Category: Tech

Microcosm in Macrovision

  • October 3, 2025

I got a new camera phone. It’s orange!

It was hellishly expensive, but my old phone lasted six years and I hope this one does as well. Even though the tech is generations beyond my old phone, the feature of this one I’m enjoying the most is the macro camera, since my old phone didn’t have one.

That’s a mini Chupa Chup. The photos above are unretouched, and presented in the same size they were captured.

A Lego piece. It looks a bit translucent when viewed using the macro lens, but it’s impressive how smooth the plastic is.

An Australian dollar coin, specifically the honeybee one from a few years ago. The detail on the bee and flowers is almost invisible with the naked eye, and I’m impressed they can mint them at this resolution! You can also see how some of the paint has scraped off, probably due to rubbing against other coins.

These photos are difficult to take since I don’t have a tripod and you have to both provide a lot of light and hold the phone very still! That’s a pill I was prescribed for my hands. I haven’t taken one yet 🙂

There’s an anti-counterfeiting test used on magic cards used called the ‘green dot test’ which traditionally required a jewelers loupe to do. The macro on this phone makes the test possible without one.

Speaking of trading cards, isn’t it interesting that the foil effect on this Waifu card is pixelated?!? I wonder why…

This diecast metal Zoffy figure is only 2 inches tall and one of my favourite possessions. When magnified using the macro lens we can see the paint application is precise, even with sub-millimeter lines.

Here’s a cloisonné pin, which is about 1 cm wide. You can see the paint has wicked up the edges. I wonder how they make these?

A Fantastic Four comic from 1976. Is the pink bleeding into her right eye an error by the colourer or the printer? Did they even notice?

A d20 from our youth. This came in our Dungeons & Dragons ‘red box’ and was from the era where the dice came with crayon to fill in the numbers. Yes, that white gunk is crayon I applied over 40 years ago! The die surface is very pitted, probably from having been rolled countless times over the years.

A dorito. Don’t they look delicious?

And last but not least an amethyst. The flat surfaces are easily visible with the naked eye, but even in macro you’ll see they continue to be extremely – nearly perfectly – flat. This reminds me that I’ve long been thinking about doing a blog post on ‘flatness’…

The orange of my phone is now hidden in a case, and I think it looks cool. As I was preparing this post I noticed the photos app now includes an AI option to remove items and I used it on the above photo. Can you see where something was removed?

  • Posted in Art
  • Robert

A Game For Men

  • May 21, 2025

Australia is famous for the ferocity of its fauna, and therefore it’s not at all surprising that yesterday I came upon this:

Yes my friends, this is Animal Kaiser Plus: The King of Animals. This is nothing less than an IC card game based around animals fighting to the death! I sat on the tiny and suspiciously close to the ground seats and could hardly throw my $2.80 in fast enough to give it a play.

An ‘IC card’ game refers to a game using physical cards that are read/scanned by the machine during play. These are very popular in Japan and this is my first time seeing one in English. If you don’t have a card to scan you are giving a default player character, which for me was Leo, The Lion Cub.

The ‘gameplay’ consists of pushing one button to get a random number (between 10 and 50) which – if higher than the opponent – leads to an attack. It’s so simple even a child – a toddler – could do it and it’s obviously no major challenge for a venerable gamer like myself.

So when my Leo, The Lion Cub was repeatedly beaten senseless by the ‘Teck’ attacks of an Asiatic Black Bear I suspected this ‘playing without a card’ business was a handicap.

Happily the game vends a card every game, and after humiliating ursine defeat I received my first card. I hurriedly fed in more credits and purchased two more cards: and thus my team was complete:

Philistines may say it was pure luck I happened to get exactly one animal, one ‘strong’ and one ‘miracle’ card in three rolls – thus providing one card for each team category – but those heathens don’t understand my level of gaming skill.

Those Philistines also wouldn’t begin to observe that this game is a simplified reskin of Japanese arcade classics such as Mushiking or the various Ultraman or Kamen Rider games I often play in Japan. I’m intrigued the system has ‘gone west’, albeit in a non-licensed form.

And so I unleashed my empowered Black Panther upon the animal kingdom, and his righteous fury made mince meat of a bear and a Goblin Shark before he was in turn blown back by the juggernaut of all beasts: an elephant.

It’s perhaps fitting the game then provided me a Goblin Shark of my very own – with evocative attacks including ‘Kande Burst’ and ‘Sledge Gauer’ – although my lethargy by now was absolute and I had to tear myself away from Animal Kaiser Plus: The King Of Beasts without seeing how the shark fared. What other fabulous cards were waiting inside?

Even if I never see this game again, I’ll remember it forever.

  • Posted in Cards
  • Robert

The Relic

  • July 21, 2024

Yesterday I found this in the attic:

It’s my calculator from high school! This was purchased in 1988 and I used it throughout year 11 and 12 and into university. It’s not a good calculator by todays standards, but in 1988 it was high-end and not only was it very useful for my schoolwork but I also used it a lot for schoolyard gambling via the inbuilt random number function.

As you can see I vandalized decorated it quite a bit!

In addition to ‘Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds‘ scratched under the display (and made more visible by adding crayon) it also has ‘The Mission‘ on the top…

And ‘Phobia‘ (a Nephilim song) on the side.

On the back we see ‘Nephilim‘, an R-rating sticker (from a VHS or magazine), a band name written using letter stickers and my own name (which I blacked out) followed by ‘T32‘ for Tutor Group 32, my high school class.

Apparently only one instance of ‘The Sisters of Mercy‘ on the back was insufficient since I also carved it at the bottom, and then covered that with two wonderfully retro stickers from my then-favourite record store!

Perhaps most delightful is the graffiti around the keys. It’s difficult to photograph because the ink has mostly faded, but I’ve circled all I could find. They are: ‘Jesus Loves The Sisters‘ (yellow), ‘Burn‘ (a song reference, purple), ‘Fields Of The Nephilim‘ (green), ‘Jesus‘ (white), ‘Depeche‘ (above the ‘mode’ button, blue), ‘SMC [heart] Bob‘ (in Sue’s handwriting, red) and something I can’t read under the ‘Inv’ button (orange).

And of course in case you missed it, a big fat GOTH in letter stickers 🙂

There’s countless memories in this simple device, and just seeing it yesterday brought back so many of them. For me this is priceless, and it’s now been very carefully packed away to survive another 30+ years 🙂