The RedCam

Ahh, memories.. This process of pulling out old band videotapes to put up on my YouTube account is hella risky in this chaos-soaked environment, and I shoulda known it. It kicks up the ghosts that call on you to remember so many things that were safely buried in time. Hell, they even coalesce into reality and message you on Facebook with a mission to burn the memories into silicon chips and bust open a beer sometime soon to catch up. The Ghost needs the memories because his perished in flames just six months ago. If the Engineer calls me up, then things will quite certainly get weird, just by the magic of confluence. It would be difficult to deny the meaning of such a staggeringly improbable coincidence of a Finder, Engineer and Ghost triad reuniting after so many years. 

“the Finder finds the paths
the Engineer engineers the doors
the Ghost keeps the souls and brings us back from the Void…”

So anyway, over to the shelf full of binder-books full of old CDROMS/DVDROMS, my data backup choice since the turn of the century. It’s at times like these that I’m glad I bothered to label my disks semi-intelligently. A few hours of paging through the silver disks netted me all of the digitized memories that The Ghost needs…

But doing so also shook loose more ghosts, not manifest (yet, anyway), digital conversions of VHS tapes of Super-8 movies from my childhood in the late 60’s through about the 80’s. Folders of photos, WAVs, video, text documents and formats for which I would have no hope of recovering – VS800 files, Hammerhead data, Cakewalk bundles and a dozen other file extensions I don’t even recognize anymore…

On the plus side, I also found a folder simply labelled “REDCAM2002”, which was full of interesting photos. I had some sort of digital camera that was capable of infrared using some process I’ve forgotten. It might have been the Minolta DImage 5, which I still have (though nonfunctional for a decade). 

hey look, it’s Einstein, the 1956 Smith-Corona Silent with math keyboard!

Heh, early digital cameras, what fun. I may have used a rubylith sheet to serve as a cheap IR cutoff filter, judging from the deep red tint of the resulting photos. Not sure where the scan lines come from, but apparently that was a feature.

Anyhow, I’m still hoping I can avoid manifesting any more ghosts for Christmas, but knowing how strong the undercurrent is, I’ll probably be besieged worse than poor Scrooge. :D

Updated: December 28, 2017 — 9:35 pm

4 Comments

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  1. It’s like finding a box of old photos and the dyes have changed or the B & W has somehow darkened. Finding old archived things is always fun. The scan lines add character to the images.

  2. At least, contrary to the story of Scrooge, your ghosts are quite friendly and ready to sing “Auld Lang Syne” as you all raise a toast. The infrared photos are neat, I’ve never seen that sort of thing before.

  3. Anything that is retro is worth pursuing. By definition, it’s in the past, but like opening a cardboard box from the corners of the attic, it evokes memories otherwise left to slumber. These images fascinate me. Like opening a casket. Thank you for this full of wonder trip!

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