Category: Entertainment

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There was a lot of Harry Potter cosplay at WonderCon this past weekend! Here are some of my photos, featuring Bellatrix Lestrange, Hagrid, You-Know-Who, Professor Sybill Trelawney (who should look familiar to regular readers!), Hogwarts Professors Dolores Umbridge, Gilderoy Lockhart and Albus Dumbledore; Arthur Weasley, and Rita Skeeter.

There are a lot more that I missed – people dressed as the Malfoys, students of course, News Scamander, other professors, and so on.

Check out my full WonderCon 2019 album on Flickr!

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Blurry leaves on a twig in front of an even blurrier background.

Super camera telephoto lens is out of focus
Even though the tripod’s set, the blur is really bogus
If you use the automated setting hocus-pocus
Still the telephoto lens is slightly out of focus!

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(The background is supposed to be blurry, but I had a lot of trouble focusing on the foreground with this lens. I guess it’s just going to take practice.)

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I’d never noticed the “don’t use Energizer” note on the smoke detector before. But sure enough, it’s still chirping.

So I went to look online for why, and found that auto-complete has some odd ideas of what smoke detectors need.

Search box offering auto complete for "smoke detector requires specific brand..." ...of product? ...of sunglasses? ...of orange juice?????

For the record: I didn’t find a satisfactory answer. A lot of talk about types of batteries based on power consistency and drop-off rates. You don’t want something that stays high-power longer, then quickly drops below the level needed to produce a low-battery alert. That makes sense. But specific brands? The consensus was split between specific brands having been rated in tests, or specific brands having deals with the smoke detector manufacturer.