We went to the late-night flea market (8pm-2am) at the fairgrounds the other day. I picked up a Ricoh Auto Shot to add to my collection. Normally I only buy cameras that I check beforehand to make sure they’re usable… even though they’re in my collection I like to shoot a roll to test the camera out, and see the results.

This new camera though, I was unable to test. When I opened the back I saw that there was a roll of film loaded in there.

So I plopped down my $5 for the camera and took it home and developed the film. It was Plux-X Pan, so I developed it in the kitchen sink.

Unfortunately, there were only two images on the roll:

As for the camera? It doesn’t work.

Eh, a bit late since it’s almost the weekend again. But I haven’t updated for a while and I didn’t have anything else to talk about.

Friday:
Not much. Dinner at Friday’s then some Halo.

Saturday:
Walked around Six Flags for a bit, then a quick side trip to Oberweis (the have the best chocolate peanut butter ice cream). Then a bit later we had dinner at Pat’s Pizza, and played more Halo.

Sunday:
We headed out to Glencoe to catch the Midwest Bonsai Society’s show at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Almost missed it this year; didn’t find out about it until shortly before we headed out. I picked up a small Ficus salicifolia (willow leaf fig) to add to my collection.

Once we got home we relaxed and played more Halo. Then Justin went out to jam a bit in preparation for the upcoming Elvi show.

Yesterday I picked up the Wii Fit. It’s pretty fun, and a few of the games/activities really wear you out.

We’ll have to hit Six Flags this weekend and try out the newly-opened Dark Knight.

I finally got off my ass and finished up with my crafty project… and the results have been listed over on etsy. So go shopping.

The best thing I’ve come across lately is called CHDK.

CHDK is a firmware enhancement that operates on a number of Canon Cameras. CHDK gets loaded into your camera’s memory upon bootup (either manually or automatically). It provides additional functionality beyond that currently provided by the native camera firmware.

It’s pretty sweet. I haven’t really explored the finer details, but the feature that I’m excited about is the ability to run scripts.

Scripts like time lapse photography.

Ever since we lost our Nikon camera in Mexico we haven’t had anything (save the computer + webcam) that could do time-lapse photography. Which obviously isn’t very practical if I’m outside of the house. My trusty(-ish¹) Canon A540 doesn’t have a time lapse mode. But now it does, and I can make time lapse videos again, and I didn’t have to go spend $300 on a new camera.

So to celebrate I made this video when we went to dinner tonight:

(3.6MB / 00:27)

¹It’s been draining batteries like crazy lately. I first thought it was that my rechargeables are starting to reach the end of their life, but normal disposable AAs drain just as quick. I don’t know…