Now they traded for Alex Tuch and signed him to an 8 year deal.

Yes, Tuch, of The Save. That guy.

Not that it ever wasn't, really, but...After many years of crop-sensor cameras, I went full frame in ~2018 with the Nikon D750. It's a great camera, though I didn't use it much during the pandemic. The full frame lenses are really heavy, though, so photography felt like more like work instead of recreation.

A few months ago, I became a professional photographer, using the D750 and a Sigma 14-24 2.8 Art to do real estate photography. That setup has been great, no major issues, but if something happened to the body or the lens, I had no backups. And while it's still a capable camera, the D750 is a bit long in the tooth these days. In particular, its video capabilities are just not up to what my clients want (4K 60fps).

Last month, I bought a Nikon Z8 with the adapter so I could still use the Sigma F-mount lens. Then, last week, I bought the Nikon 14-24 Z lens to go with it. I've taken nearly a thousand pictures with the Z8 + Sigma lens, but almost all were for my real estate work.

First...wow, this is a light lens. It's unbelievable how light it is. The Sigma is 1,140 grams, or 2.5 lbs. The 14-24 Nikon Z is 650 grams, or 1.4 lbs. The difference is astounding. It's like going back to my D7000 with the 18-140 DX lens (490 gram, 1.1 lbs), but having a high quality, full frame 2.8 lens. It's easy to hold and handle.

Second, I love the results, so far. The picture is from Niagara Falls, and the haze you're seeing is mist from the waterfall. There's a nice rainbow at the bottom. The observation tower on the right is clearly distorted, but that's a normal artifact for a wide angle lenses. I'll play with Darktable some more to see if I can get it any better.

I'm really liking the Z8. It's faster than the D750 - first, picture taking is faster, because it doesn't have the mirror to move for every shot, and it doesn't have a mechanical shutter. But it's faster in other ways, too, like being better at focusing, especially in low light situations (i.e., it's better at finding focus, so I spend less time playing with the focus point location). Those things are only a few seconds per shot, but that does add up over the course of a shoot; even a few minutes of buffer can really help if traffic or other issues interfere with my schedule.

I think my wife was a little annoyed with me this week. I have a 24-70 2.8 and a 70-200 2.8, both in F mount, so I brought the D750 and have been using the 24-70 on that body, while the 14-24 Z has stayed on the Z8. There have been times I've been swapping between cameras, and at one point, I had both slung around my neck. Hey, it's nice not having to swap lenses around and worry about the FTZ adapter.

(I also posted this in cats, if it looks familiar.)

Got a new Nikon Z8 camera body the other day. The rule in our house is that the pets must be the subject of the first pictures with any new camera, so here we are, my very first picture with it (edits: cropped and applied lens correction).

Unfortunately, I forgot to switch to raw mode, so this is an edited JPG. The fact that Nikon defaults to JPG for even their pro camera that's just one step down from the flagship Z9 might say something about the people who are usually buying these cameras.

Yesterday I used the camera on my first professional shoot (real estate photography) - it went well. I'm shocked at how fast it is compared to my D750; there were a few times when I thought, "It's done already?" It'll be nice to save a little time that way - it adds up when I'm doing a 50+ picture shoot (which is really 250+ pictures, see below where I mention bracketing).

Since it's mirrorless there's a lot less clicking, just some beeps and simulated noises. Takes some getting used to!

I haven't quite figured out the top display - on the D750, it shows (among other things) how long the current frame takes to shoot - it's useful info when the shutter is open for 10 or 30 seconds (some houses are very dark, plus we bracket 5 shots, 2 stops apart). The Z8 doesn't seem to be consistently showing that info, or maybe I'm just not in tune with it yet. Sometimes it seems like it's still showing the value for the previous frame.

It's probably just me, though - time gets weird when I'm watching an LCD display that isn't doing anything, while being nervous that I didn't set up the new camera correctly.

So far I really like the camera. I'm using my F-mount Sigma wide angle lens via the FTZ II adapter for the real estate work (and other F-mount lenses, such as the 2.8 24-70 for the picture above), so I'm looking forward to getting a native Z 14-24 lens at some point in the next few months. The FTZ works great, as far as I can tell, but it'd be nice to have a smaller, lighter package, as well as a full backup rig (D750 + Sigma F 14-24, Z8 + Nikon Z 14-24), just in case something goes wrong.

I got a new camera body the other day, and the rule in this house is that the first pictures must be of pets.

Unfortunately I forgot to switch it to raw mode, so this is an edited JPG.

Nibbler's health isn't great. Thyroid and renal issues that we've been treating for some time, but lately his blood cell count is low (anemia), and he lost a bunch of weight and is now hovering around 8.5 lbs (3.6 kg, down from about 12 lbs/5.4 kg). We had him on medicine for four weeks, with weekly rechecks, and it was up in the third week, but then last week was back down to where we started. :( We have to take a week off with the medicine, but we'll restart it tomorrow and try again.

Oh and the poor guy does NOT travel well. He always gets sick in his carrier, even in short trips to the vet. Always has, since we adopted him in 2014. I had hoped he'd settle in at some point, as we do a lot of traveling in our RV, and he did improve somewhat over the years, but he still struggles with car sickness. Poor kitty.

The picture notwithstanding, he's still active and engaged and eating and all of that, but I'm afraid we may not have much time left with him. :(

Hi, all. I'm trying to use the logo creator scripts in GIMP under Debian Trixie. Standard apt install, using Debian sources, including gimp-data-extras, which is the package with the scripts. The packages are all up to date.

When I try to run any of the logo scripts, I get an error message like this:

Execution error for 'Alien Glow': Error: eval: unbound variable: gimp-text-fontname

I've done some searching, and the results all say things like, "Oh, your script is missing..." or something like that. But it's not my script, it's a standard script with GIMP. All of the logo scripts give this error, on two different computers (both with Debian Trixie).

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

Wow. Did not see that coming.

I was walking the dog in the back yard and saw a face I didn't expect.

He or she must have gotten trapped in there a few days ago, maybe even a week or two. Poor thing!

I've put out some of our cat's food and some water. And a litter box. (This explains the poop I found in there a few days ago. And it explains how the moving blanket I had over a pinball machine in restoring was on the floor the other day.)

We think it's a neighborhood cat named Tubby. Her brother lives at another house, but she's more feral.

She definitely took off and hid in the back corner when I tried to get close. Unfortunately there's a bunch of stuff back there, and I don't see any reason to spook her further. I don't want to force her out into the rain. Now that I think about it, our dog was very interested in that corner a few days ago.

I'll open the door a bit so she can get out, but with the rain, she might not be interested in leaving. And how will I know if she's gone?

The garage is heated but I have the thermostat set to just keep it from freezing in there. Still warmer than outside though. I told my wife we may have just adopted a garage cat.

I have to get up to do some chores...

This is a pretty common occurrence, he loves to lay on my arm this way.

This has to be an overzealous security guard, or someone complaining, something like that - but, last night, the fan who does the horn sound throughout the game (to which the crowd replies, "Let's go Caps") was told to no longer use his horn, or he'd be kicked out. He was told that he shouldn't have been allowed in with the horn, and that "rules change".

If you check the comments, apparently Ted granted him permission in 2003 via email to bring the horn in specifically for that purpose.

I'm hoping this was a misinformed security guard, something like that, and not an organizational decision. I can't believe the Caps organization would do something that dumb. And, yes, I know they traded Forsberg.

Brickcraft Bender I got for Christmas. Apparently they also have the Planet Express ship!

I thought I'd share this tip, since I just found it a few weeks ago, and I thought maybe newer people might have overlooked the value of it. You can create a custom macro template for things that you use more than once.

For example, I use the sports tracker integration to track three teams. Then, I have conditional cards that start to appear the day before a game and stay visible through 16 hours after the game starts (i.e., showing the final score for a few hours into the next day).

This is a fairly complex example, but the complexity also demonstrates why you'd want to extract this out to a macro. Imagine having this repeated in 3 places (in my case), then realizing there was a bug, or you could improve it by just changing one little thing...With the macro, edit it in one place, reload the macro template, and boom, the change shows up everywhere you use the macro!

In /homeassistant/custom_templates/sports.jinja (I believe I had to create that directory, and the file), I have this code:

{% macro format_date(entity_id, interval) %}
{% if is_state(entity_id, "POST") %}
{{ state_attr(entity_id, "clock") }}
{% else %} 
    {% if is_state(entity_id, "PRE") %} 
        {% if as_timestamp(state_attr(entity_id, 'date')) | timestamp_custom("%d") == as_timestamp(now()) | timestamp_custom("%d") %}
{{ as_timestamp(state_attr(entity_id, 'date')) | timestamp_custom("Today at %-I:%M %p") }}
        {% elif as_timestamp(state_attr(entity_id, 'date')) | timestamp_custom("%d") == as_timestamp(now()+ timedelta(days = 1)) | timestamp_custom("%d") %}
{{ as_timestamp(state_attr(entity_id, 'date')) | timestamp_custom("Tomorrow at %-I:%M %p") }}
        {% else %}
{{ as_timestamp(state_attr(entity_id, 'date')) | timestamp_custom("%A at %-I:%M %p") }}
        {% endif %}
    {% else %}
{{ state_attr(entity_id, "clock") }} {{ interval }}
    {% endif %}
{% endif %}
{% endmacro %}

The macro line has two variables specified - the entity to use (in my case, sensor.capitals from the integration), and the "interval", which is only used to fill in whether it's a "period" or a "quarter" for the game. (I could have if/thens to figure it out from the attribute data, but just passing it in is really easy.)

There's a lot going on in this macro, mostly specific to the sports integration, but here's an overview:

• If it's postgame, then just put up the "clock" attribute, which will have something like "Final" or "Final/OT", etc.
• If it's pregame, then it checks if the game is today, and if so, it says "Today at 7:00 pm" or whatever. If it's tomorrow, it says, "Tomorrow at 7". If it's beyond tomorrow, it gives the day of the week and the time.
• If it's during the game, which is the only other option, put up the current clock info and whether it's a period or quarter.

Next, let's look at how to use it. Here's the yaml for the hockey team card:

  - type: custom:mushroom-template-card
    primary: >-
      {{ state_attr("sensor.capitals", "team_abbr") }} {{
      state_attr("sensor.capitals", "team_score") }} - {{
      state_attr("sensor.capitals", "opponent_abbr") }} {{
      state_attr("sensor.capitals", "opponent_score") }} 
    icon: mdi:hockey-puck
    features_position: bottom
    entity: sensor.template_away_team
    visibility:
      - condition: or
        conditions:
          - condition: state
            entity: sensor.capitals
            state: IN
          - condition: and
            conditions:
              - condition: state
                entity: sensor.capitals
                state: POST
              - condition: numeric_state
                entity: sensor.caps_hours_until_next_game
                above: -16
          - condition: and
            conditions:
              - condition: state
                entity: sensor.capitals
                state: PRE
              - condition: numeric_state
                entity: sensor.caps_hours_until_next_game
                below: 49
    secondary: |-
      {% from 'sports.jinja' import format_date %}
      {{ format_date('sensor.capitals', 'period') }}
    picture: "{{ state_attr(\"sensor.capitals\", \"team_logo\") }}"

The primary shows the score and the teams, and you can see the visibility that I hopefully described correctly before. But, look at the secondary spec: The first line tells it what file you saved that jinja code in and the macro you want to use, and the second line calls the macro.

That's it!

And if I want to change it, I only have to change it in one place, and then remember to re-load the custom templates by invoking the "homeassistant.reload_custom_templates" action (note this doesn't show up on the YAML page on the developer tools - you have to trigger it on the Actions page).

Note that I'm using it in the secondary info, but it could be used anywhere that takes a template - such as the primary in this card. For example, I could write another macro to format the teams such that the home team is always second...and I probably will at some point.

This info is in the Reusing Templates section of the Templating page on HA's website, but I overlooked it for a long time. Hopefully this tip helps someone else.

Where it would have been really helpful is that I have quite a few sensors that measure how many days since I changed water filters, cleaned the pet's recirculating water bowl, did flea and tick treatment on the pets, exercised the generator, drained and repressurized the pressure tank, changed the batteries in my pinball machine, etc. etc. etc.

So, I have quite a few templates that use a helper for the last date I did something, then count how many days since then...and they're all coded independently in my configuration.yaml (these were done before the UI helper interface was as useful as it is now). And even though all of those do essentially the same thing, I coded some of them differently for various reasons along the way. It's a mess, no question. I could recreate all of them with one short macro.

Had I noticed this macro ability a few years ago, when I first started, I could have saved myself a lot of headache!

Since there's low activity on the individual game day threads, we thought a better option would be to just have one stickied thread for all* games.

*All is defined as...2026 regular season and post season games? We'll figure it out as we go along.

Ideally there'll be a top level comment for the game in question, and the comments for that game can be posted as replies to that comment. If there's no top-level comment for a game you want to comment on, go ahead and start one.

Suggested wording for the top level comment should be something like: "Ducks @ Caps, 1/5/26". We're not going to be rigorous here, just be clear what game you're talking about.

Let's go Caps!

Believe it or not, we're roughly halfway through the NHL season.

Right now, 10 point separate the top of the east (Lightning) from the bottom (Blue Jackets). 10 points! It's so close that a few games could completely change the race in the east.

Meanwhile, in the west, the Avs just suffered their THIRD regulation loss after 41 games.

What a season!

On January 1, I received a bill from my web hosting provider for a bandwidth overage for $155. I've never had this happen before. For comparison, I pay about $400/year for the hosting service, and usually the limitation is disk space.

Turns out, on December 17, my bandwidth usage jumped dramatically - see the attached graph.

I run a few different sites, but tech support was able to help me narrow it down to one site. This is a hobbyist site, with a small phpBB forum, for a very specific model of motorhome that hasn't been built in 25 years. This is NOT a high traffic site; we might get a new post once a week...when it's busy. I run it on my own dime; there are no ads, no donation links, etc.

Tech support found that AI bots were crawling the site repeatedly. In particular, OpenAI's bot was hitting it extremely hard.

Here's an example: There are about 1,500 attachments to posts (mostly images), totaling about 1.5 GB on the disc. None of these are huge; a few are into the 3-4 megabyte range, probably larger than necessary, but not outrageously large either. The bot pulled 1.5 terabytes on just those pictures. It kept pulling the same pictures repeatedly and only stopped because I locked the site down. This is insane behavior.

I locked down the pictures so you had to be logged in to see them, but the attack continued. This morning I took the site offline to stop the deluge.

My provider recommended implementing Cloudflare, which initially irritated me, until I realized there was a free tier. Cloudflare can block bots, apparently. I'll re-enable the site in a few days after the dust settles.

I contacted OpenAI, arguing with their bot on the site, demanding the bug that caused this be fixed. The bot suggested things like "robots.txt", which I did, but...come on, the bot shouldn't be doing that, and I shouldn't be on the hook to fix their mistake. It's clearly a bug. Eventually the bot gave up talking to me, and an apparent human emailed me with the same info. I replied, trying to tell them that their bot has a bug to cause this. I doubt they care, though.

I also asked for their billing address, so I can send them a bill for the $155 and my consulting fee time. I know it's unlikely I'll ever see a dime. Fortunately my provider said they'd waive the fee as a courtesy, as long as I addressed the issue, but if OpenAI does end up coming through, I'll tell my provider not to waive it. OpenAI is responsible for this and should pay for it.

This incident reinforces all of my beliefs about AI: Use everyone else's resources and take no responsibility for it.

Top row: Nikon D70, D7000, D750, DJI Air 3S.

Bottom row: Nikon N8008, Canon SX120is (I think, something like that), Graphlex 35mm, Kodak Brownie, and a Panasonic video camera from about 2010.

I can think of several cameras that aren't shown - my wife's Olympus OM-D, my Nikon N65, a 110 film (cartridge, not the roll) camera that was my first camera, and a cheap Polaroid APS camera. They're all around somewhere.

The N65 was the first SLR I owned, I'd gone into the camera shop to buy a Canon Rebel 2000, and the shop suggested the N65 instead because it had a metal ring to mount the lens, as opposed to plastic on that model of Canon. So that's how I ended up being a Nikon guy. The D70 was the first digital camera I owned.

Not shown are the many lenses I have to go with the Nikons, but very few are "good" lenses - mounted on the D750 is the wide angle lens (a Sigma 14-24 1:2.8 DG) I use professionally. In full frame lenses, there's also the 24-70 f/4 lens, and the 70-300 AF-P. Both are decent lenses, but the best quality lens is that Sigma. There's a 50 mm 1.8 here that's also excellent, but I don't use it much.

The D7000 has a Nikon 24-120 lens that's not bad. I also have the Tokina 11-16 for that camera, and some sort of longer zoom that I'd have to check. It's not a high end lens by any means, though.

The Brownie is the only camera I own that I've never actually used, though it did work last time I played with the mechanism (there isn't much to it - a spring to control the shutter). The N8008 I bought used, well after I had the D7000, because I wanted to play with film again, and the N65's shutter had failed.

Edit to add - just realized I forgot my Gopro Hero 4 Silver, my new Insta 360 x4, and I have a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 being delivered today.

They're nice pictures, but I was glad to see the comments pointing out how processed they are. Made me feel better about my own pictures!