Saturday, October 1, 2016

Canon Rebel T5 Video Stills

I thought I'd show some still grabs from video shot with my Canon Rebel T5. This is using the stock 18-55mm lens. This was shot with a tripod and manual focus, but everything else was set to automatic.


(Click on the images below to enlarge.)


A lot of videographers are going to DSLR cameras these days and getting out of traditional camcorders. You can get a DSLR with a very large CMOS chip and large lens for just a few hundred dollars compared to a few thousand for a comparable camcorder. And single CMOS chips have gotten to where they have color that looks every bit as good as as a traditional 3-CCD camcorder setup. The large sensor and lens makes them take great shots in low light, even candlelight. I shot the footage below with just a single 150-watt light bulb. Even at that I managed to blowout the exposure a little.


What I can't get over is how good this cam works in automatic mode. Most of the time I couldn't make the picture look much better if I set everything manually. Everyone says the stock lens isn't very good, but you could have fooled me. Of course one of the great selling points with a DSLR is that you can change lenses with it. To have a camcorder capable of interchangeable lenses costs upward of $5 grand. I can get a decent zoom lens for this Canon for just a little over $100. I only paid around $350 for the camera last Christmas, so even with the zoom lens and extra battery and a large capacity storage card, I'm still under $500.


Many TV shows and movies are being shot on DSLR cams now. Most are capable of 24 frames per second and of course you can fit a pro lens on them just fine. The first one I ever saw was the finale of the medical showHOUSE. That was shot using a couple of $2,500 Canon 5D Mark II cams. That's still a very reasonable price, and truth be told, the image quality is not much better than my T5 Rebel. It's a changing world. Some things are actually getting better.

Friday, August 12, 2016

BarCharts English Grammar & Punctuation Guide

I own a book formatting company, and one thing I I've learned from it is that people from all walks of life, from physicians to politicians, all forget most of what they learned in school about proper writing by the time they're thirty. Most people don't even remember how to use something as simple as a comma, what the difference is between a comma and a semicolon, and when to use either. I've kept a BarCharts English Grammar & Punctuation Guide by my desk for the past 15 years. It's just a 4-page laminated pamphlet that will quickly tell 95% of us everything we need to know in order to write properly. For less than $7.00 it can't be beat. And being laminated, it will last a lifetime.

Even if all you write is an occasional blog post, this thing is a Godsend. Can't remember when to use an En dash or an Em dash? Don't remember when to place punctuation inside quote marks and parenthesis or outside them? How many dots go in an ellipsis? Do you ever capitalize the first word after a colon? If you place the title of a magazine in italics, then how do you set off the name of an individual article within that magazine? All the answers are just fingertips away.

I got my copy at a local B&N years ago. You can also find them online all over the place. Don't be without a copy. For $7.00 you can't go wrong.




Sunday, May 15, 2016

Looking For a Rechargeable Sweeper?


I like these little Shark electric (battery operated) sweepers. My last one lasted for many years. They do a better job on indoor-outdoor carpeting than a big vacuum does, so I use mine every week on the front porch. It's also VERY light, so it's easy to carry down to the basement and do the carpets there too.

This new one isn't as powerful as the old one I had, but it still does a very nice job. For $30, you can't beat it:


They have one that's a little more powerful for $50:

Saturday, May 14, 2016

"Quirkology" Great Site for Learning Party Tricks

This is just one of MANY great videos they have showing how to do some neat little tricks that are fun to do at parties and such. If you like this, you should check out their YouTube channel for several more.


Saturday, April 23, 2016

Where's My Damned Restroom!?

I am a giraffe trammeled in a man's body. I am among the first of many transhumans (or neo-humans if you like) to come in the next generation of genetically engineered humans. I demand to be treated with respect and to have a special restroom made for my needs with grass and dirt on the floor to absorb my plops. I am special. All must bend to my will or I will lie and say you are afraid of me and use my own brand of hate speech with the suffix, phobic, in it to try to belittle you. You are weak and stupid. You will cave to my demands. Jerry Giraffe has spoken.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Do You Know What Socialism Really is?

(An essay by GK Chesterton)

"There Was A Socialist"

It has long been obvious that Socialists are interested in everything else except Socialism. There are indeed a few narrow and perfectly genuine Communists who are genuinely interested in Communism. But they have no power even to begin putting it in operation; and the interest attaches to those who have the power, or are supposed to have the power, to apply their principle, and therefore proceed to apply some other principle. We might be duly impressed by the audacity of the cry of Socialism in Our Time, if the Socialists had not been so unwise as to let us know, or guess, what they mean by Socialism. The writer whom I criticised last week, writing under the old heading of a famous Socialist paper, actually explained what he meant by Socialism; whether it was to come in our time or no. It appeared, to my startled gaze, that he actually meant the present social situation in Denmark. Now Distributists differ a great deal about whether Denmark is a sound or model Distributist State. But there is no doubt at all that it is not a Socialist State. In its primary principle or basis it is nearly the opposite of a Socialist State. The land is not nationalised, but owned privately by a multitude of small proprietors; and that is the fundamental fact by which all such definitions are determined. The writer in question seemed to be vaguely impressed by the fact that State assistance was given in various forms, and that many obviously public institutions are owned in the name of the public. It is not Socialism to make the railroads public, any more than to make the roads public. It is not Socialism for the State to endow hospitals, any more than for the State to support reformatories. Socialism is not a condition in which the government can help hard cases or protect and patch up economic evils; it has that power in every healthy Distributist community. Socialism is a condition in which the government never needs to help anybody or patch up anything; because it owns everybody’s property and runs everybody’s enterprise. That is what Socialism meant in the days when it meant anything. But there is nothing very revolutionary in supposing that a modern nation would soon be Socialist as Detroit. As apparently anything can be called Socialism, I suppose that the triumphant Capitalism of Mr. Ford can be called Socialism. If it means anything, it seems to mean Modernism; in the sociological as distinct from the theological sense. In both senses, it is generally a euphemism for muddle-headedness. But though we should need no great revolution in order to be as Socialist as Denmark, we should be uncommonly lucky even to be as Distributist as Denmark.
I mention this matter just now, because it is almost certain that in these days the Socialist government, or the government which was once supposed to be Socialist, will be flattered and complimented by a certain amount of Capitalist abuse. The Budget is bound in any case to be abused; partly because it is bound to be heavy taxation, partly because it is in many ways bad taxation. The Capitalist is often a simple soul and when he wants to abuse anybody, he calls him a Socialist. He therefore pays Mr. Snowden the wildly and grotesquely undeserved compliment of calling him a Socialist. There have been any number of ruinous or unjust taxes in history; and those who hated them called their inventors tyrants; but they did not call them Socialists. The exact truth about Mr. Snowden was playfully expressed by “Beachcomber,” that one bright spirit of the Daily Express, in his simple rhyme for the nursery: “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, banker’s man.” He is entirely of the modern world, which thinks in financial continents, and moves on the axes of a few colossal cosmopolitan combinations. Of course all the politicians submit to these international influences and interests; but Snowden would probably accept them in theory as well as submitting to them in practice. But even in assisting the advance of cosmopolitan finance he may cross the path of some local and limited forms of Capitalism; and certain rather provincial persons can be trusted to fall into the trap. They innocently shriek out “Socialist!” and Mr. Snowden smiles and makes a note of it. It will be useful; for instance, in debates with the Communists. A few more such innocent shrieks and the Labour Government may recover its backing among equally innocent Socialists. The only people who will remain unimpressed will be the really intellectual Socialists; and especially the old Socialists who remember the dim and distant days when the word actually meant something. The typical example, of course, is Mr. Bernard Shaw. He recently wrote an article in the Weekend Review which aroused extraordinary irritation in The Clarion and other papers supporting the government. I think I know the particular sentence that really produced the irritation. They are not really very much interested in the romance of King Magnus or the farcical costume of the American Ambassador. The precise phrase which hit them where it hurts was that in which G.B.S., ignoring all relative talk about taxation or the Trade, applied the deadly test, and said that the government dare not “nationalise a single industry.”
That is why it is well, amid all the fuss that follows the Budget, to repeat the real though obvious truth, as I have repeated it here. Socialism died before the War. The solid and sincere intentions of many intelligent men, indeed of most intelligent men, to build a simplified and centralised state, in which private property should become public property, reached its height in the days of the Fabian Essays and Blatchford’s Merrie England; and then began to break down; partly even then, perhaps, by the small efforts of the first few Distributists; much more by the titanic terrorism of the Trusts. The mere Labour politician represents these old idealists, just about as much as a corrupt Whig aristocrat, dabbling in the South Sea Bubble, represented the Puritan fanatics who killed a king; or about as much as a snobbish pork-butcher of the Primrose League, celebrating the Diamond Jubilee, resembled a romantic Highland Jacobite dying for a king over the water. Socialism remains as a term of abuse to apply to other people, or a term of flattery to apply to oneself; but its real origin is lost in history, like that of the words Whig and Tory.

Friday, February 26, 2016

Meet Avery

My nephew and his girlfriend had a baby born 8 weeks premature but healthy as can be, all 19 inches and 3 1/2 pounds of her. She has long fingers and toes, so she may grow to be quite tall in the end.


Thursday, February 11, 2016

The Mystical World of George MacDonald (on DVD)

The movie I made on the life of 19th century Scottish author, George MacDonald, back in 2007 is now out on DVD at Amazon:

The Mystical World of George MacDonald


Monday, January 25, 2016

So Proud of Our Neighborhood School

This is the marque on the grade school across the street from my house. That a public school anywhere in the USA these days would have enough common sense and guts to post this on their marque kind of gives me a warm fuzzy. I like warm fuzzies.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Men in Coats and Nina Conti - A Comedy Weekend Post!

Men In Coats - Hilarious Magic Act

Ventriloquist, Nina Conti - Live at the Apollo

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

The Best Orchestral Performance You Will Ever Hear

Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" being performed by an unknown orchestra led by Lawrence Rapchak.