E-2 (1968) in room temperature C41

OK so I haven't made any updates in forever, so here's a good one. I developed some E-2 Ektachrome-X which expired in the late 60s in room temperature C41 chemicals. The images were exposed recently (about  18 months ago, if I remember correctly) It's a bit cold here, so that's a slight lie, I did warm the chemicals from actual-quite-chilly room temperature to 72F, so that it would be the same temperature as yarnzombie used when he did E-4 in room temperature C41.
He used the following recipe, which I copied:
All at 72 Farenheit
Colour developer: 20mins
Blix: 8 mins
Wash
Stabiliser: a minute or so.
I've then hung the negatives above the radiator to dry.
There appears to be images on them, although they're fairly monochrome-looking, and a bright teal colour. The images should be comprised of dyes, rather than silver, as we've blixed the film, although after only 8 mins, there may still be residual silver in the images.
Whether or not there's colour information, I'm not sure, but it's definitely a way of getting an image from ancient film. I'll add images in a couple of hours or so, once the negs are dry and I can scan them.

SCANNED!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/msmoynihan/sets/72157628280654373/
I'm amazed at how good the images are. The variation across the surface made colour balancing difficult, but I think we can see that this has been a successful project! There appears to be a slight pattern from the backing paper, but never mind.

First DIY C-41

I developed a couple of rolls of C-41 at home today, using a kit that I've been saving up rolls for for ages. I didn't want to let it oxidise, so I saved it until I had 10 rolls ready to develop at once, which I now do, including some funny stuff like E-2 process film that I want to do at room temperature, or by acceleration.
The first results (Portra 400VC in an Olympus XA2) are scanned in, and available to view here.

I also scanned my one and only roll of PX in 120, which was some pictures of my son at the beach, viewable here.

Apology

Hey Readers,
Sorry I haven't posted for a while, I've been working about a zillion hours a day on an academic paper I'm getting published at a conference in April (I'm a PhD student in physics). I've not been home from work before 10pm for a couple of weeks, so obviously sleep is a priority over developing photos and writing about them, as I have to be up for 8 the next day. Hope to be able to update soon,
Best regards, and thank you for reading,
Matthew

Glass Plate Negative

In the Big Bag Of Goodies I bought at the weekend, there was a box labelled "Agfa Isopan ISS" and an expiry date of September 1939, which is when WWII kicked off. When I opened the box, I found not Isopan ISS, but a single glass plate negative of a landscape. I scanned it in using my 4990 and was absolutely astonished by the detail. The exposure is spot on, and some sort of filter has been used (or the spectral response was weird, which is also possible) so I think it's been taken by someone who knows what they were doing.
It's a tiny plate, I believe 2 1/2 by 3 1/3 inches in size, with fairly rough edges, so it may have been cut by the photographer from a larger plate- that's just my conjecture though.
Anywho, enough talking, here's the picture. If you feel like editing the levels/curves to give a punchier image, just let me know and I'll send you a high-res TIFF file. I'm not that great with PS etc., so I'd love to see what can be done with this. The image contains so much detail and isn't blocked up in either highlights or shadows, I'm sure something fantastic could be done with it.
I might even make you a lumen print as reward, if you do something nice.

If you want to see it larger, look here.

Oh, and if you have any idea where this is, tell me!

Lumen Prints

I bought two carrier bags full of very old (at a guess 1960s) photo paper (and some other goodies) at Tynemouth flea market this weekend (Jan 22/23 2011) and since I needed to look at a sheet from each box to see if it had been exposed, I decided to make some Lumen prints. Some are plants, some are prints from film negatives.
The recipe I used for this was:
0) Get your paper out of the packet without exposing any of the rest of the paper. Use a dark bag/darkroom.
Everything else in daylight:
1) Put whatever you're using to make your photogram on top of the paper.
2) Put glass on top of that, if you can
3) Leave in sunlight until the paper gets dark (I used about 45 mins, but should probably have waited longer).
4) Fix in rapid fixer (this significantly lightens the image).
5) Wash in running water, then dry.

Sage and Onion, Lumen Print, 23rd Jan 2010, Kodak Bromesko

Here are more results:
All so far are done on old Kodak paper, which is no longer produced.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/msmoynihan/sets/72157625773448257/

50 years old

On the 1st of August 2009, I loaded into my Duaflex II a roll of 620 Tri-X. The reason I mention that it was in August 2009 was that I'd specifically chosen that date. The date was chosen because the roll had expired in August 1959, making the film exactly 50 years out of date.
I shot the film whilst visiting my grandparents, whilst at my parents' home, whilst on holiday in Spain, and in Northumberland, around Lindisfarne.
I didn't get round to developing the film, for a while, and during that time my grandfather passed away, leaving the latent image of him still on the undeveloped film, like a ghost.
I wasn't sure whether I'd get any images at all, and was scared that I'd ruin the precious ghost by developing wrongly.
The other day, I eventually decided that enough was enough. I'd waited long enough to develop this roll (about 18 months) and that I was going to do it. Any development of film this old was going to be a guess, so I took the time on the TMax developer bottle for new TX, and added a bit more, for luck.
I developed for 7:30, agitating continually for the first 30s, then for 5s every 30s thereafter.
I fixed and washed the film, before finally putting in the wetting agent for the final rinse.
I pulled the reel from the tank, glistening, wet.
There was a moment, my heart in my mouth, where I thought that the old film was blank. I couldn't see anything but fog and wet film. But then! I noticed an image, on the outside of the reel. It was the image I'd worried about so much, and been so desperate to salvage. At that point, I would have been happy if the rest of the roll had been destroyed by bacteria or age, but as I gently pulled the tacky film from the reel, I could see more and more faint, blotchy images appearing; boats, castles, seasides. I was in luck.
I hung the negative to dry from a coathanger in my bathroom, my breath baited in case the old images decided to fade, as sometimes they do.
As soon as the film was no-longer dripping (but the emulsion was still tacky), I got that first image into the scanner, and saw my ghost, as clear as, well, a foggy day.

Once I'd scanned that image, I hung the film up again, to dry properly overnight. I had a record of my image, and I was happy.
Here is a link to the rest of the images. I hope you like them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/msmoynihan/sets/72157625740561427/

Prinzpan (FP3 or 4) expired May 1970

Hallo, I shot some Prinzpan 120 film in the summer in my Yashicamat-124G.
The film is, as far as I can tell, rebranded FP3 or FP4. Its expiry date is May 1970, which is around the time of the changeover from FP3 to FP4, so I suspect that it might have been old FP3 stock sold off cheaper through DIxons (a British high-street electronics retailer).
Anywho, I exposed at 125 (I think, I might have been a little more generous with exposure, but not a lot), and decided not to send the film off in the envelope that was included with it for development at the bargain-basement cost of 6p (about 10c in American terms) because I suspected that the address might be dead by now, 40 years later.
I souped it the other night in Rodinal 1+50 for 17:30, agitating continually for the first 30s, then 10s once every minute.
I extended a bit from an FP4+ time of 15:00, to account for the age of the film and possible fogging, but I think that actually 15:00 might have been spot-on, as there was virtually no fog, and the negs came out a little bit contrasty.
Anywho, here are my images, in case you're interested as to what this funny old film can achieve.

Prinzpan (1970)

Right!

There we go. I've rescued all the posts that Google cache has still got in its archives. There's quite a lot of content there, and it's all unordered because I just posted it as I found it. Next for a real post!

ISOPAN F - UPDATE

Originally posted SUNDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 2010

ISOPAN F - UPDATE

I've finally uploaded the whole reel of Isopan F onto Flickr, thanks to my brother's birthday present to me- pro membership (and hence more upload capacity). If you want to take a look, check out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/msmoynihan/sets/72157623310828153/
Please, if that link doesn't work, LEAVE A COMMENT so that I can fix it!
Hope it's of interest to someone!

Beier Beirette Junior 2

ORIGINALLY POSTED THURSDAY, 23 JULY 2009

Beier Beirette Junior 2

Picture from Camerapedia.
I would take my own, but my digital camera has died, I hope that the original photographer doesn't mind.

Decided to do a review of this little camera. I picked it up in a charity shop in Rayleigh for, IIRC, £5.50. I mainly bought it because it looks nice.

It's small, it's pretty and it comes in a neat little leather/plastic case, which despite being a never-ready case is actually pretty useful.

The lens on my Beirette is a slightly superior one to the one on the camera in the picture above. Mine is an E.Ludwig 45mm "Meritar" lens, which opens up to f/2.9, slightly wider than the f/3.5 above. It stops down to f/22. It will focus as close as 2 feet, with the DoF extending nearer than (~1') that if you stop down enough.

The shutter is a "Junior 2" with three speeds - 30, 60, 125 and a B setting. To be honest, how many more speeds do you actually need, unless you're shooting in bright sun with fast film?

The shutter has a double exposure lock, so that you can't expose the same frame twice. Unfortunately it's not infallible, especially if you don't wind the winder fully in one smooth go. That way you get three pictures over 2 frames, if you're unlucky. It has a cable-release socket as well, for if you want to take long exposures, or remotely trigger the shutter.

The view finder is absolutely minute, the window being about 3mm x 6mm. When I got mine, the tiny, weeny viewfinder was totally clouded, with what I assume must be cigarette tar. The camera doesn't smell of smoke, but I can't think what else would cause that discolouration which scratched off with a thumbnail quite easily. Unfortunately, the internal sides of the glass in the viewfinder also have this crap on them, which obviously I can't remove without dismantling the whole thing. I'm not that fussed really, I can see a sort of yellowed image through the viewfinder, and as everyone who's ever used any kind of camera that's not SLR will know, the viewfinder doesn't give much better than a good guess as to what's going to be in your picture.

Interestingly enough, the viewfinder does have two settings, one for "N" and the other for "∞". Where "infinity" ends and "near" begins, I have no idea, but it's fairly irrelevant since changing between modes makes little, if any, difference to what you can see through the viewfinder, except that in "infinity" mode, you can't see quite as much of the lens barrel in the corner of the view.

There's a flash cable socket on the lens barrel and a cold-shoe on the top. If I can get my old-style bulb-flash working, I might put it on this camera, because they're both pretty stylish.

The winder knob has a reminder dial on it with film speeds in DIN and types of film. In order to rewind the film, you have to push a little switch underneath the winder from "T" to "R" (whatever they might stand for), then lift up the winder and twist to unlock the advance mechanism. Another wheel on the LHS is for rewinding the film into the canister. If you pull up the LHS wheel there's two vertical pins. You can spin these around to bring the frame counter back to zero.

Talking of film, I should probably discuss loading this camera. Opening the back is a bit of a puzzle (well, maybe just for me). If you look at the picture of the camera at the top, there's a bar along the RHS of the camera, it looks like it might move up and down, or hinge out. It doesn't. You have to twist it laterally, so that the bottom comes towards you and the top moves away. This kind of prises the back off the camera, which isn't hinged and just comes off as a whole piece. This took me and several other people quite a while to work out. Once you finally are inside, there's a flappy pressure plate hinged to the inside of the camera. It's a bit weird, but there we go. Loading is pretty simple, as long as you make sure that the film goes under the flap, not over it, and that it engages the sprocket holes with the sprockets on the cog.

Anywho, it produces really nice pictures, sharp, as long as you guess the focussing distance accurately enough (UPDATE: It doesn't, see below). There's a DoF scale on the lens, so you can work out what'll be in focus at the aperture you've chosen. I ran a roll of chromogenic BW film through this because there's no meter and it has good latitude for those who have to guess their exposures. It's also pretty fast so it's OK to stop down a bit for more DoF. Will add some photos from it when I can find them, as I last used it about 6mths ago.

I've just found the pictures. It seems I'd confused my memory of a different camera's results. The pictures I got from this camera weren't great. Most of them were blurred, although I think this was more due to the badly placed shutter release than bad focussing. Pressing the shutter release basically jars the camera. Not great for keeping things blur-free. Even on small 6x4 prints it was obvious. There were several totally blank frames on the roll - I think this is probably more due to a lack of a meter, and optimistic light estimations rather than a shutter fault. There were about 2 crisp, sharp photos on the roll, but I think an 18:1 success rate is pretty low. If you could be bothered to carry a release cable with this camera, it might fare considerably better, but then it loses half its charm, of being small, stylish and easy to use.

Oh, it is a very quiet camera, so for those of you who worry about that sort of thing, it might be OK...

Kodak 5302 "Fine Grained Positive Release"

ORIGINALLY POSTED TUESDAY, 28 JULY 2009

Kodak 5302 "Fine Grained Positive Release"

I was given this in a film swap from a kindly flickrite named Chris Beauchemin, who had bought 100' of it and wasn't quite sure what he was going to do with ~800 exposures worth of incredibly slow film, only sensitive to blue and without an anti-halation backing. Despite its name, when you develop it, you get a negative. It can be used to make b/w slides by photographing other negatives, since the filmbase is clear once developed. Before development, it's an eerie white colour, a bit like glow in the dark plastic, but without the green phosphorescence.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/msmoynihan/sets/72157623456848976/

In all of the pictures, the sky is plain white because it's actually blue and thus massively exposing the film, unlike everything else, which just reflects smaller amounts of blue from the sky.
Unfortunately, a few frames on this roll were ruined because I loaded the camera in sunshine (clever). The light piped down the film and fogged a few images. This is because there is no anti-halation layer to stop light piping. A similar thing occurs if you load Kodak's HIE in daylight, as that also lacks an AH layer.
Anywho, thanks Chris, it was great fun playing with something new.

Trichrome in HP5+

ORIGINALLY POSTED SUNDAY, 19 JULY 2009

Trichrome in HP5+

On a roll of HP5+ I shot two trichrome images (it was a short roll).
Trichromes are produced by making 3 B/W exposures through different coloured filters, then combining them to make a colour image. I've done this using GIMP, but it can be done optically -Technicolour, one of the first colour moving images was done this way, re-projecting the B/W images through coloured filters to make an additive colour image.

Even a hundred years ago (pretty much immediately after the invention of the panchromatic emulsion) Prokudin-Gorski was making trichrome images in Czarist Russia. His work is as impressive now as it was when he first made it, as they are pretty much the only colour images from that time. His work includes the only colour picture of Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace.

Whilst Gorski would have had to make his own filters, I just used ones I bought from the shops. I shot one image through a Red (#25) filter, one through a green and one through a blue filter. Apparently I chose a particularly good film for trichromy, because HP5+ has a good, broad spectral response.

I developed the film in ID-11 1:1 (having exposed at EI400) and got my brother to scan it.

Unfortunately, the red layer of one of the trichromes was half-obliterated because the film had been exposed at the end whilst I was bulk-loading, but I did get one image and I'm pretty pleased with it. In the distance, some things don't line up exactly because the camera must have moved a little bit, but I love the way that the sea glistens with different colours as it has rippled between exposures (harris shutter effect).

Here's the finished result: the weather was clear blue sky and bright sun. It's taken on the pier leading to Tynemouth lighthouse in N.E. England.

HP5 (Not Plus) June 1985, SFX and Verichrome Pan Found Film

Originally posted SATURDAY, 7 NOVEMBER 2009

HP5 (Not Plus) June 1985 and SFX

Found this roll at the flea market a while back. Was going to shoot it, but realised that the leader was retracted, and when I got it out, it was kinked as if it had been loaded. Thus I developed it, rather than shoot it.
Developed in DD-X 1+4 for 10 mins @ 20C (HP5+ is supposed to have 9). Developed at the same time as an expired roll of SFX that I shot through a red #25 filter on Lindisfarne a couple of weeks ago, hence the slight overdevelopment (SFX needs 10m when exposed at EI200). Agitated continuously for 30s, then 10s every minute thereafter.
SFX seems to have come out nicely, but the HP5 was unexposed, except for 3 frames at the beginning, plus a fogged leader. Someone must have loaded this sometime around "Live Aid", before I was even born, and then changed rolls after a couple of shots and never got round to reloading it.
Two of the three shots are unrecognisable blur, the third appears to be a landscape including some cliffs, but it needs scanning really to see what it actually is.
An adventure nonetheless!

Found Film - Verichrome Pan

You join me halfway through development of some Verichrome Pan. You were going to be here the whole time, but I spent the last 10 minutes wrestling with wireless internet, so you only get the last 4 mins.
I bought a Kodak six-20 brownie at the flea market today for about a quid because there was a roll of (from the red window) "PAN--->" inside it. I thought it was probably VP because it's common and it looked like Kodak font.
Decided upon a developing tome of 15mins in D76 1+1 at 15C...
To be continued after I drain the dev...
Right, fixing...
So yeah, I've developed it as I said, low temp to reduce fogging, 1+1 to reduce fogging, perhaps, that's a guess.
Anywho, when I got the camera, the winder was jammed, so I opened the camera in a darkbag and removed the film. The cause of the jam was pretty obvious, even in the dark: a 120 film had been loaded in a 620 camera. Evidently the previous owner had not paid attention to the sticker saying "CAUTION: Be sure you get '620' film". I marked the backing paper at the point where the film was behind the lens, (turned out to be at 6/8, so most of the film was used). The backing paper was purple at the end and yellow in the middle. This, combined with the font lets me date the film as being from the sometime around the 1970s. Because of the kludge with 120 film, the edge of the film was somewhat mangled, making it fun to load onto the reels. Having sat in the camera for 40 years or so meant that the film also kinked where it went over the roller.
Hopefully it hasn't touched itself during development...
Anywho, time for a rinse and I'll let you know what happens! Am very excited to see what kind of boring holiday snaps I might have saved from photonic oblivion!
Having looked at the inside of the case, it's nice to see that the camera has been serviced, according to a sticker inside. Unfortunately, it was last serviced in 1950, which might explain the sticky shutter it now has.

OKAY, so out of the rinse they come - a photo of someone's granny, a cat on a wall and a couple of frames of murk, which might resolve itself into something image-like as it dries. Not Ansel Adams' lost work, but still pretty nice to have saved a couple of old images from oblivion. It's funny to think that the lady in the picture is now almost certainly dead, and her grandchild - presumably who took this picture - is now middle-aged and rarely thinks about his old gran, memories faded; "they fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day".

Voigtlander Brillant

ORiginally posted THURSDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2009

Voigtlander Brillant

Picked this up at a flea market for a fiver. Not shot with it yet, but am looking forward to doing so. It's one of the lateish models and is made of Bakelite. Didn't realise until I got it home that there's a little door on the side of it that contains a yellow "cloud" filter and containED an extinction meter.

You'd clip the meter over the top lens and see which number/letter was the dimmest one you could see. You then transfer that number across to a table, and look up what aperture/shutter to use. Neat, huh?

The flap on the left hand side of the chimney keeps coming off, but with a tiny bit of solder/araldite on the end of its hinge pin, it should be OK. It works, except that the hinge pin keeps coming out because the "Voigtlander" plaque isn't on the front any more, unfortunately.

When I got it, various bits were sluggish, but literally a drop of lighter fluid has freed everything up, and now the shutter fires nicely (tested against a metronome on lower speeds, and eyeballed at higher speeds) and the "automatic film transport" also works.

"Automatic film transport sounds pretty advanced for a camera designed in 1932!" you might think. Well, it is pretty advanced, but it's also pretty pointless. There's a little red window on the back like normal, except there's a difficult-to-manuoevre internal cover for it, which you put in place with a twist of a very flat knob. The idea is that you put the film in and wind it until you can see the "1" in the window. You then cover the window, and reset the counter to 1 with a little lever, (which now actually resets, rather than jams, thanks to lighter fluid). Once you've shot frame 1, you push a little lever to release the advance knob, advance the film, and the movement of the film across a little cog engages a ratchet that stops the winding knob when you've advanced enough. In theory. We'll see whether this still actually works, or if I end up with horrendously overlapped frames (or overshooting the end of the roll). So there you go, it's not very automatic, but it does save you the huge hassle of looking to see when to stop winding. It might speed up shooting a frame by a whole, oh, second or so.

The focus is the classic guess/estimate style, so should probably stop down a bit, since the distance markings on the edge of the lens are somewhat faint with age. Opens pretty wide, to f/4.5 and is calibrated down to f/16, but will actually stop down to somewhere around f/22.

This baby is pre-flash synch, so if you want to use a flash, you have to have your subject in pretty much total darkness, then open the shutter, fire the flash, then shut the shutter. All in all, probably better off just waiting until it's a bit sunnier. The camera has both B and T modes, and shutter speeds from 1-1/300 seconds, which appear to be roughly correct. There's a lever to cock the shutter and a lever to fire it. There's also a cable-release socket, which might be handy.

The bottom of the camera has a tripod socket, but it's one of the old German size ones, luckily fitted with an adaptor to allow use of the smaller modern tripod screws.

The viewfinder is a lot like that of my Kodak Duaflex II, but doesn't work so well at close viewing distances (you get a weird distortion and can see inside the lens barrel). It's not a groundglass, but a lens projecting an image up towards the user. There's little arrows on each side at halfway points so that you can line up the horizon. There is also a sports-finder, which doesn't lock open any more - I think something has snapped off the catch, but those things are useless anyway, so it's no great loss. There's a little table of distances vs apertures, showing depth of field at different focussing distances using different apertures. Fairly useful, if slow. Oddly, for a German camera, the distances on the lens/table are in feet and inches, rather than metric, and the writing is in English. Obviously intended for export, despite the lack of an "I" in the word BRILLANT stamped across the front of the camera. Maybe they thought nobody would notice...
Just realised that it also says "GERMANY" on the bottom, as opposed to "DEUTSCHLAND" or "ALLEMAGNE", so it's definitely for export to an anglophone country.

Will post some pictures once I've used it (which may take some time).

Developing Agfa Isopan F

Originally posted WEDNESDAY, 15 APRIL 2009

Developing Agfa Isopan F

Having been very generously donated some Agfa Isopan F, dating from "some time in the forties" by a fellow flickrite, I decided to shoot and develop it.
I was told that the film is on a nitrate base - the kind you famous for spontaneously combusting simply because it got old - and that its deterioration gave a nice swirling pattern in the background of the pictures. Deterioration is bad with nitrate films; it increases the likelyhood that they will catch fire.
I decided to test the film to find out whether it was actually nitrate. After I'd developed it, I took the leader outside, wedged it between two pebbles and touched a lighted match to the top of it.
Of all the film types, nitrate is the only one which will burn down, and the only one which is easy to ignite. As soon as the match touched it, it burst into sizzling yellow flames and burnt down towards the pebble with a streetlight-yellow flame. I'd better be careful where I store this stuff...

Anywho, the film started off with a DIN rating of 17 degrees (ASA40), so due to its age I had overexposed and shot the film at EI6 (yes, six) because that's the lowest that my camera could meter for - I suppose I could have used the "exposure adjustment" setting to overexpose by another couple of stops, but having seen the negatives, I don't think this would have been much better.
Obviously the extreme slowness of the film meant that I was limited as to where I could shoot it: outdoors in the full sun.
36 exposures later, I'm then looking for a development time. The only references I could find to developing this film was a couple of posts on APUG - one guy said he'd recently (i.e. this century) developed some for 17m in D76 and had good results, another said he'd found an old document suggesting 9m in D76, which was a time current for the manufacture. I also found a pdf of an instruction booklet for an Agfa home-developing kit from what I presume was the 60s, suggesting a time in Rodinal of (I think) 14m with what appeared to be a suggestion of constant agitation.
Since Rodinal is pretty much unobtainable in the UK, except through one shop in London, I opted for the D-76 method (which I handily had the best part of a gallon of sitting in my bathroom, all mixed up).
Agitating for the first minute, and then 10s every minute in stock D-76 (well actually ID-11, but they're the same) and with extra long fixing and washing to account for the extra thickness of the old emulsion, I tentatively went to lift the reel out of the dev tank.
Well, at first glance it looked totally black- not promising at all - but as I carefully pulled the negatives from the reel, it became clear that I definitely did have some fairly decent looking negatives, albeit with quite a high base fog, which as the film is drying in my bathroom now has reduced slightly.
When I scan the pictures I'll let you know how they've actually turned out, the deterioration of the emulsion is obvious as a shimmery swirling pattern that actually looks quite a lot like drying marks, but isn't, since a) the negs are still a bit wet and b) I used wetting agent for a final rinse.

First Post of New Blog

Well, even though I hadn't posted on msmoynihan.blogspot.com for a while, I was somewhat narked to find that it has disappeared. I think it might have something to do with the fact that it was made through  my now-ex-girlfriend's google account, rather than one of my own. Oh well, you live and learn.
This is my ALL-NEW BLOG ADDRESS! Unfortunately, I had to chose my own name for the address, as every actually-interesting blog address was already taken by defunct blogs with no content. Cheers guys!
Anywho, I'm sorry, but all of the posts I made before are now lost in the aether, although I'll try to recover as many as possible from the Google Cache before it disappears. Look out for old-posts appearing here soon...