Call Of The Night 2, episode 5

This week, Our Hot Busty Bloodsucking Nurse finishes revealing the secret origin of Our Skinny Goofy Bloodsucking Heroine, raising at least as many questions as she answers. Our Hot/Crazy Bloodspilling Detective shows up just a bit too late to gather some new ammo.

Verdict: could use some more animation in its animation.

Kaiju No. 8 2, episode 3

Our Mighty Tsuntail had a happy childhood… right up to the day Her Mighty Mama bought the farm. Exactly what happened remains to be revealed, but I’m sure it will come up soon. Meanwhile, Our Monster Hero finally figures out the source of his performance problems and gets it up for her. And that other guy shows off his chops.

Verdict: developing nicely.

Dungeon Chibis Bluray

September 2nd. This show was surprisingly good.

(also, DearS Bluray is now out)

Yeah, probably never gonna buy this one…

Fifteen years ago, Connie Willis released a new time-travel book, Blackout. The Kindle edition was priced at around double what everyone else was selling SF ebooks for, so I just threw it onto my “overpriced” wishlist.

It’s still there, and it’s still $14 for a DRM’d Kindle book. For more fun, its 500+ pages are apparently only half a story, with the second half clocking in at 650+ pages, but only costing $13.

Northern Ireland coast

On a sunny day, Ireland is like a special effect, especially when you can contrast the green hills with the deep blue ocean.

This is from my work trip last September, where I took a few PTO days to look around and do some shopping. I didn’t bring any serious camera gear, because I was just walking around Belfast and taking a tour to Giants Causeway, so this was shot with my pocketable Sony WX-800, which has a 24-720 f/3.5-6.4 zoom. Optically stabilized, but the long end is still pretty iffy without additional stabilization, unless it’s a sunny day.

Fortunately I had sunny days for my entire trip, which my Irish co-workers thought was borderline magical.

Related,

Most of my old Minolta camera lenses spontaneously went gray at more-or-less the same time. The rubber grip bands oxidize over time, but unlike vulcanite pipe stems, they don’t turn a nasty-smelling green, they just fade, the result of mineral deposits rising to the surface. You can get the color back to about 90% with a toothbrush and some diluted dish soap, but I just got a pair of vintage lenses from a Tokyo camera shop (high praise to Five Star Camera), and I need to ask them how they restored the color to such a perfect black.

Amusingly, one of the oldest lenses in my collection, the “beer can” 70-210mm f/4, has never faded. The similar-vintage “secret handshake” 28-135mm f/4-4.5, on the other hand, went completely gray. For more fun, I have two of each, made several years apart judging by the serial numbers, and it’s the same for both.

(I’ll have to take one of my new/old lenses out for a test drive sometime soon; Minolta was always willing to make some specialized gear, and while I’d heard of it, I’d never gotten my hands on the 100mm f/2.8 Soft Focus, a classic portrait lens. The only other of their specialty lenses I’d really be interested in these days is the 200mm f/4 Macro, but it’s running about $700-1,000 on eBay)

---

Comments via Isso

Markdown formatting and simple HTML accepted.

Sometimes you have to double-click to enter text in the form (interaction between Isso and Bootstrap?). Tab is more reliable.

---