Moving soon...

Well, we closed on the house Tuesday, and the sellers are expecting to be out by the first, though they technically have until the fifth if they need it. If I disappear from the net for a few days, I'll either be fighting with a new internet hookup, hauling stuff, or resting up from those tasks. We're paying the full month on the rental so we can take our time moving and cleaning.
Unfortunately, this house doesn't have all the extra rooms of the one we tried to buy before, so I won't get to have a dedicated studio/photo-work room, but it does at least have space for me to finally have a dedicated workspace for reloading, metalworking and woodworking.
The baby's due in February, and we plan to take advantage of the empty rooms to do a few maternity shots before we move most of the stuff in, so hopefully I'll have a couple of those posted as soon as things settle down. I bought a 9x10ft piece of muslin for a backdrop just in case, but I think we'll have enough blank white walls before we start hanging photos to not need that.

If you're bored...

...try this site:
Photoshop Disasters

They're at it again

Remember the last bunch of attention whores?

Well, they can't even be troubled to come up with a new story. Same old lights in the sky.

There's even yet another picture of a point source of light. Gee, can't find thousands of those on any given night.

Pics from the Sonogram

I'd post the video, but I don't think I have any video editing software on here than can black out the personal information.

Heartbeat:


Face:


Arm:


Foot:


Appendage counts are all correct for a female, and proportions are within normal parameters, so it looks like we're in good shape so far.

Oh, by the way...

...it's a girl. Unfortunately, my wife has the sonogram video and pictures stashed somewhere and I'm not waking her up to ask where, so you'll have to wait a bit for pics.

Let's get tacticool

A few weeks ago, I picked up two Kimber LifeAct Guardian Angels, one for my wife, and one for myself. Mine have "Kimber Guardian Angel" on the clip, but for some reason, Kimber, as you can see at the link, has decided it should relabel the device as the "Kimber PepperBlaster."
I guess I won't be getting a couple more to keep in the cars, now, unless the older ones are still in stock at the shop where I got them before.
Now this was a nice discreet way to carry pepper spray; it looks like pretty much anything except a weapon. It could be a radio, garage door opener, PDA, phone, medical device, whatever. Now that they've stack a tacticool name on it, that advantage is gone.
Part of my reason for getting these was that they could be clipped to a pocket or bag, and carried discreetly in places like classrooms where I can't legally carry my gun. The shape and rather noncommittal name would prevent awkward questions from the anti-self-defense crowd, and allow it to even be carried in-hand in a potential confrontation without losing the element of surprise. Not only did they kill that capability, they also did it with a goofy-sounding name that belongs on mall-ninja gear, not a serious self-defense tool.

I've sent an email to Kimber requesting that they explain their logic. We'll see what their response is.

(Yes, I know I could just sand all the writing off the clip, but after paying $40 for a two-shot pepper spray device, it shouldn't be left to the user to modify it back to a more useful state.)

EDIT TO ADD: Thanks to EmergencyEm for reminding me: support SCCC and make this post less relevant.

What the hell?

Does some manufacturer now make a cologne or body spray in a 2-gallon "single-use" size? I've had four people walk by in the last couple hours that made me dig out the air freshener. I thought maybe it was just me until I went to get a fresh can of Ozium from the cleaning lady and she knew exactly why right away.

It's rarely even a scent that would be good in normal quantities, either. There seems to be a strong preference for godawful cloying some-kind-of-fruit-rotting type stenches.

The Regency Bridge

Now that's an out of the way landmark. Fun side trip, though.

Jumping on the bandwagon

What the hell, I got curious about this thing.

You are a Social Moderate (56% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (88% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness. loc: (24, 143) modscore: (53, 34) raw: (5132) Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid.com: Free Online Dating Also : The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

The carnival's in town...

It's gotten so small the last few years that they've stuffed the whole thing into a relatively tiny area with parking all around it. That makes it kinda tough to get photos without traffic in them, but it still makes for some interesting long exposures.

A couple more

I know I'm taking forever with these...I'll get a few more of them up eventually.


Sell photos on photrade | By KD5NRH



Sell photos on photrade | By KD5NRH



Sell photos on photrade | By KD5NRH

Things are settling down

Vacation's over. After a couple more days at the 12x7 contract, it's over, and I'm just covering a couple extra shifts so the guys that were having to work 12x7 at my regular contract during the other one can get some time off.

I've been slowly going through the photos from the vacation as time allows. I've got almost all of the B&W film developed and scanned, and it looks like about 600-700 shots total. Obviously, not everything turned out, and a lot are near-duplicates for exposure bracketing, but I'm guessing around 50-75 keepers by the time I get through adjusting exposure levels, touching up dust on the film scans, etc.

Here are a couple of my favorites so far:




Full set of the ones I've gone over so far at Flickr.

Tired...

Sonogram001Crop
Originally uploaded by KD5NRH

I've been working 12+x7 for a while now, and vacation starts after tomorrow, so here's a baby picture to keep you entertained.

For those who haven't heard...

..my wife's pregnant. First positive was 6-25 when she went in for gallbladder surgery. (Needless to say, that didn't happen.) I decided to hold off the announcement for a bit to make sure, and on 7-2 we went for the first OB/GYN appointment where they're pretty well convinced, though we're still waiting for the second test results.

Mom's coordinating the hand-me-down maternity clothes and assorted infant supplies from the rest of the family, and we're still trying to buy a house, since there's almost no chance we'll get anything built on our land in time, given the hassles of getting a construction loan right now.

Vacation is still on for August, since it doesn't look like we'll be getting one for a few years afterward.

What would the media say...

...that the SWAT team found in your house?

Thinking back to the Lisa Nowak incident and the description of the contents of her car's trunk, I decided to look around the house a bit and see what the media could report on finding.

Multiple loaded firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and high-capacity magazines. Well, duh. There's at least one brick of .22lr, and several boxes of handgun ammo running around. At some point, I also got a good deal on 12ga #8 loads, and we keep finding boxes of them that have been moved out of the way. Let's not forget the military ammo, either; I still have some Greek surplus .30-06 and Russian 7.62x54.

Bottles of mixed chemicals, including one containing pentetic acid, which is used to treat radiation poisoning. Maybe, but I'm going to have to be pretty near death to drink T-Max developer and hope for any improvements from one of its minor ingredients.

Several knives. Gnawing apart a raw chicken isn't very appetising.

Professional-grade photographic equipment. Because terrorists would rather spend a few thousand on cameras than use Google StreetView to do their surveillance, no doubt. They're also so concerned with the quality of the images that they'd rather lug around a big obvious SLR and tripod than discreetly use a camera phone.

Books on combat shooting and survival skills. Another duh. The gun isn't much use if you don't know what to do with it, and a dead animal is going to be mostly wasted if you don't know how to butcher and cook it properly.

Highly accurate GPS devices. What good is a highly inaccurate GPS device?

Police scanners. Gotta have something for local news.

Encryption software. Yep. Make 'em work for it. Encrypt lots of boring stuff, even if you don't have anything good. They won't know until they waste the time.

Camouflage clothing, including parts of a ghillie suit. I don't know what *you* wear to hunt coyotes, but blinky-light sneakers and a propeller beanie aren't exactly my first choice.

There's probably a lot more, but I have to go feed the cats.

Yep, not much to say...

...on Heller that hasn't already been said.

Start here at SCOTUSblog
Then Pagan Blacksmith.
And LawDog.
More discussion back at SCOTUSblog.
Don't forget MattG.

That ought to keep everybody busy for a while.

Is there really anyone...

...so lacking in tastebuds that they actually Can't Believe It's Not Butter?

Just curious.

How not to win friends in law enforcement...

Obama campaign stop demonstrates a serious lack of respect.

I'm not surprised to see a lack of coverage in the mainstream media, but I am surprised that so few bloggers have hit on this.

WalMart Customer Service

Tonight I decided to stop by WalMart on my way to work. It's not my favorite place to shop, but there aren't a lot of places to get batteries at 11:30PM without paying $7.50 per 4-pack at the gas stations.
When I pulled in, there was a guy on crutches making his way slowly to the grocery side doors, no doubt looking forward to one of their little electric scooters to do his shopping from.
For those not familiar with WalMart's late night policies, in order to keep things from being too convenient for the customers, they lock the general merchandise side sometime after 9PM and everybody has to go through the grocery side. The two door sets have two automatic doors each, and are roughly half the width of the supercenter-size store apart, so if you're getting 50lbs of kitty litter and not planning to use a cart, you need to know which set will be open.
The guy got to the door, hesitated, and started to head back to his car. I still didn't think too much about it other than something along the lines of how much it must have sucked to go to all that effort only to realize that he has to go back to the car for something.
By this time, I was about halfway to the door. There was a roughly 2ft square piece of cardboard cut from a large box against the wall between the two sets of automatic doors, but nothing that looked out of the ordinary until I got within about 10ft of the door.
There was writing on that cardboard, in ball point pen, no less. "PLEASE USE OTHER DOORS," with an arrow pointing toward the general merchandise side.
Now, that's a pretty common message, and I'd bet there are plenty of companies out there that make nice big signs in sharply contrasting 3-inch or larger letters with that message on them that the guy could have read from the handicap parking space, but in ballpoint pen on brown cardboard, it was hard to read from just a few feet away, and didn't even look like a sign from the parking lot. Even a piece of white posterboard and a large black marker would have been readable from the parking spaces, but I guess WalMart doesn't know where to get such things.
It's not too bad of a walk for me to go to the other doors, and not too far to walk back to the car with the single bag I came out with, but for the guy on crutches, that would have been another 5-10 minutes of what certainly appeared to be painful hobbling. Is it too much to ask a company that spends millions on advertising signs throughout every store, to simply have one large black-on-yellow "PLEASE USE OTHER DOORS" sign made for each store?

Still clicking the other magic boxes...

Been fiddling with cameras lately...some more results at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kd5nrh

I think I've narrowed down the light edges on the scans to some curling of the negatives. The humidity changes between air conditioning and outside air leaking in are playing hell with flatness even on some older negs.

Looks like my next experimental film project will be home processing of color film. I might have to put it off for a bit, but it's looking more and more attractive since I can do the rest of the process (scan and print, except that I don't usually want prints of everything on the roll - I don't know what resolution they scan at for their prints, but the last bunch of photo CDs I got weren't exactly impressive) just as well as the local one-hour places. If I can get from exposed film to stable, decent negatives, I can not only save the processing costs, but avoid having a bunch of extra prints running around too.