Knuckledragger

Desktop Dungeons is free right now on Steam. It's a cute roguelike that began development a really long time ago. The late, great TotalBiscuit covered it over a dozen years ago: Also TB died 5 years ago this spring.

Even though I tend to pontificate about cartoonishly large format cameras, I must say I find the works of Henri Cartier-Bresson and his "humble" Leica 35mm rangefinder (usually with a fairly slow 50mm attached) far more compelling than nearly everything that Ansel Adams did. HCB's nighttime Paris photos are directly or indirecty an inspiration for all the long exposures I did in the second half of the 00s. The same can be said for his candid portraits and street photography. Candid portraiture was the one area of photography where I excelled in spite of myself. I put the most effort into landscapes, but in spite of the planet, you know, in general holding still and not GAF if I was photographing it, I only ever had mixed results. Conversely, I was quite good at annoying people I barely knew with an oversized DSLR and large-ish lens and getting interesting results from them. Of course, as descendents of tree monkeys, we're programmed to study each other's facial expressions and consequently find faces far more interesting than some mountain range. Maybe I'm a hack after all. 🙃 Case(s) in point: I've never done much true street photography, but I've always lvoed this shot of a young couple on vacation on MV during the "shoulder season" of early September. As many/most HCers know, I ran a one man nightclub lighting business for over 15 years. I originally got into photography to take photos of my lighting gear in action to market it. Quickly I became more interested in photography than nightclub lighting. One thing I learned early on was how to take photos in low light conditions with mid 00s low ISO digital sensors: This photo has a bit of a story: I was taking some pictures from the stage and two inebriated idiots wandered up, wanting to talk to the DJ. They didn't know (or didn't care) that I was shooting, and stood right in my way. I set the AF point to the center, and used the two drunks to mask the sides of the image. I cropped the photo to 5x4, but otherwise did no edits. The subject is actually a fairly awful person, but in this moment she was a dancefloor diva. A good friend of mine with his then girlfriend. She was nothing but trouble for him, but I like this moment captured. Bonus: that Asioan woman out of focus above his arm is his *ex* girlfriend. I did not plan that. Hooray, beer.

There's a bit to unpack there. First off, the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody include "mama, oooh-OOOH, didn't mean to make you cry." The way Freddie sings the "oooh oooh" part is phonetically similar to "UWU" which was originally text base smiley but grew into something far more because Internet and because Anime. There's also "OWO" and "OVO" which are animal and bird emotes, respectively. From there things turn into "UWU voice" which is, well... both absolutely awful and with great rarity highly amusing. Essentially it means speaking in a stereotypical anime female character voice. There's a semi-regular on my TF2 server who does the most spot on uwu voice I've ever heard and it truly both horrible and amazing.

Apparently the current HC post editor, Chrome, MacOS and me are not going to get along. If you don't understand this, consider yourself lucky. Protests in Israel.

In that "Gen Z" article they utterly failed to the goddamn horizon line even remotely straight. The single most important part of any photo involving a body of water is keeping it level. One of the things I don't like about using an LCD screen for landscape photography is the lack of markings. For years when I used the AF point indicators on my 30D/5D to see if I had the ocean remotely level. Even with those, I'd often spend considerable time futzing around in Photoshop to get things as flat as I wanted. I salute the large format photographers who succeed at the task while looking at the world upside down and backwards. Now that I say that bit out loud, maybe I was meant to be an ULF photographer.

I have a friend who maintains a kWh sucking late 00s Mac Pro in spite of the fact that his iPad Pro has more CPU power at this point solely because of legacy FireWire hardware. He has an old high end FW audio interface (it's an RME FireFace 800 IIRC) and also an analogue video interface which he uses to digitize legacy media (a task I've taken on recently in the world of Windows Hell, more on that later.)

RIP Ryuichi Sakamoto. Member of YMO, producer, film composer, and so many other things. I've had Robin Brunson's remix of his "Anger" in my record bag in one form or another since 1998:

Every thing I said about ULF cameras in that rant earlier, summed up in one image. Palpably ancient. Cartoonishly oversized. In skilled hands, superior to more or less everything to this day. I both hope to get there some day and pray that I never do.

The Mac Ginger does not like the new HomePod.

Now this is pretty cool. Minor Threat set lists from their June 26th 1983 NYC show. Very neat penmanship for a bunch of punk kids. That said, I'm pretty sure "12XU" is said "One, Two, X You" there, Lyle.

I've had this rant brewing for a while. In the world of photography, large format photographers are the biggest dicks in the room (in the Tice sense.) If the subject is holding still, large format (which is basically anything between 4x5" and 8x10") cameras do things better than anything digital and do it with 100-150 year old technology. Large format cameras can correct for perspective in ways that even the most sophisticated SLR lenses cannot. Large format photographers shoot at tiny apertures far beyond the point of maximum sharpness for any lens and deep into the diffraction loss territory. Their lines rendered per square inch is much worse than any digital camera but they make up for it by ...having more inches (I swear I wasn't trying to make so many dick jokes when I started.) Film stock is many orders of magnitude better now than it was in decades past, but apart from that it's quite possible to use camera equipment from before the war (the great war) in 2023 and be a functionally state of the art photographer. There's a rather large issue of color vs B&W stock and reciprocity failure that I've ignoring, but it's not directly relevant to the subject I'm going to address here. As I've alluded to in many posts, I now live in Vartha's Mine Yard full time. This storied island is and has been the home to many talented photographers (including at least one super famous one.) There's man in his 60s a who lives here now and shoots with a late 19th century LF camera. I have yet to see his work, but I'm very interested in doing so. Tangent: Large Format is one of the last signposts before sanity starts to disappear completely. After 8x10" the world of Ultra Large Format begins with 11x14" AKA "My contact prints are better than yours." ULF is where madness sets in. I've seen an 11x14" camera. It was ginormous. Anything beyond is lunacy for lunacy's sake. Of course, the final destination for a photographer that has utterly taken leave of his senses is ...alternative and historical processes. The people who make cyanotypes, tintypes, daguerreotypes etc. are artisans, craftsmen and people who make me look totally sane as I'm ranting about the mintue details of the work an obscure Eastern European electronic music producer at the end of my radio show. Ahem. As I was saying, I have a small confession to make. Since moving to MV, I've become a bit of a Facebook Boomer. That's really saying something as I loathe Facebook and ...don't really like the baby boomer generation. It turns out that on an insular place like MV, most of the locals communicate ...in a private FB group. Even my (sainted, octogenarian) mother who has never used FB in her life, is aware of this group. I now log into FB multiple times a day to check out what's going on about town. As one might expect much if it is "need a place to live" "lost dog" "found dog" "why is that on fire?" etc. Old Zucc's AI sure has noticed the uptick in my FB usage. I'm now getting all sorts of notifications from FB that I haven't before ("We've got a special survey just for people like you!" "The FB Messenger App for OS X is ready to download!") I figured a good way to get known on MV (in spite of being a 4th generation Vineyarder, my grandfather ran the fish market in my town in the mid 20th century) was to show off some of my photography. I've been posting a couple shots I've taken in the last ...18 years on MV to the group. My other main skill is putting words together about why exactly I really do or do not like something, and I've been using the positive side of that trait to explain my history on MV and the subjects I've photographed. So far I've gotten a consistently positive response. There are a lot of photos posted to the MV FB group, and the vast majority of them are current tech smart phone overly HDR snapshots that drive me nuts. It's not that I'm such a snob that I can't appreciate snapshots taken by Joe and Jane Average, on the contrary, I love work like that. Photography by the people is often the most interesting. What drives me batty is the pseudo HDR math "everything is the same brightness level" look that smartphone camera software produces. It's designed to appeal immediately to the untrained eye. It makes me want to scream. Once a while, a real artist shows up. As I said, there are a lot of really skilled photographers on this island and many of them make use of very specialized camera equipment, often to spectacular effect. In the summer of 2001 a fella with an LF camera did an interior shot of one of the Victorian cottages here on MV: "Gingerbread House, Methodist Campground, Oak Bluffs, MA, July 19, 2001. 8x10 camera, 165mm @ F/22, 4 seconds, Tri-X film, minus development." As I said, LF cameras excel at things where other cameras falter. Correcting for perspective in architectural photographer is no mean feat (I know, I've tried and more or less universally failed.) When I saw the above image posted to the MV FB group, I excitedly commented how impressed I was and that a 165mm lens is "quite wide angle" for an 8x10" camera, roughly equivalent to a 22mm lens on a 35mm camera. A day or so later, I got a notification of reply to my comment on FB. I won't quote it here, but it had been dipped in bromine and condescension. The photographer corrected me that the FoV was closer to 28mm because of the "crop factor" of 8x10. Motherfucker. That's not crop factor. That's ASPECT RATIO. If you're going to be so thoroughly pendantic, you've now taken on the task of being correct about the minutiae at hand. I suppose one could make a case that camera lenses produce image circles and the film plane is "cropping" a square or rectangle out of them, but that's not how the terminology works in common usage. Unfortunately, sometimes LF photographers are the biggest dicks in the room in the ...TubeRoller sense. (How's that for an OG HeadFi reference?) Also, I should learn to take things less personally.

The Animaniacs turn 30 this year.

"I got something to say! I ate a gummy today and it doesnt matter much to me, as long as its red!"

It's St. Patrick's Day. Do don't anything stupid!

Oh man, I just heard about Bobby Caldwell. Two things: Two: I can't think of a better tribute.

There's Dartmouth, MA and Falmouth, MA. Then there's what appeared on a Cape Cod weather report: Someone's got a Fal Mouth indeed.

Well, usa_love is right about one thing. Those Mjölnir Audio guys have a terrible reputation. Especially on head-case. Especially among the stats fanatics. Especially in the Stax Mafia. Which totally doesn't exist. Do I have to put /s? I feel like I have to put /s.

Napalm Death - From Enslavement To Obliteration remaster (2012) Napalm Death - Scum 25th anniversary remaster (2012) Remastering proto grindcore strikes me as a silly idea. I had both of the above albums on cassette in the late 1980s. At that point Napalm Death were considered a death metal and/or hadcore band. I think it was nearly a decade later until I heard the term "grindcore." I downloaded a LUFS app for OSX yesterday and I'm going to run some of these remasters through it. ND is an amusing band, but they're not really my cuppa these days. With that said, one of their founded members went on to form a group I really like: Godflesh - Streetcleaner 2CD remaster (2010). This really is one of the heaviest albums I've ever heard. I remember first hearing on college radio in '89. That was a time period when: (A) I was listening to a lot of metal. (B) I was listening to a lot of college radio. (C) Both were experiencing a renaissance. Revisiting Streetcleaner, it has aged like a fine, dystopian industrial metal wine. Godflesh - Slavestate, original 1991 version. There is a 2013 remaster, but I have not heard it. An almost funky and danceable EP compared to the mechanical gloom of the previous album. I actually didn't like it much when I first got in '91, but it's now one of my favorite releases by the band. I did not plan this, but every (non ambient) album I've listen to in the last month has been on Earache records. Funny what a hugely significant label they are for extreme music.

I'm still dealing with the fallout of moving (something that is scheduled to continue indefinitely) and most of the time I have to listen to music I just fire up SomaFM's Synphaera channel. Synphaera is my current favorite ambient/downtempo/psychill/call it what you will label. The rest of the time, when I'm out and about in the world, welll... it's death metal. Florida death metal. Death - Individual Thought Patterns (1993). Chuck Schuldiner's "angsty" album where he continued his struggle to outgrow the blood and guts imagery of the band's early works. It's got Gene Hoglan AKA the best drummer in metal on it and is one of my favorite \m/ albums, full stop. Morbid Angel - Blessed Are The Sick "Full Dynamic Range" re-release from 2019. The idea of an "audiophile" edition of a death metal album might seem silly, but TBH this version really IS better. Brickwalling ruins any form of music including death metal. Also BatS is better than Altars of Madness and I've been willing to die on this hill for 30 years now. Deicide - Legion (1992). The legend of this album, which has persisted for decades, is that the band had to record it twice. The first time it was so fast that the entire thing clocked in at ~25 minutes. That wasn't long enough for an album so they had to re-record it, "slower." Three decades on, if the original faster version exists, it has never seen the light of day. Tragically, there was no special 30th anniversary release last year. Cynic - Focus. Specifically the 2004 14-track remaster. There have been a bunch of vinyl re-issues in the last decade, but precious few CD versions. The funny thing about Cynic is that they're not a one album band. The returned 15 years later with 2008's Traced In Air, which to this day I have never heard. Massacre - From Beyond (1991). This album got maligned as a "Death wanna" on release, and I have never agreed with that. Similarly, when Massacre released the abysmally bad Promise in 1996, I think it re-ignited hate for From Beyond. Promise is indeed spectacularly bad. I have listened to the entire thing 3-4 times in 25 years and it has never improved. With that said, From Beyond is a bit of a sleeper classic. That was this weekend. This week's gonna include Malevolent Creation, early Cannibal Corpse, Nocturnus and maybe some Obituary.

TBH, even by Leica standards the Sumilux glass is completely not worth it. Ignoring the massive cost difference for a second, the F/2 Summicron versions are a fraction of the size and weight of their F/1.4 brethren. Heavy lenses get old quickly, especially when attached to otherwise lightweight camera bodies. The 50mm F/2 Summicron is a "bargain" by Leica standards (even moreso on the used market.) The Leica 35mm F/2 is possibly the best camera lens in the world for actually taking photos. The only photographer I've ever known personally who shot Leica used a M6 (late 80s serial IIRC) with a 35mm Summicron. He joked that the "swappable glass" part was optional. He used that combination long into the digital era.

It's pouring rain here on MV today, so I'm doing the logical thing and avoiding housework by teaching myself about iOS camera apps. At this point I am outright allergic to the pseudo-HDR tone mapping the default iOS camera app produces. The initial problem I'm encountering is how many apps are video focussed. IDGAF about video beyond the most basic functionality. I'm a still photographer. Also some of these apps have a subscription model. There are quite a few iOS camera app reviews on the YouTubes. For some reason, ever single one I've watched so far has been by somone with an impressively thick accent. This poses a problem for me, as I'm dyslexic and have poor auditory processing of language. (That backwars R thing is a pop culture trope. Not being able to understand WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE ON ABOUT because of background noise is very real.) So my top choice is Pro Camera by Moment. It's reasonably priced and has the basic features I want (manual controls mostly.) There are a few iAPs (as are present everywhere it seems) but they're not expensive. I also bought Hipstamatic Classic. Now that we're upwards of a dozen years past the faux retro plague that took over mobile photography and lead to ...Instagram, I figure it's high time for me to buy a toy camera app. To be fair, I was making fake lo-fi images before it was cool. There are of course many other camera apps out there, but it takes me a while to get familiar with things, so I'm going to limit myself to those two for a while. I am curious about Halide, which has very good reviews. I have some doubts about their iAPs so I'm passing for now. Also I swear I'm either going to buy a either Canon mirrorless and EOS adapter or a fucking Leica before I turn 50.

I should do a second post on 2009 at some point. With that said, Couple Finds Trove of 2,000 Cameras and Lenses in Storage Unit. Right here in MA.