davidd's A DOLL A DAY 2024

[Alliecat]

Bahahaha!
Nice use of the basket and cardboard roll!
I got distracted looking at the rigging here, wondering whose it is. The white masts made me wonder if it's the 'HMS' Rose but I think the black bands are too close together....


I am sorry I don't have time to do anything more elaborate.

[davidd]

I got distracted looking at the rigging here, wondering whose it is.  The white masts made me wonder if it's the 'HMS' Rose but I think the black bands are too close together....

I am sorry I don't have time to do anything more elaborate.

That's how the "interactive" games get rolling. Nothing elaborate, any response will do.

I'm sorry, I can't help you with a ship I.D.. I searched for sailing ship rigging, and the pics I used were "generic" screensaver background images or stock photos with no identification provided. There are two photos used here, one with "golden brown" masts and one with white masts.

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7 March - A Doll A Day 2024:
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Paradise, Hawaiian Style -- 7 March - A Doll A Day 2024

[Alliecat]

Nice lighting. It really is a great little set.

Yep, it was clearly two ships. Not enough of the brown masted one for me to guess, although the rounded top would be a clue if one wanted to go digging. At least it’s real rigging, and not nonfunctional AI bits and pieces

[davidd]

... although the rounded top would be a clue if one wanted to go digging. 

I looked at online images for a little while yesterday but could not come up with anything conclusive... or even close.

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8 March - A Doll A Day 2024:

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Oh Yeah... We Do It Island Style

[Alliecat]

Oh Yeah... We Do It Island Style

Awwwww…. I love that one.
That actually made me tear up. Man, I wish I could live there.

[davidd]

That actually made me tear up. Man, I wish I could live there.

Yeah... it kinda did me, too. That song was everywhere when I first moved to Hawaii.

It's just, like, insane how much everything costs now. I'm sure you're seeing how ridiculously little a lot of money will get you while you are real estate hunting.

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9 March - A Doll A Day 2024:

VAMPIRA'S LITERARY LOUNGE

The Cottingley Secret by Hazel Gaynor

A fiction novel based on the Cottingley Beck fairy photographs taken in 1917 and 1920, the story weaves together a Hallmark-movie-ish present-day romance and "finding her true self" plot with a more engaging embellished-but-fact-based retelling of Frances and Elsie's creation of the famous fairy photos during the time of the First World War.

Favourite line: "I hoped that part of me would always be nine and a half."

[fishy]

That actually made me tear up. Man, I wish I could live there.

Yeah... it kinda did me, too. That song was everywhere when I first moved to Hawaii.

It's just, like, insane how much everything costs now. I'm sure you're seeing how ridiculously little a lot of money will get you while you are real estate hunting.

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9 March - A Doll A Day 2024:

VAMPIRA'S LITERARY LOUNGE

The Cottingley Secret by Hazel Gaynor

A fiction novel based on the Cottingley Beck fairy photographs taken in 1917 and 1920, the story weaves together a Hallmark-movie-ish present-day romance and "finding her true self" plot with a more engaging embellished-but-fact-based retelling of Frances and Elsie's creation of the famous fairy photos during the time of the First World War.

Favourite line: "I hoped that part of me would always be nine and a half."

I'll never forget the Sherlock Holmes author of all people being taken in by those things...

[davidd]

10 March - A Doll A Day 2024:

Guys Loading Stuff in to a Jeep

[Alliecat]

Ooo, are they going on an ex!pedition??

Favourite line: "I hoped that part of me would always be nine and a half."

Well, I shouldn't try to do forums on a teeny phone screen because at first glance I read "nice and a half". And I thought, Yeah, we should all try to be nice-and-a-half. Like just, people should be nicer to each other than we are.
Some days, that's kind of a tall order

[davidd]

11 March - A Doll A Day 2024:

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Desktop Jumble

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Workspace as Reflection of Mental State... I guess.

The iPad I used to snap this grainy photo is about 9 years old now. It still works okay, but the camera has always been crummy. Out of curiosity, I just checked the Apple website, and priced out a top of the line iPad Pro with max memory and all the bells and whistles. Funny how quickly "Starting at $799" can snowball to a final price of just under three grand.

I should snap the same pic with my DSLR and see if there's any significant difference.

[Alliecat]

I hearya about the mental funk. I have little piles that I can’t be bothered to deal with too. I suppose you could try for a refurbished iPad, but if you have the DSLR then why not make use of it?

[davidd]

... but if you have the DSLR then why not make use of it?

I tried some pics of the same scene with my DSLR camera yesterday, and they turned out as grainy as the iPad photos. What th' heck? Am I doing something wrong on my computer? Is the computer no longer working properly when I import pix?

Then I ended up having trouble importing pictures. They show up on the camera, but when I put the card in the reader in the computer or in a reader attached to the computer, the pictures don't show up... unless I reformat the SD card each time I put it back in the camera. Weird. Maybe I need a new card.

I finally thought to check the ISO setting on the camera. I figured out how... that took some digging. It was set to "auto" with an upper end limit of ISO 16000. Not 1600, but 16000.  I cranked the top end limit down to 800, and the pictures showed less digital grain... but more motion blur, because I'm out of practice hand-holding those 1/5-second ex-posures.

What ISO range do you use for your digital photos?

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12 March - A Doll A Day 2024:

VAMPIRA'S LITERARY LOUNGE

Extremely Online (2023) by Taylor Lorenz

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Extremely Online: the Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet (2023) by Taylor Lorenz.

Non-fiction history of the emergence of social media influencers from about 1997 to 2022.

Quick summary: A lot of (mostly very young) people made, and continue to make, buckets of money, millions, providing content for online platforms, yet the author takes the position that the reader should feel sorry for them because they have to work so hard and put in so many hours to keep the money flowing while the big mean nasty corporate juggernauts do little or nothing to support them (other than giving many of them MORE MONEY IN A YEAR THAN MOST OF US EARN IN A LIFETIME).

Additional remarks (please ignore):

What I learned: the author self-identifies as "medically fragile" and supports everyone continuing to wear masks everywhere and forever to protect her, and she supports online platforms limiting or removing "COVID disinformation" (which is broadly defined as anything that does not support the COVID mask-and-vax agenda).

Not a word, not one, about the revelations that much of the COVID "disinformation" was actually accurate, and that "stopping disinformation" was largely about ensuring compliance and hiding the potential negative side-effects of the inadequately tested, and questionably effective, vaccines.

Oh, and... any criticism leveled at a woman or a girl is, by default, "misogynist." I lost count of the times that word appeared in the book. And even though a lot of the criticism of online female "influencers" comes from the female audience, apparently that, too, is somehow "misogynist."

Other than that, the rest of the book was pretty interesting... although somewhat vague on specifics. The book did not delve in to where the money came from when growing social media companies "valued" at hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars, several of which ended up collapsing, offered lucrative "creator contracts" to online "stars" who attracted large user followings. How can a company that loses tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars a year keep going? How can it keep spending?

The "misogynist" and the COVID-masking "medically fragile" stuff was annoying. The big money the early YouTubers and Vine stars and Instagrammers were making was interesting, albeit almost beyond comprehension. The source of the staggering sums of money the tech companies have burned through over the past two decades without turning a profit is never ex-plored. Overall, an interesting read, but I would have found it more interesting if it had gone in to a little more depth on the business side, and if the rise of online media stars had also been ex-amined from the perspective of the audience and fans: why do the fans follow certain people? Why do the fans lose interest in, or even turn against, former favorites?



12 March - A Doll A Day 2024
NECA Toys "Toony Terrors" Vampira figure

[fishy]

I hope we aren't the only ones left on the doll forum because we're the only ones left alive. ;__;

I didn't get the injectable smallpox blanket either.

[Alliecat]

Hahahahahaha, 16,000!!   
As soon as I read "grainy" I thought to suggest you reduce the ISO, and then read further.  Yeah, that'll do it 
Sorry I can't help you with the card reader.  I have Pentax software that gets the photos off both cameras.  Anything helpful if you google something like "computer doesn't recognize card" or ...?
1/5 is way too slow to hand-hold.  (I'm not sure if you were kidding about doing it.)  Standard guideline is 1/focal length.  So if you had a 50mm lens you wouldn't want to hand-hold below 1/50.  200mm lens, minimum hand-held speed is 1/200.  Of course some people are reeeeealllly steady; I've got away with 1/8 on mid-range lenses, but I'm sure if you blew them up they wouldn't be that sharp.
I prefer to use 200 or 400.  If I'm outside and it's getting dim and I'm being lazy (i.e. no tripod) I might go to 800, but yeah, if you want fine detail on faces that starts to get fuzzy.  If I'm shooting light-painted stuff in the dark I usually go right down to 200 (the slowest it will give me) so I can have lots of time to play with the flashlight.
200/400 should be fine for you in your nice sunny outdoor pix.  Inside.... get a tripod.  Even a wee one.

A lot of (mostly very young) people made, and continue to make, buckets of money, millions, providing content for online platforms,....

Uggghhh... maybe that's why the young fellow I saw on "Renovation Aloha" tonight had $3.8 million CASH to drop on the featured house?? 
I'm sure it must be very hard putting in all that time and effort stressing over whether a bunch of strangers "like" what you post online.  Life is tough (eyeroll).
Having zero interest in "social media influencers", I'd have minus interest in reading about them, but the diversity of book tastes on the forums is often entertaining.

[davidd]

I hope we aren't the only ones left on the doll forum because we're the only ones left alive. 

There are two or three stragglers remaining at the Figurvore site. And four or five at Dollieh Sanctuary. Outposts holding out in the face of the Dollpocalypse.

A lot of (mostly very young) people made, and continue to make, buckets of money, millions, providing content for online platforms,....

Uggghhh... maybe that's why the young fellow I saw on "Renovation Aloha" tonight had $3.8 million CASH to drop on the featured house?? 
I'm sure it must be very hard putting in all that time and effort stressing over whether a bunch of strangers "like" what you post online.  Life is tough (eyeroll).
Having zero interest in "social media influencers", I'd have minus interest in reading about them, but the diversity of book tastes on the forums is often entertaining.

Yeah, I had heard of only a few of the "influencers" and "creators" mentioned in the book, and even then, I've never watched any of their stuff. It is mind-blowing to me the way the tech companies shovel money at these people. The book was very sparse on details as to why certain ones become popular, or are selected be become popular (it turns out a lot of "amateur" online videos have production teams behind them).

I was not familiar with the "Renovation Aloha" show. I looked it up and found this episode description:

House Held Up by Car Jacks
Kamohai and Tristyn buy a house that's so termite eaten they don't even need a hammer for demo. And more problems appear as they peel back the layers as they discover a deck being held up by a rope and a foundation that's on car jacks.



So true! So true! Foundation? What foundation? My house sat on wooden posts (termite-eaten wooden posts) on concrete blocks set in to the sand. "Peel back the layers?" Ha! There were no layers to peel back! The old "plantation style" houses were "single wall construction." The plank you see on the outside is the same plank you see on the inside. Drive a nail too deep to hang a picture and it pokes out the side of your house! Electric wires had a little wooden conduit over them, otherwise they were surface mounted. Decks and porches held up with random bricks, cinderblocks, or yes, the occasional car jack were common sights in da neighborhood.

I miss it.

If I knew then what I know now about "fixing stuff" I might still be there. "Fixing stuff" isn't all that hard if you don't have to deal with inspections and permits. Once the permit people show up, you can't afford to fix things "up to code," especially when things weren't "built to code" in the first place because "codes" didn't exist.

Now, I know enough to have taken care of the drain issues. I could have upgraded the water lines. I could probably have fixed the foundation well enough to get another couple of decades out of it. I could have even upgraded the electrical wiring. For about forty bucks in plastic pipe and some digging with a shovel, I could have even fixed the neighbor's entire clogged-up drain system which would have shut him up about needing to pump the septic tank (because it was his iron drain pipes that were rusted shut, not a problem with the septic).

But back then, I didn't know how to do that stuff... or I thought it was somehow "specialized" and required "ex-perts."

As for the young guy on TV dropping four million bucks in cash - yeah, maybe a YouTuber, maybe a "Bitcoin Billionaire." I still haven't figured out how the "cryptocurrency traders" convert totally fake online cryptocurrency in to cold hard real world cash.

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13 March - A Doll A Day 2024:

DSLR Version

ISO 800
f/11
1/6 sec
18-55mm lens at about 35mm
Hand-held