Leaderboard

Anyone remember this little gem. Extra poignant today but also distracted by how hot Lita Ford is...

Bill Cosby can go fuck himself, but that is a sad way to go for MJW. RIP

Listened to Vol 4 and Sabotage earlier, on to my favourite album of (early) Ozzy era: ...which has 5 of my favourite tracks by them (Back Street Kids, You Won't Change Me, Gypsy, All Moving Parts (Stand Still), and Dirty Women).

I saw Sabbath back in '72 or '73 in Newcastle City Hall. Even in those early days Ozzie seemed hell bent on frying his brain with any substance going. It was loud! I'm astonished he lasted so long. He was in fact only 7 years older than I am now, RIP Ozzie!

So long Ozzy. Rock In Peace. We sometimes don't realize how lucky we were to be in the right place at the right time, when it was just a local hometown gig. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_of_Ozz_Tour Ozzy Osbourne Concert Setlist at Odeon Chelmsford, Chelmsford on October 22, 1980 https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/ozzy-osbourne/1980/odeon-chelmsford-chelmsford-england-73d652c9.html

This one is huge although not unexpected. What a monumental figure. I'm a fan of everything he's done, but his two albums with Rand Rhoads are my favorite. RIP Ozzy (Prince of Darkness)

Didn't get a chance to listen to anything yesterday, and over half a century of music is too much to take in, so I'll just listen to this one. In a way it covers it all. vinyl

...and Patient Number 9 by Ozzy Osbourne (2022) https://album.link/hm7bxmvpdbdjz Example: His final release as my final listen for the day. Thanks Ozzman for sharing your art and pain with us. The Ozzman goeth. 🤘

and.. Scream by Ozzy Osbourne (2021) https://album.link/b02swtdbpb428 Example: Not a fav album, but some gems in there. And the sad...

The Cardigans did a version of Iron Man...

🤘 May he entertain the dark lord as much as he has entertained us. Time to dust off the old Sabbath albums for a listen. To @robm321‘s point that intro to the song Diary of a Madman is among my favorites in all of rock.

One of the guys on the UK Vintage Radio forum posted: "A little story. In my teens I was a big Black Sabbath fan. I'd heard that Ozzy lived at Ranton, a village near Stafford not too far from where I live. Me and a mate got on our bikes and rode over there. In a field a guy who looked like Ozzy was riding around on a monkey bike that was popular at the time. It was Ozzy's brother and he asked if we wanted to meet Ozzy. Of course we did. So we went in and for half an hour I chatted to him as he lay on a settee plucking aimlessly at a guitar. I kinda interviewed him. After a while his wife (first wife not Sharon) came into the room and said, "We have to go to Billy's now". Obviously Bill Ward, the drummer in Black Sabbath. Ozzy sent us on our way with signed stickers. A day to remember."

... and Ordinary Man by Ozzy Osbourne (2020) https://album.link/nz94tsmmhqxd0 Example: Amazing trick that his voice is like a switch, 70yo+ at this point and his voice is right there the entire time, and of course he gets the players to show up.

The Cardigans also did a cover of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" on their first album from '94. My college roommate loved that band and had all of their albums (which was ~3 at that point.)

^ yup .. and Down To Earth by Ozzy Osbourne (2001) https://album.link/zbtz4hjjh3tvv catching up, in memoriam, on a few albums that I didn't know that well. I have been very rewarded.

But did you know there was a Jack Black / Dweezil Zappa version?

Reasons... Blizzard Of Ozz by Ozzy Osbourne (1981) https://album.link/mbcqtdrxwpk6f Example: Yes I know Crazy Train Exists. But I just like the Album opener so much. RIP 🤘

Rock on with Randy forever ... RIP Ozzy 🤘

\m/ legend. will be missed.

Kevin warned me about that stuff as it is toxic if I remember correctly. I have a rule of thumb, if Kevin says something is nasty stuff then I keep well clear.

Bought a Macbook Air, being the only Mac without fans, so ideal for my fourier analysis. I should at this point say again, as the original one, already on my desk, has been shall we say appropriated? Yeah. And just because of that, this time i went for the 32GB RAM, 1TB disk version. Now for the 6 weeks wait. I did say again, did i not. Since i'm paying for everything 'round here, why shouldn't i be back on my slow ass backup Windows laptop you're probably thinking? Quite so! Saw a t-shirt with "Bank of Dad" printed on the front once, too young to get it back then

My weakness I do not know these code words: ATO, AE07. I learned chemistry in a few decades ago if not in English. .... I googled some Fatty Alcohol Polyoxyethylene Ether and antimony doped tin-oxid. Where can you get these for kitchen tuning?

Try an ATO alcohol solution with a concentration below 10% and add 1-2% volume of AEO7. This is the conductive coating I use now. It can make a transparent coating with a stable surface resistance of 10^8Ω

I used to have a friend from .ca who lived outside of the Toronto area. His parents owned a BMW dealership, so I called him "The Torontonian Trustafarian." TT for short. He endured a good decade of "TT" jokes. If we were still friends, he'd be extra annoyed with me today as all three TTArtisan lenses I bought during prime day arrived. I made it a point to use all three. I favored the 75mm F/1.5 the most, to the surprise of no one. The 100mm F/2.8 Bubble Bokeh is odd and I need to use it more. The 11mm F/2.8 Fisheye is neat, but I have no idea what I'm doing with a fisheye lens. 75mm, wide open. This wood pile is my new favorite subject. 100mm wide open, I think. The aperture ring is in an odd spot on all of the TTArtisan lenses and was not used to adjusting them. My neighbors across the street are and old Vineyard family. Mr. Norton died earlier this year at 93. His family do a top not keeping up the farm. They replaced half a dozen rails in their fence (which are expensive AF.) I think I mentioned I have no blinkered idea what I'm doing with a fisheye.

For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music (1973) https://album.link/q4k7kdbzzrrhh Example: More of an Early Genesis prog sound than I was expecting. Much enjoyed {most of it}

I'm in love with the color. It looks good in pics, but even better in person. And Al's door design is stunning IMO. I will build new door jambs out of the same White Oak, as well as mill up new casing. These doors are heavy, and will require 3 hinges per side. I'm excited about seeing it all in place, but that will be a bit in the future.

Congrats and nice shots! Curious how the low light noise would compare if you shot the A7R5 in 26MP or 15 modes (or even downsampled the 60MP to 24)?

Work has been continuing to use photos that I’ve been shooting for publicity and Congressional communication so I decided that rather than keep shooting with my personal camera that it was high time to request a replacement. They asked what I wanted so I spec’d the following: 1. Body - Sony A7R5 - I’ve gotten used to the Sony ecosystem through my A7IV and figured what the heck, might as well have all the megapixels. I don’t need 120FPS so the A9 series was not compelling and while it would have been fun to shoot with an A1II budget was somewhat of a consideration. 2. Lenses - I’ll continue to shoot my A7IV with it’s 24-240mm so figured I should cover an expanded range with this rig and be able to shoot high(er) quality. So a 24-70mm F2.8 GMII and a 100-4000mm F4.5/5.6 coupled with a 2x teleconverter round out the bag. I’ve got the whole shebang with me on vacation to get used to the platform and find its limits (me) but sheesh, 60MP is a lot to work with. Initial impression is that it’s all very similar to the A7 but doesn’t shoot low light as well. That won’t be much of a concern at work and if/when night time becomes the right time I’ll switch back to my A7 for those situations. The 100-400 has as lot of pull and with the 2x, it’s pretty absurd. That was lightly touched in LR and just a quick handheld at sunset. I’ll have to contribute more to the HC coffers if I start pushing up 40MB drink photos. And 12,800 starts to get a bit noisy so I’ve reduced the max ISO to 3200 for now to see what I can still grab. And [EDIT] seems like the forum software intelligently down-sampled that image to a more manageable 5MB. It is wild what you can do for fun crops with this much real estate.

Finished 11th out of 44 drivers at my last autocross. Goal was top 15 so I’m happy. Turns out putting better tires on the car makes a big difference. Who could have guessed? You can brake harder, carry more speed, and get back on power earlier. These aren’t even that fast of a tire too!

Arctic Monkeys - AM vinyl Forgot that I had this record. Not a bad song on it. Qobuz - 3 songs in. Enjoying so far.

Latest additions. GT4RS and BAC Mono I do fit the Mono, just can’t breath

Still trying to make sense of Sunny's murder and failing to do so. I knew her for just under 30 years. I actually remember the day I met her. It was August 31st, 1997, my first day at Bradford College. Also the day Princess Diana died. I've been a photographer for two decades at this point, but I have precious few photos of Sunshine. I had been meaning to catch up with her for years, but as tragically is so often the case, I kept putting it off. The last conversation I had with her was two years ago when her father passed. I sent her this photo: I look it in 2012 with the never-not-shit EF-75-300mm. I ran it though the Silver FX Pro plugin, which I favored at the time. Mark (Sunny's dad) was ...a piece of work, but certainly a character. In this shot he's a man in his element. The only photos I have of Sunny herself are from 2007 and 2008. I took this one on my back porch in October of 2007. When I remember is she had to leave early. That fall was marked by two things: some of the best foliage colors I've ever witnessed in scenic western MA, and the absolute peak of dubstep. Not brostep fart noises, but the original very sparse minimal reggae tinged sound that started in say 2003 and was dead by 2009. There was a big dubstep party that happned about two days after Sunny left. I did the lights and if memory serves, I DJ'd at the after party. Initially Sunny wanted to attend, but business in Maine called her back. Sunny was possibly the biggest extrovery I ever knew. She had no shortage of self confience. Yet she did not like having her picture taken. This shot and the following one are from July of 2008, just shy of 17 years ago. She wasn't pleased that I was pointing my SLR at her. As I have said many times, I always prefer portraits where the subject is reacting to anything but the camera. I mentioned the Silfer FX Pro plugin earlier. Prior to that, I used to make heavy use to two Photoshop scripts I found in the mid 00s. One was "holgafy" and the other was "lomofy." Both were more than a bit heavy handed, but I taught myself to reverse engineer and wrangle them a bit. I did to passes with said scripts on a photo of Sunny in 2007, but never published the edits. I found them yesterday while looking for photos of her. I don't particularly like either edit, but he lo-fi effects of the scripts take on an entirely new meaning in light of Sunny's passing. At the risk of repeating myself, if you have someone you haven't spoken to in entirely too long, do it today. There may not be a tomorrow.

The greatest letter ever written. What a rollercoaster ride.

RIP Malcolm Jamal-Warner, whose death is totally overshadowed by Ozzy's (RIP), but his drowning took him out relatively young at the age of 54. https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/bill-cosby-mourns-late-star-malcolm-jamal-warner/story?id=123940226

Black Sabbath's Ozzy Osbourne dies aged 76, his family announces. Fuckin' hell, mate.