GAS Latest Shiny Things (non camera related)

marlof said:
Or use one lens to correct near-sighted issues, and one for far-sighted issues. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I know of two people who swear by that solution. The human brain is obviously a remarkable thing.
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I have a good friend that does this. He says it works fine. I'll have to ask him which lens goes in the dominant eye.
 
From what the opt' told me, one eye handles distance, while the other handles up close, and it's different for each person. You already instinctively know this, as it will be how you select which eye you use for certain things, like aiming down a sight. I'm right handed, but I played hockey left handed. Interestingly, I do everything else right handed.
 
Well, I won't get the new lenses for another week or so. Meh, health insurance only covers about 1/5th of the price....That could've gone to another nice camera body.


For this upcoming weekend at the Army Engineers museum, I've been expanding the display material a bit;
US Army demolition charge computing tape measure. It was cheap, because of its rough condition.
This one is from 1975, but is basically unchanged from the World War 2 version (except for the Phillips head screws)

ComputingTape.jpg


Wouldn't be too difficult to make a replacement for that missing metal tab.
 
There's a fun way to establish which is your dominant eye, for distance anyway.

Point at something in the distance, without thinking too much about it. Now close each eye in turn and you'll see your finger jump sideways when you close one eye, and barely move when you close the other. When the finger jumps, you've just closed your dominant eye.

I know it's April fool's day today, but I promise you it works. Just be careful who you are pointing and winking at.

-R
 
Richard said:
There's a fun way to establish which is your dominant eye, for distance anyway.

Point at something in the distance, without thinking too much about it. Now close each eye in turn and you'll see your finger jump sideways when you close one eye, and barely move when you close the other. When the finger jumps, you've just closed your dominant eye.

I know it's April fool's day today, but I promise you it works. Just be careful who you are pointing and winking at.

-R
Click to expand...
It works a bit better if you hold your finger vertical at arm's length.
That method is how to determine whether to use a left or right handed bow in archery.
 
Richard said:
There's a fun way to establish which is your dominant eye, for distance anyway.

Point at something in the distance, without thinking too much about it. Now close each eye in turn and you'll see your finger jump sideways when you close one eye, and barely move when you close the other. When the finger jumps, you've just closed your dominant eye.

I know it's April fool's day today, but I promise you it works. Just be careful who you are pointing and winking at.

-R
Click to expand...

I remember a certain action movie with Nicolas Cage where they used a similar method to established which was his dominant eye.
 
Well, Heather's PC is pretty much complete now.

Went to my supplier to pick up the other bits today, and decided to pay them to install the 2TB SSD in my laptop. Just as well, they had ordered the wrong one, with a heatsink, and it wouldn't fit, so I eventually ended up with an upmarket Crucial one (same company as Micron). Fifteen minutes turned into an hour and a half!

Currently, W11 will not allow me to access it via the Windows disk management service, unless I log in as the original administrator logon.

I'll fix that tomorrow, when I remove the bitlocker encryption from both SSDs.

Then to start the back grade to Windows 10.

I've got the 4TB Kingston Hyper for my main workstation, and I don't expect installing it to be problematic.

Laptops are a PITA in some respects!
 
Went on my first outing with the new inflatable kayak. An Anfibio packraft, to replace my Itiwit. Incredible, how much faster and straighter it runs. And amazing, how it weighs all of five kilograms including seat, pump, and paddles, compared to the old 20 kg that I was barely able to lift.

And what a fun tour, too, with my kid and my parents on the Danube.
 
I divested myself of my Windows PC that I built. Nothing wrong with any of it, but I’m at a place in life where you have to pay me to use Windows (which my workplace does, essentially). The other problem is when I have a PC that can be upgraded, well, I keep thinking about upgrading it, and GPU prices are just plain ridiculous these days.

So, to keep things simple for the gaming itch, I took a chance on a PS5 slim for a really good price on eBay. The listing said the box was heavily damaged, and the condition was fair. It arrived a few days ago, and the box matched the description, but the PS5 itself appears to be brand new. The cables were all still factory bundled, and there was protective tape on some of the console. Certainly feels like another deal of the decade, along with the OM refurbished E-M10iv I picked up a while back. Through selling various things, I’m actually a few hundred bucks ahead and no worse for wear. Don’t worry though, I found a few things I could buy with that too. 😆

I’ve taken to the E-M10iv far more than I expected. I like that it has the manual controls but is otherwise simple to operate, and it is nice to have an Auto mode for that rare occasion when I hand someone else the camera for a family photo op. I can’t tell you how often I’d do that and the volunteer looks somewhat terrified.
 
Darmok N Jalad said:
I divested myself of my Windows PC that I built. Nothing wrong with any of it, but I’m at a place in life where you have to pay me to use Windows (which my workplace does, essentially). The other problem is when I have a PC that can be upgraded, well, I keep thinking about upgrading it, and GPU prices are just plain ridiculous these days.

So, to keep things simple for the gaming itch, I took a chance on a PS5 slim for a really good price on eBay. The listing said the box was heavily damaged, and the condition was fair. It arrived a few days ago, and the box matched the description, but the PS5 itself appears to be brand new. The cables were all still factory bundled, and there was protective tape on some of the console. Certainly feels like another deal of the decade, along with the OM refurbished E-M10iv I picked up a while back. Through selling various things, I’m actually a few hundred bucks ahead and no worse for wear. Don’t worry though, I found a few things I could buy with that too. 😆

I’ve taken to the E-M10iv far more than I expected. I like that it has the manual controls but is otherwise simple to operate, and it is nice to have an Auto mode for that rare occasion when I hand someone else the camera for a family photo op. I can’t tell you how often I’d do that and the volunteer looks somewhat terrified.
Click to expand...
The EM10 MKiv is under appreciated, a great value if you can get past the needless menu items that were removed by Olympus.
 
BruceRH said:
The EM10 MKiv is under appreciated, a great value if you can get past the needless menu items that were removed by Olympus.
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Yeah, there are a few items I'd like to have in there, but at the same time, simple is good. I guess if they add many more, you basically have an E-M5iii with a flip-out screen. 😃
 
Darmok N Jalad said:
I divested myself of my Windows PC that I built. Nothing wrong with any of it, but I’m at a place in life where you have to pay me to use Windows (which my workplace does, essentially).
Click to expand...
That's why I back graded my Dell Latitude refurbished laptop from W11 to W10. W10 is at least usable, well, once one installs Open Shell! AND creates a local user with Administrator privileges. AND signs off from Microsoft ...

W11 is more of a disgrace than W8.0!

MS lost the plot completely when they dropped W7!
Darmok N Jalad said:
The other problem is when I have a PC that can be upgraded, well, I keep thinking about upgrading it, and GPU prices are just plain ridiculous these days.
Click to expand...
A decent graphics card can be had for about AUD$ 400 (that's Australian Pesos, these days). However, one can spend up to AUD$ 10K on a crazy powerful card ...
 
John King said:
That's why I back graded my Dell Latitude refurbished laptop from W11 to W10. W10 is at least usable, well, once one installs Open Shell! AND creates a local user with Administrator privileges. AND signs off from Microsoft ...

W11 is more of a disgrace than W8.0!

MS lost the plot completely when they dropped W7!

A decent graphics card can be had for about AUD$ 400 (that's Australian Pesos, these days). However, one can spend up to AUD$ 10K on a crazy powerful card ...
Click to expand...
Yeah, and it's not just cost. There are theoretically "cheap" GPUs that one can use, but they sell out instantly, or stock is never replenished. The AI craze has overtaken this market entirely, so all the production space is going towards that end. Reminds me of the reason I got out of this space last time, when mining for cryptocurrency was responsible for shortages and price insanity.

And yes, MS is entirely off the rails, IMO. It's not just W11, but their "Copilot everywhere" attitude, and quality assurance is way down. I encounter errors in Windows/Office at work every single week. I'm not exaggerating. The tools are still good, but there are way too many bugs, like window rendering issues (a dialog box pops up and it's entirely empty). Apple isn't without its faults either (like their entirely bungled "Apple Intelligence" rollout), but at least the GUI renders correctly and it doesn't change every few months. There's a disturbing amount of clicking-and-waiting in Windows, which is an alarming regression.
 
Darmok N Jalad said:
Curious how you like it. I just picked up the slim, but the pro sure feels tempting too.
Click to expand...
My original PS5 only has a .5 TB SSD which is a little limited if you want a number of AAA games. I eventually supplemented it with a 2TB SSD.
The Pro has an over 50% more powerful GPU for faster rendering and more fancy ray tracing and AI-upscaling. So I can probably switch games from performance mode to graphics mode without lowering the frame rate substancially. Not a lot of PS5 Pro enhanced games out there yet to take full advantage of this yet either.

I did not really need to upgrade, but a buddy of mine is still on a first model PS4 (another hand-me-down from me) and I've offered my older PS5 to him.
So he can at least play the newer generation games with the rest of our coop buddies; Helldivers 2, ARMA reforger, Sea of Thieves, 7 Days to Die....to name a few.
 

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