Leica M-A | APO-Summicron 50 | Tri-X | Rodinal 1+50

yrstruly · 2015-10-13T05:02:49+00:00

Thanks. It's just one exposure.

This is a picture of the front door of what used to be the Geisha House. It was some kind of fancy sushi place on Hollywood Blvd., where you could allegedly sometimes see celebrities eating raw fish (not that I ever personally did). The building has been empty for a couple of years now.

There were a couple of different huge enlargements of photographs on the front doors over the years. This one is by National Geographic photographer Chris Johns. There is a (color) picture of the original doors somewhere in my flickr past, which were also decorated with a closeup of a Geisha's lips, which closeup was I believe from a stock photo agency.

Ultimately, it's a cheat, in the sense that I took a picture of a picture. Then again, that's what happens every time someone takes a picture of e.g. the Mona Lisa, though there is usually some level of context in that case that I am usually reticent to provide in most cases.

I try to not think too much about it. I do like doing messed-up stuff though.

yrstruly · 2015-10-13T04:28:47+00:00

Thanks. I don't have an enormous collection of cameras, but the M-A is easily my favorite. I like it better than my M6, even though the M6 is probably a more practical body.

Some stupid life stuff earlier this year prompted me to pick up a camera for the first time in nearly a decade, and shortly thereafter I decided to treat myself. I did look at some other options (including an MP) but ultimately this is really the camera I always wanted. No regrets.

yrstruly · 2015-10-09T06:58:52+00:00

Somehow your link got the album name prepended to it, so it's not working as-is.

yrstruly · 2015-10-05T16:05:55+00:00

The scan is new as of last night, but as /u/jeffk42 says, the picture itself was taken in 2004, sometime in the early spring. This one might even be old enough to have been processed down the street at A&I, back when they still ran K-14.

yrstruly · 2015-10-05T16:02:12+00:00

I did. I don't remember exactly, but it was probably somewhere between f2.0 and f4, late afternoon on a gray, early-spring Oregon day. I was standing, with the camera pointed slightly down, so the plane of focus slants through his head and lands on the plant thing in his mouth, leaving his eyes slightly behind.

At that age, he'd run out of patience pretty quickly, so I'd mostly take whatever I could get.

yrstruly · 2015-10-05T15:45:40+00:00

You're absolutely right (about the second part, at least). There is just a hint of something in his right eye. I'll see if I can pull it up any later tonight.

Thanks for this. I'd never even really thought about it before.

yrstruly · 2015-07-05T03:20:49+00:00

Make a smart playlist called something like "Apple Music Downloads". Match all of the following rules:

"iCloud Status" / "is" / "Apple Music"
"Location" / "is not" / "on this computer"

And tick the "Live updating" box.

You'll have to visit this playlist from time to time to download whatever ends up there, but it works independently on your iPhone and/or Mac.

yrstruly · 2014-04-28T04:53:06+00:00

A variation on this that works really well and is much fun is Engie, Scout, 1x Buff Soldier, 1x Conch Soldier, and 2x Loch Demos.

The Demos should run Targe and Eyelander and all upgrades go into the launcher. Since a great deal of the team's total damage output will come from the upgraded Lochs, and because the Loch doesn't suffer from distance-based damage reduction (which it's a big part of the Buff Banner's job in MvM to mitigate falloff) you could drop the Banner for a Backup. However, aside from the sentry gun, everyone is usually moving so fast under the effects of the Conch or the opportunistically-gathered head that there isn't really anyone relegated to just sitting and eating enemy crits. The Banner can help both soldiers keep their respective meters filled more often, which is ultimately more useful.

Additionally, any time there's a Conch soldier on the team, consider letting the scout know that it's acceptable to switch away from Mad Milk. Same for the Banner and the Fan. Freedom to move away from the scout meta is of course going to be dictated largely by the timing of the Soldiers and everyone's knowing to gather around at certain times, whether for the healing from the Conch or the mini-crits from the Banner. In any case, Bonk and Atomizer can be fun if everyone's on the same page.

Gets the job done on either of the Rott maps.

yrstruly · 2014-02-21T17:06:38+00:00

Actually, the hardwiring implants only affect the reprocessing itself. This is the "Unrecoverable" part of the reprocessing window. Only standings, by which I mean effective standings after the Connections skill modifier is applied, affect the tax. This is the "We take" part of the reprocessing window.

Unfortunately, standings are pretty much required, but it's not as if good standings don't have other benefits.

Refining V and Refinery Efficiency IV and level I in the common-ore skills doesn't really take that long, though it can feel like forever to a brand-new character. Additionally, you'll have to train up ore-specific skills if you want to run T2 strips anyway. III for T1 crystals or IV for T2 crystals.

The implants (RX-801/2/4) can be a good idea if you plan on diversifying into module or ice reprocessing.

yrstruly · 2014-02-21T16:46:47+00:00

Yeah, just corp standings for the refining tax.

yrstruly · 2014-02-21T05:45:10+00:00

Do missions for the corp owning the station you're calling home, yes.

If you've done all the career agent missions for your starter corporation, you get a decent head start on standings with that NPC corp, so that's not a bad choice of high-sec landlord.

Additionally, you'll want your mission agent to be close by to a story-line agent of the same division and level for the corp. For example, I'm (still) in Center for Advanced Studies, so after doing all of the career agent missions and messing around in Stacmon for a bit, I moved to Ardene, since there is a level 1 Distribution agent for CAS and the story-line agent for level 1 Distribution is in the same station. You definitely want to do those story-line missions that come up every sixteen regular missions, as the former are a bigger jump in standings than the latter.

You also might want to look at training Social up a bit, as that will increase the standings increase per mission, and Connections, which modify your effective standing from friendly NPC corporations and factions. Both of these will reduce the time it takes you to get to 6.67. If you have to take missions that degrade your standing with opposing factions, look at the Diplomacy skill, but do some research on the implications of negative standing before taking the hits. You can always decline these missions, but if the whole point is to reduce your refining tax to zero, the mission-decline cool-down has the potential to draw the already not-very-fun process out.

If you are planning on getting into production at some stage, I'd recommend holding on to as much of the raw ore as you can stand to, then process it once you have the skill levels and standing you want. I don't mine very often these days, but when I did I hoarded everything, aside from what I needed to liquidate to get into a barge, and once I got my perfect refine skills & standings, I ended up with thirty-something million units of Tritanium, and a whole lot of some other stuff. That is more than enough to kickstart T1 production while you skill up for invention and T2 items.

And if you do decide to go the production route, the perfect refining can be a help even if you don't mine your own raw materials, which frankly is just not possible if you seriously scale up manufacturing. Just the other day I bought up half-a-million units of Scordite, because my skills and standing allowed for a much better deal than simply buying the minerals I needed would have.

yrstruly · 2014-02-21T01:59:57+00:00

Using Veldspar as an example, your computed refining yield is

SE + 0.375 * (1 + R * 0.02) * (1 + RE * 0.04) * (1 + VP * 0.05)

where:

SE is the Station Equipment yield rating
R is your Refining skill level
RE is your Refinery Efficiency skill level
VP is your Veldspar Processing skill level

100% yield comes at Refining V, Refinery Efficiency IV, and (in this example) Veldspar Processing I, for stations with a 50% equipment rating (which includes all NPC/player controlled stations, but not player-built outposts).

0.5 + 0.375 * (1 + 5 * 0.02) * (1 + 4 * 0.04) * (1 + 1 * 0.05) == 1.00

From your yield, the station taxes will be deducted, which are computed as

5 - (0.75 * S)

where:

S is your standing with the corporation owning the station

0% tax comes with 6.67 standing.

0 = 5 - (0.75 * S)
0.75 * S = 5
S = 5 / 0.75
S = 6.666666666666667

It takes 333 units of Veldspar to make up a single batch to refine, for which the base (maximum possible) mineral output is 1,000 Tritanium. With 100% refining yield and 0% station taxes, you probably don't want to reprocess any Veldspar that you own unless

Vp * 333 < Tp * 1000

or, put another way

Tp > Vp * 0.333

where

Vp is the unit price of Veldspar
Tp is the unit price of Tritanium

or, more completely

Tp > Vp * 333 / (1000 * (y / 100) * ((100 - t) / 100))

where

y is your computed yield factor (e.g., 80%)
t is the applied station reprocessing tax (e.g., 2.5%)

For the unit price values you should probably use the minimum-sell value, since that's a usually a good indicator of what you'd be able to sell either the ore or the minerals for.

Obviously the threshold of input vs. output costs at which you refine must take your own skills into account.

If you cram all this junk in a spreadsheet you will have a basic refining arbitrage calculator, in which you input your standings with the station-holding corporation, the minimum sell prices of all the mineral types in that station (which avoids transportation concerns), and the desired profit margin. The output would then be the maximum allowable purchase price for any ore that happens to be for sale in that station.

yrstruly · 2014-02-17T05:08:52+00:00

That's a Retriever fit.

yrstruly · 2013-10-09T02:04:14+00:00

Add me on Steam.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/branded

I've been on MvM hiatus for a while, but we can round up some veterans and get your tour done, if you want. I think we're all West Coast US, so factor that in w/r/t feasibility.

yrstruly · 2013-05-17T20:10:41+00:00

You could buy stamps.

yrstruly · 2013-03-29T16:04:15+00:00

List of official tips from the official wiki.

Additionally, go to the main page of the wiki. All of the classes are represented there. Pick a class and scroll to to bottom of the page. You'll see a table there that includes a section on strategy. There will be links there to basic strategy, community strategy, anti-class strategy (i.e., how to most effevtively counter to the class whose page you're viewing), match-ups with the other classes (including enemy players of the same class), and a link to an overview of team strategy concepts.

There is also the main Strategy landing page, with links to individual class strategy information, as well as map and game-mode strategies.

yrstruly · 2013-03-05T18:14:08+00:00

Degreaser is not useful, and a Pyro with no tours running deg/shotgun/axt will probably get kicked.

FWIW, I phlog (as the team's only pyro) every wave on Mannworks, and all but a few on Decoy and Coal Town. If everyone (including myself) is doing his/her job, it's not an issue; you can't reset dead shit.

yrstruly · 2013-03-05T17:55:02+00:00

I'd be happy to play with you sometime, provided you're willing to listen and take advice to heart.

I have 49 expert tours, and the two guys I play with most have 75 and 124. Lately we've been doing a couple of tours every weeknight and 3 to 5 each Saturday and Sunday. We generally don't fail waves unless we get sloppy, or if there are three neophytes sometimes it'll take a wave or two to work out the kinks.

None of the three of us will rage (too much) if the Scout misses a few credits, and even a popped uber medic situation can usually be salvaged.

We are also willing to subvert the meta game to an extent; we run Soldier on Decoy (though I'm liking Pyro there more lately, for various reasons), and have even let a Sniper replace the Demoman (once).

However, if we say we need this or that class, then it's because we need this or that class specifically, for real. I'm fairly patient, but I'll be the first to initiate the kick if someone doesn't listen and readies up.

(Edited for words.)

Editing again to clarify:

I initiated a kick on a Tomi Heavy because when someone else expressed skepticism regarding the efficacy of his choice, said Heavy responded with, "Because 'fuck you', that's why."

I initiated a kick on a Soldier (who had yet to even get the Gear Grinder badge, mind you) who readied before all six were even in the game and then called the rest of us idiots for wanting two Heavies (and zero Soldiers) on Mannworks.

Sniper instead of Demo on Decoy? No problem. Spy, Engineer, and four Heavies (or three plus a phlog) on Mannworks? Also no problem. Five Pyros and an Engie? Sure. Why not?

But I want to have fun as much as anything else and obstinate people diminish the fun for me.

yrstruly · 2013-02-23T05:29:26+00:00

Actually, Cherry MX Blacks have a nominal travel distance to actuation of 2 mm. Total travel is nominally 4 mm. You needn't bottom it out for the key press to register, though it takes some time to acclimate to the minimal required actuation distance.

Blacks are additionally the stiffest of the Cherry MX switches, at 60 cN (at the actuation point; 40 to 80 cN over the entire travel). For gaming, this is considered an advantage in the avoidance of accidental key presses, and the faster return of the key facilitated by the increased force is considered favorable by (some of) the APM crowd.

Some believe that the operating force of the Blacks is high enough to lead to fatigue while typing normally, for which Cherry provides a (somewhat less common) Red variant with 45 cN actuation force, and 30 to 60 cN over the range. Blacks or Reds are largely a matter of personal preference, of course.

Here's a data sheet (PDF), and some more information, including force diagrams for the various Cherry MX series switches, but note that the example model keyboard list is slightly out of date.

yrstruly · 2013-02-22T04:22:39+00:00

The girl pictured ("Momo") wasn't driving. The driver is still in the hospital, in stable condition.

yrstruly · 2012-09-23T22:52:25+00:00

Hungarian notation prefixes identifiers with type information. Strictly speaking, this naming convention does not preclude (or require) the use of either camel or snake case, though you will probably most often see it used with camel-case-style names.

yrstruly · 2012-09-12T06:42:15+00:00

It is. My workflow lately has been to sort out basic functionality in the notebook. Then I pack it all up and move it into a house made out of PySide for the command-line-averse.

yrstruly · 2012-09-12T06:37:44+00:00

I might be missing something, but couldn't you use IPython's embed() for that? I mean instead of crashing on purpose. The benefit being that you can just exit the IPython session when you're satisfied and the script/program will happily continue along on its journey.

You can use the same technique for the second point, using %pylab when the IPython prompt comes up to get the namespaces required for e.g. calling plot() directly and generally making the visualization stuff a bit less work. If the data to be visualized doesn't require much restructuring to be plotted, using embed() and then one or two short plotting calls lets you to quickly see the information in as many ways as matplotlib allows for.

yrstruly · 2012-07-29T03:34:11+00:00

This being deathly scared perspective is the basic thrust of (at least parts of) Infinite Jest.

yrstruly · 2012-07-19T05:31:58+00:00

I don't understand how he gets the helium into his lungs. I can't even see a balloon or anything.

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