An random Sunday morning will find us at the Hillcrest farmers market. Been going for about 14 years now.
Wide angle
So a few months ago I bought macro and wide lenses from Moment for my iPhone X. They work great and I was hoping to get a few years from them but Apple changed the 11 and to everyone’s surprise added wide. It’s great! Here’s normal and wide at work.
Conveys place well.
And nothing to carry etc. anyone want some moment lenses?
Night mode iPhone 11 pro
Impressive. Both dark to the eye.
California’s wildfire blackouts are a mess. Here are 3 key solutions. – Vox
This is a very good post about the current mess here in California where PG&E shut off power for 800,000 people to cover its ass and avoid starting another fire. It sounds as if my local utility, SDG&E, actually got its shit together after starting a fire in 2007 and being forced to actually pay for it:
n 2007, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was blamed for wildfires in San Diego County; investigators found it hadn’t done proper vegetation management. It ultimately paid $2.4 billion to settle lawsuits related to those fires. It wanted to pass on remaining costs, some $379 million, to ratepayers in the form of higher rates, but the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) wouldn’t let it. The case was appealed all the way up to the California Supreme Court, which found against SDG&E. Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court announced that it would not take the case, leaving SDG&E to eat the costs. (This ruling is relevant to how PG&E’s liability will ultimately be divided up.)
Vox
Since 2007, the scare of those lawsuits has prompted SDG&E to spend $1.5 billion upgrading its fire detection and response capabilities. And in its recently announced wildfire mitigation plan, it proposes spending $3 million more on such measures as aggressive grid hardening and vegetation management, improved meteorology with more weather stations, more remote, high-definition cameras for fire-detection, a multi-level community outreach and education program, and a series of community resource centers where people can go when power is shut off to receive information and basic needs.
Vox
The other state trend driving this is housing prices – for years, ‘drive till you qualify‘ was received wisdom for years. The result, combined with the desire for a yard, was sprawl. Sprawl + climate change = burning homes.
Anyway, the Vox piece does an excellent job of laying out the utility and fire side of the story – have a read.
Mammalz – one for Terri
Y’know, I have a tiny readership, and rather than emailing posts to people I’m going to try blogging them instead, with the faint hope of sharing more widely. I’ll use first names only, unless it’s a public thing like this post for Dan.
Anyway, in the local paper there’s news of a local startup – a social network for fans of the outdoors. I don’t know anyone involved, but it seems a nice idea and I wish them luck.
The mobile app and website is meant to be a destination for people sharing and watching nature videos and other wildlife media, including live-streamed content.
SD-UT
The startup’s founders Rob Whitehair and Alex Finden told me in May that they wanted to update a Hollywood genre that’s failed to keep up with Silicon Valley’s warp speed: nature programming.
Site: https://www.mammalz.com/
Magic Eraser Juice | Hazlitt
This is an astonishingly good piece of writing. I cannot recommend it enough.
https://hazlitt.net/longreads/magic-eraser-juice
Found via HackerNews, which has a decent comment thread going on.
They say heroin is amazing. It’s a cheat code. That it’s better than any other feeling that you’ve ever had up until that moment. Everything you’ve ever tried for, every challenge you’ve failed or risen to, every struggle and every injury, it all just falls into place. It was all worth it, every minute, every gasp, to bring you here to this moment. It’s meditation, it’s orgasm.
From the post
I’m not a heroin user, but I know what it feels like to search for something and think you’ve found it. I know that aching, dark emptiness of an addict, and the feeling that one more step, one more grasp, and it’s just within reach; that thing you’ve been hunting for, the thing which has kept you up at night. It’s right there, right beyond your fingertips, just stretch a little farther, escape a little more. I can’t begin to know the pain of a true opiate addiction, but I have no judgments for those in the struggle.
Like I said, a must-read.
One for Dan
Via Electrek, that’s the Australian-made Fonzarelli NKD electric motorcycle. Looks a quirky and versatile ride according to Electrek, though of course more expensive than the China-made competition like the CSC City Slicker.
One of these days I’ll convince my better half and buy a Zero…
(Who’s Dan? Dan Fock, of course, my mate from OWC.)
Omega calibre 59.8D 1940s clock
N.B. – this is another save from the WatchOtaku.com blog entries. The clock itself is rare and interesting and beautifully made.
Last updated Jul 13, 2013 by Paul Hubbard
A very unusual find on ebay UK:
Here’s what I’ve been able to find so far:
- Made in the 1940s for a UK store
From TZ-UK:Model created in 1936 and specifically designed for the British Navy. Calibre 59 8-D with double barrel, back with bayonet closing, enamel dial marked Omega Swiss Made – Story Barrow, arabic numaral hour hands, minute track, blued steel Empire hands, triangular-profiled polished brass case designed to be screwed-in on a boat dash. Ref. British Admiralty. Item production date 3rd February 1940. - Omega calibre 59.8D, aka 59 8-day. About 3,000 of the movement were made between 1935 and 1940. I think this is the remontoir version.
- 15 jewels
- Handwinding
- Non-hacking
- 8 day power reserve – wind it once a week!
- Enamel dial
- Blued steel hands, Breguet style
- Subseconds dial at twelve
- Wedge-shaped brass case with key
- Dial has ‘STORY, BARROW’ on it – seems to be an old UK retailer. That thread also speculated this was from a submarine, which might account for the oddly shaped case.
- Weighs 1,660g (1.6kg) – very heavy.
- About 10cm wide by 12cm tall by 7cm thick at the base of the wedge.
- Bi-metallic split poised balance
- Blued hairspring with Breguet overcoil.
More info
- A similar one with flawless dial sold for a bit more in July of 2011.
- Someone else with the same clock
- The 59.8D calibre also had a dead seconds version (59.8D-SCS) with spectacular decoration.
More pictures:
Pretty, eh? Mine keeps time a bit erratically, gaining or losing about 5 minutes per week. I need to do some research to see who can service these, RGM for sure.
It makes a fantastic desk clock, the well-worn case and subtly cracked enamel dial wearing their age proudly. The tick is loud and slow (18,000 vph) and winding it on Monday mornings is a nice start to the week. For just under $400, I got a cool Omega with a mysterious history – can’t do much better than that!
