Last October, somewhat on impulse, I upgraded my phone to the Samsung Galaxy S10. It all began when I met up with a friend of mine and saw that she was taking photos with her phone, not with a DSLR. This was a surprise to me, since the photos she had been posting looked like…
I Welded Something
When my infrared camera came in on Friday, I played with it a little that afternoon, but I couldn’t spend my time with it because I had a party to prepare. I snapped some photos around the house, and they showed some promise. The next morning, I played a little more with them in Photoshop,…
Whip-poor-will Overload
I haven’t been to all of them, but I suspect that the Hercules Glades Wilderness is the crown jewel of Wilderness Areas in Missouri. It is not the biggest, but it is scattered with glades — some quite large and picturesque, has an extensive and well maintained trail system, and even has a set of pretty…
Panasonic GH4 Crop and 4K Window
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…
Hey, Baldie!
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…
CentOS vs. Ubuntu
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…
Spring Has Sprung
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…
Film Adaptability of Various Novels
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…
Trail Report: Rockpile Mountain Wilderness
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…
Gun Sale!
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…