A Guilty Conscience (2023)

Once or twice in our lifetime, if we were lucky we got woken up from a slumber of our own making.  This force majeure  jolts us to remember what we long suppressed like why we wanted to be a lawyer in the first place.  Nobody wants to grow up working 27 hours a day kowtow to the rich and corrupted.  And yet we have grown to accept that as part of growing up and being adults.  A Guilty Conscience (2023), starring the multi-talented Wong Chi Wah with an equally impressive supporting cast, tells such a story.  Wong plays the titular character, an acerbic tongue attorney, and hence the Chinese title, who was passed over for promotions in part for his failure to manage up.  He later quit his job at the bench as a magistrate and went back to private practice with the sole intention of cozying up to the rich or in his words to lick those assholes where presumably money is dripping out.

Lam's scheme to park himself next to the rich quickly falls apart.  He was the defense attorney of a mistress who stood accused of child abuse and  endangerment of her own young daughter.  Her paramour and father of their love child is a doctor and a married man to the daughter of a prominent family.  Both families of the married couple are well respected in Hong Kong for their wealth if not for anything else.  The child endangerment case against the mistress quickly made a turn for the worst.  The child died from injury sustained and his client, the mother of a now deceased child was convicted of manslaughter and was sentenced to seventeen years in prison.  The conviction in large part was due to Lam's professional negligence--his failure to secure written affidavits from the witnesses, that is from both the father of the diseased  and the security guard and Lam's general insouciance towards the case as a whole.

His failure to defend his client left him badly shaken with a guilty conscience, and hence the English title.  The silver lining of his legal debacle, if any, is it makes him reassess his life thus far like why he wanted to be an attorney in the first place: it's about justice and helping defend those who can't defend themselves.   He vows to save his client using all he's left and can muster.  What he lacks in money and powerful connections he more than makes up in his doggedness and not to mention his acerbic tongue to outwit and out maneuver the prosecution.  By saving his client he also saves himself from straying from his original ideal of justice for all and to a larger extent righting a rigged justice system that not only favors the rich and powerful but at times also punishes the powerless and penniless.  AGC is a welcome departure from the all too common gangster genre forever popular in Hong Kong cinema since the 80s.  In present day Hong Kong, people live in extreme wealth disparity and many question law enforcement and the judicial system behind closed doors.  Hong Kong nowadays can't even just have simple evil like regular psychopath who kills and dismemebers for pleasure.  Instead Hong Kong now has an extreme brutal murder that potentially involves cross border organized crime, corruption, and filthy amount of cash: a case that embodies everything that is wrong in Hong Kong.  Lam in his courtroom closing statement utters, "In the past, all were equal in front of the law.  Now, the poor suck dick before the law," a sentiment that's widely shared and believed in Hong Kong.  AGC provides a two hour reprieve for an audience who has to live everyday brutality that's now Hong Kong.

Lazy Loading Jetpack and Envira on WP

 Full size images load at the bottom of a Envira gallery and it really shouldn't.

To make sure the full size images do not load, I need to turn off the Lazy Loading on Jetpack.  I don't know any other way.

For mobile browsing, the Lightbox images are very very small and can't be fixed via the additional CSS.

For the above two issues I don't know if it's exclusive to the Lite or i.e. the unpaid version or somehow the issues are fixed on the paid version.

Stutterheim Bucket Hat

 The item was shipped directly from Sweden via UPS.  Frankly I am impressed, then again, I maybe easily impressed.

The item is known as Beckholmen Coconut size L.  Coconut refers to its color, not the shape, taste or smell of the hat.

I've always like a bucket hat with a size large enough for my noggin.  The Large seems to be large enough "even" for a European brand.  As I've always got the impression they run small.

The item arrived.  And size wise I think it's big enough but it doesn't fit too well to me.

The bigger issue is it smells funny.  Perhaps I should have known.  The hat is coated with some rubber or whatever chemical so it's waterproof.  So it's sweaty and non breathable, two of the things I hate or don't appreciate at all.  Between polyester and cotton, I always prefer the breathable cotton.  I think Gore tex is bad, try rubber coated fabric.

Oh well, I hope the smell would get less repulsive over time.  I am OK just not sure people next to me.

Camera Lenses and accessories bought used

The last camera I bought brand new was the Nikon D7000.  It went berserk after I soaked it in rain during a cyclocross.  I sent it to Melville to fix it but then it wasn't a good fix.  I remember sending it back again as the AF wouldn't light up or something something.  It was many years ago.  Since then I've always bought used.

From eBay to retail I have almost 100% positive experience.  The items are good and if the items aren't good or good enough to live up to my expectation the sellers are willing to take it back no problem at all.

I shopped at 

KEH, I bought a Nikkor 28mm f/2 manual focus lens, the glass elements have lots of bubbles which isn't exactly faulty for good old lenses but ... they were willing to take it back.  I am sure I bought some filters and other stuff no problem like some bazooka.

Adorama.  I bought some big ticket items like my D4s with them.  No problem.  I bought a Good lens with them.  Their Good is not what I would call it Good in layman's term, check out their definition it could have problems.  But you want to think they are being conservative.  Anyway, I ordered Good but it has 3 flaws.  The major one was there was a scratch on the front element right in the middle.  The lens where it meets the lens hood was out of shape, the lens hood couldn't screw in properly at all.   So you don't know what the lens went through.  Did somebody dropped it or some idiot screwed the hood the wrong way by brute force.   The tripod foot was so tight I didn't want and couldn't unscrew it.  The scratch did show up in one of my pictures out of some 1,600 frames.  Adorama lists items with generic pictures of the items so you can't get a feel what it is like plus it won't go to describe individual item unless it's big I guess as even Good is defined as bad in layman's term.  So you can't really say oh it's supposed to be Good.  No.  Not as defined by them.  But they have good customer service, return it no problem.  But I wish they would have mentioned the flaws.

Usedphotopro or Roberts Camera.  I shopped directly or via their eBay store.  Good experiences.  Good items.  I did try to return the item but they say don't even bother, just keep it and issued me a refund as the item is not functional.  Probably my fault as it says untested.  They didn't say it's non functional....  I bought some Excellent item and it does come in excellent.  And the price is very competitive.

Buying used or selling used is about managing expectations.  When you say Good, the average person would expect good as in good.  I don't mind the body is roughed up with brassing and all.  But for the lens has a scratch right in the middle I think it needs to be disclosed.  That's just my opinion.  Just remember they are used so don't expect pristine through and through.  Sometimes you got lucky sometimes the Good is just as defined by the vendor.

Overall if you aren't made of money, buying used is not a bad choice and sometimes it's the only choice.

How to Geo Tag your Photos

This is not meant to be a step by step guide.

The easiest way is perhaps just use our iPhone, the pictures are geotagged unless you turn off the location thingy in the setting.

I think many years ago I tried that already.  Back then I was using an Android phone and some Nikon D7000 camera I believe.  But things haven't changed much for me since then:  my cameras still lack GPS.  I still don't have any commercial reason to geo tag my pictures other than I feel like to and because I can.  When exporting my pictures to JPEG, my routinely remove GPS data even I don't have them to begin with.

One of the few things I discovered is that Lightroom enables me to geo tag my pictures with the Map module (or whatever parlance Adobe uses).

So all I need is a software that allows me to create a GPX file from my iPhone.  I just downloaded one from Open GPX Tracker.  I proceeded to set the camera clock closest possible to my iPhone's as I suspect time will be used to match the picture taken to the gpx file time data.

Once I got the GPX file to my computer and Lightroom can just use some magic to get the GPS data to the picture files.  If I don't want to be precise I can perhaps just drag whatever pictures to a location that's close enough without even the use of any GPX files.

So I just save myself some $90.  Adorama used department sells some GP-1 for $59 or so without explicitly stating whether cable included or not so I take it it doesn't while KEH sells one for some $90 with cable included.  I checked NikonUSA, the cable is selling the cable for $69.99 while I don't seem to find any pricing for the GP-1 or GP-1A, I think the 1A is the latest model and NikonUSA doesn't bother to say the difference.  I have to find it out with a Google search.  The 1A has some bigger screw on for better secured connection ... or something but feature wise, they are the same.  Anyway I won't be buying one with or without the cable. 

Photoshop and MacPro3,1

Photoshop simply won't load when your chip is old as the one in MacPro3,1, the 2008 edition.  I have done some searches on this topic and finally got some workarounds.  Unfortunately those workarounds don't workaround for me.  Again, after a day or two intensive digging I have to give up on it.  It's not worth the trouble.

D4s and D700

I've always like the pictures from my D700.  There is nothing objective or scientific about it, it's just my beliefs.

I usually shoot with my D810 and D700.  The D700 seems to give me more accurate focused pictures.  The shutter and mirror sound is loud and oddly reassuring.  Despite or because of its 12MP, I really don't know, I think the pictures always look sharp and clear.  It has that clarity.  I am not saying the D810 is bad, actually when I shoot with the 16-35 f/4 with flash and pan I got some very solid pictures.  I actually find this is my sweet combination.  Still there is something about the overall clarity of the pictures from the D700, the color is not as rich or deep as the D810 but in most situations I find them nice or nice enough.

Fast forward to D4s, I haven't bothered to do any test except one if you can even call it a test.  And it troubles me that the pictures don't seem as sharp as the D700 ... though it's only based on one single event.  I even tried to do some test, like with tripod and strobe with fixed shutter speed and f-stop between the cameras.  The result is virtually identical between the D700 and D4s.  Alas, I was shooting at 1/250, f/16, ISO 400 with qflash at manual output at 1/4.  I guess I should have done a set at f/2.8.  Sometimes when I shoot cycling event and the D700 returns sharp pictures, and at the line up I can see the pores of the face.  I haven't got the chance to shoot with the D4s on events like that.  I hope the camera can return same or better results than the D700.  It's hard to believe if it doesn't but then you never really know I remember reading some online (!) review saying the D4s images are soft and have Nikon USA checked out the camera.  I don't want to be that buyer.  I don't think it's the AF as I feel the AF is accurate.  I've never done any AF fine tune with any of my cameras, not before not now.  Maybe it's the lighting condition.  When there is not enough light or contrast it's hard for pictures to look sharp.  I will find out from real life shooting soon enough.  This kind of first world problem is annoying and embarrassing.  When I tell people this kind of problem I imagine people would just roll their eyes.

Nikon Firmware Update

 Nikon is not particularly clever when it comes to software.

It has firmware and the lens control in two separate bin files.   I copied the two bin files to the root of a CF card thinking that it would do them in whatever sequence as necessarily.  The typical user behavior thinking what the machine would do instead of just following the damned instructions which by the way doesn't say you can't have both firmware and lens correction exist in the CF card at the same time.

The firmware upgrade was fine.  But then the camera would only pick the firmware where it's there in the CF card even both the camera and the CF card has the same one.  It even ran the whole firmware upgrade even the version is the same.  It simply won't go a step further to get the lens control bin.  Once it sees the firmware then it just does that nothing else.

Me being a relatively intelligent guy so I removed the CF card from the camera and plugged in to the computer and delete the firmware bin file.

Once the firmware bin gone from the CF card, the camera knew to update the lens correction.  So that was it.

Dickies work pants

 I have a pair of navy blue dickies from way back.  I don't remember when I bought them, but as far back as I can remember they were in my wardrobe.  I think probably more than 20 years or so.

I wasn't a big fan for two or three reasons.  I outgrew the pants soon enough as I started to grow horizontally in my mid thirties.  And the pants are true to size and really hit the waist instead of low.  Also it's not 100% cotton, so in terms of breathability it's not exactly great.  But if you want your pants creased then they maintain the crease quite well, which I find it quite interesting, I meant these are considered work pants.  But I guess back back back in the old old days, workers are expected to be well or properly dressed and groomed.  Another funny thing, at least in my book is the belt loops are relatively small or narrow, not for big freaking belts but for narrow belts.  So again what is the deal.  If you have some cowboy belt it's not going through those narrow loops for sure.  Again perhaps the idea is to make these work pants more like dressed pants with small belt loops* and creased legs, I could only reckon.

They are pretty well constructed and durable.

After some twenty plus years I ordered online another pair.  And this time around I ordered online directly and I chose the Lincoln green color.  I think that's the color for the sanitation workers here in NYC.  I am just fascinated by that color.  Black and navy blue are the most common work wear colors and Lincoln green kind of special.  The model name is 874 which I think is the original cut instead of some more updated version like slim fit or something something.

*Serious dress pants should never have any belt loops anyway.

Flash Duration

 Flash duration seems like an easy concept... What I don't understand is how does it come into play if your ambient light is like sunny f/16, with lots of sunlight?

If your camera shutter speed is set at X sync at 1/250s with a shortest flash duration, will that even matter at all?  As the ambient is continuous sunlight, how does a short strobe duration helps freezing action in this case?  I understand if your ambient is jet black then sure, even if your shutter set at 1s, if your flash duration is short enough then you can freeze the action.

I read and watch, and people keep talking about flash duration or a very short flash duration helps freeze action.  But they never mention only if you have no and very low ambient.  Am I missing something?  I really want to know.

I think a long flash duration and high camera shutter speed with well timed shutter release, that is, hyper sync works better in broad daylight.

Hypersync hack using SB-800 and a pair of Sunpak 120J

 I have a couple of receivers and a transmitter that say

Frequency 433MHz, Service range <= 30m

Sync Speed >= 1/250s

Receiver 2x1.5*AAA battery.

These radio trigger can't do any high speed sync or hypersync or hi-sync ...

However if I were to attach my Nikon SB-800 to the hotshoe of say my D700,  Hypersync from my Sunpak 120J is possible.

I need to run a sync cable from my SB-800 to the transmitter.  Then connect the receiver to the sync terminal of the 120J.

The D700 is set to do AUTO-FP at 1/250.  Honestly I don't know if it's at or above or just above that speed then the camera and the speedlite will do the high speed sync, that's producing pulses of light as if continual lighting for the duration of the exposure.

For this to work relative well, I have noticed the following.  There is really no black band on the frame but for high speed and small aperture, say 1/1000 and f/16, the picture looks darker.  And the bottom of the picture looks brighter regardless.

Let's say I shoot about 10 ft away subject to 120J, at full power, and it says f/16

My SB-800 is set at 1/128 power as I only use it as a trigger not as a flash.

So here is my settings

D700, at 1/1000, f/8, 2-stops lower than my 120J says.

Sunpak 120J: full power

That's it, full blast and the picture looks good no black bar at the bottom.

Conclusion:

I have a pair of Godox CellsII-N which is bigger and supposedly do some hypersync.  But the trigger sometimes fires randomly.  So I don't like them.  Plus it's only 2, one is transmitter one is used as a receiver.  So any time more than 1 light is impossible.  Even though most of the time I shoot with one off camera light anyway.

With this SB-800 hack I can run two 120J at full power blasting off and still run at 1/1000 or higher and the triggers is cheap and pretty reliable in my book.  It can run at regular sync or hypersync, so it's all good.  And if I want I can run the SB-800 as fill flash as well in addition of being a trigger only; so three lights.

Strobe qflash model T

 Latest fascination

The Quantum qflash.

I couldn't find any difference between T and T2.  I think if I don't ever use any TTL then perhaps it doesn't really matter.

One is untested and is on its way.  I am taking a chance as it says it's untested except it can power on.  What does that mean, the most optimistic scenario is the unit actually works it's just than the vendor is being very forthright telling you that the unit hasn't been fully and completely tested.  I wonder how many sellers actually test the whole feature set, I mean do they see if the flash duration is actually within spec at 1/2 power for example?  I don't think so.  Or the TTL actually works?  Or the slave feature works?

Instead of getting an extra Powerpack like the Godox PB 960, I opted for the silly power pack from maxxpower.  When I first got my Sunpak 120J that's what I got for the power.  But now the powerpack can no longer be charged.  I wonder if it's because it hasn't been used and needs to be awaken.  But then I have no way to awake it or know if it's just sleeping.

Also ordered a TR 2000 cable, which doesn't fit right into the Sunpak 120J; it needs a 3 to 2 prong adapter which I have with the original TR-PAK II I got years ago.

Or I can order a quantum turbo extension cord QT49 to run 2 120J from one PB 960.

I sort of create my own problems and look for solutions on eBay.

2015 MBP SSD and Big Sur Upgrade

 If you do a search you probably would find lots of pertinent information.

The 13" 2015 MBP is on its last leg on being able to upgrade to the current macOS.  There is no way I can upgrade my 2008 MacPro and 2012 MBP to Big Sur without major major hassles.  They are in Catalina already.

The original 13" 2015 MBP came with 128GB of SSD.  This certainly on the meager side.  I changed the battery a few months ago after it started to bulge.

I gathered 3 items to do the upgrade.

1. The Rongdeson M.2 NVME SSD enclosure

2. SPG SX8200 PRO 512GB

3. Sintech NGFF M.2 adapter card

I didn't bother to backup anything on TimeMachine or otherwise.  Just do it.

Put 2 into 1.  Connect to the MBP, erase the new SSD into APFS and the rest default values.

Upgrade the MBP to Big Sur by downloading and installing on the new SSD

The upgrade will prompt you for anything it needs and it also prompts you to migrate your existing Mac to the new Mac, ie copy the old SSD data to the new SSD.

After the migration, the last step is to turn off the MBP, open the bottom cover, unplug the battery, remove the old SSD.  Remove 2 from 1.  Then slide 2 into 3 completely.  Take 3 with 2 attached and plug 3 into the existing slot, make sure they are inserted all the way.  It's like at an angle, seat it and screw it down.  Plug the battery.  Put the back cover back on and the screws.

Turn on the MBP, answer a few prompts like verify your Apple ID and stuff.  That's it.

this is the swapped out old 128GB SSD, it's not M.2 or NVMe.

LG WH14NS40 1.03

 Finally downgraded the firmware to 1.02

Hopefully there are many more years to come for VLC, MakeMKV and LG to live happily ever after.

macOS 10.15.7 Supplemental Update

Apple released this update on 11/5.  It wouldn't be a pain if your Mac is supported.  For me running on macpro3,1 with unsupported GPU, it's a major pain.

Maybe one day I will finish this update or maybe not.

Or maybe I will get a Mac supported GPU so I can do the boot screen thing when updating.

Too much work for me.

Post Stamp

Once upon a time when I studied law, the post stamped date determines the date of acceptance, not the date of receipt.  That's if one actually can read the stamped date on the envelop and the mail is delivered promptly without undue delay like a year later or never.

I don't know what is the rule for the US Election, it seems like people make up the rule as they go.  My initial impression was the ballot mailed on Election date should be counted even it came after the Election date.  Mail in ballots are a little mess given that plenty of people can't follow instructions, mostly people do not sign the envelop or cross the ovals instead of filling the ovals . . . .  When one casts the ballot on site, those errors can be avoided or corrected right away.  If you take any public exam in multiple choice format, those answers would be discarded as you can't follow the instructions.  I don't know how those ballots would be treated like without signature or marking it kind of wrong.  Or "lost in mail" or "stuck in the post office" or simply delivered days late or no clear readable postal stamped date on it.

Perhaps these errors, if any, may not be statistically significant to be important to the outcome of the race.

Catalina 10.15.7

 Even Mojave has some supplemental update and security update.

After a few months I itch to upgrade again.

No surprise, the Catalina patch still won't go through the second phase.

Every time I do this I do this in a feverish pace and in the end, I don't know what I am doing.

But I have to say I am calm and a little bit more prepared.  When it failed to boot up to continue the second phase.  I was able to recover from the Mojave recovery snapshot though I forgot the details.  But it certainly emboldened me to go really to Catalina instead of just going update Mojave as I know initially I was able to upgrade to Catalina but somehow in subsequent update I wasn't able to complete.

No surprise I wasn't able to go to the second phase of the patch to complete but then it didn't destroy the last bootable OS I was able to boot back holding the Alt or Option key.

So here are the steps

Download the latest Catalina patch from dosdude1

Make the USB drive

Boot from the USB drive (for me I have to switch back to the supported GPU card, otherwise I can't do this ALT boot sequence)

The installation reboot and back to the USB installation screen and in some instances it gives me the mouse setup, just click Next or similar to back out

Reboot holding down Alt key, you should see the Install partition of whatever it's properly called, you should see the USB and other possible Boot EFI from previous failed upgrades but pick the installation thingy you've never seen before that was just created in the first phase of the update

This should complete the second part of the installation.

Once it reboots you should be home free 

Good luck.

PS:  you won't be able to stream Netflix on Safari, but Chrome is perfectly fine.

Catalina 10.15.6

 I have bad experience with Catalina hack with my MacPro3,1.  But that's a hack so I can't really be too angry with things don't work out.

My MBP mid-2012 is officially supported and the update is officially approved.

It took forever to update and when it's done the system is crawling and worse the system refuses to charge the battery.

I re-install the macOS hoping that it may correct something.  I started the re-install in the afternoon, maybe around 4PM it just won't finish, and at 6AM the follow day it was still updating.

When it finally finished, the same thing.  The system is crawling and the system refuses to charge the battery.

I think this is the worst ever upgrade I've ever experienced.

LG WH14NS40 NS50 ROM VER 1.02

I thought I have it set for a long time.  I even ordered a couple more Blu-ray.  Then one arrived and the disc doesn't mount.  I thought it was a bad disc.  It happens.  But then I tried others, didn't work either.  I know there is a problem.  But where exactly I wouldn't know.  The drive seems to be spinning just fine.  I took the drive apart and cleaned it twice.  The lenses don't look dirty at all.

The fact that I am running a few hacks on my system doesn't help.

The original Superdrive works somewhat but over time, it would just disappears, so I don't know what the deal.

I was planning to bite the bullet to get another one but it's just hard to be all that lucky to be able to get one with the exact firmware I want without flashing.

Anyway to be continued.

High Speed Sync

I always thought the built-in flash of my Nikon cameras can do high speed sync on its own.  Wrong!
How often do I flash?  Not too often.  And when I flash I either flash using the SB-800 or my Sunpak 120-J.  And honestly I seldom use high speed sync and when I do it's with an external Nikon flash like the SB-800 or my broken SB-600 if I ever did.  But I always thought it can be used with the internal pop-up flash.

Well today I tried because I was too lazy and too weak to carry an external flash and a battery pack let alone any trigger or light stand.  It's not worth it.

So I thought that little flash can sync above 1/320.  Wrong.  The fastest it goes is 1/320.  So the pictures can't be too crispy.  But then again it's not at all that bad if you manage to catch the right moment and don't look at it at 100%.

Right now I almost think it's imperative to shoot with a flash otherwise the pictures look kind of flat and lifeless.  But that's just one man's opinion.