Knuckledragger

Part Two of *mumble* The Wenlock Barracks apparently. It's a dog photo with some background people and vehicles. That's a lot of square trucks. Time for some pointy ears. What we have here is a Corgi 90 and a Corgi 110, though looking now he might even be a Corgi 130. At the time my (sainted, octogenarian) mother commented that the fella in the foreground was "first to the food bowl." There's a case to be made for the parallels between Corgis and Land Rovers. Both originate from the British Isles. Both are expensive and high maintenance for what they are and can be a bit ...temperamental at times. Both also have loyal (and in some cases, royal) fans who swear on their virtues vs other breeds/brands. Also, both are quite photogenic. Woof.

33 year old space heater.

I have to face facts. There is no way I'm going to be able to park all these Land Rovers in one post. This is the first of ...several. Also, I am not able to identify LR versions with 100% accuracy. This Series II and its odd custom suspension lives on MV full time. Same for this one. It turns out they're very good for advertising. The lighting is brutal, especially with the asphalt. I cheated by converting to B&W. I like the vintage look in this case. It's not an eye patch. Arr! There is an entire industry of replacement LED lamps for old Land Rovers. This ambulance was kind the star of the show. It a 1979 Series IIIa and served as part of a volunteer rescue outfit in the UK. It is a right hand drive model. I talked with the owner an he said did okay, but certain turns could be scary. Defender 90s are my favorite. Short wheelbase, reasonably modern powertrains, and they still look like an actual LR. Don't get me wrong, I really like 110s (and the nutball 130s), but I wouldn't want to have to navigates MV roads (and MV traffic) for any length of time in one. There is a lot to be said about the looks of Series IIs. Not an LR, but still very shiny. The swooped nose is the body style of the microbus that everyone likes. I've read conflicting information on it. Supposedly 1967 is the last year to have it, but I've seen what was supposedly a 1970 model with the V nose. In any case, the new 2025 "ID Buzz" version is downright fugly and has exactly zero charm. To quote my favorite line from one of my favorite films: Tune in next time for more LRs and gratuitous photos of Corgis.

I've been cheerfully obsessing over Oliver Lieb's music for well over 30 years now. His personal studio is the stuff of legend. OL's collection of kit goes deep, and he knows how to use all of it. OL's studio in 1993. OL's studio in the late 90s. OL's studio in the mid 00s. OL's studio in 2013. OL's studio in 2017. Oliver works as mastering engineer for other artists and his own productions are fastidiously constructed and precisely arranged in three dimensional sonic space. OL is the grand master of reverb, delay and compression. His compositions extend to the edge of the known universe. With that said, Oliver himself is very much rooted on planet earth. There are certain other visionary electronic musicians who are more than a bit out there. Geir Jenssen and Jake Stephenson are two shining examples. Both are (sadly, were in the case of Jake) capable of making music like no one else can and have a sound that is instantly recognizable. They are, to borrow a phrase from the late George Carlin, fuckin' nuts. Weirdly, both Stephenson and Jenssen made use of remarkably sparse studio setups. Jake was never hugely successful (he's far more famous in death than he was in life) and Geir is just weird. Gier Jenssen's studio, 2012. Gier Jenssen's studio, 2015. The man himself in his studio, 2017. Jake Stephen's humble bedroom setup in Glastonbury. What he was capable of doing with it boggles the mind. Compared to Jake and Geir, Oliver Lieb is (to quote my favorite malapropism by the greatest stand up comedian of the modern era, Bill Hicks) the complete realm of sanity and reason. In every interaction I've had with him online (going back to a text based internet in the late 90s), OL communicates quickly, concisely and wastes no time. No one as productive as him has time for idle chit-chat. With this said, I've noticed an uptick in Oliver's online presence recently. He's got a personal FB account (which I've been friends with since 2007. Neener.) that he doesn't use and an official artist page. That latter one has been exhibiting a flurry of activity recently. Today he posted this: In the man's own words: There is nothing quite like hearing Oliver Lieb of all people geek out about synth gear.

Hey, y'all. Remember this thread? So, funny thing... Since moving to MV, I ran out of blades. The stack of Astras I bought in 2013 are long gone. I went through the small stash of Sharks I had earlier this year. Sharks are good for like 2 shaves and miserable thereafter. I will never buy them again. The box of Feathers I had (sharp AF blades, but very unforgiving) is emptied. The Personna blades, which are nearly as sharp as Feathers but much easier to control are doneski. It's more or less impossible to find blades locally. I called around to half a dozen shops on MV that might carry safety razor blades and got either a firm "no" or similar answer, or no answer at all (it is high summer here and the population is 10x that of the winter.) I'm going to have to put in an order this week. Problem is, I have several events where I need to appear reasonably presentable, including one this afternoon. Also, as I mentioned, it's summer and I find stubble to be insufferable in the humidity. I had an impulse to rummage through my travel bag and I found an unopened 5 pack of Lord brand blades. A Lord safety razor was the first one I bought. I (re)learned how to shave with it back in 2013, but I haven't used it since. The handle is too narrow for me to grasp comfortably. It must have come with a couple packs of blades and I forgot about them for a dozen years. So I did my first shave with a Lord blade today. Lord is not exactly a premium brand. TBH, the shave was great. Far better than a shark (damning with the faintest of praise), not as high risk/reward as a Feather. Maybe a step below a Personna. They'll do until I can order some "real" blades.

In an earlier era, I was a regularl reader of The Online Photographer. I haven't kept up with it in years, for a host of reasons ranging from lack of interest to not really gleaning much worthwhile info to entirely too many Amazon affiliate links. One of the entries on TOP from 15+ years ago was "No one cares how hard you worked." I took that one to heart. I've spent ages editing a photo only to earn a collective shrug. Conversely, I've had SOOC jpegs from years ago that get attention to this day. With that in mind... OnnnnOn two occasions recently I've had the hood on my 17-40mm misaligned and not realized it. It's not super noticeable in the viewfinder and I don't chimp (stare at the LCD like a monkey) much. The misaligned hood only shows up in super wide angle shots, say 17-20mm. On Saturday, I had that problem for the entire shoot and didn't noticed until I was done. I have had quite a job with the Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush tools in Photoshop, painting out the upper left corner of dozens of photos. When that doesn't work, I have to crop. Sometimes, both are necessary. Also, as was the case last year, the lighting conditions were harsh and difficult. I'd already edited 30 or so photos in Photoshop before I decided I was unhappy with the results and ran them through Luminar 4. Let's talk about Luminar for a moment. I pirated it 5 or so years ago. I liked it enough that I bought it. It does a lot with pseudo HDR math, similarly to what smartphone cameras do. The advantage Luminar offers is that it has sufficiently deep granularity in its controls that it's possible to reel in the more cartoonish aspects of HDR. With careful tweaking, Luminar allows for improvement of the dynamic range of images without looking like Photomatix vomit ca. 2006 or Facebook family vacation photos. L4 is no longer updated and in its final state is a quirky and buggy app. I have to make a copy of every photo I feed it because if I use the original, L4 will delete it. I learned this hard way and had to do serious work to replace all the originals Luminar deleted when I discovered this "feature." The app dev Skylum is now pushing the successor, Luminar Neo. They want it to be rentware like an Adobe product, but they don't have ADBE's clout. There is a lifetime license. I bought it on sale months ago for like $120. I am ...underwhelmed. Some of the UI is better than L4, but Neo is enough different that my workflow is much slower in it. Also, said UI is basically a new coat of paint on the same old engine. I find this displeasing. So far I have edited 102 photos (ya rly) including in a number of cases several edits of the same image. If you're really impatient, they're on my Flickr page. It has been been uncharacteristically hot and humid here on the Vineyard, and I swear I can feel my brain swelling. I went over my work earlier and found I had uploaded dupes of at least four different photos. Then there's the issue of figuring out which photos to post here and arranging them. It's exactly like a DJ set in that regard. Anyway, here's a nice bright rear end to tide y'all over while I finish editing The truck. I'm talking about the TRUCK. Stop looking at me like that.

Tom Lehrer, song satirist and mathematician, dies at 97. Also, Tom Lehrer was still alive.

I'm voluntarily getting up at 8AM tomorrow (a Saturday) to take photos of Land Rovers. ^ I wrote that last night and forgot to hit enter. Also I think I managed like two hours of sleep last night. With that said, I made it to the Vineyard Series LR meetup and took a ton of photos. Now replaced with a properly edited version. More when I'm less tired.

Related, Ozzy had a comeback in '88 with his hit song "Miracle Man" which is about Jimmy Swaggart.

Hulk Hogan croaked. I have very little good to say about him.

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.

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.)

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

This is absolutely crazy. Th Those are Legacy Whispers. I'm enough of a nerd to remember when they came out in the early 90s. They were Legacy's statement model. They're actually not as bassy as the Focus model (which I have coveted for 35 years now) but they excel in more or less every other aspect. Of course, the way to get around the lack of bass is:

Dear lord. Today's news is insane, and leaves me with more questions than answers. Sunny was a tough woman. Not superhuman, but definitely world wise and not easily intimidated. She grew up in a harsh environment and knew how to fend for and defend herself. There's some missing piece of this story we still don't know. Is this kid a physical giant? Did she know him? I suspect she did. Did he manage to sneak up on her? This would be an insane story in any location, but in a quiet town of ~2000, it boggles the mind.

Speaking of expensive... Anyone remember Kai Wong? In earlier days of YouTube, he hosted a bunch of photography related videos on DigitalRevTV, out of Hong Kong. DRTV doesn't really exist anymore, but Kai maintains some degree of celebrity in the online photography world. He's got his own YouTube channel. I'm not subscribed and have never watched any of his videos (before today) but YT's algorithm has taken note that I have been consuming a fair amount of photography related material recently. (I've been doing a deep dive on TTArtisan glass, the OG Canon EF 15mm F/2.8 Fisheye -- more on that later -- and of course specific M42 mount lenses like different iterations of the Asahi Takumar 50mm F/1.4. I learned that my non-multicoated 7 element version is probably radioactive.) I guess that explains the giant orange hexagon, but I digress... Well, ol' Kai managed to get his hands on a vintage French-made cinema lens, the Som Berthiot Flor 55mm F/1.5. I don't know a thing about the Flor 55mm or Som Berthiot in general. I do know that cinema lenses tend to be several orders of magnitude more rare and expensive than ones designed for still frame. They were made in comparatively infinitesimal numbers and only a small fraction were sold to the general public. Additionally because motion picture cameras feed the film through vertically, many cinema lenses don't make an image circle sufficiently large to cover the 35mm film plane on a still camera. The Flor is one such lens and it can be adapted to fit Leica rangefinder bodies. Consequently a clean example goes for upwards of 60,000 British Pounds in the rare event where one comes up for sale. I'm not necessarily suggesting anyone watch (most) of this video. In spite of Kai's best efforts with his little handheld wireless mic, the sound quality is lacking. Add to that the rather thick accents of most of the subjects and it can be a challenge to figure out what they're talking about. The example shots taken with the Flor are ...fine, but nothing dazzling. I own a (not so) small army of manual focus primes. While none of them match the Flor's specific unsharpness and color transmission, I can get to an equally interesting optical space with fair number of my vintage lenses. I can't mount any of them to Leica body, however. (Which is mostly fine with me, I have never coveted a Lecia digital body, but I would certainly give an M6 with a 35mm Summicron a go.) I'll go a step further and say that if there was lens that offered identical optical performance to the Flor, but was made in much larger quantity by a less storied maker (Yashica, for example) it would sell for maybe $100 on eBay.

The base model M4 Mini is basically the best deal in computing right now. It's so good that it has more or less killed the used Mac market. Except for a few exotics, it's difficult to sell Intel based Macs at all. I'm seeing them pile up on the MV Stuff 4 Sale group. No one is selling Apple Silicon models.

Things have been so chaotic recently that I'm not sure I mentioned this or not: My M1 lappy had a major problem. First one of the TB ports stopped working, then the keyboard began to fail. I lost use of left arrow key, which was a nightmare. I am constantly using arrow keys to highlight text. I began to get the "MacOS doesn't recognize this keyboard" messages ...on a laptop. I had the option to renew my AppleCare this past February and didn't. Big mistake. It cost me three times that to get this machine fixed. With that said, when one gives APPL nine hundred fucking dollars, they really deliver. They sent me a super neat box to ship it out and got the machine back to me within 5 business days. Here's the punchline. It's an entirely/mostly new machine with my SSD in it. I am on this laptop more or less constantly. The only objects I own where I know the nicks and scratches better are things like my Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 Mk I that I've had for 20 years. Apple is a weird as shit company and I could write a book about them. It'd be titled "Why Apple Sucks Balls, But I Swear On Steve Jobs' Smug Grin, Windows And Android Are Worse At Every Fucking Turn."

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.

Holy shit. One of my closest friends from college was murdered not far from where she lived. Sunny was one of the toughest people I've ever met. I can scarcely process this.

Ukraine accuses Putin of humiliating Trump with devastating attack on Kyiv. Russia launches record number of drones and ballistic missiles in seven-hour assault shortly after its leader spoke to US president.

File under: Exceeding the attention span of nearly everyone. Five hours of Gamers Nexus explaining why chaotic tariffs are a dumb idea and how they ruin everything. I watched the first installment over a couple evenings while grinding loot in an RPG. I haven't watched the second one yet.

In the parlance of our times, RIP Bozo. Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, whose ministry was toppled by prostitution scandals, dies at 90.