I'm A Poor Hawaiian Boy

All I have to say is that the pineapple is lying to you.

Pack Up My Belongings, I've Got To Get Away

 So about 20 years ago, I was trying to get things figured out for moving.  I was going to a place where I didn't have a great deal of personal space to work with and no internet access in any way, shape or form.  It was also almost an hour away from where I worked, so things were weird there too.

I only spent about a week living there before I packed up my stuff, again, and came back somewhere closer.

I'm entertained to note that the computer I was attempting to put together at the time, for the reason I was trying to put it together, wasn't easily done in those days, but now it is a way of life. Especially for me.

My aim was to downsize a desktop to a laptop footprint and use a USB hard drive as a permanent, high-speed storage addition. In those days, anything that I could get my hands on would not have come with a reasonable number of USB ports, and USB 2.0 was a maybe.  External hard drive? Hah!

I did end up building one out of a USB CD-ROM enclosure at some point shortly thereafter. It looked like a mess, but it did the job well enough.

I did eventually get a laptop for pretty cheap that could run what I needed it to run, but by then I was a little more established with life.

These days I have a few things going on that weren't a thing previously.

I spent several years running my home network data off an old Dell rack server (Which I don't appear to have ever mentioned anywhere here), and an HP network switch that were given to me.  I had to do a little updating on the server to get everything set up the way I wanted to, but it worked.  

Here is where things get relevant:

Once I moved into a smaller house, that didn't have someplace I could run a giant server and switch, I had to figure something else out.

I am now running everything that was previously on the server, which ONLY (I know, I know) ~6TB of storage space to a 8TB USB hard drive plugged into my primary desktop PC.

I could, however, run it off a laptop these days, because they are now powerful enough to stream high quality video and audio in the background and not suffer from too much in the way of performance issues.

It's crazy what twenty years can do. 

I'm Back In The U.S.S.R

 So I finally developed the pictures that I took with the Exakta.

More accurately, it is an Exakta VX IIa with a Carl Zeiss Jena Biotar 2/58 lens:

 The camera and lens were both pretty filthy, but after a decent cleaning, they didn't come out too bad.  Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took:

 

Given what the USSR had to say on the subject of religion, I found it both ironic and satisfying to use my first roll of film on one of these cameras at a Catholic Church.

There Ain't No Cure For The Summertime Blues

 Pictures.  I can actually place pictures in this space now, without paying for the ability to so.  Pity this wasn't a thing twenty years ago, since it caused me to migrate to a different platform.

I spent so much time not posting images to either of my LJ blogs, that I cannot bring myself to ruin the text-based world that I created here.

These posts will be (mostly) cross-posted on the blog that I migrated to, but I will not be bringing those over to this space.

And Bring Him To The Ground

This afternoon I went to an orchard for...Reasons.

Things got interesting when I realized that my D3500 only had something like 15% battery life left and my Nikon FE only had a single roll of film. By interesting, I mean fantastic.  I find limits to be amazing for getting careful pictures.

Here are some of the highlights from the D3500:

 As for the film, I had my Nikon FE with the Nikkor 50mm lens.  Here are some of the highlights from the roll of film:

By "highlights" I mean every picture that doesn't have people in them, because there isn't a single dud on this roll. I really like this camera.  As for the developing, I took care of that myself. No more sending them out!

• Current Location: Home, Home again.
• Current Mood: exhausted
• Current Music: Another One Bites The Dust ~ Queen + Paul Rodgers

 

 

Searching For My Lost Shaker Of Salt

The year is 2025.

I am laying on my couch typing this post on a Lenovo something or other PC. I have the screen flipped almost all the way over and am using the touch screen keyboard to type this.

As I do this thing, I am thinking of an article written by the late Douglas Adams, and published in The Salmon of Doubt wherein he is expressing his feelings about using a palmtop (or something similar) pc while in the bath and can't help but wonder what he would think of writing on something like an iPad (quite the Apple fanboy, he was), something like nine years later.

I vaguely recall writing a blog post on my phone on the side of the road in something like 2009/2010, but I cannot recall when. 

Nope, here it is: https://galeharpring.blogspot.com/2009/11/there-nothing-to-it.html 

That was a dumb smart phone. After that, things got real with the phones and many things were taken for granted.

But that isn't what I came to write about today. I was going to write about how I am currently reading Hunter S. Thompson's book Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail '72 and about how much more sense his writing style makes to me now.

Which is odd, because as I've perused the entries on this old thing, there are quite a few pieces I would almost call Gonzo Blogging.

Much of which predates me reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 2010.

Sweet Home Alabama

 Back in something like 2019, I decided to move this to WordPress for reasons that I'm currently unaware of.  I've become somewhat annoyed and disillusioned with WP over the last year or so. Again, for reasons that I'm currently unaware of.  It probably has something to do with the fact that they want me to give them an annoyingly large amount of cashey-money to be able to post whatever I want to on a blog that I've maintained for twenty-five years, across four (I'm pretty sure) platforms.

 All but one of those blogs I have access to and have considered writing in again in the last year or so, but since I would like to post pictures, I suspect this is the one to start leaning into again.

I would like to migrate everything from WP back over to here by the first of the year, but who knows how difficult it will be.  Easy if I can do an import/export, but more difficult if I have to copy paste.

I'm going to choose to be optimistic.  

Back In The USSR

A couple of weeks ago I came into possession of three Exakta cameras that came from Soviet occupied Germany, and were manufactured sometime in the late '50s to early '60s.  The cameras are hilariously counter-intuitive to use, but the lenses are apparently very desirable and seem to be worth a decently large amount of money if I should decide to flip them.

 I have a roll of film in one of the cameras now. When I finish this, I'm going to walk down the road to a catholic church and finish the roll of film there.

Why?

Because it seems to be very ironic to take photos of any kind of religious establishment, since that really wouldn't have been an option when the cameras were new.

I will post the photos when I develop them.  

There's Got To Be A Twist

 

I was "given" a Nintendo Switch 2 as a gift this past weekend. I'm enjoying it so far, and it is not lost on me that I got my first Switch (Lite) just short of six years ago.

I don't have any pictures to post right now like I did before, but I plan to get some screenshots and write a bit more about it in a few weeks.

When I got the Switch, I was about 2 1/2 years into the life of the thing, so there was a pretty good selection of games to choose from, and I'd say I snagged some good ones to go with it right out of the gate. The Switch 2 was the Mario Kart World bundle and I snagged a copy of Bravely Default, which I enjoyed on the 3DS, and really want the opportunity to go through again. I haven't gotten the chance to actually start that one yet, but I've been playing some Mario Kart and Animal Crossing.

Yes, I started another island.

I re-read my post from my first day with the original Switch Lite, and I must say. I'm disappointed that I haven't managed to play through FFXII yet. I don't use the Lite much anymore, that has been taken over by other people in my house, and the digital versions of games start to get a little weird when you have more than two consoles. I should probably start looking for a cartridge for that one. And maybe, you know, actually play the game.

But I digress.

And forgot what I was going to write.

Oh Your Five (Five) Five Dollar (Five dollar) Five Dollar Footlong

Back in April I went to my local camera store's annual garage sale.  At that sale, I saw a rando lens that had no mount upon it.  Upon closer examination, I saw that it was a Vivitar universal lens.  Not sure what it is called at the moment, but I was given an adapter for a Nikon and purchased a lens to use with it like 10 years later.  

 I want to say that was a 135mm, but I would have to go back and look.

Anyway, I saw this lens...This 400mm lens in a box for $5. I knew I had an adapter for it and would be a fool to pass it up.

Anyway, today I actually got to use it for the first time in a "for serious" kind of way.  I went down to Yellowwood State Forest in Brown county, slapped that thing on my D3500 and decided what there was to see. I came across a VERY cooperative butterfly:

 As this is the first time I really got the opportunity to use this lens, I did a lot of messing around with F Stops to see what worked and what didn't.  Much like my filter adventure from a while back, it's not very forgiving if you get things just wrong.  An incorrect F Stop on a day like this seemed to be an over or under exposure, and it didn't look like there would be much I could do to salvage those images.  Which is fine, that is the purpose of this experiment.

The detail on something as simple as a wooden post (directly above) is outstanding, but the focus is VERY touchy.  I'm not sure if the lens was designed that way, it is a byproduct of it's size, or if it is just because it is old, but if I'm not extremely careful, things get out of focus.  Which is okay.

 Anyway, The lens is great.  Five dollars well spent.