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New Camera, Old Glass

A couple weeks ago I purchased a new to me Canon 5D, Mark II, 21 megapixel, full frame, DSLR. It was a top of the line Canon 15 years ago and takes some of the most amazing photos I have taken in my life. It is my first full frame camera. For those not familiar, this means the sensor is larger than the size of 35mm piece of film: a whopping 24x36mm, over 43mm across. Over 20x larger than any cell phone camera. That being said, some cell phones take some amazing photos, but they really rely on digital manipulation to stitch together several images from up to 4 different cameras together. DSLR and Mirrorless cameras use the old fashioned way, huge sensors and huge glass to capture images. I am going to do my best to take a photo a day, or more.

Window, Canon 5D, Mark II, Manual Soviet Lens, 50mm F3.5.
Window, Canon 5D, Mark II, Helios 58mm, F2 lens
Bark, Canon 5D, Mark II, Helios 58mm, F2 lens
Bokeh test, Canon 5D, Mark II, Helios 58mm, F2 lens
 

Posted by on March 29, 2023 in Old Glass, Photos

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An Open Letter to Elon Musk

An open letter to Elon Musk re: Twitter

A month or so ago you completed your acquisition of Twitter, a social media platform. Not a software company, not an engineering company, a SOCIAL MEDIA platform. You have laid off over half your staff and with your ill worded ultimatum, the remaining half of your staff left as well.

In the meantime you have been holding ‘code reviews’ which are pointless in terms of fixing what is wrong with twitter. You then add a cherry to the top of the crap cake and allow a known traitor, Trump, back on your platform. I have been an engineer, a real, degree engineer, for 24 years and I can tell you are not facing a technological issue, you are facing a psychological issue.

I am part of your target audience, a late 40’s, white male, and I abandoned the platform even before you announced your acquisition earlier this year. Why did I leave? It was boring and there are better alternatives out there. Too right wing, too full of stupid, and just too boring to top it all off. The major technological gripe was how difficult it was to engage with others. In fact, this loops back to the social, psychological issue with Twitter. It is not compelling. The content is not unique, the whole microblogging idea has been done to death and no amount of software engineering will fix that.

I honestly don’t know how you can fix Twitter. It may just be an idea that has played out, like America Online, Myspace, Geocities and Angellfire. Websites and social media come and gone and it may be time for Twitter to go. When a traditional message board like Reddit or social media like Facebook exist, what’s the point of Twitter? With ad free alternatives like Mastodon, what compels me to use Twitter? All of these points are psychological, not technical. Forget code reviews and hire a team of psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists.

I would wish you luck, but to be honest, I, like millions of people will not miss Twitter one bit.

 

Posted by on November 21, 2022 in Uncategorized

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Life in old glass

Trying something new, by trying something old. I really enjoy digital photography. I never really owned a film camera and am an early adopter of digital cameras, going back to before 1999 with cameras like the JamCam 2.0 and i/o Magic Magicimage 500. That being said, my first ‘real’ digital camera was the Olympus C3000, released September 4, 1999, was a fantastic camera at the time. I picked up a well maintained example off eBay for a song and decided to see how the now 23 year old technology holds up.

Path
Fire Hydrant
Bridge
Lake

As you can tell, for a camera over 2 decades old, it is not that bad. I think the most noticeable flaw is the purple fringing and not processing blue all that great, but this was a very common issue with the CCD sensors used at the time. That being said, you really would not know with the fire hydrant and path photos above these photos were taken with a camera built during the Clinton administration.

All the photos are relatively sharp and my biggest complaint is when taking photos the shutter lag is frustrating. My main camera is a Canon Rebel T1i, and even though it is a 13 year old camera, dSLR cameras shoot almost instantly. In good lighting, the C3000 still performs reasonably well, but the limited ISO range really forces you to use a flash inside or have a very steady hand.

Water tower

That being said, the photo above was taken on our wedding day, almost 20 years ago, and I am sure am glad I had this quality of camera in 2002. I love going back to our old photos and they are just as clear, sharp, and colorful as the day they were shot.

Here are some more photos taken on the same walk.

I’ll take more photos with some of my other collectables in my collection, along with photos taken with a newer dSLR with very old glass, in some cases from the 1960’s.

 

Posted by on November 19, 2022 in Old Glass, Photos

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Back to My Old/New Self

Back to my old self.

After losing a job that I had for 7 years, it has taken a while to really get back to my self, or, a better way to put it is my new self. Getting laid off is very disappointing, but looking back, and looking forward, I am truly in a better place now. My new position is more intellectually challenging, the highest level position I have ever had, and I get paid more.

For those of you out there who have lost a job of no fault of your own, it does get better. In the beginning, you thing, what could I of done better? Why was I chosen? To be honest, I think it was a short sited dollars and cents decision. We were all late on our annual review/raise, and with new owners, I guess they figured it was easier to just cut all the higher paid employees and hope the lower experience/cheaper workers can take up the slack. There is really nothing you could do better. All of my reviews were great, even though the average raises were inflation level, at best.

With hindsight, it really was a good thing I was laid off. Even with great reviews, they were late and the raises sucked. I was getting bored working on the same project for years with no end in sight. Now that I am working again, I saw just how far my skills were wasting away. So far I have completed several tests that have been waiting in the wings for month, repaired broken test equipment, and participated in a new program from the very start, helping with specifications and adding standards. For the first time in a long time I finally feel like I am making a difference with my efforts.

For those of you that have lost your position of no fault of your own, don’t despair, it will get better. In fact, this may a time to start that small business you always wanted. Take some time off, regroup, and whatever path you are going to take will almost certainly be better than the one you were on. Remember, a business that has to make layoffs is, odds wise, more likely to fail in the next few years. This is not to be confused with selective terminations for ‘dead weight’, this is your classic someone drew a line in ledger and decided this is who is getting let go.

I’ll try to keep up the blogging, it is a good way to finish processing what has happened and I have more happy news to report as spring turns into summer.

 

Posted by on May 24, 2022 in Uncategorized

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Better Times, New Toy

Now that I am gainfully employed, I bought myself a benchtop CNC.

As my latest toy in my workshop, I purchased a benchtop CNC. With 3D printers all the rage, why did I go with a relatively old for industry, new for home use Computer Numeric Control milling machine? Well, the reasons are numerous; I can’t make printed circuit boards in a 3D printer, and I don’t like the texture of 3D printed items on a home quality 3D printer, I can work with a variety of materials, and have an upgrade path.

My main goal with my CNC milling machine is to create custom circuit boards. For the amount of boards that I want to make, it is really not worth the costs associated with contracting with a board house. If I accidentally create something popular, it will be as strait forward as sending the Gerber files to get made. The file formats that get used for my CNC are the same as the files used by professionals. In the future I will detail what tools I use to create circuit boards. I can fabricate a single layer, 2 sided board in a matter of minutes using relatively inexpensive blank boards.

The second thing that I don’t care fore is the texture and strength of 3D printed parts. I know a lot of it is determined by the type of plastic used, but it still is a limiting factor. I can take an injection molded plastic, like a housing for a controller or joystick and mill out whatever custom patterns I desire and end up with a full strength plastic housing with all the expensive mold work done for me already. The tolerances of CNC are superb as well. Many, if not all, of the molds used for plastic molding were produced on a CNC, with a little human finishing at the end.

The other advantage I like with CNC is the variety of materials I can work with, it can be plastic, printed circuit boards, wood, and even metal. There are sites out there with patterns to be used with a benchtop CNC or you can just make your own 2D drawings and import them into the CNC software. Everything I have used so far is open source, so the only money I have spent has been on the hardware, not the software.

Finally, there is an upgrade path with my little CNC. If I want to upgrade the spindle motor, I can, and work with harder materials. You can even swap out the spindle motor for a laser cutter. When researching which CNC to buy, the next tier up is over $1,000, and I can order a lot of boards for that kind of money.

For now, I will enjoy playing with my little CNC, coming up with custom controller housings and maybe some fun art as well. On top of that, I am learning gcode and how to control a CNC, and maybe I will upgrade way down the line.

 

Posted by on May 19, 2022 in Uncategorized

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