Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away?

Charles Newcomb · January 22nd, 2016, 01:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

Rest comforted by the fact that one day, if you pop off the perch before having a big chuckout, some lucky sod will happen upon your hoard and go into great transports of joy over a "barn find".

Bob, if they ever have a contest to see who writes the best image-conjuring dialog on this site, you get my vote. I've enjoyed your earthy comments many times over the years.

Richard Gooderick · January 22nd, 2016, 03:33 AM

A 500 mb hard drive. Bought in the mid 90s for £650.

I am sure it has something interesting on it but I have no way of checking.

Bob Hart · January 22nd, 2016, 03:40 AM

Charles.

What was that American expression - "we aims to please"?

I've been doing a thing on the Facebook about home invasion by the wild creatures which have for some reason become inapproppriately emboldened.

I did not know how much I have posted until someone asked me for the rights. I thought it was all gone to facebook heaven as the comments were only throwaway fodder of the moment. However, except for the first three months of a calender year, facebook has hung onto it, 32 pages worth copied and pasted back to my computer so far, mainly rubbish by my assessment but other people seem to have liked it.

So thus archived were :-

BANDICOOT BARRIO.
THE RAT WARS.
THE CAT CHRONICLES.
RAPTORS.

Do you still have the foxes near your house?

Charles Newcomb · January 22nd, 2016, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

Do you still have the foxes near your house?

Yup. In fact the latest litter should be coming out of the den for the first time any day now. Both vixen and dog (female & male) come around mooching breakfast and dinner every day, and I don't mind giving it to them to encourage their hanging around because I haven't have a mouse problem for 5 years now.

Can't wait to hear what happens from the Facebook banter.

G'day, mate.

Bob Hart · January 24th, 2016, 03:16 AM

There's a few foxes up the other end of Roleystone and they are urbanised in the inner Perth suburbs.

They were not endemic to this country and are a problem with our smaller native species, which occupy your rat, rabbit, squirrel, ferret and groundhog niche. Our small creatures are pretty clueless. Foxes have been responsible for some extinctions.

In the conservation parks they put down 1080 baits to thin foxes, feral dogs and feral cats out. 1080 is a naturally occurring toxin in much of our native vegetation and the local creatures have developed some resistance to it.

The bandicoots do not lightly suffer rodents and will go them. They are rarely fast enough to catch them but occasionally will get lucky. They eat the lot except for the tail and a piece of butt around it.

Unfortunately a slow rodent is most likely a poisoned rodent. When you see black sloppy patches of turd on the pavement and bandicoots with blood on their lips, they are usually goners from eating poisoned rats.

The maggies, crows and raptors go the same way with black turdburden among the silver dollars under their perches. About three months after nesting, the sound of the moepokes, a sort of owl, moves in when the population density builds outside of the poisoned neighbourhood. They go off at night somewhat like a european cuckoo.

After a bit longer, it goes quiet. Maybe it is just a natural occurrence but it seems to coincide with seasonal rodent plagues and consequent magpie, crow and bandicoot kills.

Charles Newcomb · January 26th, 2016, 01:58 PM

I don't know if you've seen these or not https://www.flickr.com/photos/97903980@N05/ Most of them are taken from or near my back deck, even the bear. The raven has become quite tame and she'll take an egg from my fingers. The foxes, of course, are my favorites. The football and basketball ones are my youngest son, who despite being the #1 kicker in the state last year opted out of college to go into the U.S. Coast Guard. Anyway, you can tell I like critters as much as you do. I don't know what I'd do if I lived somewhere I couldn't enjoy them.

We can both thank the Brits for importing red foxes to our countries... they brought them so their hounds could chase them up trees and everyone, except the foxes, would have a jolly good time. But the foxes are prolific. I understand in England they've even acclimated to city life.

Bob Hart · January 26th, 2016, 11:13 PM

Kind of strayed off the original topic but words are free and I'm feeling a bit anarchic today.

Since urban land clearing and climate change have become part of the environment, there has been a change in what lives here. The red robins and blue wrens are long gone.

We now have aggressive New Holland honeyeaters in their place. Their bigger cousins, the wattle birds sound like some kid scrubbing an opened tin can end-on across a concrete path. They sound like european pheasants and may be distantly related.

We did not see much in the way of all crows when I was a kid but the bigger wheatbelt crows are now in larger numbers - smart too. They and the magpies train people, not the other way round.

White cockies ( corellas ) and pink and grey galahs again were predominently wheatbelt and northern creatures but are now common in the Perth metro, right into the city where they shred the plain trees for the prickly fruits.

Our black cockies? Well their number is pretty much up. Land clearings of critical habitat still get the greenlight and a substitute food source, the pinaster pine plantation is to be clearfelled in the pretxt of conserving the groundwater as a future resource.

It smells like one of those win-win deals politicians and businessmen cook up to their own exclusive benefit.

All those trees, some of which were used to make the masts and spars for the Endeavour replica will probably end up wasted as woodchip mulch. The pinaster and radiata pine plantations around the outer burbs of Perth were Great Depression-era make-work schemes.

When it really comes to the crunch, governments and profit-takers do not care much. When I was a kid on the old place downhill from here, the black cockies would darken the sky when a flock went over. They are savage on fruit and the growers didn't like them much.

Now with their food supplies dwindling, migratory nesting options and shooting over the years, they just meander over in their twos and threes, maybe parents and one squalling overgrown chick.

They are apparently mates for life so if one gets shot or stolen for the overseas illegal trade, that's it for the other one. It just flies around celebate for the rest of its days.

Right now, there is a big bandicoot in the kitchen stealing the catfood. The cat is getting old and weary. I have to buy moist catfood in the little riptop pails as well as the dry pellets. She was weaned on dry catfood too young before my folks got her and became wedlocked to the stuff which is not good for them.

If one forgets to lift the food after the cat is done, the bandicoots will pick a pail clean and leave bitemarks in the foil tray getting the last traces off. The old girl is too weary to go up on top of fridges now so has to be fed at floor level.

I live in hope that folk up here will embrace the red electric rat traps which do work. Poison baiting is only so good as when there are no other competing food sources and you still have to condition the rats to bait just as much as you do for trapping.

If the raptors could build up again, general yard tidyness maintained and roofspaces left open for them to patrol through, I think they would make a dent in the rat population. But whilst we have "no see no touch" phobia, poisons will remain the default choice. - Public education?? Now there's a film topic.

Charles Papert · January 28th, 2016, 10:27 AM

I am still trying to put a dent in my years-long project to digitize and archive my closet full of legacy tapes: home movies and work projects from the past 30 years. Yesterday I started on the 8mm and Hi8 tapes and was dismayed to discover that the Hi8 deck no longer worked properly (was fine 5 years ago or so, last time I tried it). So I figured, they must be going for nothing on eBay. Much to my surprise I'm seeing similar units starting at $400. Apparently owning a still-functioning unit in this format commands something of a premium. My fault for waiting so long, of course.

Seth Bloombaum · January 28th, 2016, 02:06 PM

Charles, I'd look for a Digital-8 camcorder or two to use as a source deck.

Not only will it handle the later Digital-8mm format (if you have any of those), but (most? all?) will do a hardware conversion to firewire, greatly simplifying the capture of 8mm and Hi-8 as well, in an excellent standard-def codec.

That is, if you still have a PC or Mac capable of Firewire! Apple sells a $30 FW to Thunderbolt adapter that's worked for me on the latest Macs. On the PC side I think you're limited to desktops with an FW expansion card - no laptops.

Charles Papert · January 28th, 2016, 03:52 PM

Thanks Seth. I had actually forgotten about Digital8!

I'm fully set up to digitize from composite and s-video (still working on the vast amount of VHS and SVHS tapes in the collection) so the firewire isn't necessary for me. But it's a smart idea since that would be a later model camera than the Hi8's and thus less likely to crap out (but as I have learned, not all Digi8 camcorders played back the older formats).

Seth Bloombaum · January 28th, 2016, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charles Papert

Thanks Seth. I had actually forgotten about Digital8!...

Back on topic, Digital8 may have been the shortest-lived format of them all.

I recently looked for my nice Sony Studio Hi-8 deck with TBC and all; I was somewhat relieved *not* to find it! What a boat anchor. Musta' lent it to somebody. Maybe I sold it here - sorry! The next time I need it, I'll see if I can locate a Digital8 camcorder...

Bob Hart · January 29th, 2016, 11:08 AM

Charles.

The tape transport on those camera-recorders may have been similar to the Sony TCD family of DAT audio recorders. Very many of those failed due to a simple issue, drying of a lube which caused a swingarm with a guide pin on it to lock. It had a very light hairspring to return it during the eject.

The arm and pin would move in under positive mechanical pressure. On eject, the pin would not fully return due to sticky lube. The tape would load but would initially be erratic, then eventually munch the tape when ejecting it.

In the DAT TCD10 PRO series, it was a dog to get at but once freed and relubed, all was fine. If the lube is just draggy, leaving the cam in a warm place for a while before using it may help.

Hunting down a service tech with the necessary skills might be a mission now.

Bruce Dempsey · February 5th, 2016, 08:48 AM

OhBoy another load of junk on the way out (it will never ever end)
Panny introduced their new fujifilm developed tech for a fantastic new cmos which will make even the newest cameras obsolete - excited and pissed at the same time me

Charles Papert · February 5th, 2016, 10:22 AM

Bruce, so we can expect some exciting new Hi8 cameras then...?!

Bob, thanks for that info. I have located an appropriate service facility and let's see what happens.

Chris Hurd · May 25th, 2018, 08:37 AM

I can't seem to discard this thing, as it changed my professional life in such a profound way. What the hell should I do with it? I know what I should do with it -- drop it off in the recycle bin at my local Best Buy. But I haven't been able to let go of it for twenty years.

They say admitting a problem is the first step to recovery. I say "vive le DV-Rex M1!"

January 22nd, 2016, 03:33 AM	#32
Richard Gooderick Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: London, UK Posts: 795	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? A 500 mb hard drive. Bought in the mid 90s for £650. I am sure it has something interesting on it but I have no way of checking. __________________ http://www.gooderick.com

January 22nd, 2016, 03:40 AM	#33
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? Charles. What was that American expression - "we aims to please"? I've been doing a thing on the Facebook about home invasion by the wild creatures which have for some reason become inapproppriately emboldened. I did not know how much I have posted until someone asked me for the rights. I thought it was all gone to facebook heaven as the comments were only throwaway fodder of the moment. However, except for the first three months of a calender year, facebook has hung onto it, 32 pages worth copied and pasted back to my computer so far, mainly rubbish by my assessment but other people seem to have liked it. So thus archived were :- BANDICOOT BARRIO. THE RAT WARS. THE CAT CHRONICLES. RAPTORS. Do you still have the foxes near your house?

January 24th, 2016, 03:16 AM	#35
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? There's a few foxes up the other end of Roleystone and they are urbanised in the inner Perth suburbs. They were not endemic to this country and are a problem with our smaller native species, which occupy your rat, rabbit, squirrel, ferret and groundhog niche. Our small creatures are pretty clueless. Foxes have been responsible for some extinctions. In the conservation parks they put down 1080 baits to thin foxes, feral dogs and feral cats out. 1080 is a naturally occurring toxin in much of our native vegetation and the local creatures have developed some resistance to it. The bandicoots do not lightly suffer rodents and will go them. They are rarely fast enough to catch them but occasionally will get lucky. They eat the lot except for the tail and a piece of butt around it. Unfortunately a slow rodent is most likely a poisoned rodent. When you see black sloppy patches of turd on the pavement and bandicoots with blood on their lips, they are usually goners from eating poisoned rats. The maggies, crows and raptors go the same way with black turdburden among the silver dollars under their perches. About three months after nesting, the sound of the moepokes, a sort of owl, moves in when the population density builds outside of the poisoned neighbourhood. They go off at night somewhat like a european cuckoo. After a bit longer, it goes quiet. Maybe it is just a natural occurrence but it seems to coincide with seasonal rodent plagues and consequent magpie, crow and bandicoot kills.

January 26th, 2016, 01:58 PM	#36
Charles Newcomb Major Player Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Salida, Colorado Posts: 561	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? I don't know if you've seen these or not https://www.flickr.com/photos/97903980@N05/ Most of them are taken from or near my back deck, even the bear. The raven has become quite tame and she'll take an egg from my fingers. The foxes, of course, are my favorites. The football and basketball ones are my youngest son, who despite being the #1 kicker in the state last year opted out of college to go into the U.S. Coast Guard. Anyway, you can tell I like critters as much as you do. I don't know what I'd do if I lived somewhere I couldn't enjoy them. We can both thank the Brits for importing red foxes to our countries... they brought them so their hounds could chase them up trees and everyone, except the foxes, would have a jolly good time. But the foxes are prolific. I understand in England they've even acclimated to city life.

January 26th, 2016, 11:13 PM	#37
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? Kind of strayed off the original topic but words are free and I'm feeling a bit anarchic today. Since urban land clearing and climate change have become part of the environment, there has been a change in what lives here. The red robins and blue wrens are long gone. We now have aggressive New Holland honeyeaters in their place. Their bigger cousins, the wattle birds sound like some kid scrubbing an opened tin can end-on across a concrete path. They sound like european pheasants and may be distantly related. We did not see much in the way of all crows when I was a kid but the bigger wheatbelt crows are now in larger numbers - smart too. They and the magpies train people, not the other way round. White cockies ( corellas ) and pink and grey galahs again were predominently wheatbelt and northern creatures but are now common in the Perth metro, right into the city where they shred the plain trees for the prickly fruits. Our black cockies? Well their number is pretty much up. Land clearings of critical habitat still get the greenlight and a substitute food source, the pinaster pine plantation is to be clearfelled in the pretxt of conserving the groundwater as a future resource. It smells like one of those win-win deals politicians and businessmen cook up to their own exclusive benefit. All those trees, some of which were used to make the masts and spars for the Endeavour replica will probably end up wasted as woodchip mulch. The pinaster and radiata pine plantations around the outer burbs of Perth were Great Depression-era make-work schemes. When it really comes to the crunch, governments and profit-takers do not care much. When I was a kid on the old place downhill from here, the black cockies would darken the sky when a flock went over. They are savage on fruit and the growers didn't like them much. Now with their food supplies dwindling, migratory nesting options and shooting over the years, they just meander over in their twos and threes, maybe parents and one squalling overgrown chick. They are apparently mates for life so if one gets shot or stolen for the overseas illegal trade, that's it for the other one. It just flies around celebate for the rest of its days. Right now, there is a big bandicoot in the kitchen stealing the catfood. The cat is getting old and weary. I have to buy moist catfood in the little riptop pails as well as the dry pellets. She was weaned on dry catfood too young before my folks got her and became wedlocked to the stuff which is not good for them. If one forgets to lift the food after the cat is done, the bandicoots will pick a pail clean and leave bitemarks in the foil tray getting the last traces off. The old girl is too weary to go up on top of fridges now so has to be fed at floor level. I live in hope that folk up here will embrace the red electric rat traps which do work. Poison baiting is only so good as when there are no other competing food sources and you still have to condition the rats to bait just as much as you do for trapping. If the raptors could build up again, general yard tidyness maintained and roofspaces left open for them to patrol through, I think they would make a dent in the rat population. But whilst we have "no see no touch" phobia, poisons will remain the default choice. - Public education?? Now there's a film topic.

January 28th, 2016, 10:27 AM	#38
Charles Papert Wrangler Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 6,810	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? I am still trying to put a dent in my years-long project to digitize and archive my closet full of legacy tapes: home movies and work projects from the past 30 years. Yesterday I started on the 8mm and Hi8 tapes and was dismayed to discover that the Hi8 deck no longer worked properly (was fine 5 years ago or so, last time I tried it). So I figured, they must be going for nothing on eBay. Much to my surprise I'm seeing similar units starting at $400. Apparently owning a still-functioning unit in this format commands something of a premium. My fault for waiting so long, of course. __________________ Charles Papert www.charlespapert.com

January 28th, 2016, 02:06 PM	#39
Seth Bloombaum Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Portland, Oregon Posts: 3,420	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? Charles, I'd look for a Digital-8 camcorder or two to use as a source deck. Not only will it handle the later Digital-8mm format (if you have any of those), but (most? all?) will do a hardware conversion to firewire, greatly simplifying the capture of 8mm and Hi-8 as well, in an excellent standard-def codec. That is, if you still have a PC or Mac capable of Firewire! Apple sells a $30 FW to Thunderbolt adapter that's worked for me on the latest Macs. On the PC side I think you're limited to desktops with an FW expansion card - no laptops. __________________ 30 years of pro media production. Vegas user since 1.0. Webcaster since 1997. Freelancer since 2000. College instructor since 2001.

January 28th, 2016, 03:52 PM	#40
Charles Papert Wrangler Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 6,810	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? Thanks Seth. I had actually forgotten about Digital8! I'm fully set up to digitize from composite and s-video (still working on the vast amount of VHS and SVHS tapes in the collection) so the firewire isn't necessary for me. But it's a smart idea since that would be a later model camera than the Hi8's and thus less likely to crap out (but as I have learned, not all Digi8 camcorders played back the older formats). __________________ Charles Papert www.charlespapert.com

January 29th, 2016, 11:08 AM	#42
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? Charles. The tape transport on those camera-recorders may have been similar to the Sony TCD family of DAT audio recorders. Very many of those failed due to a simple issue, drying of a lube which caused a swingarm with a guide pin on it to lock. It had a very light hairspring to return it during the eject. The arm and pin would move in under positive mechanical pressure. On eject, the pin would not fully return due to sticky lube. The tape would load but would initially be erratic, then eventually munch the tape when ejecting it. In the DAT TCD10 PRO series, it was a dog to get at but once freed and relubed, all was fine. If the lube is just draggy, leaving the cam in a warm place for a while before using it may help. Hunting down a service tech with the necessary skills might be a mission now.

February 5th, 2016, 08:48 AM	#43
Bruce Dempsey Major Player Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Atlantic Coast Canada Posts: 599	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? OhBoy another load of junk on the way out (it will never ever end) Panny introduced their new fujifilm developed tech for a fantastic new cmos which will make even the newest cameras obsolete - excited and pissed at the same time me

February 5th, 2016, 10:22 AM	#44
Charles Papert Wrangler Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 6,810	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? Bruce, so we can expect some exciting new Hi8 cameras then...?! Bob, thanks for that info. I have located an appropriate service facility and let's see what happens. __________________ Charles Papert www.charlespapert.com

May 25th, 2018, 08:37 AM	#45
Chris Hurd Obstreperous Rex Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: San Marcos, TX Posts: 27,366 Images: 513	Re: Once expensive, now junk, but still hard to throw away? I can't seem to discard this thing, as it changed my professional life in such a profound way. What the hell should I do with it? I know what I should do with it -- drop it off in the recycle bin at my local Best Buy. But I haven't been able to let go of it for twenty years. They say admitting a problem is the first step to recovery. I say "vive le DV-Rex M1!" Attached Thumbnails __________________ CH Search DV Info Net \| 20 years of DVi \| ...Tuesday is Soylent Green Day!