I’m going to have to do it, you know
The Meta Quest 3. I’m going to have to have one.
Not for the mixed reality – I want VR to get away from my lousy housekeeping – but because it addresses pretty much all my complaints about the Quest 2.
A faster processor. Bigger, brighter lenses. Higher resolution. But most important, the 3 has pancake lenses.
The Quest 2 had Fresnel lenses. Yes, like lighthouse reflectors. I guess it’s a way to cram a lot of glass into a thin package, but the visual result is sometimes called the screen door effect. You can imagine.
It’s not awful. If you wanted to try VR for not a whole lot of money (in VR terms), I understand they’re kicking out supplies of the Quest 2 for cheap(er) and I really would recommend it. But, you know, when you spend hours mining tritium in a teeny cockpit, those visual quirks can wear you down.
But it will have to wait. I put aside money every month into a technology account. I’ve got it. I just can’t quite talk myself into handing £479 to Mark Zuckerberg.
October 17, 2023 — 7:29 pm
Comments: 3
Holy shit, it’s for real
When Uncle B sent me this, I thought it was a piss-take. That’s clearly Lympne Castle in Kent (pronounced “Lim”).
But no, it was up for sale in 2021 for £11 million. If’n you ask me, that’s not a bad price for a 18,862 square foot Medieval castle with 130 acres overlooking France, for cry-yi. It would take a bit of hoovering, though.
That’s the farthest extent of my travels up the coast (I’ve never been to Dover). We briefly considered it as a wedding venue until we learned it is very, very high on a cliff. Don’t do heights.
The new owners will be using it as – what else? – a wedding venue.
October 16, 2023 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 4
Sadly, it’s sold out
But you can still view it here.
I was chatting with our gardener one day, when my elderly hen Mapp just plopped an egg on to the ground in front of us, in full view of her backside. The gardener turned to me and said, “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
My thanks to whoever it was on Twitter who thought I needed this in my feed today. I did. Have a good weekend!
October 13, 2023 — 4:27 pm
Comments: 5
A long way from home
I’m going out to a lecture tonight, so I shall fob you off early with this picture of a truck I snapped in the Aldi parking lot. It’s two tone, blue and rust. Definitely American; steering wheel on the left.
I’ve always wanted a truck of this era. I even test drove one once. I gave up on it when I realized I could watch the highway whizz past through the holes in the floorboards.
The decal is an ad for Dapper Dan, which I gather is some kind of hair pomade. It’s also an old song and I know alllll the words. Whenever I look at this picture, the whole thing unspools in my mind.
October 12, 2023 — 3:52 pm
Comments: 12
I mean, I love onions, but…
Uncle B outdid hisself this year: LOOK AT ALL THEM ONIONS! I reckon that’s thirty pounds. Which is fine, but he doesn’t eat onions. I get them all to myself.
My family has a curious matrilineal history with onions. My mother’s mother adored onions, but reacted badly to them. I vividly remember her defiantly eating onions, then bending over in pain an hour later. Over and over again.
I half inherited that, by the way. I sometimes react painfully to raw onion.
My mother likewise loved onions, without the aftershock. It was even kind of a branding thing for her. The centerpiece on our dining table was a bowl of onions. We got onions as stocking stuffers on Christmas Day. Onion mad, that woman.
I gather we’re too far north to be growing this variety of onion, so it’s really quite an achievement to have this level of success. Got any onion soup recipes?
October 11, 2023 — 5:43 pm
Comments: 9
Last night of the Draconids
Tonight is the last night of the draconid meteor showers. Are we watching? Nah, the draconids are boring. Also it’s cold out there.
Also, that’s not a pic from tonight – I stole it from Uncle B’s Google Photos when he wasn’t looking. It’s not a full moon tonight.
Here’s a handy phase of moon link. Tonight, it’s actually a waning crescent.
Any Linux commandos out there? You could find the phase of the moon with the pom command. Games of Nethack would run pom on a new game and warn you if it was a full moon out. I think it affected luck.
I’m working on a way of recycling useless braincells into colorful party favors.
October 10, 2023 — 7:22 pm
Comments: 3
My new favorite thing
Woodturning videos!
Okay, that one is a little clickbaity, as if he’s going to put a gnarly root on a lathe and start turning that bad boy. He doesn’t. He cuts off the worst knobs and sidebranches, submerges the rest in a bucket and drenches it with epoxy. Then he turns it.
I like David’s Woodturning, but he does use a lot of colorful epoxy resin with sparkles, giving his work a bowling ball aesthetic. What I’m saying is a lot of it’s ugly.
Mayuko Wood Turning is all about geometric arrangement of wood blocks. Again, the finished bits are not necessarily to my taste (looks a lot like Tunbridge ware to me), but I love waiting to see what the end result is.
While the lathe is turning, you can’t tell much about what it will look like. It’s only at the end, when they slow down to put the finish on, that you can see the result. It’s often nothing at all like what I expected.
Make sure to go into settings and ramp it up to double speed. There’s usually no talking or music, so there’s no downside to speeding it up and the visuals are even cooler. Hoo boy, does it make a lot of hard work look swift and effortless!
Jack Mack is another favorite. He does a lot of burl + resin, some of which I like a lot.
I like burl.
Then once the algorithm knows you like this stuff, the suggestions start rolling in. Like this guy, who turned a melty elm pot. Or the man who turned a thousand feet of denim and twenty gallons of resin into a huge table (his channel has lots of cool tables).
And don’t get me started on the metal lathe guys.
October 9, 2023 — 7:09 pm
Comments: 4
Dead Pool 160: a nice round number
Well! Nana1 takes her third dick with Dianne Feinstein. Let’s face it, this is the only way Feinstein was ever going to retire. I deliberately didn’t go back and refresh my memory of the awful things she did in office because, to be honest, I have enough living people to be pissed off about.
Let’s get to it.
C’mon, admit it – you’ll be a little bit sad when you can’t pick Jimmy Carter any more.
What’s that? No?
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.
October 6, 2023 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 64
Spot the scam
I get these periodically. Usually, they manage to address it to “Dear Sweasel” showing they’ve at least scraped the site. Sometimes they pretend to be another blogger trading posts, often on wildly inappropriate topics. Like cosmetics. I’ve never responded (this one has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, which is a novelty).
I honestly can’t work out what the scam is. It isn’t a genuine offer – a link back to a client from a low traffic blog like this isn’t worth effort, and it certainly isn’t worth money.
Any ideas?
Back here tomorrow for the Dead Pool, y’all!
October 5, 2023 — 7:26 pm
Comments: 5
Shiiiiiny
Welcome to the Big Book of Torcs – which is not a book at all, but an interactive website (meaning, they’d welcome feedback) about British Iron Age torcs.
Tessa Matchling is secretary of the Prehistoric Society and Roland Williamson is a craftsman of museum-quality replicas. They got talking about how these things were made, and this website grew out of it.
It’s an interesting topic. Torcs come in all shapes and methods of manufacture. They were a high status item, sometimes maybe a sign of office or rank. Men, women and (maybe children) wore them. Some were a simple twist of metal and some were amazingly elaborate.
After the Romans beat the Celts in one battle in 191 BC, they looted 1,500 torcs (officers?).
They were sometimes buried with the owner, sometimes deliberately broken and put into graves and sometimes buried together in groups. Sometimes when they are buried together, they are interlocked. Sometimes wear patterns show they were worn for a long time, by more than one person.
So, status symbol, portable wealth, mark of rank, personal branding and probably something…eh…spiritual? Archeologists are too quick to put spiritual significance on ancient objects, but it’s clear torcs were significant things.
October 4, 2023 — 7:51 pm
Comments: 10