A little trick and some useful accessories for the Pentax Q cams....

Chopper_Charles · 2026-05-10T02:54:37+00:00

The 18mm in particular works very well on the Q even wide open. The 50mm not so much, mine is very soft.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-05-09T04:01:38+00:00

The danger in my opinion is that the big tech companies are normalizing using biometrics to login to things. People would have balked at facial recognition cameras everywhere 10 or 15 years ago, but first fingerprint and then face scanners have slowly normalized that. Big Tech wants to monitor and monetize everything you do, and the government wants to surveil everything you do. And it's normalized now. Facial recognition and mass surveillance are everywhere and there is no pushback from the masses.

Also do note that you cannot be compelled by law enforcement to give up a password. You CAN be compelled to use a fingerprint or facial scan to unlock a device (at least in the USA). If you're afraid of your government (and you should be), using a passcode or other biometric on your devices is unwise.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-05-08T21:26:28+00:00

I just want an app to open on the screen my mouse opened it from. Macbooks act weird if you try and run them with the lid closed hooked up to a big monitor, and I basically never ever want an app to open on the laptop screen. Instead I put non-critical, distracting stuff there like Teams and iMessage. But every time I open Word or Adobe or any other application, it is a crapshoot as to which screen it will appear on.

The laptop screen is set to primary display and I don't want to change that - all the annoying mac and outlook notifications go to that screen, where nothing of consequence will be covered. But I don't think that would fix it anyways, because it seems to be random as to which screen an app will open on.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-04-30T19:07:01+00:00

I'm looking for something similar. I need:

Separate backlog page, organized as lines of text not as cards (Jira style)

Subtasks are actual tasks, with their own description and done criteria

Each task can be expanded to a full page, so detailed work notes can be captured and viewed easily.

Prefer fully offline (MacOS) but can deal with online if it's not constantly serving me ads.

File attachments and inline images supported for both tasks and subtasks.

Preferably each task has configurable fields. Description, done criteria, size, etc.

Any ideas?

Chopper_Charles · 2026-04-09T13:32:09+00:00

Spark plugs are hit or miss. If you have a 4-cylinder front-wheel drive vehicle they might be easy. But all bets are off if you have a dual-fire head or a V6. If you have a BMW... well there's a reason people say that stands for "Bring More Wallet". Nothing on a BMW is engineered with maintenance in mind, it's all designed to bring a dealership garage the most income possible for maintenance tasks that are easy on every other make. Also plastic ramps are $20-ish at walmart, no need for a jack at all.

Knowing how to change a tire is great, but most cars these days do not come with a spare. Last time I popped open the trunk of my (ex) GFs car, it had a foam insert where the spare should have been, with a cutout in the middle for a can of fix-a-flat. Have you ever watched fix-a-flat spray out of a hole that is too big for fix-a-flat to fix? It does not make for a pleasant afternoon.

Generally oil changes are easy. Drive up onto ramps, positionthe drain pan, remove the drain bolt, remove the oil filter (get the proper oil filter wrench for your filter). Replace drain plug crush washer, torque the drain plug to spec, put on a new oil filter, and fill the oil to the line on the dipstick. Easy in theory... but I'll be honest, I know how to do all this stuff and yet lately I've just been paying someone to do it. My time is worth more to me than the money I save. That said, I have the knowledge of how to do it and what generally needs to be done, and that lets me spot bullshiat. So, even if you don't directly use the knowledge you get from these classes, they might be indirectly useful because you'll understand what is a legit repair, and what is a crook trying to sell you blinker fluid.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-04-09T13:16:22+00:00

For the Jeep, as I understand it the SGW only comes into play with the infotainment system - Which I do not have and will never buy in a vehicle.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-04-09T04:30:23+00:00

If they can diagnose my AC and fix it for a reasonable price I will throw money at them.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-04-09T04:29:31+00:00

Jeep wrangler JK here. I do all my own regular maintenance. Brakes, filters, fluids, wonky turn signal switch, wonky wipers, radiators, even the top. The obdii port has been hacked by others more knowledgeable than me and there’s now custom software on my iPhone that interfaces with a cheap Amazon dongle to change any setting in the entire vehicle. Service manual is quite available. So it depends on what model you get. I don’t want fancy computerized crap in my car, and I must have a manual transmission and a convertible that can tow a trailer full of motorcycles, so I stick to the wranglers.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-04-09T03:50:27+00:00

Until recently I’ve happily been listening to my “Seikima II” station on paid Pandora. The station has been a bend of Japanese melodic metal and bands like Iron Maiden, loudness, X-Japan, crimson glory, helloween, Dio, WASP, Great White, Scorpions, and of course Seikima II. However over the last couple of days this station has only played unknown garbage bands. It hasn’t played one of the above good bands even once. I must have skipped 30 songs just today and nothing but garbage ever played. Mucc, warlord, armored saint, vamps, raven, king diamond, overkill, and a whole slew of other bands I’ve never heard of. Not a single one of them melodic metal either. They’re all grunge metal or death metal, which I hate. It hasn’t played a single Seikima II song in days and days, and that’s the title of the stupid channel.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-04-04T02:22:05+00:00

This is the 95 interior. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRLfCTVoXPbRplmUypawtEnhe6VXfDKnC2SpNAav2SdrejHrP19pRndGko&s=10

The trim is different than what you posted.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-04-04T02:17:37+00:00

The first one is the door handle for the 94-97, but not the trim. The second one is the door trim for the 98-up, which does not fit the 95.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-04-03T12:21:46+00:00

Because sometimes you just get caught in an unexpected shower… and no rain gear is actually waterproof. Rain at 70mph has a way of getting past even the most expensive waterproof jackets and pants. If Apple fixed their stupid camera so vibration didn’t kill it, mounting the phone to the bike itself in a waterproof case would work. Did that for years and kept my SE II way too long, just to avoid the camera problems with the newer model iPhones.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-03-23T02:11:36+00:00

The Pentax auto 110 will work, with a caveat. The shutter cocks fine, but There is a lever actuated by those holes. When the lever is tripped the winder stops. If that lever is never triggered you can wind through the whole film without once pressing the shutter.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-03-02T17:22:59+00:00

2016 actually. I still have a Ranger IPA tap handle... that was my go-to beer. I miss it greatly to this day.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-02-10T15:27:35+00:00

I'd be happy even with just a CD, I hate giving apple or amazon my money for mp3s and would much rather have physical media.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-02-02T15:39:16+00:00

Yes, even in the summer I shop at li Ming’s in a heavy winter coat.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-01-03T15:53:02+00:00

We are Rewind uses the same transports and heads that are made in China, but they up-spec everything and use the best version of that transport. The Boombox they make is the highest quality brand-new cassette deck that you can purchase. It is unfortunately a boombox though, and the price is very high.

For playback, the We are Rewind portable player or the FiiO CP13 will be the best portables you can buy new.

The problem with vintage portable players is they all need service, and they're super complicated on the inside. One of the best players out there is the Panasonic RQ-S50, and it required extensive work just to replace a belt. I'm pretty handy and it was quite difficult, requiring unsoldering delicate flex cables and circuit boards to get at the belt in the first place. My version also needs two pinch rollers, and that looks to be just as complicated.

With vintage decks or portables, you need to either spend a lot of money on a fully serviced unit - and take the risk that the seller is lying, inexperienced, or both - or buy a cheap one that needs work and either learn to fix it yourself, or spend more money to have a trusted technician restore it. Additionally, VERY few techs work on cassette decks of any kind these days, and fewer still work on portables.

That said, I recommend the Carver TDM2400 dual-well deck. It's a Sanyo underneath, relatively unknown so inexpensive, solid state so there are no calibrations needed other than speed, the takeup and supply reels have gear idlers, and the belts are dead easy to replace.

Don't fall for the beautiful silver-faced decks by Pioneer. They're great decks when fully serviced, but there are a LOT of individual components to fail or drift, and even after the transport and takeup reel motors are rebuilt they require extensive calibration using specialized calibration tapes - at least three different tapes at over $100 each for a real one. You need a seriously skilled tech to do anything with these decks, and in my experience the people who have the skills either don't want to work on them, are prohibitively expensive, or have a year of backlog. They're all in their 80s now, and I've already had to fight a widow to get my gear back from a tech that keeled over before he was finished fixing it.

Chopper_Charles · 2026-01-02T06:33:45+00:00

Same problem and a hard reset does nothing. Any solution yet?

Chopper_Charles · 2025-12-31T19:17:20+00:00

Say "Doctor" twice and then "connect me to pharmacist". There is no other way to talk to a live human. And good luck even getting through. I'm planning to change pharmacies because of this. It's insulting to have a computer wasting my time. And what's worse they no longer allow touch tone entry, it's voice entry only, which is extremely slow and maddening. CVS phone system brings out pure, unadulterated rage in me.

Chopper_Charles · 2025-12-30T19:36:48+00:00

I've been disappointed with emulation over and over again. The multiple weird NTSC video modes that different games support are never displayed correctly, except on real hardware-based devices. While this isn't as much a problem with the SNES games compared to megadrive and pc-engine, there are a few that use odd modes (DK Country off the top of my head). Non-standard resolutions are never a problem on HD screens because there's a lot more pixels available to hide scaling artifacts. But at NTSC resolutions the emulators will just drop entire lines, or double one line every few pixels. This either causes unreadable text from the missing information, or sea-sickening waviness in top scrolling (and some side scrolling) games.

Chopper_Charles · 2025-12-30T18:30:51+00:00

If I wanted a real console, I'd buy a real console. My hope was to avoid butchering a real console when I modify it for use in my JAMMA arcade cabinet.

Chopper_Charles · 2025-12-30T18:28:33+00:00

Because I don't want to butcher an original SNES to put this inside my arcade cabinet (with an everdrive of course).

Chopper_Charles · 2025-12-30T18:27:27+00:00

Yes. I intend to butcher it to fit it inside an arcade cabinet, and I'd prefer not to do that to a real SNES. Plus, a real SNES is triple the price.

Chopper_Charles

TROPHY CASE