END!
Raspberyl is literally scaring the shit out of Drossel because _______________________________.
Today was supposed to be a Thursday night where I wasn’t intending to go storytelling stuff to settle some storage issues in my room. However, the library called me to request to have some pictures taken during the storytelling sessions.
It’s been a long time since I was in a storytelling room filled kids and wasn’t the storyteller, and how could I resist the chance to take pictures of the adorable kids!
One of the most rewarding things beside their laughter and smiles is watching them grow up. I’ve been going to the library every week for almost 2 years already and I’ve seen them grow so much over these 2 years.
Of course there are the new comers who don’t know the rules of storytelling sessions; One of them is to not stand up and block everyone behind.
Anyway as I was saying, watching them grow up is really touching. I was looking at the pictures I took a year back and the few who still come back for the weekly sessions of storytelling have grown really really a lot.
You must understand that these kids are 4-6 years old and 1 year is like almost 20% of their whole existence!
Take Gretel here for example; She started coming in March this year and she was a really really shy one. Now she dares to attend the sessions without the accompaniment of her mum!
This brother and sister pair is actually belongs to a sibling of three. The eldest brother in blue is reading something behind his sister. I remember when they first came, the boy just couldn’t sit still and wanted to stick his face into the book every time I turned to a new page. Not to mention that he grabbed my leg once and begged me to read one more story when the session was over. But all’s good now, he’s all nice and friendly (:
This is Charlotte, another shy one originally, has got a very friendly dad. Charlotte tells me her mum likes to buy shoes for the whole family and they have lots of shoes at home.
I don’t know the name for this one but she comes pretty often. Her grandma/mum speaks to me more actually. Her sister is the adorable little one that doesn’t sit down during storytelling sessions.
This one loves to answer “yes” to all my questions.
Questions include “Are there dinosaurs in the zoo”, “Can penguins fly?”, “Do you think I’m 100 years old?” etc etc.
Last but not least, this is sweet little Alexis. She’s the longest regular I know and she’s one little angel. Very attentive, no trouble, and best of all, one of the few who don’t call me uncle. Her grandma is one nice lady too!
So anyway storytelling is pretty awesome. Went for this library event for some awards giving ceremony for volunteers last week and met other volunteers. The demography of the volunteers was really interesting; Many many senior citizens, a only a few young ones. the young ones were still in their Secondary school. However, I met this very pretty volunteer which I regret not taking a picture of and with. Oh well, there’s always next year’s award ceremony right? ^^
A stash of unpublished photos that were taken during a craft preparation session in the library. I remember sitting there for 6 hours cutting and painting while watching Whose Line is it Anyway?
A few months ago I lent my first love, the D40, to a friend of mine. Apparently after my D40′s little excursion, she decided to die. Apparently the shutter cover was paralyzed. I’ve been wanting to send it for repair since the start of the semester break but was too lazy and stuff.
Since I’ll be away from a very long camping trip for the upcoming weeks, I’ve decided to finish all the things which I meant to do by the end of the week. Getting my D40 fixed was one of the top tasks.
My D40 is 2 years old and thus the warranty is kaputt. Not like I remember where I left it either but it doesn’t matter anyway right? So I spent the good half of the evening googling camera repair shops and this was one of the times where Google sensei fails. Hence I took the initiative to google the problem and the solution. Apparently the shutter jamming is a pretty common problem and the way to fix it was to open the camera and grease the gears.
One good thing about having a mum that has an electronic engineer background is that you grow up watching her fix all sorts of electronic equipment at home and you grow to love to do the same and have no qualms about ripping electronic equipment.
I mean, how hard is removing screws from a camera. That being said, my screws were so rusted. Must be the times where I was caught in the rain with my camera, and the dropping of camera into salty sea water etc etc…
Unscrewing is the easy part, but remembering where the screws are supposed to be was the hard one. The screws where of different shape and sizes and I don’t like screws that have different lengths.
The solution was pretty simple. A picture and some labeling. Simple, but troublesome still. But I read somewhere that some guy screwed a long screw into a short screw slot and the made a hole on the circuit board.
There were more screws than this. Had a whole box full of them stuffed with post its and scotch tape.
It was pretty interesting to see the insides of a camera. It definitely looked neater than I expected it to be.
The red gear was the one which was supposed to be lubricated. I initially used WD40 (the red straw like thing) to lubricate the gear. It worked for 4 shots and then the shutter mechanism went back into spasm mode. The best part was that it went back to spasm mode after I screwed everything back.
That meant that I had to lubricate the whole gear system, which meant opening up the camera even further.
So I went back to reopen everything. If you scroll back up to the WD40 picture, you’d notice that the red gear was under this metal plate. I had to remove the metal plate and trust me, it was a pain because I had to remove the back covering of the camera to expose the 2 screws that were connected to the plate.
The most fun part was finding the elusive screws that you had to remove to remove the back plate of the camera. It was a miniature hide-and-seek game. That also means more screws to label.
But at the end of the day, everything comes out.
The red gear is clearly seen, with the white gear, all part of the shutter system.
In the end, I decided to use a this awesome liquid to lubricate the whole mechanism. Took many many drops and lots of time to lubricate everything.
Then I let the whole camera system rest overnight, and this morning, it was working perfectly. Ok, maybe not perfectly, the shutter sounds like a 99 year old person, sounds sluggish, but at least the camera works now!
Satisfying to repair your own broken stuff!
And this is the other magical liquid after superglue.