The Online Photographer

[UPDATE: The answer is in the Featured Comments below. Look for Joel Entin's comment. —Ed.]

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I spent yesterday posting some stuff on Craigslist and eBay. Trying to raise a little cash to help offset my taxes a bit before the big hit. (This is always a challenging time of year for the self-employed.)

I'm wondering how many people "get" my eBay handle. Probably not very many. You know how sometimes you'll see a car with a personalized license plate that seems to mean something, but you can't figure out what? I used to stop people and ask them. Sometimes the meanings were an "inside" secret, like a family nickname. My cousin used to have the plate "CSWY GRL" because Barry Manilow, the singer, customarily chose an audience member to join him onstage so he could sing "Can't Smile Without You" to her, and at one concert my cousin was the chosen one. For many years the plate drew numerous comments from other "fanilows," the name for Manilow's fans, out in public. But of course nobody who wasn't a fanilow would know what the plate meant.

Anyway, my eBay handle is:

txind76121

Anybody know what it means? Hint: might help if you're a former darkroom rat.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Daniel (partial comment): "Pretty sure it is not your North Dakota Taxi drivers license number."

Mike replies: No....

MikeR (partial comment): "The d76 part may refer to Dektol 76."

Mike replies: Nope! Dektol was a print develop and didn't have numbers.

Ian Hunter: "FP4INID11!"

Mike replies: Made me laugh  :-)  . You must be from the UK.

Ian Hunter: "I am indeed from the UK! I have a fridge full of FP-4, ID-11 in stock and a darkroom with three enlargers. I am a bit of an eccentric I admit."

Mike: The good kind.

Emil Aaltonen: "If it weren’t for the hint, I would have guessed it was a reference to a taxation index...."

Mike replies: Right, it isn't that.

Dan Khong: "I'm guessin' tx = TriX in = in d76 = D76 developer 121 = 12 minutes, single use.....or perhaps this fellah Mike's assets in US$ millions!"

Mike replies: Close but not quite on the first guess, and as for the second, all my assets are intangible, damn it. Things like kindness to animals, the wisdom of many years, and my taste in B&W tonality.

Joel Entin: "Hello Mike, As a former darkroom rat as well, I couldn't help but chuckle at your eBay handle of txind76121. Has to be Tri-X film developed in D-76 diluted one-to-one. Most of my black-and-white film photography was with Plus-X film developed in D-76 diluted one-to-one at 68 degrees for 8 minutes. I still have the negatives from the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s."

Mike replies: You got it (as did a lot of others as well).

Working with students as young as seventh graders, I never used the x:x format for ratios...I always wrote "1-to-1" and if the numbers were different I always specified which one was water; for instance, "1 part developer to 2 parts water." Always on the lookout for possible ambiguity so as not to confuse....

c.d.embrey (partial comment): "Best California vanity plate I've seen recently was CLOKWRK. It was on an Orange Honda."

Mike replies: Funny. Just as it happens I was watching YouTube videos about Kubrick last night until late. Someone made the point that critics never liked his films when they came out but usually by the end of a decade they had reversed position. One said that Kubrick himself had made a chart logging various critics' changing reactions to 2001: A Space Odyssey over the years. On one side were pasted the original negative reactions and on the other side were later appraisals calling it a classic and a landmark and a masterpiece.

I never did see A Clockwork Orange. I was scared off by people calling it "shocking" and "violent."

Malcolm Leader: "Best plate I ever saw was UEVOLI—which only makes sense in the rearview mirror."

V.I. Voltz: "Tri-X film in D-76 developer diluted 1+1. It is quite arresting how quickly this has gone from being something anyone who is interested in photography would know to an esoteric piece of arcana."

Mike replies: I'll second that.

Mani Sitaraman: "It's brilliant, Mike! But, I must confess, the second it clicked in my mind, I was hit by a giant pang of nostalgia, in the original Greek sense, of a sharp pain felt for something left behind. I don't know why; I do miss it all. The formulas, the sometimes exhausting long sessions in the darkroom, the sense of slight disorientation when you emerge back into the rest of the world. I must be bonkers."

Mike replies: If you are, then I am. I have that νοσταλγία and it never goes away.

Luke: "Barry Manilow has fans?"

Mike replies: A great many, mostly women, most middle-aged, and many very devoted. I'm not one, but I could tell you stories, via my cousin. She paid $3k to meet him for 15 minutes, for example. And that did not include the plane ticket. That is far from the most extreme example.

Mike Plews: "Great idea. I may start going by txpinhcb."

Mike replies: Wouldn't that have to be txpinhc110b?