Astronomer

Happy birthday, my friend! I hope the penicillin fixes your...ummmm...issue!

NICE!!!! Congrats on the ink! I hope to be able to show off some new ink later this year. Still working on the design. I don't think my wife would appreciate one as large as that one! LOL!

"Banned". Seriously? by who/what, exactly? We must appeal to the World-Wide Book-Banning Authority to release this amazing font of hidden human knowledge! LOL!! You can't get more click-baity than using words like "banned".

This band is going to breakout to something huge in 2018

Actually, it's between an American and a Canadian from the looks of it. ...or between a Canadian resident and a Canadian that lives in the USA!

Why can't we all just get along?

Thank goodness! I was wondering who you were pranking with that last gawdawful rotation! LOL!

THAT is a sweet piece of kit! Congrats on getting what is arguably one of the best cameras out there. I just picked up a used Canon 6D full-frame. It's huge pixels and very low noise make it still one of the top cameras for low-light and night sky photography. I'm keeping my APS-C body for nature/birding etc.

Happy 12th birthday, AH!

The full show: Tragically Hip with the late and amazing Gord Downie on vocals:

The Tragically Hip

From July 2017.

Another one a little later in the morning.

From this past weekend.

First time I saw them was in the late 1980's, for under $10 in a campus pub. Gord was an everyman, and was better than most. He'd been known to see a game of street hockey with one of his band-mates in his hometown of Kingston, and they'd join right in. He truly loved Canada and it's stories, its people. A listen to any of his lyrics will give you the sense of his passion for where he came from. He was a once-in-a-generation person, at once larger than life, and down to earth, with no contradictions.

My ear-worm of the week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEe_yCVLQSc

2 of my eclipse pics:

New toy: a ~$100 MIDI controller. These are normally used as a music mixer for live music, DJ-ing, etc. My usage for it is quite a bit different: Image editing. The application that I use for image cataloguing and basic camera RAW image editing is LightRoom, from Adobe. Using a free plugin for LightRoom called "MIDI2LR", I've mapped the controller's dials, sliders, and buttons to LightRoom tools. It's easy. The first time I plug in the controller and once in LightRoom, I activate any control on the pad and MIDI2LR opens a dialog that lets me choose from organized menus which LightRoom tool I want to associate with that control. The process is very intuitive. I mapped it out in advance and had it set up in a few minutes. I only have to do this once and save the mapping file. The dials, in rows of 8, I've set for red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, and magenta adjustments. The adjustment rows are for adjusting those colour's Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. The sliders correspond to primary adjustments of Colour Temperature, Tone, Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Clarity, and Vibrance. The buttons let me navigate my photos, undo/redo adjustments, zoom in/out in increments, select white-balance presets, attach ratings to images etc. This will speed up photo editing greatly. This image was edited with the controller! Once I get to the point where I don't have to think of what control does what, I can just focus on the image and make my adjustments with my left hand. This will replace a lot of clicking around with the mouse to various tabs and on-screen sliders. I noticed that while navigating through my images, as soon as I touch an editing control, it takes me directly to the editing mode on-screen. The fine-control and having my most used tools handy on one physical device is game changing. If I need more controls, I can simply add another controller. There are many on the market, starting for as low as $40 with a few controls. I've just added coloured dots for the dials and I'm in the process of makeing lables for the sliders and buttons. I'll post an image of the controller again when it's all finished.

Deleted because too soon.

LOL! You're awesome, @AthenA (especially when we're on the same team!)!

Thanks folks! I can't believe that I've been 29 for so many consecutive years...

Thanks Merlin. That explains why no one was on last evening!

Happy birthday to one of my favorite idiots! Hope to see ya a bit later this Summer!