Monkeyspill

Dark Souls 2 and 3. I loved the first game - and Bloodbourne. So I should really like the other two games but I can’t get into them. I’ve tried two or three times but always give up quite early on. They don’t feel right for some reason.

My bike has disappeared. I fell off it while driving over a tiny stream and couldn’t find it so thought I’d make the delivery on foot as it wasn’t far. But the bike has gone completely. Do vehicles get stolen if you leave them?

13!

I don’t remember much about the computers in secondary school apart from rarely being allowed to use them. I was one of the thickies, who they didn’t want breaking things by mashing all the buttons or something. We had IT lessons but we hardly ever got to use the computers. It was all writing in exercise books. I sort of inherited a Commodore 64 from my brother in about 1987 or so. He had a ZX81 as well but I never got that. I didn’t have a TV, and my dad wouldn’t allow games on the big telly in the front room because it would “break it”. So I had to use a tiny portable I used to borrow from their bedroom, or failing that - an even smaller black and white TV that used to run off the car battery when we went camping. One of my friends had a C64 as well and we used to bunk out of school at lunchtime, go to his house and play games. Seeing how long it took stuff to load, we probably didn’t get much gameplay out of it. My other friend had a Vic 20. After a few years my friends were getting Amigas and Mega Drives while I was stuck loading games from tape on the C64. Apart from the guy who still had a Vic 20. At least I wasn’t him. The first time I saw a Windows PC was in school in the sixth form. I was pretty amazed by Encarta with its animated bits but got bored pretty quickly. Eventually, I was given a Mega Drive and had that until I was in the second or third year of uni and could afford a PlayStation with my loan money - this would have been when FFVII came out (I remember calling my character “Penis” at the start and being stuck with that for the whole game).

The weird thing is how 2009 seems fairly recent to me but 2004 seems like ages ago.

I should probably sort out a preset. I’ve been adjusting each one manually in photoshop while comparing it to digital pics. It takes ages. That said I find Provia a lot easier to scan than Velvia.

A few more scans from our trip to France and Switzerland. Colour are Provia, B/W are T-Max 400. The top one was an absolute bugger to scan and edit. The slide was a really strong blue which looked just odd (all of the Provia came out blue-ish but this one looked almost cross processed. I’ve edited the colour but it’s probably still too blue/purple. Here’s a shot of the same place taken with the 5d3: This next one has wrong colour too. The lake should be more green like the shot above. And a few digital:

Realism did it for me. In the top-down GTAs and the PS2 3D ones, I used to love killing sprees and their cartoony violence. Running over pedestrians was like pac-man munching up dots - it even had a satisfying sound effect. When it became more realistic, it wasn’t fun anymore. It was horrible.

I’m still unsure about this. I’m not exactly excited about it anymore and £50 is a lot of money to me. So - I dunno.

What I’m getting on the b/w neg scans are uneven blacks. I don’t mind grainy blacks - I can deal with that but this looks like streaks and lighter patches going across the blacks and dark areas. Could also be light leaks or x-ray damage or something but I think it’s more likely the scanning.

More black and white. T-Max 400 pushed to 800. The dark ones are really hard to scan - I’m getting reflections off the film or the scanner is straining trying to register something that’s not there. Provia: Comparison with 5D3:

180 pub darts.

Colossal 3/5 Much better than I expected.

Not sure if these are too dark. Also, the top one looks like a corny car advert. I didn't have a lot of time to compose these as I was being rushed.