Knuckledragger

Dayum. Anyone want a deluxe repress of one of the most famous 90s ambient albums? Warp is re-releasing Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works vol II for its 30th anniversary (also SAW II came out 30 years go, oh god am I old.) The wooden boxed set version will set you back a cool $300. There's also a plebeian vinyl release for $50. I hope it's better pressed than, ahem, some of the Warp vinyl re-releases have been. The music itself is of course excellent. Richard D James has never not been a bell end of the highest order. He's also released an awful lot of wank over the last 30 something years. With that said, his good moments are about as good as British electronic music ever got. SAW II represents him at peak, more or less.

I watched the whole thing. I have very mixed feelings about it, as I do with everything related to Pantera. Since I first heard "Heresy" on college radio in 1990, I've loved Dimebag's riffs. I have never particularly liked Phil Anselmo and my opinion hasn't exactly improved in the last 34 years. When I heard a few years ago that Phil was going start performing live as Pantera, my reaction was not a good one. "Are you serious? What kind of disgusting cash grab is this? Can you piss on Dime and Vinnie's graves any harder?" I didn't GAF in the slightest that he had Rex back. Rex, bless his heart, has always been the least interesting member of the band. Then I heard Phil hired Zakk Wylde to play guitar, and Charlie Benante on drums. Charlie has quietly been the engine of Anthrax for nearly 40 years now, along with his nephew Frank on bass. Zakk needs no introduction. Nothing is ever going to make me like Phil, but I became at least open minded to the idea a live version of Pantera. The above video is both kind of what I expected and quite a bit different. Zakk's guitar tone is kind of awful, but that is (in all seriousness) a proper tribute to Dime. The best description of Cowboys From Hell I ever heard was "the best worst guitar tone." Certainly, Zakk has full command of Dime's riffs and solos. Similarly, Charlie's drumming is on point but to my ears he sounds poorly mixed. The drums might have sounded great coming out of the stage PA, but in my headphones they sound a bit anemic. Phil somehow sounds worse than I remember. With all of that said, the energy the band puts out is impressive and the crowd is clearly really into it.

The main road to Grindavík right now.

At least I think that's the name of the holiday.

Legendary Sony squares: The Esprit APM-4s are ~100 lbs. The APM-8s are a stout 220 lbs each. There's also an APM-6.

Let's talk about Lucy Vincent and Gay Head. The former has a bunch of famous rock formations, which I mostly failed to capture: Approaching minimalism. Nifty 50, 5D IV. A study of the rock formations. 50/5D. iPhone uh 13? with the "Camera+ Legacy" app. I will never like mobile phone camera apps, but Camera+ allows for some taming of the pseudo HDR bullshit Apple does out of the box. It also has a really neat white balance control. (More on that later. Much later.) ibid. The town of Aquinnah, MA was known as Gay Head from 1870 to 1997. The townsfolk elected to change the name to honor the native people who lived there and certainly not for any other reason stop snickering. Aquinnah is famous for its brick lighthouse and brightly colored cliffs. Said cliffs are still called "The Gay Head Cliffs." They're among the most photographed things on MV. All taken with the iPhone/Camera+ app. You can't tell from here, but that guy in the water is naked. It's is not a nude beach. The one feature about SMRT phone cameras that I really like is taking panorama shots. The cliffs and lighthouse seen from the lookout platform in the most touristy area. Fortunately when I was there most stores were closed and it wasn't crowded. The walk from the parking lot to the beach is actually quite long. I took this shot from the start of the jaunt. The building to the left is the <mumble> museum, which was closed. 50/5D. Minimal editing (I am obsessive about having a perfectly flat ocean horizon line.) The view from the lookout platform. 50/5D. Next time: Asparagus in the sky! (AKA asperitas clouds.)

As promised, I divested myself of the Canon 28-90. I made some attempts to use the Canon 35-80mm F/4-5.6 III, which is slightly less bad but still awful. Color transmission and contrast are both lacking. Distortion is present, but far less so than the 28-90. The MV museum's parking lot. 35-80 @ 64mm, F/18, which is probably well into diffraction territory. I worked this image over pretty thoroughly in Luminar 4 and Photoshop. A few feet back, also 64mm and F/20 which is ...excessive. EDIT: Hours later. One goddamn wrong link fixed. Sweetened Water Farm, across from my house. Golden hour sun. Less editing than one might think (contrast enhancement mostly). 80mm, F/18. That famous little shack, which is one of my regular test subjects. 35mm, F/14. Much work done in Photoshop correcting distortion, boosting contrast and colors. That's probably it for me and the 28-80. It manages to suck less than the 28-90, which is damnation with the faintest of praise. Tune in next time when I take the Nifty Fifty to the famous Lucy Vincent Beach and the Gay Head Cliffs (yes, that's really their name.)

Nothing like beating a joke to death. I showed the above meme to some normie friends of mine. They more or less all thought that the darTZeels were among the ugliest pieces of electronics they'd ever seen. One pointed out that "dartzeel" is an anagram for "zed alert." That gave me an idea. New DLC for KF1 just dropped! Don't tell @MexicanDragon

Good lord. Anyone live near a Microcenter and have need of a low end Mac? Via Reddit it seems there are two prices depending on location. Either $350 or $380. 8GB is not enough for most things (and it ain't upgradable) but at that price, I'd find a use for it.

Porque no los dos? Introducing the new "drumpFZeel" monoblocks. (TBH I always though they looked like excessive computer cases aimed at the LeeT GaMeR market. That'd explain the darTZeel name at least. Also, I mention this every time the brand comes up: Frank Herbert modeled House Harkonnen after the Swiss.)

Fella on /r/audiophile decided to show up ...everybody: System #37 of 58. Was refurbed and upgraded recently. Reddit thread posting as a link because I hate the way the site embeds.

Dual mono silver face with a side order of 2008 vroom.

I'd like to report a murder.

Dogecoin dog Kabosu dies after 14 years as meme.

RIP documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. His reputation got rather tarnished in the last however many years. He was a raging alcoholic, which greatly skewed his breakout documentary Super Size Me. He also had a nasty history of at best being a serial sex pest and philanderer and at worst committing sexual assault. With all of that said, he did help kick start the documentary boom of the 00s. Also he named the right town where Osama Bin Laden was hiding and wouldn't be found until years later.

"Sir, there appears to be a dining table in front of your stereo."

Happy birthday, FATHEAD! I got you a custom decorated cake.

Don't look now, but I think I found Brent.

You know the old saying "No highs, no lows, must be Bose there's a cat on the speaker."

I've owned a bunch of film bodies over the years, including two Canon SLRs. I had a Rebel G in the mid 00s and put a number of rolls of film through it. I got rid of it, but I no longer remember the circumstances. I have to this day a Rebel K2, which is very consumer grade, but it works. Paradoxically, I exposed fewer total frames with the K2, but I worked much harder with it. Last summer I blew the metaphorical and physical dust off the K2 and ran some slide and print film through it. I still haven't developed any of the above, but that's another matter. The first task the Rebel presented me with was cleaning the ...gunk that the soft touch plastic grips had become. I had to do the same thing with the Lecia P&S I stumbled upon as well as my IR-modified PowerShot G2. Soft grips are the devil. When I got rid of the Rebel G, I kept its kit lens, which is a boring 35-80mm zoom. I also still have the K2's kit lens, which is an absolutely abysmal 28-90mm. The 28-90 is so fantastically bad it's kind of amazing. It's not "silly lo-fi lens" bad like the Holga 60mm F/8: The 28-90 is both boring and bad: not very sharp at any aperture, wretched color transmission and very poor contrast. It also has impressive amounts of barrel distortion throughout its zoom range. I'm not one who complains about distortion under normal circumstances. I shot with the infamous EF-S 17-85mm for years, which is a goddamn fisheye at the wide end. Last week I had the bright idea to clean up both the 35-80 and 28-90 and strap them to my 30MP 5D4. I actually haven't shot with the former, but I gave the latter quite a workout and it returned were a frothy mix of bad and boring. Fool that I am, I spent considerable time editing some of the better shots. Morning Glory Farm. F/13 at the wide end. The unedited photo lacked color, most sharpness and contrast. The distortion is present here but largely irrelevant. My back yard. Zoomed almost all the way in (88mm) and wide open (F/5.6). Were I shooting seriously, I'd have bumped up the ISO considerably and stopped way down. I also used a LUT, which helped add some color. Hilariously artificial skies above Sweetened Water Farm. F/14 at the wide end. The most famous little shack on MV. 35mm and F/11. As was true for all of the above images, I spent ages editing this one in Luminar 4 (including applying a LUT to it) and then Photoshop. For this one in particular I went as far as comparing this shot to other photos I'd taken of the same building to correct the barrel distortion as much as I could. I will never shoot with the 28-90 again. I'm thinking about donating it to the local charity shop. I'm going to try out the 35-80 this weekend. It can't be any worse ...can it? I'm going back to my trusty 50mm F/1.8 Mark I once this little experiment finishes.

If you're insistent on shooting film and want EXIF, you could search for a Canon EOS-1V or Nikon F6. The 1V can store exposure info for "100 rolls of 36 exposure film" and the F6 can save information for <mumble> exposures to CF with the MV-1 card reader. All of these things are 20 or so years old now and don't grow on trees. In 2009 or so, I had a chance to get a clean EOS-1V, 85mm F/1.8 and 200mm F/2.8L (the "L" no one remembers) for like $1100 shipped. I didn't buy it and have been kicking myself ever since. Of course, given what I've done in the last 15 years, I'd probably have spent $30 on batteries for the 1V and put 2 rolls of film through it. Such is life.

Since some time 2008, when I shoot film I use the voice recorder app on my phone to record the time, date, exposure settings, lens, filters, zoom in mm (if applicable) on every shot I take. It's a PITA, but it saves my sanity. I learned a long time ago I am incapable of guessing what lens I used. Take this not very interesting shot taken with Kodak Gold 200 in 2008: When I got the scans back in '08, I didn't really like it so I ignored it for 15 years. Revisiting it in 2023, I guess it was taken with my 35mm F/2, which I used a lot with film bodies at the time. I checked my notes and .... "Hadley, 7/02/08 - 8:07PM - 135mm Orestor @ F/8." I can't reliably tell the difference between a 35mm and 135mm on a full frame, in a location I know and have visited for almost five decades. Write your shit down. Future you will be very thankful.