Cold and wet, with a chance of cold and clear. National forecast says we’ll be clear, and it could warm up, but it was 48F when I went to bed.
Spent Friday doing my pickups, then finding the stuff I wanted to bring to my meeting to try to sell. I had lost a thing that is bigger than a breadbox… found it though. Looked in three places before looking at home. It was sitting here all along, not even hidden, just in a bin I didn’t think it would be in. I was looking for it out in the open. You always find it in the last place you look 😉
Today I’ve got my meeting, then load the truck and head out. I’ll get some stuff moved up there, do a chore or two, and spend some time there. All wins.
I have plenty to do at home, but I need to keep moving at the BOL if we’re going to do Thanksgiving there.
And I’m moving stuff there and building the stacks. If I have enough time, I’ll divide my OTC drug bin and take half to the BOL. I’m taking most of the food I bought yesterday too. One of the deals at HEB yesterday was “buy a ham, get a free turkey”. I’ve got freezer space at the lake, so I did. Even though the ham was a dollar more per pound than Costco, the 12 pound turkey for free more than made up the difference. A couple of years ago that deal didn’t save any money over Costco. Now it does.
If you aren’t normally a “deal” shopper, a coupon-er, or an ad shopper, this would be a good time to start. Get a jump on the coming hardship, and practice saving money. Learn the rhythm of the sales, and what stores have better pricing on what items. It’s not yet a matter of eating or not eating, so you can make mistakes and climb the learning curve. Going on as you’ve always gone, is not going to be an option forever.
Preps will help ease the transition. So stack some stuff.
nick
Vaguely related to the idea of an MBA: Our Business Informatics program is being modified to allow three specializations. One of these (mine) is technical, involving a lot of programming and using real-world tools to produce software. One is half-techie, involving data analysis. And one is pure management. If you think this change is because too many students were failing the technical courses, you wouldn’t be wrong.
Anyway, yesterday, the three specializations were presented to the students, who will have to choose in the next few weeks. There were two presentation times, the thought being that most students wouldn’t want to hear about all three anyway. Afterwards, we hung around for Q&A.
In our room, we had almost no students in either of the presentations. Afterwards – during Q&A – we were absolutely flooded, and the students asked us to please go through our presentation again. The main reason: the management specialization came across as basically useless.
We tried not to laugh, since – obviously – all of us technical types pretty much agree with that description of management. Looks like we’ll have plenty of students after all 🙂
Excellent. Maybe that will drive home the error in their voting ways.
The game was not as sloppy as I thought. The sidelines were bad and I had to be really careful not to slip in the mud. I made it without an issue. Long drive, 157 miles each way. Wife went with me and we decided to stop in Elizabethton for dinner at Chick-fil-a. The team buses were there, and they were feeding the players. Several bags of food were available and the wife and I were offered bags.
The rain did stop at 6:30 PM for about an hour then a light mist started at 8:00 PM. Made for a miserable experience. I have had worse. The camera is weather sealed so the mist was not a problem. Just annoying.
The team did win.
Friends who have been through MBA programs in the US all say the same thing – the curriculum is mostly group-oriented work and the real education is about learning to tolerate the incompetent, even when they let the team down in a serious way.
I keep most of my spices in the refrigerator. The spices I used all smelled and tasted normal.
I don’t recall hearing about using baking soda. I’ll give that a try. I don’t have any yogurt and I wouldn’t be surprised if the sour cream looks like a petri dish.
No beans.
It’s a good batch with some cheese.
35F this morning and the dogs slept in the living room. Penny has assumed her Winter position on the sofa. Pellet stove is running fine. They’ll let me know when they want to go out.
43F and gusty but clear. Headed out as soon as I’m emptied and cleaned and fed.
– I really doubt this. Unless there is some analysis of who voted where, (and there should be) I’m not buying it. EVERYONE was fired up for this election. I really want to see a precinct by precinct break down of attendance and result, along with comparison to history, at least three elections. I’d bet there are a bunch of anomalous results. Pick some small counties and Harris and do an audit. They have to restore trust in the system if they don’t want a civil war.*
n
*yeah I see the problems with that statement.
My wife had dinner last night with former co-workers at one of the big local medical groups in Austin, if not the biggest. Most of the GPs in the group have “Shrugged” in the Ayn Rand sense of the word, “quiet quitting” as the kids say these days.
Only the insane apply to work full time at the clinics. Most of the new GPs last 3-6 months and then quit, despite a $10,000 penalty plus tail malpractice insurance if the provider does not give six months notice of resignation.
Of course, the financial penalty cuts both ways. A provider can write a check and be gone in an hour. Most of the time, the group negotiates as they did with my spouse.
I’d say “Your nurse practitioner will see you now” (notch that Bingo card if you are playing at home), but the nurse practitioners are moving on as well.
Pictures from the game if you are interested in a time sink are located at:
https://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/Cloudland
Enjoy.
It was really much darker than the pictures indicate. I had the camera maxed out on ISO 25,600 1/1000 f2.8 most of the night. The misty rain in some of the pictures did not help.
Suburbs of tech hubs are going to vote Dem, even in Texas. Only a crazy four-way gerrymander of Williamson County prevented our walking corpse Congresscritter from finally losing his seat this time around. The county went blue except for the RINO Right Reverend “Judge” who kept his mouth shut after having his hypocrisy exposed early in the pandemic..
Texas Republican leadership seems very focused on retaining their own cushy gigs in Austin and not much else. Well, besides abortion – gotta chase Ann Richards’ ghost.
The situation reminds me of Dems in Florida 30 years ago, when the party controlled all three branches of state government and won most of the statewide races but had a tenuous hold on power. Interestingly, the cracks first appeared in Senate races there too.
I do believe Rafael Edward is in trouble in 2024.
My bad – Williamson County went narrowly for Abbott.
SEC Coaching drama note of the day – the interim coach of Auburn is Cadillac Williams, another talent wasted by Jon Gruden during his last few years coaching the Yucs. We’ll see what Williams makes of the opportunity in a road game at College Station vs Jimbo, who doesn’t seem interested in keeping his job any longer.
Which SEC teams … or future teams … aren’t going to be shopping for a new coach in December?
Country roads … take me home …
Interestingly, Gruden’s name is floating as a possibility for the head coach opening at my alma matter. Chuckie is still popular in Tampa.
Nice pictures, Ray, especially under poor light. I think digital is here to stay!
I am also impressed with my Note 20 Ultra 5G’s camera. I have recently taken some pics in very low light, with surprising results. I need to work with this camera more and learn it.
What really impressed me was using it to “scan” 45 year old somewhat poor quality C-size (17×22”) blue line architectural drawings. The detail was very impressive, and I didn’t even bother to use the highest pixel setting. This was a quick job, so I haven’t had the time to try some post processing to clean up the usual noise common in blueprints. The important thing is that all the lines and captions are sharp and easily readable. I had done the same thing about five years ago with my Pentax K20D digital SLR, but with larger and higher quality inkjet drawings. The results were readable, but not as sharp as I had hoped for. I have an old (non-digital) copy lens, but didn’t try it because this was another quick job. That lens worked wonders in the film era. I was able to copy 8.5×11” pages using fine grain B&W 35mm film with excellent results. Ah, the old times!
Speaking of learning cameras, I have a set of the old NBS-1952 Resolution Test Charts (T-40). I have kept these since the mid 1960s as my standard for testing lenses. They are not as easy to use as the more modern charts, but I can compare results using the same charts. I really need to try them on my newer cameras, especially my Note 20. Another time sink. Probably better to just get more acquainted with the myriad of settings, and get the best results I can.
I do remember when we wondered if digital would ever reach the performance of film. Happened a long time ago. No more wet hands.
It was 46 F when I drove home last night at 11pm. It is 59 F now. It was 85 F yesterday at noon. Quite the change.
from AceofSpadeHQ:
The McFailure Plan to Kneecap Trump [Dave in Fla]
—Open Blogger
Last Saturday, Rich Baris put out the following tweet, when the DeSanctimonius controversy started:
Last night, he further expanded on what is going on, while waiting for Arizona results that never came.
The “Plan” that was hatched by the McFailure wing of the GOP was to offer the nomination to DeSantis. The GOP would provide funding, support, and a clear path to the nomination. If DeSantis declined the offer, the second choice is Glenn Youngkin.
By not fighting for seats in the House and Senate, they wanted to reduce the number of MAGA Trump supporters in their chambers, and they assumed that the political environment of the moment would allow them to still gain both chambers, but blame the “disappointing” results on Trump.
What Trump has been doing with the personal insults to DeSantis and Youngkin, is to let them know that he will go after them personally if they accept the offer from Team McFailure. He wants them to remember what happened to “Low T”, “Lying Ted”, and “Little Marco”.
I don’t want to get into the Trump/DeSantis wars (though I know this is going to spark them). I tend to agree with Ace, I am worn out by Trump the Insult Attack Dog. But I think everyone should be aware of what is really going on, and not think that Trump has lost his mind.
[Edit – I am not saying that either DeSantis or Youngkin have accepted the offers]
Posted by Open Blogger at 07:55AM
I remember Kodachrome 25. Digital will never exceed that film for resolution and color. At least not in a handheld version. What amazes me is the ISO capability. What I do at football games is impossible with any film ever made. Unless I had access to the NSA, CIA, etc. films. There was probably some super secret super expensive stuff used by the 3 letter chaps.
When I started taking football pictures it was impossible without flash. And those images are just not good.
The sensitivity, the fast auto focus, the fast frame rate, have made an almost impossible task easier. I cannot afford a $5K camera and a 12K lens. The capability at my level is amazing. Even the newer phone cameras are HPFM.
What’s missing from the analysis is that, much like former Governor now Senator Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis has never been liked or really well supported by the McFailure wing of the Republican party, whether on the national level or within the borders of Florida.
Even now, the Legislature has an uneasy relationship with the Governor. What made the huge gains in the Florida state-wide races and US House delegation possible on Tuesday was DeSantis vetoing the establishment’s redistricting plan, the first in the state’s history done with Republicans in control of all three branches of FL government, in favor of districts more favorable to conservatives.
Jeb! Bush still very much runs the Florida Republican party, regardless of how the residents of the state view him these days. DeSantis knows the deal.
Maybe Glen Youngkin will bite on the deal, but, IIRC, he wasn’t expected to win in Virginia either and the party pretty much gave up on that race.
FOUR HUNDRED private jets arrived in Egypt during COP27 as climate delegates are accused of ‘hypocrisy’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11416209/FOUR-private-jets-arrived-Egypt-COP27-climate-delegates-accused-hypocrisy.html
Anyone know a student, high school or above, looking for a semester-long climate project?
Research social media to compile a list of attendees. Link them with their jets and tail numbers. Use publicly available information to backtrack those jets for 30 days (365 would be better). Estimate the mileage flown by each jet. Compute a yearly estimate. Use published performance data to estimate the carbon dioxide (not just “carbon”) emissions by jet and by group. Use the group emissions to rank the fleet in comparison to the transportation sectors of the countries of the world. Divide the group emissions by the number of attendees to get a per capita figure, and compare it to the per capita CO2 emissions of citizens of the world countries.
For Extra Credit: Convince Climate Action Now! that they should glue themselves to these climate criminals as a much more effective form of protest.
Probably right. That was my favorite film. Shot thousands of slides with it. Everything else was noticeably inferior. Still, I have underestimated digital at my own peril. Somebody might invent some software that could emulate the gorgeous pastels of Kodachrome 25 using existing cameras. The gamut is there.
Most of my work could tolerate slow shutter speeds. When I did some sports, it was football in the daytime and basketball with pushed Tri-X and flash. Don’t miss those days.
Something in the Linux 6 kernel seems to have fixed the power management problems I was having running Pop! OS Linux on my Ye Olde MacBook Pro Santa Rosa.
Linux now runs great again on the laptop. Saved from the scrap heap.
Apple used to build laptops which were not disposable. The Santa Rosa is now over 14 years old.
All I need is a battery. $70.
Loading up the truck to head out.
Sunny but still a bit blustery. Wind gusting, and only 66F.
n
The original Kodachrome (ca 1935) was ASA 10, followed by Kodachrome II with ASA 25, and Kodachrome X at ASA 64 in 1961.
Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64 were introduced in the mid-70’s, and used a different iteration of the Kodachrome developing process.
The inventors of Kodachrome worked for years before striking a deal with Kodak, and it took more years with Kodak resources behind them to perfect the three-color process that became Kodachrome (a name originally used for a much earlier two-color process). The product was an unimaginable leap in film. Look at some of the pro photography threads and you will find photos posted that retain every bit of the original color and are as close to grainless as possible.
The marvelous the View-Master stereo viewer was based on Kodachrome 16mm movie film.
>> January and February may be very cold indeed on the upper east cost of the USA.
+1 for @lynn for the Freudian slip.
>>Friends who have been through MBA programs in the US all say the same thing – the curriculum is mostly group-oriented work and the real education is about learning to tolerate the incompetent, even when they let the team down in a serious way.
And if you plan to work in IB, learning about what each level of the hierarchy does and how many hours a week go along with each level, with 100+ not unheard of for the first year – some of that spent covering for the aforementioned incompetence.
Plus time polishing your CV and networking/internships/networking/internships…
If you make it to MD without keeling over, you’re pretty much set for the second half of your life.
Once had a job offer in IT from GS. And while the $$$ were enticing the hours were just too much of a trade-off.
On board the Disney Dream. Geez is it awesome! Buh bye for a week.
@Alan
I’m a fan of shortcuts as much as the next guy, but could you expand some of these abbreviations?You used 6 of them in your short post.
I got:
MBA = Master’s in Business Administration
CV = resume, curriculum vitae
MD = Medical Doctor
IT = Information Technology
but you lost me with
IB
and
GS
>> I really doubt this. Unless there is some analysis of who voted where, (and there should be) I’m not buying it. EVERYONE was fired up for this election. I really want to see a precinct by precinct break down of attendance and result, along with comparison to history, at least three elections. I’d bet there are a bunch of anomalous results. Pick some small counties and Harris and do an audit. They have to restore trust in the system if they don’t want a civil war.
So you attribute (some of?) the losses to ‘bad actors’?
Was there a backlash against Bad Man Orange Hair? Even as far as split-ticket voting? And the “Red Wave” was just in McCarthy’s dreams? I mean, I know it’s CNN (and the supposed new, more centric CNN), but John King still maps out, on his Magic Wall, a long-shot path for the Dems to retain the House.
So if you’re Joe Manchin, consider this outcome…most projections have the Senate at 49 / 49 with Laxalt having a slim lead. What if the Dems take Nevada and Georgia? Then it’s 51/49 and the next time Manchin has a “tantrum”, they drag out the Kamel to cast the tie-breaking vote.
We live in interesting times…
@Alan
I’m a fan of shortcuts as much as the next guy, but could you expand some of these abbreviations?You used 6 of them in your short post.
I got:
MBA = Master’s in Business Administration
CV = resume, curriculum vitae
MD = Medical Doctor
IT = Information Technology
but you lost me with
IB
and
GS
Sorry, sometimes I forget this place needs a glossary.
MD is Managing Director – the top level in Investment Banking (IB)
GS is Goldman Sachs is an IB, second largest behind JPM (JP Morgan)
ADDED: typical IB levels: Analyst, Associate, Vice President (or Director), Senior Vice President (or Executive Director), Managing Director, C-Suite (eg COO, CEO).
IMHO, SP use W2M TLAs, sometimes TLAs.
GOML!
Translation:
In My Humble Opinion, Some People use Way Too Many Three Letter Acronyms, sometimes Two Letter Acronyms.
Get Off My Lawn!
Until Biden assumes room temperature one day in the next two years and the Kamel moves up, with the Republican House Speaker, now the proverbial “heartbeat” away refusing to schedule a floor vote on a new VP. Suddenly, Manchin is the defacto President.
Now about those coal miners in WV who lost their jobs …
Ok, MD as Managing Director makes more sense in context.
Thanks for the clarification.
Put C++/Boost on a resume with some meaningful time on the relevant job, and you’ll get multiple calls and emails from broker firms weekly to do High Frequency Trading work.
As I have pointed out in the past, there are metrics that are used to investigate the integrity of election results.
Some of these were discussed here and elsewhere in the aftermath of 2020, and as I noted then, some that would have been considered statistical “proof” of election tampering by James Earl Carter in his decades of round-the-world efforts to impugn the results of elections won by non-progressive politicians got very different treatment when measured in the good ole USA. Crickets, Jiminy?
It’s an interesting exercise to imagine legitimate reasons for preventing measures to improve the integrity and increase the transparency of elections. For example, does anyone have one that explains the resistance of the Democrat Party and their minions to an expanded–within state law–hand-count verification of machine tabulation in Arizona?
If I can’t decipher what the acronym means, I just make something up. For example, GS = Good Shirt(-r).
May make no sense but if it’s good for a grin, I’m good.
“Deep Green Western Australian Government Considering Diesel Generators to Keep the Lights On”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/07/deep-green-west-australian-government-considering-diesel-generators-to-keep-the-lights-on/
Please no. The last thing we need is more diesel users in the world. Just because these idiots could not keep their coal power plants running.
Because the Secretary of State, who oversees enforcement of the rules, is about to be elected Governor under the current system.
While messing with my Dymo Label Printer, I don’t know if they have crappy software or if they have set for the dummies.
Add in Win11 for extra “joy”.
The Dymo installs links to import addresses from things like Palm and Act and Word. I have none of those programs. Seems like on Win7 you could right click the shortcut you don’t want and delete it. Win11 does it differently for some reason.
Ok. So you r-click on the offending shortcut in Start / All Apps. Some things offer to uninstall which is not desired.
I don’t want to uninstall the entire program, just the link for the ReadMe file. I think I figured it out. R-click, select More, Open File Location. An Explorer window opens and you delete the shortcut there.
I have no idea if this is a system wide or just a user thing.
It might be easier to dig into C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs . Might not. It’s a strange place. Not everything in the Start Menus is there. Like Cortana. I have zero desire to talk to my PC, my phone can do that and I don’t use it.
Same for Camera.
Your time frame may be off. I was using Kodachrome II and 64 in 1970. Used to send the rolls to the Kodak lab in Rochester. When I relocated to Hawaii in 1972 I used the Kodak lab on Oahu.
My experience mirrors that when I scanned in my slides. Kodachrome was flawless to my eye. Ektachrome a little more blue. Agfachrome only the red was left. Fujichrome colors were a little pale. Seattle Filmworks were almost transparent with a barely visible outline of something, total crap.
Have you seen the “film” videos on the SmarterEveryDay channel on YouTube? I enjoyed them very much. The first one about Kodak is here: https://youtu.be/HQKy1KJpSVc
My mistake on the Kodak lab, it was in Rockville, MD.
Mark Cuban’s Pharmacy: Mark Cuban started a company that offers generic versions of medications at extremely low prices. A recent study calculated that Medicare could save billions with this business model.
See here.
Not all drugs available, appears to be mostly generic versions. But all are at manufacturing cost plus 15%, plus shipping. You can get pricing on the site here.
I checked some of my prescriptions, and there was some significant savings over my Medicare Part D (via Humana) costs at WalMart. Some had lesser savings.
“The Scorch Trials (Maze Runner, Book 2)” by James Dashner
https://www.amazon.com/Scorch-Trials-Maze-Runner-Book/dp/0385738765?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number two of a six book young adult science fiction apocalyptic series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Delacorte Press in 2011. I have purchased the next three books in the series from Big River and am reading the third book now.
I saw the excellent movies made using the first three books in the series a couple of years ago and decided to read the books finally. The first movie is fairly faithful to the first book with Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf) playing the part of Thomas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_Runner:_The_Scorch_Trials
The basic premise is that the Sun goes wild and scorches the Earth in an event called the Flare, outright killing most of the people on Earth. And then a manmade virus rolls through the remaining population, killing many of them and making most of the survivors crazy. A group of kids wake up in a glade surrounded by a huge maze full of dangerous creatures and learn how to survive in very difficult situations.
The kids make their way out of the maze and into the control room for the maze. A group of scientists takes them to a safe place and then sends them across the blistering desert. At the so-called safe place, the kids find out that there was another maze and another group of kids.
Warning: Several of the kids are killed in the book and the movie.
The author has a website at:
https://jamesdashner.com/
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (8,543 reviews)
“Your time frame may be off. I was using Kodachrome II and 64 in 1970”
1970 would have been Kodachrome II (ASA 25) and Kodachrome X (ASA64). Kodachrome 25 and 64 were introduced in 1974.
Ektachrome was produced in two “flavors”: balanced for Daylight or Tungsten (professional photographer lighting). If the latter was shot in daylight and processed normally, you got a strong blue cast. It wasn’t unusual to have a roll exposed half one way and half the other, so the only way to compensate was in printing, if you had prints made.
The Ektachrome developing process was much simpler, allowing local labs to do the processing. The early chemistry yielded short-lived transparencies, and stepwise improvements were made over the years. NASA shot Ektachrome in space and on the moon. The E3 process used at the time was stable for about 30 years, but NASA and other pro shops like National Geographic had help directly from Kodak in designing their storage. The latest process is E6, said to be good for 200 years (note: Kodachrome is estimated at 180).
“COMET is THE place for Science Fiction programming on television – with blockbuster movies, cult classics, and out-of-this-world TV series.”
https://comettv.com/
The Planet of the Apes movies are being broadcast, and tonight includes “Escape from TPOTA”. The MTI (move tie-in) aka novellization was done by JEP.
@Lynn
Did you read the Mushroom Planet (Eleanor Cameron) and Freddy the Pig (Walter Brooks) book series as a child?
ADDED: For those not familiar, Mr. Brooks is more famous for his other talking animal: Mr. Ed. Sadly, the tv show did not air until after his death.
“The incredible disappointment of Elon Musk’s first weeks owning Twitter (PART ONE)”
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-incredible-disappointment-of
“I thought he’d bought the platform because he believed in free speech and debate; now I’m not so sure”
“Almost two years ago, I suggested to Elon Musk that he buy Twitter.”
“We’d talked since May 2020, when we discussed setting up an independent news site to report about Covid and the lunacy of lockdowns. (During that crazy month, Musk repeatedly offered to wire me money for the site. I declined – I wasn’t sure how I could up an independent board or hire reporters with the lockdowns raging. Yes, I am the only person in the world stupid enough to turn down money from Elon Musk.)”
@Lynn
Did you read the Mushroom Planet (Eleanor Cameron) and Freddy the Pig (Walter Brooks) book series as a child?
ADDED: For those not familiar, Mr. Brooks is more famous for his other talking animal: Mr. Ed. Sadly, the tv show did not air until after his death.
Nope. Tom Swift Jr., Hardy Boys, Issac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Jack London, Perry Rhodan, Boy’s Life.
OK. So the difference seems to be the names. I don’t remember the specific names, just the speed of the two different versions of Kodachrome. I used both speeds.
I knew about the two different color temperatures of Ektachrome having made the mistake of using the wrong version a couple of times. Ektachrome always seemed cooler to me based on the Kodachrome comparison. Especially outdoors in the sun.
I seem to remember that there was a high speed version (ASA 160) of Ektachrome that could be pushed process to ASA 400. I and my friends did that a few times. Results were never great and that could have just been us. My friend found a place that would push process the film to 800 with really poor results.
My least favorite memory of Kodak was owning one of their inkjet printers. Used it for several years. Then one day found a small puddle of ink on my desk. It seems the cartridges all decided to leak at the same time. I was not happy. That stuff was harder to clean up than toner powder.
I also used the Plus-X and Tri-X films. Excellent quality for prints. None of those prints survived my moves. Tri-X could be pushed to ASA 6400 if a person could find a lab to process the film. Never did any of that.
All my transparencies are gone. Scanned to digital. Slides tossed, projector tossed, screen tossed.
Fond memories of photographing weddings with that film. Two cameras because of the 36, maybe 37 frame limit. Wife would load one while I used the other. Had to time things to not run out of frames.
Now my digital camera can hold 7,000 high resolution JPG and RAW images. I have no idea how many I can stack on my phone.
Chilly willy up here. And dark. Had dinner. Looking forward to a fire and beverage.
N
>> Get Off My Lawn
That, my friends, was a FLA
@Ray Thompson
Not much difference at the user end between the Kodachromes with ASA 25. Developing chemistry was different and the labs did both for a while. I stuck with the 25 because the f-stop difference didn’t seem worth it.
I didn’t like the 160, and had one roll push processed to 400 so I knew what it could do. I used TriX a few times for the speed, but favored PlusX in the limited times I wanted B&W.
I learned every trick I could find to hand-hold for long exposure times, and got consistent good results with K25 and a Pentax camera. Took some photos outside one winter and the combination of cold and slow shutter speed gave me reciprocity failure and a very interesting upset color balance. Might have made a very artistic effect if I had pursued it.
I don’t miss the 36/37 shot limitation.
I do miss being able to open a box that is 20+ years old and knowing that the photos and negatives are stable if properly stored. I need to get all the old memory cards transferred to newer media before they are gone, and get some archival prints made for family before I am gone. I’ve seen family photos going back to the 1880’s, and there’s at least a few photos since then from each generation. Don’t know who will care in the future, but I’d like to give them the option to laugh at haircuts and clothes.
Many people have lost years of video on deteriorated tapes. Seems like there’s a need for an upgrade path. We’re not far from sub-$100 for a pentabyte of storage, so raw memory cost isn’t an issue.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/breaking-horrifying-video-shows-moment-two-planes-collide-mid-air-during-dallas-airshow
B-17 Crash Video from Dallas Air Show. Grim.
I photographed mostly outdoors so the 25 version was my favorite. The richness and depth of the colors, the resolution, top notch. Always developed by Kodak using the prepaid mailers and never had an issue.
Saw a camera back once for Nikon. 250 shot back (if memory is correct), with a motor drive. Guy was doing a fashion shoot outdoors so I watched. He went through the entire film load in the back in about 10 minutes. I don’t know if the back was at full capacity. An assistant handed him a replacement back which had been preloaded. Burned through that in 10 minutes. Then another back in another 10 minutes. Three backs, with my guess of at least 600+ images. My thought was anyone with a lot of money can be a fashion photographer if it requires 600 images to get a couple of keepers.
When I depart this 3rd rock from the sun my son will get my computer. He will probably format the M.2 SSD and wipe out all the images. My backups will be gone as he will probably throw those drives away. I have family images from late 1800’s with a few people I know. Images from grandparents wedding (only a couple). Pictures from relatives in WWII. Pictures of family from the 1950’s through 1980. Film from my youth, five years old, that my brother had scanned onto a DVD. These will all be lost forever. The youth of today, even my son who is 38, have no interest in photographs and images from the past.
Digital has changed everything. I could not afford to take pictures if I was using film. The capabilities of the cameras are just astounding. The ability to do on my computer that 30 years ago would have required a million dollars in dark room equipment, if even possible.
Another observation is a lot of people now claim to be photographers when before they bought their “kit” camera they could not even spell photographer. People use them because almost any image beyond the crappy cell pictures that many people experience is a big step up.
People get fixated on pixel count. They think a 40-megapixel camera is better than a 20-megapixel camera. Well, it might be if it were not for the optics. A $799 camera with a $300 lens is crap. The lens will not resolve better than about 5 megapixels under ideal conditions.
I tell people don’t fawn over a more expensive camera until better optics are considered. A $700 camera with a $2K lens is better than a $2K camera with a $700 lens. The cost is the same, but the images will be much better.
@Lynn
The Tom Swift (senior) books are worth reading. They are a bit uneven due to changes in authorship, with Howard Garis doing the original and best, although I don’t believe that he wrote everything attributed to him (House on Wheels, for example).
Leslie McFarlane wrote the early original Hardy Boys. They were
editedeviscerated in the 1950’s, supposedly to remove racial sterotypes but a lot more was done. The originals are worth tracking down, either as the older editions lacking dust jackets (brown covers) or the Applewood editions of a few years ago, which sadly only published the first sixteen.Doc Smith’s Lensman and Skylark series are also worth reading, if you haven’t.
Andre Norton was one of my faves, courtesy of the Ace D and F-series paperbacks.
So was Alan E. Nourse, although his best novel, The Universe Between, wasn’t Ace. His best work was short stories, collected as:
Tiger by the Tail
Beyond Infinity
The Counterfeit Man
Psi High and Others
and it’s a shame that those works weren’t collected and republished by Eric Flint, as he did with Laumer and Schmitz.
“Climate Religion: Egypt’s Mount Sinai to receive ‘Climate Justice Ten Commandments’ during UN summit – Interfaith ‘Climate Repentance Ceremonies’”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/12/climate-religion-egypts-mount-sinai-to-receive-climate-justice-ten-commandments-during-un-summit-interfaith-climate-repentance-ceremonies/
Tell me that the climate changers are not a religion of Earth worshipers. I am fairly sure that they will be sacrificing babies and virgins before this is over.
@Ray Thompson
Technology destroyed the Kodak moment. There is no longer much significance in the taking of the photo, no waiting to the results. It used to be a regular part of family reunions for everyone to bring the best photos from the last one. We used to have at least two slide viewers getting passed around, both holding up to 40 slides. I still have one in my locked box of old photos.
Now photos are texted and forgotten.
I’d like to put a digital back on one of my Pentax with the 50mm f/1.4 and see what kind of results it produced. Not feasible with manual focus and aperture, but it would be interesting.
@Lynn
with almost every one either the chief shaman or one of his impo(r)tent henchmen.
They should all be rolled in still bottoms and feathers and sacrificed to the volcano god.
too late to add to the above, but I found this:
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Alan-Nourse-Unexpurgated-Classics-ebook/dp/B003FMV67G?tag=ttgnet-20
and some good discussion here:
http://www.dondammassa.com/znourse.htm
although the author criticizes the few modern collections as “adult” stories marketed to younger readers, but fails to note the “The Counterfeit Man” cover that he used as illustration is from Scholastic Book Services.
Lynn:
They already are in New York and Cacafornia; it’s part of abortion now, including abortion for a month AFTER the baby is born. Sacrificing virgins? That’s part of the transgender insanity. And I think it’s more demonic than religious, but that’s just a matter of perspective.
>> I checked some of my prescriptions, and there was some significant savings over my Medicare Part D (via Humana) costs at WalMart. Some had lesser savings.
The more disruptors in the pharmaceutical business the better. My Costco fills one of my scrips that my Plan D doesn’t cover using some discount card (eg GoodRx) that I’ve never heard of. On my Part D plan I take one med that is new to the market so it’s a Tier 4 and resulted in a lot of digging to find the best plan.
Noodling around looking for Alan E. Nourse short story collections, I found this series of 48 Kindle collections on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BWQPWPL?binding=kindle_edition&searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1668313925&sr=8-1&tag=ttgnet-20
which includes one by Nourse, one by Baum (18 Oz books), one by Andre Norton (including the Time Traders series), etc.
Might be a good source for the archive.
And one correction to my post above: Beyond Infinity is a variant British tiel for Tiger by the Tail. The fourth collection is Psi High and Others.
For my work in theater, I used to shoot slide film, something that had to be stored in the fridge, and pushed two stops to get usable shutter speeds. I think the ASA was 64 but could be wrong. Kodak of course, and tungsten balanced. Shot some Fuji that was supposed to be equivalent but it sure wasn’t. LOVED the look of the blues with that Kodak film. Had a formula down to get good usable shots of staging and lighting. If I got six per roll I was really happy, since I was bracketing, and shooting hand held, essentially in the dark. Had to have a pro lab do the work, and sometimes the shots were so dark they didn’t know where to cut and mount the slides.
I used to make prints with a color xerox machine that had a slide attachment. They looked great unless you looked from an angle, then you could see the blacks were different sheen than everything else. Got me into grad school… and last time I looked they still looked good after 30 years. I haven’t looked at the source slides in a decade. Scanning all that mess has been on my list for a while, but very far down the list…
Headed to bed. Chilly tonight.
n
>> Now photos are texted and forgotten.
And more images than you can count of any and every sightseeing location / piece of art / celebrity / etc is one Google search away.
@Nick
The film stored in a fridge (or freezer) could have been Ektachrome Professional. It had much tighter colour balance. Came with a set of ymc filter recommendations. I worked at Photoengravers & Electrotypers one summer (they did the Canadian Simpson-Sears catalogue) and all the film (only sheet) was stored in a freezer. An interesting place to work. They developed a process to strip Ektachrome film. This was in 1966 (I think).
I have some transparencies from around the same time on Kodachrome 64. They still look good. Other than Kodachrome, no other reversal film from that period is good. Some of my negatives from that period are are good but require correction (a lot).
When I could I shot on Adox KB14, Agfa IFF or Panatomic-X. Otherwise Plus-X. Tri-X if necessary and on occasion (very few) Royal-X.
I also processed my own B&W film. Processed my own colour when I could. I pretty well stopped all my photography after ‘76 when I no longer had a darkroom. I only started again when I got a digital camera. Digital is good enough but still isn’t as good as wet chemistry film. But it is a hell of a lot more convenient. Cheaper too!
Yup. Freezing slowed down aging, so once a pro understood processing nuances for a particular batch, they had it nailed until they ran out.
I posted a link above to an inexpensive Amazon download of Kindle ebooks for Alan E. Nourse and others (see”Noodling around”).
It finally occurred to me to check , and the Nourse list is 100% contained in Project Gutenburg, so I suspect the others are also, and these are just compilations from that source.
Such is perfectly within the license requirements of Project Gutenburg. For the 99-cent fee, it’s probably worth it to save a bit of time selecting and downloading the individual files, BUT they can all be had for free if you go to the PG website:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=alan+e+nourse&submit_search=Search
@drwilliams, thanks for the clarification. I actually used Kodachrome II (ASA 25) starting in the early 1960s. My father used Kodachrome (ASA 10) before that, in both 8mm movies and 35mm slides. K II was a revolution in color rendition, with greatly improved pastels. I still have most of the slides, and last time I checked they were in good condition.
I experimented with other reversal 35mm films, but Kodak with their mail-in processing was the best.