Month: February 2023

• I had what I think is a meaningful exchange with a friend on the Birdsite; they were wondering if a small camera like a Canon G7X is worth it when we all have cameras in our pockets.  Putting aside the old saying that the best camera is the one you have with you, I would say that if you’re not getting paid for your work, your phone camera is often better than an SLR any day of the week.  Plus, and this is by no means necessary, Moment makes a case and lenses for your phone.  I generally shoot videos with a CPL and an ND 32 filter attached.  I have a telephoto and wide-angle lens, but I rarely need to use them.  Also, while I have a DJI Osmo Gimbal, I rarely use that.  If I’m shooting a video, I use my mini tripod as a handle with a phone clamp.  If I’m shooting photography, I don’t need anything else. But, again, I’m not a professional, and what works for me may not work for you.
• My SLR has taken up residence in my studio in a locked-down position, and I’ve just bought a teleprompter system that uses my iPad for the scripts.  We used something similar when I worked at Canon, but I was in the market for something that didn’t cost an arm and a leg.  Next up, lav mics.  I might still have one somewhere; I’ll need to dig around and test it. Finally, perfect world, I want a boom mike on a stand.
• While caring for the wife, I give a moment of praise for the ability to get groceries delivered and the gig workers who bust their asses to deliver them.  I did it for a while, so I know the wear and tear they put on themselves and their cars.  I also know what a treasure it is to have those 2-3 hours back so I can do other things.  If you use a similar service, please take the time to thank them and tip them as well as you can.
• A handy tip for those who feel compelled to pick the low-hanging fruit tweets of some of our more colorful wingnuts:  Don’t.  You’re being baited, and too many of us take the bait.  More engagement boosts it in the algorithm.  They cry about being shadowbanned when they don’t get the engagement they think they deserve.  With Elon being Elon, now is the perfect time to follow the screenshot method.  Screenshot the post, crop it, post that picture with your response, and do not tag the OP.  Let them cry to Elon.  Hell, let them cry, period.  We do not have to engage these people.  We can point and laugh at them while they melt down, though.

Has anyone else experienced the following:  You’ve been stressed out past your limit so much for so long that you stop holding back about things?  That’s where I’m at right now.   Whether that’s good for my mental health–or anyone else’s–is up for debate.  Film at 11, as they say.

• RIP to Richard Belzer, most likely the first comedian I ever saw on TV and knew what he was.  A brilliant comedian.  The character of John Munch will have him on TV from now until the heat death of the Universe because SVU is playing on TV somewhere on the planet.  I heard yesterday that he took the settlement money when Hulk Hogan dropped him and bought a house in France that he named Chez Hogan.  I don’t know if that’s true, but that sounds like him.  And, of course, let’s never forget his brief moment of MTV stardom.
• MTG posted this tweet this morning (it’s there as I type it, card subject to change) where she says:
  

  “We need a national divorce. We need to separate into red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”

  Honestly, I’m warming up to this idea, but not for the reasons she would like.  It would appear that the red states are more dependent on Federal Aid than the Blue states, which generally have a higher income and GDP.  The Blue states pay more taxes, and the Red states appear to be the–to be generous–slightly larger beneficiary of those taxes. But, of course, this ‘national divorce’ will never happen.  She knows that.  This is just red meat for the ignorant.  Her citizens will expect the same services they’re getting today with a fraction of the tax base.  You have to make up for that somehow.  Someone should ask her how she plans to….oh, wait.  Right.  What plan, right?

• MTG Related: Could someone please tell her that giving access of the 1/6 tapes to Tucker Carlson is not the same as releasing the tapes?  If there are 41,000 hours of footage, you can bet Tucker is going to release about 30 seconds of some guy from Dubuque taking a leak in the Bushes and claim it was Antifa, so TOTAL EXONERATION.  Of course all that footage will NEVER be made public, but that’s ok.  We have C-Span.
• To get back into photography, I’ve signed up for a newsletter from Digital Photography School.  This week’s challenge appears to be about using lines in your images.  ByI received a beginner’s guide to street photography for signing up for their newsletter.  I was today years old when I realized one of the best tips about street photography is to find a place you like aesthetically and JUST FUCKING WAIT THERE.  I’m the Goofus walking around with a camera making everyone uncomfortable.  Plus, the last time I went out shooting street photography, I had my Canon T5i.  My iPhone 12 camera with the Moment Gear is much more suited to this purpose.  So, I think I have two things to work out this week.  Let’s see how it goes.
  • • Photography related:  I see that Canon is releasing the R50, which seems to me to be the entry level mirrorless camera.  This is clearly meant to be replacing the M50; the M Line was Canon’s first excursion into Mirrorless cameras and after a while it was clear that Canon wasn’t going to devote more time to it.  A fine camera, but a limited amount of glass.  The R50 along with an 18-45mm and 55-210mm lens is out for pre-order for 1029.00, and I have to tell you I’m wanting this one.  There is an adapter for my EF Lenses, so there’s a way to keep my current glass involved.  My more professional friends might laugh at wanting just the entry level camera.  I don’t need more than that. I’m not a pro, but I do want a new camera.  My T5i was out of date when I bought it at a pawn shop with two lenses for 300 bucks.  I’ve held off on getting a new camera until Canon made an ‘affordable’ replacement they were going to stand behind, and this R50 is that camera.
• Jimmy Carter is entering hospice care, and the amount of tributes he’s receiving for the life he’s led post-Presidency is nice to see.  Honestly, he wasn’t the greatest President, but he’ll be leaving this Earth knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t the worst.  I stand by my belief that Carter freed the Iranian Hostages in the hours before Reagan’s Inauguration, and Ronald Reagan got credit for it, and I hope in the coming weeks the tributes make that abundantly clear.  Of course, there will be the vultures, you’ll see them come out of the woodwork the moment the announcement is made.  I suppose I’d ask them how they felt when someone spoke ill of Reagan when he died, but they’ll never answer that question as long as the white hot hatred of Carter/Clinton/Fonda/Ted Kennedy fills them with impotent rage.   That Venn Diagram is the most perfect of circles, you can be assured of that.
• The human equivalent of the slime you scrape from a hull under the water line James O’Keefe has resigned from Project Veritas.  No doubt he’ll find another grift, they always do.  On the other hand, maybe he’ll end up doing dinner theater in Branson. Kind of a coin flip, truthfully.
• At last, the true power of AI: Let it decide who gets laid off.  You know this is how we get Friend Computer, right? Please report to the Food Vats for…uh…Reassignment.
• Lastly, I’m starting a little experiment.  This post is also a Podcast on my Patreon Page.  It’s got what you see here, plus a little more in the way of my flavor of crazy because it’s me.  I’m making every Monday Patreon show public so it can be shared and promoted.  Feel free to check it out, share and subscribe.  Thank you.

Welcome back. That’s more for me than it is for you.

• I haven’t had as much time for blogging–or anything else– as I have for other things that require my time. Specifically, in the past little while, my cat died, my wife’s parrot died, and my wife almost died. So, I’ve been busy. I haven’t been well, but I appear to be returning OK. It’s incredible what having access to the meds you need to be a functional human being will do for you. It would appear that my mental situation was directly tied to my lack of access to those medications. In this case, it was not my anti-depressant; it was the fact that I am now a Type 1 diabetic and am now insulin dependent. My A1C, a metric of my blood sugar levels over 90 days, was 10.1. A person who does not have diabetes would have an A1C of under 7.   Today, my estimated A1C is about 7.7, which has led to clearer thinking, more energy, and in this case, depression. I feel a lot more like my usual chaotic good self, so I’ll see if I can get back into creating more things.
• At the beginning of the year, I set out a list of goals, separated by quarter. Due to the above, I’ve not met any of those goals for the 1st quarter. Let’s go over those:
  • WORK: Professionally, identify one area of my job where we could improve the workflow–DONE
  • WORK: Average between 700-750 items a week at my job.  — FAILED (managed 500-700 items a week. More than anyone else on the team by a lot, so might need to revise.)
  • WORK: Outline and propose Multimedia Training for my department — ADDRESSED, REJECTED due to Personal information being the hangup. PII Security is important in my line of work.
  • CREATIVE: Podcast and Patreon at least once a week in 1Q — FAILED; see above.
  • CREATIVE: Gain 25 subscribers on Patreon.  — PENDING
  • CREATIVE: One Tentpole article a month — FAILED; see above
  • CREATIVE: One Photo and one Video Essay in 1Q — PENDING
  • ACADEMIC: Dedicated Learning Time once a month in 1Q — PENDING
  • FUN:  Karaoke once a month — PENDING
  • FUN: Photo Challenge once a month — FAILED; see above
  • FUN: New song on guitar once a month — FAILED; see above
  • FUN: Something that doesn’t involve work or creativity once a month – well, depending on how you look at it, spending more time in a hospital than anyone should qualify, but FAILED in the spirit of the intention.

    Since I feel better and things are getting as close to normal as things get, I intend to try and catch up on some of those pending and failed items, but we’ll see how it goes.

• I didn’t go into much detail about this, but you’ll notice that this website has returned to a WordPress site. I don’t have a bad thing to say about Squarespace; I no longer require or desire the bells and whistles they provide. Still, even WordPress doesn’t quite capture what I want. The closest thing that captures what I wish is Dave Winer’s Scripting News, run on Dave’s outliner program Drummer. To get as close to that as possible, I make one post a day with all the items I want to cover. I don’t believe I have the ‘fu’ required to create something in Drummer. I intend to try, and if I’m successful by some quirk of fate, I may redirect the domain there. In a perfect world, I’d try to run it from my server, but it doesn’t look like that’s possible. I could be wrong. In the end, what I want is (maybe) simple:  One date per day, my writing for the day underneath with anchor tags for each item, and the ability to post those items to Twitter, Mastodon, etc.
  
• Speaking of social media, I’m frankly getting sick of it. Facebook sucks, Instagram no longer focuses on photography,  Elon is intent on making Twitter a garbage fire, TikTok is OK, but mainly for fun, and LinkedIn is not what I’m trying to reach. Mastodon is OK, but I feel meh about the whole thing.   I no longer have a clear understanding as to why I’m on social media at all. It was to try to direct eyeballs here, but I spend so much time on those platforms that I spend next to nothing here where I should. I’ve half a mind to cancel all my social media accounts and work on optimizing everything for search to come here. That sounds like the direction I want to go. Or, I cross-post links to those places and not deal with them outside of that. The bottom line is that I no longer think that social media serves any purpose other than to agitate, and I don’t need that drama anymore. I certainly don’t need the distraction.
• Not sure how this post is going to work going forward.  I’ll either post it in the evening, or write a bunch of stuff and post it the next morning.  Frankly, I’m leaning towards the latter.  That waym I might have the time to research anything that comes up and give you something more than my usual gas-filled take on things.  We’ll see.  if that’s the case, the next post will probably be Tuesday.