commentary – grouchyfarmer

Lumos Dual Laser Engraver from Wecreat: A Sort Of Review. Kinda.

Okay so this is like the third time I’ve started to write this review and each time I ended up with something I found entirely unsatisfactory so I’m going to start this all over again and keep going until I finish this sucker.

I’ve been having problems with this review not because of the Lumos itself, but because I don’t want this to be associated in any way, shape or form with the dozens and dozens of fake crap “reviews” I’ve seen for the Lumos since it was released a few months ago. I’ve sat through way too many of those so-called “reviews” and they are almost universally utterly horrible and completely and totally useless. I’m tempted to go off on a rant about these and maybe I will at the end of this or in a separate article. But I’m not going to waste your time with that now. You’re here to hopefully learn something useful about this thing.

I’m not going to do a typical review. I’m not going to repeat readily obtainable information about this thing. If you want to learn statistics and hear people gushing about how wonderful it is and all that just go look at the dozens of reviews on Youtube and elsewhere. Me? I’m going to talk about what it’s like actually using this thing in actual real world conditions.

So this is it down below. the Lumos from Wecreat (yes, that’s how they spell it) in all of its purple and orange glory. And for those of you who might be interested in actually buying one of these puppies, it sells for ~~$1,200~~ or so. Ah, strike that. Looks like it’s down to $1,000 as of Nov. 12. That’s without accessories like the sliding table and the rotary tool which are extra cost options.

What makes this unit interesting is that it has two different lasers built into it. There is a more or less normal 10W blue diode laser for working with materials like wood, paper, some plastics, etc. But there is also a 3W infrared laser that lets it actually engrave metal. That’s the real reason I was interested in this purple beastie. I wanted to be able to engrave metal. And at the time I bought it, it was the only one on the market that had all of these features. X-Tool and a couple of others have brought out units that are comparable to this one now, though, so if you’re in the market for one of these do some shopping around.

Personally I think it’s a good looking little unit. Certainly the build quality and fit and finish seem to be excellent. The only visible plastic bit is the orange shield in the front. Everything else is solid, sturdy aluminium. The laser head is the circular unit with the handle attached at the top. It is packed separately and must be attached to the base unit but that takes only one bolt to accomplish and takes all of about 2 minutes. That’s the only assembly that is required. Basically you can put this thing together, plug in the power and USB cables, and be ready to go in about 5 minutes. Then just install the software from Wecreat’s website and you’re all set. You could be up and running with this unit in probably fifteen minutes from the time you open up the box and unpack it. This is a far cry from the first laser engraver I bought many years ago that arrived from China as a box of parts, with no instructions.

I won’t keep you in suspense. I’ve been using this thing for over a month now. And I’ve been using it hard. It’s cranked out about 150 challenge coins, several hundred drinks coasters, along with dozens of one-off specialty projects along with just goofing around with it, and it’s never missed a beat. I’m not your typical hobby craftsperson churning out the occasional birthday gift or Christmas ornament. I’ve been using this in a semi-production environment almost since the day I got it. There have been days where it’s been going non-stop for 6+ hours a day sometimes. And it’s worked pretty much exactly as advertised.

Does it have limitations? You bet. Does it have problems? Sure it does. And I’ll get to those. There is no such thing as the “perfect” laser engraver, after all. But this unit does exactly what it’s specified to do and it’s been doing it very well indeed.

First a bit of background. This is what is known as a galvo laser, and by its very nature that means it has both some very significant advantages as well as some equally significant limitations when it comes to functionality when compared to a gantry style laser like my Falcon.

The biggest advantage is speed. Galvo lasers are very, very fast when compared to gantry style lasers. Gantry lasers have the laser source itself mounted on a movable framework that is physically moved over the surface of the work material by belts, pulleys, stepper motors, etc. All of those mechanical gubbins having to move around seriously restricts the speed at which it can work.

Galvo lasers have a fixed laser source. It never moves. Instead there are tiny mirrors in the head that are moved to direct the path of the laser beam itself. Because the mirrors are very small and very low mass, they can be moved much, much faster. And that translates into getting projects done and out the door much, much faster as well. As anyone in business can tell you, time is money.

But that’s also the biggest problem with galvo lasers because that severely restricts the size of its working area. Where my Falcon has a working area of about 13 inches X 15 inches. the Lumos has a working area of only around 115 millimeters square, or about 4 inches.

The working area of the Lumos is only about 120mm x 120mm or around 4.5 or so inches square.

Now this isn’t as much of a problem as you might think. The vast majority of engraving jobs I do will fit quite comfortably into that working area. If I need to do something a lot bigger I can either use the sliding table, which expands the working area to around 120X420mm, or if I need to do something bigger still I can use the Falcon.

Speed is where this thing really shines. Let me show you with a short video if I can figure out how this upload thingie works…

Egads, it worked!

Now that engraving on a metal business card took about 30 seconds, all together. The exact same engraving using the Falcon took a good 3 minutes.

Since the video thingie seems to be working let me stick another one in here just for the heck of it. This one takes a little longer because it’s a more complex design but what the heck

I should perhaps point out that these videos are real time, not sped up. It’s really that fast.

(FYI: Those are black anodized aluminum business cards. They’re fun to mess with and they’re super cheap. I get 100 for about $9 on Amazon so I use them for experimenting and just messing around.)

This one above shows the infrared laser in action. Instead of just burning the black coating off the metal card it’s actually etching that design into the metal itself. It’s a bit hard to tell what it is because the video is shot through the shielding but that’s a cat watching Santa’s sleigh flying across the face of a full moon.

It’s that IR laser that made the Lumos interesting to me. That and its very high resolution. It’s the only laser in this price range that I know of that has dual laser sources built into it; a more or less standard 10W blue laser and a 3w IR laser. The standard laser works with the usual materials like wood, plastic, leather, etc. The IR laser has the ability to engrave metal.

If you saw the review I did of my Falcon laser you may remember that I used it to work with metal also. But that was different. The Falcon cannot actually engrave any kind of metal no matter what the hyped up advertising might make you think. It can discolor metal but it cannot actually engrave it. It can also be used for a kind of powder coating. A special material is applied to the metal and the laser’s heat causes the material to chemically bond with the metal to give a very durable result. But that’s not engraving as such. Engraving involves the actual removal of material from the surface of the metal.

I did about a dozen of these little metal Christmas gift boxes with various designs and wording. They’re just the right size for gift cards or small trinkets.

If you’re doing this laser engraving thing as a business, here’s a hint. You can pick up these boxes for about $0.50 each in quantity or even less if you shop around, and people will pay actual real money for these things with a nice bit of artwork engraved on ’em. Better still, take the whole show on the road, set up in a booth or table and do custom engraving on the spot for people. Takes only a minute or two to engrave a name or brief message on one of these.

That’s not just discolored metal, that’s actually engraved into the surface of the metal box.

One thing I’ve been doing for years now is I make a whole line of custom drinks coasters for a brewpub in West Allis. One side has pub’s logo, the other has a (hopefully) humorous cartoon or satirical item. Those dopy things have become ridiculously popular and when I send a new batch down there they’re usually gone in a few hours because the customers steal them. Which is just fine with me because the customers hopefully show them to friends and family and helps get the pub’s name out there and attract new customers. So I do stuff like, well, this, for example:

Nope, I don’t read a lot of manga and even if I did I wouldn’t let it influence my drawings. Nope, no sir… Yeah, right…

Yes, it’s an old joke. I used to ~~steal~~ borrow images from late 19th century and early 20th century public domain sources but I’ve been doing that less and less lately and doing my own because it’s hard to find appropriate images from copyright free sources to match a specific joke. They’re fun, easy to do, and the only difficult bit is the amount of time it takes. With the Falcon doing one of these would take 5 minutes or more. I could cut that down quite a bit but only by sacrificing the quality. With the Lumos it takes about 1/3 of the time or even less do do one of these.

I’m afraid that I’ve been picking on West Allis, the suburb of Milwaukee where the tavern is located, of late. I hope the town has a sense of humor because stuff like these pop up…

Yes, I am ashamed of myself. Anyway I’m showing you these because it would have been difficult or even impossible to do this with the Falcon. At least in any kind of reasonable amount of time. As nice as the Falcon is, it just isn’t fast enough, nor does it have high enough resolution to be able to do a decent job reproducing photos like these up there. Just for the heck of it I did the “vegetable queen” one on both the Falcon and the Lumos. On the Lumos it took about 3 minutes. On the Falcon? It took 10+ minutes. See why I’ve been using the Lumos so much since I got it?

The resolution of this laser is extremely impressive. Look at this test image I did on one of those black anodized business cards.

There’s no way the Falcon could achieve that high of a resolution. The width of its laser is just too wide.

Doing photos with this thing is a blast. It gives near photographic quality results on almost everything I’ve tried it with. Over there on the left is a photo of one of my cats that I took. I cut out the background and imported it into the Wecreat software. I found a bit of scrap cork laying around and lasered it onto that with the diode laser and you can see the results for yourself. The resolution of this thing, both the diode and the IR laser, continues to impress me.

Let’s look briefly at the sliding table. I use the optional sliding table for batch runs all the time. Below it’s set up for doing 4 coasters at a time.

I put 4 blank coasters on the table, start it up and it merrily chugs along for about 10 – 15 minutes doing all 4 of them. Then I reload more blanks into it and start it all over again. While it’s chugging along doing the batch I’m usually working on artwork for the next batch of coasters or some other project.

Installing it is about as simple as it gets. Over there on the left you see one of 2 “L” brackets that are included with the laser that screw down into the holes you see on the baseplate. Not only do they serve as makeshift guides to help place material on the bed, they are also used to anchor down the sliding table. The two brackets are screwed down to fit in the white painted line shown in the lower right corner, and in a second one in the upper left corner on the base. Then the sliding table has corresponding holes in its base. Just fit it down over the top of those knurled knobs, plug two cables into the back of the Lumos itself, and it’s ready to go. Takes all of two minutes to install it or remove it as needed.

I also use the sliding table with jigs I make myself (usually cutting them out of acrylic plastic or plywood on the Falcon) to hold small objects. or with guides clamped down to the edge of the table that I use for coasters. Below is a jig I cut from acrylic on the Falcon to do challenge coins 6 at a time.

I load 6 coins at a time into the jig, load the appropriate file and start it going. Engraving coins takes a long time though. Depending on how intricate the design is and how deep the engraving needs to be it can take well over an hour to do one side of all six coins. But since I’m working with non-flamable material I can just let it go while I do something else and I don’t need to actually be there the whole time.

The other optional tool you can get for this thing is the rotary tool and I have that too although I’ve only used it a couple of times.

Engraving things like cups, glasses, water bottles, etc. isn’t something I really do but I wanted to do a few items just to make sure it actually worked as advertised.

Unfortunately, unlike the sliding table which is extremely easy to install and use, the rotary is a pain in the neck. It has to be physically bolted to the base of the Lumos with 3 very small screws which you will immediately lose. I did. Fortunately there were extras included.

It does work well, however. I tried it just this afternoon using the old stainless steel water bottle I carry on the bike. The kit with the rotary tool includes a height adjustable rest with rollers to support the end of whatever it is you’re trying to laser which was absolutely necessary or the bottle slipped enough in the jaws of the tool to get out of position.

The blotch over the “u” in grouchy is from a defect in the surface of the bottle, not from some kind of glitch from the Lumos.

Once I had it set up it worked quite well. I had no issues with it. Basically it works just like any other rotary tool so if you’ve used one before with a different laser using this one isn’t going to be a big deal.

One thing you are supposed to be able to do is take the top off the sliding table, attach the rotary tool to it somehow, and then then clamp that whole conglomeration to the base of the Lumos and use it to making engravings up to 0ver 400mm long on lengthy round objects, with the rotary tool rotating as needed. and the sliding table moving the whole thing left to right as necessary. One of the advertising videos Wecreat has shows them engraving almost the entire length of the barrel of a baseball bat.

Now that’s a neat trick but me, being the 3rd laziest person in the state… Well I couldn’t work up enough ambition to go through all of the work of half dismantling the sliding table, attaching the rotary to it and then trying to test all of that. I’ll just take their word for it that it works and be done with it.

Overall the Lumos has been excellent. It does exactly what it’s advertised to do and it does it pretty darn well. I’m very pleased with it so far.

I want to talk specifically about metal engraving for a few minutes too. I’ve been using laser engravers for years, but I’ve only had diode lasers that couldn’t engrave metal before, so this was something entirely new to me.

Something like that metal box up there that I pictured doesn’t take very long, a few minutes at most. But if you want to do highly detailed, relatively deep engravings for an object that will have to endure a great deal of handling and wear, it is going to take a long, long time. Let me show you what I mean. Here’s a 30 second clip of it engraving a coin:

See what I mean? When I was doing those coins I’d load up 6 of them in the jig, start it going and then go do something else for an hour and a half or so. All those videos you see on Youtube of people doing deep, intricate engravings in just a few seconds? Sorry, just isn’t happening. Those videos are speeded up enormously. Until you get into lasers in the $4.000+ range you can plan on waiting a long, long time to do a deeply engraved, intricate design on something like a coin.

The other thing I want to talk about is that there has been a huge amount of hype with the Lumos and other IR laser engravers about being able to do color engravings on metal, usually showing you pictures like the one over there on the left. If you follow some of the “reviewers” and “creators” or whatever on Youtube, you’ve been led to believe it’s that it is wildly popular with customers, and that it is easy to do stuff like this. It isn’t. IMO it is mostly an interesting gimmick and I had a hell of a time trying to get it to work consistently.

I have gotten this to work and one of my successful experiments is up above. But I burned through a dozen or more of those stainless steel cards before I got results like that. And even that simple design took something like 20 minutes to crank out. More often than not, my attempts to get color turned out looking more like the image over there on the left. Lots of dull browns and grays.

And even more interesting is that these brushed stainless steel cards and a brushed stainless steel bottle opener I had laying around from another job were the only pieces of metal I was able to do this with. Every other attempt using brass, aluminum, copper, and even other pieces of stainless steel were complete failures.

Perhaps I’m doing it wrong, perhaps I don’t really understand how it works well enough to get decent results, but my experiments with getting color have not been encouraging.

And when they have worked the results were never as brilliant as the ones I’ve seen in the ads and reviews, and the process took so long that it wasn’t worth the effort. If you’re doing this as a hobby and aren’t under any kind of time pressure, hey, it’s fun to play with. But if you’re trying to crank out products for sale? The color effects aren’t as brilliant in real life as they appear in the videos. You need to put some kind of clear coat over the top or it will start to fade and even corrode (yes, even stainless steel will corrode over time). And even worse it takes so long to do that I don’t see how this would be cost effective for commercial production.

So let me sum this up. The Lumos is a great little laser. It’s fast, compact, does a nice job. The resolution is excellent. It’s much, much faster than my Falcon. And the price isn’t bad at all. I just saw that it’s down to around $1,000 now, $200 less than mine cost me.

There are definitely disadvantages to lasers of this type, however. There is the small size of the working area, for example. There is the issue of fires to deal with if you’re going to try to cut material with it. I’ll come to that in a minute. When engraving metal it can be very slow. But otherwise I like it a lot and it gets used here constantly.

The Problems

Does it have “issues”, as they say? Definitely.

Let’s talk about fires. Yes, actual, real fire. Whenever you’re using a laser on flammable materials like wood, paper, fiberboard, etc. there is always a danger of fire. This is especially true with galvo style lasers which lack the air assist capabilities that most modern gantry style lasers have.

When trying to cut flammable materials the Lumos can and will start things on fire. It has a built in fire detection system that will shut down the laser, but that’s all it can do, shut off the laser. The burning material will continue to burn until you put it out.

This isn’t the really the fault of the Lumos, it’s just the nature of the beast, as they say. With the Falcon, because it has air assist, I can hit a piece of plywood at full power to cut through it without much risk because the air assist prevents charring and blows out any fires. But that’s not the case with the Lumos. The only way I’ve found to reduce the risk of fire is to use lower power and multiple passes. While it can cut thin wood, etc. this is not the kind of laser you want if you’re going to be cutting a lot of flammable materials.

Sidenote: Smoke and fumes are always an issue with lasers. The smoke and fumes generated from using lasers with almost any material is dangerous and can be highly toxic. Plus, of course, it will set off every smoke detector in your house. The Lumos has a very powerful extraction fan that blows into a large flexible pipe that you can either shove out a window or attach to an extraction fan, like I do. Or you can feed it into a filtration system of some sort. But you absolutely have to do something to deal with the fumes. Unlike other lasers I’ve worked with, the extraction fan on the Lumos is powerful enough that it does a reasonably good job even with the cover open.

As long as I’m on the subject of safety I need to talk about the dangers of laser light to your eyes. Exposure to laser light or radiation can and will damage your eyes. Most of these modern lasers come with some sort of enclosure that has plastics that block dangerous levels of laser radiation. But in the case of the Lumos it is necessary to operate it with the shield raised up in order to use the sliding table or the rotary tool. So you are absolutely going to need eye protection. And unlike every other laser I’ve bought, the Lumos doesn’t come with any. No glasses, no goggles, nothing.

Unless you already have safety glasses, you’re going to need to go buy some if you’re going to use the Lumos with the shield up.

Other things… As I said before I don’t like how the rotary tool attaches to the frame. It bolts not to the actual frame of the Lumos but to the small removable plate that’s inset into the base. That means the rotary tool can be tippy, which is something you absolutely do not want. It’s also very awkward to try to get those fiddly little screws attached to the base. They really need to come up with a better way of attaching it.

My biggest complaint about the Lumos isn’t the hardware, though, it’s the Wecreat software that comes with it. The software has a lot going for it, especially if you’re a “member” or whatever they call it and the AI functions become active. (I suspect that they’re going to demand I pay some kind of subscription fee once my initial membership expires to keep the AI functions working. At this point I’m not sure if that’s going to be worth the expense or not.)

The AI functions are actually quite good. It can generate complete images based on whatever you type in, and it does a reasonably good job of it. The AI can help to “process” imported photos to help get better results as well.

The software does everything it needs to do, pretty much, but it is unnecessarily awkward to work with. Different functions and settings that should all be gathered into one place are scattered all over in different pop up windows and menus for no rational reason I can come up with.

The font search for the text tool doesn’t seem to work at all. I could type in the exact name of a font exactly as listed in the list, and it couldn’t find it. I’d have to scroll through an apparently endless list of fonts to find the one I wanted.

The materials settings were even more frustrating. You can bring up a list of materials and when selected it’s supposed to change the engraving/cutting settings to the ideal settings for that material. This is a common feature with the software that comes with most of these lasers these days. Only absolutely none of the recommended settings actually worked. None of them. I found myself suspecting they just copy and pasted the settings from a different one of their engravers and never bothered to see if they actually worked.

I ended up wasting a hell of a lot of material just experimenting to try to figure out the ideal settings for the materials I was using. If I went with what the software recommended, I’d get results that were so light they were almost invisible or, even worse, that literally started the material on fire.

Copy/paste of objects between different work spaces doesn’t work at all. Select an object in your currently active work space. Create a new work space and click “paste” and… nothing.

The most irritating thing I found with the software is that it doesn’t let you save your designs in any format other than Wecreat’s own proprietary format. You can work for hours designing a nice engraving, and then you can’t save it in a format that will work with a different laser. Even the Falcon from Crealty lets me export a design in .SVG format so it could be used elsewhere.

I’m hoping that a future version of the software fixes this. But at the moment anything that I design in the Lumos software can only be used with one of Wecreat’s lasers, it seems. Be aware of that if you do your own designs. If you only work in the Lumos’ software, you’re locked in. If you get another brand of laser or Wecreat goes out of business, all of the work you put in designing those engravings is going to be lost.

This isn’t a big deal for me because I do almost all of my design work in Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. Then I export it to a .PNG or .SVG file and import that into the Wecreat software for actual use. But a lot of people, especially hobbyists, don’t have access to those tools and depend on the software that the laser comes with. If you use the Wecreat software to design engravings, you’re locked to the company. If the company goes out of business or if you want to switch to a different brand of laser, at the moment there seems to be no way to move your work over to a different machine.

Supposedly the Lumos is compatible with Lightburn, which is more or less the software package that most professionals and serious hobbyists use these days. I don’t have Lightburn and I’ve never felt a need to get it. I’m quite comfortable using the tools I already have to do basic design work and then import it into whatever software the laser I’m using comes with. However, if you’re planning on doing laser engraving for actual production work for a business, it is something you should look into.

And that’s about it. If I come up with anything interesting in the future while I’m working with this laser I’ll keep you informed.

Record Reviews. Sort Of.

One of the things I do is sort, clean, and grade albums that come in as donations to a local charity and I thought hey, I’m bored. Why don’t I write brief reviews of some of the stuff that comes through the doors? So here goes.

Bear in mind that these are personal opinions and everyone’s taste in music is different. Also the price that I eventually put on a record is solely based on what I think it will bring in the store. General rule of thumb for the store for almost all of the items we sell is we look at the average used sale price and we charge 1/3 of that. Why not charge the full used price? Because we wouldn’t get it, first of all. Second we need ot move product through the store fast because we don’t have a lot of shelf space or storage space.

You Gave Me Love by BJ Thomas.

I’m not a BJ Thomas fan to begin with but this one was bad even for him. Mechanical, emotionless, wooden performances across every song on the record. Basically it’s generic background music with a semi-Christian theme. Entirely unappealing. At best ignorable. Is this really the same guy who did “Raind Drops Keep Falling on My Head”? Apparently it is. Sadly, the disc itself is in good condition so I don’t have an excuse to just chuck it into the bin. We price our albums at about 1/3 of what they’re going for, on average, on the internet outlets like eBay, etc. This one is going for a whole three bucks on eBay so we’ll put it on the shelf for $1.

Happy Man by BJ Thomas

Yes, another one. Sigh… This one is all Christian and even though the liner notes make a big deal about him being an enthusiastic Christian, he doesn’t seem to be able to summon up enough of that enthusiasm to sound interested in anything he’s singing on this album. Despite cover damage the disc itself looks pristine almost as if it’s never been played. Considering the uninspired musical accompaniment and Thomas’s dreary, unemotional singing, “Happy Man” isn’t going to make anyone very happy. The longer I listened to this thing the more I had an urge to throw a rock at the turntable. $1.

Air Supply Greatest Hits

I admit I’m not a big fan of Air Supply but even so, after dealing with those two Thomas albums, having this one turn up is refreshing and some of their stuff was genuinely good. And unlike Thomas who’s performances were so stiff and mechanical he might as well have just stayed home, these guys at least put a lot of effort and heart into their singing and some of it is genuinely enjoyable. And the disc itself is in nearly pristine condition. The price reflects that. Where Thomas’s stuff is going for about $3 on the used market, this one is averaging around $15. This one will go out the door for $5

The Sound of Music. The original first edition of the sound track including two copies of the original

The Sound of Music is a bit divisive, if you’ll forgive me for using that term. People seem to either love the music and the movie or they absolutely loathe it. I have to admit to being a bit prejudiced because I have fond memories of the movie and the music. When it first came out the nuns at school actually went and hired a bus and schlepped my entire class up to Green Bay to see it which meant getting out of class for almost an entire day. It is silly, ridiculous, nonsensical, illogical… the list goes on. But it’s a musical and musicals are generally all of those things to begin with. Would I recommend someone actually spend money to buy the album? Not unless they were already a fan of cheesy musicals in the first place. Would I spend money on this? No. It was pleasant to listen to. Once. As for value? Despite the fact this is the original release of the album, that it includes two pristine copies of the booklet that almost always gets lost, and that the record is in very good condition, it still isn’t worth much. It’s going for about $7 – $15. At the store I’d put $4 on it.

Angels of the Deep by Sweetbottom

I’d never heard of these guys before and to be perfectly blunt, that cover didn’t give me a great deal of confidence because… Well I mean just look at them. They look like refugees from a 1980s porn film. This was a pleasant surprise, though. Turns out they’re local, a fusion jazz band from Milwaukee. The music is pleasant, fast paced, upbeat and generally well done. Not something I’d buy myself but if I was visiting someone and they put it on the record player I wouldn’t be so irritated that I’d throw a rock at the turntable as I probably would if someone put one of those BJ Thomas records on. Their albums do show up on the internet. Looks like they average about $7+ used so this one will go out the door for $2.

Bobbi Sue by the Oak Ridge Boys

Hey, it’s the Oak Ridge Boys. What can I say? At their best they’re a fun band. This album is about average for them, a mix of pretty good with some mediocre filler. Alas, their stuff doesn’t go for much on the used market either. Looks like average price is about $7 so even though this one is in pristine condition it’ll go on the shelf for about $2

Free Room & Board by Don Wharton

First I want to make a distinction between true, traditional gospel music and what I call “modern Christian” popular music. I love gospel music. It is full of life and love and enthusiasm and joy and emotion. It is a celebration. We host Gospel Fest here in Hilbert every summer, a two day celebration of gospel music that is full of life and faith and love. Even if you aren’t a believer yourself the music can be amazing.

Meanwhile there is what I call “modern Christian” music which is… Well it’s this garbage. Insipid, dull, tedious, and being sung by someone expressing all the emotional range of a potato. It’s generic, emotionless pablum. Even worse is the fact that Wharton isn’t a good singer to begin with. He’s off key more often than not. I didn’t think I’d ever say this but he makes the two BJ Thomas albums I started this off with sound good in comparison. I should add that this is one of the worst quality pressings I’ve ever seen. Paper thin vinyl, the spindle hole is punched off-center, etc. I’ll put $1 on it but if it were up to me this one would have gone straight into the bin.

Mountain Music by Alabama

Okay, what’s going on here? Another genuinely good recording? Someone actually donated some good records to us? Apparently yes. Alabama Mountain Music. I’m not a big fan of country style music but I still like these guys. IMO this isn’t one of their better albums but it’s still pretty good. Alas, this is another one where quality of the music isn’t reflected in the price. Looks like this one is averaging about $6, $9 used so this one goes out the door for $3.

The Partridge Family Sound Magazine

Yes, it is the abomination that was the Partridge Family. It is difficult for me to express how horrible the Partridge Family really was. None of them actually played any of the instruments they were shown with. The only one who was permitted to actually sing at first was Jones. Everything else was lip synched and voiced by studio singers. Even in their “live” performances. But after a time Cassidy was finally allowed to sing his own parts once he repeatedly demonstrated to the producers that he, like Jones, could actually sing. Show up at the store and we’ll let you have this horror for $1. Frankly, though, it should be buried at the crossroads, at midnight, with a stake through it so it doesn’t come back to haunt me again.

Strange in Town by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

Hey, it’s Bob Seger. It’s the Silver Bullet Band. It’s the Stranger in Town Album. First song on the album is Hollywood Nights. Followed by Still The Same. Do I really need to say any more than that? Ome of my favorites. The disc, alas, is not in perfect condition but it’s still acceptable. This one will go for $6.

Let’s end this on a high note. I still have about 25 records left to sort and there’s another box full up at the store waiting for me so I need to get cracking here.

Yes I’m Still Alive!

I know it’s been ages since I wrote anything here but that’s because it’s been crazy busy here at grouchyfarmer.com’s palatial headquarters. The gardens were spectacularly prolific this year and dealing with all of that has been a struggle for me and MrsGF. It’s October 4 as I write this, it is 91(F) degrees out there, and we’re still harvesting peppers and tomatoes. Plus the brussel sprouts are now starting to come on strong and we have something like 15 big butternut squash ready to pick that we’re going to need to deal with.

We’ve given up trying to process the stuff ourselves. We ran out of freezer space and canning jars long ago. We’ve been giving it to two or three of the local food pantries and they’ve been very grateful to get the stuff. The food pantries have been struggling to keep up with demand over the last few months as it is, and because of recent funding cuts the demand has only been increasing. We took about 40 lbs of tomatoes to one pantry and about 15 pounds of jalapeno and bell peppers and our friend who volunteers there said it was all gone within a couple of hours.

Still the end is here for both the tomatoes and peppers. We’re going to do one last picking of both and then the plants are going to get yanked. The tomatoes stopped blossoming some time ago and the existing fruit is almost done developing. The peppers are still flowering somehow but have slowed down to where there’s no point to keeping it going. We’re going to wait until the weather cools down a bit before we tackle all of that though.

Speaking of weather, it has been seriously strange. It’s the first week of October. It should be in the low 50s at the most, with temperatures getting down close to freezing or even a bit below that this time of year. Instead we’ve been locked in this streak of hot weather for weeks now with daytime highs pushing well into the 80s or more. Normally we might get a few days of warmer weather this time of year, but not this warm and not for this long.

When I haven’t been puttering in the garden I’ve been busy cranking out a whole new line of hopefully amusing drinks coasters and re-drawing the artwork on the old ones to reprint some of those. Looking at the artwork on some of those first ones I made makes me wince today. So before re-printing any of those I’ve been cleaning up the artwork or even re-doing it entirely.

I also have other stuff in the works, like engraving coins, making specialty tokens and quite possibly custom glassware and other goodies. Thanks in part to a new acquisition, that weird looking thingie over there on the left.

That’s a Wecreat Lumos 3W infrared and 10W blue diode laser that comes with a flatbed conveyer thingie and a rotating thingie that I have yet to play with but will hopefully get set up yet this weekend.

Ooo, it’s got a rotating thingie! Cam’t wait to play with that.

It definitely is not going to be replacing the Falcon laser engraver/cutter. This one is entirely inappropriate for jobs I use the Falcon for. This one is going to be for specifically doing metal engraving and, hopefully glassware and jewelry.

Keep an eye out for a full blown review of the Lumos in the future. It is both enormously useful and great fun to use, and enormously frustrating at the same time. Which seems to be about par for the course for these things.

It’s main use here is for metal. Even as we speak it’s engraving “challenge coins” for a small scale production run. It’s not fast, true. I wouldn’t want to have to use this to try to crank out a significant number of items. But for a run of a dozen or so items it’s not too bad.

Anyway, more about that later as I said.

The new EG4 12000XP inverter is more or less installed and working just fine. It’s still in “testing mode” so to speak as you can see in the photo because we haven’t finalized the wiring. Those of you who are yelling at the screen about the wiring not meeting code and all of that, I probably know the NEC better than you do and I should point out that when that photo was taken we were still testing and hadn’t yet finalized the wiring. So before you launch into some kind of rant about it in the comments, just don’t.

There were some teething issues with the 12000XP, but they were minor. The first was it wasn’t “talking” to the batteries. That turned out to be a communications configuration error that was quickly corrected. The second was an odd glitch where the AC side would trip out with an overload error if there was power coming from the solar panels, and if the batteries were at 100% SOC an if there was an AC load of more than about 200W. And only if all three of those criteria were met. That turned out to require a software update and as soon as the firmware was updated it was working just fine indeed.

Now we just need to get the new solar panels up on the garage roof. They’ve been sitting in the garage since February waiting for eldest son to clear up some time on his calendar to work on it because MrsGF won’t let me do more than climb a step ladder after she caught up up that tree last spring stringing up an antenna.

And that’s about it for now. Thought I’d better post something to reassure the people who thought I was dead or something. Hopefully the Lumos review will be coming up in the near future.

Why Does Anyone Put Up With Broadcast Television?

I gave up on commercial television several decades ago and that was a decision that I never regretted. I’ve never seen Friends. I’ve never seen Seinfeld. I’ve never seen Big Bang Theory. Name any of the television shows over the last few years, and I can confidently tell you that except for possibly a few seconds accidental exposure, I haven’t seen any of it. And guess what? It hasn’t killed me, hasn’t resulted in me being ostracized from society and. indeed hasn’t had one single detrimental thing happen in my life. In fact one could argue that it’s been enormously beneficial. I read several books a week. I garden, I dabble with electronics, woodworking. computers, engraving, needle work. cooking,, photography, drawing…. And people don’t understand how I have the time to do all of that. It’s because I don’t waste years of my life watching the drivel being served up by the commercial television producers.

And having to sit through the evening news from one of the big networks the other day made me vividly remember one of the reasons why.

News starts. Teasers telling me of important stories that really aren’t all that important and don’t actually give any information in the hopes of making me keep watching. Lead story about the flood in Texas that lasts about a minute. Another teaser about an upcoming story. Duration about 2 minutes total before cutting to 3 minutes of commercials for prescription drugs and “supplements” that basically are nothing but snake oil.

Return from commercial. Thirty second blurb about something Trump said. Cut to 4 minutes of commercials for more drugs and a health insurance scam.

Thirty second blurb about something Rubio said. Cut to 2 and a half minutes of commercials for laxatives and two more drugs with side effects more terrifying than the illness they treat.

Thirty second blurb about Gaza. Cut to 2 minutes of commercials for more “supplements” and an ad for a drug.

One minute story about how hot it is. Cut to ad for scam Medicare Advantage insurance and two minutes of drug commercials.

Thirty second blurb about deportations. Cut to 3 minutes of commercials.

The “lead story” finally appears. An “in depth” story about tariffs that lasts all of a minute and a half before cutting to… you guessed it, more commercials.

Back to the 30 seconds of news followed by minutes of drug commercials…

In that entire half hour the actual amount of real information that was shown could have been presented in less than a few paragraphs of text that I could have read in about five minutes.

Dear sweet lord, why do people put up with this crap?

Random Thoughts: Jaguar. (The car, not the cat)

Some motor vehicles become iconic. Almost everyone, at least in the US, will instantly come up with an image of the Ford Mustang in one of its many forms. A classic shape that Ford has more or less stuck to since it was first introduced in the 1960s.

Another automotive icon is the Jaguar E-type.

That up there is the image most people think of when someone brings up the car brand.

Jag has always produced cars that are stylish, sporty, elegant and, of course, bloody expensive. And often not very well made, I’m afraid. My experience with Jag is that it is a company that has always valued style over substance. That beautiful E-type up there? I never owned one but I have driven two different examples of that car back in the 1970s when they were still relatively new, and I can tell you from first hand experience, that while looking at one is fantastic, driving one is something else again. Both of the ones I drove were utterly awful in every single way. Over the last 20 years or so that’s changed, the cars certainly handle and perform better. But, alas, they have earned a reputation for unreliability that has hurt sales badly.

Jaguar’s biggest problem though has always been that it can’t seem to be able to actually sell cars. At least not enough to remain profitable. The company has changed hands more than once over the last few decades, and since 2007 has been owned by an Indian conglomerate called Tata. And it is doing worse than ever, I’m afraid.

Jag’s solution to the problem is to stop building cars entirely. Seriously. It is completely shutting down all production of all current models and in the future it is going to completely retool and produce only newly designed EVs. So what is it going to do to tide itself over while waiting to bring out the new models?

This is what Jaguar dropped on an unsuspecting world a few days ago:

I’ve watched that ad about six times now and I still don’t know what the hell it’s supposed to be. No one else seems to know WTF it is either.

The ad sparked a firestorm of controversy on social media, as I’m sure you can imagine. The comments on FB, X, Youtube, etc. have been scathing, and often they have descended into downright abusive language and even hate speech directed at “woke” ideology and LGBTQ persons. It’s all really rather sad.

Basically all Jag has going for it right now is its brand, Jaguar, a maker of over priced, over powered, stylish and not very good cars that seemed to be aimed squarely at the kind of fellow in upper management who takes his Jag to a secluded resort in the Catskills to cheat on his wife with his trophy girlfriend, and the golf clubs in the back so he can go golfing with his boss on Sunday while trying to explain why he doesn’t have all the receipts for his expense account claims.

What this ad tells me is that Jag is desperately trying to change that image. And I mean seriously desperate. It also tells me that they don’t have a fucking clue as to what the hell they’re actually doing. They have no sense if direction, no market that they’re aiming at, no technology they are trying to push, and worst of all, no cars. They got nothing. So all they can do is put out whatever the hell this is to try to keep the brand name alive until they have something, anything, they can try to sell.

But this? This is supposed to give consumers confidence in the brand? This is supposed to somehow make people curious enough that they’ll wait until Jag can retool and start producing cars again? No. Sorry.

Stop it. Just stop it. It’s time for Jaguar to just hang it up and retire gracefully instead of trying to hang on far, far too long like an aging quarterback who refuses to admit he no longer has the ability to compete.

Radom Thoughts: Movies

So I’ve been watching movies of late. Netflix has dropped a whole bunch of (shudder) Hallmark style holiday romcoms and I (god I don’t believe I’m admitting this. I’m never going to live this down, am I?) have watched pretty much all of them. I could probably come up with a lengthy essay about that all on its own, but that’s not where I’m going with this.

I want to talk about the multiverse. You know, that theory that claims that there are many, many universes out there. All of them just like this universe, only a bit different here and there. Somewhere out there is another universe where you’re filthy rich and Musk is your personal toenail trimmer. Or where you are a small, intelligent duck named Roger who lives in his mother’s basement. Or where you’re a ferret herder in Canada. You get the idea.

Specifically I want to talk about the movie industry and the multiverse.

So let’s get back on track, shall we? One of the reasons why I was watching those romcoms was because I needed to do something to recover from watching the Deadpool/Wolverine movie that I’d watched earlier. After watching two hours of bad jokes, dozens of disembowelings, beheadings, and an eventual body count that that surpassed that of a small war, I needed to do something to get all that gore out of my head.

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last year or so, the biggest event in the movie industry (arguably) was Marvel/Disney dropping the new Deadpool movie on an unsuspecting public. And if you aren’t a fan of the franchise, you probably don’t know why this was such a big deal.

After the wildly successful Avengers movies, Marvel put out a few flicks that were, to be blunt, stinkers. The Eternals did badly. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was disappointing. Instead of following up the mildly successful Captain Marvel movie with a decent sequel, we got something called “The Marvels”. I’m still not quite sure what Marvel was trying to do with that movie. And as for poor Thor… The last time we saw Thor he’d been partnered up with a 9 year old girl. Seriously. They’re apparently trying to turn Thor into a kids show? The last Dr. Strange movie was – was just odd.

So basically Marvel needed to do something. They needed to do something big. And even more importantly, they needed to do something to make gobs and gobs of money because they got bought by Disney and Disney needs the money. Keeping Walt on ice in the secret vault under the Magic Kingdom ain’t cheap, after all. The only two superheroes whose careers Marvel hadn’t ruined yet and which were pretty much guaranteed box office gold were Deadpool and Wolverine. So, someone said, let’s team the two of them up! Our two most popular characters, the only ones who’s reputations and careers we haven’t driven into the muck yet, together in one massive blockbuster movie? Heck, they could have put DeadPool and Wolverine in tutus dancing in Swan Lake for two hours and a lot of fanboys would pay money to see it.

There was only one problem. Wolverine/Logan was very, very dead. A fact that was abundantly made clear when in the opening minutes of the movie we see Deadpool using Logan’s rotting corpse to dispatch several dozen bad guys in a variety of very entertaining ways.

No problem, though. This is Marvel, after all. Need to replace a hero who was killed off in the previous movie to make people all weepy and sad? Just trot off to an alternative universe and find a new one.

Yes, more “multiverse” crap. Sigh… Kill off your hero? No problem, just pop into a different universe and find the alternative version of said hero. There are apparently an infinite number of them. Just whip out your Walmart alternative universe twiddler and pop off and bobs your uncle. Take your pick…

Sigh… Look, okay, it was kind of neat the first time they pulled this stunt but it got old fast. Both Marvel and DC have been pulling this crap for years now and we’re getting tired of it. It’s hard to get movie goers to invest emotionally in the tragic death of a character when we know damn well that chances are good that in the next film they’re going to whip out another one brought in from an alternative universe.

So stop it. Just stop it. Okay?

Photoshop, generative AI and art. And a few observations.

I’m a photographer and artist (well, sort of an artist), among other things. While I am strictly an amateur at both, I’ve been using Photoshop for something like 20 years for editing photos, sketching, cartooning, etc. And I have some concerns about what’s going on in the world of photography and art. Let me give you an example.

Look at the photo over there on the left. It’s a fairly generic looking and pleasant image of an attractive young woman. A woman who doesn’t actually exist. That image was created a few minutes ago using Photoshop Beta with Adobe’s generative AI technology. As you can see, generative AI has become very, very good. Scary good, really.

Well okay there are still some “issues”, as they say. Let me who you the entire image that Photoshop came up with when I told it to generate a photograph of two women in a coffee shop.

See the problem? The young lady must really, really like her coffee. Or look at this one, which is another image generated using the same text description.

Generative AI may be very, very good, but it isn’t actually all that smart.

Let me show you another image. This one was generated with the exact same text description but this time I told it to produce a black and white line drawing. This is what it came up with.

Not the best artwork in the world but perfectly acceptable for a simple drawing. I’ve seen a heck of a lot worst human created artwork. And better still, no weird glitches with cups or hands. I got this one when I tried generating another line drawing with the same text description.

I’m sure you see the problem there. Adobe’s AI, and in fact almost all of the ones I’ve experimented with, all seem to have trouble dealing with hands for some reason.

Now, did you notice something else interesting about those images? All four images depict young Black women even though I did not specify a particular ethnicity in the description I typed in. I found this rather curious so I continued. Eventually I generated 20 different images using the same text description. Of those 20 images, 10 depicted Black women, 3 depicted women of Middle Eastern ethnicity, 4 were Asian, one was Indian and 3 were caucasian.

I found this rather curious. The same was true, although to a lesser extent, when I generated images of men. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not upset. In fact I find this rather refreshing because often we’re bombarded with images of nothing but white people in a lot of the videos, advertising, stock photography, etc. that we’re forced to endure every day.

But sometimes the images are a bit – well a bit disturbing. I asked it to come up with a line drawing of a couple sitting in a pub having a beer and this is what it came up with.

Oh, dear… Yeah, seriously. This is what it thinks a young couple in a pub looks like.

Just for the heck of it I added a specification that it should generate an image of a white couple and this is what it came up with.

Oh, dear again. Why does she have a pepper grinder glued to her head? Why is he dipping spaghetti in his beer?

But it also comes up with some stuff that is surprisingly good. I told it to generate an image of a grouchy old farmer leaning on a split rail fence watching a herd of grazing cows and it came up with this.

Not bad, really. Well, if you don’t look at his left had too closely.

For the heck of it I switched from photography to painting and it came up with this from the same prompt.

I actually like that one, to be honest. I would print that out in large format, put it in one of those overpriced tourists shops up in Door County and someone would probably pay actual money for that.

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about, and that is how AI generated artwork is going to effect society in general. We are already starting to see fundamental changes.

First, we’re going to see the end of stock photo providers ike Getty. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Why would anyone bother to license stock images from companies like Getty when with a few words of description and Photoshop or one of the other AIs you can generate a generic illustration for your story or article? Let’s say you’re writing an article about vacations and you want to use a nice beach scene to illustrate it. So why go to a stock image company and buy the rights to use one when you can do this below with a few words and Photoshop?

Took all of about 15 seconds to generate that image from a one sentence prompt.

Stock image companies aren’t the only things that are going to come to an end. Would Normal Rockwell have ever gotten a job doing magazine covers in today’s world? I doubt it. I think illustrators in general are already losing their jobs, their work being done by AI. I’m seeing scores of images illustrating articles, fiction, even news stories, that look suspiciously like they were done by AI.

AI is already making inroads into the world of computer programming. There’s a very good chance that AIs are also already making significant decisions about you health care, not actual real doctors. The customer support person you chatted with on that website? Quite possibly an AI.

You may not like it. I don’t. Isn’t going to matter in the sightest. That horse is already out of the barn. Corporations can and will use AIs to replace human beings every place they can.

Catching Up

Covid For Christmas – The Great Pi Famine -Lettuce In December – Weather – Dreams

Covid

So on Dec. 23 MrsGF got an unwelcome Christmas present, Covid. Don’t worry, she’s doing fine. She still has a nasty cough but she’s feeling much better and has been testing negative for two days now so we’re hoping it’s all over. Somehow I avoided coming down with it. I took precautions, staying in the basement most of the time, eating our meals separately, wearing N-95 mask whenever I was upstairs, etc. But even so I figured I’d come down with it too. Well, I still might. She’s been testing negative for 2 days now. They say that the incubation time for the current strain is about 2 – 4 days, so I’m not going to be able to relax much for another couple of days.

And me… I’m a hypochondriac. All through the pandemic, every time I coughed or sneezed or my head got stuffed up, I was convinced I had Covid myself. And I have some pretty nasty upper respiratory allergies on top of it, so I pretty much have mild symptoms that could be mistaken for the early stages of Covid all the time.

The Great Pi Famine

RaspberryPi 4. I’m still amazed that they can squeeze a complete quad core computer with 8 gig of RAM, hdmi video, sound, 4 usb ports and WiFi into a package this small. Storage on this one is a 128 gig micro-SD card.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you know I like to fiddle around with electronic gadgets and gizmos and tinker and build stuff. One of the mainstays of the electronic tinkerers out there as a controller of electronic equipment of all types has been a tiny little single board computer called a Raspberry Pi. They’re available in a variety of types ranging from tiny little units that are used as controllers for a variety of gizmos, to a full blown Linux computer that’s smaller than a deck of cards, the Raspberry Pi 4 and now the new, more powerful Pi 5. There are four things that make them attractive. They’re small. Very small. They are designed to make it easy to interface them to the outside world in order to use them to control robots, motors, actuators of various types, collect data from sensors, etc. And three, they’re relatively easy to use, easy to program and enormously powerful for their size.

And the fourth thing, they were cheap. Like really cheap. The Pi 4 which is basically a full blown Linux (using a variation of Debian) computer with up to 8 gig of RAM, built in WiFi, HDMI video, USB 2 and USB3 ports sold for about $40 or even less. If you ever wanted to play around with Linux to see if it could be a viable replacement for the ever increasing horror that is Microsoft Windows, a Pi 4 is an easy and cheap way to do it. Just plug in a monitor, keyboard and mouse, get yourself a good introductory book on the Pi computers, and away you go.

Sidenote: I was just reading an article the other day that illustrated just how much computing technology had advanced in the last few decades. Someone pointed out that the Raspberry Pi 4 is six times more powerful than the original Cray 1 “super computer”.

Note that I used the past tense there. They were cheap. Then the pandemic hit, supply chain problems hit, demand for Pis increased because people were stuck at home and were looking for things to do, and, perhaps most importantly, the profiteers struck. Scalpers, profiteers, scammers and the like snapped up every Pi they could get their hands on, and then turned around and re-sold them for three, four times their original cost. I saw Pi 4s, a computer that sold for about $35 – $40 originally, being sold for $250 or more.

Pre pandemic I had a half dozen or more of the things laying around the house. But I gave them to a friend who was an electronics experimenter and solar power experimenter before the drought hit. Get them back from him? Yeah, well, he lives in Barcelona half the year so that ain’t gonna happen.

After the pandemic, when I couldn’t get them for a reasonable price any more, I switched to using Arduinos for the fiddling around I was doing. But while they and other microcontrollers are extremely useful and fun to play with, they aren’t computers.

But now prices have finally started to settle down. They’re still over priced when compared to what they were before the pandemic, about $75. But that’s cheap enough that I’m willing to get one and start playing around with it.

To make a long story short the nice fellow from UPS dropped one off here (two, actually) and I spent a couple of hours setting it up, updating the software and fiddling around with it last night. So you might be seeing some more stuff pop up here concerning Linux and the Pi in the future.

If you want to fiddle around with one of these yourself and you’re new to the Pi I’d recommend you get something like this from a company like CannaKit in the photo below.

No, I don’t get a kickback from CanaKit or anything like that. There are a lot of disreputable vendors out there, but I’ve bought stuff from CanaKit several times now and they provide exactly what they advertise, ship quickly and their prices, while a bit high, aren’t horrible.

It includes everything needed to get the thing up and running. The Pi 4, a power supply for it, HDMI cables to connect a monitor, a case for it along with a tiny cooling fan, heat sinks for the CPU and two other chips on the board, and a micro-SD card with the operating system pre-installed. It’s more expensive than buying a bare bones Pi but it has everything needed to get it operational. Just plug in a keyboard and mouse, and a monitor.

Lettuce In December

From about the end of may through September we had fresh greens whenever we wanted them out in the garden. All we had to do was go outside, clip off some of the lettuce mix we’d planted, and graze to our heart’s content. I really missed that. And then I was in the basement doing stuff and saw the little portable green house we used to start seedlings in the early spring with the grow lights and heater and thought why the hell aren’t we using that to grow some fresh greens? So we did. And this is what we ended up with.

We didn’t put in a lot because we weren’t sure it was going to work, but as you can see it worked very well indeed. We got more than enough for a couple of good sized salads plus a bit more. And yes, it tasted very, very good. 😊

Other Stuff

The PreciseRF magloop antenna continues to work surprisingly well for me. I was concerned about it’s survivability when set up out in the weather but it’s been holding up well despite the rain, snow and colder weather we’ve had. But the real test is yet to come when it gets really cold here. It’s been abnormally warm here all through December. Even now, on Jan. 3 at 4:30 AM, it’s 35 degrees out there. We’ll see what happens when it’s -30 and blizzard like conditions.

Weather

If we ever get cold weather, that is. Temperatures have been running well above normal here. I vividly remember one New Year’s Eve before MrsGF and I got married. When we got out of the pub where we’d spent the evening it was -34F with a stiff wind and everything, including the car, was frozen solid. We spent the night at a friend’s house and managed to get the car started the next morning, somehow.

It was brutally cold for weeks that January. On Jan 1 after I got back to the farm I had to put a new alternator on one of the tractors. It was so cold that the insulation on the wires the old alternator shattered when I bent them. I managed to get the tractor running well enough to pull it into the heifer barn and then close everything up. 30 or so young heifers put out a lot of heat and it was warm enough in there that I could get the job done. The heifers thought it was great fun. They were all crowded around watching me.

What’s Coming Up

I got a woodworking project going. This is a joint project by ES (Eldest Son) and myself. One of his hobbies is doing stained glass so I’m making a backlighted frame for a piece he did. That promises to turn out to be pretty interesting. More about that when it gets closer to completion. That’s still in the planning stage.

One thing, though, dear sweet lord has good quality lumber gotten expensive! I’ve been spoiled. Years and years ago I bought a whole pickup truck load of very good quality, kiln dried, white oak about 1 1/4 inches thick, 6 feet long and of various widths that ranged from 6″ up to 13″. That’s pretty much run out now so I had to actually go out and buy wood and prices of good quality, furniture grade hardwood are absolutely nuts.

I don’t really have plans for the Raspberry Pi. It’s something I wanted just to be able to play around with Linux and mess around with. If something develops from that I’ll let you know.

Dreams

Dreams are weird. At least mine are. I was up at 3 AM this morning and just couldn’t get back to sleep so I came out here dealt with my email and then started writing this up. I do vividly remember the dream I was having when I woke up. I rarely remember my dreams, but when I do they are often extremely vivid and detailed. This one was like that.

MrsGF and I were having dinner at a rather fancy restaurant with a very nice young couple from India. I have absolutely no idea who they were or why they were in this dream. Nice people, though.

When MrsGF and I left we went out into the parking lot and the car, my Buick, was gone. We thought we mis-remembered where we’d parked it so I pulled out my phone to use the app that tracks my car. And my phone didn’t work. It had been infected with some kind of malware that just kept cycling through obnoxious ads over and over again.

There was a strip mall nearby and a T-Mobile store was there so we walked over there. They were about the close but a nice young woman kept the place open. She got me a replacement phone right away, restored all my stuff and got the phone working. We went back to the parking lot and activated the tracking app and yeah, the car was gone. We called the police and they found it, and the thief, rather quickly.

Elon Musk had stolen it. He’d been at the table behind us and had overheard me making disparaging comments about how utterly hideous his “cybertruck” looked so he’d gotten huffy, hacked the electronic systems in my car and took it.

Still, it’s better than the vivid, realistic dream I had about painting the garage. That was the entire dream, painting the garage. That was it. It was so boring that I bored myself awake.

Random Stuff

Sorry, Ain’t Gonna Happen Department

The Zuck VS Musk Fight. Artist’s rendition.

I’m sure that you were just as excited as I was to learn that two of the richest and most hated men on the planet were going to beat the crap out of each other on live TV. Come on, admit it, you’d have even paid money to watch that.

Alas, it isn’t going to happen. After Zuckerberg accepted Musk’s ill advised challenge, Musk, who is in even worse physical shape than I am judging from some of the photos I’ve seen of him without a shirt on in the Daily Mail, must have realized that challenging someone who is actually physically fit, trained in martial arts and is reportedly very, very good at it, wasn’t such a good idea and suddenly came down with “neck problems” that would require surgery. After numerous jokes and comments about alleged cowardice on the part of the head Twit, he said he would livestream himself driving to Zuck’s house and fight him in Zuck’s backyard. When Zuckerberg wasn’t actually home, I should point out.

Sheesh. With Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” concept being pretty much a total failure so far, and Musk’s issues with Tesla’s that allegedly stop steering and allegedly lying about battery capacities, exploding spaceships and the collapse of the social media service formerly known as Twitter turning into another Myspace you’d think these guys would have something better to do.

Ooo, Brussel Sprouts!

We got Sprouts!

When MrsGF suggested we grow brussel sprouts I said sure, why not? We’d never grown them before. And they are one of the weirdest looking things we’ve ever had growing back there. They look like some kind of mutant cabbage plant that was grown too close to the Kewaunee nuke plant. But MrsGF assures me that this is indeed what they look like and I’ll take her word for it.

How About A Flower?

There you go.

What? You want another one? Oh, why not…

The New Solar Panels

As I said before I replaced the 8, HQST solar panels with 4 Newpowa 220W panels a week ago so I have 10 of them out there now. And well, damn, they work good. Whenever you see the power ratings of a solar panel you need to remember that those numbers are produced with the panels in laboratory conditions that you will rarely see out in the real world. Especially up here in Wisconsin. So if I get anything even remotely close to the rated output wattage out of a panel it’s doing pretty darned good. And these have been doing better than good. By about 9 AM with some of the panels still getting some shade they’re putting out about 400W. By 10 AM when they’re in full sun they’re putting out about 1,000W or more. And at midday, under near ideal conditions they’re pumping out close to a full 2 KW. Let me run down in the basement and check some numbers quick. Don’t go away, this will only take a minute…

Okay, yesterday the inverters tell me the PV system pulled in 8.1 kWh, and the panels were switched on for about 6 hours. So the average per hour would be 8,100 divided by 6 = 1,350 per hour over those six hours? Egads, that’s not bad at all.

Still More Smoke

Once again we’re under an air quality warning here in Wisconsin because of the out of control wildfires in Canada. I feel so sorry for those people up here. These fires have burned something like 34 million acres so far and it it doesn’t look like they’re going to end anytime soon.

DC Tries Again

Supposedly there is a new Superman movie in the works. Even though I’m a sucker for superhero movies because I’ve been a comic book fan since i was like 5 years old, I’m not exactly thrilled with the idea of them taking another run at a Superman flick. Let’s face it, DC hasn’t exactly hit a lot of home runs with its attempts to adapt their characters to the big screen. The Justice League movie wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t very good either. And Black Adam… Oh dear. I felt sorry for the Rock because he really wanted to make this work and he ended up with a script that was, frankly, pure crap. I haven’t seen The Flash yet. What it all amounts to is that nothing that’s come out of the DC franchise in decades has done anything to excite me. Marvel has put out its share of stinkers but at least it has also put out a few gems that have kept people excited. At best what DC has been putting out has been mediocre at best.

Supposedly the whole DC multiverse is being “rebooted” yet again. The Batgirl movie, already completed and ready to roll, has been flushed down the toilet and will never be seen. I have to wonder just how bad it was that the company didn’t dare to even release it. New people have been brought in and there is a whole new “vision” for the Superman movie.

Hmm, I distinctly remember writing a Black Adam review but I can’t find it in the archives here. Did WordPress flush it? Did I delete it and I don’t remember? Sheesh…

David and Goliath

How about some peppers?

The tiny red one is actually supposed to be a jalapeno. I don’t know what happened to it. The ones in pots up front are just funny looking. Taste good, though. I associate tiny, tiny red peppers with intense heat but that one up there was relatively mild, even sweet.

The bell peppers are doing crazy good this year for some reason. We’re getting massive bell peppers bigger than my hand. MrsGF had to stake some of them up because the weight of the fruit was making the plants fall over.

Anyway that’s about it for now. We’re bracing for heat right now. The latest weather reports are telling us that we’re going to be getting up to around 101F tomorrow, the hottest it’s been up here in ages. We are not looking forward to it.

House Insanity

Okay, so the house just around the corner from our place just went up for sale. It’s small, about 1,200 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 2 of which aren’t much bigger than my walk in closet, just extensively remodeled. Virtually no yard at all. And they’re asking $350K for the thing. $350,000 for what is, I’m sorry to say, a 100 year old polished turd.

That got me and MrsGF talking about how utterly insane house prices have become in the last few years and speculating about what our place might be worth. We paid $85K for it about 25 years ago. The town appraises it now at $180K for tax purposes. Our insurance company claims it’s worth $500K. And if we look at real estate ads for houses with similar amenities, size and size lot in a nice neighborhood we’re seeing prices pushing up over $750K.

WTF is wrong with people? Seriously.

Random Observations

Here We Go Again

Alleged typical director of one of Wisconsin’s monopoly elecric utility companies.

Wisconsin’s monopoly electric utilities are once again trying to do everything they can to make it as difficult and uneconomical as possible for us to put in solar power. They are required by law in the state to buy power from homeowners who have solar power systems but they try to do everything they can to make it as hard as possible for you to actually do it, they add in all kinds of junk fees to make it costly, and now they’re trying to cut the price they pay for that power to almost literally nothing.

One utility company in the state has already dropped the amount they pay to home solar owners to a whopping 4 cents per kilowatt hour, and two more have filed applications with the public service commission to do the same. And they will almost certainly be granted that new rate because the PSC will claim that it is “in the best interests of the consumer”.

Meanwhile the utility companies will gladly sell you all the power you want, at 16 to 28 cents per kwh depending on what company you’re dealing with and what plan you have. That means that if you have a solar power system and you’re selling power to the utility instead of using it yourself you’re losing anywhere from 12 to 24 cents per kwh for every kilowatt you sell them.

See why I don’t like grid tie systems?

Let’s Play Spot The Turtle!

Do you see him? Do you? I almost missed him when I was out on the bike and I stopped at the stone bridge to look at what’s left of the river. If he hadn’t moved his head I never would have spotted him.

This Sunflower. WTF? Seriously, WTF?

This is one sunflower plant. Just one. I counted 37 flowers on this thing. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Personally I think its aliens.

Speaking Of Aliens…

Typical US Congressperson. Artist’s rendition.

Now I’m not a historian, but I suspect that our current Congress has to rank as the single worst and perhaps the stupidest Congress in the history of the country. In fact it probably ranks right up there with the top ten worst governing body in the history of the entire planet.

Why? California is on fire. Again. Wildfires are moving from Canada into the US. Large parts of the country are experiencing the most extreme heat ever recorded. Every other day there is another mass shooting somewhere in the country. Deaths from overdoses of illegal drugs have reached epidemic proportions.

And what is the U.S. Congress doing? That distinguished body is holding hearings on aliens. No, not the illegal kind. The space kind. They were actually sitting there, people who claim they are reasonably intelligent representatives of the American people, listening some “witness” claiming that “someone” told him that the US government has actual real alien spaceships, actual real alien bodies, and has been keeping it secret since the 1940s. And they’re taking it seriously. Did this witness have any actual, well, proof? No. No documents, no photos, no videos, no audio recordings, no first hand witnesses. Nothing. Just “A friend of a friend told me that someone he knows said that they overheard someone saying that the Army had a spaceship…”

Sigh… Like I’ve said before, the human race is going to be the first species in the history of the planet to stupid itself into extinction.