Tuesday, 14th September, 2021

I wanted to sit outside this evening and write in the wiki but it’s too cold. It’s nice to get away from the computer. I probably have some bad habits that are triggered by sitting down at the computer - YouTube videos, general time wasting. Sitting somewhere else helps break them.

Again with another evening (yesterday) of faffing with Hugo but not actually getting anywhere. I also had a detour into ikiwiki, wondering if I should just use that. I have an instance of it setup mostly for when I think about using it I can switch to it and just mess about with it. I get hung up on tiny details, imagining scenarios (that’ll probably never happen) which xyz theme or config can’t solve. When I went to bed I thought about binning everything except this wiki.

Well I finally made a decision….My “normal” blog is now officially on ikiwiki.

Monday, 13th September, 2021

Spent way too long looking at Hugo Themes yesterday evening. Still haven’t picked. Should just go for a regular one then can always come back later for the funny ones. Got distracted by the fact our flights during the holidays got cancelled by the airline and finding nothing else comparable in price or convenience ☹️

The Lime one light meter that showed up in NI got special delivered to me today…except no one was in and now that it’s special del (compensation from Royal Mail) it needs signing. Rescheduled, so we’ll try again.

I should learn how to use makefiles.

Sunday, 12th September, 2021

In my attempt to be quick (lazy) I tried to just make use of the forestry.io starter packs. i.e. one click clone and setup on forestry. I wanted to stick with Hugo just in case I want to tweak later, and whilst a couple of themes looked fine (nothing exciting but good enough) they ended up having weird features that were annoying and would take too much effort to deal with. So rather than spending time fixing a theme I’m not that excited about, I might as well setup one with a theme I do like and then configure forestry.io myself. I’m hoping I can copy the config across and it’ll be good enough. In fact I’m going to test just changing the theme git repo and seeing if it all magically works…

However, now I have to find a theme…🤔 ugh I get sucked into themes with a million features…

Saturday, 11th September, 2021

I’ve gone full circle and am back on static gen Hugo blog. I’m using forestry.io though to interact with it. I just used one of their templates to start as I was always too lazy to configure it with my own blog. I’m not loving the theme but it’s fine for now. One thing I found, which is overcoming one of the biggest blockers I had to a static gen site, is that if I upload media via iOS I can choose a size and iOS will compress it! So now I can upload more sensibly sized images without having to mess about compressing it. As I can access Files app and therefore server, I can access all my photos and then have iOS compress them. This is pretty nice.

Need to finish off configuring the site then will just get on and write stuff vs. Endless motion and zero action.

I was wondering where my [Hedeco Lime One] was, particularly as the tracking hadn’t updated all week. I even emailed the seller to ask if other UK orders showed similar minimal tracking info. Typically the tracking updated after I emailed him, which was good to see….except it had gone to Northern Ireland…oh well glad it’s not lost.

Friday, 10th September, 2021

Phil describes his perfect camera.. Well I presume so, it could just be the camera he wants //next//. Not sure you can get a viewfinder and the size of a Ricoh? I think, and sort of from experience, that if you just have one camera, then a X100T/F/V is the way to go. If it’s a camera to compliment others you have, then I think it’s good to find cameras that have advantages for situations. E.g. Ricoh for compactness, X-T2/3/4 for ICL, D500 and 200-500mm for birding, Hasselblad Data Camera for visits to the moon.

My dad visited today to see us and play with the kids. The 23mm f/1.4 is perfect for indoors. I like the 23mm length and it was cloudy/rainy so poor light inside the house, so the 1.4 keeps the ISO down. Plus 1.4 on a 23mm still often gets enough in focus. However, then playing outside in the garden the 35mm f/2 or the 16-80 f/4 are my favourite picks. I was also playing football etc. So kept to the prime for compactness and weight. I have wondered about the 50mm f/2, just to get a bit tighter shots, although then more likely to be individual shots vs. group - which is often when the 16-80 is nice. Having said that, I sometimes find the 16-80 photos to be a bit lack lustre. Maybe the shots are boring and I suffer from the infinite digital photos capacity. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I find after trips out with the 16-80, very few photos are appealing. Compared to the 23mm, which I pretty much love every photo from it. I suppose with the 23mm, I get closer to everyone, so they make up more of the frame. Plus I always use it indoors, so it tends to be f/1.4-f/2.8 so I get more isolation. I should go through my photos with the 16-80 and take a look at them and at the focal length I used and see what I think then.

Posted the X100F off for repairs. I’m now back wondering about the GRIII (non x) or GRII. A little from price standpoint but also as the 18mm lens might actually be more interesting to use.

Thursday, 9th September, 2021

Been reading/watching various reviews of the Ricoh GR3x. The thing about the 18mm lens version is that you don’t really need to look to frame things. Whilst you do have the LCD, you can shoot from the hip and get away with it. I think that becomes tricky at longer focal lengths. 28mm isn’t that much longer so probably be fine. I think I’ve become a viewfinder snob. Thinking “I don’t want to look like an idiot using the screen / people won’t take me seriously / etc.”.

Let me remind myself:

'’no one cares’’

I spend a lot of time stressing about blogs and websites etc. Maybe I should just not bother. Other than this wiki, which is easy going and simple to look after.

Wednesday, 8th September, 2021

I started on the export script for node.js version to build a blog and a public wiki. I think the blog might take longer to get the formatting suitable. I would also like having the backups of this as individual tiddlers, makes git history more useful.

Trying hard not to buy the Ricoh GR //before// I get the X100F repaired and sold. Also have a nagging feeling that I should keep the X100F as well, rather than exchanging. It has nice features over the GR, like flash (vs. GR 3), and ND filter and a viewfinder…Maybe confirmation bias….but maybe I should get the GR before I sell the X100F, to check that it’s what I want. 😂 I’ll at least wait until the shipping material arrives to send the Fuji back for repairs.

Weather has been lovely these past few days. Sat out in the garden in the evening with the iPad and writing this or reading stuff online and a cup of tea. I debated about an ipad for so long but it’s been a good tool to use. The Smart Keyboard thing is nice and makes it more effective for me. Was ideal for going on holiday, home working, and being outside. I’ve always been a heavy desktop user, then a light laptop user so the idea of an ipad seemed stupid to me. However, the mobile OS, battery life and decent apps are what sets it apart from a laptop. There’s still a few things I miss from a regular OS but everything else makes up for it.

One thing that has been annoying recently, is Files app refusal to write to a samba share. Perhaps I’ve not got something configured correctly but I’m sure it used to work fine and I’ve not changed my samba config in over 10 years. It might be it doesn’t like guest users but it’s a pain when trying to do any photo management/editing/printing workflow. I like downloading and opening the scans of film on the ipad, look through, maybe print one or two and then back up to the server. As a workaround I end up using a web based files application I have running on the server for accessing files remotely. Seems dumb, but it’s less time than trying to find out why Files app doesn’t work. Probably if I paid for some cloud service it would be easier but I already have my own…ZFS RAIDZ1 and my mate’s computer at his house (also ZFS RAIDZ1).

I was thinking about getting a photo box (a fancy shoe box I suppose) and printing out a decent number of photos to stash in that. Mostly to then put in a cupboard and look forward to when the kids find it and go through old pictures of us.

My nanna used to use Tripleprint to develop and print her photos. They’d print off 6x4s but also two 2x1(?) and she’d cut off one of the little ones and give them to me. I’d have a big box of them from my time at my grandparents house and occasionally come across it and look through it. As a kid I liked that they were small. They weren’t very convenient for keeping though. Think I tried to put 4 in a photo album sleeve but was awkward and they kept moving about.

Tuesday, 7th September, 2021

Jack Baty shared this, and I’m really glad he did as I never knew that before. tl;dr comic sans is one of the best fonts for dyslexia as it has very few repeated shapes between letters so they are more distinct. Explains why schools always use it.

Monday, 6th September, 2021

The sofa that was about 3 miles from our house in a van last Sunday has now been lost. They’re going to build a new one and it’ll be 3 months wait. 🤦 I guess they’ll refund the money until then, which is fine as the car had lots of things that needed repairing.

When I had the Nikon DSLR I was attracted to mirrorless for its small size. Now I want the Ricoh GR for its small size…as the mirrorless is “too big”. I do find the mirrorless size advantage a bit squiffy as whilst the bodies are generally smaller the lenses are still honking great tubes. Yes, there are pancake and small lenses but if you need some speed then you pay in size. (Fuji f/2s are pretty small I guess…) Now I do like the EVFs of mirrorless, if you’re going to use digital, why not take //full// advantage of it. I’ve used the OVF on my X100F so few times, generally when the battery is really low and I don’t have any other charge. I don’t want to do processing on the computer (or even on the camera) so I’d rather WYSIWYG it: EVF, film sim, and exposure comp dial.

I enjoyed my Nikon DSLRs, the D40 was my first and I learnt so much with it. I made a lot of great (to me) shots with it, and I couldn’t afford too much back then. I sold my Magic: The Gathering collection to buy it (probably that’s worth more now but whatever) and picked it up used from eBay. I got the 35 mm f/1.8 used from a computer forum and that was my kit for a couple of years. I did get a 55-200mm but didn’t take to it that much. I really wanted the 18-200mm super zoom but it was too expensive and the D40 was a bit small for it really. I think the D40 only had 3 focus points, but I always used the centre one and recomposed. When I upgraded to the D7000 and eventually the D7200, I found all the focus points confusing the use and for a long time just set it with the single point. I read up on it some more and eventually made use of the other AF systems. I sold the D40 on and got a D7000, and also picked up the a 3rd party ultrawide, 11-16mm I think it was, and then the 18-200mm. It was perfect on the D7000, balanced well and took some lovely shots with it. Portrait of my daughter is on the wall in front of me now. The D7200 was probably the perfect model in the 7000 series but its larger density sensor meant all the flaws of the 18-200 were much too visible and the lens was ruined. I, eventually, picked up the X100F when it came out and sold my Nikon cameras. A few months later I regretted it and bought a D7200 back again, but after using the Fuji I struggled to go back to the enormous DSLR and eventually just sold it again.

At the time of looking for the X100F, I’d debated about the X-Pro 2 and the X-T2, but they were expensive! Plus lenses. Plus I wanted something small and light to take when we travelled back home with everyone, and the X100F won the decision. Last year I bought the X-T2, was a bargain, and has been great to use. Got the 35mm f/2, the 23mm f/1.4 (the indoor favourite) and the cheapo 50-230mm.

Maybe I should stop complaining about blogging and use micro.blog (that I’ve paid for) and let it be the convenience I’m looking for. Plus it should be auto backing up to Github, and any “precious” images I can just download from it and put in the wiki pre-compressed. I’ll leave the forums as they’re sort of fun but likely no-one else will join, or say anything. I should put a bit of effort into customising micro.blog. Then when the annual sub is due I’ll go through the whole mental anguish stuff about my non-existent blog’s home. Plus maybe buy then I’ll have bought a mac and the desktop app will make it even more convenient just to stick with µblog.

Paid £155 for Fujifilm to fix my X100F. Tried seeing if I could fix the SD slot myself but I think some pins or springs in it have somehow got bent and it won’t lock. Didn’t really want to spend that but the camera is useless otherwise. Just means I’ve now spent £310 on repairs on it…

Sunday, 5th September, 2021

For DSLR scanning this is an alternative to the Essential film holder. It includes 35mm, 120 and 4x5, which is appealing, and a light box. The EFH is just 35mm and 120 and no light source, but also cheaper at £90 vs $300 (£220).

Still waiting for a notification that the cheap copy stand I saw is back in stock.

I’ve started wondering if I should pay for Flickr Pro. I’m not entirely sure why, it’s not for backing up photos, but it seems like the only photosharing website that I can stand. Although I’m not that bothered about sharing my photos.

Spent a while last night tweaking the forums. I do like discourse as a piece of software. Just still not quite sure it’s what I want in general. Although I sometimes think I invent scenarios in my head that I’m trying to address…probably many of them aren’t real or are ever going to be. I guess I’ll just keep it as if I do revert to a more traditional blog, ie get Ghost setup, I can use it as a comments backend. Although maybe people don’t like that as there’s no quick comment option.

I looked at Wordpress and decided I didn’t like it….maybe I was too premature…I now don’t like Ghost, so removing it and might as well try out Wordpress first…this theme looks nice. Well, I installed Wordpress.

Interestingly, Wordpress and Ghost both suffer handling image uploads on this free Oracle VPS. Perhaps a setting somewhere but wordpress is php and ghost nodejs It was nginx. What is even more interesting is that Discourses seems to handle it just fine as I think they compress it client side before uploading.

All this blogging] stuff is starting to clog up the dailies.

Saturday, 4th September, 2021

I should setup SSO for google and ~GitHub etc tonight for Discourse site. Saves some hassle if people do want to comment 😉. //Update// I’ve added Github and Twitter. Github was by far the easiest, Twitter was okay. Google seems incredibly complicated just for OAuth, so I’m skipping that. I don’t use Facebook and I didn’t think Discord was that popular although I might add it if it’s easy.

I’m not 100% convinced it’s the right thing to do. It does open up the interesting dimension of have blog post threads, some story over time but linked much more visibly and immediately than just hyperlinks or tags etc.

I have gone to a lot of lengths to find a blogging platform, as I’ve decided static gens have too much potential to overcome before I write anything, yet I’ve not tried the most obvious one of all…Wordpress.

I do wonder if by dividing my time between this site and the forums/blog will I write less than if I just consolidate everything into one site. THIS site is clearly a wiki, so all wiki type stuff should go here. However, I’m wondering if the chat box (I don’t know what I’m calling that site) might be better for daily waffling. Just of course linking to wiki content within a daily journal note is more hassle as moving between sites.

Oh no…I think I’m creating my equivalent of Jack Baty/Phil Nunnally’s Roam vs. Org vs. xyz … (also Jack’s page has disappeared…perhaps the github saver borked at some point)

I have just realised that having auth and groups etc. on the forum means I can add Private stuff on it and not worry.

Friday, 3rd September, 2021

What a story of programming back in the day.

My makeshift blogging platform built on Discourse is up! Basics are sorted out but I think still some more tweaking to do but for now I’ll leave it and see how I get on.

Thursday, 2nd September, 2021

Discourse is installed. Email setup was a bit of a pain as seems the first email to setup has a hardcoded address and that’s not the one you put in the settings… It’s a bit of a memory hog, my poor 1 GB VPS is sat at 707 MB, and after a fresh boot it ends up using ~50MB of swap. Perhaps with usage it doesn’t go up much. They say 1GB is fine for a small community so we’ll see. Have to wade through all the settings and have a look at some themes and plugins next. No doubt to go through all this then throw it away and just use another tiddlywiki as a blog 😅

Wednesday, 1st September, 2021

The sofa that never showed on Sunday has now gone missing and “can’t be found” so won’t be being delivered tomorrow. Perhaps it fell down the back of another sofa. Obviously the database and the real location don’t match so no-one has any idea where it is. The beanbag arrangement continues.

I enjoy having small conversations via micro.blog, such as this:

@alexjj It is indeed weird to earnestly shop for an old digital camera. For me, the lower cost is a driver, and I’ve also found that 16 MP is my favorite sensor resolution. Going higher can result in images that are to me sometimes too clean.

Phil Nunnally

But I don’t enjoy scrolling through the feed. It’s just parts of conversations that I then have to open up to see the context of. Perhaps I’m doing it wrong but it’s too time consuming. I bought a year of it so time to consider.

Still keep eyeing used 90mm Tele-Elmarit-M (that’s f/2.8). It’s basically the same price as a Fuji 56mm. They’re virtually equivalent lengths but I feel like I should probably get the Fuji first as being digital I’d use it more. However, there aren’t many of these 90s and I like the lightness of it. I could get a M to fuji mount adapter, but I usually want autofocus if I’m taking the digital camera.

Older GR settings for nice B&W look.

Pedagogy is a stupid looking and sounding word. When people use it I immediately shutdown the computer and go outside.