Here's your chance to win an Olloclip, a combination wide-angle, fisheye and macro lens attachment for your iPhone.

The nitty-gritty:

You must download the Diptic app for iPhone, iPad or an Android device, then use it to tell some kind of compelling story. It could be about anything: a puppy playing, a visual murder confession, whatever you like. Then you can either post the image on Twitter with the tag #DipticTellTheStory or email it to contest@dipticapp.com.

The deadline for entry is June 4th and the folks at Diptic will pick the winner. You should check the 'Tell the Story' contest site for more details and to make sure that I didn't screw up anything crucial.

Yes, you do have to pay $0.99 for the app, but that's a pretty dinky entry fee for a photo contest, and, of course, you do end up with the app. I can actually think of all kinds of ways Diptic would be handy: as a tool for serious photographers to whip up a series, as a shortcut for immortalizing an event, or as an easy way to make a visual how-to, like, I don't know, say, the steps of doing the Heimlich maneuver.

You can enter up to five times.

No, it's not the pot stores, hockey riots or rain that makes me wish I was there. It's the announcement of the first 'Leica Boutique' in Canada, which opens at Broadway Camera this week. A place for lots of quiet reverence and awed gawkery of precision German optics.

My first thought on learning of this was that Leica was attempting to take advantage of Vancouver's formidable Asian market and, sure enough, it turns out that Broadway Camera offers service in 'Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese.' As well as English and French of course.

If anyone goes to this opening, please drop me a line.

I continue to like indie rock - or alt rock, or whatever you want to call it - because it's just about the only type of pop music where actual musicians play actual instruments. There are still lots of good indie bands, and there are even crossover indie hits like Gotye's 'Somebody that I Used to Know.' You don't really see any crossover hip hop or country hits, and to me crossover appeal is always the sign of a good song, even if it irritates purists and pale music journalists at Rolling Stone.

The Royalty are a new indie band out of El Paso, Texas, and they have a Metric vibe with maybe a touch of The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. This is more than just an amateur opinion because, as I keep pointing out to you people, I can play guitar and do bar chords and diminished ninths and everything. So there.

You can check out The Royalty's latest single, but 'How I Like Em' on their video is a probably a better intro to the band. Their debut album Lovers comes out today on Victory Records out of Chicago. Yes, it's available on iTunes.

Tour dates on their website. Nothing (sadly) yet scheduled in Canada.

Check out these images of the great June Carter, when she was not yet Mrs. Cash. These are over fifty years old and they just pop: immediate, vibrant, and lifelike. If you looked at the chromes in person they'd be even more impressive. Taken by Life veteran Yale Joel.

Courtesy Retronaut.

Yesterday in New York, various Occupy types attacked photographers and other media. More here.

Here's a suggestion: perhaps the Occupy movement could hold a joint rally with the police and they could both beat up some photographers. Everyone seems to agree they're the real problem. They are a shifty bunch.

Here's a wonderful little series of previously unseen photographs taken from New York City's Department  of Public Records. Most date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the city is making a gallery of almost a million such images available online. Unfortunately, they were in such instant demand it overwhelmed the city's servers, so you still can't see the rest of the images just yet. It will be a real treat to browse through this database once they've got things up and running again.

UPDATE: Much wider selection available here via The Atlantic. These are even better than I could have imagined.