish both the pest-control and security industries in one fell swoop!

Of course, with all the whistling & hooting, and the staring eyes, it’s distinctly possible that your garden could start to resemble a buck’s night at the Oxford Tavern so you might want to give your neighbours a heads-up. Especially if you live next door to me – I’ll need to get my air-rifle out of the basement.

GEEK ALERT!: Another camera mod that will probably have minimal interest for most of you, but I’m posting it up because I think it’s cool, and because I think you need to know.

The other day I happened to be listening to a podcast that mentioned in passing that over-exposed, processed colour negative film is mostly opaque to all visible light, but readily transmits infrared. The over-exposed bit of the neg looks ‘black’ on the neg strip. It’s actually a very deep blue to the naked eye if you hold it up to a strong light:

Translating: the ‘blue’ bit in the negative above allows infrared light to pass through. “Well, what the hell use is that, Rev!” I can hear you say. “Our eyes can’t see into the infrared!”

Aha! Your eyes can’t, Faithful Acowlyte, but maybe your digital camera can… To check, find a TV remote and press any button on it while pointing it at the camera lens. If the display allows you to see a light blinking on the end of the remote, then the camera’s chip sees infrared. This means (I can see you’re ahead of me now) that you can record infrared images!

Why would you want to do that? Because it’s pretty and mysterious! Isn’t that reason aplenty!? Just clip a piece of the end of an old neg, tape it over your camera lens and Bob’s yer uncle! The film knocks the exposure way down so for best results, set your camera ISO on its lowest setting and use a tripod and a longer exposure. If your camera is a Canon point-and-shoot, you may be able to hack the firmware to get exposure times of up to sixty seconds.

Now, for some striking results, go photograph some vegetation. Here’s a lily in my backyard. The leaves are actually a deep rich green, but because plants reflect so much infrared light (they can’t use it for photosynthesis) their foliage appears red, and sometimes even almost white.

Now. How to record ultraviolet…?

Cow Cool Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

*WARNING: This is a geeky tech post. If things such as hacking devices to make them more fun don’t interest you, you should go have a coffee and a donut.

A recent article over at Lifehacker* explains how you can hack your digital point-and-shoot camera via software and turn it into a ‘super-camera’. The hack requires that you own a Canon camera and have some (fairly basic) computer skills, but it is on the whole pretty damn easy.

I have a Canon IXUS55 and it’s a great little camera. Most of the images that I’ve shot specially for The Cow have been recorded with it. It’s pretty darn versatile, but now I can can do a multitude of things that were previously not possible with it, and yet, bizarrely enough, are still functions contained within the camera’s operating parameters.

One thing that has always bugged me about my IXUS is that there is no battery life indicator. Well, with the Canon Developer’s Hardware Kit (CHDK) firmware installed, I get my wish, plus a host of other neato functions. For instance, I can now override the shutter speed of the camera, allowing me to take exposures of up to 60 seconds in length. Or, if I am inclined, go the other way and fire the shutter at faster than 1/10,000th of a second. As another feature, the CHDK also allows me to save my images as RAW (that is, uncompressed) image files, something that is usually the domain of professional gear (most point-and-shoots compress the images to jpg, which means you lose some of your potentially useful exposure data).

With the addition of some executable software scripts, I can also turn my little Canon into a motion-sensing camera (ie, movement will trip the shutter), an intervalometer (to allow automatic ‘time-lapse’) and rig it to record lightning flashes. There are a number of other very useful scripts written by users, and the database is increasing all the time.

I’ve only just started playing with it, so nothing especially great to show you right now (I quickly snapped the image above just for fun), but next week I’m intending to give it a good workout so stay tuned!

Cow Cool Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

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*I highly recommend that you check Lifehacker out. It’s not just geeky electro/computer/software stuff and I guarantee that no matter what your interests, you’ll find something there that’s totally cool. It is a little Windoze-heavy for my tastes, but at least they don’t totally ignore the Mac community.

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I was loitering over at Radioactive Jam yesterday, where the Jamster was musing about an epiphenomenon of texting (namely ‘twittering’) and where he posed the following question:

What about you, my feiends? Do you use your phone for text messaging? If so how often, and how many people do you communicate with using text?

Well, for me, that question was like waving a red flag at a bull. Or, to be specific, since we evidently have so many pedants in our midst, like waving a Pantone 032 HC woven textile heraldic banner at a toro lidiado.

Because I absolutely detest texting. To me it seems like a useless 21st Century gimmick that will surely, and quite properly, go the way of CB Radio craze of the mid 1970s*. My reasons are many, and only one of them is because I’m a grumpy old geezer. Here are some others:

1: On a normal keyboard (that is, one designed for human fingers) I’m a pretty fast typist and it drives me absolutely BANANAS to try and tap out messages on those stupid little phone keypads. Especially when it is almost always faster and easier to dial the number and actually talk† to the recipient.

2: Predictive texting doesn’t help matters any. How many times have I sent a message to Violet Towne that says ‘DON’T WAIT FOR OF. I’LL BE GOOD LATE.’ or something equally as baffling. Additionally, the software for predictive texting (on my phone, at least) is written by an insane person. Let me give you an example: recently I was keying in a word, let’s say it was ‘hamster’ (because I can’t remember what it actually was – suffice to say it was a word in fairly common usage as opposed to, oh, quincunx, or something). Anyway I get as far as H-A-M-S… and the phone makes its irritating little ‘ping’ noise and says WORD NOT IN DICTIONARY. OK, so its dictionary doesn’t know hamster or hamstrung, even. Understandable, I suppose, if somewhat moronic. But then one day I find I’ve inadvertently keyed E-X-P-O-N-E-G-F-D-E-R and it’s still letting me merrily type away, with no advisory ‘ping’, as if somewhere, somehow, if I keep on adding on enough letters exponegfder… is suddenly going to turn into a word it retains in its feeble little nano-brain. What the fucking hell is that all about? It’s the kind of thing that can only happen because a mad person is at the controls.‡

3: I have a rare genetic disease¤ that means I am unable to write sentences without using punctuation or correct spelling. This slows texting down by nearly one million percent, because people who write the software for mobile phones are illiterate and don’t care about such things. So if you want to put an apostrophe or semi-colon in your text, you have to first have a Degree in Illogical Thinking to figure out how to do it, and second, spend an extra two minutes actually doing it.

4: Texting is the method nonpareil for avoiding taking responsibility for bad behaviour. Let me draw you a picture (and tell me this has never happened to you): you’ve just spent 30 minutes standing in the rain, chilled to the bone by a raging blizzard, fighting off drunken louts who seem to think they have more right to the taxi that you flagged down than you do, arrived at the cinema for a film that you really don’t care too much to see but which you’re prepared to endure because, well, you’re a good friend and you do that kind of thing, only to have your message alarm make its chirpy little beepity-beep-ta-ping!: ‘SORRY CANT MAKE IT 2NITE CATCH U L8R!!!’†† When you try to call back, the phone goes straight to message bank. C’mon, hands up, who can relate to that? Even more pertinently, hands up who’s guilty of sending that message! Yes, just as I suspected.

Of course, in Ye Olde Days, being stood up in some similar fashion might have easily happened too, but back then we had GUILT™. In this new Age of Instant Communication, the text message somehow allows a weird kind of magical dispensation whereby the fink that ditched you can now be tucked up all warm and comfy on the couch at home with a tub of Cherry Garcia and the DVD Box Set of the Remastered Outer Limits Collector’s Edition and able to enjoy the rest of their evening somehow completely absolved of any remorse!

Because they texted you that they couldn’t make it.**

5: You don’t need even the smallest degree of commonsense to be allowed to use your phone to text. Last week I was traveling back along the airport freeway in the rain when a car just in front of me in the right-hand lane swerved so close that I was forced to slam on the brake to avoid a collision. As I slowed down, thanking the Spaghetti Monster that I was still in one piece, the culprit went weaving back into his own lane, oblivious to what had happened. Yes, you can guess what was going on. Whilst travelling at 100 kilometers an hour on a multi-lane freeway full of cars on a wet night, this idiot was texting someone. Not only that, I bet my entire Spam Fortune (which is quite considerable now – about 120 billion dollars at last count) that his message was something like ‘SORRY CANT MAKE IT 2NITE CATCH U L8R!!!’. This guy was equipped with a car, a phone and the English language, any one of which would been an obvious challenge for him to deal with on an individual basis let alone all at the same time.

Oh, there are many more reasons I could go on with but I’ll give it a rest now. Anyway, I can see you all twitching your fingers there below the table, undoubtedly Twittering something along the lines of ‘REVEREND A WAFFLING ON AGAIN PLUS CA CHANGE PLUS CEST LA MEME CHOSE’

(Does ANYONE see how pathetic and sad that phrase looks without the proper punctuation? Anyone? Sigh. I thought not).

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*Most of you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about unless you’re around my age. And there’s a very good reason for that.

†Yes, yes, I know that talking business is SO Last Century.

‡I’ve spoken previously about other aberrant behaviour in the predictive texting of my phone that gives weight to this theory.

¤Its technical name is ‘Education’.

††The multiple exclamation marks are mandatory in cases like this. They do not represent ‘punctuation’ as such, but instead are meant to evoke a sentiment something akin to ‘Oh I’m just SUCH a kooky crazy wacky kinda person and, gosh, life is just so topsy turvy, and like ANYTHING can happen really. Wow! How can you possibly hate me?’

**Seriously, if you ever bother to take the matter up with the fink the next day, the response is invariably one of indignation on their part: ‘What’s your problem – I texted you to let you know!’

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Atlas Cerise draws my attention to the release of the Teo MP-301, an mp3 player in the shape of a crucifix. Unlike the iBelieve (which was really just an alternate lanyard for an iPod Shuffle), this is a fully featured mp3 player, with voice recording and FM radio functions. And in the shape of a cross! Take that Steve Jobs. And you thought you were God!

Now I dunno about you, but I have an overwhelming desire to own one of these so I can fill it up with all my old Black Sabbath CDs and Aleister Crowley spoken-word recordings. Then I’d wear it upside-down.

According to iceTech, who make the Teo:

… it comes with the conversion software that would allow you to transfer music of various formats from your CDs and files to this device.

Notice the sneaky ‘would’ in there. Not ‘will’, but ‘would’. As in: The software on the Teo ‘would’ allow you to transfer music from your CDs if that was, like, actually legal in the country you lived in. Like it isn’t in, oh, er Australia, for instance.

Which raises an interesting question: If you commit a sin, and you don’t actually know it’s a sin, will God really strike you off the register? I can only imagine the disbelief on the faces in the queue at the Pearly Gates when people realize they turned down all that sex only to be sent Hellward by a few meagre Britney Spears music-pirating offenses.

But fear not, favoured Acowlytes! If this is the kind of tricksy dilemma you find yourself contemplating, TCA Laboratories in association with PWB are proud to bring you an astounding alternative to the Teo.

Announcing: The Tetherd Cow Ahead MooO™!

Yes my friends, the MooO offers everything the Teo boasts but with the added advantage of the revolutionary new Tetherd Cow Ahead Absolution Engine™! Here at TCA Laboratories, we’ve developed technology that actually allows you to pilfer your music from anywhere you like and digitally cleanse it of any sin! 100% Money Back Guaranteed*

The new CowSound-enabled MooO! Holy Cow that Sounds Good™!

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*We’re talking exclusively metaphysics here. TCA Industries guarantees that the Absolution Engine removes sinfulness, but legal obligations under the law of your country are your own affair…

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