First Shots...

Well, 158gr Fiocchi FMJ ammo shoots pretty much to point of aim at five yards from the Taurus 856 Executive Grade.

That's forty rounds at five yards for initial impressions. The uppermost of the low-left shots was my first shot...mea culpa...and the remainder of the low left ones were me getting flinchy toward the end of the session.

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On the Case

I used Magpul cases on my two previous iPhones, but Magpul exited the cell phone case business* after the iPhone X. 

As guns have become increasingly something I have to do for work, cameras have become more and more my main hobby, so it's probably fitting that my new phone case isn't from a firearms accessory maker, but rather a photography gear manufacturer...

On the left is the Magpul case on the iPhone 7 Plus, and on the right, the 13 Pro Max sports a case from Peak Design, who also make a bunch of other camera bags and accessories I use. 

In fact, Peak Design is a company that reminds me a lot of Magpul, being cleverly engineered gear solutions designed by people who actually are end users of the products in question. That phone case isn't just a case, but part of a system that includes tripod mounts and bicycle attachments and all kinds of other stuff.

I guess with more and more people using phones as cameras, it only made sense for an innovative camera accessory company to jump into that market.

*If you want a lookalike for a newer phone, they're sold under the Rugged Shield name at BezosMart.

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Natural Disaster...

Of all the images of southwest Florida that flickered past on the television screen this morning...washed-out causeways, sharks in streets, acres of flattened or burned homes...this one caught my eye.

That overturned Vitamin C Orange 1970 Plymouth Superbird, though!

Of course, the winged warriors from Mopar are such collectors items these days, with average prices at auction pushing a quarter mill, that as long as the VIN plate survives, it's gonna get rebuilt. Kinda like WWII warbirds that way.

EDIT: Oh lordy it gets worse if you zoom out. At least the much rarer '69 Charger Daytona stayed on its wheels, although Daytona rear windows don't grow on trees...

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I don't get it either...

When Ben Shapiro or his loyal henchman Matt Walsh go on extended rants about masculinity in, like, the military or whatever, I just don't understand why they'd tickle that hornet's nest.

"Hello? I'd like to report a murder..." https://t.co/o9H2P1dlrt

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 26, 2022

JVL nailed it here...

"The point I’m trying to make is that none of the outcasts and weirdos who are talking about overthrowing the liberal order in the name of the Great Common Man would be at home in a Budweiser commercial.

Or at a real bar, where real people who work with their hands go to drink Budweiser.

Hell, I’d be shocked if any of these guys has ever even had a Bud.

Instead, these are people who saw the populist movement rising and decided that they could get in on the action and ascend to a place where, one day, they’d be the ones in charge. And then, instead of being outsiders, they could tell both the woke lib hippies and the lax-bro banker-establishment cons to get bent."

Two is one and one is none...

So what do you do with dual card slots in a camera, you ask?

Well, it depends.

Back in the day, when you had the one SD slot and one Compact Flash slot, it was common to record a JPEG to the SD and the much larger RAW file to the CF, since read and write speeds on Compact Flash were higher.

It's as common these days to have both cards of the same type, but some folks still use them like that. Others will have the second slot set up as an overflow when the first one fills.

I shoot everything in RAW these days, and so I record simultaneously to both cards, using one as a backup in case a corrupted card is unable to be read. That way if I shot a whole day's worth of photos at a class or event or something, all is not lost if a card craps the bed.

The only time I do differently is in the Fuji X-T2. I love Fujifilm's JPEG film emulations, and so I'll record RAW to one SD card for post-processing in Photoshop or Lightroom, and then a film emulation JPEG of Velvia or the like on the other card.

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Grumble...

Here's a gripe...

Olympus's E-3 DSLR came out in late '07 and was roughly comparable to the Nikon D300 and Canon 40D. It had two card slots: A CF card slot like a normal camera and a slot for Olympus's almost-proprietary xD card. It couldn't record to both simultaneously, and you couldn't even set it to switch over automatically when whichever one you were using filled up. Oly was just clinging to xD like grim death and wanted to sell cards, I guess.

Anyway, a couple years later the E-5 came out. An updated E-3 with HD video, 2MP more resolution, and some other tweaks, it was the last gasp of Olympus's Four Thirds DSLR system, and the closest to a true pro body they'd yet made. They even bowed to the inevitable and replaced the xD slot with an SD slot like a normal camera.

Guess what? You still can't write to both slots simultaneously.

WTF, Olympus?

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Turns out it's a physical activity...

Intense thinking and concentration burn more calories than most people realize. Getting really into a mental exercise can release adrenaline and elevate heart rate. If you wear a smart watch or FitBit and spend a day behind the wheel of your car doing any sort of involved driving, you'll often be surprised at the number of calories it says you've burned.

So imagine what it's like for really intense dudes who are doing olympic-level thinking...

In recent years, the proliferation of livestreams, fit trackers and other tools have created almost a game within a game at modern chess tournaments. Rubbernecking audiences watch for clues of mental cracking and physical distress in the quirky, contemplative figures bowed over the boards. At the 2018 Isle of Man International tournament, fitness metrics projected on a large screen revealed that grandmaster Mikhail Antipov torched 560 calories sitting stock still for two hours. By way of comparison, the average person will burn just 100 calories running a mile on a treadmill.

Sex on Wheels

Oh, man, this beautiful Egli-Vincent by Godet makes my heart go pitter-pat...

That's easily the best shot I've gotten of it yet, even though the lighting was a bit tricky. Normally it's just zipping past...

Gorgeous, hand-built machinery with a pedigree. I think this might be the very one that was on Bring a Trailer a couple years ago. 

[EDIT: On closer inspection, it's not the same bike, just very similar. They're all essentially one-off customs.]

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Great Success in the Gear Box!

I checked the Taurus in a couple K-frame rigs from my Big Box o' Holsters, a Bianchi #3S Pistol Pocket and an old, long-discontinued DeSantis convertible OWB/IWB rig, as well as with HKS #10A speedloaders, and it fits them all.

Relatedly, for some reason I seem to still have a metric buttload of .357 L-frame speedloaders, including lots of Safariland esoterica, and I don't think I've owned a medium-bore L-frame since the GWB administration. Obviously this is my cue to finally buy that 586 L-comp of my dreams.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #219...

If you want to push my revolver buttons, a 3" heavy-barrel, full-underlug, fixed sight K-frame sized wheelgun is the way to do it.

I'll be reviewing the new Taurus 856 Executive Grade for CONCEALMENT to see if the actual blaster lives up to the big expectations Taurus has set for it.

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Brrr!

It's frickin' 44°F out there right now, and only supposed to claw its way into the low sixties today, and that not until mid afternoon.

We might see the low seventies again this weekend, but it's gone from unseasonably warm to unseasonably cool like flipping a switch.

At least it's supposed to be nice and sunny. Got a long dry patch ahead of us, too, which I presume means some pretty good fall colors are coming up soon.

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An auction you don't want to win...

So, imagine this. You're just some normal family in New Zealand, engaging in the perfectly normal practice of bidding on the contents of abandoned self-storage units, hoping to make a few bucks or find some hidden gems.

Among the goodies you get are some suitcases, and when you open them...you find the desiccated, dismembered bodies of two kids.

Congrats, you just won a crime scene!

But wait, there's more...

The ensuing criminal investigation pretty quickly zeroed in on the kids' mother, who had long since fled for South Korea.

Fortunately there's an extradition treaty in place.

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Feral

One of the neighborhood ferals spotted on the fence in the back yard. Judging by his markings, we're guessing he's from our extremely fertile neighborhood unwed mom, Copper.

As far as I know, she's still thus far eluded any attempt at capture. 

This kiddo has much of his mom's wariness. He was okay with the camera pointed at him, but as soon as my face came out from behind it, he was down off the fence into the neighbor's yard and scurrying off through the underbrush.

Photo shot with an Olympus E-3 & Zuiko Digital 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5.

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The Right Gear

Yesterday afternoon, just before strolling home from lunch, I noticed this little tiny little doggo lounging in the shade on the sidewalk out in front of Twenty Tap.

Now that shot was taken from my seat with the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 II zoom on my Olympus E-3, an excellent walking-around lens, cranked all the way out to 54mm. With the crop factor of the Four Thirds sensor in the Oly DSLR, that's the equivalent of a 108mm lens on a full-frame camera.

I wanted to get a closer shot, so I either needed to get closer or get more focal length. Thing is, get too close to the dog with the camera and he's going to stop laying there and get up and try and see what you're up to and it blows the whole shot.

I also wanted to be able to get the shot at the camera's native ISO of 100 to minimize noise...

Fortunately, that green blur at the bottom edge of the snapshot there is my camera bag, and in that bag is my secret weapon for a situation like this: The Zuiko 150mm f/2.

Et voila!

ISO 100, f/2 @ 1/250th, trusting the in-body image stabilization of the E-3 to do its thing...

Automotif CCCXLV...

Here's a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado ragtop in Calumet Cream with what appears to be a Light Ivory leather interior.

Power was provided by the 500cid Caddy V8 in its final year of production. Now fully catalyzed, EGR'ed, and 8.5:1 compressioned, the ginormous "8.2 Litre" that had been introduced with 400 SAE gross horsepower in 1970 struggled to make 190 net horses six years later. (You could bump it to 215 by ordering the optional fuel injection.)

By the mid-'70s, convertibles were vanishing. They were heavier and had worse aerodynamics than fixed-roof cars, which hurt gas mileage, and they had a hard time with NHTSA rollover standards. Cadillac marketed the 1976 Eldorado ragtop as the last American convertible and quite a few of the roughly 14,000 sold were driven straight into garages and parked as investments.

When Cadillac launched a new Eldorado convertible eight years later, there was a class action suit as a result.

Truth in Advertising...

Here's an Aston Martin Vantage in...hand to God, this is the actual name of the color...Kermit Green.

Photographed with an old Canon EOS 7D & EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM in Aperture Priority mode, ISO 200 and wide open on a cloudy day.

Automotif CCCXLIV...

The side marker lights and grille tell us this Mist Green Plymouth Road Runner with an Antique Green vinyl top is a 1968.

The fact that it's a hardtop means it was made in the latter part of the model year, since the Road Runner was originally only available as a pillared coupe with a bench seat.

The 440 badges on the hood, if they're not lying, mean that someone's upgraded things in the engine bay from the original Road Runner 383 V8, since the '68 was only available with a 383 4bbl or a 426 Hemi. (The standard Road Runner 383 was a 335bhp version, with a hotter cam and other tweaks exclusive to the model, unless you ordered A/C, in which case you got the same Super Commando 330bhp 383 4bbl as in Uncle Lester's Fury.)

Lucy's got her football out...

https://t.co/ZD7qfllnze pic.twitter.com/AxS8cGQgVL

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 23, 2022

Brrr!

Did I say it was going to get down to 49°F this morning? I was mistaken, or rather the weatherdude was. It was 47°F when the alarm clock went off here at Roseholme Cottage. Summer has officially ended.

Yesterday it was 67 degrees and breezy and in the shade, wearing my summer attire of blue jeans, a short-sleeve t-shirt, cotton socks, and a very lightweight gun burkha, it actually felt a little chilly. Understandable, since it had been 94 the day before and the indoor temperature at the house was hovering around 75.

Not quite time to drag out the wool socks, long-sleeve t-shirts, and heavier gun burkhas, but that's probably less than a month away. Call it three or four lawn mowings to go before lawn care involves rakes and leaf vacs.

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Wish it into the corn field!

We do have a problem with people who seem to have an entirely too detached and casual relationship with violence, and an overlapping problem with people viewing guns as problem-solving tools. This is visible in plenty of non-gun areas, too. People are on a short fuse and have been for a while, with the events of 2020 and beyond only exacerbating an existing societal tension.

Part of it is that people can't chill and let go. We carry rage-generation machines around in our pockets. I'll bet the people I muted in that discussion are still raging at me. Don't know, don't care. My arguing-on-the-internet days are long over.

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