And those pack films produced the types of Polaroid photos that would have benefited from some shaking, since the development was quite a wet process. (Integral film too, but it's all encased in plastic). Older pack films also had to be coated with a fixative that also required drying, so yeah, there was a whole lotta shaking going on.

1) That parties thing? Yeah, that was a metaphor. You might want to look that up.

2) I have a box full of Spectra/Image photos that go back to 1986. They're all clear as the day they were taken.

I bet you're a blast at parties.

Clearly you've never seen the joy in people's faces when you hand them a photo that you've just taken.

I take one of my Polaroids with me to street festivals and such. See a person with a cute puppy or a funny hat or whatever's interesting, take a shot, hand it to them, walk away.

The films from The Impossible Project work, but at this point still need to be considered "experimental". The biggest problem they have yet to conquer is the chemical layer that shields the photo from light immediately after ejection from the camera - aka the opacifier layer.

All the current films require that you immediately protect the film from ambient light while it develops, which definitely kills some of the joy of the original SX70 experience.

Still major amounts of mad props to TIP for saving the film manufacturing equipment from being scrapped and being able to create a whole new film that works even as well as it does, on a shoestring budget in a short amount of time.

Fuji still makes some instant cameras, the Instax and Instax Mini line. The blood-sucking leeches, errrrr, the company that currently owns the Polaroid name rebadges one of the Instax Minis as the Polaroid 300 and sells it at a premium.

The Instax films are not compatible with older Polaroid cameras that use integral films, but Fuji also makes some films that fit the even older Polaroid pack film type cameras (pull the film out, wait 60 seconds, peel, wonder what to do with goopy negative portion).

While you are reading, you should look up "false dichotomy."

Look kids, Big Ben! Parliament!

>When you think of product placement on television you tend to think of cumbersome 1950s examples where the actor would cheesily turn to camera and hold up, say, a bar of soap

No I don't. I think of a scene with the actors driving somewhere, and one says to the other "hey, this is that new CANYONERO with that great NAVISYNCSTAR system, isn't it?" And the dialog just gets worse from there, while the camera lingers lovingly on the vehicles console for a creepily long time.

It's as if there's more than one dialect of English! Maybe they even use English in some other countries.

What is this I don't even.

> was it going to be a Sci-Fi film, or an action film?

As long as it's not a Syfy film!

It's cute that she thinks everybody on FB uses a real name. I'll be sure to pass that along to my friend Charlie Unknown*, and many others.

*Not the actual pseudonym, I wouldn't want somebody to get reported to the bureaucrats....

It's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

The choice of "a" or "an" is dictated by the sound of the following syllable, not based on the letter. Since "utopia" starts with the sound equivalent to "you", then "a" is the proper choice. Similarly, we would say an honor.

(Insert argument about "an historic ..." here).

"Roog" is one of the best stories, ever. I'm also fond of "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford".

And last night I read "The Eyes Have It", which I don't think I'd encountered before.