u/thevmcampos

I'm ditging through some old stuff and I found this issue of "Toons: The Animation Magazine" from 1998. On the back cover it features a couple of classic anime that you could get on VHS, from good old Suncoast. Remember Suncoast??

I had this when I moved off to college.

I need to do a video where I flip through every page of this treasure someday (subscribe to my YouTube!!), but in the meantime enjoy some snaps from the 1997 student faculty and staff telephone directory. Hey, that's me!

I picked up this vintage Sony tower (2001) a few months ago and was playing with it today. Just for fun, I installed the CLI version of Debian 12. So far so good but the fan runs at full blast, and I doubt I'll be able to deal with it because of Sony's proprietary implementation of it. 🌬️

While rummaging through a box of old stuff, I found this souvenir from 1994, the 25th anniversary of San Diego Comic-Con.

I was up a bit early, so I decided to lug my rig to a nearby park (mental note: pare down the rig!) to try out my new DIY antenna with FT8. Very happy with the results as I made contact with an operator in the Philippines for the first time!

Rig:

Xiegu X6100 connected to my Surface Pro. I'm still tuning the antenna, but it's a 20 meter band EFHW connected to a 64:1 UnUn in an Inverted Vee configuration. Outputting 5 watts from the X6100 and getting ~50w from the Micro PA100+ amp. Listening to a great rag chew Net on the Explorer QRZ-1, too.

Loc: DM12mp.

How's your day been so far? 📡

My dad found this at the swap meet and said, "I know you like comics, so I got you this." 😁

That would be Jersey Girl, of course.

Sure streaming is "convenient" and you can find "every" song there.

But do you still like to tune into a classic FM (or AM...) station and just enjoy what comes on? If you still have real DJs on your stations, even better.

Here, in the San Diego area, 91x (91.1 FM) is the go-to station for rock and alternative music. They have "Resurrection Sunday" where they play a bunch of classic '80s stuff on Sunday. I forget the day/time but they have "Finding Emo" where they play a block of Emo music. They play a lot of great stuff all day long with a good variety, think. My photo shows them playing Cypress Hill's "Insane in the Brain" last Saturday. Cool!

Also, you can see my presets there are pretty cool. You can have 'em 😁

So, Regular Radio Squad, rise up and sound off!

I made my first contact today to South Korea from San Diego, California. So amazing to be able to do it with only 9 watts!

My rig: Xiegu X6100 with a DIY Inverted Vee antenna at 17 feet or so. The thing is, I wanted to trim the antenna to 20 meters, but I was hanging out at 17 meters when I tried to make contact on a lark. The SWR was around 2.0, but I did it! I'm also trying out this old Surface Pro as the computer interface and I think it's causing all that noise visible in the waterfall. The MackBook Air I usually use doesn't have such QRM, but it's heavier than the Surface.

But I made the contact!

I found this complete version of this 18 CD epic published in 2010. It includes the voices of Sean Astin, Kristen Bell, Michael York and more. It's 22 hours long! And it's endorsed by the Vatican, and Pope Benedict XVI gushes about how they were able to get THE Samwise Gamgee to play Matthew 😂

It was a bit before my time, so I didn't experience The New Universe when it debuted. From afar I thought it was a More Grown Up comic line.

Decades later, I had Psi Force #1 (1986) on hand and gave it a read.

Eh. Well, I can see there were nuggets to mine, but it didn't feel too special. KGB agents chase an ESP escapee; a group of likewise youngsters must team up after their mentor is killed; he can be summoned when they combine their powers...

Dialog was cringy (especially from the Jubilee analog) and the characters weren't very endearing.

This was supposed to be a More Real version of the Marvel Universe, but having ESP/telekinetic powered characters kind of undoes that concept.

I'll have to dig through my collection to see if I have any other New Universe titles.

What about y'all? Any love for Earth-148611?

It's been five days since San Diego Comic-Con International 2026 started. I don't want to come back to the real world, yet!

Here's a shot I took, while ascending the escalator, with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II. The lens is my weird JC Penny 135mm f/2.8 from the '80s. The previous owner must have disassembled it for cleaning and reversed an element or two; I get some very nice soft edges, odd blur, and bloom. 📸

Most seemed like bootleg stuff, though.

Seen at San Diego Comic-Con 2026

To me, Comic-Con is still about the comics. 😁

Several months ago I bought a vintage 135mm lens from JC Penny on eBay. Yes, they used to make their own lenses back in the day (well, they were rebrands they commissioned). They were low-cost and good-enough quality.

My particular version has a quirk: it seems a previous owner disassembled it and put the glass elements back wrong. But the results have been beautiful! The edges are quite distorted and center (when you can hit focus) is nice. I've been enjoying these imperfect shots a lot.

Here's a Straight Out of Camera shot (shooting JPGs on a RAW-capable camera is quite shocking to some people!) using my User Defined 3 recipe on my Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

The scene is Hall A of the famed San Diego Convention Center, on day 1 of San Diego Comic-Con International 2026.

More to come!