Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

Merry Christmas Day 2025

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family ,

Well, here we are.  We made it to the end of the year and now we get to spend a few days reflecting on the year and looking forward to the next one.  Christmas Day will be a family gathering here at the Compound and we’ll be stuffing ourselves with rich foods and desserts and basically enjoying each other’s company for the day that the kids and those who are young at heart wait all year for.  It sounds like we’ll be lucky and have a day without snow.  The grass is still covered with the two inches that are left over from the last few days but the driveways are pretty clean for the cars to get in and out.

Camera Girl has worked mightily for the last few days shopping and cooking and baking up a storm and there will be a roast beast and lasagna and all the fixin’s.  My oldest grandson is graduating college and we’ve been talking about applying for jobs and also all of the latest technical innovations in the computer and information fields.  He told me about the computer that is now available that uses a chunk of brain cells to play pong.  That had me shaking my head.  But I’m sure crazier things are in the future.  Maybe someday they’ll grow an entire brain in a vat and then the Matrix will be for real.

Well, I’ll try to look in on the site sometime tomorrow.  But here’s hoping everyone has the best Christmas Day they can.

Merry Christmas to all of you and yours.

Maybe I’ll Swing Down to Mar-a-Lago

photog Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

Today was an interesting day.  The younger grandkids came over with their mothers to make Christmas cookies with Camera Girl.  In addition to the real cookies, they also got to make “sugar cookies.”  This is some kind of sweeter cookie dough that they then adorn with multi-colored granulated sugar and other impossibly sweet ingredients like chocolate sprinkles.  And they didn’t just sprinkle it on.  They poured it on like cement coming out of a truck.  It was horrifying.  No one but a child could stand the saccharine sucrosity of that unholy concoction.  But of course, no one would force me to ingest that mess so I smiled indulgently and feasted on a few of the legitimate confections that were created in the kitchen.  And they were very, very good.  Sure, they’re not good for me but it’s Christmas and this is the time to overindulge.

And later on, my proof copies of “The Sniper” were delivered by the Amazon truck.  He brought them to the bottom driveway and then had to skate across the ice that had melted from the snow and then refrozen over-night.  I apologized to him for the hazard but he laughed it off and said he’d seen much worse today.

Now these “proof” copies have a watermark across the cover that says “not for resale” or something like that.  But seeing my work (or Jake Barter’s anyway) in the flesh, as it were, was kind of fun.  After all, what could be more official than finding your product inside of an Amazon box?  Why, that’s the very definition of American commerce in the twenty first century.  Thank you, Jeff Bezos!

And after a cursory inspection it looks pretty good.  The cover art is clear, the text lines up well on the pages and the paper feels right.  I’ll page through it and make sure nothing is missing or marred.  But I think everything looks like it’s a go for next month.  I’ve applied for Author status on Goodreads and I’ve authorized my marketer to set up my ad campaign and choose the keywords or whatever they call the bait that’s meant to entice the algorithm to catapult me to viral ubiquity.  I wonder if this magic requires the sacrifice of a hecatomb or at least a black lamb.  All of it seems like black magic to me.  But I figure it’s definitely worth my while to give the whole thing the old college try.  After all. What has Brandon Sanderson got that I ain’t got?  I mean other than $41.7 million dollars of Kickstarter funding, that is.  By February I may be waist deep in royalty checks.  Movie studios may be fighting each other to get me to sell them the movie rights.  I’ll probably get a call from the White House begging me to use my vast clout and get involved in the negotiations to end the Ukraine War.  I’ll probably spend a few hours in Oval Office advising Donald about domestic and foreign affairs and signing autographs for Marco and J.D.  Who knows, maybe I’ll swing down to Mar-a-Lago and advise the President on how to lower his golf handicap.

Well, we’ll see.

We’ve Got to Have Priorities

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family ,

 

Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

Well, Christmas has arrived.  No not the Day or the Eve.  We’re still four or five days away but the reality has landed.  On Sunday, Camera Girl and her daughters and granddaughter will be making Christmas cookies all day.  Now this is a major event in the holiday.  When it happens, I can grab a cookie or two with every cup of coffee she serves between now and Christmas (and even a while after).  So, this ushers in the end of reasonable eating habits until the end of the holiday.  I approximate I’ll put on five pounds between now and then.  And at my age that’s a burden because losing five pounds is painful.  It’ll take three or four weeks to shed it.

But I have to admit it’s worth it.  Christmas dinner will include both roast beef and home-made lasagna.  And I have already seen the ingredients for ricotta cheese cake and several half gallons of very good ice cream.  I even complained bitterly until she stocked up on some Klondike Bars.  I know for a fact that several of the grandchildren love them and I refused to miss out on a chance to spoil the little guys.  As I’ve stated before, I believe my chance at immortality depends on their good opinion of me after I go to that big website in the sky.  So, I groused about the ice cream and voila!  I saw them in the groceries yesterday.

So yeah, I’ll eat too much rich food and will be pretty groggy by December 26th.

But it’s worth it.  After all, the next real holiday after this is Valentine’s Day and that’s a month and a half away.  Plus, that’s just one small meal.  The next respectable eating marathon is Easter.  And whether that’s the end of March or the beginning of April that’s an eternity away.  We’ll even be close to the end of winter and that’s an eternity away from right now.  So, I’ll begin enjoying myself with those cookies and I’ll continue with my holiday movie viewing ritual and that should insulate me from whatever insanity is breaking loose in the “so-called” real world.  And it’s working I’ve skipped right over the psychopaths shooting up innocent people at colleges and on beaches and wherever else they want to target humanity.  I’ll just let the other pundits address these depressing abominations.

I’ll concentrate on coming up with a decent line of conversation with my grandchildren and providing a chance for my children and their spouses to relax for a few hours while I distract their children with desserts and black and white movies.  That seems like a worthwhile endeavor in this crazy world we inhabit.  I won’t think about the plans at the state capitol to raise our taxes to make up for the Biden dollars that aren’t flowing in any more.  I won’t worry about the attempts to make homeless encampments permanent all over the state.  Instead, I’ll compare the relative merits of the various cinematic portrayals of Bob Cratchit over the years.  Yeah, Cratchit should be next.

Jake Barter – A Man for All Seasons – Well, Summer Anyway

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Jake Barter is a shadowy figure who inhabits the Compound somewhere in the semi-mythical town of Dunwich, New England (state unspecified).  He is the sole proprietor of the website Orion’s Cold Fire and splits his time between battling the eldritch horror and annoying bureaucracy of Dunwich’s First Selectman Cthulhu and pursuing his avocations (science fiction writing, macrophotography and right-wing politics).  His schooling was in math, chemistry, engineering and classical languages.  In a past life he designed biopharmaceutical processing plants.  Now he concentrates on getting a decently brewed cup of coffee every morning.  He is happily married to Camera Girl and enjoys the status of patriarch, surrounded by his descendants and their relations.

This is the Author’s Bio I put on Amazon today.  For a figment of my imagination, it comes reasonably close to being a facsimile of me.  If I had known what a pain in the neck it is selling a book I might have been dissuaded from doing it.  There’s an enormous amount of hand-waving and classifying and “key words” and other stuff that I thought I could slough off on other people entirely.  Then there’s Amazon Ads and Goodreads approval and before you know it I’ll have to be interviewed by Oprah and the View.

But there is some progress being made.  I got my e-book listed with a pre-order page and an Author’s Page for Jake Barter up on Amazon and on Sunday a proof copy of the paperback will be arriving.  Supposedly it has some kind of watermark on it to designate it as “not for sale.”  But I’ll be playing around with it like a dog with his favorite bone.

As I mentioned the other day, this week was the first time I started thinking about what might be in the next book taking place in that “world.”  This one will have Connors trying to deal with a fractured America.  President Chastain and the red and blue states will be brokering short term arrangements as the Constitutional Convention is set up.  There will be plenty to discuss while the red states stand by the exits in case “business as usual” is what ends up prevailing.

I’m thinking of inventing a character who demands a new Declaration of Independence that includes the statement, “All Men are Created Unequal and endowed by their Creator with unique characteristics that require free association to ensure nobody has to be forced to endure unbearable neighbors.”

Now, that might sound as if it’s clear enough to avoid the same problems we’re having now from happening again.  But I’m convinced that’s not true.  It’s not the words on the paper.  It’s not even the way the government is structured.  It’s inherent in human beings that they will twist whatever arrangements they live under to unfairly advantage themselves over their neighbors.  The Greeks and Romans went through these same things.  The rich and the powerful bend the government to their advantage and make their neighbors slaves.

Maybe the best way to deal with this is to tear the whole thing down to the ground every two hundred and fifty years.  Give everyone the same amount of stuff and start over.  It probably couldn’t be any worse than what happens if you don’t.  Well let’s see what George and Paul come up with.

So Now I’ve Got a Publication Date

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Update:

The Book Detail Page went live on Amazon:

Amazon book page

Wohoo!

I started loading the files for the e-book and paperback on Amazon.  The release date will be 21JAN2026.  I’m doing a last review of the text to find typos and “literary infelicities” before I hit the button and make the pre-release page live.

I’m setting up a page on the site (link directly below) for the marketer to direct traffic here.

Coming 21JAN2026 – The Sniper by Jake Barter

I have to admit I’m more excited about this than I thought I would be.  I’m especially looking forward to getting the paperback proof copy.  I’ll put it on the shelf of my bookcase in the living room between my copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey.  After all Homer has only produced two books in the last three thousand years and I wrote one in less than a decade!

I think today is the first time i started thinking about the next book in the series.  Bogey’s had his work.  I’ll let him off the hook and let Connors recruit some new folks to wrestle with the political chaos that has enveloped America after the events in “The Sniper.”  For this one i’ll have to map out a series of events.  I can’t just wing it.  Maybe I’ll do a “future history” timeline like Heinlein did for his alternate history stories.

I think in these later stories I might like to have a moon base.  It’s definitely not an unbelievable technological stretch and it would give the stories a less claustrophobic feel.  Mars just seems too difficult and with a fractured America I doubt the resources could be imagined available for something as challenging.

But that’s just a spit-balling thought.  I’m going to have to do some serious thinking before I just jump into it.  It’ll have to feel right.  And then I’ll have to come up some new characters.  I think I want some technical types in this story.  And I’ll have to think of what is going to happen to poor President George Chastain.  I’ll left him holding the bag with a bunch of states in basically open revolt.  He inherited this mess and he has my sympathy but I’m afraid it’s not going to get easier in the next book.

And in the next book I might try my hand at my first love story.  I’ve left Paul Connors and Grace Boghadair sort of up in the air.  With bogey out of the limelight maybe it’s time to see whether those two have a future.  Well, I’m no romance novelist but maybe I can come up with a believable plot to get those two together.  After all she is a widow looking for a husband and you can’t find a more eligible bachelor than the richest man in the world.

Well, I’ll attach the links to the Amazon pages for the books and the author (Jake Barter!) as soon as they’re live.  Meantime here are my cover shots.

It Doesn’t Compute

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Most of life is about paying the bills.  We work most of our days to pay for food, shelter and raising children.  And for the most part we don’t think too much about all this.  After all what we do is the human analog of what very living creature on Earth has to do to keep its species alive into the future.  And none of them question why exactly all this goes on.

But when you get to a certain point and the end of the race is in sight and maybe you have a little more time on your hands than you used to, you might start asking some questions about what all of this is.  This is called philosophy or religion or maybe just plain curiosity.  One day you look around and think, “How the hell did this whole thing get started and where the hell is it going to end up?”

And it’s a good question.  The pessimist’s answer is the whole thing is just a complete accident.  Life itself is just a random occurrence that probably will just peter out and end when the sun dies in several billion years or maybe even sooner than that if some things go sideways for us here.  Who knows?  Maybe we ourselves will be responsible for the end of life.  Some madman may decide it would be fun to figure out a way to kill off every last bacterium and virus and make it so that none could ever reappear on Earth again.  It seems like a stupid idea but there are lots of crazy people and who’s to say that a really smart crazy man might not take it into his head to do something like that.

But there is definitely a sizable chunk of humanity that believe that we are here for a reason.  They believe in some kind of God.  Not necessarily the personal God of the Bible.  Some think there is some sort of universal spirit that is associated with all life or maybe just human life.  And it’s safe to say they have no way of ever proving what they believe in is real.  I’ve heard lots of people trying to prove God’s existence.  And I don’t think anyone has ever come up with anything that would convince an atheist that he is wrong.

No, the belief is not based on proof.  But at the same time, I don’t think for the most part it’s wish fulfillment.  I think it’s a form of intuition.  Some people look around and say I just don’t believe that all of this is the result of random chance working out over the course of several billion years.  It’s like that old idea that if a billion monkeys typed on a billion typewriters (word processors) for a billion years that they would come up with the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.  I think it’s a case of not letting large numbers intimidate you.  I can understand that over the course of geologic time mountains can turn into valleys and stars can explode.  But how does that create Mozart or Shakespeare or even you?  It doesn’t compute.

Musings in the Mother Ship

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In the alien spaceship approaching the mothership:

David:  Head straight for it.

Steve:  What the hell?

David:  Don’t touch them.  Don’t, don’t, don’t!  I was counting on this.  They are bringing us in.

Steve:  When the hell was you gonna tell me?

David:  Oops.

Steve:  We’ve got to work on our communication.

Seeing the troops inside the mother ship

David:  Oh, my God!  Look at that!  There must be thousands of them.

Steve:  Millions of them. What the hell are they doing?

David:  Looks like they’re preparing an invasion.

The ship docks with the alien command center and David attempts to upload his virus into the alien control system.

David:  (CLAPS)  We’re in.  (SIGHS)  Do it. Do it. Do it.

Back on Earth:

General:  Sir, he’s uploading the virus.  Eagle One, the package is being delivered.  Stand by!

In the Alien spaceship:

David:  Oh yeah, oh yeah! One more step.

Suddenly the screen flashes a message in the alien text.  David pushes several keys and the message resolves into English, “INPUT PASSWORD.”  David lets out a strangled scream and says:

David:  Steve we’re cooked.  I have no idea what to enter.

Steve:  Just write password in lower case.

David:  That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.  We know nothing of their language or software rules.

Steve:  Yeah, well then how the hell were you able to write a virus that would work in their system?

David:  Well, that’s a good point.  Let’s see, p a s s w o r d.  Good heavens it worked!

Steve:  Of course it worked.  There’s only twenty minutes left in the movie.  We have a few threats left like the ship docking lock that won’t release and then the pursuit by the three alien interceptor craft and finally the debris field created by the nuclear explosion in the mother ship and then we’ll be home free to the heroes’ welcome where the pretty girls jump into our arms and kiss us.

David:  Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.  Tell me does Randy Quaid manage to earn the respect of his stepson by saving the day during the fight against the alien ship back on Earth.

Steve:  Yes, but he dies sacrificing his life to destroy the ship by crashing into the alien ship’s primary weapon.

David:  Well, that’s probably for the better.  He was a very silly and annoying character.  After all, if he really had been abducted by the aliens why would he still be alive?

Steve:  Good point.  Do you think we’ll get to be in the sequel in twenty years?

David:  Well, I will be.  By then I’ll be looking for an easy paycheck to retire on but you’ll be a much bigger star and won’t want your name associated with the kind of cheesy project that a sequel to this goofy movie will likely be.

Steve:  Yeah, I think you’re right.  I’ll probably concentrate on high end projects directed by Steven Spielberg.  Of course, I’ll leave space for the occasional sequel to “Bad Boys.”  You shouldn’t forget what got you to the dance.

David:  Yeah, I’m hoping to make at least one more sequel to “The Fly” one of these days.

Steve:  Oy!

Me Robot

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When I received the call from RoboDriver I had been lamenting the fact that I hadn’t received an offer for a date in seven years.  That’s why I prefer robots.  They’re a cleaner breed.  They never have dandruff.

I arrived at the plant where the incident had occurred.  This was the only manufacturing site for the Higgs bosonic brain.  Of course there was a reason for this.  The instability of this boson was so extreme that the robots were constantly in a state of nervous exhaustion and frequently flew into a rage and killed everyone around them.  As you might imagine this was seriously cutting into profits.

I entered the office of the CEO of RoboDriver and he said, “Thank you for your swift response, ma’am.”  I retorted, “I prefer to be addressed as Dr. Daystrom.  She/her.”  He replied, “Alright Dr. Daystrom-she-her.  We need to troubleshoot exactly why one of our robots went on a killing spree in downtown San Francisco today and come up with an action plan to solve the problem and convince our customers to use RoboDriver for all their driving needs.”

Gritting my teeth over his insulting greeting I said I would begin a thorough forensic investigation that would include interviews with all of the witnesses, review of all of the technical documents for the manufacturing and quality assurance records, a comprehensive search of all similar problems over the last twenty years and an electron microscopy examination of the Higgs bosonic brain of the killer robot.  He asked, “How long will that take?”  I answered, “About forty minutes.”  He was taken aback, “How could you possibly complete such an investigation in forty minutes?”

I replied, “Because there’s no need to do any of that.  Everybody knows that the Higgs bosonic brain has a 100% failure rate within one week of installation and of the 1,343 cases of robot committed homicides, 100% of them were robots possessing a Higgs bosonic brain.”  He said, “Oh.  Well, you have a point there.”  I followed up, “But you know that already.  Why does RoboDriver continue to use the Higgs bosonic brain when the US Robotics positronic brain has a stellar record of safety and longevity?  US Robotics licenses their technology and has a good reputation for working hand in glove with their partners.”

The CEO got up from his desk and shut the door to his office and walked over to my chair, cleared his throat and said in hushed tones, “The fact of the matter is we were the victims of a hostile takeover by a venture capital group that installed a cost-cutting program that identified the fact that licensing Higgs bosonic brains instead of the positronic equivalent would save seventeen cents for each robot equipped.  Now after the fact, this savings seems to pale in comparison to the 1,343 wrongful death suits and the Justice Department’s grand jury indictments but all of that stuff won’t hit the fan until after Christmas so what we need is a band-aid to keep this under control until the December bonuses get handed out.  So, what can you do?”

I looked down at the floor and shuddered and told him I’d see what I could do.  I headed out onto the programming floor and using the clearance card I had been given by the CEO began writing some new code for the RoboDriver robots.  I loaded the code onto a server and began the download to the entire robot fleet.  I headed for the front door just as the first wave of murder-bots stormed the C-suite.  Well, so much for their bonuses.

The Blabbnoy Effect

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The Galactic Corps had relentlessly pursued the evil anti-civilizational organization of Carpone from one end of the Milky Way to the other.  They had methodically identified and rooted out each level of Carpone until they had finally located the heart of the organization.  This galaxy spanning criminal conspiracy was headquartered on a planet called Sflprugm.  Sflprugm was as hard to approach as it was to pronounce.  All the space within a two-parsec radius had been planted with detection devices meant to alert Sflprugmians of any approaching danger.  Only the Corps’ ultra-advanced spy rays had allowed them to study Sflprugm from a safe distance and so size up the enemy.  And they were a worthy opponent.  The defensive screens that protected Sflprugm were beyond impregnable.  No imaginable fleet of battle cruisers could hope to breach the screens.  And the Sflprugmian fleet was as large as and as deadly as the Corps’ own.

To solve the problem of conquering the Sflprugmians the Corps turned to the greatest living scientist of the age Dr. Balbus Blabbnoy.  His work on trans-dimensional ballistics was required reading at the Academy.  He was tasked with calculating the trajectory of an anti-matter planet from the Psi-Gamma dimension and forcing it into our universe with just the correct entrance and momentum needed to collide with Sflprugm.  It was assumed that much of their fleet would be destroyed with their planet.  But the Corps’ fleet would be assembled to mop up the remnants.

Admiral Bowser planned out the exact coordinates for the fleet’s convergence.  It would appear out of hyperspace about five billion miles from Sflprugm; safely beyond the radius of destruction but close enough to pursue the remaining vessels.

Dr Blabbnoy would be on the bridge of Admiral Bowser’s flagship; The Superponderous and when zero hour arrived, he would throw the switch which would trigger a sub-ether wave that would activate a device in Psi-Gamma that would cause a sub-atomic generator to generate a worm hole that would translate the anti-matter planet into our space-time with devastating results for Sflprugm.

Balbus was on the bridge and Admiral Bowser noticed how extremely tired the scientist was.  He was mumbling something under his breath that the Admiral thought sounded like, “Was it X15 or X-15?  Now the Admiral had never gotten past high school algebra but even to his non-mathematical ears this didn’t sound promising.

When the clock ticked down to zero Dr. Blabbnoy screamed, “X15!“ and slammed the button.  For a few seconds nothing seemed to be happening.  The sub-space screens failed to show any irruption in the space near Sflprugm.  But while the navy was watching their screens Dr. Blabbnoy was looking out the front window of the ship and that was where he saw the irruption.  The missing anti-matter planet was about five hundred miles from the flagship and heading toward it and the rest of the fleet with about twenty seconds before impact.  All he could think to say was, “X-15!“

Suffice it to say that this was not the finest hour for the Corps or human civilization or even computational science.  But it was one of those examples from history of exactly the danger in not checking your work.  Or even more importantly having someone else check your work.  But most certainly it taught us to never trust anyone with a name as ridiculous as Balbus Blabbnoy with almost limitless power.  How could it not be a disaster?

The Sheldon Chronicles

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Larry Sheldon (25,501 – 25,587 N.E.) – Founder of the science of psycho-cosmography, famously quoted as saying, “Look, we needed more space so we invented starships.  What’s the big deal?”  Creator of the Sheldon Plan whereby the new empire was replaced by the new, new empire and the outpost world Zero became the Bulwark for this new order.  He was a secretive and reclusive genius who suffered from acute fear of other people’s body odor.  Some historians now believe his existence may have been apocryphal.

(Encyclopedia Publicius Domainius, 1023 edition)

Here he stood in the center of the galaxy, the administrative capital of the new empire; Titantor!  A world that circled the central black hole of the Milky Way galaxy.  Only an incredibly powerful anti-gravity field prevented Titantor from being ripped to shreds and swallowed by the gravitational force of its evil black star.  A steady stream of planets and debris had to be fed into the anti-gravity generator to keep this horrific imbalance in existence.  But such was the power of this empire and its vanity that the whim of the emperor was enough to maintain this cosmic madness.

And here he stood Bob Goodfellow, a fresh graduate of the Arcturus Community College and Creamery here to put his knowledge of psycho-cosmography to good use assisting Larry Sheldon to save the new empire from the forces of entropy that threatened to tear it apart and bring on a trillion years of barbarism and low credit scores for everyone.  And he was nervous.  Meeting a genius like Larry Sheldon was intimidating.  He could feel sweat forming on his forehead.  He wiped it away with a handkerchief.  And suddenly there was Sheldon walking toward him smiling and looking him over nervously, “Bob, good to finally meet you.  Yeah, I’m not big on shaking hands or standing downwind of people.  So, let’s walk with the wind in our faces and you following me at about a six-foot distance.  Thanks!”

Within these strictures they covered the distance to the Titantor Senate building in about an hour and Goodfellow watched from the gallery as Dr Sheldon was cross-examined by the representatives of the Imperial Science Foundation.

The Pontifex Maximus grilled him, “Dr. Sheldon, you claim that using the energy output of fifty billion stars to turn the Smaller Magellanic Cloud into a jacuzzi for the emperor’s concubines will lead to the heat death of the galaxy.  Do you have any proof of this?”

Larry sat with his handkerchief clutched over his nose recoiling at the examiner’s overpowering cologne, “Well, the fact that the population of the empire has decreased from a million-billion-billion to seventy-eight would seem to be a relatively strong indicator, mathematically speaking.”  The Pontifex made a rude noise and scoffed, “What nonsense!  This mighty capitol; Titantor, on its own, is home to countless billions.  We see them all around us!”

Larry used his emergency inhaler and continued, “Yes, but they’re all robots.  In fact, it’s worse than the numbers indicate.  There are only thirteen women of childbearing age left and half of them are Vestal Virgins.  We’re going to have to really rethink a lot of priorities if this whole shebang is going to last past Wednesday.”

This sparked outrage and shouting among the senators.  The concomitant bad breath overwhelmed Larry and he swooned in the witness chair.       …     To be continued!!!!