License To Kill.... Errr, Shoot

To shoot with a spy camera, that is.  You've seen the nifty little spy cameras that James Bond uses in the movies, they are totally cool!  Well, here's some tiny cameras of my own that are pretty small and easily hidden.  And they really work.

This is the first subminiature camera I ever got, a Rollei 16 - you may recognize it:

Yes, it's the same camera that Carl Kolchak used on The Night Stalker.  Although his pictures hardly ever turned out, this camera can take very good images.  It's a well-made piece of solid metal that was manufactured in Germany in the 1960s and has lots of useful features on it.  Here's a photograph I took with it, and even though it's only 16mm, it still takes surprisingly clear photos:

 

My second example is a Minolta-16 II.  It has the clever push/pull action to arm the shutter and advance the film like you've seen James Bond do a hundred times.  It has adjustable apertures and shutter speeds and it's fully manual - it doesn't need batteries to work:

One look at this next image I took with it will convince you that it would, indeed, work well as a spy camera.  If you're needing to photograph top secret documents, you definitely need clarity in your camera:

It's so clear, you can read every label on these spices.

My last example isn't a "spy camera" per se, but it actually came about because of the scarce conditions in Japan just after World War II.  Everything was hard to come by because Japan was recovering from the war and items such as film were scarce and expensive.  So the clever Japanese invented a tiny camera that used tiny amounts of film.  They called it a "Hit" camera.  In Japanese, Hit means "hand."  I suppose because you can hold one of these cameras in your hand.  They're only a little over an inch high:

Needless to say, with a negative only 14mm x 14mm, it doesn't take very clear pictures.  But, they do work.  Here's one I took outside my house when I first got it.  I suspect it can do better than this and I need to try shooting with it some more and find out:

So, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, my spy camera arsenal.  I guess I could search the want ads and see if anybody needs a good, capable spy.  Because I already own some of the equipment I would need.

Turko de Mayo XII

It's getting close that favorite holiday of mine, Turko de Mayo.  It's observed in May and it's been on my mind.  Because of that, I realized I hadn't posted anything about a few earlier versions.  So, to rectify that error, here is Turko de Mayo XII, which I celebrated on May 25th, 2021.  Here is what the turkey looked like that year:

I live alone, so I usually only cook a smaller turkey; it's more than enough for me.  Once everything was prepared and ready to eat, I positioned everything around my dining room table for the proverbial "money shot."  Here are all the items I had:  Turkey, mashed potatoes and turkey gravy, green beans with smoked sausage, stuffing, cranberry sauce and homemade Texas Roadhouse rolls.  Plus fresh pumpkin pie for dessert.  Doesn't it all look yummy?

Of course, a plate will only hold so much, so here is what I chose for my first serving.  A little of this and a little of that:

I think that I may have mentioned before that this combination of foods is my favorite meal of all.  That's why I fix it twice a year; for Turko de Mayo and Thanksgiving - which is what it actually is.

Greek Foods

Something I like is Greek cuisine.  There used to be a Greek restaurant close by that I liked to visit, but they moved somewhere else.  But that won't bother me too much because there are a couple dishes that I make at home to satisfy any craving for Greek food that I may have.  A main course and a dessert - perfect!

The first and favorite of mine are Gyros - a wrap of pita bread filled with lamb meat, tomatoes and with a cucumber sauce.  I make it all homemade, as fresh items always seem to taste better.  Here is a shot of some pita bread I made recently:

 

And here is what a finished gyro looks like.  I can guarantee they are very tasty:

Of course, for any meal, you must have dessert afterwards.  A Greek pastry that I really like and have made, is called Loukoumades.  They're deep-fried and then sprinkled with powdered sugar.  They come out looking like this and are mouthwatering, for sure:

 

So, there you have it - two dishes that will satisfy any cravings for Greek food you might have.

Total Eclipse - April 8th, 2024

 My area was blessed with, not one, but two total eclipses in the last few years - one in 2017, and the other on April 8th, 2024.  If you've never experienced one, it's a strange and wonderful phenomenon to witness.  You don't notice it at first, but after a while, you sense everything getting a little dimmer.  You can see the sun is being chipped away, a little at first, and then more until it's all gone.  The sound around you dies down and everything is lit just a little bit - enough that it looks eerie.  It's a hard feeling to describe, but here is what it looks like.  There are two pictures as it starts to be eclipsed, one of totality, when the moon is covering the sun's disc perfectly, and then one last one as the moon keeps moving away from the sun.  As I said, it's a truly awesome experience.

 

 

At first, you don't notice that it's getting darker.

By this point, you know it's getting close.

Those few seconds of totality seems to make the world stand still.  It's an awesome experience.

By this point, that feeling that washed over you is still hanging around, but dissipating.

If you ever get a chance to witness a total eclipse of the sun, don't miss it!  It's something that happens to a person very rarely, but when it does, you'll never forget it.

Nineteenth Annual Ten Commandments Post

For this year's Ten Commandments post, I thought I would highlight a certain scene from the movie that has a significance for people even to this day.  The night before the Israelites were to leave Egypt, they were instructed to paint lamb's blood around their door.  In this way, God would "pass over" their house and not inflict the final plague decreed by the Pharaoh; that each firstborn should die.  And on that night, they had one last meal before they left.  This has become known as Passover.  Here is the scene from the movie where they were celebrating this Passover meal:

 

The Passover meal is celebrated to this day.  My church, even though we're Southern Baptists, celebrate it at our church as well.  Here are some pictures that show what it is like.  These pictures were taken in 2022 when we still had our pastor as pictured below.  He led the ceremony.  In this first picture, he is talking about the unleavened bread, which had to be prepared without yeast because of the haste needed:

Here is what we used for the unleavened bread, it was like an unsalted cracker:

 

At this point, a drop of wine, or in our case, grape juice, is used to represent the ten plagues:

We dip the end of our finger in the wine and put a drop on a napkin to signify each plague:

Some of the foods the Israelites must have eaten will have included some of these items.  Dates, prunes, olives, grapes, eggs, lamb meat and possibly two different soups:  Matzah Ball soup and Lentil soup:

 

A closeup of the Matzah Ball soup.  The Matzah balls are made of matzah meal, eggs and fat and served in a flavored chicken broth:

 

               

 

So, that is the typical Passover meal.  I celebrated it at my church this past Wednesday evening.  Of course, during my annual viewing of The Ten Commandments movie this Sunday night, my personal tradition for Easter has been a meal of ham and Baby Swiss cheese on rye bread, mashed potatoes and stuffing or a vegetable of some kind.  Something like this:

 

Enjoy the dinner and the movie!

God Bless The U.S.A.

 

Donald J. Trump surviving an assassination attempt at a rally he held in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13th, 2024.  This should be what the next issue of Time Magazine should look like.

Eighteenth Annual Ten Commandments Post

Being that time of the year again, I'm posting about my all-time favorite movie - The Ten Commandments once again.  I've seen it so many times that I forget just how many times I have seen it.  But I have to tell you, when this mountain comes on the screen at the opening of the movie, I start getting geared up to see it once again:

Now, most people are used to seeing this logo for the opening of your usual Paramount movie:

But, since the director of The Ten Commandments, Cecil B. De Mille, made epic motion pictures, he got his own customized Paramount logo to open the film:

I can't describe the feeling it gives me, even though I've seen it many times before.  But the title screen comes on and I'm ready for almost a four hour ride once again:

So tune in to ABC, (if they're showing it again this year), or grab your VHS tape, or your DVDs or Bluray discs and join me for the ride.