Knuckledragger

Remember when I mentioned 19th century railroad bridges a few months ago? A part of my re-visiting of photos I took in 2010, I ran a few shots I took of the Chester Arches and water below through modern software. Luminar 4 is a fine tool if one wrangles it properly. I'm still not much enamored by Luminar Neo. Watch out for that train! Tune in next time for a walk around town with a not very good Tamron superzoom "vacation" lens.

RIP Cleto Escobedo III, of "Cleto and the Cletones" fame.

Wake up babe, the GabeCube just dropped.

Y'all remember Plants vs. Zombies (2009). One of the most beloved video games ...ever. It had a couple sequels that were nothing like it, and at least one "F2P" online version IIRC. Well, apparently EA shat out a "remaster" last month called Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted and it's a half baked, buggy AI-upscaled mess. Now that's a damn shame.

We are so thoroughly doomed as a species.

Dick Cheney croaked. Remember when he was the most evil man in America?

For the bargain hunters out there.

Brief update on this issue: To securely wipe an HDD, it's necessary to do one pass with Disk Utility first, then make use of the Terminal command. This is because Terminal itself can't unmount a disk. Also, in possibly related news I have a stack of six HDDs to donate to the local second hand shop.

I've been "following" the FB page of Finnish electronic trio Koneveljet for like 15 years and the updates have been ...sparse. Their last album was 2005. It was a staple in my record back in the 00s. Unlike many of their peers from the frozen north who make either brooding techno or chilly ambience, Koneveljet got for a mouse upbeat and cheerful sound. They do so while being exceedingly odd about it. "Welkom" is a bouncy, almost goofy dance track with the strangest tourist guide imaginable: I dropped it in a tiny but very ritzy club in the second half of the 00s and got asked by several of the patrons "What is this stuff?" "Kompa" is similarly energetic with a guy with a (presumably) Finnish accent repeating the names of famous people. To this day, I'm not sure of the name after Winston Churchill. I love how they use Ringo Starr as poignant punctuation. The whole thing is so genuinely odd yet completely effective. Solid Finland/10. Since then they reformed briefly to do a live gig in 2017 (in Finland of course). Most of their updates are in Finnish (even machine learning struggles to translate it correctly.) Some things don't really require translation, like this photo: I woke up this morning and was greeted with the announcement of a new Koneveljet album, the first in over 20 years(!) Downside: the cover art is AI slop. 🤮 I hope the music is better.

RIP David Ball, one half of Soft Cell and The Grid. Everyone knows "Tainted Love" (for good reason) but in my world The Grid was the absolute sweet spot for UK rave culture with pop sensibility.

RIP Susan Stamberg. I'm not sure I aligned with per politically or otherwise, by I can say my formative years had her and the other NPR ladies on in the background. I'd say her name wrong ("Stanberg" "Samberg") much to the amusement to the adults.

RIP Ace Frehley. I was never particularly a fan of Kiss, but his showmanship was something else.

Something I just learned that others might already know: Apple removed the secure erase function from Disk Utility because users where "damaging their SSDs." Something, you know, a warning popup might have solved. Now one has to go through Terminal to accomplish the same thing. I mention this now because I'm finally decommissioning some external HDDs from the early 2010s.

Some damn, dirty hippie with entirely too many guitar amps. Taken in St. Petersburg, FL in 1973 by Joel Bernstein.

I have questions. I don't want them answered.

"Never trust a computer you can't lift." Steve Jobs died 14 years ago today. At the time I tweeted (ya rly) "The Reality Distortion Field is now off."

Photographer Sally Mann warns of 'new era of culture wars' after art seizure. I have always had mixed feelings about Sally Mann, and by "mixed" I mean "I recognize she's making art, but I'd prefer not to see it." With that said, she's long been the target of puritanical forces (the same ones keeping the Epstein list hidden, for some odd reason.)

I like trains. I fucking hate TechBros.

Don't ask me why I do things.

Fair warning: Incoming gratuitous cat photos. I've been editing a bunch of shots I took 12-15 years ago. Two friends of mine (who are now married and have son about to turn eight) lived in an apartment in a former mill town. They had two cats. Ozzie was a Russian Blue and exhibited the characteristics of his breed. He was inquisitive, always tuned into what the silly humans were doing, but also very independent. He was not a lap cat. The other kitty was Mauro, who ...a bit heavyset (he was an absolute chonker) and possibly the extreme example of a polydactyl cat I have ever seen. Ozzie's antics were legendary and I took many photos of him "helping" me DJ. These four I posted when I took them in the spring of 2010: Note the first photo being used as the wallpaper in this shot. Ozzie helping me wire up my Korg Z1's MIDI connections. I mentioned in another thread that Kate (one half of the couple mentioned above) had a birthday on the 11th of this month. I had plans (of the "mice and men") variety to send her a bunch of photos from early 2010s on her birthday, but it took me a week to finish editing them. I mean, I'm still editing them, but that's another matter. All of the above were photos I edited and posted around the time they were taken. The following are newly edited. In August of 2010, we (and by "we" I mean "me and I have no idea who else") did a "photo shoot" with Ozzie and some accessories: Ozzie was mostly cooperative (not a guaranteed thing) an held still while we placed smokes, Snapple, a phone and some kibble in front of him. Another shot of Ozzie with wallpaper Ozzie behind him. I used the 50mm DoF separate the actual cat from the photo of him, but still keep the latter recognizable. Ozzie, warming himself on the exhaust fan of a Windows laptop. He's got his paws on a USB battery. Part of the "Where is your god meow?" series I did with Ozzie. Circle cat could use a good brushing, but I wouldn't recommend trying it. Ears back momentarily, for aerodynamics. Mauro being chill, which was his normal state. He was very stead in a windstorm. Tune in next time for pre-civil war bridges!

Seems legit!