Time Marches On

I was taking a couple of pictures of my Play station (Original) the other day and came across the Playstation Underground ID label from about a million years ago that is still on the bottom of the console.  I decided to make a handful of the labels to adorn the rest of my Playstation collection.  Every Sony console and handheld now sports one of these beautiful things:

 

This one is on my Playstation Vita.

 

Not going to lie, I kind of love this thing.  The build quality feels good and the screen looks great!  My only gripe is storage, but I have everything but the patience to hack the thing and solve that problem right now.

As for the labels themselves.  Yes, I could have done a better job with the sizing.  I could have updated them somewhat if I felt compelled.  This is a first draft.  I may use some standard mailing labels, match up the black for the background and run the name and ID number in red or something…Just to update it but on the other hand, it is a classic and I’m probably the only person with a Playstation Underground labeled Playstation 4!

I might add a picture of that later, but I’m tired.

You Can’t Judge A Book By Lookin’ At The Cover

 

Got a ChromeBook today.

I am, in fact, updating this blog from said ChromeBook today.

I’ve never used one of these things before, I always thought they were somewhat stupid, honestly. Well, now I’ve used one and my belief is bordering somewhere along maybe not super stupid, and possibly somewhat useful, depending on the task the task.

Chrome OS is now, apparently on version 78, so I assume there has been some pretty serious work done on it over the years. Mine had version 61 out of the box, and it took less than 10 minutes to update to the current version over the Starbucks WiFi.

This particular computer is an HP Chromebook 11-V010NR which is rated pretty decently for a super inexpensive PC. It has 4gb of RAM and 16gb of built in storage. It boasts an 11 inch display, 1 HDMI port, 2 USB (3.0?) ports, an audio output and a Micro-SD slot. Allegedly the battery will last something along the lines of 10 hours, and with virtually no moving parts, that is probably not a hard claim to actually adhere to.

At a guess, I would have to say that this thing will do a pretty good job of what it is made for…Surfing the web, light document creation and editing, playing a few lightweight games and scrolling mindlessly through Facebook/Instagram/Twitter.

I haven’t yet ventured into the world of photo editing or graphic design, which is primarily what I am using PCs for these days, but I don’t expect things to be all that great on that front, since, well, Chromebook.

So far as I can tell, Word and Excel are pretty solid and more or less fully functional, there will just be a learning curve associated with figuring out where everything lives now.

I don’t understand why Microsoft doesn’t port Publisher to other operating systems, because that would make this thing a lot more likely to come out of my bag rather than the laptop, but, alas.

I am having a much easier time adjusting to this than my iMac, partially because a lot of the shortcut key combinations still work, but I do miss the F keys, along with the fact that there are certain things I have to look up. For instance, screen shots, but either I will adjust or I will never use this thing again after today.

Amazon Music is streaming well and the sound is quite excellent via the headphone jack at least!

This thing doesn’t seem likely to be consigned to the “Never to be used again” pile of computer crap that I own though. I’ll probably use it for what it is designed for. Doing simple tasks quickly, watching videos and streaming music.

He's A Pinball Wizard

 Came across a Nintendo Switch Lite.

I’m enjoying it greatly so far! As it stands, it is the best way I’ve ever seen to play games I’ve owned for a long (in some cases, decades!) time.

I had been up in the air about getting a Switch since it basically first came out, and then when the Lite came out recently I spent some more time contemplating it.

With the original Switch, I was really liking the idea of TV/Portability, but the cost was a huge turnoff. Also the issues with the JoyCon drift and a few other things I was on the fence. I started evaluating the Lite version, and when I realized that I don’t really do any sort of gaming on an actual TV screen anymore, it became a more serious contender. After actually holding one, I really started liking the way the Lite feels in my hand. Seeing as the controllers aren’t detachable, it feels a lot more solid, which is part of the appeal.

Yes, the screen is smaller, but it looks great, and is a wonderful size!

As for the game library, the ones I have are all games I have owned for a long time:

I’ve owned the original Link’s Awakening since my father gave it to me as a birthday gift in something like 1996, and every now and again I pull it out and play it.

Final Fantasy X was the first game I bought with my refurbished PS2 in about 2002 or 2003, and I play that one every now and again.

Final Fantasy XII I bought new. Got it at Target right when it came out because they were giving away a gift card with the game purchase…Which I used to buy groceries since I had just spent my grocery money on a video game.

Breath Of The Wild is the newest game I own on this list. Got that one with the Wii U at the beginning of the year and I’ve enjoyed the heck out of that one.

As for the games, Link’s Awakening is a remake of the first portable Zelda game. This is an amazing game all around, a direct sequal to the brilliant “A Link To The Past,” and released about two years after. It took me something like two years to get through this game. Partly because that Gameboy consumed batteries like nobody’s business, partly because I just never wanted it to end. I picked up the port of the Deluxe edition that was released for Gameboy Color on my 3DS a few years back, but this one is absolutely the best remake.

The graphics are very much similar to those in A Link Between Worlds (also fantastic!), and I feel like Nintendo knocked this one out of the park.

As for Final Fantasy XII, I’m not sure why they added “The Zodiac Age” to the title, and I honestly haven’t bothered looking up the reason for it on the internet, yet. As for gameplay itself, the cutscenes are a lot prettier than I remember and the in game graphics are very nice too! It is an updated version of the original, while still keeping very true to it.

Final Fantasy X is one I haven’t started playing through again yet, and I’m a little bit into Breath Of The Wild, so I don’t have any sort of images or anything from those two yet. I’m tempted to grab a video capture device and record some playtime from the Wii U version. Although I might just see about getting some screenshots of both versions, just for comparison. Same thing with Link’s Awakeing, If I can find out how to grab a screenshot or 5 from the 3DS, I will update this post with some side by side shots.

Needless to say, I am enjoying it greatly.

One More Cup Of Coffee 'Fore I Go

A while back I came into possession of a Sony A6000 mirrorless camera. 

(Yes, that IS a hand made Star Trek neck strap!)

Finally I am able to play around with it.

My employers gave me a broken camera and lens a while back.  The shutter was stuck shut.  After a few months of poking around online, I found a functional body for less than the cost of repairing the old one, so I snagged it.  There was a lens included with the damaged camera, so I had hopes that it would function.

It did not.

Since I have been pretty much all about Nikon camera equipment for the entire time I have been doing this, I ordered an adapter to allow me to use my Nikon F Mount lenses with a Sony E Mount camera body.

Once that came in, I was able to finally use the camera, and I must say, it is nice!

 

The above photos were taken with a 75-300 Vivitar Macro Focusing Zoom lens manufactured in about 1975 mated to this glorious 24.3 Megapixel beast, and I must say…The images this combination produce can be stunning if you take your time.  The lens is not fast by any stretch of the imagination.  Take your time, line it up and get it exposed correctly and it is beautiful!
Currently I have an old Nikkormat lens from about 1959 on the body, and the results are just as beautiful:

The low light results are also very nice, and for the most part, very clean.  I’ve gotten a few grainy shots with the ISO maxed out at 25,600 but, for the most part, I don’t need to use it that high since I can easily set F-Stops and shutter speeds to work in harmony with a flash to produce cleaner pictures.

The continuous shooting mode is smooth and fast, thanks to the mirrorless nature of the beast, but be wary…You will fill up an SD card real quick if you aren’t careful!  Took me about 3 hours to fill a 16gb card.  Part of that was messing around with it, but al lot of the space was taken up by the RAW files which are ~24mb each.

  

Overall, it is a camera that I am very happy with.  The size and weight take some getting used to after using a DSLR or SLR for so long, and it feels fairly durable.  I doubt it will fully replace my trusty old D40x anytime soon, but it is a lot of fun to use, and in some situations it vastly outperforms my old DSLR.

Wondered How Tomorrow Could Ever Follow Today

Decided to send a message to my old friend from school this evening.

We ended up having a nice conversation and became FB friends, so I guess all is well.  It was nice to catch up with her a little, she was one of the most positive influences in my life back in those days.

I Want My...I Want My MTV

While attempting to consolidate and, for a lack of better term, archive my web presence in one place, I completely forgot about my old Geocities sites.  Problem is by the time I realized that, Yahoo! had shut the whole thing down and deleted it.
Actually deleted all of it. For everyone. Everywhere.
ALL. OF. IT.
A huge record of the “early days” of the internet. Of early, free web hosting and usable tools for design.
Every now and again I check the oocities archive to see if either of the two sites I actually remember pop up.  I downloaded the index file for the nearly 1TB torrent, but I cannot find anything in there.  Nor do they seem to be present on the Internet Archive.
Maybe I have it backed up onto a CD. While not likely, I did find two pages on a CD I did for a birthday gift for an old friend last week.

Here are those, at least:

Faces Come Out Of The Rain

I saw someone at Kroger this evening who reminded me of an old...Friend? I guess you would call her?  Our relationship was a very odd one.

I know it was not her, but I began mentally having the conversation we probably would have had...It disturbed me to hear the things I think I may have told her.  Things I have been aware of for...Oh, I don't know the 22 years it has been since we met.  The year and a half of bad decision making leading up to it?

I should probably have a talk with the psychiatrist that lives in my head.

Pa Rum Pum Pum

Since I started out my photograpy stuff with 35mm SLR cameras and do not believe in post processing, I have amassed a sizeable collection of camera filters over the years.  Some of them are actually useful, some of them are just downright bizarre. A few of them I purchased, a lot of them were gifts.

My collection is mostly colored stuff.  I have a huge set of solid and gradient filters, a small set of colored gradient filters that I can actually screw directly to the lens and each other, a set of bizarre plastic I don’t even know filters that I refer to as my “analoge Instagram filters”, a couple of neutral density filters and even one odd…I don’t know? Fly eye? thing.  I also have a telescope lens attachment that I’ve never had ample opportunity to use and a fish eye job that I haven’t seen for years that I really need to find.

Solid and gradient filters

My wacky 5-way thing

SUPERSPEED!

Last but not least…My collection of analog Instagram filters!

On Every Page

This is going to jump around…A lot, so please stick with me.

I take pictures. 

Sometimes I take a lot of them.

Not going to lie, my preferred method is using a Nikon Nikkormat FS DSLR that was made in the late 1960s because it presents a unique challenge.

That camera is completely mechanical. No electricity whatsoever. No light meter, no nothing. No battery. No nothing. That camera has never once let me down!

CVS stopped processing film in store which is why I basically stopped using film.  I can no longer get a roll processed for $2.19 in less than an hour.  I have to send it off somewhere and wait a week.  I know, I know…#firstworldproblems and all of that, but for me I want to know so I can learn from my experience.  I want to see what I got before I forget what I used.

Post processing is a thing I really don’t believe in. For me each image is an individual lesson.  I want to know what I had so I can know what I did right and what I did wrong.  At any given time I will go on an adventure with several different cameras and lenses, so I like to know what I did with what while it is still fresh in my mind.

For me, the biggest reason I have stood by Nikon cameras is (other than durability) the Nikon F-Mount for lenses.  Nikon has used this mounting system since something like 1967, which means that virtually any lens that fits a Nikon camera from then on will work on a modern DSLR.

That makes me happy.  I have gotten so much amazing vintage glass for so cheap it is not even funny!

Also, I have found that shooting manual lenses on a DSLR has taught me enough that I can just shoot and go on 35mm and not end up nearly as many bad exposures as I used to get.  I have 3 rolls of nearly perfect film from 3 different cameras with 3 (vastly) different lenses to back this up.  No light meters, no nothing.

I just went with it.