Month: October 2024
Tom’s World – 10OCT2024 – Museum Aircraft – 6
All of these shots save the Spookies were from US Naval museum and the Spookies were from the Air Force museum at Eglin AFB.
F4 Corsair, one of the, if not the premium fighter aircraft of WWII. Corsairs were still in frontline duty 10 years later after all the others were long retired.
A F18 F/A retired from the Blue Angels
Another view of the F4 Corsair
A US Marine Corps Vertical take off and landing Harrier. This was originally a pure British design and produced (and used) aircraft. Falkland Islands, remember? When the US Marines thought the Harrier was spot on, it was injected with some US DNA and produced by McDonald Douglas in the US.
2 views of the original Spooky Gunship made famous in the VietNam era. It was based on the WWII era C47 AKA, DC3 & and was armed with .308 (7.62×51 NATO designation) miniguns and could put on quite a night time display, filling the sky with tracers. The gunship concept was considered to be highly successful and has since evolved considerably, currently C130 based and with a variety of types of lethal weapons of various calibers up to and including 105mm howitzers of (ironically) also of Viet Nam vintage.
Tom’s World – 09SEP2024 – Museum Aircraft – 1
Tom’s World – 18SEP2024 – Museum Aircraft – 2
Tom’s World – 25SEP2024 – Museum Aircraft – 3
Could Trump Win?
The Election Fraud in 2020 changed my outlook on American elections. What I saw happen that November convinced me that outright theft of the presidency is completely within the scope of the Democratic Party’s purview. Suffice it to say that I am highly skeptical of Trump’s chances in this election. I assumed they are low; less than 25%.
But then I watched this:
2WAY is a creation of Mark Halperin who was a talking head on one of the networks, I think ABC. Sean Spicer was one of Trump’s first press secretaries. Dan Turrentine is a “Democratic strategist.” I’ve never heard of him. Anyway, Halperin hosts these zoom calls with various Democrat and Republican talking heads and a bunch of everyday people who come on to give their two cents but without any screaming or name-calling. More or less Halperin attempts to be an honest broker who allows both sides to talk about the election without too much spin.
For the last week or two, Halperin has been saying that the inside polls and the early voting data is increasingly good for Donald Trump and bad for Harris. In this short video both Spicer and Turrentine seem to be agreeing with him. Now, I hate to get my hopes up because that is a dangerous thing to do, but it’s getting harder to resist. Well, I’m “all growed up now” so I guess I shouldn’t be scared of working through what’s going on in the real world.
With two weeks left before election day it’s still too early to get too excited about this “trend.” I think this Friday would be a good place to evaluate where the race and the indicators stand. What Spicer thought was that if the Democratic campaign thinks things are going south, they will immediately start attacking Trump with anything and everything they’ve got. Well, that’s interesting. I’m not sure where you can go after you’ve already called him a despotic, demented, unbalanced danger to the republic. I guess Harris can approve a commercial where a picture of Trump morphs into Adolph Hitler or Darth Vader. But I’m interested to see if something like that does surface on my local television station. Of course, this being New England, that would be preaching to the choir and an awful waste of money. But perhaps Pennsylvania and Michigan might be bombarded with such stuff.
Look, I’m skeptical as hell. I’ve been burned before and don’t enjoy getting my hopes up. But I have to confess that with the fallout from the Biden administration looking like a list of biblical plagues not seen since the time of Moses, it’s hard not to believe that the American voters would rise up and demand the end of the Democrats’ reign. So, let’s just say that I’m more than a little interested in the increasingly worried statements coming from the Harris campaign behind the scenes. I’ll review things on Friday and maybe I’ll have more to say at that time. Now that’s cautious and bland enough. Isn’t it?
23OCT2024 – Photo of the Day
23OCT2024 – Quote of the Day
The word impossible is not French.
Napoleon Bonaparte
The Honeymooners – Complete Series Review – Episode 3 – The Golfer
In this episode we are introduced to Ralph’s unending search for a gimmick to reach success in business. He has been spreading a rumor at the bus company that the executive (Mr. Harper) who is choosing the new assistant traffic manager is a good friend of his and will pick Ralph for the job.
But when the other bus drivers realize that Ralph is the source of the rumors they break out into derisive laughter and one of them informs Ralph that Harper doesn’t even know that Ralph exists. Ed Norton is having lunch with Ralph and hears about Ralph’s embarrassment. Norton encourages Ralph to strike up a conversation with Harper and try to make a personal connection with the executive in order to increase his chances for the assistant traffic manager’s job. So when Harper happens by Ralph tries out Norton’s advice and by lying about his golfing abilities (he has none but claims to be a pro) he catches Harper’s interest.
Norton erroneously assumes Ralph is serious about wanting to play Harper and backs Ralph into a corner that sets up a golf game between Ralph and Harper for the next morning. When Harper leaves Ralph explodes at Norton for setting up the game. He tells Norton that he can’t play at all and the game will expose Ralph as a complete fraud. But Norton assures him that with a good book on learning golf and Norton’s help he should be able to convince Harper that he is a good golfer.
And this sets up the scene that is the highlight of the show Ralph and Norton trying to learn how to play golf in Ralph’s kitchen with an old golf club, a round cloth pin cushion for the ball and Norton’s interpretation of the words of this “How to Play golf in One Easy Lesson” handbook.
And they get pretty good physical comedy mileage from that setup. Ralph copying Norton’s hip gyrations while “addressing” the ball is enough to give Alice the best line of the show. Alice arrives home just as Ralph is performing his limbering moves. Seeing her he says, “I’m practicing golf.” She replies, “Is that what it is? The way your backfield was in motion I thought it was football.”
Alice’s discouraging words shake Ralph’s confidence and he comes to realize just how hopeless a situation he’s in. But a miracle intervenes. One of the other executives shows up at Ralph’s home and informs him that Harper injured himself and can’t play the next day. But instead of gracefully accepting this stroke of luck he plays up how much he wanted to play Harper and of course the executive decides to take Harper’s place on the links with Ralph the next day. After the executive walks out the door Ralph looks at Alice and says, “Well, Alice you’ve got to admit one thing. I’ve got a biiiiig mouuuuth!” End of episode.
So this whole episode is just an excuse for watching Ralph and Norton performing one of their desperate attempts to escape their working class limitations and end up on easy street. And most of the fun is watching their expressions as they try to convince themselves that it is working.
But as always it’s the final interaction between Alice and Ralph that brings home the message that all of Ralph’s biggest problems stem from his desire to be more than he is. I rat this episode highly because of the physical comedy between Ralph and Norton. Well worth watching
22OCT2024 – Quote of the Day
Where do you think you are going? Can’t you see that the battle is won? Come on, stand firm!
Napoleon Bonaparte
22OCT2024 – Photo of the Day
21OCT2024 – OCF Update – Babylonian Captivity
As previously whined, I am entering an extended period of limited access to the internet and limited time to post. I will check as circumstance allows but it will be inadequate. I’ll catch up at night and try to provide content but I predict quantity and quality will suffer.
Apologies from the management. On with the show!
Focus Bracketing Inside the Sony A7 IV – Part 1
Well, I couldn’t resist. I went on Sony’s website and found the pages with the firmware update (4.00). But upon reading the instructions I found out that since my firmware was at version 1.01, I had to first update my camera to version 1.05 before updating to version 4.00. The warning said that if I went straight to 4.00 it would cause an error and then I wouldn’t be able to fix the problem. Well, the camera gods are a jealous bunch and defying them is very unwise so along with many a grumble and even a few mumbles I went through the procedure twice.
1.01 to 1.05
1.05 to 4.00
And what do you know? It really worked. The drive menu had new options that included focus bracketing. After following the instructions from a YouTube video, I was able to quickly and easily run a quick bracket on a preserved tarantula spider specimen and send it through my focus stacking program (Affinity Photo) and, voila, edge to edge sharpness.
Now this was just a quick test. I had a kid’s party starting and barely got the files stacked before I had to go referee grandkids for Camera Girl. But it was definitely a proof of concept and I can see how this will work for even some field shots. Definitely usable for macro shots of plants like mushrooms and such and even for resting or sedate creatures like resting dragonflies and such. Of course, butterflies are out of the question. But a little testing is bound to bring up other applications.
So, all in all, this is an amazing surprise from Sony. Kudos to them for hearing my cries in the wilderness. Bravo, gentlemen, bravo.