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Two things: (1) This time of year (we're picoseconds from the solstice), the sun does some funny things. (2) My CZJ 135mm F/3.5 Sonnar is one of my favorite lenses, full stop. I describe the images it renders as "handsome." Everything is sharp, colorful, and has the right amount of distance between subjects. In a different universe, I might use a 135mm on a medium format (Hasselblad makes a neat 135mm that'll set you back about 5 large.) It is not the narrow FoV that I like, it's what is to my biased eyes the "correct" amount of telescopic compression. To wit: Note the birds in the upper left corner. Earlier, I was capturing fall colors with the Sonnar: Also this photo got into Flickr's "Explore" section: Nearly 5000 views and 150 favorites later. TBH I find the whole thing kind of silly. Longtime listeners may recall me mentioning that Explore is heavily botted and most of the photos that end up in it are eye catching, but not particularly good. TBH that's what the above is, I think. The Sonnar's bokeh is quite good and the little cedar tree is tack sharp. With that said, the framing is nothing special. It's just a snapshot with a shallow DoF. The Sonnar is a great lens. Flickr is dumb. Bonus, previous photos of mine that I have made it into Explore: The pond next to Edgartown harbor. 2020 rework of a photo I took in 2006. IR version of the same area, 2013. A bungalow, across from Cannonball Park. As I said, eye-catching but not necessarily good. Next time: Cats, squirrels and whatever I get up to with some new glass (more on that later.)

50th Anniversary of Vince Guaraldi’s Jazz Mass at Grace Cathedral Part One Part Two

We caught up with one of the kids who sang on 'A Charlie Brown Christmas.' He's 72 now. https://www.npr.org/2025/12/19/nx-s1-5640171/a-charlie-brown-christmas-christmastime-is-here-peanuts-schulz

I'm up! https://www.twitch.tv/philodox42

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Does Broadway count? New music for this revival by Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA fame, with lyrics by Tim Rice.

This is the statement, translated: ...so I don't think they are going to replace them. The Shure KSE's are also discontinued with no replacements that I've heard of.

Agreed.

Do we know if they discontinued the 002 for good, or are they bringing out another version at some point like with the 007? The IEM world has gone off the rails in the high end and Stax could do some disruption if they just fix what was wrong with the system, which is mainly comfort. I never tried the 002 but the old 001 mk2 was a torture device with the stock tips. At the same time, it was one of the better sounding Stax headphones at any price, at least in the 003 version. Go figure...

Something I noticed the other day - Qobuz has tapped into Gramophone and a few others like 4F to add Editor's Choice and the like. Not that big of a deal, but a nice addition.

RIP Greg Biffle - and family.... RIP Mr. La Biff.

T2 build coming along, everything under control. Problem: connectors ITT/Cannon KPT06F 12-8S missing locking nuts Anyone know where they can be obtained?

amp board for single ended. you can run this as low as +/-24v and as high as +/-40v pioneera09amp - CADCAM.ZIP pioneera09pre2gain - CADCAM.ZIP

^^^ Glad I got my first NAS updated to 40+TB (!) before the AI component craze......

Ukandanz.

A certain 8TB drive was full, so I got a new 12TB drive, mounted it in a trusty external hard drive dock, connected by esata Ran This robocopy H:\ L:\ /E /COPYALL /DCOPY:T /R:0 /W:0 /MT:12 /XJ /LOG:C:\robocopy_H_to_L_full.log And walked away (without an explosion in the background) To get this Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras Dirs : 1966 1966 2 0 0 0 Files : 7172 7169 0 0 3 0 Bytes : 7.270 t 7.266 t 0 0 4.370 g 0 Times : 309:01:27 21:57:50 0:00:00 1:49:56 Speed : 101043866 Bytes/sec. Speed : 5781.776 MegaBytes/min. Ended : Wednesday, December 17, 2025 6:02:03 PM Some 22 Hours later. Swapped the drives, and now I have to play with, Matey.🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️ EDIT: Of course, if the AI Bubble hadn't made cheap storage and ECC DDR5 unobtanium, I'd be expanding a ZFS storage pool on a NAS by just adding a drive, but here we are.

I had to do it! I had extra shoulder bacon, English muffins, eggs and so on. I did cook more hash browns than intended.

Some Anti-AntisocialPersonalityDisorder-ant would be a start

Yesterday I and my father visited my aunt at hospital. We haven't been seeing each other as families for more than 10 years. And before that it was like bumping each others on weddings, funerals etc and seeing each other wasn't pleasent. My mother and she has deep problems since I was born; long story... Anyway, she had been diagnosed with gastric cancer as it turns out 2 years ago and she just wanted to say her goodbyes. She was in extremely bad shape, my father couldn't even look at her. Reasons for not seeing them is/was rightful but still I feel deep sadness. Shaken since, sleeping for almost 16 hours didn't help as well. Made me think on things I'm angry with my parents, their desicions on my life which pushed me into the life I don't want to live since I started to school. Things I can't forgive them. I didn't think seeing her evoke so much shit. I'd rather avoid it if I knew. We didn't tell my mother about that visit cuz even my aunt is in deathbed we don't know how she is going to react. I feel really bad about it as well.

Free endorphin shots here

I could listen to the tone of this instrument all night.

It's probably a sort of pilot project - if they don't lose their shirts on Type I, maybe they'll fire up Chromium and Metal cassette production later. And what is this stuff for, anyway? Hobbyists, or real music production work? Will most of these tapes go into cheap Tanashin-knockoff Chinese cassette players? Are we playing with analog for analog's sake - should a new cassette transport include noise reduction like Dolby S or is it a solved problem already (Digital Compact Cassette)? Wouldn't it make sense for a new cassette transport to use direct drive instead of belts and fewer parts for reliability? I'm putting this Nakamichi Dragon vs. LX-5 comparo and a boombox review below just for reference - there is a small niche market emerging...

Also very much it?