Back in Business

I just won both flash adaptors to replace the one I broke on Sunday. Someone tried to snipe me on the optical slave adaptor so I didn't get it quite as cheap as I had hoped, but still got a good price. I'm just waiting to hear back from the seller about whether he's willing to combine shipping on the two items.

Fantastic Island

I came across this today. This place is crying out for a film to be shot there.

Behold Hashima Island off the west coast of Japan near Nagasaki. For reasons obvious in this photo the island is also knows as Gunkanjima ("Battleship Island"). Early in the 20th century the island began to be used as the entry-point for coal mines that stretched out from the island under the sea. For a time it became the most densely populated bit of land on the planet, peaking at 5,259 people on the 6.3 hectare island in 1959. 40% of the island was devoted to the industrial workings of the mines with the people living on the other 60%. The population density at its peak in the residential district was 1,391 people per hectare. Compare that to Vancouver's West End which is currently at about 250 people per hectare.

With the mines exhausted the island has been utterly abandoned since 1974. http://www.gunkanjima-odyssey.com is where these spectacular images come from, and there are many more. The text is in Japanese. This article on another site (Cabinet Magazine) gives a brief history of the island in English.

I'm in interesting company

I've been asked to do an interview on Vancouver's "Goth culture" by someone who as part of the same series has interviewed Mark Emery, leader of the Marijuana Party, on "Pot culture"; Susan Davis, chair of Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education (PACE), on the sex trade; and Diane Tobin, president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), on Vancouver drug issues. How I ended up being mentioned in the same breath as these political activists for the sake of a particular musical preference and taste for vintage and downright antiquated clothes, I'm not sure. How does running a website off my desk ultimately based around my liking to wear cravat and a top hat to go dancing to Collide and Peter Murphy compare to getting hauled off by the DEA in a bit of extrajurisdictional imperialism or running the only safe injection site in North America? It's oddly flattering and flat-out odd.