So, after careful consideration, I am letting quite a few of my domain’s lapse. The only issue at this point is that I have to look at them in my list for 80 days before they roll off. It just annoys me. It’s a function of the new provider (my current provider was purchased). I decided that I am keeping 3saintsartstudio, redskyartstudio, markschaaf, ratpuke7, czech-it-out, and unclemarksbasement. I decided that there are only so many hours in the day and there is no fricking way I can develop any more than that. Everything else is disposable. I did however, sign up for the next watercolor class with John! On that note, I have to boogie and go pick up a memory stick and some shoes. C-ya.
Well, I have quite a few irons in the fire, and I owe my nephews some goodies (entries from UMB – hint: Arduin). On a different note, I have to sign up for an art class, I haven’t taken anything since December of last year – 6 freaking months! I recently swapped out my Carver pre-amp and replaced it with a Pioneer pre-amp. I am also swapping out my Carver amp and will replace it with a different Pioneer amp. Going “older school” to match my Pioneer speakers. I may hate the setup – we shall see. I have been ordering some SACD’s and will soon hook up the Sony 400 disk changer. I needed a couple of new D/A converters, because I want to use a couple of the Toslink out ports on both the changer and the minidisk player, but the preamp is old school and has no digital in ports. I am planning on filling up the changer with SACD’s and will leave normal CDs for the FLAC streamers. I still haven’t hooked up the tape deck, so i have no point of reference yet. Speaking of which, I decided to do a different streamer in this basement setup. We shall see how it goes. I’ll be posting pix in a couple of weeks. I just want to “see” if I can hear a difference. Life is always interesting.
Hello Gutenberg! This is definitely different. I didn’t think that I installed this plug-in but I’m glad I did and that it’s working now. I remember it crashing my site and having to disable it.
In any event, Happy New Year 2025 readers!
Update: I hit the 100K point mark in Duo Lingo for Russian! Making it my most studied language. However, I have to start furthering myself in the Russian language and not just working on points ;p. I am also going to start to try and learn Hindi. I have a new goal – keep my Russian up and learn Hindi at the same time. I can try and practice with Vikash and Pooja.
Update: I had a doctors appt on Jan 3rd and I got the directive that I have to lose some weight, and my doctor recommended that I start limiting my carbs. So, that is what I am doing. I did some keto stuff last year and although it wasn’t sustainable, I used a pretty good app on the iPhone (Carb Manager). I am using the same app this time but adjusting my carbs to the recommended amount. I mentioned trying to diet last year and was using the “Lumen” to try and get my body into fat burning mode. While I could never get it there, I could only burn carbs or glucose. I got frustrated and ditched the Lumen after 2 or 3 months and figured that I was metabolically inflexible and had no idea how to combat it. Well, this time I have a strategy. This time, I am trying to be “Ideologically Flexible” (flexible in thought) so, I will see what I can do to adjust my diet and exercise this time. Anyway, the last time was a stupid time to diet – right before a 12-day cruise to the “ABC Islands”. Yeah, I know – stupid. I haven’t busted out the Lumen yet. I had a bunch of concerns for the doctor on resting heart rate and metabolic inflexibility – since diabetes runs in the family. I am taking 6 weeks off from watercolor painting and trying to get a jump start on exercise (my art teacher was not feeling well and is taking the first 6 weeks of this year off – at night). Hopefully, he is feeling better and will resume night teaching. I retired my old weight bench and bought a new one – it is much safer. I don’t have to worry about weights crushing my larynx.
Update: After almost a year of audio frustration, I rewired my Klipsch speakers I got from my brother and decided to bi-amp them. My theory is that the crossovers are fried so I will use the receiver’s crossover to bypass the speaker’s crossover. That should increase the speaker’s performance as well as cut out the distortion and attenuation. I went to a record show and bought 2 new albums (vinyl) – Evanescence – Fallen (2003) , Triumph – Just A Game (1979) and some record cover sleaves. I also found some replacement needles for my turntable. Around Christmas, I purchased an audio streamer so I can rip all my CD’s to it. Currently, they are all in the cloud (Apple). I also have a NAD streamer, but I lost all the data someway, So I am not very keen on re-burning my CD’s. The cloud is bullet proof, but you are beholden to apple forever. I was also looking at ROON. I love the MAC mini. I may try something like that – if I can ever figure out how ROON works.
So, applications have been giving me a hard time this week. If it wasn’t Duo Lingo, it was my blog, or some application at work. Duo-Lingo kept giving me errors no matter what I would do. I was having a hard time getting anything accomplished. So, I filed a bug note with the app manufacturer. I tried all the suggestions they had, from uninstalling the application to restarting the app. Turns out, since I have 3 wireless routers (SSIDs) in my house, the one that was the most convenient was not connecting to the app. It’s lack of connection was causing the errors. Change the WAP, problem solved! Couldn’t log into my blog for a few weeks! I forgot that all I have to do is disable some of my more esoteric plug-ins, the problem goes away! I still have to make everything work together though.
I am sore today. My trainer was on vacation this week, so I worked out by myself. I guess I tend to push myself harder than usual. Chest sore, triceps sore, shoulders sore, Hammie’s sore. I’ve been pounding the protein. I think I need to work out more than once per week – just not as hard though. I think my body needs it.
I am working on a watercolor of the Chicago skyline. A friend suggested it. I am still wrestling on the drawing part of things. I may mount it on a board and stretch the paper since its only on 140lb – it is currently on a pad block. Can’t wait for fall and painting again!
I have been starting to study for my Azure AZ-900 test which is broad-based Azure concepts. It’s been fairly interesting and a lot of things I can apply to my website (from a concepts perspective). Which has been good for me. I would really like to put my site on Azure, but I wonder how much that would cost me? It would probably be cost prohibitive since my stuff is just a glorified blog and a personal opinion blog at that – lame.
I started doing a portrait last week of Leo. I am planning on using acrylic paint tonight painting and a smallish 11×14 portrait, with the plan on cutting it down to fit an 8×10 frame – matted.
In duo lingo, I started doing Russian in lieu of Dutch. Just for a break. I’ll come back to Dutch. Russian is like an old friend. I learned Russian back at the university for Physics.
My honest opinion of Nikon cameras DSLR, DX, FX, and mirrorless…
I have 3 Nikons – D5600, D810, D850. First, the 2 full frames (D810 and D850) are behemoths and with the larger lenses I need a tripod that is capable of handling around 24lbs. Second. the D5600 which has WiFi built in is smaller, lighter, and is quick and nimble -but the D850 which also has WiFi support, weighs a ton but is quick. The D5600 is also supposed to have GPS support built in. But nothing in the Nikon world is more full of crap than “supportive GPS”. Its highly complex, slow as hell, and requires steps that would frustrate the most patient person. The D850 pulls location data easily/seamlessly from the iPhone while the others do not. However, you have to move the pictures to your iPhone or Apple Cloud. Third, from a shot perspective, you can fit more in in the same shot with a FX vs DX. I used to joke with a friend to take 2 big steps back and get the same shot and save money. Fourth, only the D850 does movies easily, the other 2 are a PITA.
I like the professional looking pictures from the D810 and the D850 vs the D5600 – better bokeh, better lenses, higher megapixel counts, a longer shelf life (equates to more pictures over the life of the camera), the D850 is also a much faster camera than the D5600 or the D810 – from both a chip and consequently a focus and picture processing perspective.
I’ll take the D850 – anytime. I don’t know if I would take the D810 over the D5600 knowing what I know now – I think I would recommend living with the D5600. Mirrorless vs the D850? I don’t think it’s worth it – save your money.
Back in the summer of 69′. Neil, Buzz, and Collins landed and walked on the moon! Well, Michael Collins was there in spirit. He orbited in the return ship.
Nikon D850 First Pix with the help of YouTube video – this was a life saver! Kudos to “Atort Aerials”. I didn’t feel like any of this was intuitive.
There is never enough time in the day. It’s always something. The baby shower went well, unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures. That the hell kind of photographer am I going to make? I was so inundated with work from a getting everything together perspective, clean the house, cook the food, organize things, etc. I didn’t have time to think about photography and that was a bummer in retrospect. What’s a dad to do?
I got a Nikon D850 on eBay and am selling my D810. The main differences are the 2 is the extra 10Mp of resolution, the extra 2 fps, the upgraded chipset, the built-in wireless, better video and faster memory card support.
As I learn, I will post. I purchased the memory cards I will be using and instead of relying on the ability to upload and clear photos, I decided to take the plunge and bought 1 TB memory cards – both CFExpress and microXDSC. It may seem like overkill, but I figured I’d rather grow with it instead of outgrowing it almost immediately.
