Leaderboard

I waged war with a family of rats that were under the garden shed. I bought a rat trap, put some chocolate on. Next morning trap snapped shut, chocolate gone, no rat. Tried cheese - same thing. So I bent the trigger so that if you sneezed it snapped. Chocolate on. Same damned thing. The darned things are really clever - must have been using a stick as a tool to trip the trap so they could eat the goodies. The neighbour bought a "humane" trap, and all he caught was a hedgehog. Then my cat got on the case, and worked here way through the lot. Came in each time looking a bit battered (rats fight back), tail high and proud. On the deck a half eaten rat. Repeat four times. Rat problem gone

I've been busily going through photos I shot on film in in '07 and '08. I used a variety of different cameras, and many film stocks. Many of the exposures are lousy and more often than not the scans are bad as well. Eventually I will buy a scanner and correct some of these problems. Over a long enough timeline I will buy a slide scanner and get revisit the expensive, risky and hugely rewarding world of Fuji Velvia 50. I've got several posts to make about my old film shots, but they're going to have to wait for the moment. While going through scans of a roll of Fuji Superia X-Tra ISO 800 color print film, I found a number of frames I took with my then new to me Meyer-Optik Orestegor 300mm F/4. I've mentioned the insanity of this lens repeatedly. Sadly, my copy has grown some fungus and haze in the 15 years since I last used it regularly. I was not great at taking notes about exposures I took for the first few rolls of film I shot, which is a fact that comes back to bite me in the ass every time I revisit them. By the time I got my second Canon film body (and EOS Rebel K2, which I still have) I began recording time, date, lens, exposure settings etc. For this shot I wrote "Frame 3: Edgartown, 10/06/08 - 2:35PM - Orestor 135mm @ F/6.7 1/2000 - tree + reflection vert. oops shot!" That means I didn't plan on taking that photo. For several reasons (mostly having to do with the crap shoot is that is shooting color print film), I like it better than the shot I meant to take. Most modern SLRs display metering info when one half presses the shutter button. This is a super handy feature. It can be difficult to avoid a full press sometimes, triggering an unwanted exposure. In the digital world, this is irrelevant. When shooting film, it's a PITA and can be an expensive one. I've done it a bunch of times. This summer I can count two accidental exposures I did with the little Leica C3 I got a the second hand shot as well as at least two more with the Rebel K2 which I have pressed back into service. Even though we live in a "post tag" world now because of abuse by things like bots and spammers, I still obsessively tag every photo I post to Flickr (itself a site that is a relic of the past). My personal favorite is Taken While Driving, each frame of which represents me endangering myself and others. Yesterday I decided I needed a name for "oopsie" photos I didn't plan on taking. August 2005, which I was slightly past the "shiny bit toward subject" level of photography. I think this was at Landmark College, my old alma mater. October of that same year. The PowerShot S60 I had slipped out of my hand and went for an impromptu bungee jump on its wrist strap. I decided on the term "accidental exposure." I checked Flickr for the term. It turns out that "Accidental Exposure" and "Accidental Male Exposure" (which comes up in the same search) are commonly used terms for specific types of dick picks, and there are thousands of them on Flickr. There's at least one group dedicated to the subject and one user who had that as a name. I'm ...not opposed to consenting adults who want to share dick picks amongst themselves, but I don't want my clumsy shutter presses getting lost in the sea of old man peens. So I went with "Accidental Shutter Release" instead. This has been your "there are a lot of dicks on the internet" moment.

it seems like i will be waiting a long while for my Argos lever machine (their QA process has slowed to a crawl) so i've resorted to faking shots using the Fellow Prismo attachment on my aeropress. grinding in espresso range on the P100, immersion for 1:00, then a slow press fully down to compress the puck and produce extra, albeit very thin, foam. the resulting drink is a "FakePresso" 1:3 lungo (18g in, 54g out) that is nowhere near real espresso-feel but the taste is great... way better than anything like a Nespresso. plus i feel like it will help me get used to concentrated flavors and help my real shots whenever i finally can do them. today was Savage Parabolic gesha roasted by Red Meow in Hong Kong.👌

The key is that the thing being shoved into the hole is not too big, nor too small.

Came home to find out my brake lights were stuck on. Apparently there's a little rubber disc that goes on the brake pedal arm that pushes the switch to shut off the brake lights when the pedal is up, and it disintegrated. Found the pieces of it on the floormat when I went to check the switch. Luckily I found a bolt laying around whose head was almost the exact thickness of the disc, so I just shoved that in the hole and now the brake lights work normally again. There wasn't room to get a nut on the back side (the side of the bolt is right against metal), but the pedal has to be pushed way down to even get it in or out, and it's relatively snug in there, so I guess this will be the permanent fix.

Rainbow - Rising

https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/24/sony-is-buying-gaming-headphone-maker-audeze/ This should be interesting…

https://www.headamp.com/blogs/news/sony-buys-audeze The information they sent to dealers says that the company will remain independent with the same management and they'll continue to develop gaming products for non-Sony platforms

Woooooooow

America: Greatest Hits 180g LP I've always liked these guys' vocals/choirs...almost as much as Cross, Stills and Nash

I liked this photo a lot. I recently bought a Samyang 800mm to continue with my "paranoia" of photographing the moon (a mirror lens or basically a mini telescope) that achieves a blur with rounded effects... very curious. By the way, that thing moves even when mounted on a tripod.

Gene Ammons, Boss Tenor (Rudy Van Gelder Remaster)

Sorry, this guy is just wrong. The smoky/sour/sweet/salty combo of a barbecue chicken pizza with pineapple is magical. And if you want to go crazy with the three-ring-circus-on-your-tastebuds, try adding hot Jalapeño peppers and black olives on top of all that. I had this just the other day. It was sublime.

Take your time and baby your throat. It's now all irritated and doesn't trust food, air, liquid, etc. Make sure to take slow inhales and fast but not damaging exhales, and let your mucus do it's work (bringing up the last bits out of your lungs). I wish you feel completely better with no side effects soon.

While Tice was boosting his health, I was endangering mine(!) Not so Cool Story Bro: Tonight I had some vegetarian quiche, which was good but kind of bland. I added some Tapatio hot sauce to make it more interesting. I took a bite that was bigger than perhaps it should have been. A bit went down the wrong pipe. A bit soaked in hot sauce went down the wrong pipe. I felt instant irritation and blockage. I spat out what I had been trying to chew (gross, but this was an emergency.) I stood up, I began coughing frantically and pounding myself on the chest. I stumbled toward the sink while my (sainted, octogenarian) mother watched on in horror. To her credit, she did not panic. There is nothing quite as scary as the feeling of "I need to take a breath now" followed by "I can't." I sort-of knew I was going to be alright, as I wasn't genuinely choking so much as having a reaction to my attempts at breathing hot sauce. Eventually (mere seconds, but it felt like time dilation at light speed) I got a few haggard breaths in. I hacked up "I'm okay" and kept coughing for a bit longer. Eventually I managed to drink some water and in time even finish my dinner. I'm "fine" now, but my throat feels like something mean got at it. It's been quite an evening.

The pool slide is the best part.....

Very distressing. RIP to noted humanitarian Mr. Prigozhin.

The pharmacist had to find a spot between type to mark my covid booster, since my card was full. But I'm boosted again and ready to thumb my nose at the flu as well.

A Midjourney AI image I actually like. It's not too late to invade England. A Midjourney AI image that's laughably bad. She forgot how to gun. BC, CA RN. Maui last week. The current state of Dumbfuckistan. "Jewish Space Lasers" is the Dunning-Kruger Effect meets modern blood libel.

Crossed the 1/3 mark yesterday, thanks folks. Logged some solid training miles this morning before the rest of the family was awake.

Noice! The analog espresso is the best out of the three I tried (analog, organic, and I forget the third one). It's my favourite store-buyable coffee by far, and not just because it says "black cat" on it. 😺

This is our raclette source

That is certainly some wiring voodoo.

❤️

Related: