Raskolnikov: My new ФT-2 panoramic camera

I’ve wanted a decent panoramic camera for ages.  Unfortunately, my searches have only found cameras that were either too expensive (a “gently-used” 360°-panoramic Globuscope costs about $1,500), or were just a piece of unmitigated junk (yes, Lomography Sprocket Rocket with its worthless plastic “hipster” lens, I’m talking to you).  The few panoramic shots I’ve successfully…

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Best of our TU Community Blogs, December 18, 2014: Ten for Thursday

We’ve got some really excellent community blogs here, and I want you to enjoy reading them.  And let me tell you, I enjoy not only reading them, but also posting them every Thursday.  So get yourself a cup of coffee and a bagel with a schmeer, and enjoy these ten blogs by ten Times Union…

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Robot leers at exercising woman… and they’re selling…

One of the main rules of television commercial advertising is to make your commercial memorable… and to make sure your viewers know what you are selling. Well, a company named Wink definitely achieved the former… With one of the most suggestive commercials I’ve ever seen on network television. The commercial starts with a woman practicing…

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Did the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame get it right for 2015?

I stopped doing a “who should be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” listing years ago.  Mostly because the artists I thought SHOULD be in the Rock Hall by now – the Moody Blues, the Guess Who, Styx, Boston, Cheap Trick, Kansas, the Electric Light Orchestra, New Order, Depeche Mode – kept…

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Christmas in Iverhill: Merry Christmas, Steve Kaplan

NOTE: To read Chuck Miller’s book “The Robins of Iverhill: A Minor League Fairy Tale,” as well as the short stories in the “Christmas in Iverhill” series, visit this link. Friday, December 21, 1973. He could smell the perfume-scented Christmas card the moment he opened his mailbox.  And he smiled.  He knew it was from…

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The Electras is an Album I Want to Be Buried With

I can understand if you’ve never heard of the Electras.  It’s not like they ever had any Top 40 hits.  There’s only one album in their catalog, and it was recorded when the teenaged members were all in a private boarding school. But you might definitely have heard of at least one of the bandmembers. …

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