Cheaper Malice

Panasonic GH4 Crop and 4K Window

Posted: 17th June 2019 by Cheap in Filmmaking, Photography, Technology, Videography

Five years late to the game, I am picking up a Panasonic GH4 for filmmaking. This is for a specific project, which I needn’t discuss here. I have just spent some time making sense of the crop factors and the 4K windowed video, and here is what I have figured out.

First of all, “crop factor” has to do with differences in the physical dimensions of the image sensor. A “full frame” image sensor is one that is the same size as the film frame of a 35mm still camera*, about 36×24mm. Most digital cameras use a sensor that is smaller than that. The result is that the smaller sensor sees a smaller portion of the image projected by the lens. This is exactly as if an image from a full frame camera had been cropped to a smaller size, hence the name. The ratio in size between the smaller sensor and a full frame sensor is known as the “crop factor” or the “35mm equivalence factor”, and it is useful in comparing the angle of view of different lenses based on their focal length. For example, an APS-C sensor has a crop factor of 1.6, so a 100mm lens on an APS-C camera will have the same angle of view as a 160mm lens on a full frame camera.

All of that is broadly understood, but what most people don’t realize is that a crop factor is somewhat meaningless if you are comparing image sensors with two different aspect ratios. A Four-Thirds sensor (which is 17.3×13mm) is known to have a crop factor of 2.0, but that is actually the ratio of the diagonal dimension. The horizontal factor is 2.08 and the vertical factor is 1.85. So is a 12-35mm Micro-Four-Thirds lens equivalent to a 24-70mm EF lens? Well, yes, but only diagonally. How often are you trying to fit a subject diagonally across the frame? Still, it is a reasonable rule of thumb. However, the aspect ratio situation gets even more complicated when you digitally select a different aspect ratio. The Four-Thirds sensor has a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you use that sensor to record an image with a 16:9 aspect ratio, the portion of the sensor being used is even smaller (17.3×9.75mm). The horizontal crop factor remains the same at 2.08, but now the vertical crop factor is 2.46.

For 4K and C4K video, the GH4 uses a “window” of the sensor. Instead of the 4608×2592 pixels on the portion of the sensor that covers a full 16:9 aspect ratio, it uses only the 3840×2160 pixels in the middle of the sensor for 4K, and the 4096×2160 pixels in the middle of the sensor for C4K. I assume this solves a problem with aliasing or processing performance. In any case, this means the effective part of the sensor is even smaller: 14.44×8.12mm for 4K and 15.4×8.12mm for C4K. A smaller sensor means an even more significant crop factor: a 2.49 horizontal crop factor for 4K and a 2.34 horizontal crop factor for C4K.

What is the bottom line? Well, here are some horizontal angles of view for common Canon lenses on a full-frame sensor: 16mm = 96.7°, 24mm = 73.7°, 35mm = 54.4°, 50mm = 39.6°, 70mm = 28.8°. Here are some horizontal angles of view for Panasonic lenses when shooting 4K on a GH4: 7mm = 91.8°, 12mm = 62.1°, 14mm = 54.6°, 20mm = 39.7°, 35mm = 23.3°. This helps me know what lenses I will want when shooting my project.

(* 35mm still cameras and 35mm film cameras have difference frame sizes. Film moves through a still camera horizontally, so the limiting factor is the height of the frame, about 24mm high. Using a 3:2 aspect ratio, the width of the frame is about 35mm, hence the name. The same film moves through a motion camera vertically, so the limiting factor is the width of the frame, about 24mm wide. The height of each frame will then depend on the the aspect ratio and whether an anamorphic lens is used. Nothing about it is actually 35mm, except that it uses the film stock designed for a 35mm still camera.)

Hey, Baldie!

Posted: 16th May 2019 by Cheap in Fiction, Film, Technology, Television

I just realized that I can’t remember the last time I saw a film in a theater that wasn’t a superhero film, a Star Wars/Trek film, a James Bond film, or a Harry Potter film. Maybe it was “Ready Player One”. I decry all the superhero films and sequalism, and the audiences who won’t risk watching anything new, but it looks like I’m contributing to the problem. Then again, I hardly ever encounter any marketing for other films.
Looking for a reason to keep my CBS All Access membership now that season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery has finished, I watched the first two episodes of Instinct. They never used the words “consulting detective”, but it is clearly intended to be a knock-off of Elementary. I wasn’t impressed, and the writing is the problem. They try to fit too much into a single episode. The character arc of one episode would take Elementary a half or even a whole season to savor. Also, Alan Cumming’s character is very lighthearted, nearly a clown (to a large extent, that is Alan Cumming). He plays across from Bojana Novakovic, whose character barely has any personality by comparison. It all comes together to make Instinct feel like it has no depth. A cheap cardboard cut-out of Elementary.
Speaking of Elementary, CBS claims they are about to air season 7, yet it appears that season 6 was never made available on CBS All Access. Perhaps “CBS Some Access” would be a better name for their streaming service. Season 6 is available on Hulu, so I watched it there. I have cancelled CBS All Access, until another season of Discovery comes out.
I read Gingerbread. Substantial portions of it are written in the present tense, which generally irritates me. Relating a story as if it has happened should be done in the past tense. The only form of fiction that present tense is good for is netsex. This is the third book written this way that my SFF book club has sprung on me. Carefully looking ahead, two of the next three books are that way, also. I have decided to boycott them. I pushed through Gingerbread, but now I’m done putting up with this. Is this a new trend in publishing? Or are the people running the book club following some bias that leads them to these? (They’ve also been picking many books that are speculative fiction, but aren’t SFF — like this one.) I almost didn’t go to the book club meeting for this book, because I didn’t think I wanted to talk about it, but it turned out to be a pretty good discussion, so I’m glad I went.
I shaved my head. I had been planning to for decades. My father’s bald spot finally caught up with me. Of all the places to lose your hair, that spot at the back of your head is the only one that seems ugly and degrading to me (probably because that’s where my father lost his hair). I told myself I wasn’t going to do vain things like a toupee or even surgical hair replacement. Instead, I’ve always planned to shave my head when it came time. Well, it came time. I was a little worried that I would have an oddly shaped head, in which case I would be disappointed by the result, but that did not turn out to be. My scalp is quite pale now where I used to have hair — but not where my bald spot was. I’m still trying to get the hang of shaving my head.
The monitor I have connected to my work laptop died. (At a highly inconvenient moment, but when is that sort of thing ever convenient?) It was an el cheapo Acer monitor that was at least six years old, so not terribly tragic. I looked on Micro Center’s web site for the cheapest thing, which turned out to be another Acer monitor for $75, and then I went to go get it. Luckily, they had a demo unit hooked up, because wow was it awful, mainly because it was super washed out, with the blacks nothing like black at all. I’m not using this monitor for photos or anything, just the usual office plus system administration type tasks, but it was so bad that I knew it would grate on my nerves every time I looked at it. I started looking at the other inexpensive monitors in the story, and I ended buying a $100 LG monitor that is actually quite good. Evidently, IPS has become completely affordable. It looks much nicer than the one I had before, and I don’t mind paying a little extra, because I’ll be looking at this display for several hours each day.

CentOS vs. Ubuntu

Posted: 11th May 2019 by Cheap in Technology

The newest release of WordPress requires a minimum of PHP 5.6.4, and so does Laravel. My primary web server has been running PHP 5.4.16, so I needed to upgrade. It was running on CentOS 7.0, so I figured it was time for a complete refresh. I spun up a new VPS with CentOS 7.6 and installed PHP, which resulted in a huge leap forward to PHP … 5.4.16? CentOS has been shipping with the same version of PHP for five years? Yes, they have. CentOS’s excuse is that they’re just doing whatever Red Hat does, so what’s Red Hat’s excuse?

I jumped through some hoops and got PHP 5.6.4 installed, but I eventually got to thinking, maybe other distributions aren’t so behind the times. Maybe it is time to re-evaluate some other distributions. The default OS from my VPS provider is Ubuntu, so I thought I would start there.

Out of the box, Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS installed Apache httpd 2.4.18 and PHP 7.0.33, the last of which is a huge improvement. A release from this year. That part made me happy.

So far, I haven’t found many differences, but I haven’t really been looking very hard. apt-get instead of yum. SELinux is not enabled by default.

Spring Has Sprung

Posted: 24th April 2019 by Cheap in Camping, Fiction, Gardening, Hiking, Hunting, Television

I picked up a pair of Salomon Quest Prime GTX hiking boots (in a color called “Swamp/Night Forest/Titanium”), and they are working out quite well. I’ve finished two hikes in them. Today, with good hiking socks, there was not even a hint of blisters. They provide much better support for my feet. They do fit a little large, though. I really put the Gore-Tex to the test today, tromping through streams, puddles, and mud; my feet stayed perfectly dry inside. These are mid-height boots, and there really is a bit of ankle support, but perhaps more importantly, I feel more confident walking through trails filled with piles of leaves hiding who-knows-what underneath.
Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery was pretty good. A little more episodic in nature, and they didn’t jump any sharks this season. I really liked Anson Mount as Christoper Pike, but I didn’t really dig Ethan Peck’s version of Spock. In my opinion, the massive space battles were too much for that time period, but it was entertaining television. However, the writers need to learn more about computers and time travel. The second season of The OA was nearly as good as the first. It was weirder, and in many ways it was evocative of David Lynch. Season 5 of Bosch was very good.
I read Spock’s World, and it was alright. The story itself is fairly mundane, but the book is padded with a series of vignettes about life and the evolution of civilization on Vulcan, and that was more fulfilling for the Trek fan inside of me. Cat Out of Hell was decent, but I wish authors would stop trying to tell stories through alternate forms of narration. I read Black Leopard, Red Wolf, and it is by far the most vulgar novel I have ever read.
I have built a new web server and I am migrating my web sites to it. They have been on a “temporary” server for nearly four years, and much of the software is becoming out of date. It has been a good chance to clean things up and make improvements.
I took a day off of work to go turkey hunting on the opening day of the season. Five years ago, I bought and patterned a shotgun specifically for turkey hunting, but I never got to go. This year, a friend of mine invited me to hunt on his 200-acre property. He swore that turkeys had been gobbling there recently, but on the morning I went, there was nothing. Still, it was a beautiful morning to be out.
I backpacked Rockpile Mountain Wilderness again, with much better results. I went on some good hikes on each of the weekends since my last trip there, and it really paid off. I managed to explore the rest of the trail system. I think I have talked myself out of volunteering or adopting the trails at the wilderness. I just don’t have the time to commit. I don’t need to backpack there anymore this year, although I might go there for some squirrel hunting. My next backpacking plan is for Hercules Glades Wilderness.
I have fourteen pepper plants in two rows of my vastly expanded garden, and they are doing quite well. I need to prepare a third row, but it is time consuming and hard work.

Film Adaptability of Various Novels

Posted: 27th March 2019 by Cheap in Fiction, Film

Here are some novels I’ve read recently, and my thoughts about how easily they could be adapted to screenplays.

Cat Out of Hell, Lynne Truss — There is quite a bit of action that is directly adaptable. The novel is presented as a mish-mash of formats, including interview transcripts, emails, and descriptions of photographs. All of that would need to be discarded, but that would create some challenges about how to unfold the story. I don’t envy the filmmaker who must direct a considerable amount of action involving cats, let alone talking cats, but that’s really not the writer’s problem.

Spock’s World, Diane Duane — The main story would quite easily adaptable to film, and by itself it would undoubtedly be an appropriate length for a feature film. However, the novel also includes a series of vignettes that contribute to world-building of Vulcan. Each of them ought to be reasonably adaptable, but I’m sure the final product would be a film that is too long. One could simply omit the vignettes and have a solid story, except that the story depends somewhat on the vignettes for mood and a little background. While the vignettes would increase the total production cost considerably, enriching the film cannon of Vulcan would have more value to Trek fans than would one more otherwise mediocre Star Trek story. Who would produce such a film? With Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley dead and William Shatner in his late eighties, the could only be done in the J. J. Abrams reboot series, but this story doesn’t have the requisite amount of action to fit. Could it? This could only be a writing exercise.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin — There is much said in this novel about gender and gender roles, and I’m afraid much of it would be lost. Furthermore, the central invention of the story is the concept of a humanoid species that is neither and both male and female, but could you show that in film? In the book, it is described, but no actual sex takes place in the story. Furthermore, even if there were the opportunity, how could you possibly show what needed to be shown? It would be a weird kind of pornography. Therefore, you simply cannot show it, and the writer must figure out another way to get the point across. Today’s appetite for media about gender issues is quite large, but could you do the story justice in those ways? All of the feminist observations are Genly Ai’s private thoughts.

The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie — The obvious challenge here is how to tell a story from the point of view of a rock. Actually, a good portion of the story takes place in a fairly normal way. Sooner or later however, the rock needs to be brought into it. A talking rock. I’ll have to think on that.

The Cloud Roads, Martha Wells — Adapting this story to film would be fairly straightforward. Of course, the film would require a significant amount of CG, but that’s not the writer’s problem.

Trail Report: Rockpile Mountain Wilderness

Posted: 18th March 2019 by Cheap in Camping, Hiking, Outdoors

This was my second time backpacking at Rockpile Mountain Wilderness. Previously, I had simply hiked more or less straight to the peak of the eponymous mountain, camped there overnight, and then hiked out the next morning. This time, I had ambitious plans to explore the whole trail system.

I was thwarted. For one thing, I was in much worse physical condition than I thought. Looking back, I realize that I have done very little hiking this winter, or even last fall. On top of that, I had a heavy pack filled with a heavier 4-season tent, a warmer sleeping bag, and extra clothing layers. The miles took a toll on my body, and I was in pain. The other problem is that the trails are less of a system and more of a smattering. I have personally verified that some of the trails on the map simply do not exist anymore. Other trails are supposed to connect, but I was unable to follow them, and I ended up cutting cross country. I wasted a good amount of time and energy searching for lost trails and backtracking. In the end, I cut my plan short, and even then the last couple of miles back to my car were grueling.

I very much enjoy finding beautiful rock formations and waterfalls. It is even more amazing when you discover them on your own because no one thought to mention them. I had previously thought that the most interesting thing in the Wilderness Area was the man-made circle of rocks near the peak of Rockpile Mountain. However, getting off the trail this weekend, I discovered shut-ins in the stream known as Cave Branch and some really spectacular rock formations.

I hiked at least 17 miles, though a few miles were without a pack. I drank almost 4 liters of liquid.

This was my first time backpacking with my Eureka Alpenlite 2XT. It is rather heavy for backpacking, but it is a really great 4-season tent. I enjoyed sleeping in it more than I ever have. It’s too bad there was no snow or high winds to justify hauling it. I was also testing for the first time my Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XTherm Max air mattress and my Marmot Col -20° sleeping bag. The air mattress worked great. The sleeping bag was way overkill for the temperature (a low of 35°), so venting left me uncomfortably hot in some places and uncomfortably cold in others. However, the performance was excellent, and I look forward to trying it out on colder nights.

I always eat fewer meals than I expect to. I planned for lunch and dinner on Saturday, and then breakfast and lunch on Sunday. Plus snacks. However, hiking tends to curb my hunger. I ended up eating a late lunch on Saturday, and instead of dinner, I ate a snack in my tent (rice krispie treats made the night before!). Instead of the breakfast I’d planned for the next morning, I drank a protein shake I had thrown in at the last minute. (I love Kellogg’s Special K Rich Chocolate Protein Shakes, but they are no good warm. However, I realized that if the temperature got down to near freezing, they would be perfect if I simply left them out. And they were!) I ate trail mix a couple of times in the late morning and early afternoon, and then I had another late lunch. I could have saved a few pounds by not bringing two canned meals and the stove. I didn’t touch the four energy bars or two energy gels I brought. I’d also brought a bag of no-shell pistachios and a bag of Moon Cheese, which I snacked on with my Sunday lunch, but didn’t really need.

I’ve decided that my Merrell Moab 2 GTX shoes suck. I previously had some Merrell Reflex II Low Hiker shoes, which I loved. I used them for about five years until the tread started breaking apart. I figured anything by Merrell would be good, and the Moab is their most popular line, so I ordered a pair of Moab 2 GTX shoes. However, I’m not in love with them. I’ve never gotten them to fit well, and they don’t do anything special for my feet. No matter what, they chafe at the back of my foot and cause blisters. Now when I look, I see many negative reviews, suggesting that Merrell shoes aren’t what they once were, either in terms of fit or durability. I’m going to have to find something else.

The power bank I brought to charge my phone only brought it up to 89% and the leveled off there. The power bank claimed to be still mostly full, so it wasn’t a matter of capacity. It was some other problem. I need to do some testing. The temperature may have been a factor. The phone is young and gets good battery life, so I would have survived in any case, but I’d really like to understand what happened. Update: The power bank works fine at home. I’m certain the problem was the cold temperature. In the future, I’ll have to charge my phone inside my sleeping bag when it’s cold.

The road leading to the trailhead is awful. My car couldn’t handle it, so I had to park a steep mile away this time. I really need to fix my truck.

I saw a feral piglet. It was just about the size of a football, and it was brown with black longitudinal stripes. It was running right down the trail toward me, and if I had realized sooner what it was, I could have shot it. Or stomped on it. I thought it was a dog coming down the trail. A fat chihuahua. When it got about ten feet away, I realized what it was. It passed close by and then veered away from the trail, and I stood there like an idiot as it ran out of sight. Before that, I had just been remarking to myself how much the area had recovered from hog damage from the last time I had been there. Later on, I did find quite a bit of hog sign.

I also saw a permanent hunting stand, which is illegal in the National Forest and doubly so in a Wilderness Area. I’ve sent an email off to report it, complete with GPS coordinates and photos.

Next time I visit, I want to explore the rest of the trails, and I want to find the source of Cave Branch (to see if it is a cave, of course).

Lessons learned:

Get some hikes in before committing to miles of backpacking. Don’t start the season with a heavy pack unless I’ve been backpacking through the winter.
Don’t pack a 4-season tent that weighs 9 pounds unless I have reason to suspect snow or high winds.
Get some sleeping bags with ratings in between 30° and -20°.
A pint bag of trail mix is excessive if I also bring a whole gaggle of other snacks. Be prepared, but also be reasonable.
Get off the ridges once in a while, because some of the most interesting sights are in the hollows.
Test my technology before relying on it.

Gun Sale!

Posted: 17th March 2019 by Cheap in Camping, Fiction, Firearms, Gardening, Hiking, Outdoors, Photography, Television

I finished Elantris. The characters that seemed so unrealistic and two-dimensional became much more realistic and grew to have more depth than my initial impression at the beginning of the story. I’m glad I finished it, because I did quite enjoy it, though I would still say it’s not Brandon Sanderson’s best work. I also read The Cloud Roads, another work by Martha Wells. It wasn’t as brilliantly awesome as the Murderbot Diaries, but it was still a good read, and I will go ahead and read the rest of the series. Ann Leckie just released her first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, which was pretty good, and unique, and told from the point of view of a god. I labored through The Left Hand of Darkness for my book club, and now I think I’m finished reading Ursula K. Le Guin, because her characters are too boring and without apparent feeling.
A thing happened while I was reading The Left Hand of Darkness. I live in a rural county in a red state. I went out to eat dinner, at a chain restaurant that seems to employ nothing but high school age girls. I went alone, and brought my book. As the hostess was leading me to my table, she asked me what my book was about. The answer that popped into my head was that it was about a planet of humans who were neither and both male and female. However, I didn’t really want to say that. I judged the hostess to be not particularly open-minded, for the reasons I’ve just mentioned, and it seemed like too much complication to give her that answer and then to have to explain it, and be judged during my dinner, etc. So, instead I just told her I hadn’t actually figured it out yet. Later, I realized I would have been delighted to inject some controversy given the opportunity, but that my new anti-social tendencies made it much less appealing.
The ABC Murders was quite good, if disappointingly short. The Fall managed to make a full third season after they caught the bad guy. Russian Doll was somewhere between comedy and introspection, but failed to connect with me in any deep, meaningful way. I generally enjoyed Chance, although the ending of the second season was a completely anticlimactic cop-out. The second season of Star Trek: Discovery has been rather more grounded in the normal format for Trek: more episodic and less like a crack addict’s soap opera. Rumor has it that new seasons of Bosch, The OA, and Stranger Things are coming soon.
Ever since the .300 AAC Blackout was announced, I have wanted a bolt-action rifle chambered in the caliber, set up for subsonic loads with a suppressor. Savage had an interesting rifle for a while, but they quickly discontinued it, citing stabilization problems. Then Remington introduced the Model 700 SPS Tactical in this caliber, with a 16½” barrel, threaded for a suppressor. It has been on my wish list for years. I had never made it a priority. However, I noticed that Cabela’s had it on sale for a very good price. I braved the snowy roads, and I bought it. It has a surprisingly heavy barrel, a pretty good trigger, and a well made synthetic stock, and I want to believe it will be quite accurate. However, I won’t know for a while, because I still need to buy optics for it, and I might as well wait until I have a suppressor for it before I do much accuracy testing.
I had to have it shipped all the way from England, but I finally own a Benbo Classic No. 1 Tripod. I have paired it with a Manfrotto 405 geared 3D head for the ultimate macro photography tripod. The setup is strange and burly, but it works great. It makes me want to go out into the woods to take macro photos. So far, I’ve just used it to take time-lapse images of my pepper seedlings and some macro photos of .300 AAC Blackout cartridges.
Speaking of pepper seedlings, they’re going great. I started them a little earlier than I had intended, but it won’t hurt. They should be in good shape by the time I am ready to transplant them outside. I have sixteen varieties of hot pepper in seedling form, plus two other plants that have been wintering over in pots. I have crazy, ambitious plans for a garden this year. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all the peppers, but I can’t wait to try them.
March really is a good time of year for hiking, backpacking, and other outdoor activities. I was not bothered this weekend by mosquitoes, ticks, spider webs stretched across the trail, or pollen. Low humidity, and just generally not feeling hot.

Nobody Knows Anything

Posted: 19th February 2019 by Cheap in Film, Filmmaking

From an NPR article, Are Movies Getting Better?

The famous screenwriter William Goldman had a saying about the ability of the movie studios to predict what would be a critical or commercial success: “Nobody knows anything.” Waldfogel calls this “Goldman’s Law,”

The methodology described in the article to arrive at its conclusion is flawed, but that one tidbit is something I keep coming back to: Hollywood hasn’t a clue about how to predict film success.

If someone wanted to become fabulously rich, one could do it by inventing the means to determine whether a film will be a success or a failure. Ideally, before the film is made.

Another problem Hollywood has is marketing. In my opinion, many good films flopped at the box office because they were marketed badly, and then went on to grow a “cult following”. Fight Club is a classic example. It was marketed as a film about fighting. No wonder no one wanted to pay to watch it.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Active Redux

Posted: 13th February 2019 by Cheap in Technology

My phone since December 2015 has been a Samsung Galaxy S6 Active. It is more than three years old, and until last week, it was still going strong. No performance or stability problems. The screen is still perfect. Even though I don’t use a case, there is so little external cosmetic damage that I don’t see any unless I specifically look for it. The battery life might be slightly reduced.

Last week, I flew to Denver. Shortly after I left the airport, I noticed that the back of the phone was significantly convex. Instead of sitting flat on a table, it rocked around on its back, which had become curved. The battery had swollen, and the aluminum back had deformed. Even more troubling was that the glass in front was slightly deformed. The phone worked, took a charge, and never caught fire. It functioned okay for the whole trip, although the battery life definitely wasn’t as good as it used to be. When I got back home, the bulge was significantly less. Denver’s mile-high altitude must be a factor.

As soon as I discovered the problem, I figured I should start researching my next device. The S9 is the current model, but there is no S9 Active. There is an S8 Active, and I looked at it. I was disappointed.

The S8 Active is even bigger than the S6 Active. (For some reason, phone manufacturers believe that bigger is better. It is not.) Faster CPU, but that probably also means it uses more energy. A ton of wasted real estate around the screen. They rounded off the corners of the display. WTF? (Evidently this is common; the Google Pixel is the same way.) Slightly larger battery capacity, undoubtedly to make up for the power hungry CPU. The camera resolution is reduced to 12 megapixels. It basically looks dorky. For this, I would be paying $850 to “upgrade”.

I noticed that AT&T’s site also had the S7 Active for sale still, but it had all the same disadvantages. I wondered why I couldn’t just get a new S6 Active. Instead of searching AT&T’s site, I used a search engine to find the S6 Active. There was my phone, new in box, on Amazon for a couple hundred bucks.

After a day of deliberation, I ordered one. I ended up getting the dark grey model, instead of the camo blue one I have now, because it was $75 cheaper, and because I hardly ever notice the dark blue pattern on the back. I figure $185 isn’t a three-year investment. Instead, it will give me breathing room until Samsung or someone else releases a great outdoor phone.

I’ve had it for a day, and I really only have two problems with it. The first is that it came with Android 6.0.1, and it won’t update to the 7.0.1 version I have on my previous S6 Active. This might be because I checked for updates while I didn’t have the SIM card in it. Now it won’t even let me check for updates for 24 hours. The other problem is that the Reuters News app I’ve been using does not appear in the app store. I’m hoping this is because it doesn’t support the older version of Android that is currently installed, and once I figure out how to get the update, I should be able to find and install the app. UPDATE: It is applying software updates. Unfortunately, it refuses to even check for an update until 24 hours has passed, and it will only install one update at a time. According to this document, there are sixteen updates from the version supplied with the device. I have managed to install two of them, but at this rate, it will be more than two weeks until I will have my phone current. I am three more updates away from 7.0 Nougat. What a pain. 2nd UPDATE: Once I got to 7.0, it stopped pretending for 24 hour intervals that there weren’t more updates available, so I was able to get through all of the 7.0 and 7.0.1 updates in several hours. My phone is now fully updated, five days after receiving it. There were actually a few updates that could be skipped because of the way some updates were rolled together. Also, synchronization to the Samsung cloud started with 7.0, so I was able to get back more data, namely all my memos. And yes, the Reuters News app was available in the app store once the device was sufficiently updated.

Ultra-Wide Angle

Posted: 30th January 2019 by Cheap in Fiction, Filmmaking, Firearms, Gardening, Hunting, Peppers, Photography

I finally own the so-called “Holy Trinity” of Canon zoom lenses. I acquired my original Canon EOS camera outfit, including the 24-70mm f/2.8 and 70-200 f/2.8 lenses, in 2005. Since then, I have wanted to round out my lens collection with a 16-35mm ultra-wide angle zoom lens. It isn’t useful for model photography, so it wasn’t a priority, and it was expensive. I have lived all this time without a lens wider than 24mm (not counting lenses for smaller formats), and I never felt like I was suffering. That was until I went to Glacier National Park. There were so many wide vistas, and I just couldn’t capture them. I was really disappointed. When I came home from that trip, I was more serious about acquiring the lens. By then, Canon had just released a Mark III of the lens. It was even more expensive, but a worthwhile improvement. Still, I have been putting it off, because there has always been filmmaking gear needed with a more immediate priority. Well, I finally purchased it. It isn’t as big as I expected.
On that topic, I have been trying to slow down on filmmaking. I was on twelve film sets last year. More than a couple of them were unpleasant experiences. I feel like I am devoting too much time, energy, and money in that direction. I’m not sure I am feeling satisfied creatively.
This year, I want to do more photography. I want to do more camping and/or traveling. I want to do more hiking and biking. Perhaps more importantly, I would like this year to be my break-out year for writing. I would like to spend more time learning Russian. I feel like I have been spending the right amount of time reading. I have been spending too much time on television.
I have discovered Hornady ELD-X bullets. They have high ballistic coefficients and are designed to expand at a broad range of velocities. In other words, they are designed for long-range hunting, but they can be used at shorter ranges if necessary. I have a custom precision rifle in a wildcat magnum cartridge (6.5mm WSM), and I have been planning to develop a good hunting load. This bullet would significantly extend the effective range of this rifle. It would theoretically have 1500 ft-lbs of energy out to 700 yards, and it would have enough velocity to properly expand out to nearly 1200 yards. The rifle may very well be capable of that, if I can learn to shoot those ranges. I have ordered a box, and I will try them out.
On the recommendation of a colleague, I began to read Defending Jacob. I was having some trouble maintaining enthusiasm for the read, and then the reason occurred to me. The protagonist keeps making obviously bad choices. He keeps a case after it’s been suggested he has a conflict of interest. He covers up something that is obviously potential evidence. He sneaks into his house to look for and hide possible evidence before the police can execute a search on his house. That’s as far as I read. I have written before about how much I dislike this as a plot device. In this case, there is a good argument for employing this device, because the author is intentionally making a story of the conflicting emotions of a protective father versus those of a smart lawyer and prosecutor. That might have been more compelling to me if I had ever been a father, but I haven’t. So it went back to the library.
I started my pepper seeds quite early this year. Not too early, I hope. I have eighteen pepper varieties growing, and some of them have already come up. I have big, ridiculous plans for a garden in my front yard this year. Theoretically, there will be room for thirty plants, although I will give some of that space up to flowers that attract pollinators.