Stuff to go, stuff which stayed

With my usage of two monitors for manga comics lettering and
retouch work, I found myself with very little space to move around in
my room. That's when I decided to do some general cleaning while my nephew Enzo was in the hospital. It was my
only chance since I had the house all to myself and I needed the sala
space to store the junk before I move it to the trash.

I admit I'm sort of a pack rat so I keep (read:
"collect") a lot of stuff. I had this
inkling that I had accumulated too much junk through the years. I
decided to just classify them into "stuff to go" and
"stuff to keep". I had to let go of a whole stack of
old PC, gaming, fitness and photography magazines. The photography
magazines were the toughest to let go since a lot of them belonged to
my Dad. But I really had to discard them, like most of the stuff I let
go they were obsolete, unusable, deteriorating and just plainly took up
a lot of space. Other than those I also discarded a decade old PC
monitor, 2 PC casings, various add-on cards, speakers, earphones,
microphones, car pillows (a whole trash bagful!), 2 USB PCI cards, old
martial arts equipment, striking mitts, speed punch gloves, computer
peripherals, PC and electronics boxes, broken DVD players, old belt and
gym bags, Baguio sturdy woven hiking bags (which I haven't used in more
than a decade, they were the kind that you can sit on when in line for
subjects at UP), lots of foam padding, styrofoam, plastics, art and
crafts resources, paints, varnishes, thinners and various other
disposables. When I finished removing the "stuff to
go" and temporarily placing them in the sala, I realized that
the volume of discardables was about half the size of my room floor
space. O_o;;

I disposed of the discardables via my mom's garage sale, I
pegged the prices very, very low (PhP10 - PhP50 only) so that I could
get rid of them fast. The whole bulk was bought by Mr. Jojo even before
everything was displayed outside. Easy sale. Now I have plenty of room
for new junk. Hehehe. I didn't get rid of any of my (now few) musical
instruments, cameras and usable computer parts. I love my cameras, even
if they are old film cams. Two old things I didn't part with and
decided to resurrect were an old Franklin eBookman EBM-911 and
Fujifilm Instax
200.

The Franklin eBookman isn't
really much of a PDA, it's really more of an ebook reader. It was given
to me years ago by my sister who got it from her former
officemate Armand. She got a Palm Pilot from her sister-in-law (and my
kumare) Kay so she had no use for the eBookman. I
gladly accepted it. I stopped using it when I was able to install
software that allowed me to read books on my celfone. I bought AA
batteries, restored the MMC, plugged it in to the PC and revived it.
Now it houses about 60 titles in its 32Mb MMC. It plays converted MP3s
so I can use it as a music player too, but I don't know if it can
recognize MMCs larger than 64Mb since it's old tech. Oh well, next
risky project for me would be figuring out how to make it recognize a
larger capacit MMC. :D

When it comes to text readers, I always start off with
Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary
Shelly's Frankenstein and Joseph Sheridan
Le Fanu's Carmilla. I quickly follow those up with
Sir Richard R. Burton's
Vikram and The
Vampire, Lafcadio Hearn's
Kwaidan, Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'
Arthur and Thomas Bulfinch's
Mythology. Yup, all gothica, medieval and mythology,
it's my "hello world" for eBooks. I found the public
domain eBook texts and more titles on Project
Gutenberg but decided on Franklin Free Library and Manybooks.net downloads since
they're more readable and specific for the Franklin Reader and MobiPocket
software that came with the eBookman.

The Fujifilm Instax 200 I bought
many years ago on a whim at the dawning of digicams. It's an instant
camera similar to Polaroid models, nice, quick and handy if you want to
see printed pics in less than a minute. Only drawback is
that the film costs too much. A 10-exposure film cartridge costs
PhP300+. That explains why I only use it once a year. But I love it
just the same.

crossposted: gokitomo.com, gorilla.multiply.com, gorilla.vox.com