Media - new toys - Page 5 | virtualwolf.org

A photo of the (very compact) box that the tripod came in. It's tall and thin, roughly 40cm long and a bit under 9cm wide.

The camera tripod we currently have is "Velbon" brand, I've had it for YEARS and tbh it's not great. It gets the job done but it's not what you'd call sturdy or hugely stable. It wasn't too much of an issue until we got a Peak Design camera strap that has a (quite standardised) plate on the bottom of it that the Velbon doesn't work with. To attach the camera to the tripod we had laboriously unscrew the base plate of the hand strap, screw the tripod attachment into the camera and put it on the tripod, then undo all of that when we were done. I'd had enough and decided to get the Peak Design Travel Tripod, and man it's impressive. It's WAY more compact than the Velbon, but far sturdier and can go both higher and lower than the Velbon as well, and it's attached by a single ball head so you can adjust it every which way and then just lock it in place and bam! You're good to go.

Posted on 12 June 2022, 19:50

A photo of the box of a Iwata "Smart Jet Pro" airbrush compressor (a black metal box with the ends open and a handle on top, with some vents in middle of the side), a "universal spray-out pot" (a little pot with a lid to spray the airbrush into to clean it out), and a braided hose for connecting the compressor to the airbrush (which it turns out wasn't needed because the compressor comes with a braided hose).

Turns out my compressor arrived sooner than predicted!

our house darkroom new toys airbrush

Posted on 24 February 2022, 10:44

IT'S HERE! ...and the compressor isn't coming until next week. 😭 #FirstWorldProblems

our house darkroom new toys painting airbrush

Posted on 21 February 2022, 10:52

A small (~30cm wide) horizontal speaker with a light grey mesh on the front. The speaker body is made of walnut and it's quite charmingly retro-looking.

The same speaker but without the grill, showing the individual speakers inside it. There's two woofers towards the middle, and two tweeters on either end.

Both my USB guitar input and electronic drum set have headphone jacks on them, and no way to get actual audio out of them without plugging into that. If I'm using headphones by myself that's fine, but if I want to be showing someone else while hearing what I'm doing, it's a bit of a problem! I looked into Bluetooth speakers that have 3.5mm jacks as well (we've got a little Bluetooth speaker that I use to listen to music from my phone when I'm out in the back room doing my painting and it does okay, but the sound quality's not great plus it lacks any way of getting audio to it except Bluetooth), and decided to get the Audioengine B2. It arrived today and is both very handsome and sounds quite good!

our house music darkroom new toys portrait mode drums speaker

Posted on 14 December 2021, 12:14

A photo of an ultrawide display seemingly suspended above my desk. To the left is a Space Grey 16" MacBook Pro on a stand.

One issue I didn't foresee with the new monitor is that it's SO wide it catches the glare from the window right next to me. And because it doesn't have the anti-reflective coating that my iMac had, unless I run it at a higher brightness than I'd prefer, I struggle to see the very left side of it when the sun is shining directly in. I ordered a monitor arm so I can play around with the positioning more, and it arrived today. Looks so clean and tidy! To properly do this rearranging, though, I've subsequently realised that I ALSO need a laptop stand that can move the laptop higher than my current one, so now I've had to order one of those too, heh.

our house darkroom new toys macbook pro

Posted on 18 November 2021, 15:10

A photo of my old computer setup: a 27" 2013 iMac in the middle sitting atop a slightly-dodgy home-made wooden stand, with a 15 year-old 24" Dell to the left of it sitting on an even dodgier stand that consists of hard rectangular pieces of cardboard that were part of the packaging for something or other. There's a Thunderbolt dock next to the iMac with a ton of cables coming out of it.

A photo of my new desk setup: a 34K LG Ultrawide monitor with a Space Grey M1 Max MacBook Pro off to the left sitting on a laptop stand, with one single cable coming out of the laptop that provides power, USB, and video.

Before and after. 😎

our house darkroom new toys macbook pro

Posted on 13 November 2021, 13:26

A photo of the box of my new M1 Max 16" MacBook Pro.

🎉🎉🎉

our house darkroom new toys macbook pro

Posted on 12 November 2021, 14:05

A photo of the box of an LG 34" Ultrawide display sitting on the floor, with a small scruffy blonde dog furiously sniffing it.

Given the 34" LG monitor I'd been eyeing off was entirely unavailable everywhere, I'd decided to just stick with my iMac-in-Target-Display-Mode setup for when the new MacBook Pro arrives. Unfortunately it turns out that the iMacs with Thunderbolt DO NOT work in TDP with M1 Macs. 😞 So I'd be without a proper desk setup. On a lark over the weekend I decided to check for that monitor again, and lo and behold it was in stock! Ordered one and it just arrived. 🎉 I can't actually USE it until the new MacBook Pro arrives though, because I don't have remotely enough space on my desk for my old iMac plus the new display. 😛

beanie our house dog darkroom new toys

Posted on 9 November 2021, 12:49

A photo of the box of a Mac mini. It's white and very minmal, with "Mac mini" written in silver on the front and a photo of the top of the Mac mini itself on the top of the box.

At work, when you hit ten years of service, amongst other things you get a thousand dollars to put towards a gift of some sort. I couldn't think of anything I wanted so got an Apple Store gift card, intending on putting it towards my eventual M1 MacBook Pro, but like a huge dingus, I entirely forgot to apply the gift card when I ordered the MBP last week. Fortunately we also needed to upgrade the old 2012 Mac mini so I put it towards an M1 Mac mini instead, and it arrived today! 🎉

our house darkroom new toys portrait mode mac mini

Posted on 26 October 2021, 16:24

A photo of the box of a set of Acacia Lunar scales, and the additional magnetised plate to make it a little wider if you need it. The scales are ~10cm x 10cm square, with rounded corners, and thin enough to fit under your cup when you're making espresso.

Woohoo, my fancy espresso scales arrived! (I mean, you can obviously use them for more than just espresso, which we'll be doing).

our house darkroom coffee new toys

Posted on 19 October 2021, 14:02