Pretty soon we may have UHH members and posters who don't even use or own a camera - they will just do AI.

Let's see, My oldest son is 5'10", a Staff Sgt in the Army Reserves who volunteers for every overseas assignment that comes along*, Jump Master, Iraqi Veteran, his Reserve company does hand-to-hand training regularly and his fitness is what you would expect from someone like him. A mugger or even two would not be advised to take him on with bare hands.
So he can defend himself without a gun in some circumstances. But he prefers using a gun because that way the other guy doesn't have much chance of hurting him.

*He sees it as a way to see the world at Uncle Sam's expense, so far he has touched over 20 countries and spent time in about 12. Next month he leaves for a year stationed in Germany, but I get the impression Germany will be a base to visit other places.

Our daughter on the other hand is 5'3", 124 and a Pediatrician. Not exactly a Women's Wrestling or Boxing type and petite on top of that. She does know how to use sharp things, like scalpels since she has studied surgery. But doctors don't walk around carrying scalpels. So besides not being a good bet with even one unarmed mugger for self-defense she would need a gun. I taught her to shoot and with pistols, the bigger the hole and the louder the boom they more she liked it. If she asked I would hand her any gun I own, but for her size hands I would urge her to take a snub-nosed .38, the hammerless .32 Mag that belonged to my mother or my compact 40 S&W pocket model.

"God created mankind, Samuel Colt made them equals."

Haven't seen him.


Seriously, I have a few cousins that way back then made me wish they weren't my cousin. Esp in the age of mini skirts and then micro-mini about the time I got our of the Army. A couple of those skirts had something to do with my wife becoming my wife.

The first time our daughter saw this photo, her comment was "Miles of legs!"
And NO! I didn't buy those pants. My Mother worked at sears and was always buying me the latest "In" fashions. They were fine wool and I referred to them as "my horse blanket". But Mom and Debra liked them.

Amazon, Costco, Sam's, Walmart, Sears and others with a big online presence were booming-online. The brick and mortar stores both large and small had less traffic and lower sales.

The delivery companies were over worked, hired more drivers, rented more trucks etc. In our neighborhood there was one elderly UPS retiree with just his old company cap and a six passenger golf cart delivered small packages every day of the week for a while. He told one of the neighbors that he was making 3-4x his pension delivering small packages 6 hours a day. Because of the open work cart and his great personality, school kids who were homeschooling on Zoom would take breaks to ride their bikes with him, talk to him and help him drop off packages so he didn't have to climb in and out and walk so much. When UPS got another truck and full-time driver the kids were disappointed to not be helping anymore.

And the shut-downs were largely due to Covid's effect on workers and sales = people shopped online. The wife and I still do, easier than driving around. The UPS and FedEx drivers have our house memorized. The fast food and other restaurants also went to less human to human contact by going to electronic with kiosks and phone ahead, pickup at the door.
The kiosks couldn't catch Covid and when you drove up to pick up your app or phone order for a while the person who handed it out the window or came to your car in the pickup section of the parking lot looked like a CDC hazardous lab worker.

My hometown in Kentucky had US 60 going right through town and a Great Aunt and Uncle owned a restaurant right on US 60. They used to get a lot of out of state travelers and when hunting season started those people were always curious or shocked by the numbers of people going by with guns, esp kids of elementary school age with a rifle or shotgun tied to their bike handle bars headed out of town to hunt. Uncle Earl had a standard answer which went something like; "Oh, that is the Smith boy, don't worry, his family taught him to shoot safely. If he ever violates the safety rules he will be hunting with a slingshot." They retired just before girls started to get into traditional male things. Today if I went home for a visit I will bet anything that half those kids on bikes with guns or in the back of someone's pickup will be girls.

I worked part time, weekends and semester breaks 10 years for a friend who owned a Police Gear and Gun Shop. (he owned three, I only worked at the big one) When we started delivering Glocks to PDs going to autos I got qualified as a Glock Armorer and did transition training of officers from several PDs.

I taught my wife, the oldest son and daughter to shoot (younger son is special needs, mentally 5 yo-when my wife asked if I was going to teach him to shoot NO!.) All I taught Jon is, don't touch a gun, tell me, Mom, his older brother or his sister or some other adult there is a gun...

The wife did very well but isn't into guns. Our oldest son, well to him they are a tool. He did 6 yrs active army including Iraq as a Combat Engineer during the war and now approaching 20 years total with Army Reserve time, he volunteers for active duty when a chance to go see somewhere he has never been comes along. Next month he goes on 1 year active, in Germany??? I get the impression Germany will just be home base. He speaks some Turkish and some Arabic. His last two years active he retrained for Civil Affairs, took a lot of medic training and is not only airborne qualified, he is a jump master for his reserve company. Civil Affairs are part of Special Forces, they are the nice SF, they try to make friends, build schools etc. before they start shooting.

And Jasmine, our baby, the bigger the hole and the bigger the boom, the more she liked it. She is 5'3" and 124lbs, but she likes BIG BOOMS. Once she went shooting with her current boyfriend at the time and some others, I gave her a bolt action .223 with scope. She liked it, but the guys loved it and let her shoot up the .308 while they played with the .223. She is now a Pediatrician in a large LA County Hospital in an iffy area. I told her if we have riots etc. like they keep predicting she can have anything in my gun safe. She grinned and said "Even the .44 mag or one of the .45 autos?" I said yes and she grinned bigger.

On my RP today I found my focus point in the lower right corner = where my nose or cheek would touch the screen. i now have touch turned off. I didn't use it after playing with it to see how it worked on the first day anyway.

You forgot the 2nd and maybe more columns for the BANGs of the wife and older kids.
I was roaming the country side with a BB gun at 6 and a real gun at 9.
Once when a group of us were shooting at a moving target from 10-12 feet (milk bottle cap on a string blowing in the wind) without much luck and my Mother came out, took my Red Rider BB gun and proceeded to hit it three shots in a row. Handed it back and said I have milk and cookies when you boys are ready for a snack then went back in the house. Talk about a bunch of young male egos that looked like balloons with holes in them!!!
She did the same kind of things when we were playing baseball. She could bat and catch really well. Furthermore, she also had intimidation down to an art. She hit a grounder and the shortstop threw it to me at second base just as she was rounding 1st; "If you tag me out, No TV this weekend!" I tagged her out, no good shows on TV that weekend.

Those aren't lights, they are view ports and the interior is lite. Why so many view ports? Those are tourist cruise ships loaded with tourists (a lot take photos) come to see the strange creatures of the planet size, natural habitat zoo.

I might be interested in the future, depends on the lens. The 10-18 is tempting because if I go out with my R7 somewhere, I "might" want to do landscape etc. I would want the widest lens I could get just because of the nature of APS-c. I have an R7 APS-c and RP FF body and a selection of 8 lenses, so far all are FF so I can use them on both bodies. I also have the adapter so I can use all my EF lenses on the RF bodies. But I do have an RF 14 so the 10-18 is probably a 6/7 on a 1>10 "want" list for now.

For years now I have sent images from LrC (light room classic) to PS via a drop down menu. Up top 4th from the left is "Picture", on the new drop-down,7th from top is "Edit in". You get another drop down with a list of all editing apps or add-ons but the first one on the top is "Edit in Photo Shop 2024" (on my machine currently) and all the other editing apps you have are listed below that. Click on the one you want and it opens. When done, I click Save and it goes back to LrC.
Also I watermark (signature) in LrC. Top left click File, in the drop down #11 is "Export", in Export you can select where the image is going, give it a custom name (Dandelion in this case), then scroll down and 2nd from the bottom your find "Watermarking" where you can design a watermark or click on a list of saved water marks. When you create a new watermark you can choose size, font, color, transparency, position and others. The attached sample I used extra large, center, white.

This watermark/signature does not become part of the LrC file image avoiding the need to have a virtual copy in order to also have the unmarked image because in the future you might want a different watermark, different crop etc.

(Download)

Yes, I now have a Canon RP and R7, great images etc. but two problems for me, one major and one minor.

When looking in the viewfinder with my glasses on light gets in and washes out what I see (brighter the sun the worse the problem) making composition etc. difficult.

The minor one, I often use my camera and telephoto as a telescope to search for birds etc. and with mirrorless I have to turn the camera on and drain the battery faster.

That said, I really like both cameras. I need to talk to my optometrist about getting some soft contacts in my new Rx* and put an eye cup on the bodies, that will solve the wash-out problem. As to the battery drain, well I like cargo pants and shorts and those vests with about a dozen pockets so I need to just remember to drop a few extra batteries in one of those pockets.

*I have a couple pairs of the 30 day types from about 3 Rx ago, which are better than nothing but I really shouldn't drive (or ride my street legal mobility scooter) with that old Rx. If I got in a crash and it came out I wasn't wearing up to date lenses I could be in trouble.

You don't need 5 McDonalds', but if they are all surviving then all the people in the area must need them. We have 3 within a 2 mile drive and all have cars in line all the time.

I just looked it up to refresh my memory. In Athens citizens were males, born in Athens, who completed their military training successfully so they could be called up in case of war.
Over a few centuries this averaged from 10% to 20% of the total population. Athens also had slaves at the other end of the social scale. But treated them much better than most slaves in history. Even educating some and making them managers etc. in family businesses. The Spartans used to complain that they couldn't tell the difference between slaves and lower class citizens in Athens.