The Lime One has shipped…hope I don’t get stung on import charges or whatever due to Brexit. Thanks Boris.
Meant to have a new sofa arrive yesterday, we watched the truck drive all round the city on their website until 4pm, when we get a text message saying the driver is too tired now. AND then they make us call to reschedule because they couldn’t possibly come the next day… Unsurprisingly they didn’t care. I don’t much either but we moved the old sofa out already.
I don’t like the stock Ghost themes. They’re all so “cards” and compartments of text, big banner pictures and scrolly junk. There’s no awesome ghost repo…how am I meant to find anything…I just like the Ghost admin. Looks like I can use it with its API to staticgens like gatsby…bleh. I wanted ease. Maybe I just haven’t found the right settings page or something to turn off all the crap on my site. Maybe I should just bin it altogether.
Had a random though of using Discourses as a blog. Least the comments are built in. Wow this site is Discourse!
Finished The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson last night. An epic 1200~ page book that’s part of the Stormlight archive.
Does anyone still use a tea cozy?
Eyeing a Leica 90mm f/2.8 tele-elmarit-m. It’s not //too// expensive…there’s not many about and finding historical prices is tricky. That would be a good website, historical prices of used stuff. I can look at eBay sold listings, but they always seem to be “just last week this thing sold for 50% of price the current ones are listed for”. usedlens.co.uk is a good site to find currently for sale items but there’s no historical prices.
I should probably just keep them but thinking about selling the Minolta film SLRs and lenses. They didn’t cost me much so maybe just keep them. Have a hard time keeping things I don’t use as I’ve always sold on things to pay for new items. Mainly digital cameras and lenses and computer parts. Also want to sell some things as I’ve spent a lot recently! Perhaps I can sell some old switch games or something…
Just ordered a Hedeco Lime One lightmeter. My extent of sunny 16 ends with “it’s not full sunlight, now what?”, and “surely f/11 is too much”, and I bring out my phone for the lightmeter app. This is annoying and distracting. I could spend £1000 and buy a M6 or spend £2-3k on a MP or swap the M2 for M5, or save money and buy something else 😅. Instead, I’m going to buy a hot-shoe light meter. It does distract from the look of the camera but this one seems not to obtrusive and functionally excellent. The shop only opened Friday and was hidden for early subscribers only. However, you can just look at past emails on the newsletter to see the password! The shop reported stock so I don’t think anyone has missed out by me “jumping” the queue.
The Ghost CLI tool makes it incredibly simple to install. Just need to figure out themes and config items. Probably just pick one of the free ones from ghost’s website as otherwise too much faffing will ensue. Unless they’re too “bloaty” and too many sections and social media sharing etc. The magazine ones might be good, less typical styles.
I like the photography themes. They probably don’t fit with my blog content but tempting to make another site.
The lawn desperately needs cut, so maybe not much time to fiddle about with Ghost.
Thinking about my X100F (which needs repairs…again), once I get it fixed I’ll sell it. Wondering if I need to replace it with something or just live with only the X-T2. Feels a little vulnerable just having one digital camera, and even if not because of reliability, then fresh motivation by having a little change. I could get the 27 or 18mm pancake lenses if I need a small setup. Which I actually do when we travel to France for 3 weeks with one checked bag for a family of 6 😅. When the kids get older it’ll be easier to travel with more camera stuff. I was also thinking about having a B&W digital camera. I like a lot of my digital B&W but rarely switch to it, and too lazy to process raws later to see B&W. (As before there’s also film simulation bracketing but then I’d have even more photos to process and decide). The X100F’s replacement could function in both these roles, and revert to colour when its the only camera I have for a trip away. There only really seems like two options though: The X100V or the [[Ricoh GR
Ricoh GR]]. I’m tempted by the Ricoh just for something completely different and it is even smaller! The Fuji is 73% heavier and 61% thicker! That is a lot. If I were doing a primarily film photography trip away, adding the Ricoh would be minimal but handy. Not sure about the 18mm though. I like 23mm on crop sensors, enough to get things in frame inside but not too wide when outdoors that you have to be really close else the subject gets lost in the surroundings. OR maybe I just use my phone like everyone else does.
I’ve been thinking about my blog (in a state of half not finished), how I’ve been using this site and then words of wisdom from 4 years ago. I used to sneer at Wordpress. Its php language, its reliance on a database, and my view of its bloat. I was missing the point though. Maybe VS Code in github with a preview extension and split screen could achieve everything (although images still need messing about it with) but the reduced friction to get writing…that’s what my focus should be.
Time for a late night install of Ghost, on another free Oracle VM. 😅
Any time you’re ill every says it must be COVID. I guess probabilistically, that’s true but it’s still annoying. Least I get to work at home again for a good reason. My work desk has 2x24” monitors. They are nice monitors, Dell with USB-C hub and daisy chaining and virtually no bezels, but they seem oh so small compared to my home 32” 2560x1440 monitor!
I most likely have strong confirmation bias about how my film photos are much better than digital. I wish it wasn’t quite so expensive though. Ordered 3x gold, 2x colorplus (it’ll be first time with that) and 2x Kentmere 400 (also first time with that). Basically, the cheapest you can possible get. Fomo is about 50p a roll cheaper, but you always buy the second cheapest wine. So 252 shots, £39.50 (inc. postage) means 15.7p a shot. C41 developing is £6/roll plus postage (but can group them), B&W £10. So assuming I post them all together, it’s another 19.8p/shot in developing. 35.5p/shot total. If all the photos I took this year were on film, I’d have spent £980. This is all a bit silly given my last camera. I keep talking about home developing but have done nothing about it so far. The two kentmeres were meant to encourage me to start. Seeing developing (and scanning) makes up almost 56% of the cost is also another encouragement. It’s not about the money, I just like working it out.
Realistically, I’m going to get through about a roll per week MAX. Typically more like 2-3 for some event/visit/trip which is probably once a month over the year. So maybe £460 a year. Not sure what home developing costs look like on a consumables basis. Online suggests about £1.50-£2 a roll for B&W, so 36 B&W rolls of Kentmere a year, plus darkroom basics and a scanner (think used flatbed or used 35mm film scanner is cheaper than DLSR) then that’s maybe £500 in year 1 but then only £240 in year 2.
All the fun of home developing…priceless…and this is before all the pushing and pulling.
Then I’ll want to do large format and drop £50 on two frames or whatever.
Realised I hadn’t uploaded several weeks worth of photos to my website, so started to do so. But I’m still questioning it’s value. Partially as I upload quite a lot of photos, and who’s going to look at them all. I was trying to minimise the number of albums but perhaps I should have many small albums vs few larger ones. Maybe I need to revisit my Photo Management thoughts. One thing that struck me was that my wife said she hadn’t seen any from the summer. I used to point Plex at the old static photo site folders and so when she’d turn on the TV they’d pop up there and have a look through them. I do like them on the TV. Maybe I just need to sort that out again, although it duplicates photos, unless I cull an album to the best ones and discard the fine but boring ones. I do delete terrible ones, out of focus or the kids firing off one hundred photos of their shoes, but there are lots I keep (especially digital) which never go on a website or in a photo book. Why do I keep them? Perhaps someone else will like them…although they only get looked at twice - once when I add them and once when my wife makes the photo books. Now I need to look at the old photo site and see what I used to do.
We I take so many photos, maybe I do need to be more ruthless.
huh…Literally whilst I was using this today’s journal note has disappeared…I dug it out of github, although single page in git is painful. Count 3 of github saver woes.
Part way through my decompessing Meditations into individual tiddlers - via python not hand. I have a json of with tiddlers per book but I want per paragraph. That way I can transclude one per journal and take time to consider it, maybe reflect on it and favourite any good ones. I’m sure all that can be automated in TW but I might just do the manual transclusion. [[Stoicism]] resonates with my natural disposition so I enjoy reading about it. I also like ancient Rome and Greece so it’s a good combo.
Should have a look through the TW dynalist to see if there are any good navigation ideas. I want to keep it simple. Added [favourites(http://favorites.tiddlyspot.com/) for now. I like this but not sure if I want to use it. Also the [Ghostwriter theme
https://ibnishak.github.io/ghostwriter/]] looks interesting as a blog theme… Best make a Tiddlywiki Hacks page else I’ll lose this.
Digging through my oldest wiki/notes backups and keeping the best parts.
[Get ready for HAUNT 2!(https://aavegotchi.medium.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-aavegotchi-haunt-2-8bd086f9026c) Best I can hope for is to make 10% on my GHST then win a portal with raffle tickets. Just not sure how many to use if Realms are coming along. These portals are going to be 800 GHST minimum - that’s ‘‘$1700’’, which is retarded. Although in the scale of NFTs it’s a penny in the street. There are so many items going to be listed…25,944..transactions are going to timeout and all sorts of nonsense. Best tactic is to go all in on a godlike the instant it opens…but so will 1000s of others…
Might try Photonix or librephotos next. From this list. Also this, from the comments. It’s interesting they claim Photoprism has the most accurate object recognition, because in my library it’s quite poor. It does get a lot right but there’s also a lot wrong.
hmm…I’m sure there were other pages on here that I wrote last night but seems they didn’t save…Also my phone browser forgot my github key so it wouldn’t save…Github saver being annoying again…
I could do with some organisation on this site. I was using recents but now I’m uploading a lot of things it gets messy.
Took the M2 out with me this afternoon. Don’t have much 35mm film left, so it was some random B&W. If I had some home developing equipment and chemicals I would’ve finished off the roll and developed and scanned it tonight to see the pictures. Perhaps ironic that I want to see my photos immediately yet I took the film camera with me… Filmdev is cheap to develop and scan C41. Not sure I can beat that in terms of time, effort and reliability. However, B&W maybe more worthwhile, at least for fun and to stop me just picking XP2.
I do like B&W photos, but rarely take them with digital. Although have come across some nice ones from the Fuji X-T2 and Acros. Wondered about a B&W only digital camera, e.g. an old X-T20. But I could just do film simulation bracketing, but that seems to defeat the intent to shoot just B&W. Film makes a lot of choices for me.
I want to buy film from AW but it’s always cheaper somewhere else…I do have £10 in vouchers for them. I’m hoping their new development business will offer good value for developing and new film. At least that’s what I’d do.
My effort to reestablish the blog has slowed to nothing. Must be record of mine, to lose interest in it before it’s even setup! Perhaps I need something more engaging to write in. I think I want something more “normal” than this site, but not sure what. Buying a service hasn’t worked. Maybe self-hosting something dynamic and not static is what’s needed…hmm to awesome self-hosted again…
Photoprism continues to scan…up to 40,000 photos now. I didn’t think the Home Server is //that// slow.
I think Kodak Gold is my favourite colour negative film stock. ISO 200 is good for Scottish summers (probably too slow for winters) and it has a warm, soothing look, like remembering a happy moment. I thought all the films I had developed were Gold but now I just remembered one was Portra 160. So I need to go and look at them in more detail and compare to Gold to see if it’s worth the premium.
I want to keep tags to a minimum on this site, but not sure when to add and when not to. I also don’t think I can add tiddlers that have no tags 🤔
https://photoprism.app/]] on my server. I tried it before but it wouldn’t work, anyway it was simple to get going using docker compose. Only the preview version does face detection but it’s coming to the main one soon enough. Not sure if I’d want this public facing or just leave it at home, locally. The labelling seems a little poor accuracy wise - e.g. calling a cow a bird or a person a kite and other random things - but maybe it gets better? It’s not google photos smart but they also don’t have the resources of google. I do like how there’s a mobile app that can sync with it via ~WebDAV, that might be good if I get it up and running, because then photoprism will automatically organise those files.
Was funny finding out someone is actually reading this site! Hello Phil Nunnally! I had a brief panic of “//what did I write on there that he might’ve seen//” but I know he understands, and I admit I read his wiki too 😅 Phil’s and Jack’s are my favourites. So HP Tango is for you Phil!
Slowly setting up my “proper” blog. Moved micro.blog to micro.alexjj.com as well. Here’s a list of all the blog posts I’ve thought about writing but never did:
A real one about the HP Tango
One for every camera I’ve owned and what I’ve thought about it. Particularly the random film ones I’ve bought, fixed (well cleaned so they work again) and sold on eBay.
Reflecting on 10 years on Github. Most stars and interactions I’ve had, notable moments etc.
Reflecting on 10 years of having a domain and website - thinking screenshots of old versions of the site etc.
Going back even further to my very first websites I made as a teenager
A post about all the mechanical keyboards I’ve owned, built and sold.
** I did start this on the old blog, think there was about 15 posts I started drafting for it
Plain text accounting
** Someone emailed me about my 2016 blog post on beancount the other week! Guess I should put it back online
Monte Carlo simulations with python for work 🤓
Scanning, making a book and website for my grandad’s 1960s slide film from Africa and places.
Many more I’ve since forgotten.
Excited for Amazon’s Wheel of Time TV show. Took me about 5 years to read all those books, and I kept telling people they should make it a TV show. Although if you thought Game of Thrones was long…
Diablo II: Resurrected open beta starts today! Preparing us all to pay £40 for a 21 year old game that has been brushed down and tarted up a bit. I’ll give it a shot but if I remember correctly, D2 makes D3 seem like a once through story completion game when it comes to grinding gear.
Coming up 2 weeks with this wiki, and I must say I quite enjoy it. I like the design, the administration aspect, and the (Basic) setup I have for it. I keep thinking about a blog but I’m still tempted just to keep this. I’m writing all this for myself, and sometimes imagine others reading it but don’t really care if they do or not. Whereas I find a blog seems to be more focused on having others read it. I’ll continue to ruminate about that. Would also be nice not to have to support so many domains…I actually like this one more than alexjj.com but I can’t give that up as so short, and my pictures one is short, and the other for my dad’s email…ugh guess not.
Got my latest films back from developing. First set with the Leica M2. They all look great - which is good as it means no issues with the camera. I also got two films back from my Minolta SRT100X SLR. They look great as well. The film look is really enjoyable, and even though I’m sure it can be replicated in Lightroom I much prefer the original. Plus I know what’s gone in to make them - manual everything and timing and no second chances etc. - so that makes it even more rewarding when I see them.
The problem is that do the photos from the M2 look 30x better than the Minolta ones? In fact more than that including lenses. The answer is of course ‘‘No’’. The SRT even has a built in light meter, which for the most part seems reasonable accurate. The only thing that M2 has over the SRT is the rangefinder style focusing. I think all but 1 was completely out of focus and maybe 2 weren’t quite spot on with the M2, whereas I’ve had 10+ on a roll come back out of focus on the SRT. I’m sure I’ve focused it though. Either the mirror is maybe out or something but then the next roll is 90% in focus. I have noticed that sometimes there seems to be a lot of play with the lens for focus and I can’t tell that it’s changing at all. Whereas the rangefinder, line up the patches and we’re good. Sometimes it’s tricky if there’s little contrast but I do like it. I guess I’ll only be able to tell if it improves with more shots/rolls and see how they come out overall. It is an expensive camera. However, there’s very few options for rangefinders with interchangeable lenses. I also like there are still professionals who will repair the Leica, so it should last forever. Even if I do decide to get rid of it, I’ll get my money back - maybe lose a bit on the lens as ended up buying that new as I wanted the mark 2 of the Voigtlander 35mm nokton. The real alternative would be a Canon P or 7. I did own a 7 for a while but sold that as “ahem” thought it was too expensive. I think it had some light leaks though too. Now I think I should’ve kept the lens as it was the 50mm f/1.4 and they seem to go for a lot and aren’t very common.
Counter to that, I think about the MP! I like the M2 but the lack of light meter is a little tricky at times. Getting my phone out all the time is annoying and maybe even a handheld might be just as bad. I could get a hot shoe mounted one like the keks or voigtlander ones, but then that adds bulk to the camera and makes it janky? In bright sun I can manage just fine with it on f/11 and 250 or whatever but otherwise I can’t really tell. Maybe I should try and find a second hand one, or just buy the keks for $120. To spend £3-4k on the MP to get a light meter built in is retarded. Could mean I could get a black version…again retarded. I’m nervous about the M2, how would I be with a MP! Best get some more lenses and then maybe think about the MP. There’s always the M6 or M7. Or just go digital with a M! That’s also retarded. I did wonder if I should’ve got a Leica CL //film// camera. In fact I was looking at getting one ages about but decided they were too expensive 😅. It would be a bit lighter and smaller than the M2, and I doubt I’d notice the differences. Has a light meter too, although prone to breaking and no-one will fix it. The no-one fixing it does put me off. It’s “cheap” at £200-350 (if you’re lucky and wait) but quite a lot for the potential failure. Might still get one to compare. Shame there’s no decent camera shop locally. There’s one but it’s 3 hours away, not practical to pop in to handle a camera.
I quickly got over the Leica CL that I was admiring the other day. The native lenses for it are all huge. The 18mm is small and the 23mm is okay but the 35mm and the 60mm are big. Makes it look weird. It would be nice to have but meh. I should get the 70-300mm and maybe the 56mm for my X-T2.
I should also get some film developing going - although need a scanner and can’t decide if I’m just going to stick to 35mm or whether I should prepare for 120 as well. I think just 35 mm as it’s going to be a while before I have time / hands for 120, and just send it away. A 35 mm scanner is a much more contained expense - maybe £160 for a used plustek - should’ve kept the one I had for scanning all those slides.
Made a little script to generate hledger web page with report in it. Can get it cron-jobbed to run each night for me. I might also get it pushed to my private TW. Although I suppose I should write it to google sheets for me so I can just look there. Hledger-ui is a nice way to interrogate it. Still want to do a monthly write up but not sure where to do that. Be nice if I could do it on here. Maybe I can write it without the specifics. Maybe I could also just have it pushed to a github private repo README…in fact the very repo I keep the data in is private, so I can just visit that to look at it anywhere.
Shouldn’t have bothered with micro.blog. I just don’t care about a social website thing. I can’t be bothered looking at other people’s posts and articles. Not because they’re boring but just as it’s just another time sink I don’t need. It’s better than twitter and facebook but it’s still the same thing.
Phew it’s been a lot of writing tonight. Time for some more Lost in Space!
Finally finished getting all of 2021’s transactions into hledger for tracking expenses. Was one that I hadn’t put two spaces (not used to that from beancount days) that I couldn’t figure out why the balance assertions were failing. Once I found it then everything balanced perfectly. Just testing out the reporting now. Although I think is -M -depth 2 might be pretty much what I need month to month. Just a summary of spending. I’ll mess about with saving as html or csv and importing into something for charts or maybe this (or another) wiki to annotate.
Been thinking about setting up my static blog again. I liked the idea of microblog but not sure I want to keep everything on it and have to pay for it. It’s not much but’I don’t know’I like having my own thing. Although this goes against why I signed up to micro.blog just last month’ugh I don’t know. I keep thinking of things that I want to blog about but then never do.
Anyway started setting up another Hugo static blog. It’s quite the faff to get it up and going and then writing stuff and adding comments etc. This is my motion vs. Action again. Why don’t I just write on micro.blog? Actually makes me think about ikiwiki again, or just use this!
Found out that season 2 of Lost in Space on Netflix is out (and has been for ages!) so stopped all this blog fiddling and watching that instead.
The MakingKodak book arrived today. It was pricey, particularly the postage to the UK, but it’s an amazing book. It’s like the perfect mix of chemical engineering and film photography. —
date: 2021-08-17
title: Tuesday, 17th August, 2021
—
Been thinking about setting up my static blog again. I liked the idea of microblog but not sure I want to keep everything on it and have to pay for it. It’s not much but…I don’t know…I like having my own thing. Although this goes against why I signed up to micro.blog just last month…ugh I don’t know. I keep thinking of things that I want to blog about but then never do.
Anyway started setting up another Hugo static blog. It’s quite the faff to get it up and going and then writing stuff and adding comments etc. This is my motion vs. Action again. Why don’t I just write on micro.blog? Actually makes me think about ikiwiki again, or just use this!
Found out that season 2 of Lost in Space on Netflix is out (and has been for ages!) so stopped all this blog fiddling and watching that instead.
The MakingKodak book arrived today. It was pricey, particularly the postage to the UK, but it’s an amazing book. It’s like the perfect mix of chemical engineering and film photography.
Now I want a Leica CL (digital version). Sigh. So many reasons suddenly appear in my head that makes it seem like the best idea I have. It’s not much different from my X-T2, aside from a big price difference. It is a nice size but the lenses get big quickly. The 23 mm f/2, 35 mm f/1.4 and 60 mm f/2.8 macro. Can mount M lenses on it but then can also do that on the Fuji. Maybe I’ll get the X100F fixed, sell it and then consider my options.
Had some university friends stay with us and last night we got into a conversation about cryptocurrencies. My wife was curious as to if any of them were into them or had any (they didn’t). Normally I avoid talking about it as people have very different views and generally people don’t seem to like them - possibly as they regret not buying them before this bull run. Or they dislike the energy consumption of proof of work coins. Feels like talking about politics, usually not the best topic of conversation.
However, it did make me realise that I don’t know how proof of stake actually works and I think my proof of work explanation was poor. They said it made sense but it wasn’t quite right. Up till now, I’ve satisfied myself that I know the gist of how it works and that’s good enough, but perhaps I should learn more. However, equally there’s a whole host of fiat workings that I don’t understand and aren’t going to learn it. Would be good to have a brief, layman’s explanation of PoW and PoS though. I regret saying how much our bag went up by, and knew I shouldn’t but it was hard to escape the conversation.
One person works at a renewables power company and supposedly they spoke about it at work and should the renewable energy be used for crypto and they decided it shouldn’t be. Seemed like an odd thing to do. So should they not sell power to people or companies who break the law or have different views from them? Why is it for them to decide who can and can’t use renewable energy.
Also noticed my credit card company is going to block all transactions for crypto to “protect its customers”. Buying with credit cards is stupid anyway, but still they’ll let me buy more terrible things with it. However, it’s only to protect themselves, so they don’t have to pay out money when people get scammed or lose their keys etc.
Been thinking about photos and picture management.
Another little bit of large format
LargeFormat from youtube…I suppose it knows I’m interested. The Intrepid seems like a good way to get into it…but I would need multiple things plus when am I going to use it?
The other day my boss at work asked what I wanted to do with my career and what other jobs am I interested in at work. I jokingly (at least to make the appearance of joking) that I’d like to retire. She said I was too young. It’s interesting people’s perspective on retirement. I replied with ‘I’m not too young, I just don’t have enough money’. I feel this is an important distinction that is often overlooked. Whether or not I would actually do that is a different question but to have the choice to do it would be nice.
Finally started with my expenses tracking. Quite liking hledger and still only getting going. I think the hledger add is going to be a good thing for me. It uses the journal to guess the rest of the transaction from the description. So once I get a few months of historical data in then 90% of the time it’s enter, enter, enter, enter. Maybe changing the amount here and there but quick yet still meaning I engage my brain with each transaction and register it. Done the short accounts, moving onto the longer ones and then will start playing with the reporting and saving that as a script. Probably just get my server to generate it each night so I can look at it whenever. I should do some more now, but I’m playing a silly Aavegotchiminigame]] so that my gotchi gets some XP. I’m doing well but there’s still nearly a week left. I bet someone makes a opencv script to auto click it or something. Maybe I should…nah…better things to do.
Maybe I should add all my books here. Some table system with using fields and so on….or I keep my static single page instead…reminds me I wanted to switch over my blog to some hugo build. Ugh why bother, I’ll never use it.
Yesterday the github saver didn’t work. This was disconcerting, particularly as I’d written quite a bit in the expenses tiddler. I waited a while then tried it again and it did work. I thought I could copy all the text, refresh the page and try again if it hadn’t worked. However, it’s made me wonder if I should setup the node.js plus build job versions. Have to look into how I take an existing TW and then migrate to node.js. It would have the advantage of sorting out Private stuff and the source is all individual tiddlers that I can source control more easily.
Well maybe next week, as I want to start my [[Tracking expenses]] efforts off this week.
Trying to tidy up my Github account of old and random repos. Not sure if it matters but I don’t like having clutter in it that I no longer need. Particularly forks of stuff. Restored a few notes from older wikis into here. Still yet to bring in my original dokuwiki site that I had running for several years. Maybe I should just restore it into my dokuwiki setup - I’ve forgotten the domain to it already…oh how could I! It’s the same as it’s always been.
I’ve only had this a short time but I’m beginning to think that it should replace all my websites. I like the domain name too, maybe I’ll get bored of it all (like always) but so far I’m hopeful. Maybe I’ll keep a more ‘formal’ blog for ‘good’ posts that I want to put up and share, rather than pointing people to this rats nest of stuff.
Setup my Gemini blog, gemlog?, last night gemini://gem.alexjj.com. Probably will never put anything on it but there we go.
Finding some photos to print and send to people. I was going to write a review/post on the [[HP Tango]] at some point’ but like all my blog posts, it never gets written.
I should look for a ‘find all stubs’ thing so I can fill in the gaps when I’m looking for something to do, instead of mindlessly browsing reddit.
My plan to print and send photos to family with a letter has the downfall that I forget what I’ve printed. So now I’m worried I’ll send the same things again. It was meant to be the past 2 weeks, here’s a couple of photos, but now I feel like I need to be super organised to do this. It doesn’t help the first set were random ones across about 6 weeks. I could save them to a folder on the computer I suppose. This is getting in the way of actually doing anything.
I want to print a couple of grandad’s slides to send to my mum too. That’s easier to do, I just need to find them.
All this also points me to the fact that my photo organisation is poor. It’s not terrible - I have folders by year and a date with a name e.g.:
2021
|
--- 2021-01-01 New Years
--- 2021-04-01 April Fools
However, people and tags and ratings…there’s none of that. I have my website where I pick out good ones but that doesn’t go back very far. I think I need to look into photoprism or something, digikam?
I have Lightroom classic but I don’t know how to use the library stuff and collections etc. I also store all my photos on the NAS and keep telling myself (for the past 10 years it seems) that when I get a new computer with more storage I’ll keep them on that…but I’ve also not really upgraded my computer in 10 years. That’s not quite true, it got upgraded from sandy bridge to ivy bridge when I bought a Dell Optiplex for a machine learning project that never really happened and then I realised this “junk” computer was better than my main one. I really want a Mac Mini, the new ones with M1, but can’t quite justify it. I think Apple macOS is a good compromise between Windows and Linux. Windows for the family and Linux for me, plus as all our other devices are Apple maybe it’ll be useful with iPhotos and iCloud stuff. So now I tell myself once I get a new mac I’ll sort out my photos properly…this time…
Spent a lot of time thinking about Tracking expenses the past few days, umming and ahhing between nothing, Beancount, hledger, and spreadsheets. Still not sure but writing it out might help me…think I’m coming to the conclusion although it’ll probably be short lived.
Someone emailed me asking about my 2016 blog post on Beancount, which is quite amazing that anyone looks at it or even still wants it after 5 years! Reminds me I need to sort out my blog. The micro.blog stuff didn’t last long. I just don’t care about the “community”, I just want to write things for me and maybe for others to see. It is nice having dialogue on it for posts but equally I posted some pictures that I thought were interesting and no-one said anything which isn’t surprising as no-one follows me and I only just joined but why did I bother. This wiki is much more engaging for me. Maybe I should just skip the blog altogether? I feel like the blog is for “perfect posts” that I want to share on a “normal” website. If I do any code blogs or things like beancount. Perhaps this is my notebook and then I’ll take content from here and make it more official. Or this will teach me that blog posts don’t need to be perfect. They just need to be something.
First outing for the Leica M2. Not having a light meter is interesting. My other film cameras do all have light meters but I don’t entirely trust them ‘ being decades old. However they still function to some extent and I realise offer a sounding board or approximation that helps confirm my settings.
I use my phone and the Lightme app and found that I’d check and recheck the lighting. It was a variable day and would go from overcast to sunny very quickly. So the same shot could change before I’d even take it. I like that I’m noticing this more and thinking about it more actively. I still have no idea though. Using f/11 and f/16 is very alien to me from digital camera world. With digital I typically shoot aperture priority or program/auto mode, maybe occasionally shutter priority if I want to freeze something. The camera ‘‘never’’ picks anything over f/8, in fact often just f/5.6. So whilst it is mostly auto, you get used to seeing the settings.
From my limited film experience i have underexposed many frames and think I now try to compensate for that but at the risk of over exposing too much. So today when the light meter is 500 at f/16 I stop it down to 250 or f/11. Well I’ll see what they look like. Perhaps light leaks and uncalibrated rangefinders will be more of the problems than exposure. I should do some test shots and record the settings’when I’m not with the kids!
I do enjoy the rangefinder focusing. I’m still slow but I feel much faster than SLR focusing. I have more confidence in the shots when the patches align versus SLR where I’d go in and out to test it. I’ve not got the film processed yet so perhaps I need to wait before judging. But the taking of shots is more enjoyable.
On my last few rolls of 35mm. Have lots of 120, not sure if I bought more of it or just haven’t used as much. Will need to get some more, can’t decide if I’m going to setup my own darkroom and this buy some B&W or stick to C41 and send away. I like the idea of self developing b&w and predominantly shooting it on film and save colour for digital. I should give it a shot anyway.
Not the very beginning of my tiddlywiki nor my online wiki, rambles, dumping group but the beginning of this one. This is going to be better, and not die after 2 weeks (like most other things I do). It would probably be interesting to write up my InternetWorld at some point. I should define ThisWiki as well.
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What’s with the tea?
— //No-one//
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I really like tea.
LargeFormat cameras have been popping up and nagging at me. I’m trying to resist and focus on “affordable” 35 mm only.
This lady’s video was harmless fun:
TalkPhotograph forums had someone listing their huge setup of everything large format. and JackBaty has been messing with his expensive looking [[Linhof Master Technika
