It is, inexplicably, still winter here, and so little to do except projects that really don’t result in photographs. I’m still working on some other possibilities, so hopefully something will be along shortly. And as I say out loud below, I’ve got several things planned for later on in the year, actually scheduling photo opportunities rather than taking them as they come, so we’ll see if this results in more and/or better content.
So for now, we got this:
Walkabout podcast – Nothing in particular 2
Some of the things I made reference to within:
George Hrab’s Geologic podcast. I shouldn’t link to this because mine will now seem even worse than you originally thought in comparison, but I can promise you that I will never talk about how great The Beatles were, so there’s that.
The program to block Windows Update Services can be found here. With Windows 10, the updating service has become obnoxious, intrusive, and uncontrollable, any one of which is an inexcusable trait for any software to have – having all three is fucking contemptible. This disables that completely, and greatly improves Windows performance to boot (at least in my experience.)
I thought I’d posted at greater length about what I call the ‘puzzle drive,’ but so far the only mention of it that I’ve turned up has been here. Maybe it was in comments on another site. But think about how satisfied you feel whenever you solve a puzzle, figure out a mystery, or even fix something. And alternately, how frustrated you feel when you can’t. It’s pretty compelling, isn’t it? I think there’s more to this than we typically give it credit for.
The site I used to learn how to clean digital sensors is here. Once again, and they stress this many times on their site, you only want to do this if you feel comfortable with doing delicate work. And yes, Eclipse is the name of the high-grade alcohol – I picked mine up off of Ebay. I also use a battery filler bulb instead of the ridiculously overpriced Giottos Rocket Blower – three to five bucks is about in line with a goddamn squeeze bulb air blower. A good artist’s brush for the first pass, cleaned in baby shampoo (doesn’t leave residues behind) and rinsed and dried thoroughly, and then a microfiber cloth also cleaned meticulously. A dust-free environment helps a lot, but that’s very hard to accomplish, though getting the bathroom a bit steamy can do a lot for controlling airborne stuff. And you can see below why this has to be done from time to time (or at least, why I have to do it…)
And GIMP, a full-featured and completely free photo editing program can be found here. There are versions for Windows, Linux, and OS X.
The plethora of Jim’s pics which contributed to last year’s posts can be found here. And I might have a few others up within a week or so.
That’s all for now. But if you’re looking for more suggestions on how to handle the season, last year’s podcast may help. I already have a bunch of seeds and mantis egg cases for spring.
Addendum: Oh yeah, forgot this in the original post. While I make snarky comments about income, more often than I should really, I think that doing what you like to do is more important than chasing the “‘Murican Dream” or whatever.