Knuckledragger

When Pope Francis was visiting America, he told the limo driver that he had the sudden urge to drive. The driver was a good Catholic man and would never dream of questioning the Pope’s authority. So the Pope sat at the wheel, while his driver got in the back. The Pope pulled out safely onto the road, but quickly revealed himself to be quite the adrenaline junkie when it came to driving. He was soon whipping in and out of traffic and speeding down roadways, easily doubling the speed limit. He was a wild man behind the wheel. Eventually, a policeman spotted this limo flying down the road, flipped his lights on, and pulled the limo over. Before approaching, he called his chief to warn him about a limo he'd just pulled over with a VIP inside it. Chief: Who is it, the mayor? Cop: Nope, bigger. Chief: What, the governor? Cop: Even bigger. Chief: Wait, did you pull over the President??? Cop: Nope. Bigger than that. At this, the chief ran out of patience. "Okay, I give up. Who is it?" And the cop answered, "I think it's God." "What in the world makes you think that God is riding around in a limo?" the chief exploded. To which the cop lowered his voice and replied, "Well, who else would have the Pope as His chauffeur?"

I prefer to think of it as his Holiness's final act was giving JD Vance the gasface.

This is an absolutely wild one.

Let's go back to 2006 for a second (no, seriously, let's go back.) Then 1968 and 1969 for a second followed by 1962. Finally, back to 1994.

I keep my (now nearly 20 year old) Nikon D200 and 300mm F/4 on a lowboy chest in the kitchen, ready for whatever fauna shows up. Mr. Cardinal, being his usual show-off self. The pond froze for a preciously small period of time. Missing from these photos is the excited "roof roof roof!" noises that green sweater dog kept making. The sounds echoed off the ice and trees surrounding the pond. It was quite a scene to behold. Tune in next time for a 2006 logging camp!

So it turns out that this thing was a complete disaster. The entire thing is plastic, including the drive sleds, rails and all mounting hardware. The decidedly cheap MediaSonic ProBox enclosures I bought years ago are far more better built. With that said, I'd be willing ti ignore the plastic nature of the QNAP here if it actually worked. It (not so) randomly disconnected all 8 drives three times in less than day. Two were while I was doing an rsync. That could be catastrophic. A friend of mine suspected it was a power issue. I've got the two MediaSonic units back in action. They have loud and annoying cooling fans as well as their police car like strobes: Seriously look at this. Can you imagine having TWO of these in your bedroom? I covered the LED bars on both units with electrical tape. As much as I mock the MediaSonics, they have been extremely reliable, working 24/7 for years on end. Zero disconnects as well. I'm now looking at two other options. One model went up in price by 20% since yesterday (thanks, Donny!) and the other is ...the OWC Thunderbay 8 I probably should have gotten in the first place. (To be fair to me, OWC is now owned by some vulture capital firm and their reputation has tanked in the last however many years.)

A person I used to know in W.Mass is (very) active on Bluesky. They posted a bunch of parody variations of musician names like "Britney Halberd" and "Worse than Ezra." I was inspired: Silentpark (High) Pearl Fructose Syrup Alice Set Free Farvana Glass Mosque Drivers The Repairing Squashes Church of the Cat Father Hate Knuckle Sighted Cantaloupe Goldbench Visual Geriatrics Bar Peaceniks John's Rehab Mouth Skaters Enginefoot Minorlife Keen Eared Panther Uniform Gang Major Security

Got one of my two Thunderbolt docks, my DJ mixer, my MOTU M4 and all the appropriate wires out. I've got nearly everything set up and my Thunderbolt cable has gone missing. I cannot find it anywhere. I had it at the start of the evening and it's now touring outer Waziristan. No show tonight. Maybe one tomorrow.

*blows copious amounts of dust off this thread* Native Instruments is circling the drain. Due to some bad financial decisions by them in the previous decade + the vampire squid that is private capital, they may never release a new version of Traktor. I am now testing out DJay Pro. It's "free" on the app store, but requires a $50/year subscription I hate SaaS just let me buy the fucking thing I swear every MBA needs to die UH I MEAN the base version appears to be functional. The UI is alien to me, but that's what 16 years of Traktor does to a MFer. I'm not saying there's going to be a one-off test broadcast tonight, but there is now some possibility.

Sick space heaters.

Vintage Krell gear is highly regarded. Analogue equipment ages like a fine wine. A nice set of meters really accentuates a properly built stereo. In the words of the late, great Bill Hicks, does anyone not know where this is going? A panel of 4 will will run you about $2600.

This famous photo of Marvin Gaye is flipped: This shot from 1972 is even worse quality, but it's facing the right way. There we go. I have a sneaking suspicion that those meters glow blue.

The lady I mentioned a few pages ago with the pile of Canon gear to sell has been pestering me, which means she's a motivated seller. Now maybe she'll face up to the fact that her prices are retarded come down a bit. I really want that 135L. I would make much better use of the 24-70mm F/2.8 II (which is a pro grade workhorse of a lens.) I dunno what to think of the 7D II. I learned quite recently that Canon R series mirrorless bodies can use EF and EF-S lenses with the same adapter. Neat. I swear I used to post photos in this thread. Last December, right before I got covid, I took the 50D and 35mm F/3.5 Takumar out for a stroll. I have a bad habit of taking photos of the same thing over and over again. Since I took this photo, both the house (built 1940) and barn no longer stand. The EDG Yacht Club bought the property as-is for over $1M and bulldozed the whole thing. They're butting in high density housing for their staff because no one can afford to live on this fucking island. Cannonball Park, looking quite cheery on late fall. This is what the houses of MV residents who are still hanging on by an economic fingernail look like. Same idea, but after it's been sold to off-islanders who then dump a fortune into renovations. In this case, I'm not talking shit. The new owners did a really nice job with the house. It's too bad they stay here like 2 weeks a year at most and the rest of the time the place is empty. Until quite recently, this house belonged to the descendants of my great aunt. It's an old house that sits on a double lot, across from Cannonball Park. Sweetened Water Farm's horse barn. One of the most famous views on MV. It's a 5 minute walk from my front door. I really should bitch about things less. I will literally never stop. Mr Norton, the owner, died last month at 95 years old. Back in the creepy woods. It's not actually creepy at all. Tune in next time for a frozen pond and 300mm prime!

This is an odd one for me. Going back to the 1990s, when the internet was much more sparsely occupied and still primarily text based, I knew a guy named RalphE. He was a bit older than me, very gay and quite successful. He was charming, witty, engaging and prone to making bad decisions then doubling down on them repeatedly. He had his own vocabulary. When giving directions (he helped me drive through Boston, which is no mean feat) he'd say "go gayly forward" because telling someone to "go straight" went against his principles. He walked a delicate line of being just a tad condescending but having enough charm and empathy to always pull it off. I remember him telling me "I don't know how you silly hets (heterosexuals) manage without us (gay people.)" Ralph was always strong in his professional life, but in his personal one he was always getting out of or freshly into some disaster. I observed him spend every cent he made (which was quite a few, most of the time) on some hot young European guy who was clearly only in it for the money. I lost contact with him not quite 20 years ago, but I'd occasionally hear about him from a mutual friend. Today I heard from her that Ralph was gunned down after withdrawing cash from an ATM in the Philippines(!) There's an obituary page up. As per usual, I'm the last to learn of such things. I have mixed feelings. Ralph lived life more intensely than most folks, and got a lot out of it. I always got the feeling he wasn't entirely sure what he was chasing, but the passion with which he went after things was a force to be reckoned with.

Apple unveils new Mac Studio, the most powerful Mac ever, featuring M4 Max and new M3 Ultra. M3 Ultra maxed out: Apple M3 Ultra chip with 32-core CPU, 80‑core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine 512GB unified memory* 16TB SSD storage $14099 before tax.

GTAV: Enhanced unlocked today. It's free to owners of plain old GTAV on Steam and the R* store (apparently EGS users get the shaft, but seeing as how GTAV was free on the EGS, I can see why.) The visual upgrade is pretty, but not earth shattering. Frame rates are slightly better on the same hardware. That is a rare one for R*. I'll post screenshots later if I think of it.

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: