Category: OCF

26OCT2024 – OCF Update – This ‘N’ That

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Well, another day in captivity.  But there is the possibility I’ll have at least most of Saturday off.  Surfacing and looking around I see that the consensus is growing that Trump is leading Harris in the swing states.  So, of course that means Harris declares him Hitler.  Well, as anyone who’s been on the internet for a few decades knows when you pull the Hitler card you lose.  But it’s always fun to see someone bring back the classics.

Honestly, all of the “drama” in the last week and a half of the election is overblown.  Harris is an unlikable person who comes off as a phony and an emotionally unstable individual.  Really the only question is whether the Democrats have alienated enough of their base to lose so conclusively that normal voter fraud will be insufficient.  And since half the polls are rigged, we’re just going to have to wait until election day (or later) to find out.

Well, I’m fine with that.  I just hope the Democrats are out of snipers.  Trump is doing a rally in Madison Square Garden and there isn’t anywhere to hide on that stage if someone sneaks a gun in.  But let’s assume they’re not stupid enough for a third try.  Honestly, if anything like that happened to Trump at this point, it really would tear this country apart.

Well, anyway, that’s where the election is right now.  In my circles I can tell that the rank-and-file Democrats are very, very nervous.  So, I’m just ignoring all the horse race stuff and shrugging off all the “convincing” arguments about why one or the other of them is going to win.  It’s mostly just whistling past the graveyard.

It turns out the Yankees managed to get into the World Series this year.  Back in the 1990s Camera Girl and I followed them very enthusiastically.  But since Major League baseball started allowing their players to take a knee during the national anthem, I swore off all the sports games.  So, she was watching the game tonight.  Well, she fell asleep and I was writing my post and in the bottom of the tenth down by one run and with two outs the Dodgers get a walk-off grand slam.  Poor Camera Girl.

So tomorrow I plan to enjoy all of this unseasonably warm weather.  I might even try to photograph some of the remaining autumn color that put on such a nice display when I couldn’t shoot it.  I’ll try to find an opportunity to make a few macro focus stacks with the new firmware programming.  Of course, everything is turning to mush after the frosts we had last week.  But who knows with all this heat the bugs and critters might be reawakening.  Now they’re predicting something like eighty-degree weather for Halloween.  That would be something.  But I’ll still be trapped inside so it might as well be Antarctica as far as I’ll be concerned.

Something occurred to me while I was perusing my Complete Shakespeare.  The Honeymooners is sort of a reverse version of “The Taming of the Shrew.”  Basically, Ralph Kramden has set the male sex back about four hundred years.  Over and over again Alice proves him wrong and shows him to be a pathetic loser.  As much as I like the show, it is interesting that the Honeymooners is the template that all modern art uses to describe the relations between men and women.  It’s certainly not a flattering paradigm for us.

You know, maybe it’s time to revive Shakespeare’s play.  We may have reached the inflection point where giving the girl bosses a taste of their own medicine might be the best action.  Even though I’ve never had to beat Camera Girl, I don’t see any reason not to reinstate the rule of thumb.  I’ll have to write at depth about this in a couple of weeks from now.

Well, I’ll leave it there.  Enjoy the day.  I know I will.

21OCT2024 – OCF Update – Babylonian Captivity

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner ,

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

photog Camera Reviews, Current Events, OCF, Photo Study, Photography, Photography Reviews , , , , ,

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.

20OCT2024 – OCF Update – This ‘N’ That

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Ah, the calm before the storm.  I have this weekend completely off before the next seventeen days of misery and isolation.  So, I’ll enjoy these two days to the hilt and then, “abandon all hope ye who enter here.”  For what it’s worth it seems like Trump is enjoying himself a lot more than Kamala.  Her cackling has diminished and her ranting seems to have replaced it.  From everything I’ve heard she is a truly awful person that makes those around her miserable.  If she loses, I wouldn’t be surprised if her marriage ends and many of her other connections to human society.

The latest “controversy” is that Democrat voters will be using the branding     ,LA      (get it, comma la) on their clothing to get around the restrictions against wearing the candidates’ names or images at the polling place.  So, we’ve reached back to, I guess, kindergarten or at most grammar school in our tactics.  What’s next, will the Democrats be telling “yo mamma” jokes?

Anyway, the weather around Dunwich has been remarkably mellow for this time of year.  I understand we’re expected to have a string of three or four 75-degree days ending on Tuesday.  That’s phenomenal.  But because I’ve gotten used to fall weather, it’s almost too warm for comfort.

I wrote that post about Sony adding focus bracketing to their firmware update for my A7IV camera.  I intended to wait until after my captivity before updating the firmware but it’s killing me to not try it out.  I think I’ll bite the bullet tomorrow morning.  I have this dead luna moth that I found this summer and I’d love to play around with focus stacking it.  Well, we’ll see.  Tomorrow is a busy day.  We have a kid’s birthday party coming up and I’m sure Camera Girl has a laundry list of honey-do’s lined up for me.  And honestly there are several things I should be working on anyway.  So even if I update the camera I may have to wait.

It should be interesting to see how the country changes regardless of who “wins” the election.  I think there’s a growing cohort that realizes that something is very broken with our whole social order.  The fragmentation now extends to a polarization by sex.  Younger women and men are lining up in opposition to each other philosophically.  I really do believe we are seeing the beginning of a permanent split.  Basically, women who have accepted the new template for living for a career will not be having children.  And that means that men will have to find wives who want to have children elsewhere.  I guess mail order overseas brides will become more the rule than the exception and over time the cat ladies will die out.  Well, that’s a solution of sorts.

The “October Viewing” movies has been fun for me but it’s gotten me thinking about what a monster is.  Is it only freakish creatures like Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster or can it be a man like Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates?  Obviously, the actual humans are scarier because they really exist.  When you hear about the things that Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer did to their victims you understand that inside they truly are monsters.  So maybe creating fairy tale creatures like the movie monsters is a way of distracting ourselves from the true horrors that we don’t want to contemplate.  But our society has grown up and now we prefer to scare ourselves with realistic monsters.  I remember when I read Thomas Harris’s “Red Dragon” back in the 1980’s it struck me as an interesting crime story and nothing more.  But when I thought about the way that that the murderer selected his victim families by working in a photo lab that developed family home movies, it chilled me to the core.  If a motivated psychopath could select his victims without any direct connection to him then how could anyone hope to protect his family from this random agent of horrifying destruction?  Basically, you can’t.  Random chance rules all of our lives.  That I found horrifying.  So maybe I should include “Psycho” and “Silence of the Lambs” in my October Viewings.  Or maybe that would take away some of the fun.  Well, October is waning I better hurry up and make up my mind.  What do you folks think?

Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus. But His Name is Sony!

photog Camera Reviews, Current Events, OCF, Photography, Photography Reviews , , , , ,

At this point I considered attaching a video of the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah.  I had been waiting and hoping and praying that Sony would add focus bracketing to my Sony A7 IV camera by a firmware update but had more or less given up.

They did it!  Well, they made the update but I haven’t updated my camera yet.

But I watched the video below and did a quick jig around my house and am now calming down enough to type this post.

Ah hell, let’s add the Hallelujahs!

TomD replied:

Really!!??

I’ve been wanting focus bracketing for years! Years ago, FB was a relatively expensive windows or apple program and you had to shoot with the camera tethered to a computer. What a PIA.

I’m gonna update right now.

It can immediately help with a number of different types of shots I do. Aircraft in a museum for example. Museums are crowded with a constant problem of subject isolation. Far enough out to get the entire plane in the shot and there is a LOT of stuff competing for attention. Close enough with a wide angle and there is the depth of field problem.

photog replied:

I had to do two updates.  First I had to go from version 1.01 to 1.05.  Then 1.05 to 4.00.  But it worked.  I’ll load up the trial macro focus bracket soon.  It’s much easier than the damn tether.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy

Well, the horror is upon me.  I got home tonight around 9pm and hadn’t had dinner yet so my whole schedule is a mess.  And this will be the way of it for the next three weeks.  I’ve gotten ahead on the daily photos and quotes which is good.  But my brain is groggy and I haven’t had a chance to go over much of the news and even if I had there doesn’t appear to be anything interesting to discuss.  I mean do we want to talk about Kamala Harris?  Why?  Has she suddenly raised her IQ to 80?  Did she accidentally get injected with Sodium Pentothal and started telling the truth?  Did she catch her husband diddling the nanny again and asked for a new First Gentleman?  And even if all three of these things had happened would anyone care?  I know I wouldn’t.  I find Kamala so profoundly stupid that it’s hard to listen to her anymore.  I need a break of at least a few days.

I was considering watching and reviewing Coppola’s Dracula tonight but I’m afraid I’d fall asleep in the middle.

So, what the hell do I write about tonight?

How about a little wishful thinking about the future?  Let’s assume the worst occurs in November.  Harris is installed in the White House and doubles down on invasion and Bidenomics.  After eighteen months in office inflation reaches an annual rate of 150% and the cities are so crime-ridden and filthy that even Democrat voters revolt.  Armed insurrection becomes widespread and Harris resigns and Walz agrees to make Trump his Vice President and then resigns in his favor.  Trump declares martial law and implements a laundry list of executive orders to drain the swamp and clean up the country.  By the end of Trump’s term in 2028 J D Vance is extremely popular and landslides to victory with majorities in both houses of Congress.  After another eight years of conservative rule the United States has eliminated the deficit and is on track to pay off the debt within a decade or so.  The energy problem has been fixed with multiple robust sources and the United States is able to concentrate on raising the standard of living for all its citizens to heights never imagined.  All of the Bill of Rights are restored to their original forms and affirmative action and DEI are just bad memories of a failed social movement that did no one any long term good.

And finally, SpaceX finally sends a manned mission to Mars and they discover that the Martians have been hiding below the surface all along trying to decide if they wanted to meet up with us or not.  They make friends with Musk and allow him to build his asteroid mining base on Mars and shortly afterward he finds a fifty-mile-long gold nugget somewhere near Jupiter and becomes the first quadrillionaire.  Shortly afterward he begins building his ring world project and all intelligent life leaves Earth to the Democrats and other invertebrates.

There that’s better.  Now I better get some sleep.  It’s going to be a long three weeks.

Turning the Page

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner ,

The countdown continues.  As I write this there are twenty-four days until the election.  From my point of view, I am desperate for this thing to be over.  After November Fifth I hope never to see Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow or any other poisonous talking head for the rest of my natural life.  My intent is to occupy my time with things that can have a positive impact on me and my local world.

Now it may be that from time to time I may have some reason to consider what the two national parties are doing as it impacts me.  That’s only reasonable.  But all of my efforts will be directed toward avoiding the policies of the federal and state governments that negatively impact my life.  I don’t delude myself that I can completely negate these deleterious influences.  But I intend to use whatever resources and logical analysis I can bring to bear to improve the way I and my friends and family live inside this place.

I look at this as a shift from a passive strategy to an active approach.  Instead of stressing over an election that I have absolutely no control over and which may be completely rigged from the get go, I can concentrate on my own actions and how they will impact the things I identify as in some sense controllable.  And that shift from passive to active I find very exciting.  For way too many years I have been fixated on reliving the experience of Ronald Reagan capturing the imagination of the majority of Americans and trying to change the course America was on.  Probably the closest we ever came to that was when George W. Bush was given a mandate in 2004 by the American people.  And he squandered it.  Well, time is growing short.  I can’t wait for the country to return to a consensus.  That may take decades or maybe never happen at all.  For me direct action is the solution.

Of course, my actions will be small, limited in scope and based on my interests and talents.  I intend to spend my time writing.  I think I might be able to produce some entertaining stories.  I want them to reach a sizable audience so I have a lot to learn about marketing and other aspects of book selling.  Some of the things I’ve heard about how you have to write ten novels ahead of time so that you can release them, one a month, in order to trigger the Amazon algorithm that notices such things.  That seems insane.  You have to write a million words before finding out if your story will be seen by anyone.  There’s got to be a better way than that.  But anyway, that’s one of the things I have to find out about.

So, come on November Sixth.  Get here already.  Put an end to polls, debates, pundits, special reports, psychopathic snipers, CNN, MSNBC, 60 Minutes, Joe Biden’s presidency and every other scrap of this long stupid ordeal that has eaten up years of my life but hasn’t improved it one iota.  Let me move on with my life.

Update:

War Pig commented:

I voted yesterday. Early voting in person at the board of elections. A strange process this time. After validating my identity via military ID card, I signed in and watched as a ballot was printed off for me. I don’t like that. I voted and left. Now I can see how easily electronic-counted ballots can be faked. It goes into a reader machine and I have no way of knowing if it is read correctly. I use ink to fill in the bubble beside the candidate. But when read does the machine record my actual vote or is it set up to record the wrong candidate one out of, say, fifty times?

Hmmmm. Since the Clintons are related by marriage to Soros and a relative of Soros owns the company that makes and supplies software for the majority of voting machines, it gives me furiously to wonder.

Photog responds:

Since the debacle of 2020 I plugged into the local electoral process where I lived.  And what has changed surprised me.  Even in New England there has been an upswell of monitoring of such things as voter registration lists and fraud.  Will it make a difference?  Hard to say but there has been some scrutiny.

A Better Mousetrap

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Camera Girl is a courageous woman.  She will bravely rail against anyone who offends her sense of justice.  Unfortunately, she usually does this when it puts me in the firing line of whoever she is challenging or berating.  This can get a little dicey for me.

So, she has the heart of lioness, except when it comes to mice.  The poor girl is terrorized by the diminutive rodents.  Something about their tails fills her with horror.  And so, she wages a war of attrition against them in all the outposts of the Compound.  Specifically, the garage and the large shed that houses the yard equipment.  My own feeling is that areas outside of the house and its various attachments are outside of the jurisdiction of polite society and so a mouse or two more or less is not cause for alarm.  But she disagrees vehemently.  Part of the reason is that she has to go through the garage to bring the dogs to the fenced in areas she lets them out into at night.  And if the dogs sense that mice have been in the area, they become interested and this frightens her into thinking that one of Stuart Little’s relatives might make an appearance and trigger the dogs to catch and eat it.  For her this would be even worse than one running by her.

And so, she has taken to mining the garage and shed with mouse traps.  Interestingly, seeing a dead mouse in the snap trap is not frightening for her.  Once rendered inert, she discharges the traps at the edge of the pond and literally caws for Moe the Crow and Poe the Raven and their ancillary corvids to partake of the murine feast provided.  I find this to be one of her most eccentric rituals.

Anyway, a crisis has emerged.  A year or two ago we switched from the venerable wooden spring traps to a newfangled jaws-like version made of plastic.  She liked these better because they made it easier to release the dead mouse from the trap.  But recently these traps have begun failing.  Apparently, the mice were now able to extract the peanut butter that she baited the trap with, without the trap snapping.  She would come back from her trip to the shed, filled with a sense of dread and tell me this tale of woe.  The world turned upside down!

Because Camera Girl had never developed the knack for setting the older wooden traps I have, of course, been recruited to become the baiter of traps.  And also, I have been tasked with solving the mystery of the failed plastic traps.  And it has been implied that if I fail to diagnose the problem and correct it, I will have failed as a man, a husband, and an engineer.

O tempora, o mores!

So far, I have installed the wooden traps with the prescribed bait that was provided to me by Camera Girl.  That much have I done.  But I have only just begun to investigate a cause.  Could the traps be defective?  Could they have gotten rusty and thus less sensitive?  Might the peanut butter have become old and therefore easier to remove?

My mind has raced to encircle this mystery within a thicket of possible solutions.  But these are deep waters.  I cannot be too hasty.  A proper plan of attack is needed.  I’ll need a budget to purchase supplies, tools and instruments.  I’ll need a detailed schedule to properly scope the project and I’ll need a scapegoat in case the project is a failure.  Maybe one of the dogs.  Updates will follow but I felt this project was important enough to warrant an introductory post to benchmark the effort.

The single guys out there probably assume I’m suffering the beginnings of dementia.  The married men will probably understand that this is just one of the many accommodations a man makes to keep a wife happy.  And after all the expression, “Happy wife, happy wife,” Is not far from the truth.  But I do wish someone would invent a mousetrap with lasers.  It would make the who thing much more fun.

Update:

War Pig commented:

Mamaw used peanut butter in her traps as well, but when the diminutive rascals found out how to defeat that, she went to bacon grease. Mice, in Ohio at least, cannot resist bacon grease. Also the plastic traps tend to not give the same force as the wood-and-spring traps. A healthy mouse can get out of them and resist a broken neck due to their lack of dynage. Living on a farm meant constant vermin control. The little buggars aren’t stupid. We have to change out methods and baits from time to time. Thankfully, a generation of mice comes along a few times per year. So anything learned from the last generation is lost to the grandchildren.

Apology to TomD and the Site Viewers

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, OCF, TomD ,

Due to an error by the webmaster (me), TomD’s latest post on military aircraft “Tom’s World – 10OCT2024 – Museum Aircraft – 5” was not published this morning as it should have been.

Instead it will appear tomorrow at 9am eastern time.

Please excuse this lapse.  I’ve been juggling a few too many chainsaws of late and it’s beginning to take its toll.

photog