From The Verge: Nikon will reportedly discontinue DSLR production, citing slowing sales. can’t say I’m surprised.
This is the first weekend in a long time where we’ve been home. Like, in our own house for two days. Jen has been socked in with work for several weeks, and a lot of it has come to a head, so we thought we’d take a break from driving south to Lexington Park and stay around the homestead. I’ve had a lot of things around the house piling up in our absence, so I took the opportunity to knock a couple of them out.
The first thing was replacing two basement windows that were original to the house. I’d ordered replacements back in March and they finally arrived about a month ago; I’ve been waiting for a solid weekend to tackle the project. Pulling the old windows was pretty quick work—they were only held in by two sets of ancient brass hinges and a hook and eye latch. I cleaned up the wooden surrounds, cut and installed baffles, and slotted them into place. With some careful carpentry the inside baffles got nailed into place, and they got caulked tight. Now we can have open windows and enjoy fresh air in the basement! A miracle.
The second project is one Jen has been asking about since last year: painting the garage to match the house. I started out by scraping the west side and got it ready for paint. After cleaning both my guns and consolidating the remaining paint, I filled the compressor and sprayed out the west side and half of the driveway side before running out. I’m going to have to repair some of the plywood on the front side and do a lot more scraping overall, but it looks pretty good so far.
Finn has been binging a new videogame for the past month, and has been asking me to play with her. It’s a survival/exploration game called Ark, where you land on an island teeming with dinosaurs and have to learn how to gather food, build tools and shelter, and tame those same dinosaurs to help you advance. She’s been playing on her iPad, but I can’t load it on my phone and squint at tiny menus. I saw that it was available for the Xbox so I ordered a used copy on Amazon and installed it on the console. From there it demanded a 100GB update, so we waited days for the console to choke that down (it puts itself to sleep after an hour, so I had to constantly keep it awake) and then two more updates before we could play.
Once that was done, we picked up our controllers and started a new world together. And found, very quickly, that it was almost impossible to navigate in 2-player mode. They split the screen horizontally, so the top half is one character view and the bottom half is another, but they didn’t change the menu system to fit that resolution. So when you go into the menu system (and half the game is spent here) it’s still the size and shape of an iPad and you have to squint at tiny little icons smushed into the narrow space given. It’s like looking at the menu bar of Word 97 through a peephole: impossible unless you know exactly what you’re looking for. I tried for several nights but found it almost unusable.
She then found a new game called Albion and started playing that. Seeing that it was available for the Mac, I downloaded a copy and tried it on my 8-year-old laptop, which slowed to a gelatinous crawl, cooling fans struggling to keep the processor from melting. I thought about it for a day or so and decided I’d pull the trigger and finally buy the iPad Pro I’ve been looking at since they were released. Playing games with Finn was a big part of the decision, but the other reason was that I want to work in Procreate with the Apple Pencil and learn how to illustrate with the system. I bought a new 11″ unit with the Pencil and picked it up at the local Apple Store this past week. The early review is very favorable: playing Albion on it is easy and fun! We spent a couple of hours on Friday getting me set up in the game and understanding how not to die. Now I have to catch up to her character level.
This is the first device I’ve owned with Face ID, and it’s very slick. The Pencil is fast and responsive. I bought Procreate and started fooling around in the program but it’s going to take a lot of time to sort out how I use it and get the most out of it. Getting used to the way the brushes and pressure work is an uphill battle, especially for someone as picky about the tactile feel and orientation of scratchboard tools as I am. I’m going to start out trying to mimic what I know and love, and then see where the app takes me.
I’ve been noticing the stitching on my $50 soft top coming apart above the rear flap for a couple of weeks now, and it’s been accelerating. Where it started out at an inch long, it’s now about a foot and a half long and getting worse. Some of the threads have rotted and are giving way, but some of the canvas is ripping as well. I decided to pull the whole thing off and switch it out for the dark brown top from Chewbacca for the rest of the summer until I figure out a way to repair it.
This is the first time I’ve had this top on this truck. It’s a snap model like the tan top, so it’s a simple switch. But there are differences in the design—this one is clearly an early production version while the tan top is newer. The main differences are around the front windows; on the tan model they sewed a set of padded baffles over the top of the windows so that rain wouldn’t drip inside the cab. The flaps that fold under the window frames are smaller and have less velcro surface area. And there aren’t any straps built into the back corners to hold the top down to the body.
It’s not very pretty. The color combination isn’t to my taste, but the top itself is in excellent condition. I’ve got some spare nylon strap and quick-release buckles left over from my last repair job, so I’m going to make another set of straps for this one. Finn and I took it for a test run this afternoon and the velcro held up fot ten minutes at 65mph, which is more than I can say for the other two tops. But if need be, I’ve got enough mil-spec snaps to modify the flaps like I did with the other two.
It’s hard to believe I’ve gotten this much use out of these tops—all three of them are over 20 years old and showing their age. But with some careful repairs I think I can get a couple more years out of them.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
With the parade preparations basically monopolizing my time last weekend, I neglected to mention the update from Lexington Park, where we visited with Jen’s Dad and continued helping him get his affairs in order. While Jen focused on paperwork, I hooked the boat tank up to the Chrysler and primed the carburetor with fuel. I should back up here and mention how difficult it was to find the correct fitting for the carburetor fuel inlet; between three different stores, five websites, and two handfuls of brass and nylon parts, I still didn’t get the proper size or thread combination correct. Instead, I hooked the hose up to the lower section of the existing steel fuel line and called it done.
When I primed the carb it leaked out through the gasket, so I torqued the screws down good and tested it until it stopped seeping. This seems to have flooded the carb, because I couldn’t get it to start for love or money, even after letting it sit for four hours. So we’re back to square one there.
I went back outside to the porch ceiling, which I’d powerwashed a few weeks ago, and scraped the remainder of the flaking paint off before hitting it with two coats of white exterior latex. The door surround got two coats as well, which brightens up the front of the house immensely. Then I threw almost all of the breakers in the house until I found the one that killed the outlet on the porch. That plug was flopping loose, which made me nervous. As I unscrewed it, it disintegrated in my hands. Five minutes and a new plug from my electrical stash, and it’s good as new.
There was a time when Jen and I could organize, prepare for, and host a parade party for 100+ people on our own. It was several days’ worth of preparation, purchasing and manual labor. By the time the last float passed the house and people were picking up their chairs to return to the backyard, we were tired but usually had enough gas in the tank to power through until the sun went down, and at that point we closed things down to relax. We’d be tired and dirty and still a little tipsy but we could drag stuff back inside and then pass out to the sound of the Catonsville fireworks going off over the hill.
These days, I’m good until maybe an hour after the end of the parade, and then it’s go the fuck home o’clock. We hosted our sister and brother-in-law and their kids yesterday—cooking nothing crazy, just some burgers and dogs, guacamole and coleslaw, and drinking some beer—and it damn near wiped me out. Perhaps it’s also the aftermath of the six Coronas I drank through the course of the day, but this Tuesday I am a withered husk of a human being. We did have fun, and it was great to see the family, and the parade was good (although still slightly less engaging than years past) but I’m straight exhausted, and that’s after a good 10 hours’ sleep last night.
As I get older I understand more and more why my uncles all drank Coors Light out on the lake at this age. Heavy beers don’t treat me well. I enjoy the flavor but I can’t handle the headaches they give me these days, so I’m writing them out of my life. I went through the kegerator last week and consolidated a bunch of beer I’d been avoiding into a six-pack container: several heavy chocolate stouts, double IPA’s, a Troegenator, and a coupe of others that all registered over 8.5ABV. About two hours before the parade I ran them next door to my neighbor’s, who has a liver made of cast iron and hosts a party for roughly 30% of Catonsville: surely someone there could put them to better use than I.
That also means I’m going to organize and put the homebrew equipment up for sale in a week or two, as it’s just gathering dust in the basement. It’s a sad situation, but I can’t brew anything that doesn’t give me a headache anymore. I’ve got a couple of go-to commerical beers I enjoy very much, so I’ll continue drinking those and retire the homebrew hobby for good.
This week I built an auxilliary fuel delivery system out of a boat tank, a cheap fuel pump, some spare wire, and $25 of hose. The tank is a 3 gallon West Marine unit I got on sale, with a quick disconnect and a handy gauge built in. The pump I found on Amazon, which pushes at 2.5—4psi. Everything I’ve read about the Carter AFB says it likes up to about 6psi, so I figure we’re in good shape. I soldered clips to some extra wire I had on hand and lengthened the reach of the pump, so we can disconnect it quickly from the battery if need be. The big question now is what size the fuel inlets on the carb actually are; I’ve got three Thermoquads sitting in the basement, but none of them have a screw-in fitting so I’m taking a wild guess, and the information on AFB carbs is spotty at best.
I built this to get the Chrysler moving under her own power, but the universe seems to have further plans for us. In the last month I’ve been approached by two separate people with Scouts who need help getting them running again: I drove Finn to karate practice a couple of weeks ago and one of her instructors told me she’s got a Scout under a tarp in her backyard. Naturally I offered my help to get it running. And last week a neighbor walked up the driveway and asked me for some help: his friend has a Scout that’s been sitting in a garage for years and he wants to get it running again.
Clearly I have been noticed as the Scout Guy, and more confoundingly, the Get This Scout Running Again Guy; I’m pleasantly surprised and somewhat intimidated by this development. Hopefully I can live up to it.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.