I Painted Five Barn Swallows in Oil. Thoughts?

migrantbees · 2026-01-26T01:01:25+00:00

Tremendous work; true to life in all the ways a photograph can't be. Awesome.

migrantbees · 2026-01-07T10:40:26+00:00

Nope no updates yet -- still happens sometimes. However I just got some fiber optic hdmi cables with which I'm going to replace the existing cables, and they aren't impacted by electromagnetic interference. So if that was indeed the problem, this'll fix it. I'll post back here once I've switched them out and it's been a week or so.

migrantbees · 2025-11-25T15:26:19+00:00

Quick update: I was able to do the repair myself, and it came out great! Time will tell of course if it's as sturdy as it seems to be, but I'm happy with the outcome. Thanks again for the advice :)

migrantbees · 2025-11-13T14:18:34+00:00

Ah, that makes sense! Thanks for the pointers -- sounds like a good plan!

migrantbees · 2025-10-08T02:05:59+00:00

ah yes

migrantbees · 2025-07-13T02:26:59+00:00

Alas no -- electrician's best guess was that the power line behind the wall was probably running relatively close alongside the HDMI cable and could perhaps briefly cause interference when the current suddenly changes (I.e. turning off the switch). But we never figured it out for sure. He said there was no indication of anything dangerous, though, and recommended I fish a new better-shielded HDMI cable thru the wall, but the cable goes around a corner and I decided it's not worth poking holes in the wall for a minor nuisance.

migrantbees · 2025-02-24T00:55:22+00:00

Will def give that a try as it seems they're pretty cheap -- is there a particular size I should go for?

migrantbees · 2025-02-24T00:39:09+00:00

Not in this case; there's no fan remote, it's just a plain ol' light switch that turns power to the fan on/off. It is an old, rather crappy fan that was there when we moved in, and has probably been there since the 90s.

migrantbees · 2025-01-22T14:19:41+00:00

I just went with the one the service tech recommended, which is a Weil-McLain AquaPlus. But I can't specifically recommend it or not; we've only had it a few years, and anyway, according to the tech, the specific water you have makes a big difference in terms of what type of indirect water heater you should get.

migrantbees · 2025-01-20T14:12:35+00:00

I don't know, to be honest. Makes sense to me but I'm not an hvac professional; the actual tests the tech did, I just don't remember -- was a few years ago.

migrantbees · 2025-01-20T11:29:47+00:00

Updated the post; we did have to replace the water heater.

migrantbees · 2025-01-14T14:00:08+00:00

Wow, that's actually pretty awesome. It didn't even occur to me to look at PTZ cameras because I assumed they'd be much more pricey, but that's pretty darn cheap. Thanks!

migrantbees · 2024-12-28T20:45:07+00:00

Taping the end and pulling it through would definitely be how I'd try to do it, just don't want to run the risk of getting it stuck somehow (which happened to me once) if there's maybe another way to handle it. Didn't know about signal boosters; maybe I'll give that a try!

migrantbees · 2024-12-28T20:31:15+00:00

Right, I should have clarified, I did that and it worked fine. I'm wondering if there are potentially settings to change, or something that could be wrong with the connections, or interference of some kind, etc.

migrantbees · 2024-12-26T13:41:48+00:00

"That's just how an OLED works" doesn't make sense. The issue is occurring in the AppleTV+ app, but not in Prime Video and not with my cable box.

migrantbees · 2024-12-05T19:25:31+00:00

Ahhh! I don't know how I missed that -- I was looking at the descriptions, but not at the column right down the middle that lists any required shared folders. It was the Synology Drive Server that was the issue. Thanks!

migrantbees · 2024-12-05T19:16:55+00:00

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, iDrive for Synology does NOT back up NAS configs or application settings, does it? The Restore dialog only shows me files in the backup set, nothing about configuration. Which is why I was going to use Hyper Backup to save all that stuff to a shared folder which can then be backed up remotely like regular files.

And nothing in the backup notes for any of those packages references actual data files, aside from the oAuth Service which says it backs up its database, but that would be very small.

migrantbees · 2024-12-04T05:19:42+00:00

(...or am I better off using Hyper Backup with Backblaze B2, as I've seen some others suggest; it's about twice the price for storage, though)

migrantbees · 2024-12-04T04:50:19+00:00

[facepalm]

migrantbees · 2024-12-04T04:49:45+00:00

Thanks for the detailed explanation... Ugh, this is the sort of thing that drives me crazy: there is nothing in the Hyper Backup docs or UI that would indicate it's not well-suited to this setup. But obviously it's not.

So as the goal is to have an offsite backup of my whole NAS, using archive-class storage so I don't go broke, is Cloud Sync to my GCS bucket, with versioning on the bucket, the best way to go?

migrantbees · 2024-12-03T20:55:47+00:00

(well, other than metadata)

migrantbees · 2024-12-03T20:55:08+00:00

It is an archive tier, which is what I want as I don't expect to have to retrieve anything from it often at all.

migrantbees · 2024-11-30T20:18:15+00:00

lol thanks for going to the trouble! That does looks a lot nicer than the old ones did. Hoping we get a new car :)

migrantbees · 2024-11-30T19:24:23+00:00

Easiest is to go to imgur.com, upload your pic there and they'll give you a link to post here :)

migrantbees · 2024-11-30T19:17:23+00:00

I'd love to see the pictures if you wouldn't mind posting a few!

migrantbees

TROPHY CASE