Range Day… or not

Was looking forward to heading to the range today and getting rounds on targets but apparently they’re closed for Labor Day weekend. Until Wednesday. Not ideal but I guess plan B it is…. Just haven’t figured out what that is yet. Hope you’re all having a great holiday weekend!

It’s been a while….

Life happens. Time passes. “The significance of the passage of time… is that time is passing significantly.” …or some such nonsense. Regardless, I’m trying to make an effort to get back to posting more frequently. I’ve been sharing a bit on Instagram and twitter and I’m planning on setting up a Github for some of my coding projects. I’m mostly focused on BASH, Python and PowerShell so let me know if there is any kind of project you’d be interested in torturing me with. My vision for the future of 4Kgaming is pretty unfocused at the moment. I’m interested in many different things and different types of content. Obviously everything I post about won’t be for everyone, but I hope that everyone can find some value in at least one thing I post. Let’s see where this ride takes us….

Don’t Australia My America

New video of the week is up on my self hosted site. This one is Colion Noir explaining the dangers of ‘common sense gun control’ and why we, as freedom loving Americans, must always fight to protect our 2nd Amendment protection from fear mongering politicians and low information people and organizations… mostly funded by blowhard of all blowhards, Michael Bloomberg. There’s no common sense in any of the ‘common sense gun control’ laws proposed by any group or politician. The only common sense you need is to know that when guns are made to be illegal, only criminals will have them. Then who’s really safer?

The best thing every law abiding American citizen can and should do is learn more about firearms and firearm safety. Take training classes. Watch training videos. Familiarize yourself with guns. They’re only scary if you don’t know anything about them. How many people die in car accidents every year? According to the National Safety Council, there were over 38,000 deaths by car accident in 2019. How many gun related deaths? Not counting suicide, which is a completely different category with it’s own set of complications, there were just over 15,000 in 2019. Ask any teenager what they’re most excited about and just about all of them will say they can’t wait to be able to drive. Cars are deadly weapons yet we allow kids as young as 15 to get driving permits like it’s just a natural part of life. Well, it has become one but driving a car is not a right protected by the Constitution.

If we were really a responsible society, we would concentrate more on educating people, starting at a young age, about not only the dangers but the value and benefits of firearms. Firearm safety should be second nature to every American citizen. It shouldn’t even be up for debate to restrict our 2nd Amendment rights yet here we are. There are too many people who are too ignorant and unwilling to actually learn anything about these ‘scary weapons.’ Guns are tools. They serve a purpose and in the hands of a responsible, law abiding citizen they are an effective criminal deterrent. These same people calling for guns to be banned or restricted are the same ones who walk around daily with an armed team of security guards carrying the exact weapons they seek to ban. If they were so sure guns are bad, they should immediately strip their security of these weapons but they never will. Why? Because they feel safer with their protection. As a free American, we should all take responsibility for our OWN protection. We should know how to use these tools to defend ourselves and not allow our families, property and fellow citizens to be terrorized, vandalized and afraid. The only thing stopping criminals from breaking into your house is not knowing whether an armed citizen is waiting for them on the inside. We can not allow anyone, especially the government, to tell us we are not allowed to own guns. History shows something similar happened to Americans in the 1770’s…. Americans fought back.

Post Content – The learning continues….

I’ve been pretty busy with work and other things around the house lately so haven’t had a ton of time to spend on posting stuff here. The free time I have had, I’ve been trying to polish up my hosted site and continuing to learn python. The more I use it the more things I’m finding I can do with it. My latest triumph is I’ve just created a few scripts that help update the posts on my site so I don’t have to manually code all the HTML by hand and it’s a huge time saver. I’m also using it to reformat the gallery output from Graphic Converter so I can quickly format the photo page to my current styling. Without these two essential scripts, it would be overwhelmingly tedious to continue to update these things on my own site and I really don’t want to torture myself that way.

WordPress is pretty nice and it’s easy to just create a new post and get it published but I’m not able to add some things I want without upgrading to the paid plan. I’ve gotten, like, 5 visitors to my site and who knows how much time I’ll eventually have to update it… or if anyone even wants to read anything I post. I’ll stick to free for now. My money tree died so I’ve become pretty thrifty. One of my next projects is to create a similar posting system for my hosted site and post directly on there instead of linking from WordPress. I was thinking about maybe just creating another python script to format it the way I want, but it may be worth my time to learn Django and make something with that. This all sounds kind of ambitious for my current web development skill level, but I’d really like to see if I can make it work. I may have to wait until I can integrate some kind of registration and/or like and follow system.

If you’ve seen my site, I’ve actually added a couple of external widgets for things like Telegram, Facebook and Twitter as well as a Telegram comment box and an embedded Telegram channel. If I ever actually get this thing off the ground, the channel will be a good way for people to subscribe to content and get notified in Telegram on their phone. Each broadcast has the ability to add comments and people can comment either directly on the website or in the channel in Telegram on the phone. Try it out if you get a chance…. let me know what kind of content you want to see me work on for a future post or project. Overall, I’m kind of just documenting my journey into learning python and web development in my spare time. Along the way, I’ll be adding general interesting tech posts like my (still upcoming) Ubiquiti home networking and gaming related content… mostly first person shooters and open world/MMO stuff. And up on the site now, I’ve added a Funko POP gallery to both show off some cool collectibles and what I’ve learned with Javascript so far.

So if you’re trying to learn a new programming language, web development, have an interest in tech gadgets or games, or just want to see how miserably I can fail, let me know. Comment or follow on WordPress… comment in Telegram on my hosted site… I’d really like to hear from you and what you’d like to see or maybe we can throw ideas off each other in a discussion about various topics. If people are interested, I’ll make time. We’ve got some big ideas as to where we’d like to take 4kgaming and hopefully we can follow through. Keep an eye out.

Election Day…. VOTE!

My first vote…. ever!

This is the most important election of a generation…. possibly in the history of our great country. I hope you’ve all been doing your own research and thinking for yourselves. Get to the polls as early as possible and make your vote count this year! I, for one, can’t wait until the results are in and we can stop talking about politics. Let’s get back to normal life….

  • My Voting outfit
    My Voting outfit
  • Polls @ 7am
    Polls @ 7am

The entire process from arrival until we were back in the car heading home was about 45min total. Definitely not as bad as I thought it would be and not at all difficult to understand for a first time voter. It’s all very clear and there are instructions everywhere. Ask for help from one of the volunteers if you don’t understand something but you won’t need to. I’ve never been even the slightest bit interested in politics at any point in my life but I’m glad I stepped up this year and did my part.

ATF is grossly overstepping its bounds

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

-Benjamin Franklin

Just a quick post to share the latest Guns&Gadgets video about the ATF abusing its power. If you’re an American, you love freedom and the 2nd Amendment is non-negotiable, check out the latest on what the tyrants want to do to our rights. Shall not be infringed isn’t a suggestion, it’s a Constitutional right. Just remember how the Nazis disarmed German citizens ‘for the good of the people’. How did that turn out?

New post incoming … UniFi networking

UniFi Dream Machine

I’m a big fan of ease of use and reliability. UniFi network equipment has proven to have both qualities. Whether you’re looking for an all in one solution, similar to Apple’s now defunct AirPort Extreme/Time Capsule or a flexible solution that can adapt to scale for a home of any size, Ubiquiti probably makes a solution for you. I’ll be putting something together to represent the two most common setups for home user types and also touch on the Protect line of home monitoring/security. DM me if you have anything specific you want me to cover or if you have any specific questions I may be able to help you with.

Python scripting … pt. 2

The journey continues…. I figured out how to use selenium for some basic web scraping. I know, big deal. But since IFTTT is no longer reliable for tracking price changes now I can create my own tool and get exactly what I’m looking for. The next step is to output to a gui or maybe internal webpage for my own purposes. As for GUIs, tkinter seems like the only thing I can get working on any of my Macs. It’s pretty basic and combined with my lack of creativity, quite ugly. Despite this, it’s functional and at least somewhat useful.

I mentioned flutter in my last post and got all of the requirements installed and watched a few videos. Still trying to come up with an idea for an app to make (no creativity, remember?) so I’ll stick to pushing my limits in python for now. The latest triumph I had is using pyad to combine some common AD tools into a python script at work. I already have these working in PowerShell, but it felt good to get it working in python. I’m still a long way from proficiency but even baby steps are progress. The struggle continues….

The iPhone 12 feature not many are talking about…

With the imminent release of the iPhone 12 lineup, people are talking about the new colors (both Blues look awesome), new size (uhh, mini??) and most of all, increased feature parity between the standard 12 and the 12 pro models (hello 5G!). Going back to the first Plus model iPhone, there has usually been at least one feature that stood out as pretty awesome but I was always able to talk myself out of the top tier phone. Things like portrait mode, selfie portrait mode, Face ID, bigger screens, OLED, higher resolution, and the most convincing, the telephoto lens. I was able to be ok with a 7 vs 7plus and Xr over Xs or Xs Max.

This year it seems like more than any previous year, reviewers are recommending the standard 12 for most people. All models have 5G. All models have MagSafe charging. Great. The 12 is still nice and the color choices are excellent but with the introduction of the mini, the standard 12 is bumped up $100. Want more than 64gb storage? That’s another $50 bringing the standard iPhone12 to $850. So now the pricing is much closer than it’s been in the past, the size is the same (no more 5.8″ ‘pro’), 128gb storage standard, you get the telephoto lens as mentioned earlier AND… what I think could be the standout feature and the reason to ultimately go pro… the LiDAR scanner.

I know it seems gimmicky and on its own, there’s really little to get excited about. So it does AR faster and more accurate… yay. The REAL reason I think this is going to be a standout feature is the advertised 6 times faster low light autofocus and better portrait mode photos. Low light photography has been pretty good in the last few models of iPhone but with the addition of the LiDAR scanner, this could be a gamechanger. The biggest issue with trying to get that low light photo nice and crisp is trying to hold still long enough for the exposure to be accurate and sharp. The increased speed in low light will make taking great low light photos easier for more people. Whether this feature will turn out to be as good in practice as I believe it will remains to be seen and I suppose we’ll all find out in about a week.

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