Month: September 2021

26SEP2021 – Quote of the Day

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Just as people are born, live a time, and die by diseases or old age, in the same way republics are formed, flower a few centuries, and perish finally by the audacity of a citizen, or by the weapons of their enemies. All has their period; all empires, and largest monarchies even, have only so much time: the republics feel continually that this time will arrive, and they look at any too-powerful family as the carriers of a disease which will give them the blow of death.

Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great)

WSJ Article Lambasts the FBI and Calls for Their Abolition

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One of the top journalists at the Wall Street Journal, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., says the FBI should be shut down.  Yeah, well, who doesn’t know that?  The question is who could get it done?  He covers the bases pretty well but at this point who doesn’t know all of this?  And who is going to drain the swamp?  It’s been tried and the FBI came out on top.  Read it if you want to feel depressed.

 

 

 

 

 

photog’s Technophobia

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So, as I’ve alluded to recently, I’ve been playing host to one of my descendants recently and whenever he visits, he’s always shocked by how little progress I’ve made technologically since his last visit and in a spirit of charity he tries to modernize my approach to various everyday life circumstances.

For instance, he reminded me pointedly that my camera, the Sony A7 III, still had the original firmware version.  But there were currently versions above revision 4.  And he stressed the fact that one of those revisions included a major upgrade to eye autofocus and tracking autofocus capability.  And since he is painfully aware of my legendary laziness, he begged me to actually perform the upgrade while he was watching, which I did.

Later when he attempted to run a YouTube video on the tv through a DVD player that had wi-fi, he was dismayed at the terrible bandwidth and asked if I had any other alternative devices.  I explained that a year ago I bought a Roku device but it seemed as if I would need to pay for a monthly subscription so in my annoyance at being sucked in, I threw it into my tech scrap heap and forgot all about it.  He assured me that the credit card registration was a harmless feint and I would not be charged for free applications like YouTube and other movie channels that had free services.  He then dug it out, installed it and suddenly my wide screen tv became a new world of high-definition nature shows that he favors.

And the other day he asked me about my photo workflow.  I use Capture One software to post-process my files and I had mentioned that the loading and backup time was becoming unmanageably long.  So, we went through the system and identified that one of my settings had been accidentally changed and I was loading all my files to one folder that was now horrifyingly large.

I attempted to remedy the situation.  I did successfully change the setting and now am no longer making the problem worse.  Score one for me!  But I then attempted to break the catalog into smaller pieces to speed up the processing time.  That didn’t work out so well.  Capture One has several categories of files.  There are catalogs and sessions and folders and even other things that I’m not really sure I understand at all.  I spent several hours chopping up the giant folder into my existing file system.  Then I tried to point the thumbnail renderings to the new file system and that was a total failure.  It wouldn’t locate the files for the thumbnails to work as needed, a crushing blow.  An alternative would be to manually point the thumbnails to the individual files one by one.  But since there are tens of thousands of files, I might not live long enough to accomplish this.  Plan B is to spend several hours combining all the files back into one folder the way they were before I started changing it and then move the thumbnails and files together into separate folders.  It’s sad to know just how inept I am with the software tools I work with.  But an honest man must swallow the hard truth and try to do better.  I have vowed, with Peter Thiel as my witness, that I will get my tech house in order.  I will give a DAM (that’s digital image management) and get my millions of photo files under control.  I will learn how to make my own plug-ins for my website.  And I will spend the time to find the appropriate (and cheap) software I need to optimize my other digital occupations like fiction writing.

Of course, I won’t start today.  We’re having a big get together and I have to help Camera Girl with the set-up and general chores.  But soon!  And from now on!  The world will see a new photog!

Did that sound convincing?

25SEP2021 – Quote of the Day

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Do you think I take any pleasure in this dog’s life, in seeing and causing death in people unknown to me, in losing friends and acquaintances daily, in seeing my reputation ceaselessly exposed to the caprices of fortune, in spending the whole year with uneasiness and apprehension, in continually risking my life and my fortune? I certainly know the value of tranquility, the charms of society, the pleasures of life, and I like to be happy as much as anybody. Although I desire all these good things, I will not buy them with baseness and infamy. Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve our country faithfully at the expense of our blood and of our repose, to commit our whole being to it.

Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great)

The Right’s Two Missions

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I don’t know who first said that the best defense is a good offense but for the most part he was right.  It is my contention that if we intend to defeat the Leftists two separate efforts will be necessary.  One will be supporting the social and cultural objectives that we need to sustain and improve our lives.  So that includes all the efforts needed to support our agenda and defend it against the Left.  All of our efforts to defend the constitutional freedoms, all the programs that will improve the chances of normal Americans to prosper in the new reality of America in this globalized environment.  Let’s call all of these the defense.  We’re defending ourselves from enemies foreign and domestic.

But there’s the other mission.  Let’s call it the offense.  And that’s something that hasn’t happened up till now.  What is needed is a concerted effort to attack the institutions and the individuals on the Left.  And as far as a template just model it on how the Left attacks individuals and institutions on the Right.  No one is surprised when right-wing people are tossed off Facebook or Twitter.  And equally no one is surprised when the state organs of government in Colorado sue and harass a small businessman like that wedding baker.  And it’s just business as usual as lawfare is levelled against organizations from the Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts to Chick-fil-A and hounded out of existence or neutered by various states and jurisdictions.  No one is surprised because the Left has made these attacks their stock in trade.  But when is it done by the Right?  Never.

What is needed is a concerted effort to level legal and other actions against leftist organizations and individuals who are vulnerable to this approach.  For instance, why haven’t Texas and Missouri and other red states taken legal action against the individuals and groups that make up antifa and BLM.  Why aren’t those people in jail?   And why doesn’t someone go after the Fortune 500 corporations that have funded them?  Why isn’t anyone representing the people in Minneapolis and Chicago and New York City who were harassed and assaulted and burned out of their businesses?  Why shouldn’t the governors and mayors and city councils of those places be sued personally for allowing the outrages to occur by restraining the police from doing their jobs?  It’s not happening because the national leadership of the Right isn’t an organized body.  It’s just people scattered haphazardly across this country without the strategic awareness of what is needed to counteract the forces that the Left has brought to bear.  And until we start attacking the Left on an organized and professional basis we’ll always be on the defensive.  There should be a bank of lawyers that are spending time representing people on our side who have grievances that will generate settlements of large amounts of cash and legal remedies that will discomfort and maybe incarcerate criminals on the Left.

Think about it.  Why aren’t the antifa criminals in jail?  The January 6th trespassers are and what they did is a trifling offense compared to arson, homicide and grand theft.  Donald Trump is being investigated by the New York Attorney General for being a businessman but the Governor of Minnesota and the Mayor of Minneapolis allowed their citizens to be terrorized and denied their civil rights by a mob that was allowed to run amok.

The people who represent us need to start thinking strategically about how to strike back at the Left or we’re not going to win.