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Here come de snow

I always make the mistake of thinking weather moves more-or-less straight West to East, as it tended to do in Rhode Island. Instead, it moves in a large and lazy swirl, effectively a long diagonal from the mouth of the Channel to London.

So that blob of weather in the Channel that I assumed would float harmlessly over and dump its payload on France is actually about to curve up into the oval area on the map (that’s me) and snow all over us.

Eh. It’ll turn to rain by morning. We’re just so dang bored of the cold gray monotony, we’re excited by a few flakes.

Any of you caught under this ‘polar vortex’ thingie?

January 31, 2019 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 12

Putting things on top of other things

The Adobe magazine is usually pretentious twaddle, but this article on focus stacking in Photoshop was interesting.

You’ve probably guessed that ‘focus stacking’ is combining more than one picture to arrive at a level of sharpness across distances that isn’t otherwise possible with a camera. You’d think it would stand out as fake looking, but it doesn’t.

That’s because, counterintuitively, it’s to the way we actually see. Even though the depth of field of human vision is more limited than a camera’s, usually, our eyeballs jump around and our brain stitches it together into one really eerily well-focused whole.

This is the opposite of tilt-shift, which you’d think would be closer human vision, but isn’t at all. It makes big scenes look like weird tabletop models.

First time I’ve heard of focus stacking of conventional photography. It’s a big, big thing in photo microscopy, as you might imagine. That’s why you’re seeing amazing amateur photos of super sharp microscopic subjects these days. There are neat programs to stitch your photomicrographs together — like, thirty fifty images isn’t uncommon.

That’s when you start asking when is a photo more of an illustration. I mean, you might ask that. I don’t. I don’t give a shit, if it looks cool.

January 30, 2019 — 10:11 pm
Comments: 7

The heartbreak of fish breath

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images from the Comedy Wildlife Competition.

Given the mission statement, I was kind of hoping for a better selection of funnies, but they’re mostly fairly meh. Still, I’ll look at animal pitchers all day long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 29, 2019 — 8:59 pm
Comments: 5

Cat picture for scale

So the printer sent me a note today — that big job I was working on last week — saying they couldn’t work with jpegs, could I send .pdfs?

Easy, I thought. I went to pdf school back in the day, I thought. I got this.

Well, not so easy. All the built-in ‘print to pdf’ options only recognize standard copier paper size. These are big posters. But it’s all print to file, so it should be easy to make a custom paper size, right? Nope.

Back when I was in pdf school (she said, leaning back and hooking her thumbs in her lapels), when we ran into a thorny problem, we’d load a generic postscript printer driver, print to .ps file, edit the .ps file in a text editor and use Adobe Distiller to convert to .pdf. Doesn’t look like I can recreate that process without joining up to the dreaded Creative Cloud.

Or maybe I could, but I got tired of chasing my tail. What I did was print to copier paper size at an obscenely high resolution. I hope that translates to big poster at a normal dpi.

Also, I took a snapshot of the kitten with my phone.

January 28, 2019 — 10:40 pm
Comments: 17

Dead Pool Round 118: testing, testing…this thing on?

I forgot there ever was a Kaye Ballard, and now there’s not. I wonder how often she was mistaken for Martha Raye.

Hint: don’t do a Google Images Search. It’s depressing how hot both those ladies were before old age and infirmity swallowed them whole.

In a move that was either lucky timing or a sneaky-sneak, ‘little sister’ takes the dick. I remind everyone that dirty tricks are celebrated ’round these parts (if you are weasel enough not to get caught).

Are we ready? Is Ruth Bader Ginsberg still on the table…?

0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.

1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).

2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.

3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.

4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.

5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.

6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.

7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.

8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.

The winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.

January 25, 2019 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 69

Big scary message

I tried to queue up a Dead Pool an hour ago and got a nasty WordPress database error. The suggested fix involved mucking around in the bowels of the blog, up to my elbows in other people’s diagnostics and other shit I don’t understand.

It may have dropped some things. Comments maybe. Maybe even posts.

In the end, there were some unrecoverable errors, but everything seems to be working. A little slow, maybe? Hard to tell. Our internet isn’t the best.

The Dead Pool should drop in a couple of hours and I’ll keep an eye
on the stability. Just a reminder, though — I have no idea
what I’m doing.

Cheers!

— 4:12 pm
Comments: 4

Sneak and ye shall find

Interesting. Interesting.

The internet says Kaye Ballard died Monday night. Noob ‘little sister’ picked Ballard at 2:10 pm Monday. The timestamp is my time, probably. Meaning it was eight hours earlier than that, Kaye Ballard time.

It looks legit. It is either legit, or somehow very very sneaky (which is even better). Congratulations, little sister — you take the dick!

See you all back here tomorrow for the usual. 6pm WBT (which is 10am Dead Kaye Ballard Time). Dead Pool Round 118!

p.s. Stole the header graphic from the Kaye Ballard FaceBook group. No, I didn’t know there was one, either. In fact, I had totally forgotten there ever was such a person.

p.p.s. Maybe not so mysterious. A Kaye Ballard documentary came out last week and she mentioned her health wasn’t good.

January 24, 2019 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 10

Stretched a little thin tonight

Brought work home again tonight. I think I’m more or less done at last, but at least I got an excuse to make a skinny weasel joke out of it.

January 23, 2019 — 10:27 pm
Comments: 8

Nailed it!

Two fingers bent over…check. Two fingers in the air…check. Thumb alongside, pointing up…check. Yep, it checks out. That’s just what a priest’s blessing hand looks like.

Some days, correcting Medieval drawings is a sad and lonely job.

January 22, 2019 — 9:46 pm
Comments: 4

Well? DO you?

No, no. Not me. Not here. This place dun’t have no rules!

I nicked the graphic off FaceBook, where people are potty about rules. Have you noticed? Is it true in your groups?

I got booted off an anatomy group once because my drawing of an armpit looked like it had flesh on it. Which, I dunno, I guess I didn’t KNOW THE RULES. I saw someone get scolded off a ‘bad art from junk shops’ group because her bad art was from a flea market. I guess she didn’t KNOW THE RULES.

And don’t get me started on the chicken groups. There aren’t so many rules about actually keeping chickens than there are posting in the chicken groups.

What is with people who get a little taste of the whip hand?

January 21, 2019 — 9:38 pm
Comments: 11