Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

Shroom for Improvement

Sunday, October 1st, 2023

Fungal Bungles

Today I had an interesting experience involving photography and the lawnmower.

I was riding along beside the fence that separates the pasture from the yard, in a long, grassy strip that resembles a road. I looked ahead and saw a couple of clusters of mushrooms. They were pretty new. Ordinarily, I would have splattered them with the mower, but I realized I was seeing something I could photograph, so I mowed around them.

When I went back later, I realized I only liked one of the clusters, so I tried to take a few shots with a Sigma 105mm macro lens. I was carrying it because I hoped to find some small things to shoot. Smaller than mushrooms.

Fortunately, not every shot I take with this lens has to be a real macro shot. I was able to shoot from far enough away to get the whole mushroom cluster in the photo.

I shot some more stuff I will probably delete, and then I edited two raw photos. You see them below.

I’m reasonably happy. The focus is bad, because I keep overestimating the depth of field, but the pictures showed potential. I picked a fairly good subject, the composition is okay, and but for the depth of field issue, these pictures would have been pretty good.

I like editing raw photos. Seems like I can stretch my work a lot closer to adequate. I am using the trial version of Photoshop Elements, and I plan to buy it.

The second photo is a little disturbing to me, because Photoshop cropped it. I did a crop first, and then I saw that the program was recommending its own crops. A couple were hideous, but then I saw the third, which was just like mine, only better. So am I still a photographer if a program crops my photos?

I learned I should not be afraid to clean up the area around things I shoot. I thought the blades of grass in the foreground would add context, but they are just distracting.

I tried to get a shot of another mushroom I spared with the mower, but the depth of field problem was so bad, it’s not even worth posting. I need to make a strong effort to preview depth of field in the future. It’s not all that easy when you’re on the ground looking down at your camera, especially if the sun is bright.

I tried to shoot some little weed blossoms, but this lens is not great for really small subjects. Disappointing. There is a very good Chinese manual focus lens that could be better. It has 2x magnification.

I’m not afraid to give up autofocus. I don’t really like it. It seems like it’s not as trustworthy as manual, and it doesn’t always want to focus on the right thing. I can spend the rest of my life mastering the camera’s focus programming, and I guess I’ll get sharper shots than I get now, but I already know how to focus manually.

Great photographers took very good photos for decades with manual focus, so I feel like I should be able to pull it off.

I would like to shoot more bugs, but they don’t like to pose. I had an idea: pour sugar water on things and wait for the bugs to arrive. A weak solution should dry and become invisible, but the bugs should still smell it. I’m trying it now. Tomorrow I’ll go out and see if anyone has shown up.

I have to be more serious about recognizing subjects, I saw some interesting mushrooms at the base of a tree, and I kicked them to see if they were mushrooms or edible fungus. It wasn’t until later that I thought about taking a picture.

I also have to learn not to go out and shoot things on the ground right after dinner. It’s not the best time to be squatting and bending over.

These mushrooms should keep popping up until the cold weather comes, so I should be able to get some really neat photos once I figure the depth of field out. As it is, I am a disgrace to the body of people who own this lens, which is supposed to be excellent.

I could have done better with the DSLR, but I’m not going there. I have to master this camera.

Photo Realism

Wednesday, September 27th, 2023

It’s Good if You Think it’s Good

It’s a milestone day. Last night, ghetto kids, and probably many people who were not kids, sacked an area of downtown Philadelphia like Nazis raiding Jewish stores. They fought the police, of course. At about the same time, Target announced it was closing a whole bunch of stores, including locations in Harlem, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco. Hmm. What do those locations have in common? The amazing thing is that Target came out and admitted crime was the reason. Not just crippling theft, but violence which exposed the company to lawsuits from employees, customers, and their families.

Target snitched on its urban customer base. The gloves are off.

What were the stores most prominently mentioned in the Philadelphia story? Apple (phones treasured by ghetto kids), Foot Locker (expensive athletic shoes), and Lululemon (major vendor of trashy twerking pants). Is it a dog whistle if a news organization mentions the companies?

WGN, a big Chicago news station, just ran a story about a Democrat mayor (El Paso) busing illegal aliens to a “sanctuary” city (Chicago) with a black mayor. Two things to take away once you’ve seen the video: Democrat mayor doing what DeSantis and Abbott did, which was supposedly cruel when they did it, and the WGN team sympathizing with him and making it clear the invasion is a problem.

When a major news organization in Chicago starts repeating conservative talking points about illegal aliens, it’s a day of note.

The world really is ending. It’s amazing, watching videos about our sudden plunge into chaos. I feel like I’ve been sucked into the TV screen during a disaster movie. You know how they create fake news shows. “Godzilla just used San Francisco’s South of Market area as a litterbox, and he’s headed for Palo Alto!” “The asteroid has hit, and here’s a live feed of a tsunami swallowing Leonardo Dicaprio’s house!” It’s all happening now, but it’s real.

I predicted this years ago, and even though I believed what I was saying, it’s still hard to fully accept as reality. Vote for whomever you want. Buy a solar roof. Learn to grow potatoes. It won’t help.

Sit back and enjoy the ride. I don’t know what else to say. Sooner or later, the wave will make it to your area.

Every big city in America is becoming Detroit.

Businesses are boarded up all over America. Crime and covid ended them. Covid drove people to remote work, which they really like, because it’s easier to get away with doing very little at home. Now they don’t want to go to cities and support stores, restaurants, and landlords. BLM and Antifa taught people crime was a human right, so even if people wanted to return, many are afraid to. Commercial property values are tanking. Maybe next year you’ll be able to buy the Chrysler Building for a thousand dollars.

A long time ago, I saw Detroit described as a doughnut. The suburbs were the ring, and the center, which was destroyed by the people of Detroit, was the hole. I guess we’re going to see a lot of doughnuts in the near future. A lot of worthless toilets that used to be centers of commerce where decent people could live decent lives.

In other news, I saw a great video about photography. It was about photographer Vivian Maier, sort of. Really, it was about the importance of taking pictures primarily to please yourself.

Maier worked in Chicago, and she left hundreds of thousands of negatives behind. She did not exhibit her work. Somehow, she was discovered after she died. Her photos are excellent. Truly exceptional.

Was she a great photographer, or will anyone who takes half a million pictures produce extraordinary work inadvertently? Is it a million-monkeys thing? I think the explanation has to be talent. There are millions of monkeys out there taking hundreds of thousands of pictures each, and most of them don’t produce much of value.

The gist of the video seems to be that you shouldn’t feel you have to post everything you shoot on the web in order to justify what you do. If it’s satisfying to you, that’s enough, and it’s more validating than likes from people who think Kim Kardashian and Joe Biden are saving the world.

I have been caught up in the mechanics of taking photos. F stops. Lenses. Figuring out endless camera menus. I should be thinking more about whether I like the pictures, and I should not be eager to discard pictures I think are flawed. Sometimes a picture that is over- or underexposed or blurry can be very satisfying.

I should know this better than anyone, because I write and cook primarily to suit my own tastes. I can’t say I would write as much if I knew no one would read it, but know NEARLY no one reads, and I still sit down and type.

As noted in my last post, I decided to get a used Canon SL2 to replace my 350D. I couldn’t make myself sell my lenses, which are nearly worthless, and the camera is worth so little, I would have to either throw it out or let it sit in a closet until my heirs threw it out. I felt like dropping $300 on a new body would make me happier. It arrives today.

I think it was a smart move. I’ll be more willing to risk damaging or losing it than the big new Sony, and the photos should be just as good, albeit a little smaller.

I got a flash for the Sony. I am getting nowhere with it. It works in either TTL (through the lens) or manual mode. My understanding is that TTL is for idiots. The flash receives data from the camera, as though looking through your lens, and it decides what kind of light to give you. The lens tells the camera your F stop and focal length, and your camera relays the information to the flash.

I tried idiot mode yesterday, and I got idiot photos. I turned the light in my dining room down to restaurant levels, and I tried to shoot as though I were taking travel photos in a restaurant. I got very grainy, poorly focused pictures. Because I was using a 15mm lens (I surmise), I also got something resembling vignetting. There were shadows around the photo’s center. I think the flash was not prepared for the wide field of view. The lens I used doesn’t tell the flash anything. It’s a manual lens.

I also tried a longer lens that was not manual, and things were little better, although turning the flash upward and back for indirect light killed the vignetting.

I kept getting really slow shutter speeds, and when I used automatic ISO, it went way up. This increases noise.

As a photo ignoramus, I just assumed a good flash would let you take decent pictures in a restaurant. I didn’t think the shutter would slow down to nothing. I didn’t expect the ISO to skyrocket. I thought the whole purpose of a flash was to fix those problems.

I have not tried using the flash’s manual mode yet. It seems to me that if idiot mode is too hard, manual, which requires knowledge, is still a ways off.

Of course, now that I have a good APS-C camera on the way, to save money, sort of, I am starting to want a new APS-C lens. As was said of King Lear, “He hath ever but slenderly known himself.” I should have seen this coming.

APS-C is good for travel because the camera and lenses are smaller and cheaper, and travel is upcoming.

My wife’s arrival here appears to be very close. The other day I was cleaning up the kitchen, and I considered giving away the T-Fal deep fryer. I find it useless and unpleasant to handle and clean, and it takes up room. She said I should keep it until she gets here, and they we can decide. Her expected arrival is so close, it actually made sense to say that.

If she gets the go-ahead, and we also get a European visa we applied for, we will visit Prague and Rome, so plenty to photograph and film.

My macro efforts are going badly. Part of it is getting use to the new lens and camera, but I’m also having a hard time finding critters to shoot. I had an idea: spray some plants with sugar water. It won’t show on film, and it will draw bees and flies. I may try it.

The guy who did the video I posted did another video about exercises to help photographers make the most of their surroundings. They are intended to help you see potential in things you would usually walk by. I may try them.

Having seen the videos, I feel like I need to amend my photography philosophy. I have been dividing photos into two types: documentary (Louanne and I were at the world’s largest ball of string) and artistic (Check out the amazing bokeh on this tiny orchid). Now I think I have to create subcategories: photos that obey the rules, and those that don’t. People keep telling photographers to make everything sharp and look for textbook composition and lighting, but sometimes a photo is better because it breaks those rules. I think I have to start throwing photos out because they’re bad, not because they would get me bad grades in a community college course. I should hold onto strange photos that are still pleasing.

I like photos that tell a story, but today I realized I also like photos that suggest there is a story no one is telling you. Sometimes a photo is telling you a story, just like a Normal Rockwell painting. “These boys got caught skinny-dipping.” Other pictures suggest something is going on, but you can’t figure out what it is. “This man is grinning, and the woman is furious, but why?”

Lots of things to think about when you take a photo. There are lots of things that can give a photo merit in one way when it appears worthless in other ways.

None of this philosophizing will do me any good until I learn how to work the equipment. I’ll get back to it today.

Little Problems

Sunday, September 24th, 2023

Bugs are Demanding Models

It has been a while since I got my Sigma 105mm macro lens for my new Sony camera, and I still haven’t been able to accomplish much. It’s hard to get used to the controls, and the lens and camera, together, just seem hard to operate.

I went outside and looked around for macro opportunities, and as luck would have it, a big, fat carpenter bee started feeding on the blossoms on the weeds by my house. I ran over and started trying to capture him doing something interesting. It was pretty much impossible to focus in time to get a decent shot. I got one depressing picture of him flying out of the scene.

Later on, I saw some kind of wasp or bee on a blossom, and he was taking his time, so I didn’t have to chase him. I got all excited and tried to shoot him. Afterward, I realized I had forgotten to check the shutter speed and ISO. Here is the best picture I got, and this is AFTER a lot of doctoring. Of course, it’s slightly better at full size.

The exposure is horrendous, and it can’t be fixed.

Yesterday, I decided to try shooting in RAW format, and today I tried editing. I tried to photograph some lantana blossoms. I could not get a good sharp picture, and the photo seemed dark in spite of checking the exposure. I used Photoshop and Camera Raw to try to fix the picture up, but it’s still a mess. I only took one shot because I had to shoot from a very uncomfortable position.

I’ve been thinking maybe I got the wrong lens. The Sigma is heavy, and the best magnification you can get is 1x. A Youtube macro guy says the Laowa 58mm macro is the way to go. It’s small and light, and you can photograph things between one and three inches away, which makes life easier. It does 2x magnification, so you can get shots the Sigma won’t get.

I have a perfectly good APS-C Sigma macro lens for my old Rebel 350D, but I don’t want to spend the rest of the year taking 8MP pictures. When I first started thinking about getting better equipment, I assumed I would use my old lenses, and people said I should get a newer body that would fit them. They recommended the T7, also called the 2000D. It looked great compared to my 350D, but while I was researching it, I learned that DSLR’s are now obsolescent, so I didn’t go for it. I bought a mirrorless.

Today I started considering the T7 again. I found out the resale value on my old lenses is about enough to buy three pizzas, so selling them will not be very rewarding, and they are capable of very good work. I looked around, and I decided to pick up a used Canon SL2 body.

This body is considerably better than a T7. It’s lighter than my full frame. It does video. It has 24 megapixels. It will give me an excuse to keep my old camera bag. I can use it when I’m afraid to take the Sony out or when I travel to places where good cameras tend to get stolen.

Now I should be able to get some decent macro shots, one way or the other. Eventually, I should get somewhere with the Sigma on the Sony camera. Until then, I can produce some useful work with the Canon.

I have an external flash coming, along with a cheap flash diffuser. I learned that you need a fast shutter to do macro on anything that moves. Bugs flap fast. To get good lighting, you use a flash, and the diffuser prevents it from looking like, well, flash.

Working with raw files sounded intimidating, but it doesn’t seem too hard. It seems pretty much like fixing JPG’s in Photoshop Elements, but you have a wider range of adjustments, and you are a lot more likely to be able to save iffy shots.

Tomorrow my used Laowa 15mm zero-distortion lens gets here. That should be a lot of fun while traveling. We are hoping to go to Rome, and it sounds like the perfect lens for shooting inside old buildings. I don’t know what I’ll do with it here, though.

My wife should be here for good in as little as 5 weeks. It is possible I will meet her in another country and fly home with her. That would give us a lot of photo opportunities. She is very supportive of the whole thing, because like me, she has very, very few childhood pictures of herself. We want to do better.

Sorry for the lame pictures, but I am plugging away, and I expect better results before long.

Macro Equipment; Micro Ability

Monday, September 18th, 2023

I Think I See Waldo Behind a Tree

My efforts to become an award-winning photographer are going poorly at the moment.

I took some okay photos with my old Canon 350D and my new Sony ZV1M2, and I got all excited and bought a Sony A7IV, which is sort of a low-end pro camera. I got myself a 24-70mm lens and started shooting.

First problem: macro is not really an option.

I had been doing macro photos with the Canon, and I was extremely pleased with them. My farm is a good place for macro photos. I guess any place is good for macro photos, because you’re shooting things the size of a quarter. Shrinking the size of your subjects increases the number of potential subjects per unit of area. You can spend all day shooting macro in your house.

The new lens does not like macro. You can’t get close enough to little things to really fill the screen, so you end up with longer shots you have to crop, and even with this camera’s huge sensor, you can only crop so much. Also, I’m not very good at using the camera.

In addition to these problems, I have a lot of mosquitoes right now, and I need to get on the tractor and bush hog a lot of the farm. Thorny, unproductive blackberry bushes are taking over, and there is also some kind of stinging weed that sets your ankles on fire. The farm is not the most pleasant studio at the moment.

Giving up on macro puts me in a position where I have to find bigger things to shoot, so now I have many fewer subjects to choose from. I am struggling to find subjects, and it is not going all that well.

I ordered a real macro lens, and while I wait, I’m shooting bigger stuff, including landscapes.

I think my farm is beautiful. I treasure it. God used it to save me from Miami. But let’s get real. The land is flat by landscape photo standards, there are no creeks or rivers, there is no lake, there aren’t many big flowers…it’s not like the same size parcel in Switzerland or Norway.

Yesterday I walked all over, trying to find things to shoot. My understanding was that it was best to shoot when the sun was low, so I went out in the afternoon. The sun was still blazing like a thermonuclear blast, which, I guess, it was. The grass looked bleached. I didn’t know how to cope with the light.

I shot a bunch of garbage anyway, because I knew it would help me learn. Trying to find subjects is good practice even when you fail, and I was also getting familiar with the camera.

The landscape shots, apart from being shot in kind of a boring area, seem like subjectless photos. Photoshop people into them, and they would be fine. As it is, they’re like big empty frames.

I’m starting to wonder: are there places where you just can’t take a lot of wide shots, even if you’re good? I’m not saying I’m good, but I have taken some decent pictures.

I think a lot of people would say a good photographer can take great photos anywhere. I’m guessing, because that sounds like the kind of thing people would say, because they say things like that. But I have to point out that when Ansel Adams wanted to take great photos, he went to Yosemite. He didn’t hole up in his house, shooting dust bunnies and refrigerator magnets.

I Googled his photos, and I don’t see any shots of his toaster or recliner.

The macro lens will arrive tomorrow, and I expect it to save my life. You can never run out of macro subjects.

So, getting back to things like landscapes and street photos, I’m wondering if I’m going to have to start getting in the car and wandering around in public. Also, am I going to live for traveling with my wife? When you travel, you run into good stuff all the time.

I think I should get a wide angle lens for the future. I mean like 12mm or so. Not a fisheye, either. One that leaves straight lines straight. A really wide lens will give me stuff which is very different from my current minimum focal length of 24mm. It will also let me shoot in very small places without losing everything except someone’s elbow or a napkin dispenser.

I have looked at photos from different wide angle lenses, and I feel like a person’s first wide lens should be very, very wide. When you spend a lot on a lens, you want it to do something very different from what your old lenses do. If all you have is a 24-70mm, you don’t want to buy a 20mm lens.

I like the dramatic feel of wide angle photos, and it’s neat, the way they can make the observer seem isolated from the subject matter. When a lens pushes people away, it lets you know you’re not part of the action. You’re like John Cusack, in the portal, watching a lesbian live his intended life with his ex-girlfriend.

In Singapore’s airport, I used my phone to take a wide shot I really liked. It helped motivate me to think about wide lenses. I tried to find out what sort of lens the phone had. I figured that if I could find this out, I could get a lens just like it.

It turned out the center lens on my phone was (allegedly) a 24mm. I have that already, in my zoom.

If I lived in Singapore, I could go to the airport and take the same shot with my zoom, to see if the 24mm measurement is really correct. Can’t do it from here, though.

The web says my phone’s sensor has 50 megapixels. Can that be true? That’s insane. I think the Hubble only has 40. You get 50 with the center lens, 10 with the long lens, and 12 with the telephoto. On one $750 camera. Which is supposed to be a telephone.

The world has gone nuts.

The wide lens on this phone is said to be 13mm. If I had started thinking about still photography before the trip, I could have done more wide shots.

Is 13mm on the phone the same as 13mm on a full-frame camera? You tell me.

Really good wide lenses, like nearly all really good lenses, are really expensive. I found one that could be a bargain, though. A company named Laowa makes a 9mm job which features zero distortion. It’s affordable, it’s very small, and it’s light. It gets good reviews. The only problem is that it does not do autofocus.

Do you really have to have autofocus all the time, especially when you’re doing crazy-wide shots? I don’t really see myself suddenly developing an urge to shoot moving subjects at 9mm. Also, the depth of field is always large with this thing.

It’s difficult to make equipment decisions when you know as little about photography as I do. I am seeking advice on the web. Maybe trial and error are inevitable.

When the macro lens gets here tomorrow, I should be able to produce some acceptable shots. It should keep me supplied with subjects for, well, ever. Meanwhile, I’ll keep looking for ways to get good material out of the zoom. I might pick up the Laowa.

Climb up on my Knee, Sony Boy

Friday, September 15th, 2023

At ISO 2000, I Don’t Mind the Grey Skies

My new camera arrived today. I decided I can now call myself a photographer. I have decent equipment that will allow me to create really excellent photos. Can you call yourself a photographer when you’re not highly trained? Yes, if you are capable of doing acceptable work. This is my ruling, based on the fact that there are innumerable experienced professionals out there, making a living, who couldn’t take a decent passport photo on the best days of their lives.

Maybe someone else out there is trying to decide which mid-range mirrorless camera to get for travel, so I will issue a couple of conclusions.

I was torn between two models: the Sony A7IV, which is full-size, and the AC7II, which is nearly the same camera in a compact package. I fretted a lot about this. I am a pretty experienced world traveler, and I know what it’s like to lug heavy stuff around while walking several miles per day.

Get the bigger camera. The difference between the compact and full-size jobs is nearly nothing, and once you put a huge lens on your camera, you will realize how stupid you were to worry about it.

I bought a 24-70mm zoom, and it’s as big as a can of corn. It’s bigger than the 17-17mm EF lens I had on the old Canon 350D. Attaching it to a camera that weighs 4 ounces less and is about 1/4″ shorter across the front is going to make no difference at all, and bigger stuff works better because there are fewer internal compromises. Big stuff overheats less. It has more features. It’s what you want.

This camera has a much better viewfinder than the small one, and it’s in the center, the correct place. It’s also shaded, unlike the one on the AC7II. You don’t want to fight with the sun when you look through a camera with old creaky eyeballs.

If all I had was a pancake (stubby non-zoom) lens, maybe I could bring myself to care about the difference in camera body size, but with this mechanical whale hanging off the front, the body doesn’t make much difference.

One disappointment: no charger tray. There is a charger, but you can’t attach it to the battery. You have to plug it into the camera itself, so if you have multiple batteries, you can’t charge one while using another. Amazon has a fantastic charger tray for $19. It takes two batteries, and it accepts USB-C and that other connector which is shaped like a “D.” It will charge two batteries at once, and it will give you a use for your old USB cables.

The bag B&H included with the camera at no charge is great. It’s a high-quality bag, just like the Lowepros I’ve had. The free memory card is a $120 Sony. The free second battery is a somewhat questionable brand, but they are all somewhat questionable, and this brand, Watson, is the least questionable. It costs something like $60 by itself, so no complaints here. A new Sony battery runs $80, so if this one is any good at all, I will be very pleased.

Sony sent its own battery empty. Bummer. I stuck the Watson in the camera, and it said it was at 58%. I’m charging it while I type this, and I’ll have to survive the weekend using the camera as a tray. Then the new one will arrive. This camera will supposedly take nearly 600 shots on one Sony-battery charge, so I should be okay. It will do two hours of 4K video, which I never plan to shoot. I’m a 1080p guy until someone changes my mind.

The Sony strap is not great. It’s thin, so it will cut into my neck. I’ll have to find a replacement.

I’m going to take the camera outside and see what I can shoot. I hope it’s less annoying than the 350D. The 350D is a fine camera, but it does some irritating things, like shutting off the internal display right before you take a picture.

I might conceivably read the new camera’s manual, but I doubt it. That would be cheating.

The lens looks perfectly fine to me. I’m not much of a photographer, and I try not to be a cork-sniffer. I know serious pros can criticize any lens. I’m going to shoot some regular shots and some extreme closeups and then render a premature, poorly-informed verdict. My bet is that if this lens has any real issues, it will be at least 6 months before I realize it.

I don’t look forward to lugging this thing around, and I hate looking like a Japanese tourist, but I should be rewarded abundantly for the effort.

I’m really happy about this. I did the right thing. I didn’t worry too much about saving my pennies, the way I did when I got the Canon and the small mirrorless Sony. I got something that will get the job done for a good long while. There will be fewer times when I can’t do something well because the camera won’t let me, and years from now, if the rapture is that far off, my family will have a lot of wonderful imagery to help us relive shared history.

I’ll tell you something weird about doing little bits of nature photography. It relaxes me to look at my own work. I don’t know why. When I take a shot I like, and I put it on the TV and stare at it, my blood pressure plummets. All my worries vanish. It makes me wonder if putting a few framed photos up in the house will improve my health and mental state.

I did not see this coming.

I generally don’t feel this way when I look at other people’s photos.

I supposed it makes sense that looking at God’s work is a little bit like being with God, who radiates peace in all directions.

Guess I should order a strap and then put the camera to the test. It will be a big relief, taking the ISO above 200.

MORE

I fired the new camera up and wandered around looking for things to shoot.

First thing I realized: this is not an ideal macro lens. You can get some good shots with it, but it’s not all that easy, and when you shoot things that are really small, you have to crop a lot.

Here are a couple of things I shot. I don’t think the first shot is great, but it’s acceptable for today’s purpose, which is to get the camera to work. It’s a bunch of leaves on a tree in the side yard.

Here is another weed blossom. The depth of field is too shallow, but I love the dark green background. It’s less grainy at the original resolution. Still too grainy to blow up.

Here’s one more weed blossom, cropped two different ways.

Finally, a shot of the goat shed. Here, I was learning how to avoid lying in the manure by using the flip screen. I extended the screen and looked at it while I lowered the camera.

I am able to take shots that were out of reach for the Canon 350D, and I have a lot more room to crop, so all is well.

California has Great News for Chestfeeders and Menstruating Persons

Thursday, September 14th, 2023

Your Kids Can be Just as Crazy as You

I can’t believe the world I live in.

In California, it is now possible for the state to punish parents who refuse to pay for the castration of their children.

Where did I wake up today? Is this Mars? Am I on life support, receiving a feed of AI-generated fiction while they get ready to pull the plug?

Pull it! Pull it!

The number of the relevant bill is AB-957, and the legislature just passed it. All it lacks is the signature of Gavin Newsom, which it will, of course, get.

Conservatives are oversimplifying the law, making it sound as though parents who refuse to support child mutilation or perversion will automatically lose custody. Leftist nuts are doing a poor job of defending the law, saying it only requires judges hearing custody cases to consider failure to support mutilation or perversion.

No matter how much lipstick you put on it, it allows judges to take custody away from parents who are terrified of seeing their children cut up and sterilized.

So what do you do now, if you’re a California father (it’s always the father), and you are terrified that a savage with a scalpel is going to slice your son’s penis open, scrape out the insides, and turn it inside out? What do you do to prevent your daughter’s breasts from being sliced off and discarded, her arm or leg skinned, and the skin being turned into a grotesque false penis?

This is what “bottom surgery” really means. Go Google pictures.

Talk about feeling powerless. Imagine having to stand in your house, looking out the window, as cops and social workers take your confused son off to have his testicles removed and incinerated.

This is enough. This age has lasted long enough. It’s time for Jesus to put an end to it. That’s my take, anyway. I don’t tell Jesus what to do, and maybe God has reasons for extending this ordeal, but if it were up to me, I’d remove Christians from the world today. I think we’re accomplishing nearly nothing here.

My wife should become a permanent resident in a few weeks. Then we will try to have kids. What planet are we supposed to raise them on? Assume one is born a year from today, which is about the best possible scenario. If things are this insane now, what will they be like when our child turns 18? I can’t even imagine it.

Are we supposed to live in a cave? Will we have to move to Africa and live in a country where sodomy is a crime and Christianity is in the constitution?

Right now, I have a great governor who shelters us, and there is a huge influx of sane, decent people, pumping up the conservative voter base. That won’t last forever. Sooner or later, Florida will go full-throttle pervert.

It’s bad even with DeSantis in charge. I listened to a legal “education” video the other day, and the participants were people who dealt with runaways and so on. These were people who are part of the system. Powerful people in low places. When you have a problem with your kids, you don’t get to deal with Ron DeSantis. You deal with these lunatics.

They insist–INSIST–that lawyers call runaways “absent from care.” The term “runaway” is somehow harmful, though completely accurate. If the cops rescue a child prostitute from captivity, you can’t use the word “rescue,” because–not kidding here–it implies all of the problems are solved. Of course, it implies nothing of the sort, but this is leftist insanity for you.

You can’t use the terms “prostitute” and “prostitution.” You can’t tell older kids who take drugs and turn tricks they are in any way accountable for what they do, even though they are. You have to tell them they’re victims, so they never take accountability and take control of their lives.

The whole thing made me want to puke.

These wackjobs come from the same milieu as the ones who come to take your kids when they think you’re misbehaving. I’m sure they would be forcing parents to support child mutilation if they could.

The Deep State isn’t just a federal thing. Every state has a deep state, and they are overwhelmingly leftist, i.e. psychotic and tyrannical. Government worshipers. People who gave their lives to the Beast without even believing he existed.

If you want to understand the level of religious freedom, and freedom to use common sense, that I now have, ask yourself what would have happened if I had objected to what the people in the video were saying. “I want to practice family law, but I insist on using terms like ‘prostitution’ and ‘runaway.'” Would I be allowed to practice? Would I receive a public reprimand?

Reproduction is important to God. It’s the reason he made the universe. We are supposed to generate his children through our bodies. I used to think I wasn’t obligated, but now I believe I am, so I plan to go through with it. I feel like I’m going to be holding drills on a destroyer while torpedoes close in on it.

There is no natural answer. You can’t fix it by voting. You can’t fix it with resistance or violence. It’s a supernatural thing, and repentance, prayer, and submission are the only way out, but Americans aren’t going to do those things in sufficient numbers to fix this country. We’re too busy thinking about red baseball caps and 3wning the libs on social media.

Man, I can’t wait to get out of this place. I don’t want to spend my few remaining years moving from refuge to refuge, ceding more and more of myself and my family to the deranged mob.

People I think of as Christians will turn. Same thing will happen in your life. Suddenly, they’ll be infected with wonderful rationalizations to justify siding with Satan’s herd, and they will come to your house and shame you for not seeing the truth. They’ll say, “If we don’t go along, what are we supposed to do?”, like it’s your responsibility to take God’s role and make things easy for them. I’ve seen this a zillion times. “If I do wrong, and you don’t give me another option, I’m innocent, and you’re guilty.”

The remnant of people who haven’t been corrupted will get smaller and smaller, like Gideon’s army. You’ll have to watch while people fall away and destroy themselves.

My children will want explanations. You know how kids are. If they’re not caught up in the derangement, they’ll want to know what I was thinking when I decided to bring them into this world. The answer is obvious: it was God’s will, so I had to do it. But I won’t be able to tell them things will get anything but worse, or that they have any hope of living in a decent world.

If there was a rocket to heaven standing in my yard right now, I would walk out and get in. Well…I’d do it if my wife had a rocket, too. I couldn’t abandon her here.

In brighter news, I ordered a camera. I was going to get a compact full-frame mirrorless camera, but I decided it would be better to deal with the added bulk and weight and get a real camera. Compact cameras have weird viewfinders and fewer features.

I ordered a lens somewhat like the one I use now. I ordered a Sigma 24-70mm zoom lens. It’s better than the equivalent Sony, and the better Sony that replaced the Sony costs over twice as much. I would have felt bad buying it, given my unending beginner status.

The 24-70mm will be great for almost all my shots, but I think I should still get a prime lens for things like street scenes and shooting in small spaces with dubious lighting. My plan is to use the 24-70mm until I have a clue and then pick out a prime.

A lot of people like the Sony 28mm f/2.8 lens. Seems like the zoom will duplicate its function, though. My understanding is that the zoom’s clarity and sharpness are not as good. Maybe I should go for a shorter lens. I should know in a few days.

I used B&H Photo. Amazon offers my camera at the same price, but you don’t get anything with it. B&H gives you a $100+ memory card, an expensive bag, and an extra battery. You can’t get the camera itself at a lower price by giving up the extras.

I think I know how this works. Sony tells B&H, “We’ll cut you off if you discount our cameras,” but it doesn’t tell them they can’t give things away with them, so B&H undercuts Amazon by giving you a lot of stuff.

I wanted the card and the battery. The bag is just a bonus. I’m sure I’ll find it useful, though.

So why buy a camera to preserve memories for the future, when I think there is no future? That’s a great question. I think the rapture is coming very soon, but God hasn’t sent out a printed bulletin with a date. What if it’s 20 years off? Besides, even if we only get a year of enjoying videos and photos, it will be worth it. I enjoy them now.

What do I do with my old Canon 350D? It’s not worth selling. It would bring about $20. I might be able to get a couple of hundred dollars for my lenses. I would rather just keep everything. A spare camera never hurt anyone. Maybe my wife could learn a few things with it. I would like her to develop basic competence with a camera. We may be in Rome this year.

I went pretty crazy ordering the camera body. I got a Sony A7IV. This is a very good camera when viewed in juxtaposition with my status as a total photo hack. It’s not a pro camera, but pros use it. It will do video and stills very well. It should have a useful life as a primary camera for a decade. It’s not as small or light as some models. I’ll just have to deal with it.

I didn’t choose Canon even though I’ve had two. This business with refusing to license their lens mount is not acceptable. It makes them sound like Apple. There are a zillion lenses for the Sony, and I mean lenses that are made for the Sony mount. No clumsy adaptors.

I should be up and shooting tomorrow. I will try the camera in places where the light was too low for my 350D. I hope it will get me shots I could not get before.

Guess I Won’t Need Those NASCAR Posters and Beer Mirrors

Tuesday, September 12th, 2023

PIX

I’m starting to think I may have enough ability to take decent photos.

Today I was collecting all my Singapore and Hong Kong photos and videos, and I came across this picture of the Jewel building at Singapore’s Changi Airport.

This was just a phone snapshot, and I did not expect a lot from it, but it grabbed my eye. It looks considerably better when not shrunken down to blog size, but even here, you can see that there is a surprising amount of drama going on. If I had paid more attention and also made sure I took it at exactly the right time, it would be a very good picture.

There is implied motion, even though nothing except the water and the people is moving. On the upper right, the glass seems to be flinging itself up and to the right, like a pitcher’s arm, and the wall of plants seems to be swinging up to meet it. On the left, the little wall and the pavement seem to be shooting off down and left. The people look like they’re in a hurry, going somewhere important, even though they’re not. I think that’s because the image is slightly blurred.

There are little stories in the picture. Look at the lady staring at her cell phone. What’s going on with her? And whose kid is that way off in front of her, all by itself?

Never let a woman touch your phone. They put grease on their hands, and after they handle your phone, all the pictures will be blurry.

I also got this picture of a snake out on the patio. This thing was swimming all over the pool trying to get out, and it was going to drown. I saved it with a red plastic dustpan, and it was so wiped out, it just sat on it.

The curves of the snake and the texture of the skin are beautiful. There is something dramatic about the way the rear of the dustpan shoots off to the upper right while the handle breaks off to the lower corner.

The colors are vivid. The water drops add texture and context. It looks like I saved the snake in the rain.

I didn’t put a lot of effort into these pictures, but I did think before I pushed the buttons. They didn’t just happen. I thought about what I was seeing. I didn’t just think, “Now I have a picture of this snake, so I’m done.” That’s the attitude we have about photos before we learn anything. “I proved me and Sue were at Six Flags!” “Everybody stand in a row and smile!”

I have been looking at photography forums and photographers’ sites and videos, and I have noticed that most of the photos don’t look good to me. Guys with $10,000 cameras, who make a living with them, are putting up stuff I would delete right away.

On a forum, I asked what made this picture grab the eye, and some guy gave me a terse answer even I knew was wrong. He was a little rude. He said it was all down to a wide angle lens and doing something called “PC” with software. I don’t know what that is, but since this photo hasn’t been altered, I know he’s wrong. His analysis is shallow and unhelpful.

I asked my question in a beginner’s forum, so what’s with the attitude? A beginner’s forum is for stupid question, and mine wasn’t even stupid.

I decided to look up his photos, and they’re really amateurish. One level above high school yearbook shots. I take better photos right now. I can’t tell him his work is bad. The other forum members would be all over me.

Now whenever I ask anything on this forum, this guy is going to be my self-appointed Yoda, giving me bad advice and getting in the way.

A photograph is not just a visual record of a set of objects. It’s a painting with limited options. You start with whatever it is you’re photographing, and it is what it is, but once you accept it, you can do whatever you want with it within that constraint. Different lenses and lighting. Color and black and white. Software adjustments. Ansel Adams didn’t just shoot pictures and print them. He processed the daylights out of them. He never saw Half Dome the way it looked in his work.

Photography is really impressionism. You don’t just present what’s in front of you. You make it better. Van Gogh painted very ordinary things, but he changed them so much, they became completely new. He exaggerated colors and perspectives. He put in stuff that wasn’t there but should have been.

I think this is going to be easier than I expected. I may never be an expert at every camera feature or photo effect, and I may never be able to teach a class on lenses, but I am sure I can take photos that are worth displaying.

Worse Than the Matrix

Monday, September 11th, 2023

You are a Termite

I am still trying to get a grip on photography and equipment choices.

So I did a macro photo of a tiny weed blossom, and it was so beautiful, I wanted to blow it up, print it, and put it on the wall. I went to the true photography experts: Walgreen’s.

Okay, Ansel Adams wouldn’t have used them, but there is a Walgreen’s near me, and I can submit photos online for printing. And their candy aisle is outstanding.

I uploaded the photo, and the website told me it was too grainy to be printed at 16″x 20″. The photo is nearly square, but I figured I would print it in a rectangular size, cut off the blank parts, and put it in a frame made to hold it.

Now I have to decide whether to put up with the graininess or print a smaller photo. Sad, because every photo is unique. I can’t go out and redo it.

This problem showed me a couple of things.

First, I really do need a better camera. My camera has an 8-megapixel sensor, so you don’t get a lot of pixels. It’s fine if you’re not doing too much cropping, and you’re not printing big pictures, but otherwise, it’s a huge problem. Until yesterday, I was going along with the people who told me it’s the photographer, not the equipment, that matters. Turns out they’re totally wrong. You can take great pictures with a bad camera, but you can’t take EVERY great picture. A camera’s limitations can limit what you can do, very dramatically.

Second, when taking macro shots, you need to get as close as you can and fill up the viewfinder. That way, you get as many pixels as possible, and when you crop later, you get the best resolution possible.

A few days ago, I was wondering if I should blow $400 on a cheap DSLR body that would make better use of my old lenses. Now I’m thinking I should spend a few thousand dollars and get it over with. I have a wife. I may have a child sometime next year. I can’t keep letting bad equipment cost me opportunities to do good photography.

I also have to get out and shoot several times a week, because lack of skill and lack of familiarity with the equipment also ruin opportunities. I don’t want to be the old guy who finds himself cursing at his camera and millennials and electric vehicles and soy while his son takes his first steps.

I don’t know too much, but it’s starting to look like I need to put at least two grand into a camera, along with a big sum for a very good zoom. The zoom I have is 17-70mm, and it starts out at f2.8, so it’s unusual to have to take it off the camera for anything. I have a prime lens I never use.

I don’t want to find myself on a trip with two annoying cameras, plus lenses, to lug around, so whatever I get has to be very good for both video and stills. That means I need a flip screen so I can see myself and/or others when I’m in the picture. There are still a lot of cameras without flip screens, and they’re not going to work for me.

I don’t want a DSLR because they’re extinct already, and they are completely inferior to mirrorless cameras with far better electronics. They miss shots. They focus on the wrong things.

It sort of looks like the camera I want isn’t available yet. I looked at a bunch of products, and it seems like the Sony A7CII is the answer, given what I am willing to spend. It does great stills. It’s pretty good for video. It’s water-resistant, unlike most cameras under two grand. It has a flip screen. It’s intended to be a smaller version of an existing Sony people like, so it saves weight and space. It won’t be available until later this month.

Sony mirrorless cameras supposedly take an extremely vast array of lenses, unlike Canons, which are limited by a greedy refusal to license. What if I want to do telephoto stuff a year from now? Do I want to be confined to a few overpriced lenses that may or may not be what I want?

It turns out cameras are like rifles. I can buy a phenomenal rifle for under a grand, but glass to make it work right will likely cost more than the gun.

Today I’m doing continuing legal “education” again. Right now, I’m playing a video about attorneys who use artificial intelligence. It’s really depressing.

Most people are not overly bright or perceptive, so most of us don’t really understand what AI is going to do to us. We have ideas about computers creating big machines that go around exterminating us, and surely that could happen after enough technological progress, but the real threat, which would come to pass much sooner, is that we will become startlingly stupid people who do almost nothing except serve as receptionists and mechanics for computers who do our actual work.

Apparently, a huge number of people are using AI to do things they should do for themselves. Kids make it do their homework. Students have found ways to make it take exams for them. Lawyers are making it do research and writing.

The speaker in the video talked about using AI for things like doing writing tasks lawyers don’t feel like doing or are, frankly, too dumb to do. She talked about using AI to beat writer’s block.

I don’t get writer’s block. If you tell me you need me to write 500 words, I can sit down in front of you and get it done in 15 minutes. I once wrote a very good legal brief, 48 pages long, in a day. It’s not a problem for me. Some people can dunk a basketball. Some people can write symphonies at the age of 7. I can write legal documents quickly, well, and without help.

So now people like me are going to compete with numbskulls who struggled to get through law school, who pick up their phones, log into AI sites, and tell them to do what I do. When the product spews out a few seconds later, their only job will be to review it and correct it, and if what I’m hearing is true, a lot of the numbskulls aren’t even doing these things. They are getting caught submitting things AI messed up.

If I practice law again, I may spend 20 hours putting a brief together for you, but opposing counsel, with an IQ of 95, may bark some commands into his phone in a strip club toilet instead. Then I’ll bill you $10,000, and he’ll bill his client $10,000, but I’ll be doing about 20 times the work he does.

If this is how it works, aren’t we going to end up with generations of utter morons who are not able to practice law when they aren’t plugged in? Even many of the smart ones will stop learning the second they pass their bar exams.

Also, what will happen to fees? How long will $500 per hour seem reasonable when machines that cost little to use are puking the work out almost instantly?

It will only be a few years before reviewing AI work will not be necessary, because AI will be much better at the work than we are. The tables will turn, and if we actually write anything, AI will review it for US.

Remember I, Robot? Will Smith had a self-driving car. He got in it with Bridget Moynahan. She started shrieking about how unsafe it was to drive a car for yourself.

Won’t there come a time when doing your own legal work will be considered negligent? Computers will be so much better at it, it will be foolhardy to let humans do it. What happens to lawyers then?

It will happen, and it’s going to happen very soon. Within 5 years, probably.

Judges, quite frankly, are already stupid, without the help of AI, and they are also biased and dishonest. Not all of them have these faults to problematic degrees, but many, many do. Should we have AI judges? Maybe they’ll miss some things human judges would catch. At first. But what if the down side is grossly outweighed by the up side?

When I practiced patent law, the country’s only appellate patent court was reversing 54% of the cases it heard. Federal district judges were just too stupid to do the job. There are other areas of law that are also too hard for many federal judges, who tend to be stooges with political appointments. Should we continue letting these people ruin lives and mishandle cases when we have computers that will do a better job?

What if the reversal rate for human judges is 54%, and the reversal rate for AI judges is 35%? Could we ignore this?

Is there a way to team humans up with AI judges to balance the disadvantages out? I doubt it would work well. Human judges have a limitless capacity to screw things up.

What about medicine? Let’s be honest. There is no way a human being can consistently diagnose physical problems, or prescribe treatment, as well as a really good machine. A machine will know the symptoms of every problem known to medical science, no matter how obscure. It will know every cause. Every treatment. What the outcomes are. Most medicine boils down to following flow charts. Human beings can’t do that as well as machines. In the future, doctors will probably be limited to examination and data entry.

For a long time, we’ve had robots helping doctors rip out prostate glands. How long will it be before machines do many procedures from beginning to end, with doctors standing by mainly to collect fees?

I would rather have a machine than a doctor most of the time. Doctors have misdiagnosed me and given me the wrong treatments many times. I have stumped them many times, which should not happen. They have tried to con me into undertaking unnecessary courses of supervised treatment, so they could make more money. Give me a machine any day.

What about an AI president? Sometimes I wonder if the Antichrist will be a machine or a huge leftist mob wired together with a central machine.

The millennials who teach CLE courses think AI is wonderful. They can’t wait to see it do more. They may feel different when they’re collecting aluminum cans for a living.

Another disturbing CLE taught about social media and the law. Boy, are you in for a surprise if you’re a social media addict and you find yourself in court. They will go after your entire history. Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook…even Myspace. You name it.

You should probably delete every account once a year. If you really have to, you can start new ones with less dangerous data stored in them.

They’ll also go after every email address you have. Probably every forum you’ve ever joined. I have no idea how many I’ve joined. I’ve been on the web since about 1992.

If you lie about your whereabouts, or you just make a mistake, they’ll dig up things you’ve put up on the web, along with times and locations, to prove you’re wrong. Can you imagine anything more invasive?

On top of that, there will be forgeries, and lawyers will have to hire expensive experts to validate or invalidate things attorneys want to introduce into evidence. This is how it works right now, so expect it if you get dragged into court.

What a nightmare. You’ll be sitting in court looking at subpoenaed copies of your neighbors’ Ring videos.

I don’t want to live in the world that’s coming. Take me now. The Borg is real. It’s already here. Our lives are suddenly losing all purpose. We are losing our value as individuals. We are like ants in a farm. Bees in a hive. Gather the nectar, make the honey, and then die.

Oh, well. Back to CLE. When Jesus comes, I’ll be able to say I finished this cycle.

Weed Addict

Sunday, September 10th, 2023

“If you Truly Love Nature, you Will find Beauty Everywhere.”

My subtitle is supposedly something Van Gogh put in a letter to his brother Theo, and the web says it appears on page 88 of National Geographic’s Sublime Nature: Photographs That Awe and Inspire.

I decided to wander around today and try to get used to using my camera in manual mode. It’s very easy. I used to complain about it, but I was just lazy. Too bad.

I took maybe 25 shots, and I only came up with two that I thought were good enough to spend time editing. Here they are.

The first one is another weed blossom. I posted a weed blossom picture a couple of days back. It’s surprising how beautiful flowers on weeds can be, if you just zoom in and get the weeds out of the pictures.

The flower is no more than 1/2″ wide.

I was telling the wife I would like to blow a few of these up and put them on our walls. She thought it was a great idea.

I was thinking yesterday that if I keep shooting weed blossoms, I’ll turn into a low-budget Georgia O’Keeffe. That would be sad. That lady had no talent. I don’t care what anyone says. Her paintings were clumsy, ugly, and creepy. I have read that she painted flowers to look like women’s genitalia. Maybe women who needed surgery. Not normal women. And what kind of nasty old pervert would do that anyway?

Cracked Magazine says she denied the accusations, so maybe she was slandered.

Do modern artists absolutely have to be degenerates to get attention? I guess they do.

The second picture obviously a bull. This guy is very friendly, which is not normal as far as I know. I took several shots of him, and this one was the best. Not Pulitzer material, but I felt like it was acceptable for my purposes. The second-best of a bad lot, but too good to delete.

This camera is fine for macro shots, and I once took a pretty good photo of a friend from a couple of feet away. I don’t know if it will ever be good for shots taken at longer distances. The subjects would have to be pretty compelling to overcome the dubious resolution, I think. I don’t think every shot should be razor-sharp, and the history of photography is full of astounding pictures that were not clear by today’s standards, but it’s a shame to be unable to get good detail in today’s world, where cameras are so capable.

The camera also provides somewhat bland colors in JPG mode. That can be fixed with software, but it would be pleasant to have striking photos right out of the card. I wonder if the camera has an adjustment!

I shot in very bright sunlight. Looks like that’s a mistake for most shots. The grass in the photos looks extremely washed out.

I want to get decent editing software. I use a free website called Befunky for blogging, because my needs have been simple up to this point. I would like to have something like my old Photoshop Elements program. I downloaded Photoshop Express from the Microsoft store, and it’s awful. I looked up the new Photoshop Elements, and people say it’s terrible. I think Adobe made it that way so people would upgrade and subscribe to their annoying cloud program. I don’t want that. After 4 years, I’d be into it for around $500. I am not completely stupid. I can do multiplication.

I tried GIMP, and it’s atrocious. The interface is for the kind of geeks who run around insisting Linux is for everyone.

It’s not. And GIMP is no fun.

I will keep at this for a while. It shouldn’t take long at all to figure out which camera and/or lens I need to replace the creaky 350D and Sigma zoom.

Tiny Little Dollars

Friday, September 8th, 2023

Biden and his Weimar Scrip

What is happening to the dollar? Is there some explanation I don’t know of, or are we just reaping the harvest Bush and Obama sowed when they started pumping currency out of the Federal Reserve like it was Monopoly money? Sooner or later, something had to happen.

I have a warehouse. If memory serves, in 2017, it rented for about $1770 per month, tax included. Florida collects sales tax on commercial rentals, which is probably one reason there is no income tax.

The warehouse needs a new tenant. The lady who helps me with tenants just sent me comparable rentals. They average out to about $3888/month. I don’t know whether that includes tax yet. She is getting back to me.

Assuming tax is included, the increase is about 120%, over 6 years. The INCREASE, not the total. I’m going to charge more than twice what I did 6 years ago.

Where is the money supposed to come from? I know I’ll get it, because people have no choice, but where are tenants finding money to pay their rent now? Is their income 220% of what it was in 2017? I’m pretty sure only burger-flippers are doing that well. They can write their own ticket in Biden’s America, although they are rapidly being replaced by apps and electronic kiosks. I’ve probably been to McDonald’s 15 times in the last year, and I only ordered from a human being once, to add something I forgot to tell the app about.

Last year, a tenant called me about a rent increase. He was almost in years. He literally begged me to help him out. He’s a great tenant. Never a hint of trouble. Pays his rent. I didn’t want to raise his rent at all. But I’m not running a charity. I pay taxes, which go up. I support myself and my wife using tiny, shrinking Biden dollars.

What am I supposed to tell him at the end of his current lease? I’ll probably have to tack over a thousand dollars onto his monthly rent.

I have to do it. I assume he’ll leave. I have no reason to think his business will generate an additional $12000 next year. Who will replace him? I know someone will, but where are these willing tenants coming from? Dubai? Palm Beach? Beverly Hills?

I’ve had people try to sell me on long-term leases. “I’ll pay what you ask, but you have to let me stay x years.” I never go for it. Why would I? I have zero incentive. If you don’t accept my terms, someone else will jump in later the same week, and I won’t have to worry about being underpaid after a year or two of inflation.

No one has ever refused to rent from me because I wouldn’t accept a long-term lease. Not once.

They tell us inflation is at something like 8%. How can that be true when so many things have doubled in price? Are they cooking the numbers or what?

I watch a Youtuber named Louis Rossmann. He’s a New Yorker. Well…he USED to be. Not long ago, he took off from Manhattan and put his computer repair shop in San Antonio. He’s a big right-to-repair activist. He also criticizes the government, which is an easy thing to do in a giant pile of reeking excrement like New York City.

He criticizes landlords, too. He goes around filming vacant businesses in Manhattan. They’re everywhere. When coronavirus hit, a lot of people just went home, and instead of helping them, the government made things worse. They’re not going to return, but somehow, landlords are charging more than ever. He showed tiny spaces smaller than a Miami warehouse, going for numbers like $75000 per month. Per MONTH. Not for jewelry stores or Apple shops. For ordinary businesses.

Granted, some of the increases are necessary because of inflation, but in view of the fact that the vacancy rate is huge, one would expect things to balance out at a lower average price per square foot.

By the way, he mentioned something interesting. He said people who lease real estate in New York are allowed to lie about the square footage. Say you have a unit with about 1500 square feet of space. You can tell renters it’s 2500, and you can’t be sued. You can say you adjusted it to include the benefit of common spaces like the lobby or whatever. They call the additional pretend square footage “loss factor,” so they have an established, accepted term for lying to people. If you tried that in Florida, I think they would put you in prison.

If people don’t want to rent, how can landlords charge so much? Aren’t they destroying their own businesses? I could ask for a million dollars per month, but no one would bite, and if other people around me asked too much, eventually, the whole area would decline and turn into a slum. It could end up like Detroit, where you can buy a two-story house for a thousand dollars. Aren’t New York landlords concerned about this?

In a pre-move video, Rossmann said he was trying to think of things to tell his employees in order to get them to move to Texas. He said they would earn the same pay and spend way less for everything. He said he might help them move. Why wouldn’t they? I know there are psychotics out there who think Manhattan is paradise, and they wouldn’t move if the alternative was death, but why would any reasonable person choose Manhattan and living in a shoebox over San Antonio and having a house?

I still don’t understand how Americans are surviving. I’ve wondered about it for a couple of years. Where are they getting the money to pay their bills, with so many closed businesses? I know Trump and Biden gave us a few bucks off our income taxes, but it wasn’t much. I know we spent a few trillion on relief. Was it so much it kept America going? I don’t know. I’m not familiar with the figures.

Doesn’t the house of cards have to fall sooner or later? Have the basic laws of economics suddenly changed for no reason?

I bought big cans of pizza sauce a year or two back. About $7 per can, which was a big increase over $4 per can, which I had paid a couple of years earlier. This week, they cost $9.70 per can. This isn’t frou-frou stuff at Whole Foods. It’s grocery supply food, for business that think about profit and loss. The vendors can’t just mark it up because it’s chic. They have to try to keep prices down. What happened?

We all saw what happened to cereal boxes. General Mills and Kellogg’s made the boxes really thin while keeping the height and width the same. The boxes are so thin, they look like plaques.

It’s hard to pour cereal now because the boxes are so thin, the cereal can’t get out. You get a couple of bowls from a box, and you’re done. I’ve seen cereal for over $7 per box. This is sugary, low-production-cost garbage food people used to buy for $2.50. It’s not luxury food. It’s like Twinkies.

When things don’t make sense, there is a supernatural reason. That’s how the universe works. Economics no longer make sense because the apocalypse is here, and we are playing by the apocalypse’s rules. Prices go up and down. Shortages begin and end. None of it can be predicted, because spirits are pulling the strings.

I think we may see deflation soon. I know that sounds insane. It happens, though. It happened in 2007. I remember buying prime beef for $7.00 per pound. It seems to happen when reality sets in and people realize they can’t buy anything. Stuff sits on shelves, and prices drop. Maybe that will happen soon. People have loaded their credit cards to the breaking point because Americans have no common sense. Sooner or later, surely, they will have to stop.

Or will they? Maybe Biden will open the currency tap up like a fire hydrant in August, the value of money will go to nothing, and we’ll all be paper billionaires. It’s back door socialism. I save my money and pay my bills, and you sit around sucking up welfare and playing Grand Theft Auto. The government prints money and gives it to you so you will vote for candidates who give things away. My money is now worth less, the value went to you, and the government didn’t have to confiscate or tax anything.

I don’t know what to think. I am going to maintain my prayer life and not worry about myself or my wife. Other people, however, are a concern. What percentage of the world’s population is close enough to God to be safe? Perhaps one percent?

I keep asking God to end the world NOW. Just remove us. I don’t want to see any more fat, ugly old men dancing in thong panties for children. I don’t want to be here when President Harris giggles her way through the oath of office. I don’t want to see the next pandemic, which is 100% certain to come. We’ll get things that make coronavirus look like chickenpox.

I can understand why God is going to be so brutal during the tribulation. The truth is that there are a lot of people who really need to be killed. They are beyond redemption because of pride. They would stand in front of Jesus himself, with the gates of hell open behind them, and spit in his face instead of admitting fault and receiving his love. As Jesus said about Jews who rejected him, if people won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t listen to one who has returned from the dead. The Old Testament is all about Jesus, often very clearly.

Jesus isn’t the only person who has returned from the dead. It has happened to many people, and most people who hear their stories sneer and wave them off. What Jesus said is proven true every day.

I don’t want any part of the punishment of the proud. I want to be gone, along with everyone I love.

In other news, while I wait for the bus to heaven, I have been fiddling with cameras.

Years ago, in maybe 2006, I decided I wanted to learn to take better pictures, so I got me a Canon Rebel XT 350D and a couple of Sigma lenses. I took photos for a year or two and then tapered off. I don’t remember exactly what happened. Eventually, smartphones got to the point where I could take relatively nice photos, and when I used mine, I tried to do a good job.

Since I found my wife, I’ve had to think more about photography. On our first four trips, we got by with phones and cheesy action cameras, but we had some problems, and before our latest trip, I got a Sony mirrorless vlogging camera. This thing will shoot still photos or video, and it has a built-in zoom lens. It has some shortcomings, but it was worth the money because I got some priceless footage.

Right before the trip, I dug out the Rebel to see if I should take it with us. I thought it might be better for still shots than phones or the Sony. I didn’t have much time to make a decision, so I left the Rebel behind. Today I shot some photos with both cameras, and it seems pretty obvious that a dedicated still camera with lenses I can change is a worthwhile investment.

The Sony is nearly useless for really close up shots, and it’s very easy to make mistakes with it because it’s tiny, with tiny, complex controls. And I’m stuck with one lens which is intended for people who are very concerned with convenience and less concerned with image quality.

Why not use the Rebel? It still works. I certainly can. It produces beautiful pictures. The colors are not as nice as the ones that come out of the Sony, but that can be adjusted quickly with Photoshop Express.

Newer models, however, are better. More resolution for cropping, for example. Lighter. Better integration with new tech. And a new camera would shoot video, which the Rebel will not do.

I’m wondering whether I should get a newer Rebel body. I can keep my lenses.

If we start lugging a big DSLR around on our trips, we will pretty much have to start dividing the cargo business. As it is, I generally carry a backpack, and Rhodah flits around unburdened. This is one reason I lose weight on trips while she…doesn’t exactly do that. Creme brulee is another reason.

I talked to her about it today, and she thinks carrying a backpack would be a good move for her.

I didn’t make a strong effort to take good pictures today, since the purpose of my experiment was to test camera capabilities. Nonetheless, I took a couple of shots I really, really like. I edited them to make them more striking. You can see them below, 700 pixels wide. They look somewhat better with more pixels.

The second one is a lot better than the first, but it’s pretty good for something I shot in a few seconds to test a camera.

These are just quick photos I took in the yard, so I should be able to do very nice things with more effort, or with family photos.

That second flower is a terrible weed. The Spanish needle. Guess what its Linnaean classification is. “Bidens alba.” Funny. It products sharp, hard, needle-like sees that stick to your clothes like parasites. Interesting parallel.

It’s weird how a camera can make ugly things beautiful. I would not be ashamed to blow that second picture up and put it on the wall.

I may go for it. Life is short, and pictures are important. There are probably fewer than 25 pictures of me from my childhood, and there is zero video. My dad bought a Brownie movie camera and shot some film, but he didn’t take care of any of it, and it vanished. Can you believe that? Could we be any more dysfunctional? I don’t want my wife and kids to end up in the same situation. Actually, she already has. She was kind of a Cinderella as a child, so not many pictures.

Thinking it over. I may order a new body. In the meantime, I think I’ll take some more shots around the farm. Maybe I can eventually do some wildlife and non-wildlife (cow) photos.

East to Eden

Friday, July 28th, 2023

No Riots, no Burning Buildings, no Pink Hair, no Problem

Rhodah and I are still waiting for our embassy interview so she can be brought to the US. We made the mistake of obeying the law instead of shoving her in amongst a group of military-age Somali males crashing the border in Texas, so we are still not finished.

Looks like we’re going to Hong Kong and Singapore so we can be together. I just bought a new camera so we can finally have a trip where we come back with decent video. It hasn’t arrived yet.

I don’t understand my feelings about Singapore at all. It’s a big city. Not a lot of green space. People generally live in apartments instead of houses. Hot weather all year. Lots of things I would ordinarily hate. Nonetheless, I really like Singapore, and so does my wife. I feel at home there. I wouldn’t mind living in Singapore if I had to.

Things to like about Singapore: minimal sexual perversion and coercion, extremely low crime, high standard of living, all types of goods in great abundance, stability, good food, and nice people. While the weather is hot, it’s not as unpleasant as Florida or Georgia. Mass transit is cheap and safe, and unlike New York’s trains and stations, Singapore’s don’t reek of urine.

There are nearly no bums in Singapore. We saw one lady begging, but she was an outlier.

What can you get in the US that you can’t get in Singapore? Guns are a lot easier to get here, assuming you live in a free state, and you can own them for self-defense and even carry them. In Singapore, you can get a license to keep a gun in your home, but they are rarely granted. Sounds bad, but on the other hand, you’re safer in Singapore without a gun than I am here with one.

Singapore is often called repressive, but whether a repressive government significantly impacts your enjoyment of life kind of depends on what it represses. If government restrictions don’t affect the kinds of activities in which you participate, you’re not likely to be bothered by them.

I think most people who call Singapore repressive are sexual perverts and perversion promoters. If you go online and look up Singapore repression, you’ll see that perversion is the main topic. Singapore only decriminalized sodomy last year. They shouldn’t have done that, and they’ll regret it, but it shows why perverts find Singapore unappealing.

We found the cost of living in Singapore to be reasonable. We stayed in a nice hotel for something like $230 per day. It was somewhat nicer than Hyatts and Sheratons here. We were able to get a lot of great food for between $5 and $10 per meal, and that’s Singapore dollars, which are somewhat smaller than ours. The trains were cheap. Not much to complain about.

Singapore is like a little bomb shelter for conservatives, if you want the truth. It’s not too close to China or Russia. It’s too far away for American perverts and socialists to invade profitably after they take over the US and our military. It’s too far away for social invaders from Central and South America to barge into. It’s not filling up with Islamists. It doesn’t need aid, so it won’t end up like Christian Africa, where we twist arms by connecting charity to filthy sexual aberrations God hates.

Is conservativism really about liberty? I wonder. Maybe it has more to do with safety and wealth. Do I really want a bunch of guns if crime is extremely low and the government stays off my back? I like shooting as a hobby, but I could give it up if the return were worth it.

In America, I have some guns for fun, but I keep others in order to defend myself, my wife, guests, and my property. My government is increasingly hostile to affluent Caucasians who mind their own business, and so are leftists, especially minorities. We also have a problem with crime that is not politically or racially motivated. In other countries, my situation would be different, and so would my attitude toward arming myself.

Here in the USA, we have a big population of blacks and Hispanics, and they commit a gigantic amount of violent crime and property crime. Most crimes of both types are committed by these groups. They have backward cultures that glorify the abuse of innocent people. This is reality, not the woke explanation. Statistics compiled by nonpartisan entities prove these things. White people do bad things, too, but at a much, much lower rate.

Other countries are different. Singapore is around 75% Chinese (non-red), and the rest of the people are mostly Indians, Malays, and Indonesians. Singaporeans like to work and make money. It’s a hard place to start a street gang or do a drive-by. It’s a hard place to riot and destroy homes and businesses. It’s not likely one or two ethnic groups will team up against another, as American blacks and Hispanics have teamed up on whites, and try to take what they have and turn them into milk cows.

We also have a sick government which is becoming more dangerous every month. Professional victims are taking it over. They’re getting rid of cash bail and decriminalizing theft. They are trying to destroy rural areas and suburbs, pushing people into cities where they are easier to control and prey on. It’s not merely likely that sane, decent Americans will eventually have to fight the government. It’s certain. We will see secession and/or guerrilla warfare when things get too hot, and unarmed “haves” will be slaughtered publicly, with their executions posted on social media. We’ve seen the same basic thing in revolutionary France, Cambodia, China, Russia, Cuba, and other places where smelly, ignorant, hateful mobs took over.

In the USA, unless you are willing to trust God and accept martyrdom, it makes no sense to be unarmed, but there are places where arms are a much lower priority.

If you have retirement money, life in Singapore is easy. You just live. You don’t have to endure endless daily bombardments with terrifying news about your once-great nation. “Will the Democrats force my county to put housing projects on formerly-private estates?” “Will the Democrats impose wealth taxes and impoverish me in my old age?” “Will my children be unemployable because they refuse to call male perverts women?” “Will my daughter have to be naked in front of males every day at school?” “Will Antifa/BLM nuts climb my fence and kill and rape my family?” These are things people in Singapore don’t worry about, but they are very real possibilities in the US.

As I’ve gotten older and learned more from God, I’ve become less impressed with the US and democracy. This is not the best country to live in. Not any more. And democracy is overrated. A good king, or “dictator,” as kings are called now, is better than democracy, any day. I’d rather have Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis as a king with a lifetime term than the situation we have now. I’d even take Rand Paul or Ted Cruz.

Democracy is a degenerate system of government, one step above rioting. It puts power in the hands of ignorant, malicious, bigoted imbeciles who have tremendous incentive to loot. Looters have more power than builders, because everyone gets one vote, and looters are more numerous. It also gives too much power to women, who, as a group, invariably vote stupidly.

In the US, we have the idea that it’s sort of illegal or shameful to contemn representative democracy. It’s neither. It’s perfectly acceptable to push for a monarchy or theocracy if you like. You just have to do it without committing offenses like treason and sedition.

I can say these things because I’m not a politician or any other type of person who depends on the love of the mob.

Anyway, America-worship is based in delusion. America is still very high up on the list of desirable places to live, but it’s not the best, and it will eventually become intolerable. Probably before Singapore and even places like Kenya and Uganda.

We are told to be grateful to America for what it has done for us, as though it were person with feelings; a rich mommy that sent us big checks every month. In reality, America never did anything for me. God did. He can bless me anywhere. Look how well Joseph, Esther, and Daniel did under tyrants. Look what he did to Laban because of Jacob. America is just an instrument God used to bless me.

America doesn’t actually care about me. If I died right now, no flags would be lowered. God and certain people care about me.

I’ve done a lot for America. I paid taxes and stayed out of trouble. I submitted to institutionalized racism in the form of affirmative action. I contributed to charities. I registered for the draft, which is a very big deal, at least if you intend to back up your word when called. No entity but America ever asked me to offer it my life and risk being maimed and forgotten.

If I should be grateful to anyone here, it should be the servicemen who fought so I didn’t have to.

I’m extremely grateful for every good thing I have, including the diminished rights I still possess, but I’m grateful to God, not nations. I want to continue to be an asset to America, but if I move to another country, I’ll try to be an asset there, and that country will have whatever loyalty I’m required to extend. I wouldn’t want to be like the disgraceful, parasitic people who become US citizens and then fly flags from their old countries. Dance with the one that brought you, right?

I am censored, libeled, and ostracized from the marketplace every single day, and America’s government–my country’s government–is behind it. That’s really something. I never had these problems during the last century, apart from the time I got desperate and applied for a government job. White people were not the target hiring pool. Other than that, I was nearly a full US citizen.

How grateful should I be for the good things when I’m already fairly well down the Nuremberg rabbit hole, with increased persecution soon to come? Should Jews who were once treated well in Germany have been grateful to their government in 1930? Am I wrong for weighing the very bad along with the good?

These things matter. Losing free speech is not a small thing. Being excluded from economic participation is not trivial.

To get back to travel, we’re only looking at Hong Kong because Rhodah wants to see it. If it were up to me, I would skip it.

I haven’t been to Hong Kong, but I’ve been researching. I’ve been told the people are rude, largely because so many have moved there from the workers’ paradise on the mainland. Funny thing about workers’ paradises; everyone in them always wants to move back to capitalist oppression.

Communism has made or kept the mainland Chinese coarse and selfish, and tourists in Hong Kong have to deal with them because they wait tables and drive cabs. Also, it looks like hotels and other facilities are more run-down in Hong Kong. People are less likely to speak English, even though it’s an official language. Everyone in Singapore speaks English, and they place a high priority on education. They’re not coarse, either. We didn’t see people spitting or littering. Everyone was courteous.

Look, Singapore is better than American cities. Better, not different. Let’s just say it. On average, American city dwellers are inferior to Singaporeans. Inferior. That is the right word. Some people are better than others.

Regarding Hong Kong, I have to say that the food looks very good.

Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Hong Kong Chinese are supposedly more cultured than mainlanders, which is not a high bar to clear. On the mainland, people urinate on the streets and let their kids poop there. Sometimes they pull these stunts in Hong Kong, and it doesn’t fly. Mainland Chinese tourists have terrible reputations in every single country they visit, as do Chinese businessmen.

Capitalism makes people better.

Having lived in Northern Florida, far from abusive, dangerous wokiees, for 6 beautiful, precious years that are like enormous pearls to me, I am disturbed whenever I think about visiting places where people are rude and selfish. I get Miami flashbacks. It’s too bad God won’t evacuate that place and put a fence around it to prevent it from coming back.

Hong Kong still uses the Hong Kong dollar, and I have read that people expect cash, so that’s a drag. As much as I hate the war on cash, electronic money is great for tourism.

I should have bought a better camera sooner. In fact, I did. I tried, I mean. I started Youtubing unsuccessfully in around 2016, and I have bought two unsatisfying action cameras. The latest, in 2019, was a Gopro. The cameras haven’t worked out. You really have to control them from phones in order to get them to function, and they’re very hinky. They turn on and off without warning. They refuse to connect to my phone and tablet. They change video modes unexpectedly. My Gopro ruined a video I made in Turkey. It’s just voices and a still photo. Unacceptable, when so much is at stake.

Phones are fine for photos, but I want something dependable for video, and it has to work without a phone.

My phone cost $750, and it does a ton of things. Oddly, the camera I bought costs about $150 more, and all it does is shoot photos and video.

I had a hard time choosing. I finally went with a Sony ZV-1 II. This is considered a point-and-shoot camera, although you can mess with a lot of settings, including the f-stop. I also considered the ZV-E10, which is similar but allows you to change lenses.

The ZV-E10 is more of a grown-up camera. No doubt. You can travel with a standard lens for vlogging and a zoom lens for versatility. Also, the sensor on the ZV-E10 is better. Thing is, it costs a lot with an extra lens. A good zoom lens will run around $650. Maybe I should have sprung for it, but the trip itself is not cheap, and I’m in the middle of Florida’s homeowner insurance explosion crisis, so I’m not feeling like this is the time to throw cash around. Although it probably is.

Our lives are great, but the rapture can’t come soon enough. I can’t wait for the day when I find myself looking back at Earth the way I now look back at the open latrine known as Miami.

Plinking and Prayer

Monday, March 18th, 2019

Raise Your Hands for Service

Couple of interesting things today.

First, I have been trying to get my .204 Ruger rifle and ATN X-Sight II night scope working again. I have had a certain amount of success.

The X-Sight is low-end for night optics, and it’s full of gee-whiz features (often an indication of a focus that is not on quality), so I don’t expect the world. I have had a few problems. First, the battery life is so bad, you pretty much have to buy their external battery pack. Second, the battery pack is hinky. Sometimes you have to unplug it and plug it back in to make the scope boot, and you can’t tell when it’s about to shut down for lack of juice. I haven’t upgraded the scope’s software in a while. Maybe they’ve fixed this.

The scope keeps shutting down after very few shots. I bought 200 rounds of ammo, I have used the rifle three times, and I am still on the first 50-round box.

That being said, it’s a pleasant rifle to shoot, when you can shoot it. I am shooting a consistent 2 MOA at 100 yards, including what I think of as flyers. I’ll post a photo of a target representing what I think is around 13 shots. It’s hard to keep count when you’re aggravated.

Will the rifle do better? I have no idea. I can’t shoot it long enough to find out. Also, my setup is not good. I have a rabbit ear rear bag, a bipod, and a cheap Caldwell front rest. Sometimes the target is at a level where neither the bipod nor the rest will allow me to aim at it comfortably, and the bag keeps sliding around on me. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have to work on that.

The ammunition is fairly cheap. It’s Fiocchi, with 40-grain V-Max bullets. Fiocchi has made a lot of inexpensive ammunition, but the quality is excellent. They have a big factory in Italy, with real machines and everything. It’s funny how you can’t assume price is related to quality.

Another “cheap” ammo maker, Sellier & Bellot, has a magnificent factory you wouldn’t believe. You can “tour” it on Youtube. They do it right. On the other hand, CCI, which is an American maker with a great reputation, has a facility that looks like a converted garage.

Anyway, the ammunition is cheap, and I don’t know what it can do. Some cheap ammo is laser-accurate. I use Hornady .17 HRM ammo, and it will do sub-MOA at $11.50 for 50 rounds. You can’t assume anything without experience.

Speaking of .17 HMR, when my ATN battery died unexpectedly, again, I got the .17 HMR out and shot a while. At first, I was all over the target. I was adjusting the scope knobs between shots, so it was not pretty. On the second target, I shot pretty well, with a couple of flyers. I was coping with the sliding rabbit bag and so on. I’m convinced flyers are caused by concentration issues, period, and when the rests slide around, it makes you want to forget about concentration and get the shot over with.

I cheap out on targets by firing off-center. I pick a place where the yellow lines cross, fire a few rounds at it, move to another place, and so on. If you fire everything at the center of the target, you go through targets fast.

I’m thinking of getting a real glass scope for the .204 Ruger. The ATN is fun, but it’s getting on my nerves. I have a couple of Burris Fullfield II scopes, and they seem very nice. I have a Leupold which cost more, and the Burrises seem just as clear. I may get a Burris Fullfield E1, which is a newer model. It has an illuminated reticle.

Magnification is hard to choose. A scope that only has one setting will be cheap, but you’re stuck with that setting and field of view. When a variable scope’s magnification is maxed out, the field of view shrinks, and it makes it hard for you to find animals that are moving around. If you have variable magnification, you can crank it down and see more of the area where you’re shooting.

Some people say nothing more than 9X is needed, up to 300 yards. I can’t believe that, but then I’m used to shooting targets, trying to get sub-MOA accuracy. I want serious detail. When you shoot animals, 3 MOA is supposedly fine. Not sure how that can be true, since it means you would be hitting somewhere in a huge 6″ circle on a little scrawny coyote, but it’s what I’ve read. Seems like it would be easy to miss.

I would like 20X, but I’m thinking maybe I should grit my teeth and settle for 14-ish.

If I knew what I were doing, this would be easier.

My Leuopold is 20X, and it’s not currently on a rifle. I took it off my .308 for some reason. I was planning to put it back on, and I don’t like playing musical scopes, so I would like to have one scope for each rifle. I could put it on the .204 temporarily, but the idea bothers me.

In other news, I seem to have stumbled onto some powerful information about God. Maybe I should say he directed me to it. There appears to be something about lifting your hands in worship that improves prayer.

Generally, God is not overly formal in his relationship with us. He doesn’t want us to buy books of prayers other people have written and recite them verbatim, for example. He doesn’t require us to use Hebrew when we address him. He doesn’t care whether we call him Jesus or Yeshua. Sometimes, however, he expects us to do things a certain way.

In 1986, Jesus visited me. I have written about it. I was trying to sleep, and a beam of supernatural energy shone down on me and roamed around over me. Wherever it touched me, I felt complete peace and joy. The beam was Jesus. I knew it, without doubt.

I didn’t know what to do, and after a while, I fell asleep. I woke up instantly, on my back, with both hands raised in worship. I felt energy running into my palms, like arcs of electricity flowing into anodes.

A friend of mine was an armorbearer at Trinity Church in Miami. His name is Cedric. He went to the hospital for heart problems. One night he had some sort of issue, and he woke up on his back, with both hands raised in worship. Like me, he hadn’t raised his arms, himself. Something raised them while he was asleep.

In Exodus 17, Moses and the Hebrews fought the Amalekites. Moses held his hand up, holding the rod of God. As long as he held his hand up, the Hebrews prevailed. When he took it down, they began to lose. Aaron and Hur put a stone under him to sit on, and they held his hand up. It was acceptable for him to sit, but it appears that human beings had to hold up his hand. Otherwise, they would have propped it up somehow.

While Job was suffering, one of his friends told him to stretch his hands out to God and prepare his heart so he would be delivered. He obviously believed the raising of the hands was important.

In Psalm 28, the author asks God to hear him “when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle.”

In Psalm 44, the author defends Israel, saying they haven’t stretched out their hands to a strange “god.”

Psalm 63 says, “Thus will I bless thee while I live; I will lift up my hands in thy name.”

Psalm 68 predicts that a defeated Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to God in submission.

Psalm 88 says, “I have called daily upon thee; I have stretched out my hands unto thee.”

Psalm 119 says, “My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments.”

Psalm 134 says, “Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord.”

Psalm 143 says, “I stretch forth my hands unto thee; my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land.”

Psalm 141 says, “Let my prayer be set before thee as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

Lamentations 3:41 says, “Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.”

Praising God, Habakkuk says, “The deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high.”

In the New Testament, believers laid their hands on people to heal them, to impart the Holy Spirit, and to initiate them into leadership.

Obviously, something is going on with hands. God moves power through them. It seems that God wants us to show him our palms when we want his power to flow.

I got this idea the other day, and I tried it. I held my hands up during prayer, for a long time. I could sense new faith and power. It was wonderful. I believe I was doing things God’s way, finally using the lesson he gave me in 1986.

Many preachers tell us to kneel. I don’t do it. I don’t like it. Kneeling is mentioned a few times in the Bible, but it doesn’t work for me.

I have no problem with lying down, sitting, or positioning myself on all fours in God’s presence, but kneeling is uncomfortable, and it makes it hard to look up or raise your hands. Daniel kneeled to pray three times a day, but he probably had a lower center of gravity than I do. Maybe he had a special piece of furniture that helped him.

The Psalms mention communing with God while lying in bed. That’s for me. That or sitting. I want to focus on God, not on effort. Also, when you’re on your back, it’s easier to raise your hands. When you stand, you have to pump blood over a vertical expanse of around six feet and when you lift your hands, you may be pumping blood seven feet up in order to reach them. It’s tiring. When you recline, your heart has less work to do, so you don’t feel burdened.

Anyway, I plan to continue raising my hands for long periods. It seems to make a big difference. I should have realized God was trying to teach me this.

Postal Urges

Thursday, March 8th, 2018

The Vogons Were Amateurs

Leftists get very upset when you criticize the government, because when you do, you criticize their god. They know how important it is to their agenda that everyone think the government does a great job. But what happens when you actually deal with the government? They screw up and screw up and screw up, and just as conservatives say, they don’t care, because it’s almost impossible to get government workers in trouble.

Seems like the cops and our precious military personnel are the only government agents they hate.

I am here to criticize the god of the left. I had a horrible experience (again) with the Post Office. No, I am not referring to Shakir the Angry Muslim Mailman, who had the nerve to put tip-soliciting cards in my box on a Christian holiday and who got furious because I used to stamp “DELIVERED TO WRONG ADDRESS!” on the multiple pieces of other people’s mail he gave me each week. No, I am not referring to his successor, the crazy lady with the wrist cast who got the Post Office to force me to move my mailbox 20 feet closer to the driveway (until 10 minutes after she was replaced, at which time it was moved back). I am referring to the problem I had with a knife I ordered.

I picked out a knife on Ebay, and because the price was so low, I splurged on express delivery. I was supposed to receive it yesterday. I signed up for email delivery updates.

By the way, do you have an ex-wife or maybe and ex-boyfriend you want to stalk and murder? The Post Office has a handy service that will help. You can sign up to have photographs of all of their mail emailed to you. You don’t have to provide an ID. The government photographs all of our mail (not in order to gather information on us; oh, no), and they decided to make the pictures available to us so they can pretend it’s a feature, not a grotesque threat to our privacy and liberty. If you’re planning to slit someone’s throat, and you want to know if someone else has been sending them love letters, now you know what to do.

Anyhow, I gave the Postal Service my phone number and received updates on my phone. I wrote about this already.

Yesterday, I received a very nice update. It said the driver had taken the package back to the Post Office.

It did not say, “We are at your gate; please let us in.” It did not say, “We are on the way with your package.” I did not hear a horn honk. They had my number. They were too inept to use it to call me.

Today I gave up and drove to the Post Office.

There aren’t many unpleasant drives in Marion County, but today I found one. I had to drive about 9 miles to get the package, and it took about 25 minutes. That’s urban Miami speed. The roads were torn up. I got stuck behind a country trailer loaded with someone’s personal furniture (I’m sure that was kosher), and he turned at every turn I had to take. I thought I would never get there. I went in and picked up the knife. I talked to an employee just long enough to confirm that they didn’t give a crap about my problem. I went home. Very slowly.

God bless Federal Express. Think how much worse the Postal Service would be if they didn’t have Fred Smith showing them up every day.

I contacted the Ebay seller and told them negative feedback was on the way. We’ll see if they care. You don’t send a small package and demand a signature without informing the recipient.

I can’t believe I finally got my knife. I wasted 10 days trying to get one from an incompetend Amazon seller, and then I thought the Ebay knife was the answer to my prayers. Then they tortured me as much as possible until I got it home.

It looks very serviceable. The blade is very heavy. The edge is great, if the job it did on my junk mail is any indication. The sheath is not elegant, but it ought to function very well. It’s Kydex with a few rivets.

I don’t wear a belt, and the sheath is made for a belt, so I guess I’ll have to come up with a different solution. I’m not defiling my ensemble with a belt. I think people look insane when they combine belts with suspenders. It’s the Lumbergh look from Office Space. Maybe I can get some Kydex and some Internet know-how and make a sheath that hooks over my waistband.

I love micarta handles. Whenever I watch Forged in Fire, I always scream, “USE THE MICARTA, YOU IDIOT!”, because smiths are always choosing nutty handle materials that shatter. As far as I know, micarta is the adamantium of knife handle materials. It’s basically fiberglass made with ordinary fabric.

I learned some surprising stuff about knife steels. I think I have been too hard on 420HC, the metal used in my disappointing Gerber Gator II’s.

The alloy 420HC is cheap compared to 440C and a lot of other metals, and generally, knives made from it are not great. It appears that one company is an exception to this rule: Buck. They take 420HC and harden the edge to something like Rockwell 58. That’s acceptable. I had read that Buck had special heat treating skills, but I assumed it was marketing BS intended to cover yet another great company’s descent into the toilet. It looks like that was wrong.

If what I’m reading about Buck is right, they may be providing very good 420HC knives at very good prices. I am still suspicious, because Buck itself uses the phrase “medium edge-holding” to describe the knives, but maybe they’re okay. This metal has some advantages. It’s very tough, so it can take a beating, and when you get it sharp, you can get it very, very sharp. Some metals are hard to put a serious edge on.

Some day I may try a Buck folder just to see what it’s like. I would not be shocked if I were disappointed, but maybe I wouldn’t be.

I hate a knife that gets dull fast. Sharpening twice a month is okay. Sharpening three times a day is not. There is some very impressive steel out there, and it’s not unreasonable at all to expect stellar performance, so I prefer not to fool around with junk. In the kitchen, cheap steel can be useful, because you can always keep a diamond hone handy, but elsewhere, you want a knife that doesn’t have to be suckled and coddled.

I wish the Post Office had a face so I could punch it. I will pray about that.

Time to go check the game camera. I hope it actually did something last night.

Halt! Who Goes There?

Wednesday, March 7th, 2018

Advance and be Ostracized

Now that I’m a game camera guy, I’m trying to improve my game camera game.

I started calling game cameras “trail cameras” because I saw other people using that term on the web, and then I found out “game camera” was right after all. Maybe smelly hippies are promoting “trail camera” because it has less of the scent of hunting, masculinity, whiteness, capitalism, and normal sexual orientation. I am not sure.

I went to Amazon and bought a cheap camera, and I got results with it. Then I found out I could have gotten considerably better video with a name brand. I feel like I need to upgrade already.

Here are some things you need to think about when you buy a game camera. They eat batteries, and batteries are not free, so look for one with good battery life. This varies so much, it may literally be worth it to pay three times as much for an efficient camera. Also, the illuminated area in infrared night shots may be small, so get a camera that gives you a whole frame to look at. Finally, ignore the 1080P claims and the megapixel claims. My camera has 1080P and a billion pixels, and it’s still grainy.

I’ll post some photos captured from video. I assume still photos would be much better.

This is a coon by my fence. This is not the whole frame. Only about half of the frame is illuminated.

This is a coyote by my fence. Pretty neat.

This is a fox that jumped on the fence. I didn’t know foxes were this coordinated. He jumped to the top of the fence with no problems, and then he stood there with no wobbling at all.

It looks like the big winners in the reasonably priced camera war are the Brownings. They make a couple of cameras called the Black Ops Pro and the Strike Force Pro, at around $150. They have great battery life. I put 8 new AA batteries in my camera, used it a couple of times, and then lost a night of video because the batteries were dead. The Brownings will go months on a set of batteries. I think you can see why I would be willing to pay more.

I don’t understand why game cameras don’t use wifi the way action cameras do. It would make checking them much easier. You can get full-blown cellular game cameras, but they cost a lot, and you have to have a good cell signal.

All of last night’s creature visits are lost because the camera’s batteries died. I found some old frozen pork in the fridge, so I put new batteries in the camera, put the pork by my fence, and turned the camera on. We’ll see what I get tonight. Whatever it is, it probably won’t be a herd of nocturnal Chassidic Jews.

I bought a portable blind. It’s an Ameristep Caretaker. What this really is, is a small tent made for hunting. It has openings you can shoot out of. It has room for two Adirondack chairs (you can see where I’m heading) and a cooler.

Cooler, scoped rifle, chairs, Christian music on the old Worktunes hearing protectors…I’ll have it made in the shade.

I told the cashier at the store it was too bad the blind didn’t work on people. She started telling me how great it was and how much she enjoyed hers. You have to love this town. Where else would a female cashier have her own blind?

Even if it doesn’t help me kill animals, I can set it up in my upstairs hideaway and have a cool fort, like the ones I made from couch cushions when I was a kid. There will be a secret password, and of course, no icky girls will be allowed, even if they threaten to tell on me. My sweet blind is a cooty-free zone.

You’re not cool enough to join my club, so don’t ask.

I still don’t have my hunting knife, and this strikes me as a good time to excoriate the Post Office. I ordered a knife and paid $15 for 2-day shipping. The Post Office had my phone number, and they were sending automatic texts, telling me about the status of the knife. This afternoon, they sent me a text saying they tried to deliver it and gave up because no one was here to sign for it. They didn’t say, “Help us get in.” They said, “We already left.”

Okay. You have my phone number. You’re at my gate. You have the intelligence to send me a text saying there’s a problem, but you’re too stupid to call me and ask me to come out and sign?

I think you see why I was upset.

They want me to drive 30 miles to pick it up. Nice. I called to see if they could relax the idiotic signature requirement. I couldn’t get through, so I told the computer to call me back. An extremely ghetto lady called and made it clear that she could do nothing at all for me and didn’t care at all whether I ever got the knife.

This is why the guy who founded FedEx is a billionaire. It also explains why postal employees have to wear bulletproof vests.

I don’t know if I’ll ever receive the knife, and I feel sure the $15 will never be refunded.

I had to deal with my dad’s medical chores today, so I didn’t get to shoot or do anything fun. Maybe tomorrow.

Goodbye. I will be in my fort, having a secret meeting. God help any animals that walk through the room.

If You Didn’t Want me to Film You Naked, Why Did You Shower That Way?

Tuesday, May 24th, 2016

We’re All Exhibitionists Now

I did my time today working on Quickbooks, and then I relaxed with Herodotus, after which I flew the drone. People probably don’t believe me when I write about my thrilling life.

Accounting is still a horror. I’ve gotten to the point where I understand it well enough to enter things in Quickbooks, and I will be glad to have the skill and knowledge, but once again, I am reminded of one of my dad’s courtroom stories. His client passed out in the street drunk, and a man backed over him and broke his leg. The defendant’s lawyer testified that the man had no damages because a broken bone that has healed is stronger than a bone that has never been broken at all. My dad asked him how much he would charge to break the other leg.

That which has not killed me has made me stronger, but it definitely has not put a smile on my face.

Herodotus is surprisingly entertaining, but after Homer and Sappho, the phone book would be entertaining, so my perceptions may be distorted. I have the Robin Waterfield translation, and I would describe the tone as “folksy.” When you read it, the voice you hear in your head is like an American talk radio host. Somewhat irreverent, not altogether serious, and very informal.

I have been reading about the rise of Cyrus, the Persian emperor who helped the Jews. In case you don’t know, a prophet mentioned Cyrus by name in the Old Testament. I am too lazy to look it up, but the prophet spoke long before Cyrus was born.

I don’t know if Herodotus ever mentions the Jews, but he mentions lots of figures who are either in the Bible or separated from it by only one or two degrees. Sennacherib, Ashurbanipal, Darius, and a bunch of others.

Herodotus wrote about Cyaxares, a Median emperor who married a daughter off to Nebuchadnezzar II, who happens to be the guy who sacked the temple in 586 B.C. Cyaxares was the grandfather of Astyages, and Astyages was the grandfather of Cyrus. Herodotus says Astyages had two dreams that indicated that Cyrus, whose father was a Persian, not a Mede, would depose him and take his empire. Astyages told his consigliere Harpagus to kill the child, and Harpagus delegated the job to a herdsman. You can guess the rest. It’s a lot like the stories of Jesus and Moses. A deliverer is promised, so a heathen ruler tries to kill children.

Cyrus reminds me of Donald Trump. He was extremely bold and decisive, and things went well for him, as though a higher power had given him extraordinary favor. Of course, that’s the correct explanation.

I cant’ say I approve of Cyrus, any more than I completely approve of Trump. Cyrus was not a good person, but he served a purpose, and he did a job.

Herodotus is incomprehensible if you just read what he wrote; you have to look at external sources. I use the Internet to explain things and fill gaps. I use it to put dates beside things. For example, the Scythians ruled the area the Medes later ruled from around 553 B.C. to about 525 B.C., until Cyaxares got them. If you put dates next to things, you get a picture of what was happening outside of Israel when various things happened in the Bible. The dates are highly dubious, but they’re better than nothing.

I don’t know if I would call Herodotus a historian. To me, he’s more of a gossip. He can’t verify what he says, and he admits it, but he passes it along all the same.

It’s a funny coincidence (if that’s what it is), but a good friend of mine generously sent me two huge books about the Revelation, at about the time I started going back over the books from Columbia University’s Lit. Hum. course. I’ve written about this. Evangelist Rick Renner wrote the books, and they’re stuffed with information about the ancient world.

The neat thing about going back over the torment of Lit. Hum. is that it will help me understand Renner’s books. Herodotus will not cover the time period of the early church, which appears to be Renner’s focus; Herodotus died in the fifth century B.C. But he provides a lot of groundwork on the ancient world that provided the foundation of the world that existed in the time of Jesus and the disciples.

After the Greeks and Virgil, Lit. Hum. shoots directly to Augustine, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.

I don’t know how anyone learned anything before the Internet. It makes this stuff so much easier.

Abusing my brain with accounting and ancient literature has to be countered with pleasure, so I keep working on my drone skills. Sometimes I’m able to stay aloft for maybe 20 seconds now. The drone doesn’t drop out of the air as often as it used to. Maybe something in the power trains has loosened up.

I made a fourth drone purchase. Revell, a company that makes the kind of plastic airplane models we all used to set on fire when we were 12, makes drones now, and they have a neat one with six props. It has lots of lights on it. Clearly I needed it.

Once my second drone arrives, I’ll have the ability to fly more or less continuously for maybe 15 minutes (my flights are lengthened by frequent pauses to retrieve the drone from behind furniture). That will help me practice efficiently. When I have four drones, I’ll be able to practice considerably more than I want to.

Some day I’ll get a drone with a camera. Sounds extravagant, but you can get all sorts of cool ones for under a hundred bucks. I don’t have any neighbors who sunbathe naked (as far as I know), so I don’t think I can be condemned for operating a camera drone.

Of course, I may get a surprise when I fly it. Hmm.

I think the most annoying thing about camera drones is that the punks who use them to torment us have put us on the defensive. When people complain about drones in their yards, the punks will actually say things like, “You can always stay inside and draw your blinds.”

Technology is going to get incredibly cool, and we will lose all semblance of privacy and liberty. Then Jesus will return. That’s my guess. So I feel like I need to get my droning in while I can.

As I have said before, I don’t think God will tolerate the destruction of privacy and free will. Without them, you can’t have judgment or reward. A world like that serves no purpose.

I’ll put up a Youtube of the hexacopter. I hope you like it. After all, we bought these toys with the rights we held precious.