Hi, I'm Kris! Zola 2026-05-01T00:00:00+00:00 https://slyka.net/blog/atom.xml 2026-02-16T00:00:00+00:00 2026-05-01T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2026/tinyvision/

<p>If you follow me on mastodon you might know that I have a bit of an obsession with vintage analogue video cameras. They’re great. I love them. I can’t stop being weird about them. So a few weeks ago I felt like it was finally time to take the next step and get myself one of those “televisions” I had heard so much about. Stop feeding those pristine analogue signals into a digital capture card and instead enjoy them fully analogue, end to end, crt to crt.</p>

2025-11-29T00:00:00+00:00 2025-11-29T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2025/ink-print/

<p>Have you ever heard of the Ink Process? No? Well, neither had I till a few months ago.</p> <p>If you have, then, well, you must read a lot of old german photography books. Cause that’s what I was doing when I came across the following recipe in the fifth edition of “Photochemie und Beschreibung der photographischen Chemikalien” from 1905.</p> <ul> <li>10g of ferric sulfate</li> <li>20ml of ferric chloride</li> <li>10g of gelatin</li> <li>10g of tartaric acid</li> <li>300g of distilled water</li> </ul> <p>In addition to that there is a developer made from 1L of water, 4g of gallic acid and 0.5-1g of oxalic acid.</p> <p>This was described as the “Colas Tintenprozess” or “Colas Ink Process”, a black and white positive process patented in 1880 that at first glance looks incredibly similar to cyanotype, with a sensitizer made up of a source of iron in its +3 oxidation state and a dicarboxylic acid.</p> <p>The interesting part though is the developer, which instead of consisting of potassium ferricyanide consists of gallic acid (and oxalic acid, but we’ll get to that later).</p>

2025-02-20T00:00:00+00:00 2025-02-20T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2025/unfucking-audio/

<p>Ok, I fucking hate “AI” and the corporate horse it rode in on. Machine learning though? I guess that’s kinda useful?!</p> <p>I’ve been helping out my friends at <a rel="noopener external" target="_blank" href="https://kkto.net/">KKTO</a> with their project <a rel="noopener external" target="_blank" href="https://www.minuteyear.com/">Minute/Year</a> for almost a decade now and a while ago we had run into a peculiar problem. I spent the last few days finally cleaning up the mess it caused and I thought I’d write up what I’ve done cause I’m pretty proud of the result.</p> <p>In 2023 an audio interface had failed and corrupted a whole bunch of our daily recordings in a subtle yet annoying way. It took us a few days to realize what had happened at which point we power cycled the audio interface and everything went back to normal but it left us with a bunch of corrupted recordings that needed to be fixed.</p>

2024-10-10T00:00:00+00:00 2024-10-10T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2024/raspi-media-player/

<p>A pretty common task for exhibitions I support is to have some kind of tiny unobtrusive media player box that can play a bunch of video or audio files on loop for anything from a small listening station with some headphones to a 4k projector showing a feature video.</p> <p>Since this has come up again and again for me and I’ve had multiple different versions of a setup like this for which I’ve somehow managed to loose all the source files I’ve decided to write this blog post in the hopes that when I have to do this again I’ll actually remember how I did it this time.</p> <p>I’m not gonna go into every detail here, like how to set up systemd services, but if you want to take a closer look all the scripts and files are available for download at the end of the article.</p>

2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2024/cyanotype-glass-plates/

<p>Cyanotypes are cool! But you know what’s even cooler? Making cyanotype negatives on glass plates directly in camera!</p> <p>As I’ve talked about in a <a href="https://slyka.net/blog/2023/making-better-cyanotypes/">previous article</a> I’ve developed a fairly reliable process to create in-camera cyanotype negatives on agar coated glass plates. They not only look great but also have a much higher resolution since they don’t have the rough structure inherent in paper negatives. On top of that having a negative on a transparent backing opens up the possibility of using it to directly make positive prints from it, which is very exciting.</p> <p>Let’s talk about my process for making them!</p>

2023-11-05T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-09T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2023/cyanotype-developer-absorption/

<p>If you’ve read my <a href="https://slyka.net/blog/2023/making-better-cyanotypes/">previous article</a> you know that there were some loose ends I was meaning to tie up using good old science, specifically the significant loss in sensitivity observed when mixing the classic potassium ferricyanide “developer” with your ammonium ferric citrate or ferric ammonium oxalate.</p> <p>So let’s do that!</p> <h2 id="a-quick-recap">A quick recap</h2> <p>Before we get into it, a quick recap of how the “classic” cyanotype process and formula works!</p> <p>We usually start out with two compounds, ammonium ferric citrate and potassium ferricyanide which get dissolved in water and brushed or otherwise coated onto some kind of substrate, usually paper.</p>

2023-08-11T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-09T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2023/making-better-cyanotypes/

<p>Hi!</p> <p>This blog post is roughly based on a short talk I gave at HFG Karlsruhe early this year and this is my attempt to finally expand on it a little and make the contents publicly available. It’s not really a tutorial on how to actually make cyanotypes, but more of a general overview of different techniques.</p> <p>I’ve spent the last 8 years working with cyanotype and have developed some stuff that I think could help make other people’s cyanotypes better. Maybe.</p> <p>I mean, what even is “better”?</p>

2022-12-30T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-09T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2022/cyanotype-comparison/

<p><em>This post was originally posted to my tumblr in 2017, this version has been slightly revised.</em></p> <aside> <p>I previously referred to the “blue layer” cyanotype as “blue sheet” cyanotype because apparently I completely misremembered what Mike Ware called it in the Cyanomicon. Whoops!</p> </aside> <p>While trying to improve the quality of the cyanotype prints made on my home built enlarger I came across a whole number of different techniques for increasing the sensitivity and quality of cyanotype prints, but I’ve never done a comprehensive comparison.</p> <p>So a few days ago I sat down and tested 6 different cyanotype formulas and techniques. All prints were made on A5 size printer paper and were exposed for 15 minutes. I chose a negative that has a wide dynamic range with deep shadows and some very bright highlights. All images were first washed in tap water and then in a weak solution of acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide.</p> <p>I also tested toning with three of the techniques using a mix of tannic acid and black tea.</p> <p>Most of the different formulations used here were taken from Mike Ware’s excellent Cyanomicon which can be found here: <a rel="noopener external" target="_blank" href="http://www.mikeware.co.uk/mikeware/downloads.html">http://www.mikeware.co.uk/mikeware/downloads.html</a></p> <p>Lets begin.</p>

2022-09-21T00:00:00+00:00 2022-09-21T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2022/record-lathe-pt1/

<p>Hi, welcome to the first short introductory post in a series where I’m going to document my attempt at building my own record lathe!</p> <p>Work on this started around a year ago, but I haven’t really gotten around to documenting any of it outside of some posts on twitter, so I felt it was time to put this project’s documentation into a less ephemeral form.</p> <h2 id="wait-what-s-a-record-lathe">Wait, what’s a record lathe?!</h2> <p>Good question! You know records, right? Round, black, shiny discs that contain music in a spiral groove?</p>

2022-08-25T00:00:00+00:00 2022-08-25T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://slyka.net/blog/2022/hey/ <p>Hi, I’m Kris, and this is my new blog!</p> <p>Multiple people (at least 2 or 3!) have asked me to set up a blog to document my projects and other endeavors outside of my rather slow flow of <a rel="noopener external" target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/c/KrisSlyka">youtube videos</a>.</p> <p>So here you go, a brand new website and blog! Hopefully soon to be filled with <strong>~ C O N T E N T ~</strong>!</p>