Show Me The Money - Harvesting The Drobo

Have you seen the prices that printed ephemera of the 1950's commands on eBay? It's fantastic! I'll bet it is even better at Christie's or Sotheby's. Why, there must be fortunes to be made with old magazines out in the back shed - and who knows what men's magazine gold has been tucked between the mattresses of teenage boys since then. Provided their mothers did not find them, they might still be there.

Mind you, so might the bedbugs. So to avoid that sort of trouble I decided to make my own vintage retro magazines - I'll be sending them in for auction as soon as the Epson printer gets through the stack of files.

Of course it s not all just profit - there is a fair amount of work involved in getting the girls into the corsets and girdles and the props needed are never cheap. IKEA always seems to have something that is nearly right but not quite so, and the antique stores are run by descendants of Henry Morgan. Fortunately many old people have period furniture in the shed so it always pays to beg.

The articles for he magazine are easy to write. Sex sells, and as long as you can remember to hint rather than explain, all is well. These are the 1950's after all. Germans and Japanese are also good copy as this was just after they were beaten and before they rose again. The Commies as well - if all else fails find a red star and stick it on something and suggest that there are more under the bed. Hey, It worked for Senator Joe, it can work for you.

I am still a little unsure as to how to age the paper and the pictures to simulate the real article sixty years on. I have no problem spilling coffee on myself but so far the stains on the images look a little fake. And there is nothing so false as reality rejigged. I wonder if I can get someone to pay in Pounds and Shillings?

Come To Me, My Pretty - with ioShutter

I was amazed this Christmas when my daughter took over operation of the television. Lest you dismiss this as nonsense - after all whose children do not dominate the tellie - what I mean is she took control of it from her iPhone and iPad.

It is done by a small box that passes the signals wirelessly from other devices into the TV. You can see cellphone and computer screens there in full HD - presumably other devices will synch into it as well. So far we have only tested toaster and the coffee pot but we will gradually work our way through the house.

It is an amazing demonstration of the connectivity and control available now and it calls to mind he products made by the enlight photo people - in particular the ioShutter cords.

If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad you can use these devices to control what your digital SLR does. The connectivity is available for both Nikon and Canon users - as shown by the two packages below - and the range of things it can do is quite beyond the average cable release.

Now there is that, of course - you can get a classic hands-free activation of your camera by plugging the ioShutter cable between the cell phone and camera and pressing the button on the phone screen. Further, you can get your phone to act as an interval timer, time release mechanism, or long-exposure timer. This is just like the dedicated exposure controllers - but less expensive, and unlike the specific camera controllers, with this combination you can ring up and order pizza.

At this point the ioShutter takes off on a flight to weird - you can also activate the camera with sound - a feature they call ClapToSnap. And apparently there is also a provision to use the attitude-sensing capability of the cell phone to activate the camera - and this one is called ShakeToTake. Honestly. Look at the back of the packet.

To paraphrase Will Rogers: " I don't make jokes - I just report what the manufacturers do..."

Presumably you can set it to record pictures whenever a tugboat steams by - TootToShoot - or whenever a member of parliament makes a speech - LiarToFire...

In all these cases you go to something called an App Store and download the necessary information on the phone or pad. If it all seems too much, call my daughter and she will button it down for you. Just don't expect to get the television back anytime soon.