Somehow this explains a lot about how enjoyable it is to fix a car or truck with friends. (via Road & Track)

Date posted: March 31, 2015 | Filed under cars, entertainment | Leave a Comment »

Pence, a Republican, did not answer directly when asked six times whether under the law it would be legal for a merchant to refuse to serve gay customers. “This is not about discrimination, this is about empowering people to confront government overreach,” he said.

Fuck this guy, fuck Indiana. Fuck everybody that thinks like this guy. This election cycle is gonna suck.

via CBS News.

Date posted: March 30, 2015 | Filed under politics, shortlinks | Leave a Comment »

Building a scout with spare parts

I would’ve put the hood on top but it was too heavy and kept falling inside. The white fender is actually in worse shape than I’d remembered.

→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.

Date posted: March 29, 2015 | Filed under Scout | Comments Off on Building a Scout from Spare Parts

Amazon has been offering “unlimited” photo storage through their Prime account for a while, but for some reason I haven’t noticed it until today. I’m a little unclear as to what “unlimited” means–I think it tops out at 1TB, which is a lot of space, but, then, we have a lot of photos and video files. I’m doing a test upload of images from work today, and I’ll see what kind of options it has for organization–so far the interface looks pretty basic, and I like to organize by YYYY/MM so that I know where to start looking (when you shoot digital seriously, it’s easy to flip the counter on filenames, which means there are multiple instances of IMG_4453.jpg over the years). There is a Cloud Drive app available, which is nice, and apparently there is a way to automatically sync photos taken with iPhones to the service. More info on this as I get it.

Update: I’ve uploaded everything from 1999-2005 so far, about ~19GB of data. Amazon uploads work best through Chrome, which supports folder structures. Because a lot of the file and EXIF structures have been written and rewritten (or processed out), a lot of the early photos get categorized by their modification date, which means there’s stuff from 1999 showing up in 2014. But, it’s offsite, which is nice; now I have to do some testing with recovery and download.


I bought those lenses the other night; the price was too good to pass up. They’re not top-of-the-line metal bayonet mount lenses, but for the price they were a bargain. I did a little finagling here at work and took possession of a spare Nikon D80 body with a battery charger, so when I go north in April I’m going to bring my Dad an entry-level DSLR kit to replace his ancient Coolpix 4500. He was the one who got me into photography back in the day, and bought me my first SLR for college. I’m hoping he’ll enjoy an upgrade to something more flexible and powerful.

Date posted: March 27, 2015 | Filed under family, photography | Leave a Comment »

So I’m going to take a look at some Nikon glass tomorrow night. When I joined up with WRI, I made a deal with myself not to spend any major money on DX (cropped sensor) Nikon gear, figuring eventually I’d trade up to a full-frame kit of some kind. However, I’m always on the hunt for a bargain, and I saw a pair of VR lenses come up on Craigslist a few days ago for a very good price. If they check out they’ll make a decent addition to our gear.


It sounds like Jeremy Clarkson is going to get the axe from Top Gear tomorrow, after he flipped out on a PA and allegedly assaulted the guy. I’ve not been able to see the last 3 seasons of the show because it’s not streaming anywhere and our shit FIOS TV package doesn’t include BBC America (fuck you very much, Verizon), so I’m not current with the series, but it sounds serious. The rumors are that he verbally abused the guy for a half an hour before attacking him, which is just out of control. He’s just an asshole, but I wonder why none of the producers stepped in and cooled him off before things got out of hand.

Date posted: March 24, 2015 | Filed under entertainment, photography | Leave a Comment »

Wow, beautiful work here: tiny media empire.

Date posted: March 23, 2015 | Filed under art/design, shortlinks | Leave a Comment »

DSC_0048

STOP

Smiths

Keep oil above this level

Date posted: March 23, 2015 | Filed under art/design, cars, photo | Leave a Comment »

It’s so great to have a school parking lot right across the street. Finn took a bit of a spill about 1/3 of the way through this video (leaning to the outside of the turn) but got right back up, dusted herself off, and kept riding. I think I need to find her a bigger bike, though.

Date posted: March 23, 2015 | Filed under finn | Leave a Comment »

After reading Star Blazers Got Me Through The Shittiest Year Of My Childhood, I got totally nostalgic, not because I shared the author’s experiences (that came a few years later) but because I LOVED THAT SHOW. Broadcast from the mighty Channel 29 somewhere near Philly, I watched it religiously every day at 3PM. It was the center of the Venn diagram of awesome: Space, battleships, serial drama. I spent 3rd grade through 5th grade trying to construct the Yamato out of LEGOs. It doesn’t hold up today (in fact, it moves rather slowly) but sure takes me back.

Date posted: March 22, 2015 | Filed under geek, shortlinks | Leave a Comment »

Cool! Here’s a podcast interview with my old friend Logan Hicks, who is having an incredible career as a stencil artist.

Date posted: March 20, 2015 | Filed under friends, shortlinks | Leave a Comment »