Yeah, at this rate it’s basically just a tinkering project for the grins. Whenever I do bust out my SX130 these days I use the stock firmware with it because I can’t be bothered.

The 130 is a little monster of a point-and-shoot, though. I’m always pleased and amazed with the quality of pictures it can take provided whatever you’re doing doesn’t require them to be a zillion megapixels. I bought it new back in the day and I have no idea what I paid for it. I think the original MSRP was $249.99 in 2009 or whatever.

Yes, but the point is they’re apparently already equipped for ambulatory scarecrows. I wonder just how many of those they service in a week.

…And the fuckin’ reaping hooks hanging behind the Scarecrow’s station?

CHDK? The SX120 is indeed supported:

https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/SX120IS

My SX130 is as well. It’s a little pokey, but it works.

I have seen this sentiment echoed here many times before, and every time the claimant manages to spell Richard Nixon wrong.

Almost every misstep and national ill you can pin on the Republicans that Reagan popularized, Nixon actually started. He was the original ratfucker. In fact, it was his people who coined the term.

If history is any indicator, the cockroaches themselves will continue to manufacture AAA, AA, and D cells. C cells might be harder to get.

Since it’s now officially 2026, I think Toby needs to hurry up and complete the canon already before various members of the fanbase reach critical vibration frequency because there’s nothing new left to be said and one by one start to physically explode.

Hey, I recognize that Canon SX profile from the top! I have an SX130 still, because it takes AA batteries and therefore will continue to be operable well after the collapse of human civilization and I’ll still be able to take pictures of the cockroaches taking over.

Nobody anymore, but even as of a few short years ago the Windows fanboys would crusade and do battle specifically against the Mac fanboys, for some reason.

I’m not exactly a fan of Apple, but I’m not going to go around automatically championing Microsoft because of it…

Many, many years ago I took an A+ certification course because it was provided free by the state. And a fat lot of good it did me, but it was amusing for a while all the same. (I tried to opt to just take the stupid exam, but no, you have to sit through the course.)

We were given various old office PCs to fiddle with, and would use them throughout the course for all of the electronic learning materials. In order to instill in us a sense of the Troubleshooting Spirit, I suppose, the course’s instructor would deliberately fuck with everyone’s machine overnight so you’d have to track down what he did in order to get yours working again. Naturally this resulted in much wailing and gnashing of teeth, whining, sulking, and impressive displays of learned helplessness from the class which was always amusing to watch.

For me, anyway. I was the only person there with any computer chops and at the place I’d worked at prior to this I was the only IT person simply by default. I’ve been plugging computers together since I was big enough to hold a screwdriver. Have you ever smoked a motherboard by failing to put the two AT power plugs in with the black wires in the middle, relative to each other? Ever made your own cable select IDE ribbon by carefully chopping out pin 28’s wire with a razor blade? No? Then I don’t want to hear it.

It didn’t take long before I was forbidden to help other people with their troubleshooting stuff. Fine, I’ll sit here and play Doom until everyone’s finally ready.

I tried, and failed, to convey the notion that messing with my PC was a futile effort. Short of outright stealing some vital component from it, you weren’t going to keep me down for more than about a minute.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that most of the problems deliberately instilled in people’s machines involved unplugging some cable or another, and motherfuckers never figured this out. It’s truly astonishing how resistant people will be to considering the most obvious of solutions and starting there. Mind you, this was basically the entire point of the class so I didn’t hold out much hope for the future IT careers of my peers, to put it mildly.

One day I found that the instructor had backed my network cable out slightly but left it hanging in the socket, unclipped, just enough to look still plugged in but not make contact. Obviously the lack of blinkenlights on the jack was a major clue, but this stumped quite a few of our recruits. I must have given him a sarcastic look or something when I clicked it back in, because the next day he got clever and covered the contacts on the end of the plug with a piece of clear tape and fully plugged it back in. That was devious. Not only can you not trust the user to lie to you, but now we have to contend with active sabotage!

I got him back, though. I got into his presentation computer one day and discovered there was an unused USB header on the motherboard. One header-to-port breakout cable later and I plugged the receiver for my wireless mouse and keyboard into his machine inside the case and started messing with his cursor surreptitiously. What goes around comes around, Mr. funny guy.

Internet Pedantry Alert!

If it’s what you’re thinking of and it probably is, the OG “bubble car” was the BMW Isetta and I’m afraid the scenario outlined above is a myth that was promulgated by Top Gear. The Isetta does indeed have a reverse gear, because even ze Bavarians were smart enough to think of that. Yes, this is also the car that Steve Urkel drove.

What’s true is that in the immediate postwar years, quite a lot of other lesser European microcars hit the streets which were built around largely as-is motorbike drivetrains which didn’t have reverse. Vanishingly few of these did not have side opening doors, though, with some strange exceptions.

My brother, does your keyboard not have a Print Screen key on it?

Condensing ones do exist, but I guarantee you one of those won’t work upside down so it’s probably a good job that’s not what you’ve got. They have a catch basin in them for the extracted water inside someplace, and the results would be predictable if gravity were inverted. A heat pump dryer also wouldn’t work upside down (to put it mildly) but one with a regular resistive element obviously will.

Was the manufacturer kind enough to give you a sticker with all of the control markings written upside down as well?

There’s still a Gulf station one town over from me. I don’t know if it’s independently owned and they just kept the signage, or if Gulf as a chain still exists and is just much diminished, or what.

Also, all modern cars still say “unleaded only” on them somewhere, just in a less conspicuous spot since you functionally can’t buy leaded gasoline outside of an airfield anymore. Mine says it on the yellow sticker on the back of the fuel flap.

I was miffed my new (12 years old at this point) car didn’t come with the glow-plug lighter, but I grabbed a random one from a beater at the junkyard and stuck it in the socket and was delighted to discover that it still worked. My first car had one, but the little catch on it was broken so when it was done heating up and popped out, it would shoot out of the socket and wind up under your seats. Fun times.

I don’t think they ever stop giving the side eye.

It’s a white faced whistling duck, Dendrocygna viduata. Technically I believe these are closer to geese or swans than true ducks. But they sure look like ducks, so that’s good enough for me.

Full size here, by the way.

I presume you all are already familiar with this age old debate, i.e. as it was depicted in the musical documentary, 1776:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds4dv4IS0PM

Mine too:

FYI, you don’t have to use any third party tools and I didn’t, either. Step 1 is to run the Enterprise LTSC IoT version of Windows (either 10 or 11). The consumer versions of Windows are extra bullshit, as we all know by now.

Remove the Windows Store via Powershell (you probably have to run as an administrator):

Get-AppxPackage -allusers *WindowsStore* | Remove-Appxpackage

That removes the store suggestions. It also removes the store entirely, as well as the ability to install store apps. Obviously don’t do this if you are one of the 0.1% of users who actually use the Windows Store for some twisted reason.

Then in gpedit.msc / Group Policy Editor:

Local Computer Policy \ Computer Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ Search

• Allow Cloud Search → Disabled
• Allow Cortana → Disalbed
• Allow Search Highlights → Disabled
• Do Not Allow Web Search → Enabled (gets rid of the internet search)
• Don’t search the web or display web results in search → Enabled (probably overridden by the above, I set it anyway)

Local Computer Policy \ User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Start Menu And Taskbar

• Remove Personalized Website Recommendations From The Start Menu → Enabled
• Do Not Search Internet → Enabled

There are settings for other nags and irritations in here that you may also want to configure to your tastes as well.

Also:

Local Computer Policy \ User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ Windows Copilot

• Turn off Windows Copilot → Enabled

At present it takes considerable effort or lack of skill for someone to crash their car through the roof of your house. Once morons can fly, all bets are off.