Either or

i dont know why i keep opening israeli news sites. it ends with an aching stomach every time. maybe i do it for the same reasons i try to make bread over and over again, regardless of the fact it tastes worse every time i do it.

mafiziozzo #2

Same shit, different town.

Where is Don McCullin when you need him?

one two three

the Fuse of life (a tribute to hebrew wiki)

Professional

One eye, One eye

This is for today.

Cabinet doors i don't open

when i started this blog, it was a promise. a promise to add one picture every day, a dedicated photo for this purpose. this was a promise to myself, but more then that it was a promise to two poeple, whom i feel i let down with my lack of commitment. this was a channel for me to them and i think it no longer is and hence lots some of its appeal in my eyes. every now and again i get a flair up and i try to restart, and i guess that since the big slope a while back every start up like this accumulates and eventually it will be back to what it meant, more or less. for now, this is for yesterday, when stuff meant more then it seemed.

American Prospects #3 (a tribute to Robert Polidori)

 Hoverhill, MA.

Post #901

Malden, MA.

Lee van Cleef

a shadow cast in snow.

How to make a Hasselbald\Imacon dust cover at home (Phase I)

Have you ever walked home after a long day at a nice lab or school where they have all the money and budget to buy all the accessories you could never afford if you bought something yourself? well you probably would not be able to afford the principle item anyway so this wouldent really matter. but in my case, i bought an imacon some time ago and have a dust accumulation problem from time to time. so the answer was clear to me, dont buy a cover just make one! as this giude will show you it is quite simple and all you will need (aside from an imacon, to measure your cover on) is some fabric, some thread and a needle.
Phase 1 deals with the making of the cover, but not the flap opening for the feeder tray, this will be covered in phase 2, in the mean time this will work fine for all 646 users, just put the tray aside when the scanner is covered.
to start you need a good piece of material for the cover. i used a Sky like vinyl type of material (on sale for 10.99$ yard at Jo Anns fabrics in dedham) in black. this is similar to the material used in the OEM cover, but is heavier and nicer looking. any dust proof fabric will do, though i would recommend getting something that is also less prone to static build up, like some fleece or cotton fabrics. i also got an appropriate needle for this type of fabric, and a heavy duty upholstery thread.
the scanner is 27 inches tall and so i got a piece 60 inches long, i am not sure exactly what that means because i do not know how big an inch is yet but it was roughly square so i am guessing it was 60X60 inches but i am not sure. since the scanner has 4 panels in different shapes and sizes, though all are 17 inch tall i big piece makes the job real easy. i will explain how to cut and sow this cover. basically you mark and cut the right shape, then sow the cover inside out, and once its done you turn it outside in and viola - a handsome cover with invisible stitches!

step 1: start buy laying the fabric upside down so the inside side is showing. align the fabric and orient it on the scanner. it is important to figure out where the long side of the fabric is, as it is not always exactly square. after that you want to make sure the fabric is touching the floor on all sides, other wise you might end up with a cover that is lump sided. then i pulled out the corners of the loose fabric to begin and make the markings for cutting.

step 2: i used 4 small film clamps and pinched them on at one of each of the corners of the scanner. this way the fabric was more or less stretched around the scanner evenly and you can see where to mark the cutting lines.i followed the curve of the corner of the scanner from the top to the bottom on each side of each corner. that means that if we take the front right corner for example, i made two lines going down the fabric, one marks the cut line on the front panel side of the corner and the other marks the right side panel of the corner. this way you can cut the excess fabric easy. it is important to leave ALOT of slack, cutting the fabric to short will be a bummer and you can always cut off more, but you cant add anything so make sure you leave yourself a wide bough. repeat for all 4 corners (total 8 cut lines) then cut along the lines.
you should end up with a cross like piece of fabric.

step3: make the closer cuts. now that that the fabric is more or less in the right shape its time to make it fit. i used the same small film clamps again and clamped all 4 along on corner, connecting the two flaps of fabric. while holding the clamps tightly, i marked a new, more accurate cut line along the the same pattern as in step 2. you could do this in step 2 but you risk cutting off too much.

step 4: once i had the more accurate lines on, i made the second cut. this left me with about half a centimeter of excess fabric that will hold the stitches. after cutting the closer cuts, i put the clamps back to help my align the fabric while sewing. I made a few loops with the thread and needle, all the time holding on to the two flaps tightly to make sure they are still in position. repeat the process for all 4 corners. i found it is much easier to do when the fabric is on the scanner itself. you get a better feeling as to where the loops should fit. i used a basic loop knot. it is called a plain blanket stitch here. i spaced then about 1cm apart. i left the bottom 8 cm loose as that will help put the cover on the scanner. i also left the top 2 cm alone and started just below to allow a bit of flex in the top as the whole thing will be turned outside in.

step 5: complete all the stitches.

you are almost done!

step 6: turn it outside in!

make sure you take a picture of the whole thing with crazy sun flare, its so cool.
then put the scanner back and take another picture or two.

 
enjoy!

American Prospects #2 (A tribute to Kieth Canham K.B.)

American Prospects #1

A White House. Readville MA.

two levels

how to get the same amount of blueberries in each muffin

you just gotta do everything your self these days.

Here

yesterday.

sledge

Rust belt

the unbreakable plastic broke. the ice is hard. a sign of the times.

11 1 11 (Jeff wall was here)

the world is such a big place. so many poeple, everywhere. the roads never end, there is always another place to drive to. there are so many issues compounding our place in the world, bureaucracy is only one of them.
there is something astounding about american bureaucracy and service givers. the entire american irrational fear of socialism and any kind of welfare state manifests it self in exactly what they fear the most, the working class is paying for everyone else to have what they dont deserve, and they themselves get the worst service of all.
in america there is no public health system. every health issue a person might have must be dealt with privately, and services obtained must be paid for in full. for someone like me, who never paid for a medical procedure in his life before, it was amazing to find that a doctors visit costs about 500$, for about 10 minutes. cant imagine what a broken arm costs, let alone some major surgery. but in any case, the doctor, the provider of the health commodity is a private entity. his only motivation in this business is money. a person might buy himself insurance, against any health problems he might have to pay for. this insurer covers most of the payment for a doctors visit, but unless you are extremely rich and pay an exorbitant  premium you will end up paying for most if not all of your health purchases in a given year, that is unless you did actually go through some major medical procedure.
in Massachusetts every person must have health insurance by law and every insurer must provide insurance to any one who applys. to make sure this happens there is a third party that consolidates the payments and enrollment to the insurance. the real problem is that none of these three entities have any material connection with each other, and they operate under totally  different motivations and goals. this creates a bureaucratic maze that would leave even a veteran soviet ex patriot baffled.
the bottom line is you have to be rich to live here, and you have to be rich in the first place to get rich. i am niether.

Vertical Features remake III

Leads from HERE and HERE.

the terrors of my day

060111

The errors of my way

I was right.

Hello goodbye (to the beatles)

today i have ti say goodbye to the beatles. once, when i was younger i felt it necessary to own everything that had to do with the beatles. in a way i thought it was cool, because they were cool and unique. i spent lots of time and money buing that stuff, recording TV airings of the anthology and then buying the CD's. i actually used to listen to those cd's alot. as the years progressed i mostly only enjoyed the later beatles, and at some point could not stand listening to an entire beatles album except for maybe abbey road.
actually abbey road is the only beatles album i would still listen to.
but now i have sold them all. i hope whoever bought them is someone who might appreaciate the fact that having all these CD's is not just another thing. it really is pretty exiting.
shit, i had so much more to write about this beatles thing but its just not coming out. you all get it right?

ball of confusion

not to be confused with the ball of Confucius.
recent events and newspaper readings lead me to rethink about the way history is played out in poeples heads.
reading more of the book "1967" by tom segev just keeps befalling me more and more, how did i not know everything that is written in that book? perhaps it is the long story of wiki. the wiki vision of history is written by individuals, and they, unlike what jean luc picard would have you think, are not always from the winning side (except if you are reading wiki in hebrew, where the writers are always from the victorious jewish super human variety). the history segev writes about, is present in the memoirs of all the main characters, begin, dayan echkol, dado, narkis, ben guryon, bar lev and herzog. how the conclusions he makes me see eluded and continue to elude the public of israel is a riddle that time will not answer. there is a reason they dont know what happened in 1967, and happened again in 1982, 1987, 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2009. all the atrocities that we hear about from dubious sources and refuse to believe that are true, but we cant deny the fact we know they are true are all but the same as what happened 44 years ago. the looting, the destruction and all purposefully propagated against humanity from the nation of victims, that in every generation an enemy rises up to extinguish them.
every israeli who hasent read "1967" knows nothing about his heritage and his past, his debt to the world, and to humanity. but i guess where poeple read catch 22 and then want to become fighter pilots there is little hope. all this from a person who has read less books then he has digits on his hands.

A new year. nothing else is new.