Sunday, April 26, 2020

Our V-1 Pulse jet engine adventure.



I know why now..
We learned from our failed pulse jet. (True story.)
This is the same type of engine that powered the V1 bombs over London in 1939.
We made one in our mechanical laboratory, after hours, at my mechanical engineering university in Sweden in 1962. (Name withheld, there may still be angry neighbours around looking for us.)
We started with a 25 mm diametre round steel bar, drilled it out and machined the conical areas. It was only two pieces with the round single flapper valve on a stem with a spring in between.
We got full marks for our excellent machining and creating perfect threads.

The spark plug and magneto ignition system came from a “retired” 50 cc moped engine. We took the piston out and put the engine output shaft on an electric drill, held in a vice. It vibrated badly for the lack of the rod and piston but spun freely.
We secured the pulse engine in a bench vice, pointing into the open space.
The fuel was kerosene and we started it by wiggling a compressed air hose in front, held by a hand with an asbestos glove (Who knew about Asbestos then?)
It eventually started, ran with deafening noise and almost blew out the window at the other end of the room, about ten metres away. The room filled with kerosene exhaust.
All windows were open for all runs after the first one.
We run it several times in succession, but only for a few seconds each time. The running problem was to get a steady fuel flow. We never had a chance to correct that little fuel system engineering flaw.
(I wear hearing aids now. Was my hearing loss initiated then?)
We were all infused with kerosene smell and black soot.
This was done long after dark. The building caretaker came and started screaming at us.
We had to come back, wash down the walls, pay for our own paint, and make the walls look better a few days later.
Kerosene made black soot, but you knew that?
We never checked for thrust then, and never had a chance again. It did blow out a lot of black air, though.
I’m sure that one of my colleagues still have the engine, sans ignition system, somewhere.
The question in our department was, should we be punished or congratulated on our “initiative”.
Nobody of authority said anything harsh and we all graduated a year later


Wednesday, April 15, 2020

For new immigrants to Canada to know

Posted on Quora by Koyel Ranu on 2021-02-15


For new immigrants to Canada with no previous family, friends, or job there (actual immigrants, not students/visitors), how did they decide where to move to within Canada? What factors did they consider? What do they wish they knew before moving?

Written by Quora member 

Koyel Ranu | কোয়েল রানু

and posted on 2021-02-25


I didn’t immigrate to Canada (I went there to study), but since my doctoral research involved immigrants to Canada, I can answer this question based on what I found in my research.

My research involved mapping social participation and formation of social capital. In my interviews, I’d ask questions that explored the kind of networks an immigrant has, identify the nodal points where those networks would start forming, and how those affected their decision-making process in their move to Canada and further down the settlement process, among other questions.

This answer, however, applies only to 
South Asian immigrants (people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan).


THE Person

For South Asian immigrants, a particularly important factor that impacts their decision-making in where to move, and where to settle, and what factors to consider even in this whole process – is the person of their first contact, with regards to immigration.

This person of first contact could be a very 
weak tie—some friend of a colleague’s cousin, an ex-boss, someone the immigrant had met in a travel agency in their sending country. Before moving to Canada, South Asian immigrants usually find this particular someone, in order to anchor their following settlement process in Canada.

Hereafter, this 
person guides them in choosing not only the city but also the neighbourhood, where the new immigrant family should settle.

More often than not, it is a predominantly South Asian neighbourhood, with the only exceptions to this rule being immigrants who belong to a high household income (who had an existing job offer or have a household income in the range of $110 k - $ 400 k).

Immigrants with a high household income would often choose to settle in a “more mainstream” neighbourhood (i.e. less “ethnic”), while immigrants with no job offers and meagre savings, and immigrants with some modest savings (but no job offer) would often go for settling in ethnic neighbourhoods, because of assumed support from their ethnic group on a rainy day. This part was based on a commonly-found, instinctive logic of homophily: “People who appear to be similar like me, are more likely to help me, than people who look different to me and whom I don’t know and can’t trust.

This 
Person of first contact, therefore, is elevated on a very trustworthy level of bankable dependence, because of the common ethnic background, and common experience of being an immigrant in a “white, western country”.

In the majority of the cases, a South Asian immigrant retains this selection criterion of living in an “ethnic neighbourhood” even later, even when they have got to know the city better. The person of first contact impacts not only the new immigrant’s first apartment/house in Canada but also the subsequent networks they would be a part of – ethnic and/or non-ethnic.

Generally speaking, almost all recent immigrants spoke of how they feel isolated from being stripped of their past friend circles and networks. Consequently, they felt that they had to depend on this first person of contact for information and access to groups and networks, getting around to know the city, procuring things in the new country, and obtaining general knowledge on people and things in the new country.


Where do I go?

In the decision-making process of which city to move on, South Asian immigrants usually avoid French Canada. Most of them are told that a working knowledge of French –the language they don’t know—is essential to survive and live in Quebec. Therefore, they tend to look for big cities other than Montreal; big cities, because those ones possess good public transport, which is important for immigrants since most of them do not plan on buying a car upon arrival, or might not know driving/might not have an international driving license. Big cities also tend to possess more job opportunities.

In this context, Toronto and Vancouver are popular choices than Edmonton for example, because of their milder weather (than rest of Canada, which matter for people from tropical countries) and the existence of a low-cost consumer market, even though living in these cities could be expensive (higher rent + transport cost, etc).

However, more fixer-upper alternatives exist in these cities, than in those belonging to the Prairie, where the oil and gas industry could pay well, but then, the consumer services are also more geared towards the rich. It’s not easy to be a poor immigrant in Calgary, for example, as compared to surviving as a poor/working-class immigrant in Toronto.

Immigrants also assume (or expect) that the large immigrant presence in these two cities would lead to a less alienated feeling upon arrival and a more multicultural experience –the word they keep hearing, right from the moment they think about immigrating to Canada.

Moreover, ethnic neighbourhoods usually have lower rents than more white/mainstream neighbourhoods.


Where do I move next?

With increasing length of residence and better knowledge about the city, immigrants move out of their first neighbourhood to fulfill their more relevant and emergent needs, such as:

  • greater convenience and access to places,
  • easier access to health services,
  • close to the workplace,
  • safer areas,
  • closer to better commuting areas, and
  • to stay close to their co-ethnic group.

In their initial decision-making process, the above-mentioned factors do not matter, as much as the word of The Person of First Contact matters to them.

For many South Asian immigrants, they don’t even know that they need to think about the above-mentioned factors. In South Asian countries, convenience to places such as a clinics, shops, entertainment centres, pharmacy, grocery stores are a given, often existing within walking distances.

Neighbourhoods in South Asian countries are not residential units with just houses and some corner store where you can only get milk, bread and canned goods. Lower rents of particular neighbourhoods in South Asian countries also do not automatically entail a significant qualitative difference in safety issues.

So, these are the things that immigrants often have to learn to think about after their arrival to Canada.

Ethnic Networks

South Asian immigrants prefer to live and engage in their co-ethnic networks.

Ethnic networks complement the lack of ability to spend and invest in social participation in more mainstream/dominant networks, which were mentioned as:

  • Inability to drink and socialize in a bar due to religious and/or cultural constraints,
  • Financial priorities,
  • Investment in specific kind of dressing in order to socialize in “western manner”,
  • Invest in buying extra food and other accessories (e.g., silverware) to socialize with guests and such other accompaniments required for modes of socializing and social participation in Canada.

More often than not, immigrants coming to Canada have to grapple with issues of getting their degrees and credentials recognized. As a result, many of them find themselves with little choice, but to accept the kind of jobs they don’t belief to be commensurate with their skills and educational backgrounds.

The consequent lower economic status is often survived upon by reliance on emotional, financial and material support from their neighbours and friends in ethnic neighbourhoods.


Stages of Getting Settled:

  • In the first stage of getting settled down, new immigrants are concerned with more immediate and pressing needs such as food, shelter, orientation to the city, language interpretation, and language instruction.
  • In the intermediate stage, immigrants’ needs comprise of access to various Canadian systems and institutions, such as municipal services, legal services, long-term housing, health services and employment-specific language instruction.
  • In the last stage, assuming the immigrant has adapted to the new country, immigrants strive to become equal participants in Canada’s economic, cultural, social, and political life.

Expectations

AAlienation and a sense of heightened individualism in a new country were prime factors that almost all immigrant respondents, except the ones with high household income, were found to be struggling with. The change in social conditions, along with infrastructural changes such as weather, workplace activities, and traffic, accentuated the idea of Canada being a “different” setting. Many immigrants expressed how they did not expect the “feeling of exclusion” which became a part of their newly adopted country of living.

The general expectation of surviving without as much support from friends, family, and neighbours as in the immigrant’s country of origin, receiving polite behaviour, but not the customary care and support as s/he would receive in their country of origin, were found to be overwhelming contrasts that new immigrants tried to make sense of, based on their expected norms formed “back home”.

BThe levels of being overwhelmed and abilities to cope with different customs of social interaction were seen to differ with varying degrees of education, socio-economic status, and familiarity with the western discourse in general.

As an example, this is what a 50 year old, married, South Asian male immigrant (from India, with an annual income of $35,000- $40,000) said, with respect to interacting and forming friendship/bonds with “mainstream” Canadians:

I have tried mixing in with the people over here. I have tried going at bars, trying to watch ice hockey. But I don’t understand these things… It’s not something that I’m familiar with, or that I have seen from the childhood and it’s not possible for me to start drinking at this age or be passionate about ice hockey at this age.

Source: My research interviews

CCultural Differences:

Immigrants would also differ in the levels of expected formality and etiquette, which affect their levels of being comfortable in doing things together with mainstream Canadians.

When an immigrant lacks the ease of interaction with mainstream Canadians, this affects further inter-ethnic communication, as the immigrant chooses to dissociate her/himself from such areas of social participation. Many immigrants didn’t expect that they would have to learn a new discourse of interaction because they expected they would know it anyway since they were already well-conversant in English.

This is what a 41 year old female immigrant from Sri Lanka (with a household income of $250,000) and who was convent school educated in Sri Lanka (schools offering a more western way of education; respondent was familiar with discourses of English literature and colloquial customs) had to say:

It was little things that strike…like getting the right pronunciation. Like people would say “few-el” (fuel) and I would say “foo-al” (Fuel), or this …and was….and little things like that…and that here in Canada you constantly talk about the weather. It was such a thing to say….and I was surprised at the weather too. And just the way you greet people…like “hi…how are you”… you really don’t need to explain how you really are. You are just expected to say I’m fine and how are you and pass on, right? ... and how long are you supposed to work and so…I was anxious about whether I would be up-to-date with things.

Source: My research interviews

Immigrants who could be well-conversant in English and the western way of life, would not expect about the “little things” like pronunciation that sets them apart, to the category of being a “visible minority”. They might think they know the process of settling in, in this age of Information being so widely and readily available, but then, there are some organic differences to really doing it, as the above-mentioned respondent went on to say:

Sri Lanka’s society is actually structured differently. There are neighbours available to do different things. So you won’t necessarily have to…like kids here actually go to an old age home or senior citizens home and actually spend time with them and talk with the people. That is not so much…….that is not done so much that way there.

If you want to talk you could do it voluntarily, but you don’t need to make an effort. Like spending time with people, you have to do it here. I suppose that’s what I do too. I have been told, that if you have a pet then you get to know your neighbours better with the dog running and all that. And I don’t have kids either. So those are the key things that help you to know your neighbours better and all that.

Source: My research interviews

Many South Asian immigrants expressed how they didn’t expect that social relationships (intrinsic to their settlement and integration process to the Canadian society) could not be presupposed to get cemented with time. They didn’t expect that relationships would require an active investment to build.

Cultural differences, by themselves, do not create walls between ethnic groups. But perceived levels of difference play a key role.

There are cultural differences within Indians, among people from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka but they are more akin to be friends with each other than with, individuals from Europe or even Eastern Asia. The medium of language between a Sri Lankan and an Indian remains English, as it would remain between a white, British lineage Canadian and a South Asian immigrant.

However, the commonality of a shared understanding in food, habits, and customs creates a bond that excludes possibilities of bonding and networks with other ethnic groups. A common culture does not necessarily bring people to develop a liking for each other or get into social relationships, but it does rule out steps to second guess gestures and meaning. It provides a common framework where expectations are clearer and behavioural references are easily understood.

D. Many immigrants had no idea that volunteering and networking formed an important ingredient of finding jobs and expressed the wish that they had known it earlier.

E. For a significant proportion of immigrants, they wish they had known about the frustration which colours their immigrant life: non-recognition of their educational credentials in Canada, in spite of those being recognized when being granted the status of being an immigrant.

F. Finding a job is an important precondition of getting settled in Canada. Finding a job also puts the idea of the “worth” of an immigrant/newcomer to test. In this process of finding a job, and gaining equivalent status in the new country, perceived discrimination and exclusion from the labour market, further the feeling of alienation one can encounter in a new country. Before their new identity—the Canadian identity—is crystallized, immigrants often encounter the difference between their own culture and the mainstream/dominant culture in antagonistic, binary perspectives.

G. Immigrants also expressed how they had to learn to dress in accordance with the Canadian weather. Most of them had to go through strong trials and errors of what “layered clothing” means and why and how it works, and why and how wearing a jumbo jacket might not work.

Friday, March 27, 2020

A knife fight in my taxi.

Me, my taxi and knife fighting passengers.
This is a funny. Nothing bad happened.
I was a university student, living in a suburb of Stockholm, in 1962. The pay as a part-time taxi driver was terrific. I usually drove Saturday nights so the owners could have the wheels spinning, making money, without driving themselves.
I loved it.
Now, imagine this: February in Sweden, - 30 C or colder.
Two elderly friends, both affected by their Koskenkorva, of Finnish origin, seated themselves behind the safety shield. (I apologize to all Finns, and all of you who know Koskenkorva, but you know where this story goes.)
They started arguing. The argument got louder and they soon pulled a long, impressive-looking Mora knife each. Deadly weapons.
I spoke to our dispatcher on the radio. He knew these gentlemen.
“Drive so you scare the s..t out of them.”
Not hard to do on a frozen-over empty country road in Sweden.
After a few skids (I recovered “before the ditch hit us”) they got quiet.
Their coats had some cuts but no blood had been spilled.
I was properly paid, even got a good-size tip.
Then one of them said:
You are a terrible driver, skidding all over on a night like this, you could have had us killed.”
The dispatcher, who knew so well how to handle Fighting Finns by remote control on a dark night, turned 80 the next week.
I gave him a big bottle of Whisky.
He was very happy over that.
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Wednesday, March 18, 2020

How to ruin a company - fast.

Raise all prices by 15 percent.

We had 4,000 employees and had been the world leader in our field for about 10 years at this time.

We were not the price setter, though. But we did very well and had a reasonable operating margin, enough to satisfy our corporate owners and shareholders.

Then we got a new president, an American B-school graduate. He came from Stanford, as I recall.

After some time he declared to us in the sales department (about 90 people), operating worldwide.

  • Raise all prices 15 percent
  • Go back on all orders in house and negotiate a 15 percent higher price.

I tried.

We all tried.

We suffered, badly.

  • No new orders for nine (9) months.
  • The customers with orders in place said a flat “are you out of your fr…..g mind?”

Our build cycle, order to delivery, was about 18 months.

Nine months later the factories started to look empty and were laying off staff, weekly — NO NEW ORDERS.

“Biggest boss” at our owning company got wind of this and came to town.

Our president was fired the same day and we all in sales got new instructions.

  • “Forget all orders about price increases — go sell as competitively as you can.”

It took about two years for the company to regain its world-leading position.

By that time, I and just about half of our previous sales organization were gone, replaced by eager young souls.

Monday, March 16, 2020

Me, my camera and trouble.


Dangerous times with a camera.

Got my first camera at age ten and a developing can soon thereafter.

A few stories about picture taking.

In Turkey. 

Now I had  became an expert at sliding the nose of the camera lens out of a shopping bag to take photos inconspicuously. I used my wide-angle lens to get what I wanted without really aiming. I was so brilliant, I thought.

This time, the bag-photo routine failed me.

I took a picture of the bus station and framed the people, the sun, the shadows, businesses and – the many men with uniforms and guns, perfectly.

Not so good. One of the many guards was observant. He saw the camera – and – immediately took off in my direction.

“Military, military. No photos.”

Sure, I had seen the navy vessels in the harbour beyond, but, did they matter?

They did. I was rapidly getting into a not so tenable position. I had been warned by my business hosts that taking pictures may not have been a healthy activity in the country at that time.

I started running but, by now, several soldiers were coming at me. I narrowly missed being run down by a bus. The driver blew the horn but slowed down enough for me to run to the far side of the bus and jump in through the open door.

The driver, on his route, had only slowed down a little and continued to pick up speed. Apparently, jumping onto a moving bus was not a particularly unique event there. The conductor came and made me pay the fare.

I rode a few blocks, stepped off the bus and continued into the narrow warrens of the busy market-place. I was just outside of my tourist map but found my way back, seeing a tall Mosque-tower over the roof-tops.

That was close. Too close for comfort. The pictures were great and lent themselves to some well received enlargements. The president of the company was so happy with my pictures, on my return, that he suggested that I should add all photo-costs to my trip expenses in the future.

With time, my photographs spread around the offices, not only in Canada, but in some of our overseas offices as well. I felt proud.

What about my camera-in-the bag in the future? It had to continue, but I added a leather bag with a hole in the side and a remote release to my arsenal. Problem solved. I learned to quickly flash it for impromptu photographs. I may have been called out a few times, but was never caught in the act.

Baaad mannners, I know.

Did I ever fall off, in, by, under or over anything when trying to take a picture?

Of course I did. I never got really hurt and I must say, with some pride, I never lost or damaged the camera in my hand.

The scariest event was when I misjudged the speed of an oncoming train and had to jump to the side, really fast. That time I tore my clothes on the bushes. The doppler effect of the train whistle was all too clear. It came with a high pitch and it changed to an octave lower as the engine went by me. I never learned what the engineer, this was in Kenya, thought about my photo-taking skills, or lack thereof.

My wife always wanted me to look my best. Before a trip to Spain, she gifted me a very expensive dress shirt. These were the days when all business, regardless of ambient temperature, were carried out in a three-piece suit. 

We were driving high in the Andes. The views were spectacular. I had already made a deal with the driver that he would stop when I called out the perfect photo spot.

He stopped, right next to some wild rose bushes. I was, of course, really intent of capturing the most perfect picture of a man, his donkey and the vast, mountainous background.

I rolled out of the car, camera safely in my hand, and into a tight rose bush. That became the instant ending of my expensive vest, fancy shirt and my brand new suit-pants. They got torn to shreds. I still had the wherewithal to stand up and catch the photo.

The donkey cart was perfectly framed by the mountains.

By now I was bleeding from a multitude cuts and scratches. The driver brought out the, mandatory in all Spanish cars, first aid kit.
The picture was sharp and blew up very well. That may have been the single most expensive single photo I have ever taken, at the cost of a fancy dress-shirt and a full three-piece suit.

Ooh, for the sadness of loosing your pictures. There was a time, lasting far too many years, when colour slides was all the rage. They were reverse colour developed, you got ready-to show slides from the developer.

All well and good. 

You got your projector out and could show your pictures, only to your chosen audience and when it suited all. There must still be untold millions, billions(?), of pictures on the globe only seen once, or perhaps never. These don’t lend themselves to being copied either, there are just too many chemicals and processes involved.

Not knowing better, I had gotten onto this too. Then, disaster struck. All my photographs, carefully stored in a metal box, sunk to the bottom during a basement flooding.

The negatives could be dried out, but over 2,000 slides were irretrievably lost. I never took a slide again.

My sister hated our mother’s second husband. My father had been 
dead for almost 20 years, so I was happy that my mother remarried. 

My sister saw him as a competitor for her mother’s attention.

The newlyweds went on a grand honeymoon around the Mediterranean and came back with loads of slide photographs. The were all mounted in trays, ready to go into the projector.

I noticed how my sister, passing by the table, pushed the trays closer and closer to the edge of the table. Then, a last swipe and all fell and scattered over the floor.

There was no chance for my new stepfather to assemble the pictures in any kind of order that evening. He couldn’t show them. That was 40 years ago. I still have all those pictures, they were kept loose in a plastic bag and may never have been projected.

That was the first time he learned how unwanted he was in my mother’s life. Unwanted by a thirty-year old jealous daughter.

My dear sister, long since passed away, was an arts degree graduate. She loved painting and used cameras too. She was quite good at capturing good vistas, if she could figure out how a camera works. 

She never could and would come back with wildly out-of-focus or hugely over- or under-exposed pictures. No professional training could make her understand the principles of a camera. The art of using an exposure meter was lost on her.

She even acquired a very expensive top-of-the line Leica camera. That only made matters worse.

I saw all this and – presented her with a most simple aim-and-shoot camera. After that day, her photographs were spectacular, as long as they were taken outdoors in ample light, or with flash, indoors.
I still have some in my files.

The Leica? I inherited it from her estate some 30 years later. It may not even have taken five rolls of film, was totally dried out and didn’t work any more. I sold it for good money to a camera restorer in Japan.

A family friend, a teacher of weaving, got a gap-year from her school. She went to Southern Africa, toured the nearby countries and homelands, and collected native weavings. Some of them came home and are now in museums, both in Sweden and in R.S.A. (Republic of South Africa).

She was greatly appreciated for the work she did. She taught traditional weaving techniques to the natives and documented what was about to become a lost art.

Her photographs have been reproduced in museums. She was often congratulated for her great photographic skills.

In a TV interview:
·       “Ms. Swanström, you have shown yourself to be such and expert photographer. You must be using some very special equipment for all of this? “

·       “No, just this one.”
… and she held up a $ 10 Kodak Instamatic. It was strictly an aim-and-shoot camera lacking any exposure or even focus settings.

·       “I only take pictures in the shade and when the sun is shining.”
She knew, that gave the best colour rendition and, of course, suited the fixed-everything camera very well.

I, ultimately, inherited that camera too. That was her only camera. It sat on my mantle piece for years until it got lost in a move. 

Not a valuable camera, but one that took valuable pictures. I was proud to have it.

My father had a portrait camera, dated ca 1870. It used the wet-plate principle. I tried, but never really perfected making wet-plates. The film coating had to be thin enough to be spread and thick enough to stay on the glass long enough, without running, to take a picture. The mixing and preparation had to be performed in darkness. After exposure, you had but a few minutes to initiate the developing or the plate would dry, or the coating run. All told, not a very user-friendly method to take photographs.

But, this large box came with a complete set of lenses, including aperture plates. I found a supply of large 25 * 25 cm glass plates  in a photo store and – success – I could use the camera to take portraits. The film sensitivity was 10 ASA, or even less, and exposure was counted in many seconds, often minutes if indoors. 

You had to learn by trial and error.

This lens painted a soft picture, only the centre was clearly defined with declining clarity and exposure towards the corners. What a piece of history in my hands.

This whole contraption was too large to stay in my life when I downsized after becoming a widower. I sold it to a photographer in Boston. He paid me thousands of dollars for it. 

Thank you, father, for keeping it for me. It made me learn about the chemistry of photo plates and how skillful photographers of yore were.

How much you enjoy a hobby, is how well you can do it.

My first developing can, one I found borken and glued together, stayed in my life for over 40 years. It only left me after all film-taking cameras were gone from this world. 

I used to buy professional packages of 40 rolls of Tri-X, high sensitivity B/W film, for low-light photography. You could develop it, with care, to twice, or even three times the rated light sensitivity, called "pushing the film". 

Then, you needed no flash. No flash means no disturbance of the objects and also softer exposure, totally controlled by the ambient light. Sure, you had to move around a bit, or even give up the odd picture as impossible. 

Since family pictures are all taken with colour film, the B/W film was usually in an older camera of mine.

Surely, carrying a camera and a few lenses around may not be so hard. But – you must make sure that your trip doesn’t turn into a continuous save-the-camera adventure. That’s why my big camera often stayed at home. It didn’t fly well and was a real bother when getting around.

To bring a multi-thousand dollar bag of camera-stuff is not conductive to calm travelling. That is only reserved for automobile trips on this continent. Even so, summers can be dangerous for overheating, if you forget the camera in the trunk. I usually keep my camera in a thermal bag or inside a rolled up blanket. Sure, it doesn’t stay cool all day in direct sun, but you can cool it down inside the car while driving.

I lost a camera to overheating once, or at least had to send it away for a serious rebuild. The grease in the lens mechanism had evaporated and covered the entire inside, gears and glass lenses included. 

All photographs from that moment were fuzzy and taken with a maximum lens-opening, severely overexposed.

I only found that out on the return from the UK after our first visit together. I kept the negatives that couldn't be printed then for many years and, lo and behold, could print them only 50 years later, thanks to Photoshop.

Life goes on - now almost 50 % (over four billion people) of the world's population carry a smart phone, all with a pretty good camera inside.

I still look for the righ angles - and carry a "real", albeit digital camara in addtion to - your guessed it, my smartphone.