Friday, August 17, 2018

State Fair!

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on

You know what's voodoo? Snapping a pic with your cell phone and then post-processing it in Adobe Lightroom right there on the phone.
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Skull sweat.

Some reviews are harder than others. The one I'm working on now is really hard.
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Thursday, August 16, 2018

What I hate...

...about the license model of software "purchasing" is encapsulated in the picture below:

I am positively swamped under deadlines, and Microsoft has decided that it can't remember if I have an Office subscription on this machine or not. Never mind that I was using Word as recently as last night.

So, I have to re-purchase everything because I simply don't have time for lengthy phone holds today.

Kids, once upon a time, you would buy a box with some things in it that were shaped like the "Save" icon, and you would stick those in a slot like a giant thumb drive, and you would load the "Program"...which was like an App, except it didn't constantly tie up your machine with unwanted bloatware updates...onto your computer, and there it would reside. It would function until you decided to sell the machine, at which point you could stick the "Save" icons into the next computer and install the "Program" on it and keep using it!
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QotD: Overabundance Edition...

From a brilliant interview with Penn Jillette:
"For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information. For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information. We have to adjust, and I believe we will really fast. I also believe it will be wicked ugly while we’re adjusting."
Go read the whole thing. I've always liked Penn's take on things, and he just keeps getting better over time.
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Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Not my bag, baby.

I used to painstakingly link and annotate and generally write as if every abbreviation and technical term needed to be explained to my readers.

Then I decided that took too much time and that I'd rather write to an audience of smart, curious people who knew how to use search engines, anyway.
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Vexing.

Shooting Illustrated has a thumbnail review up of the Taurus Spectrum with an included Viridian laser.

I've made some fun of Taurus's Spectrum before, but not for the concept.

It's a gun for non-gun-people, for non-hobbyists.

I have friends who are in IT, who are programmers, who build PC's for fun, who root their Android smartphones, and then I have friends who just, you know, want a phone.

Similarly, people who don't make firearms a hobby...or even have much interest in them as objects in and of themselves...have Second Amendment rights, too. These are people who are going to own the one gun and never belong to gun fora or gun groups on Facebook any more than they belong to garage door opener or lawnmower groups.

There's a definite place in the market for an iGun. A gun marketed to people who want to buy a self-defense appliance maybe because it looks cool and they can personalize it and that's okay.

 But from all I can gather, this disappointment (the latest in a long string of disappointments) from Taurus ain't it. See, the thing about an iGun is it needs to run reliably without the attention of a hobbyist owner or trips to the manufacturer.
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Monday, August 13, 2018

All Linky, No Thinky...

In lieu of me having to come up with something creative to post today, allow me to direct your attention to other people's creative posts:



Sunday, August 12, 2018

The Inner Life of the Cat.


Bobbi's post this morning is wonderful, as are the comments on it.

The social software of the domestic cat is still very much in beta, and is mostly built on a kludge of kitten-mother relationships. This is why a full-grown cat will nip you on the back of your ankle while you're cooking at the stove. That's how a kitten signals its mother to lie down and let it nurse.
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Saturday, August 11, 2018

Skin In The Game

We prefer Justice to be kinda squint-y.

Overheard in the Office...

RX: "Alexa, is the president of the United States insane?" 
Alexa: "The president of the United States is Donald Trump. Did that answer your question?"

Alexa is sometimes unintentionally hilarious.
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Busted gear.

I flew home from New Hamster on Wednesday and didn't set my gaming laptop back up again until last night. (I've been pretty desultory with my unpacking schedule since everything involving luggage is such a pain in the butt to do with only one load-bearing hand.)

Anyway, my long-serving Razer Naga was wedged in among my clothes where it was nice and safe from rough handling in the baggage compartment.  But something took all the starch out of the left mouse button, which no longer *clicks* when pressed. Now it's more of a...well, there's not really an adjective that springs readily to mind. The button still functions, but now there's almost no tactile feedback.

And of course the Naga like mine has been discontinued and replaced by a more expensive V2 with a button layout I don't like as much. I'm torn between the new Naga or buying the equivalent MMO mouse by Corsair.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Git some!

Argh.

Being in more-or-less constant pain from this busted clavicle has made me super cranky. Plus I have a lot of shooting and writing to do on stupid-short deadlines, which makes me stressed.

I just wish I could teleport ahead in time a month or so and have this all behind me.
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Thursday, August 09, 2018

Current Project...

Working on a quickie range review of the new Charter Bulldog in .45 Colt for Shooting Illustrated. It's new enough that the instruction manual included with the gun doesn't even mention the .45 Colt Bulldog, only the .44 Special version.

Being a big-bore small/medium-frame revolver, plus being a Charter Arms, fills me with both nostalgia and also very mixed feelings. The first hundred rounds went okay, but it had a hard time with the primers on a few rounds of the Magtech. The range didn't have any rental guns in .45 Colt, so I was unable to check and see if it was the gun or the ammo.

Wednesday, August 08, 2018

Lemme tell you 'bout 8 Mile...

Tuesday, August 07, 2018

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #170...

EAA Witness P Match Pro in 9x19mm. Review coming soon.
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Lesson learned...

Since I made the rookie mistake of not checking and wiping down my filter before shooting all those battleship pics, all of them looked like someone had sneezed on the lens.

The upside of that is I've gotten a crash course in Lightroom and Photoshop spot removal. Also, I purchased a container of wet lens wipes and put it in my camera bag, to supplement the microfiber cloth.
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #169...

The aft gunhouse of BB-59, USS Massachusetts, features three 16"/45 caliber Mark 6 guns.
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Monday, August 06, 2018

This is timely...


I don't really see anything there I disagree with.
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