Scattered Thoughts . . .

M y 40 year old medium format film camera had a simple matte focusing screen on it which made focusing a bit difficult.  This matte screen simply showed the scene and you would have to sort of guess what was the best focus.  There was nothing to help you actually see if the image is in perfect focus.  Using only your eyes makes it easy to slightly miss focus especially with older eyes like mine.  I knew I wanted to replace this focusing screen with a better one. The main problem with wanting to replace anything on this camera is that this is a 40 year old film camera that has been out of production for decades.  Finding parts can be difficult.  Regardless, I went on a search for the type of focusing screen I wanted.   I wanted a screen with a split prism in the very center, a micro-prism collar surrounding the split prism, and a matte ground glass field.  These can be difficult to find now but I happened to find one in Japan so I purchased i...

M y current desktop computer which I primarily use for photography and videography is getting a bit long in the tooth.  Back when I purchased this computer, my cameras only recorded FullHD video...  shortly later, 4K became mainstream....  now 8K and even 12K is well on the way to becoming mainstream.  This desktop does fairly well with FullHD but it struggles with editing and producing 4K video.  8K and 12K video is simply out of the question. I've also been experiencing issues with the computer freezing especially when I'm pushing it with photography edits.  Then I recently learned that Microsoft is no longer supporting updates to Windows 10 after this coming October and, unfortunately, my computer isn't compatible with Windows 11 so I can't just upgrade to Windows 11.  Common sense was telling me that I need to either upgrade my current computer or start looking for a new one. For the past year or so, I've been struggling with the limitations of my ...

I've been trying to catch up with the many tasks on my to-do list as the season changes toward winter. One of the things I have been focused on in recent is our furnace since winter is fast approaching.  I already did some annual cleaning of the furnace... checked and cleaned electrical contacts inside the ignition... and then turned my attention toward our thermostat. Our thermostat has been a little bit of a frustration for quite some time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We replace batteries regularly and have to clean contacts inside this old programmable thermostat approximately twice each season.  Programming that old thermostat is a pain in the butt with tiny switches on the circuit board and a very clumsy interface. Usually, we just avoid changing the programming because it is such a pain in the butt and, instead, just make do with the main programming. Whenever we need a change, we simply manually change the temperature and use the hold button which d...

The upgraded Celestron 70mm telescope.           I've already written a few times about rebuilding this particular little telescope but I added another part recently so it is worth writing about again.  As purchased, this scope was a hunk of junk. Celestron should be embarrassed by all their sub-$400 telescope packages because they are all worthless as sold. I suspect a lot of people end up getting turned off to astronomy as a result of being disappointed by purchasing a lousy, frustrating telescope. Only the very determined will continue this hobby after becoming frustrated beyond belief. I bought a Celestron 114EQ for our son a number of years ago. We quickly realized that this particular scope was not ideal for a beginner and we never got any decent views out of it so, the next Christmas, I purchased a simpler Celestron 70AZ. This telescope wasn't much better than the 114EQ but I felt it had potential for various reasons not worth explainin...

From this angle, you can see the tender marker lights and the firebox glowing in the cab. As I wrote in a previous blog entry a couple of days ago, my O scale MTH Hudson steam locomotive arrived back from the shop. I had sent it in about a month ago to have some major upgrades installed so I was pretty excited to get it back... especially to have received it in the days right after our annual train show excursion! I had the ProtoSound electronics upgraded from version 1.0 to version 3.0. This upgrade is a significant sound upgrade as well as a very significant control upgrade. Slow speed control is outstanding now... slow and steady... chuffing smoke... the sound is great and it runs silky smooth.  This upgrade also included the ability to control the rear coupler with my controller. And, naturally, this useful feature includes an uncoupling sound as it uncouples.   While it was in the shop, I had marker lights added on the front of the locomotive and the rear of th...

Around lunchtime today, FedEx pulled into our driveway... the moment I saw the box in the driver's hands, I knew what it was... my upgraded O scale Hudson steam locomotive! It was packaged exactly how I had packaged it to send it in to the facility to be upgraded. I actually made a box to perfectly fit the manufacturer's box. Apparently, this worked out well since it appears to have arrived safely and securely.  I haven't had a chance to put it on the tracks yet, but it is looking very nice!  I had the electronics swapped out completely with the newest available today. The electronics that I had originally were two generations old and quite lame by today's standards. This upgrade also provides better control, far better sound quality, better chuffing smoke, and more sounds than was previously available. Mostly, however, I'm excited about the better control. Additionally, I had an engineer and fireman added to the locomotive... a firebox glow effect with LED...

My big O scale Hudson steam locomotive is headed to the shop for some nice upgrades. This old locomotive, by MTH, currently has only very rudimentary control and some generic sounds which, to be honest, aren't that great. This upgrade will be a significant upgrade and will be  very welcomed! My MTH O scale Hudson steam locomotive... This old locomotive runs great but it operates unrealistically just like the old Lionel locomotives... press a button on the transformer and the locomotive jumps into forward... press it again and it jumps back to neutral while coasting to a stop... press it again and it jumps into reverse...  press again, back to neutral... forward, neutral, reverse, neutral, forward, neutral...  So, what if I am going forward and I want to stop at a freight station or passenger station and I want to leave the station going forward again? The next time I press that "direction button", I'll be heading in reverse! I'd prefer to have complete ...

A couple of weeks ago, Comcast offered us an upgrade to our router for free. I knew our router was getting old and I knew that we occasionally have problems needing reboots and removing the battery (which is difficult to get at) so a free upgrade seemed like a 'no-brainer'. When we got our free upgrade to Xfinity a year or two ago, I thought it was odd that the Xfinity package didn't arrive with a new modem but everything seemed to work just fine so I forgot about having an older modem. Sheila ordered this free modem upgarde and the package arrived yesterday... in a massive box... I left it, unopened, on the living room floor until after my usual afternoon nap. When Sheila arrived home from work, I opened the box... this new Xfinity router was absolutely HUGE! It was larger than our BlueRay DVD player! This router was so deep, that it barely fit on our entertainment center shelves. I would need to lay it down flat and bend all the cords plugged into the back of it in...

Back a couple of years ago, I happened to win an O scale (the old Lionel size) diesel locomotive on eBay for about $25. It runs on traditional 2 rails rather than 3 rails and can even run well on the tight curves necessary in a relatively small room (I have no room for large sweeping curves). I wanted to find a few more of these EMD F9 locomotives. About a week ago, someone advertised three of these locomotives up for auction on eBay. Finally! Long story short... I won the first one... was quickly outbidded for the second one... and then won the third one! The two diesels I won are still in the hands of the US Post Office but I'm already putting together a plan for this small fleet of locomotives. First, I needed to come up with a numbering scheme. There is a big "853" on the side of each of these diesels. Repainting is too much work so I decided to just add a suffix to each number...  853A, 853B, and 853C. This morning, I set out to create backlit numberboards for ...

Windows 10 screenshot... the Start menu opened. For the past few months, Microsoft has been nagging me by way of popup notices on my computers to upgrade my Windows 8.1 Operating System to Windows 10. I've been holding off downloading this incredibly huge (file size) upgrade in the hope that Microsoft would iron out all the little quirks, kinks and bugs. In the meantime, I would have to tolerate the constant barrage of nagging prompts from Microsoft. I chat with a lot of photographers from around the world everyday and more and more of them have upgraded to Windows 10 lately. The general consensus was that the upgrade was relatively painless and there were no problems with any software and much of the hardware issues have been ironed out by now. This was the news I was waiting for so I decided to upgrade my laptop first and see how it performs. In Microsoft's defense, the biggest problem up until lately was that third party software and hardware developers were dragging...