Author Archives: anachostic - Page 11

Collection Completion And Expansion

Posted by on May 18, 2020 No comments

I want to start off by mentioning that CDs are collectables.  There is one irrefutable reason I can make this claim.  That reason is the irrationality of the pricing of any particular CD.  While it shouldn’t be a surprise that any particular thing can be collectable and priced unreasonably high when it becomes scarce, sometimes, the outrageous prices set a particular expectation when researching and shopping.  In this way, I suspect there are a lot of dealers of collectables who will list items at outrageous prices to get people’s expectations set, then actually sell an item (maybe even as a different vendor) at a price less than that expectation, while still being somewhat unreasonable.

So anyway, this is about the last CD in a series that I need for absolute completion.  I’ve been satisfied with what I’ve had so far because those that I have are all of the retail versions out there.  The one I have been missing is a promo-only copy.  Not only a promo-only copy, which could include retail copies with a "Promo, not for resale" sticker or stamp on it, this is a promo-only version.  Obviously far less available and made in much lower quantity.  All this time, there has been one seller of this disc, offering it for $50 plus shipping.  The guy knows the scarcity.

Very recently, a new seller popped up, selling it for $30.  This guy knows, too.  And he’s looking to make a sale based on the one and only one person who has this CD in his wantlist (me).  And you know what, he almost had me.  I was getting ready to buy it when I decided to do a quick sanity check on eBay.  eBay has never had that CD before, but you never know.  And amazingly, it’s on there now.  And only $10.  It’s an immediate buy for me.  Sure, I just paid a decent amount for a used CD, but it’s been unavailable for years and has had an unflinching price of $50.  And now, my collection is absolutely complete.

Do I have other discs in my collection like that?  Yes I do.  Will I be fortunate enough to reap the benefits of scarcity when I sell?  Collectors don’t sell.  That was a trick question.

So, like I said, that completes the collection.  The IRS NoSpeak series is now complete.  The original CD collection that got me into being a completist was the MCA Master Series, which I’ve posted about many times.  Out of curiosity, I did a search to see how much of that series was available for sale on eBay right then.  That would give me an idea of the scarcity of my collection.

I would say it was maybe 50% available and of those, many were double-digit prices, so that’s actually pretty promising, from a value perspective.  But as I was browsing the results, I didn’t have any category filters set, so I was seeing CDs, cassettes, and vinyl.  But there was another product that was in the results – a promotional poster from the record label for the MCA Master Series. 

Well, now.  There’s a product you don’t see very often.  In fact, I’ve never seen one ever, nor heard of it existing.  And that would be understandable.  Posters are given to record stores and other record label contacts, are hung up until they fade or rip (or the label goes out of business), and are discarded.  No one keeps promo material like that.  But here was a surviving example.

I’ve posted before about my big artwork project of scanning, printing, framing, and hanging all of the MCA Master Series album covers as art in my house.  There should not be any doubt whatsoever that this poster must belong to my collection.  And so it became.  I don’t buy a lot of posters.  I don’t really know how much they go for.  But I got this poster for $16 shipped.  Considering the thing is over 30 years old… I don’t think that’s too bad.  It’s a decent size, also:  28" x 26".  I have a place picked out and expect I’m going to spend the big $$$ on a professional framing job.  Once stores open again, of course.

In all, this has been a spendy weekend.  But, a lot of stuff is changing in my music room.  Now stands for stereo speakers and components, a few new CDs are on the way, and a neat poster to hang in there.

It’s Never Been A Better Time To Buy…

Posted by on May 17, 2020 No comments

…from someone other than Amazon.

It was about a year ago I had made a post about how I’ve wanted to try and reduce my dependency on Amazon.  For the most part, I feel like I’ve been successful.  Sure, there are still things I buy from the empire, usually quick-need things or small trinkets that they’ll ship free where other places couldn’t be bothered with such a small order.  Seriously, I’m buying an electrical wall plate for $2.50 and you’re going to drive it to my house, tomorrow, for free?!  That’s just dumb.  But I’m sure they’re getting it back somehow.

Anyway, since everyone is stuck at home, Amazon is the place for supplies now, right?  And everyone is also trying to scratch their consumer itches, too, so there’s Amazon, again.  But, if you do your research every time, you might just find that there are other options that are just as good and many times better than the empire.  Let me illustrate.

Example 1.  I’ve been without a microwave for quite some time now, maybe 8 months.  How I’ve survived without my dedicated popcorn maker, I don’t know.  But I figured enough is enough.  I want popcorn.  So I went on the hunt for a microwave that was simple and basic-duty.  The options: Amazon, Target, Sears, and Lowes.  Because I’m a brand whore, my preferred brands were Panasonic and Kenmore, which ended up excluding Target and Lowes.  But would you guess?  The winner was Sears.  Sears!  And get this – no free shipping!  But, even including the shipping (a whopping $15), the price was the same as Amazon and I still got it in two days.  Who says only Amazon can do that shit?

Example 2.  I’ve had some stereo speaker stands on my Amazon wish list for some time, just waiting for the right time to make that move.  Today, I decided to make that move.  The stands are made and sold by Monoprice, and sold through Amazon (as well as through their own website).  The stands on Amazon?  $76 each.  The stands on Monoprice?  $55.  Both with free shipping.  I work at a company that sells some product through Amazon and I know it’s not exactly a win-win to make a deal with the devil.  You may gain a lot of eyeballs, but your profit margin is going to suffer greatly from the cut they take. 

And that leads me to example 3.  eBay has become my primary Amazon alternative.  Just some simple hair product purchased today.  $18 at Ulta, $12 at Amazon, and $10 on eBay.  Ok, so I’ll get 3-day instead of 1-day delivery from eBay, but this isn’t a need-now product.  More importantly, I think it’s important to buy from eBay because it’s smaller retailers or even individuals doing a hustle.  You’re more likely to be helping people than a company.  And while eBay is a company and yes, they do take fees for their service, it’s not a egregious as the empire.  Plus there’s the whole flea-market atmosphere which has a slight appeal to me.  There’s less Ai involved, so when you find something you like and a great price, it’s because you’re smart, not because the empire’s computer knows everything (fucking EVERYTHING) about you and tossed you a biscuit.

And speaking of eBay, I need to go now and buy the stereo stand that is also in my Amazon wish list.  Same product, same price (actually 9 cents cheaper on eBay), free shipping.  Why not patronize the little guy?  Make them happy in these bleak days.  Amazon is going to do just fine.

The Unexplainable Terror

Posted by on May 10, 2020 No comments

Following on the heels of the other dream post, last night I had a nightmare.  I know, most people’s nightmares are pretty realistic and usually grounded in some sort of reality.  An event that could potentially happen.  No, not me.  The things that scare me to death are just… weird.

In most of my dreams, they play out kind of first-person, kind of third-person.  More accurately, it’s like I’m a cameraman in the dream.  I may interact and be party to the events going on, but there are also a lot of wide shots or overhead shots, or views that I could not physically have if I was there.  It’s actually quite typical for the astral plane, which is not bound to any concepts of the physical plane.  But I digress.  I’ll come back to that in a bit.

The part where the dream centers on is where myself and a few people have been placed in a remote location.  Not exactly barren, but there’s no civilization there.  We more or less know each other but we don’t know why we’re there.  We are informed that a nuclear explosion is expected to happen.  It’s not absolutely certain, but it’s highly likely.  The time frame is also unknown, but it’s expected to be soon.  It’s assumed to be an attack from outside, not something we’re doing to ourselves.  Despite this, no one is really freaking out over it.  It’s all delivered and received very matter-of-factly.

This is the unexplainable part.  After being told that essentially we’re all going to die soon in a nuclear blast, it is explained that is not exactly how we’re going to die.  When the first nuclear explosion happens, we will utilize a different weapon for retaliation.  Not much detail is given about this weapon or technology, but when asked about its effect, the explanation is "time will go backwards for about 30 seconds."

That statement still creeps me even now.  I can’t explain why, but I’ll try in a little bit.

Our group passes the time, inexplicably, playing music together in a band format.  We’re figuring out songs that everyone knows and surprising each other with our musical knowledge and breadth of experience.  During one song, me being cameraman, I have a wide shot of the group playing and suddenly the music stops and everyone has been knocked to the ground.  In the distance, a mushroom cloud starts forming.  The time has come.

As cameraman, still, the scene pans to the left to an open field where I know the special weapon is.  Out of the ground, small (like really small, maybe an inch in diameter) metal tubes rise up.  The number sticking in my head is 60, but there were no way 60 in the scene, maybe 8-10.  And they each shot a small cylinder high into the air.  No huge explosion or report – I’m not sure how they were propelled.  A few seconds later, the payloads came back down to the ground and submerged into the ground.  Again, no explosion, they just buried themselves into the ground near the tubes they were released from.

The weapon then started and it appeared like the payloads got sucked back out of the ground and arced back to their tubes, but the motion was choppy and sequenced.  Not all the payloads came back out and the ones that did made a very clear whooshing/shh-ing sounds as they came back out.  And then.. nothing.  Stillness, a freeze-frame.  And I woke up.

I woke up absolutely terrified.  And what I was scared about was not death or dying, but this concept of time going backwards.  As I’ve spent the day pondering why that is so scary to me, the best I can come up with is that in my dream, the smart people have theoretically devised a destruction method that transcends all life.  A nuclear response is simply not enough.  Destroying all life on Earth isn’t enough, even physically destroying the Earth itself isn’t enough.  This weapon has to destroy the entirety of existence, everywhere.  Because no one knows what would really happen if you could reverse time.  The best theory we have is the event horizon of black holes where time slows to nothing and matter is ripped apart at the atomic level.  What could happen if you went beyond that?

And even that explanation doesn’t satisfy me.  It’s assigning a bogeyman to the concept, but it’s the concept itself that scares me.  One of my post-waking thoughts was a consideration of how supposedly everything in our universe is simple vibrations.  Denser matter (the physical) vibrates at a slower frequency and you move into the astral and higher planes of existence the vibrations become higher.  And my mind thought that a sudden shift in time from forward to actual reverse, would disintegrate our beings by disrupting the vibrations in a way that we could not rematerialize again.

That probably doesn’t make any sense.  Let me try and give it some context.  In esoteric philosophy, there is the belief that at our core, we are a soul (an ego, an id) and we present ourselves on different planes of existence by forming bodies of material native to those planes.  Those bodies would be of the vibrational frequency native to the plane.  As you move up in divinity, you shed each denser body to begin life in a higher-frequency body in the higher plane.  Follow that so far?  So now, what if your ego/id/soul was ripped apart even at its highest frequency?  You would no longer exist, period.  Nothing, no one would exist anymore.  It’s the real end-times.  Not just the end of the physical world, but the end of all planes of existence, the end of existence itself.

But, that’s just a weird, funny, unexplainable idea.  I mean the planes of existence concept isn’t even widely considered valid, and no one even knows what time is all about.  Some sources say we’re a unique species that is bound by time, where other, higher forms do not have that constraint.  Oh well.  I guess time will tell what comes of this.  It’s just a dream, right?

That Dream When I Was A Friend

Posted by on May 8, 2020 No comments

A few nights ago I woke up from a dream.  In the dream I was a Friend.  I was on the Friends sitcom and my brain was writing an episode for me.  This is what I remember from it.

Rachel was complaining about how every time she goes out to eat at a restaurant, the experience sucks.  Her food is never prepared right, the service is bad, everything.  Phoebe, Chandler, and I decide to go to a meal with her to see this first-hand.  At the restaurant, I notice that Rachel is getting some covert attention from the men and I suggest to her that maybe people are just intimidated by her looks.  She says she doesn’t get it.  I say, "maybe you’re too attractive for the public good."  Chandler of course takes the opposing viewpoint with sarcastic comments and Phoebe makes a non-sensical comment.  So far, my brain isn’t working all that hard at developing a script.  This is the standard Friends formula.

The waiter takes our orders.  Phoebe, then me, then Chandler, and as Rachel starts her order, the waiter starts collecting our menus and only partially paying attention to her.  When she is done, the waiter takes off without even acknowledging her order.  Rachel makes a "see?!" motion and we all mutter in agreement.  So it turns out that attractiveness is not Rachel’s problem.  We determine it’s that she’s just too particular about her order and the staff can tell she’ll be a high-maintenance customer and tune out.

Towards the end of meal, Rachel brings up the point about her attractiveness and her intimidation factor and gets an idea.  When the waiter comes back over for refills and is helping everyone else and ignoring her, she demands his attention. 

"Hey, what’s your name?"

"Matt," the waiter replies.

"Matt, I’m Rachel.  Would you like to go out on a date tonight?"

The waiter is startled and embarrassed, but sheepishly agrees.  Rachel writes her phone number on a napkin and says, "Call me after your shift."  The waiter takes the napkin and immediately refills her water and leaves.  Rachel motions to the water glass and to the waiter with a "See?" expression.  More muttered agreement.

The next day it is learned that Rachel and the waiter did go on a date and hooked up.  Rachel makes a cringey comment about "service."  Rachel, Joey and Chandler decide to go to the restaurant the next day, assuming the service will be good.  At the restaurant, Matt is not working.  However, Rachel is getting excessive service from all the male staff – bread, water refills, "everything ok?" checks.  And everyone that stops by to help her is sure to mention their name clearly.  It’s clear that Matt has spread the word to everyone how he hooked up with her.  Rachel is enjoying the attention, oblivious as to why, but Chandler is being very suspicious and is especially wary about the head waiter in particular who he describes as "Stalker-pro".  Chandler makes his point in Chandler fashion by reiterating his observations five different ways.

Rachel gets up to go to the restroom and stalker pro comes over to the table.  He strikes up a fake conversation and casually asks what Rachel’s name is.  Joey answers, "Rachel" and Chandler gives him a fierce look.  Stalker pro is called away by another waiter and Chandler hisses at him that this guy is definitely stalking Rachel and don’t give him any more information.  Stalker pro comes back and apologizes.  He clarifies her name is Rachel and asks what her last name is.  Joey starts to say, "Gree" and Chandler kicks him under the table.  Joey pivots and finishes with "Greetings".

"Her name is Rachel Greetings?", Stalker pro asks.

Chandler and Joey both confirm it, to stalker’s confusion.  Just then Rachel returns from the bathroom and stalker welcomes her.  "Hello, miss… greetings."

Rachel looks a little confused and replies, "Greetings." and Joey and Chandler both exclaim, "Greetings!"  Stalker is as confused as ever and leaves.

At the end of the meal, Rachel is thrilled by how everything has been perfect and how much attention she has gotten.  When the check comes, delivered by stalker, she offers to pay.  "I’ll just put it on my card."

Stalker looks a little victorious and says, "May I see your ID?"  As Rachel starts to instinctively look for her ID, Chandler interrupts, "No, we can’t let you pay for this meal!" And what follows is formula Friends – Joey and Chandler making up a reason why Rachel can’t pay for the meal that of course makes no sense.

And that’s when the dream started to fall apart.  Probably due to the lack of anything interesting coming out of my brain.  This stuff sort of writes itself.

A Long Time To Decide

Posted by on April 30, 2020 No comments

The quarantine finally got to me a couple of days ago and I had to go out for a drive to get some dinner at a place about 90 minutes away.  On that drive, I had a CD by The Good Rats and a song came on, Victory In Space.  This song is somewhat about NASA buying hookers for astronauts, but it’s also the germ of an idea I had for a NaNoWriMo novel.  The story idea – all I had – was about an intergalactic hooker in an erotic comedy genre.  That’s open to just about anything I could think up.  So when I heard that song come on, it got me thinking about the story again.

NaNoWriMo is still 6 months away, so I have plenty of time to commit and begin planning, or just let the idea waste away for another year.  Last night as I was falling asleep, I gave some consideration to the idea.  NaNo doesn’t care what format you write in, as long at it has a word count.  So I started thinking out of the box.  First I considered something like a series of blog entries.  There’s lots of ways I could present that.  First person, like a journal of the hooker; or third person, writing about her.  But blog entries always have this "newer is first" problem that makes reading a story difficult.

While thinking about the navigation aspect of such a story, it led me in a different direction.  Maybe I could write a choose-your-own-adventure story.  Hypertext and links are the perfect medium for presenting a story like that.  However,  a story like that could be a massive undertaking and while it’s literally unlimited in scope and plot, that’s also its downfall as many paths would be unfulfilling.

Considering those issues rekindled yet another memory of mine, where I would imagine I was a movie director.  My magnum opus would be one movie with at least 4 different plot lines in it and each had different endings based on the result of a climax in the second half.  The first half would reuse most of the scenes in each of the plots, but there would be some differences between them, like being shot from a different perspective or in a different place at the same time, showing extra info about the other potential plots.  The goal of the movie would be to cause a bunch of confusion at release time with different reviewers writing about the story and their reviews all conflict with each other as to what happened.

With that in mind, what if I did something similar with my adventure story where as you progress, you might end up in a different plotline depending on when you navigated to the next page?  But who would ever notice something like that?  You’d have to make it known at the beginning to watch out for it, which would just spoil the whole concept.

And all this is just thinking right now.  I’m not even sure I want to commit to another month of writing non-stop.  And if I did, it would be a planned story instead of my usual figure-it-out-as-you-fuck-it-all-up style. So that could slow me down anyway.  We’ll see…

Bastards and Liars

Posted by on April 14, 2020 No comments

Guess who stopped at my house again?  Spectrum.  This is the third time they have done this.  And boy did I let them hear it.

But the guy didn’t back down.  He stood his ground and as a good salesperson should do, he tried to get me to say something positive, because when you say positive things, your mood becomes more positive.  And additionally, the more you can keep the person talking to you, even if they’re bitching at you, it’s still engagement and there’s still a chance to turn it around.  Smart guy.

But he’s a fucking liar.  I told him the first reason I wasn’t going to switch, as I’ve said here before.  I’m with a company that has caused me no problems and he wants me to switch to a company that I’ve never dealt with.  Then I gave him #2, which is that Spectrum doesn’t offer the speeds that FIOS does.  That’s when he shut me up.

You see, while Spectrum doesn’t offer synchronous upload/download speeds, they do offer speeds that exceed what I currently have.  The one he pitched me was the 400/200 plan.  He said there was another plan, the gigabit option that was, I think 1gig up/500 down.  Well, that’s curious, I’d never heard of those plans before.  But to get that much upload speed must be super expensive, judging by how much the normal lopsided plans were.

He said he would be quick and just give me the numbers and be gone, which I appreciated.  He sidetracked a bit on a cable package, which I wasn’t interested in, but he didn’t care.  So it was about $55/mo for the 400/200 package and $88 for that, plus the cable package.  Huh…

As he was finishing up, I asked him if it was possible to put my house on a do-not-visit list.  He said maybe.  He would put a note in the system, which I doubt has had any effect the previous two times.  He also gave me their customer service number that might be able to do it.  And he left.

After cooling down a little bit, I took his card with the illegible writing on the back and went in search of these internet plans I’d never heard of.  Guess what?  They don’t exist.  The 400/200 plan he was telling me?  It’s 400/20, and it’s priced at $70/mo on their website.  The gigabit plan?  It’s 940/35 and costs $110/mo.  You fucking liar.

Can you imagine if I wasn’t adamant about telling Spectrum to get the fuck off my property?  That he could have convinced me to switch to a 400/200 plan that would be over twice as fast as what I had now?  How, after discovering this lie, what kind of bullshit I’d have to go through to reinstate Frontier?  You fucking bastard.

Stages (Parts 1 – 3)

Posted by on April 2, 2020 No comments

Being cooped up in the house with the COVID stay-the-fuck-at-home orders has led me to express my shopping needs in other ways.  The subject at hand is my stereo system.  An earlier post reminded me that I’ve had this goal to recapture the stereo excitement of my youth for quite a few years now.  And that’s not to say progress hasn’t been made – it definitely has.

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It started with a cheap thrift store stereo, a tape deck, and headphones.  Then a CD player was added.  Then another CD player was added.  But still, very little listening was being done.  Then the milestone of having a dedicated room for listening was reached and I cobbled a new and different stereo system together using my powered studio monitors and a new preamplifier to handle inputs and volume.  A dedicated listening chair completed the arrangement.  This setup has worked very well for over a year.

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But I’ve been envisioning the real stereo experience, with a powerful amplifier and full-size speakers to go with it.  However, in these uncertain times, I don’t want to blow a wad of cash all at once, so I’ve planned out a phased approach to get there relatively quickly.

The primary hardware to complete the goal is really only two items: the amplifier and the speakers.  There’s also some ancillary bits as well, including furniture for the hardware.  I’ve kind of been stalled on progress because I didn’t want to buy the amp and the speakers all in one go, but I didn’t want to buy either one and just have it sit unused until I bought the other.  Then, I had a revelation, which came late, but probably at a better time.

If I buy an amplifier, it would be a waste until I bought my speakers, because my existing speakers have built in amplifiers without any way to bypass them.  My revelation made me realize that although the amplification in my speakers can’t be bypassed, the amplifier circuit in the right model of amplifier could be.  That would reduce the amplifier to only preamplifier functions, just like the preamplifier I currently own.

The search was then on for a receiver that had preamp outputs on it.  And the critical decision needed to be made: do I go vintage or modern?  In my original plan, I had current, modern products picked out and a pretty large budget for them.  And now, after experiencing a number of vintage CD players, I’m not sure I need anything more modern than them.  So vintage it is.  And in keeping with my nostalgia, I’m going to choose the Technics brand.  Justly or no, Technics has a bad reputation for their 80’s gear.  There are fans out there as well, but they get shut down often by "the ones who know better".

The model I picked was the SU-V98, which has the required preamp outputs and will also be suitable for my future speakers with 110 watts per channel.  That’s actually pretty respectable as many of the amps I had been looking at were 30-50.  As luck would have it, a listing just popped up on EBay selling one for $70.  Others were priced in the $150 range, so the purchase was made.  Step one complete.

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Now, the last step in the transition will be the purchase of the speakers.  I’ll be able to run everything right the way I have it now, simply substituting my preamp for this new Technics amplifier.  But, it’s not going to be a viable long-term option.  See, my stereo setup is on a long Ikea table.  Ikea stuff isn’t known for its durability and even with only a couple of CD players sitting in the middle of the span, I can see the slightest bit of sagging happening.  Adding a 15lb amp to the table isn’t going to make that any better.  So step two in the mid-term is going to be new furniture.

Replacing the Ikea table will require a new stereo rack and stands for the studio monitors.  In the final stage, the studio monitors and stands will be replaced with tower speakers.  Since the speaker stands are only temporary, I can skimp out on them, but I should get the stereo rack with the goal of having it be suitable for the future.  However, when shopping for speaker stands, there is a clear distinction between "good" and "good enough".  That difference is the size of the mounting plate on top.  In most all affordable stands, that plate is 5"x5".  My speakers are about 8"x10".  Balancing those heavy, expensive speakers on a tiny platform 32 inches off the ground doesn’t sound appealing to me, especially with cats in the house.

That alters my plans a little bit.  It essentially doubles the budget for the speaker stands.  But, to remain positive, the stand quality will be excellent and the speakers are already excellent, so there won’t be any unnatural need to rush to the last step and buy the tower speakers.  There will be time to enjoy and appreciate the configuration as it is. 

And that’s really the plan:  to enjoy the upgrade journey.  Sometimes when you get the end result all at once, you can’t appreciate al the elements involved, because you have no history of change to compare it to.  This is really the best way to grow a stereo system.  Will it ever end?  For a lot of people, it never does.  In fact, I do know one more step I can take after "the last step".  If I find my amplifier doesn’t sound as good as I think it could, the preamp outputs in the SU-V98 can be used for what they were designed for – running an external amplifier.

Album Artwork Project

Posted by on March 27, 2020 No comments

Today, I completed a project that has been an off and on effort for a very long time.  Finally, I have all of my ripped music with high-quality cover artwork.  My definition of high quality starts at 950px, but the ones that I have been augmenting myself are 1500px.  This began many years ago, judging by past blog posts, about 6 years ago.  My first thought was scanning ALL of my CDs.  That was overly ambitious to say the least.  Then the plan was to scan only the MCA Master Series so I could print them and hang them on the wall as art.  That was doable and was completed.  Then the plan became to only scan the covers which had no suitable online version.

And that is what took me years to complete, just because it became somewhat low priority.  If I had artwork at all, that’s pretty good.  But when I started using Plex regularly, I really noticed when my artwork was subpar.  The cover would be all fuzzy and pixelated on my large TV where I was viewing Plex.  So that sort of got me motivated.

The biggest problem was identifying which albums had poor album art.  And for that, I wrote a utility that would scan my Plex database and read all the covers and get their measurements, then create an export file that I could filter and sort to what I needed.  And over time, the list of low-res covers shrank, to the point where I am today.

And while I was creating these better quality scans, I continued to upload them to my Flickr page for anyone to download, but I doubt anyone really finds them there.  So along the way, I tried to find a more popular website where I could share my work.  Fanart.tv seemed to be promising, and I did get some covers approved there, but I ran into a problem with moderators that were either too picky, or didn’t recognize the original artwork and dismissed it as incorrect.  And as I had read in their usage guidelines, you are not to argue with a moderator, just do what they say.  I chose to leave, instead.  I’ve had such trouble finding a community that I can participate in.

Despite that trouble, I’m still pleased with myself.  I’m not one to need a lot of recognition or praise, I just want to contribute.

On The Side

Posted by on March 20, 2020 No comments

Today I learned something.  While working from home, one of the cats was being stupid as usual and batted something off the kitchen counter onto the floor.  Naturally, I went to go clean it up and when I picked up the mess, I was surprised to see water on the floor.

"Where did this water come from?"  I opened up the lower cabinets and immediately suspected the coffee maker that’s been sitting under there for months.  But that didn’t make any sense, surely I would have drained the water tank before I put it away and even if I didn’t, why would something start leaking now?

I started pulling things out of the cabinets, which prompted the cats to get in the cabinets… ugh.  And what I found to be the source of the wetness was a 12-pack of 7-UP.  I pulled the box out and went to the sink and started removing cans.  One can was noticeable hissing.  Its seal had broken.  And there was a second can that was deflated as well.  What the fuck!

I cleaned up the drained sugar water from inside the cabinet and went to pull out the other 12-packs I had in storage under there.  Oh no.  This has happened before, and somehow, I never noticed it.  Two cardboard boxes were absolutely covered in black mold.  Excising the contents showed that two of the cans had broken seals, who knows how long ago.

I got out the Lysol and removed all the mold from the inside of the cabinets.  Unfortunately, the soda never drained out onto the floor where I could see it, so that means it all went under the cabinets.  Someone’s going to be in for a surprise when they remodel that kitchen.

But here’s the lesson.  The 12-packs, also called fridge packs, like this:

This is not how they get stored.  You have to turn them onto their sides, so the cans remain upright.  Maybe the soda ate through the seal opening (I wouldn’t be surprised), or maybe the seal just failed from age or poor quality.  In either case, had the can been upright, the carbonation would have just escaped and the can would be depressurized.  But, with the can on its side, as pictured, well, that liquid is going to go somewhere.  And I found out the hard way.

Failure May Be An Option

Posted by on March 11, 2020 No comments

There’s really a stigma against failure, especially in America.  It is expected that you keep trying until you succeed, regardless of the consequences of doing so.  While my tale of defeat is nothing of consequence, with little to really be lost from non-success, it kind of makes me sad for people who are not given the opportunity to fail.  And further, to even classify the result as failure when it really should not be.

A week or so ago, I replicated a piece of artwork I have in my house, using my CD collection instead of the cassette tapes that were used in the art.  The picture of the CDs turned out pretty good, I thought, and I was inspired to grow it to a massive scale.  Where my original picture had maybe a couple hundred CDs featured in it, I wanted to scale it up to most of my collection, somewhere on the order of 1500+ CDs.

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Over a series of nights, I spent my time placing the CDs in the pattern on the floor.  Keeping the pattern correct and also trying to make sure the CDs varied enough in their grouping was a little arduous.  But, I did persist and came up with a very large, organized mess of CDs.  Then the challenge became how to capture it.

I have a fair collection of photography equipment and so I was able to do some experimentation.  Experimentation was all I could do because I really had no idea how to accomplish the task.  The first attempt was to capture as much as possible in one picture.  I held the camera above the arrangement using a tripod and the self-timed shutter.  This kind of worked except when you would zoom in, you couldn’t read any of the CD spines.  So, in other words, it didn’t work at all.

The real solution would be to take multiple photos and stitch them together.  So, that was my next attempt.  I scanned one row of CDs and took a series of pictures, then took them to the computer to mate them up.  That proved to be very difficult because each picture had to be adjusted to compensate for rotation and zoom and also lighting.  This was proving to be a non-solution as well.  I had a massive number of CDs arranged on my floor and I was running out of ideas to photograph them.

Since the problem with my stitching/panorama concept was consistency, I came up with the idea that I could build a trolly-type of rig to suspend the camera over the arrangement.  This would keep the camera at a constant height and angle where each picture would be the same.  It was a pretty clever idea and made me feel pretty inventive.

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So I went to work assembling the rig and shot the first row of CDs.  I took the pictures to the computer and stitching them was actually pretty simple.  This was promising.  I evaluated the size of the arrangement and determined I would have nine rows of photos to stitch up.  This would take days, certainly.  But that’s ok, as long as I made progress.

I shot the second row of photos and brought them in for stitching.  Suddenly, things weren’t lining up anymore.  The first couple photos worked out, then all of a sudden, the scale didn’t fit any more.  Thinking I must’ve shifted the camera somewhere along the way, I re-shot the row of photos.  Again, at the same place, the photos failed to line up.  I wasn’t sure if it was the first row of photos that were somehow misaligned and causing the second row to not match up, or maybe it was just something that was intrinsic to the photos themselves.  I was noticing there was a slight fish-eye effect from the 35mm lens I was using, so the CDs on the periphery of the photos were skewed from the ones in the center.  As I would line up the images on the outer edges, they would be distorted from the ones trying to be matched in the center.

At this point, I had had my CD collection completely dismantled, on the floor, for a week.  This was causing me a little bit of stress.  I was unable to use my listening room for any listening because the floor was consumed with this arrangement.  I was adding new CDs to my collection, but they were in a separate stack, not integrated yet.  My patience was running low, and my prospects of success were low as well.

The next thing to attempt would be to use my 50mm lens on the camera, which wouldn’t fish-eye as much, but that would take much closer images of the CDs, unless I built the rig even higher up, which I wasn’t too keen to do.  So, I accepted failure and began the process of dismantling and reorganization.

And the point here, accepting failure, is the key.  "Failing", or "giving up", is not a bad thing.  There are plenty of other phrases that exist to make yourself feel better about the situation, like "cutting your losses", and something about "reward vs. effort".  those phrases get closer to the reality of the situation.  Right now, this is not something I want to tackle.  It was a good idea, and one I may revisit in the future with an improved vision and more commitment, but I want a return to stability.  There would be no way I could clear my mind enough to consider any means of improvement with everything all out like that.

In the next iteration, if there is one, I would definitely test out some techniques on smaller arrangements, instead of committing fully to a full collection dissection.  That was days of effort to dismantle and it will be days to reassemble, too.  So until next time, fail on.

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