The Loot
I now possess a Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super, an SLR from the late 1950′s. At the time, the camera cost a Mr L. Cole (as seen from a removed punch-sticker silhouette on the case) around $250 – almost $2000 in today’s dollars. And here it is, in my hands, from a flea market. Makes you wonder about your quaint iPads and iPhones.

Of course, the baby didn’t come with an instruction manual. Thankfully, I live in the age of the internet and managed to find a site which had zipped jpegs of each page! The site seems to have been completely inactive since the early 2000′s so I took the liberty of stitching the jpegs into a pdf.

Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super Manual

The rest of the camera seems to be working just fine. The whole thing is quite a feat of German engineering. However, there seems to be some speckles of dirt when I look through the viewfinder, and I can’t quite figure out if I should even attempt to remove the front lens for cleaning. Hopefully, the speckles are on the prism or on viewfinder’s window, rather than on the inside of the lenses. Otherwise, my pictures might emerge with charming freckles.

During Christmas break, I had these delicious cookies at Joe’s grandmother’s made of chinese noodles coated in butterscotch. Since I’ve always loved a little East-meets-West, I asked for the recipe and found that it’s one of the easiest snacks to make!

What you need
2 x 12oz butterscotch bits (you can find this in supermarket baking or
desserts/candy section)
2 cups nuts (peanuts work best, but other nuts can also be used)
2 cups Chinese noodles (the crunchy yellow kind)
Toasted sesame seeds

What to do
Melt the butterscotch in a double boiler – that is, bring a pot of water to a boil  and sit another bowl in it and whisk the bits.
Stir in the nuts and broken bits of chinese noodles.
Scoop out onto wax paper with a spoon and sprinkle top with sesame seeds.
Let cool, and enjoy!

Why haven’t I heard of Cloud Cult until today? It’s okay. I have the rest of my life to listen to the playlist, I suppose.

From Neurocognitive Consequences of Sleep Deprivation by Jeffrey S. Durmer, et. al.:

Table 1 Summary of Broad Cognitive Performance Effects of Sleep Deprivation
- Involuntary microsleeps occur
- Attention-intensive performance is unstable with increased errors of omission and commission
- Cognitive slowing occurs in subject-paced tasks, while time pressure increases cognitive errors
- Response time slows
- Both short-term recall and working memory performances decline
- Reduced learning (acquisition) of cognitive tasks
- Performance requiring divergent thinking deteriorates
- Response suppression errors increase in tasks primarily subserved by prefrontal cortex
- Response perseveration on ineffective solutions is more likely
- Increased compensatory effort is required to remain behaviorally effective
- Tasks may be begun well, but performance deteriorates as task duration increases
- There is growing neglect of activities judged to be nonessential (loss of situational awareness)

#1: The Limousines – “Internet Killed the Video Star”

#2: Yeasayer – “ONE”

#3: Matt & Kim – “Daylight”

#4: Metric – “Black Sheep”

#5 Major Lazer – “Pon De Floor”

Pon De Floor featuring Afro Jack & VYBZ Cartel from Mad Decent on Vimeo.

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Besides than the endless conversations, the whole trip was a blur of food, friends, desserts, movie trailers, more food, freebies, dancing pirates, snacks, and even more food. I haven’t quite gotten over the feeling of being stuffed. Maybe I’ll recover sometime next month. Maybe.

Anyways, Kitky did a great job recording almost everything we ate in her blogpost. Frankly, after reading through the post and looking at the pictures, I’m surprised none of us ended up at a hospital with a ruptured stomach. We ate that much. So much for developing nations, poverty and starvation eh?

Coulton is also wildly popular amongst the World of Warcraft crowd, apparently.

On a side note, Cataclysm comes out tomorrow. Guess who’s not playing…

(Much thanks to Joe – who seems to provide me with an endless stream of content.)

You’ve now been infected by the explosive awesomeness that is chip music and The Pixies.

(Thanks @Joe!)