Chive flower
07JUN2018 – Photo of the Day
Month: June 2018
Kill Team – Galaxy’s Edge (Volume 3) by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole – A Science Fiction Book Review
Galaxy’s Edge – Galactic Outlaws – A Science Fiction Book Review
Kill Team is the third installment of the Galaxy’s Edge science fiction series. But chronologically it occurs immediately after the end of Legionnaire, the first volume in the series. Kill Team is a two track story. One track tells the story of the surviving members of Legion Company Victory after the Battle of Kublar and how they become re-integrated into the task force attempting to prevent a decapitation attack meant to topple the Republic. The other track is a spy story following an undercover agent working to prevent the same attack.
The story is well told. But for my tastes the adventures of the Legionnaires is more engaging. The morally ambiguous role of the spy and the way that the writer portrays his internal conflict isn’t as much fun as the mil-sf adventures of Victory Company.
The story line serves to provide back story to some characters that first appeared in Galactic Outlaws, volume two of the series. And this was, in my opinion necessary. Quite a big gap existed between the story lines in Legionnaire and Galactic Outlaws. Kill Team makes sense of some of the dramatic changes in the intervening period.
My verdict for Kill Team is positive. Although, as I said I enjoyed the Victory Company track more than the spy track the story holds up well and builds on the strong characters that made Legionnaire so enjoyable. Kudos to Anspach and Cole. They’ve extended their winning streak and I’ll go for the fourth volume. I want to see just how bleak their empire crashing vision will be.
Galaxy’s Edge (Volume 4) – Attack of Shadows – A Science Fiction Book Review
6JUN2018 – Quote of the Day
George Orwell Week
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
George Orwell
I never knew this was an Orwell quote. I assumed it was a Founding Father.
06JUN2018 – Photo of the Day
Iris
CTH reports McCabe Wants Immunity to Testify
I was figuring it would be him. But this might just be a sad attempt to escape without saying anything substantive. To be continued.
Fired FBI Director Andrew McCabe Requests Criminal Immunity in exchange for Congressional Testimony…
A Sony Fan-Lost-Boy Finally Arrives in the Promised Land
This post is only for the long suffering Sony A-mount users. You know who you are. You bought the A900 or the A850 and you were looking forward to Sony re-issuing all those great Minolta lenses and competing head to head with the Nikon D3S. You saw nothing but upside from a technology powerhouse like Sony improving the DSLR. And then they pulled the rug out from under you. Translucent mirrors that lost a half stop of light. LED viewfinders that lagged by a second or two when you triggered the shutter. And then the true mirrorless camera with contrast detect autofocus that didn’t focus. The NEX series that was unbelievably small but suffering from all these problems. And then the A7 cameras. Series one then series two. Painstaking progress. Slowly the potential of the mirrorless becoming real but always something still missing. And then the A9 the camera that had all the pieces! And a $4,500 price tag!
But now, the A7 III. Oh my brothers I just must joyously exclaim. It is a real camera made by Sony. Hallelujah, hallelujah, halleleujah. The joy of picking a point in the viewfinder, half-pressing
the shutter and seeing the autofocus work instantly and precisely. I could barely see the result through my tears of joy. Huzzah, huzzah. Never again would I focus, then magnify, then manually refocus to save the shot. Now I go through the pictures afterward and every shot is perfectly focused. And ISO 800 and 1600 and 3200 are perfectly usable and even ISO 6400 is often fine! And if I want to do a macro shot with a non macro lens I use magnify to get precise focus on the exact spot I want and the 24 megapixels give me plenty of room to crop.
Nirvana, Valhalla, Heaven, Elysium, Paradise. I’m home. I don’t need to wait or hope or give up and change systems. It’s done. I’m there.
Sony you are finally forgiven for keeping me out in the wilderness all these years.
05JUN2018 – Quote of the Day
George Orwell Week
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.
George Orwell
1984 is a terrible book to give a young person to read. But it should be required reading in our present age.
05JUN2018 – Photo of the Day
flowering weed
Kennedy Allows That the First Amendment Still Somewhat Exists and Finds for the Colorado Wedding Baker
Reading the decision, it’s the most wishy-washy defense of religious freedom to ever come out of the Supreme Court. Well at least it’s a start. Now if he’ll just have the decency of retiring we can put a real conservative in and get some actual justice for this country.
Update:
In honor of this decision I will link here to my Trump vs Justice Kennedy homage. Boy, I hope Kennedy resigns this month.
The Conservative Treehouse Cautions to Wait For This Week’s IG Report Before Speculating
Sundance at the CTH says the amount of false information circulating makes it worthwhile to see what the IG’s report actually says.
Here’s his quote.
“The Inspector General report on the FBI and DOJ action in the Clinton investigation is due out this week. In my humble opinion it is best to wait and see what discoveries are within the fact-centric report, and the confirmed underlying evidence, before wandering out into the speculative land of mirrored rabbit holes.”
Probably good advice.