Knuckledragger

Debugging a PowerMac 7100, 1998. Supposedly this is Google exec Eve Astrid Andersson. Photos by Phil Greenspun. It looks like she has a nice ACOG.

Today I did a significant update to "We have iMac at home." Today at Chicken Alley I picked up a used Apple Thunderbolt display for $60. It was pretty grimy and the power cord (which is permanently attached, because AAPL) showed signs of being yanked on. Of course, the display didn't work at all, but it served to remind me that I already had one. It's a slightly different model, I got it for $25(!) and it happens to work fully. I spent an hour removing the monitor, speakers, webcam and USB hub (the Thunderbolt Display serves all of these functions) and got it working with the 2012 Mini. They work together seamlessly. That Macally mini keyboard is awful. Mum figured out something like 1/3 of the keys don't work properly with shift. That's not a "bad keys" issue, it's "something is wrong with the chipset" one. I've been shopping for decent third party Mac keyboards that are small sized and not crap. The market is terrible. I don't want crazy clicky Red switches. I don't want to pay over $300 (Seriously, look at the price of an HHK these days.) Keychron makes a lot of great models, and they are Al.. Out. Of. Stock. Unless I want a $275 Bluetooth one.

I've been reflecting a lot on talent and luck recently, for a variety of reasons. The former because I've observed that the world is full of people who believe that their own incredible luck means they are far more talented than they actually are (every tech bro not named "John Carmack" ever.) The latter because I've been a photographer for 20 years at this point and I swear I was better in 2008 than I am now. Similarly, I've been a DJ for over 30 years and I'm ...fine at it, but I haven't played out in a dozen years and I haven't done my radio show in over two (sad face.) What I observed was that no matter how much effort I put into my shows (which was a lot, from having decades of esoteric musical knowledge to to spending 2-3x as long as the actual broadcast figuring out how the selected tracks should go together) what people always commented on was the long and winding rant I did at the end. My one true talent is putting words together, either in text form with careful editing (I'm dyslexic and often accidentally a word or a letter or add add an extra one) or off the dome on a microphone. I've been working on improving that at which I'm already good. So far my outlet has been reddit comments (seriously) as well as a couple long form pieces (one of which got removed from reddit because fuck me right?) I've gone after controversial subjects not because of the attention they bring but because that's what relevant. One big one is how we ended up with Donald Jumpin' Jehosephat Trump back in the White House with Elongated Muskrat (off his tits on ketamine) in tow. Another is is the relations between gay and trans people in the US. You know, light fare. I might post a couple examples here if I can figure out what thread is appropriate.

The first part is a good question, fathead. Since I took and uploaded that photo, the ownership of Flickr has changed at least twice and the ToS has changed I have no idea how many times. I learned about the photo being featured because someone commented on it ...on my Flickr page. Also, I've been up to a lot here. I can scarcely get into it now. The woman who had the pile of Canon gear sold off some of it while I was out of commission due to covid (I can hardly blame her) but she recently contact me about the rest. She still has the 7D II (shrug), the 24-70 F/2.8 II (great daily driver) and the 135mm F/2L (endgame lens for certain lunatics.) Stay tuned. I attended two talks by a local photographer who shoots medium and large format black and white film. He captured the covid pandemic era of life on the Vineyard and did an exhibition about it at the MV Museum. He doesn't GAF at all about exposure or lens use, but is greatly concerned with the subject in frame and to a lesser extent the date the photo was taken. I could probably learn a lot from him. I've been busy with my 300mm, capturing local fauna and even some skaters on our pond. More on that later.

RIP Gwen McCrae. Google search results report today as the day of her passing, but there are exactly zero news articles on it. This Information Age thing stinks.

Everyone's favorite painfully polite British retro tech tuber investigates a premium boombox from the late 80s.

Flickr turned 21 and did post on Instagram about it because Zucc won't rest until he consumes us all that's the age we live in. Apparently a shot I took in 2006 is featured in it. Instagram ruins the shot, as it does to all things including the mental health of anyone who uses it. The original isn't bad, if I do say so myself.

This shitpost is dedicated to Hopstretch and any nerd that codes.

RIP Bob Uecker who passed at the tender age of 90. He delivered one of my favorite voice lines in all of cinema:

"We have iMac at home." A temporary system I cobbled together for my (sainted, octogenarian) mother from spare parts: a 2012 Mac Mini, 1920x1200 Lenovo monitor of about the same age), a Macally compact keyboard and a Microsoft Trackball Explorer that's now 25 years old and a bit of a collector's item. It all works just fine. This photo is actually a little out of date. I've since replaced the trackball with a conventional mouse (mum did not like the trackball at all), added USB speakers, a webcam and a printer. The Lenovo is actually a really good panel. 16x10 monitors were never really consumer products. It's only 60Hz, but it's LED backlit and its color accuracy out of the box blows away every non-Apple display I've ever owned. There's a reason I've hung on to it for over a decade now. The Mini is an interesting story in that I bought it refurb'd from OWC and it was supposed to be a 2014 model. They sent me a 2012 and by the time I figured it out, the return window had long closed. This is only one of many examples of the precipitous drop in quality OWC has exhibited over the last decade. Things are so bad that I'm scuttling my plans to buy one of their 8 bay enclosures because I just don't trust them. I'm now looking at an equivalent (and cheaper) model made by by QNAP. Also, observation: The base model M4 Mini is such a good deal, it utterly kneecaps the refurb'd market and does a lot of damage to the used one. I spent several hours a few nights ago looking at the Minis for sale on various sites (including Apple's own) and nothing comes close to the price/performance of the base M4.

RIP David Lynch, just shy of his 79th birthday(!) I was never a huge fan of his work, but it was clear from the get-go that he was a true auteur with a very uncompromised vision. EDIT: Ninja'd by dsavitsk

I swear I don't just log in here to report medical mishaps. Yesterday was a banner day by anyone's standards. MV is an expensive place to live. There's few doctors on the island because full time general practitioners cannot afford to live here. Mum doesn't have a doctor and neither do I. She had a followup phone call yesterday from a nurse practitioner. When mum went to the ER on Christmas day because of covid, they detected what they thought was a heart murmur. Mum didn't see fit to mention that to me until yesterday, but that's another matter. The fallout of all of this was that I had to drive her to the hospital yesterday afternoon. After many hours there, they determined that she has Lyme disease from a tick bite this past summer. That is a recurring theme here on MV. I am cursed to spend my whole life in places that are hotbeds for tick borne diseases. Still, much better news than actual cardio problems. With that in mind, I've mentioned the Dreyer family here on MV before. They're a nice couple in their 80s. Peter is a photographer, who shot 4x5" for decades. Adele is a piano teacher with a Steinway. They're both in as good health as any member of the silent generation. They have a daughter named Gwen. She's my age and in far better shape than I am. Yesterday she was giving blood and fainted. The staff could not revive her and she ended up in the ER. A blood test revealed high levels of troponin. TIL (or more to the point, YIL) troponin is a protein found in heart muscles and a high percentage of it is in the blood stream, that most likely means a heart attack. I repeat, Gwen is a healthy woman in her early 50s. The MV hospital doesn't have the necessary equipment to perform the required heart tests, so they doctors ordered Gwen be sent to MGH in Boston. There were no beds there, so she had to be sent to Mass General Brigham. She was to travel there by helicopter, which arrived sometime after 1AM. At 3AM, the helicopter had to make an emergency landing because of instrument failure(!) It wasn't until 6AM that there was another one available (as of yet I have no idea where the copter touched down) so Gwen spent a number of hours in the early morning (and COLD) waiting. I still have not heard what the tests performed at MGB revealed. I did learn that one of her cats has been keeping vigil on Gwen's bed during her absence. It's been quite a 24 hours.

Covid is no joke. My mother is in her 80s and frail. I'm 50 and ...sturdy. She went to the ER and got prescribed Paxlovid. It appears to help, but some of the side effects are a bit rough. I'm fully vaxed and in fact recently boosted. I'm no longer feverish, but far from well. I suspect this is a new strain that has yet to be named (remember the ominous sounding Omicron Variant?) Also the heating system is still not fixed, but after my mother went to the ER I opened the mechanical closet and yelled at it. Then I turned it off and on again and it's been making heat since. In the 40K universe I'd be a tech priest.

JC was our best ex-president. I worked for him 1994, building houses in Mississippi.

My mother just went off in an ambulance and and our heating system stopped working. This is the best of all possible worlds.