Ginger Meggs by Jason Chatfield for April 11, 2010

G’day usfellers, Joe and Jason! May today be a good day for all!

Morning, All!

Morning JFri!

Joe before I head out for my beauty sleep, LOL!, I have an old polaroid and an old Kodak sitting in a box in a rarely used closet. Don’t think they work though. Forgot all about them until you mentioned it! :-)

The only blood I have in me is mine.

Do they even make Polaroid film anymore?

Late Evening for me!

G’Day Joe, Usfellers, Celecca, Iamtxmilady, Jason and all the Meggsie fans!

My friend and I joined a camera club about 10 years ago. We both had digital cameras and used photo shop.

Almost everyone one else in the club used film and had dark rooms. They said digital cameras were nice but would never be as good as film.

Now almost every one in the club has gone digital. Very easy to up load digital files to printer on the internet. On line printing is cheap too.

It costs a tonne - Kodak stopped making the regular stuff, but specialty stores sell it.

(Gday all!)

Hey there, Jason!

Good morning Poppy1313.

G’day Jason and all Meggsie fans. Name list is getting a little long now but as Joe said yesterday ‘Y’all know who you are’.

Haven’t used a Polaroid for yonks but if I recall correctly there was one hell of a blue (Aussieism for fight) some 10+ years ago when Kodak tried to get past the patent. Polaroid nearly blew (different spelling - different meaning) them out of the water. All too late anyway, digital cameras took over. Forget polaroid film, even the old 35 mm stuff is getting hard to find in the supermarket.

Can anyone confirm that the digital camera is an Australian invention?

Wow, Ginger has seen the polaroid camera come and (just about) go, radio become popular, the discovery of penicillin, the invention of television, semiconductors, transistors, jet engines, laser, radar, nuclear energy, LED lighting, computers, orbital flight, radio astronomy … anyone care to add to that.

I belong to the generation that seems to think all of that is just for the young. Not so, try and get on board, the ride is fantastic. Remember, those more our age invented a lot of those things, why shouldn’t we enjoy them.

Very interesting lot of comments yesterday - we got a bit off the track but it was great just the same.

Dinner time and chores are waiting too. See ya’ later.

Between chores.

More things Ginger has seen invented in his lifetime - 45 and 33 1/3 rpm records, CDs, DVDs. digital radio and TV, TV recorders, parking meters, traffic lights (believe it or not), the World Wide Web, tubeless tyres, solar power. That lad has seen a lot.

Go to it Ginger, Dad needs a lot more hints about what he is missing out on.

Alright smartypants, how many times have women’s hems risen?

Dunno mate, too busy playing with all those gadgets as they came along. OK, I give up, how many?

Yes and Ginger saw it all without aging a day! Alas, wish I could be that lucky!

Dry That’s the Meggsie trick, we can all do just that on the inside.

Those asterisks work. Thanks. We learn something every day.

Back to yesterdays comments……does anyone remember Cinderella Q. Stump and who she was?

You can do interesting things with Polaroid SX-70 film as it’s developing. Warp, fold, or otherwise physically distort the photo as it is developing, or use a stylus to make lines on it.

Peter Gabriel’s third album cover has examples of this.

Hi everybody. I can’t read the graffiti on this one. Can someone tell me what it says? Thanks.

serenaskitty It says ‘I wonder why the baseball kept getting bigger - then it hit me’.

runar The film packs contained a very active battery which, when wires, electrodes and electrolytes were in correct places, they could be used to plate metal objects.

Does anyone remember how pennies were plated by kids to resemble Two Shilling pieces? That was before Polaroid cameras were around. Anyone amongst you had a clipped ear from trying to spend them?

Who tried to call from a public phone with halfpennies and then press the ‘Return Coin’ button to see if full pennies came back. If you did then you would know that not only did no pennies come out, but the halfpennies were lost. No wonder we kids grew up being discouraged from being career criminals LOL

Overseas Meggsie fans, are you ever reminding me that way back when …, we missed a lot in this Land of Oz. I’m sure we never saw Jo Stafford on TV, and believe me, this is one fan who would remember if we did. Never heard of Cinderella G (or Q) Stump either.

Thanks Joe, Wikipedia confirms that. I must have been confused with wifi. I too, remember the introduction of the Polaroid camera. What fun at parties and what embarrassment afterwards.

Ginger also saw the invention of the Polaroid camera and here he was yesterday reminding Dad that it was out of date.

By the way. I have a write-up in an 1898 Windsor magazine of an invention using a selenium drum (as in xerox copiers today) to receive pictures over cable and to display them on a screen.

Might also mention that in 1964 I went through a rigorous selection procedure to see if I was suitable to operate and program a mainframe pioneer computer here in Melbourne, Australia. Now no pile left out in a council hard rubbish drive is complete without at least one computer on it.

Joe re those washers. I am sure that, like me, you would vehemently deny trying to do a fiddle with them.

Jason,

I’m trying to tell you that you’re getting a lot of mileage out of that image of Dad looking down this past couple of weeks.

I can remember my Dad having a very early Poloroid with a timer on the back. The film was in 2 parts, you took the picture, set the timer and when it was done, peeled them apart to (hopefully) get a picture. If you peeled too soon, it wasn’t developed. I think that was when people used to wave the pic around while it was developing to make sure it finished.

ottod - This was actually the first instance of dad’s pose (it does change each time > This Sunday was drawn before the recent dailies) -but I think it suits him well. he’s always befuddled.

You’re right, Joe Doty ..It was Cinderella G. Stump, (Jo Stafford), One of her hits was “Tim - Tay-Shun” A take off of “Temptation” It can be found on You tube

Wasn’t Jo Stafford the female singer in the number ‘Temptation’ by Red Ingles) And His Natural Seven. While on YouTube, search for her singing ‘On London Bridge’. It comes no better than this.

Oh geez* I remember those coolers with the coke bottles! And the Poloroid where you waved the finished product in the air until it was dry. (NO PUN INTENDED LOL!) I swear the Polaroid part, I KNOW I WAS IN MY 20’s THEN I SWEAR!