Bleary Thoughts On Potentially Anything

I got to the end of Flash 2 yesterday,  I'm not done but I got to the end.  The nice part, because I don't outline, is that while I generally know where I'm going, I don't know the details so I get to be surprised.  The end is a nice moment.  I doubt very much if there will be a Flash 3 but if I went back, the door is still open.  It also can be thought of as closed.  Winning!  (I sorta miss Charlie Sheen being around to say that every 20 minutes.)

Kindle Lending Library, Overdrive, legacy publishing/agents as publishers.  There must be some clever thing  to say about there being 2 modes to live in-- fear or confidence.   Probably would come from either an ex-Seal Team member, a motivational speaker or a rabbi.  Hey that's a good start to a joke.  An ex-Seal Team member, a motivational speaker and a rabbi go into a  bar....

You know people are coming from fear when the level of passion used to attack something is in the meter's red zone.  Amazon is taking over the world.  How?  Google has already taken over the world.  They're spying on us, tracking us around the net, reading our email and few people say a word.  My message to Sergy Brin "If you really think I'm worthy of that kind of attention, be my stalker, I don't give a flip."  Ditto Jeff Bezos.  Take over the book buying world.  Find a niche and fill it.  Provide a service people want and they'll show up.  He's obviously doing something right, why attack him now?  Overdrive?  Seems to be another case of pigs at the trough.  Legacy publishing/agents jumping from the sinking ship--nothing to do with me.  Although I admit to enjoying some delicious schadenfreude mit schlage.

Publishing in the last 20 years did not treat me well.  If they suffer, if agents lose their jobs and businesses, well that requires a tiny bit of brief, passing compassion.  But it's really, to quote the movie Valley Girl, "Bad karma, dear".  Maybe the taxpayers can bail them out, too.  I mean like Bertlesmann surely needs more money.  Sony is practically on the street corners in Santa suits, with a bento box collecting donations.

Back in the real world where people do stuff instead of whining, I'm going to do a book of winter photos now that I have the whole camera thing sorted out.  I did some final test shots yesterday? the day before? and came to a conclusion.  You can skip this if you're bored.  Let me assume Nikon actually fixed the body and now the body is 100%.  It comes home and it's not appreciably better.  Now it has to be the lenses.  Okay so the 55-200 for some reason is not as fantastic a lens as Ken Rockwell insists.  That's why I spent so much to get the 85 mm 1.8 (reminding you the 1.4 costs 3 x the price and is really the same lens but for the extra f stop).  I take test shots with the 85 and they're not sharp.  I was practically beside myself.  What is going on?  It's a brand new lens and it's supposedly one of the best Nikon makes and it's crap, too?  How is any of this possible?  So I unscrew the old UV filter from an old lens that I put on the 85 just to protect it temporarily.  I shoot with a naked lens.  Beautiful.  What?  The Romor lens filter is crap?  How did I never notice that before?  (Other than the fact I never had a computer or Photoshop to study the images obsessively with film.)  Yesterday with Amazon Prime, thank you Jeff Bezos, my Tiffen filter arrived in 2 days as promised.  Screw that on.  Take test shots.  Everything is fine.

I will just say this again.  I wish Nikon would make a camera and lens with the sole concentration on taking the finest images possible without the video capabilities, the bells and whistles and all the other high speed low light crap that I don't need.  Think Nikon F again.  Build the finest camera in the world, made in Japan with Japanese, not Chinese parts, with 1 purpose--take a great image.  It could cost under $2000 and it would be a service to humanity.

The Naughty List