October 22, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 22, 2023, one was asleep.
Five years ago today: October 22, 2019, some banner year.
Nine years ago today: October 22, 2015, one person’s candy.
Random years ago today: October 22, 2010, shameless self-promotion.

           Good morning, especially to silver at $34.65, probably a 15-year high. Probably due to uncertainty about the elections. Trump deals a series of vital strikes that are far harder to sabotage than the border wall. It’s political genius, the elimination of taxes on social security, tips, and overtime. Why? Because we knew long ago the Democrat corruption is expensive and they are broke again and if they copy Trump’s tactics (which they’ve resorted to) they’ll get even broker. The Donald has learned the ropes. And my personal prediction is he’ll get those 105 million votes, which no amount of ballot fraud can beat.

           What works in Fulton County is not going to work on a national scale. The Democrats will be reduced to handing out $100-dollar bills on the street corners. Yet, I still maintain this is not a political blog, but a reflection of how dominant—and amusing—the issues have become. Same with this not being a precious metal blog doesn’t mean I’m not watching it like a hawk. My plan to sell a batch was called Plan E, but I can’t find it. No matter, I know the calculations off by heart. Meanwhile the State Media goes ballistic pushing the angle this election is “one of the closest in history” (Newsweek) when in fact it is the opposite. The Left effectively have no candidate.

           The deer cam got a few raccoons. The camera setup is wrong for the way they enter the footpath, so I shall try a mounting closer to the ground for more dramatic shots with them walking toward the camera rather than across. The neighbor’s cat is on the prowl again and there are some stills of a baby rat and some critter with his arse toward the lens. Probably another raccoon at a bad angle, but here’s the best shot I have overnight.

           Here’s the exact price quote less the $95 Florida tax. I’d like to get better pics for you but that entails selecting and cropping the best. And Microsoft how pushes that moron-level Photo Editor. If you wonder why so many millennial pictures are droll and look alike, the limited features on that piece of software explain a lot. But you want to hear about my shoulder. If you hold your head up and left to right, I bet you never noticed how it tugs on muscles that stretch right down to between your shoulder blades. I confirm they do, and if they don’t, you’ll feel it.

           I’m cloning the complete Win XP operating system onto it’s own drive to act as a source for drivers that are getting hard to find. On my equipment, this takes 56 minutes so I watched Gutfeld on-line. He’s right, the Democrat party has been hijacked by lobotomized pre-school teachers. Lately I’ve met this gal who is very current on software and electronic media (of which social media is one aspect). When I encounter such people, I always listen to what sites and software they use. The reasoning is simple, if they are past the basics, they must run into the same layers of BS as I do, so they often know excellent workarounds. True, it’s a pity workarounds are still needed.

           She has taken some on-line courses and used 3D CAD software. That’s more than any local I’ve met in eight years, so it surprised me not to learn she was from out west. She’s drawn the same conclusions I have about the American system. You cannot keep a shop. You must continually be expanding, branching out, rolling profits over and besting corporate level competition. For example, in the old days, most photographers made a living. Today, the top 5% make a killing and the rest barely survive. Pretty much every field of work has arrived at this. If you stand still, you get swamped.

Picture of the day.
Swedish farm land.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           If you see an animated clip of a board being sanded, that represents a couple hours of work getting the XP system working again. Turns out MicroSoft did not just quit supporting it, they made changes that blocked older apps.. Well, wait, it would be more accurate to say they act as if they do such things on purpose. So that still makes them AOLs, since it is all just software. The clip means I succeeded in getting this far, but it was quirky as hell. Plus, I’m out of practice and will have to relearn the process of titling and story-boarding. Such a sad state of affairs that forty years later there is still no easy software for this task.

           Let me go over the process so you’ll see what I mean. First, you must create the video in a format that is compatible with other software that can take a series of sequentially numbered stills. These must then be reduced in size and cropped using yet other software. This is easier said than done, as I’ve mention how SONY MP4 cannot be used by normal MP4. Your sizing and cropping software must be able to import dozens or even hundreds of still photos and give them identical treatment—a feature found in Picture Manager, but they killed it.
           It’s not obvious, but there are four or five errors and problems with this clip that most would never notice. But, that is why some blogs endure and most don’t. Nobody sticks long with low-effort postings.

           Don’t underestimate this step. It is virtually impossible to get a string of compatible stills any other way. It would take hours to do this by hand. So you see what is happening so far. Three or four different brands of software are needed before you even get to the gif editing stage. Ordinary cameras won’t produce the stills. The still software takes practice (automating this step never seems to produce the required unique and distinctive shots). And animating the gif requires yet another set of software. The two products I use are Picture Manager and Photoscape, and these two don’t know each other exist—yet it would be strange how they could be used without the other. As I said, no easy software.
           What took time today was getting the XP system set up to run the procedure start to finish. There are all sorts of pitfalls, the worst one is coordinating the folders. The original videos are in one file, the series of stills in another Those still must be sized and cropped so the finished gif does not exceed the size limit for free email attachments, which most people use. (Usually 25MB). Mistakes are common, so be very careful not to accidentally overwrite your original stills, but be sure to delete them afterward to save space and prevent a confusion of file names. This is merely an overview of the challenges.

                      Each stage must be set up to be compatible with the next. I’ve tried larger software packages that claim to do this, but they lie. Usually they work only for a narrow range of files and equipment and having to match hardware and software quickly gets prohibitively expensive. In that characteristic GenZ fashion with most applications, each one has some glaring fault that will give you a headache. For example, Movie Maker will not import MP4, but works fine on formats that I’ve never seen on any of the scores of cameras I’ve been through. But you can’t discipline these people because it is their grandparent’s fault.
           The victory is if you see a video clip. It’s meaningless, just sanding a board, but the initial set of videos taken with the deer cam could not be used. By some unknown quirk, after you do all the work, it would not save the final product. Causing you to repeat the entire sequence in case it was something you did wrong. It’s also in synch with how the silo is now set up with a computer so I spend more time out there. The hoops I go through just to keep you entertained, it’s astonishing. I’m going shopping and I’ll stop for a beer if I want. We reschedule Festus Tuesdy for tomorrow.

ADDENDUM
           Interesting thought: If people are truly free, it would be impossible to have an insurrection.

Last Laugh