For whatever reason, I'm skipping my walk this morning. I'll probably bike to the garden later.

D-cells aren't used in very many devices these days, but I have a few old radios that use them, and the iPod HiFi and a huge MagLite flashlight ("What it can't blind, it can bludgeon.") So I wanted to get some rechargeables a couple of years ago. At the time, I hadn't learned quite as much about batteries, and Panasonic doesn't offer an Eneloop in the D cell size. EBL seemed to get good reviews on Amazon, so I ordered a bunch of those.

They work, but I wasn't impressed with their longevity. At first I thought it was because NiMH native cell voltage is only ~1.2v, and so they were "dying" in the radio simply because the voltage was too low.

After watching a lot of battery tests on YouTube, I noticed that EBL batteries consistently underperformed their rated capacity in tests. So I ordered some Amazon Basics in the D-cell size, hoping they'll last a bit longer in a radio. I immediately noticed a difference when I took them out of the (very sensible, sustainable, plain brown cardboard) package. They were heavy.

Put one of each on the scale and this is the result.

So if you're shopping for NiMH rechargeables, I'd stay away from EBL and stick with Eneloop or Amazon Basics.

Hurricane season is just around the corner.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:28 Thursday, 25 April 2024

Haven't done one of these this month.

Thinking about riding my bike to the garden and then walking from there. Change of scenery.

Mowing the lawn yesterday has me feeling it in my knees. Not painful like Lyme, just like from exertion.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:19 Thursday, 25 April 2024

The mZuiko 14-42/f3.5-5.6 EZ lens died shortly after this shot. Pretty sure it's a ribbon cable issue. I have three of them. Well, two now.

Started late this morning. Got back, had breakfast and then I mowed the lawn.

I don't usually mow the lawn. But Mitzi's been gone for over a week and doesn't get back until Saturday and someone will write us a ticket if we don't keep our useless patch of grass neat and tidy. So I mowed.

Now I've got to call someone about VA Aid and Attendance assistance. First I need to make sure I write down all my questions. I think she meets all the requirements, but I'm not sure about income. Her net worth is well below the threshold, but her income is relatively "high" even though it's insufficient to meet her present expenses and we're drawing down her savings, which again, are modest.

Anyway, time to get some ducks in a row...

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:31 Wednesday, 24 April 2024

"Productive" may have been optimistic. I've just been sucked into a time-sump figuring out whether or not my two external SSDs are operating as fast as they could be on my 2019 27" iMac. I remain unconvinced, but it's possible that they are. For the moment, further investigation seems futile. Or at least, boring.

I have decided to copy the Photos library over from the iMac to one of the SSDs which has over 3TB free. I can hear the fans spinning over here in the recliner while I leave the iMac to do its thing.

For the moment, I intend to maintain the Photos library on the external drive. I quit Photos before undertaking the copy, and I'll relaunch Photos from the external library. I'll need to ensure that it's the "system" library at that point. Once, which is to say that it's the library sync'ed with iCloud. Once I'm confident that is the case, I'll delete the library from the iMac's internal SSD and stop worrying about disk space.

Shot the title pic this morning on the walk. Nice, crisp morning. I dialed my pace back a bit because I went fairly aggressively yesterday and my achilles tendons feel tight, which has historically been a precursor to a bout of tendonitis. I'd like to avoid that. May also be due to switching from a pair of worn Columbia "hiking" shoes to a pair of New Balance "walking" shoes. My gait is jacked up anyway, my shoes wear grossly unevenly with the right sole wearing out at the heel and ball areas long before either part on the left sole.

✍️ Reply by email

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:27 Tuesday, 23 April 2024

Despite being pretty tired from the early morning, I didn't sleep well last night. Got up around 0400 and watched YouTube videos about battery charging and NiMH batteries.

As one does.

Went for my walk, had breakfast and took a nap.

Spent the last couple of hours looking at how to apply for VA benefits for Mom. I think I've got it mostly figured out, but naturally, it's confusing. Probably should have done this a year ago, but I wasn't aware of it. My wife's sister-in-law informed me yesterday when I was talking to Mitzi. She just went through it for her mom. Need to coordinate with my siblings, but waiting to hear from my sister the nurse.

Anyway, saw this from the window yesterday and thought it was interesting. As usual, I took too many photos from the window. I suspect this is a disturbance in the cloud layer left by an aircraft that descended below the cloud layer heading into Detroit.

Stuff I don't see every day.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 11:52 Monday, 22 April 2024

Well, let's see if this works.

Got up a little before 0300, out of the house a 0315. No traffic at that hour. No line at TSA pre✅. Somehow my phone fell out of the x-ray bin, but fortunately I realized I didn't have it before I left security and found it on the floor next to the conveyor. I guess it came out when I pulled my backpack out.

Two plus hour layover before heading on to Albany. Figured I'd play with the marmot. Brought the OM-5 along and shot this with it.

Dozed a bit on the flight out of Jax. Wouldn't mind a nap right now, but that's kind of difficult. Made the mistake of getting breakfast at TGI Friday's. Horrible. It was supposed to be an omelet, but it was just a mess.

Connected up to wifi through my phone's personal hotspot, seems pretty speedy.

Tried doing an online check-in with Hertz, but since I reserved the car under the name "Dave Rogers," I can't confirm check-in because that doesn't match the name on my driver's license. It's 2024 and we're worried about AI taking people's jobs and we can't have a computer figure out that "Dave Rogers" and "David Rogers," each with the same address and phone number, aren't the same person.

I guess in an era of ubiquitous surveillance and corporate, government and malefactor intrusions the fact that computers and the software they run are so limited ought to be encouraging.

Can't say I enjoy traveling at this hour, but it does have the advantage of avoiding crowds. It also gets me out of Atlanta before the weather starts getting weird. Summertime is worst, but I'm not sure you can rely on past patterns anymore. Flying at this hour is more affordable too, to the extent that I was able to book first class without breaking the bank. It really is hard getting up that early though.

Ok, rambled on enough. Let's see if this will upload.

✍️ Reply by email

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:30 Thursday, 18 April 2024

Brought along the E-P7 this morning, with the Lumix 20mm/f1.7 on it. Did the bench and the arches again, probably upload those to Flickr after I get finished here. I played with in-camera RAW processing, choosing different built-in profiles.

After shooting the arches, it dawned on me I hadn't been notified by Delta to check-in for my flight tomorrow. So I opened the Delta app on my phone and saw the flight to Albany, but not the return leg. Spent some time fooling around trying to figure out what was up with that, and decided it would have to wait until I got home.

After some confusion on someone's part, I don't think Delta's system was running properly, I finally got the whole itinerary listed and checked in for tomorrow's oh-dark-thirty flight to Atlanta. I'm getting up at 0300 tomorrow to get to Jax for an 0520 flight. Oy. I'll park in the parking garage ($$) because it's just for the weekend, and I'm only bringing a carry-on and maybe a camera bag.

I printed my boarding passes, just in case, and then noticed they omitted TSA pre✅ (let's see how that renders). So I went to the app on my phone, which couldn't find my whole itinerary previously, and had to wait while something happened in the background. Now all is well, and everything is up to date. The electronic boarding pass has the TSA pre✅ logo, and now they're in the Wallet app.

I tried to do Hertz's "touchless" check-in, which is pretty creepy because they want to enroll you by having you take a picture of yourself and your driver's license. I initially declined, then thought about it and figured we're all screwed anyway as far as privacy is concerned, might as well make it convenient.

So you start on the computer in the browser, it then sends a "secure link" to your phone, where some web app is supposed to step you through taking photos of yourself and your driver's license. For better or worse, it wouldn't work, so I guess I'm standing in line to get the car. No big deal.

Planning on bringing the OM-5 with me tomorrow. Maybe the 14-42EZ pancake zoom, the 20mm/f1.7 and the 45mm/f1.8. Mostly going to be indoors with Mom, no sense going crazy.

One question will be exercise. I've been pretty consistent for the past few months, getting my walk in. Maybe I'll use the treadmill and listen to a podcast. It'll be a lot cooler up there, high for the weekend is supposed to be 61°F. I'll bring a pair of shorts in case I use the treadmill, but looks like jeans weather to me.

Watched two more episodes of Fallout. Moderately more interesting than the first four, but it's basically just ripping off Silo now. Am I entertained? Meh. I'm mostly just watching out of curiosity, I'm not emotionally invested in any of the characters and the plot just seems lazy and weak. The energy question was answered... "Fusion cores!" Of course! The "I oversee..." and the "overseers" threads were tied together with a 2x4 over your head. Vault 4 was "scientists" experimenting on "the effects of radiation on human DNA," so of course you shouldn't go down to Level 12.

It's not "art." It's just a cash grab.

I won't finish it tonight. Last night's effort left me with "unpleasant" dreams. I'll watch the rest after I get home. If you don't have Prime, you're not missing anything.

Anyway, guess I'll work on the bench a bit. Then there's a photography club meeting this afternoon, so I can get my "socialize" check in the block.

The beat goes on.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:39 Wednesday, 17 April 2024

Light was off in the library at the clubhouse. Wouldn't have been as nice a shot. Plus, I'd meant to bring the E-P7 and try it with one of its built-in B&W profiles.

Anyway, grabbed a couple of snapshots while I was focused on keeping my heart rate up. I liked this. Probably a nothing shot, but I liked it.

Next a shower and then a maintenance check with my physician.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:45 Tuesday, 16 April 2024

Read a story like this and I get kinda gooey.

Eight years gone now. My how the years have flown.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:39 Monday, 15 April 2024

I didn't shoot anything this morning until I got to this bench. I've shot this before, not long after we moved here, in color and I liked it. I brought the E-PL7 out of my pocket and turned it on and saw that it was still set up for black and white. This is the second of two shots. This isn't a "filter" it's just the grain of an ISO 3200 16MP PEN CMOS sensor with the noise filter turned off.

Anyway, it's something.

Shot the arches too.

During yesterday's Tinderbox Meetup, I got some help with Captain's Log. I'd been wanting to figure out how to turn off an edict once it's run.

Specifically, it's the edict embedded in the Midwatch entry, which runs an Automator application using the runCommand action code. Every edict in a file will run about once an hour, and for the most part it's lightweight code that isn't going to take much processor time and you should never notice it, unless you're interacting with another app. In my case, it was interacting with Automator/Calendar/AppleScript, and all the edicts were turned on. As time went on, and more Midwatch entries were added, the amount of time consumed began to grow, such that I'd be writing something here in the marmot and Tinderbox would beep and seem to go away for a second, and then return.

I'd added some code to test for the presence of text in the Midwatch entry, and if present, do nothing. But I wasn't sure it was working, because, well, "do nothing." So Mark Bernstein showed me how to add a little diagnostic action code using the "speak" command, and this allowed me to see that the code indeed worked as desired.

We then looked at how to disable the edict once it had run, and there are two ways to do that. Essentially, using the "else" clause, assign the $EdictDisabled attribute a value of true, $EdictDisabled=true, (Never quote your booleans.), or just assign the $Edict attribute an empty string, $Edict="", (a pair of double (straight) quotes).

We did all this on my 14" M3 MBP, because I can share my screen in Zoom on that machine, and something is fouled up on the iMac that remains unresolved and I can't share my screen.

So this morning, I had to remember to open the MBP and quit Tinderbox so I didn't have the files open on two different machines. Looked at the work we did yesterday and refreshed my memory of what we'd done and why. Then I spent a few minutes at aTbRef to learn about Quickstamps. A Quickstamp is an easy way to set the value of only one attribute for a number of selected notes. I selected all the previous days and disabled all their edicts, as all these edicts are intended to run only once.

Normally, for an action that you want to run only once, you'd include it in the OnAdd action, so that when that note is added to a container the OnAdd action is triggered and the code is executed. I can't include an OnAdd action in a Day prototype to perform the runCommand and populate the $Text of the Midwatch entry, because it'd run every time I created any entry in a given day.

What Mark pointed out yesterday was that I could add the runCommand action to the fMakeMidwatch function, which is called as an edict in a Day prototype.

As it is now, fMakeMidwatch just creates the Midwatch note in a new Day. The Day prototype contains the edict to run the function and nothing else. The Midwatch prototype contains the edict with the runCommand to create the $Text of the Midwatch entry. All that could be wrapped up in the function, thus eliminating the need for an edict in the Midwatch note.

Thinking about this some more, I could move the execution of the function from a Day edict, to an OnAdd action in the Month container, since each Day will create a Midwatch entry and when a new Day is created by the Month container, the OnAdd action would run the fMakeMidwatch entry for that day, and the function would execute the runCommand to populate the $Text, thereby eliminating two edicts and the necessity for disabling them.

So, that's what I'm going to do in a minute and we'll see how that works out tomorrow.

It's a pretty nice feeling when you think you're beginning to understand how something works. But I've been wrong about that before too. So no high-fives until tomorrow.

✍️ Reply by email

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:49 Monday, 15 April 2024

Yesterday was a beautiful day. After screwing around with solar panels and taking a nap, I rode my bike to the garden and looked in on the tomatoes, peas and beans. Did some watering and wandered around with the Oly Stylus 1s.

This was over by the herb garden. I don't recall exactly what it is, but it's supposedly edible.

Took the long way home, so 10K on the bike yesterday, 5K on the walk.

Yesterday was a big exercise day for me, closed my Move ring for the first time in a long time. Felt good.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:58 Sunday, 14 April 2024

Let's be precious.

I got up early, which is to say, "late," so I figured I'd just go ahead and walk instead of screwing around on the computer. Still nice and cool, with fairly dry air, so I wore a sweatshirt with the vest and stuffed the E-PL7 in the vest pocket.

It wasn't a "brisk" walk, I wasn't trying to get my heart rate up, I did that yesterday. But it was faster than I normally walk carrying a camera on my wrist or a sling, so some exercise.

I love walking at this time in the morning because I encounter so few people and cars and no landscapers. I got to the clubhouse before sunrise and stopped and tried to take my time framing this composition. It's still not "perfect." I wanted less of a reveal on the right side of the middle arch so the top right of the curve would have blended into inner right vertical of the arch closest to the camera. I'd shift left and right, forward and back, changed focal lengths and got tired before I found it.

This is the last of six attempts, and the one where I noticed the newspapers in the frame and cleared them out. Got home and had breakfast and read the news and decided to screw around on the computer. But first I figured I'd try some in-camera black and white conversions. I don't have any particular aesthetic feel for black and white. I get that it's about tonality and texture, but I don't have any sort of feel for it.

I did a bunch of conversions editing the RAW in the E-PL7. One was a straight monotone conversion with the "neutral" filter. I added some contrast and filters as well. A couple more conversions and the color jpeg are up at Flickr, all straight out of camera. I liked this one the best. I'm pretty sure this is the one with +2 contrast and the red filter, gradation was normal so no lifting the shadows in camera. 34mm effective focal length, ISO 3200.

This is a "Silent Sunday" shot for Shelley.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:34 Sunday, 14 April 2024

Mitzi headed off to San Diego this morning, and I went out for my walk. This is a nothing shot, but just for grins I shot the street lamp reflection in the puddle. The only reason I'm sharing it is because I sat in on a portion of a 1000 Friends of Florida webinar about smarter development in Florida where we hope to maintain a wildlife corridor. One of the slides showed a neighborhood of stucco homes that looked identical to my neighborhood (Quelle surprise.) and the presenter commented that it looks more like a habitat for cars than for people, and that resonated with me.

So, that's why this pic in this post. Not much of a reason, but my blog, my rules.

Anyway, the second Nebo solar panel and additional cables didn't arrive until after sunset yesterday evening, so I haven't played around with them yet. That's next on the agenda today.

My battery obsession continues. I watched a couple of videos by a guy whose channel is called Hobotech. I haven't watched enough of his videos to form any opinions about the guy. The appearance of a handgun in one gave me pause, but I remain ambivalent for now.

He does have decent production values, and the design of his tests and the quality of his information seems good. I watched this review of the Bluetti AC70 and AC2A and thought he did a thorough review. I recommend watching these videos a 1.5x speed, you can always pause and back up if you want to hear something again. YouTube surfaced another of his videos that I wasn't directly searching for, comparing Li-ion rechargeable AA batteries with NiMHs. I thought that was well done, surprising and worthwhile.

If you're disinclined to watch it, suffice to say NiMHs are likely the best value in AA battery solutions by quite a lot. Their single biggest limitation is their 1.2v discharge voltage, which is going to give you "low battery" alerts early, but which will be misleading because your device will continue to run for a long time at that voltage. If you have something that requires 1.5v, like an external flash, then lithium or conventional alkaline disposables are probably a better choice. But in terms of a "sustainable" AA battery, NiMH is the winning chemistry.

I'm also pleased with my choice of the Bluetti EB3A paired with the AC70. I think they complement each other in terms of features, at a reasonable price point. I'm unsure if the EB3A will be on the market for much longer, as the AC2A appears to have replaced it. If the EB3A isn't available, the AC2A is a worthwhile substitute, albeit more limited.

In an era of frequent extreme weather events and potential power outages, I think it's worthwhile to have something more substantial than a package of AAs from the grocery store and a USB power brick in your emergency kit. Something like the EB3A and the AC70 give you significantly more options in terms of powering devices that might be useful in an emergency. They're also small and light enough that they're easy to put in your car if you can't stay in your home for whatever reason.

Similarly, having a modest solar recharge capability just makes sense. You can go crazy on portable panels, but the expense and weight and handling issues go up quickly. A single 200W panel or a couple of 100W panels are probably sufficient unless you're looking to embark on serious van camping or something.

Some rechargeable NiMH AA and AAA batteries and a charger would also be useful for radios and portable lights.

This kind of preparation anticipates that a power outage might last from a few hours to a few days. Anything longer than that and it's kind of in another regime where you may not wish to live there until power and utilities are fully restored.

Preparing a home to be habitable in a situation where power, water and sewer are unavailable for long periods of time is a far different problem. I think we're in good shape here on the power front, but I don't have a good answer for water and sewer. A 5-gallon bucket and sawdust seems to be the go-to solution, but where do you get sawdust from?

In the near term, say the next 5 to 10 years, I think temporary disruptions might be what we're most likely to experience. I think it becomes more uncertain after that. But we do have some time think about it.

✍️ Reply by email

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:33 Saturday, 13 April 2024

I guess it was the vaccine that had me feeling a bit cattywampus. Started feeling better yesterday afternoon and woke up feeling great this morning.

Nice day for a walk too!

I got to the clubhouse entrance a minute before I got there yesterday, but it was cloudy yesterday so the lights were still on. The sun was just coming up today so the light was way different. I'll try and get there earlier next time I try that shot. I did take one, just to try and get a better composition. Not sure I succeeded.

The Bluetti AC70 arrived yesterday, a few days earlier than expected. Arrived 55% charged, tried to connect it up with the Nebo 100 watt panel, but have some polarity issues to resolve first with the MC4 connectors, which came as a surprise to me. The second Nebo panel should arrive today, along with additional cables, so I'll spend some time with the multimeter and figure this out.

I plugged my M3 14" MBP into it after recharging it from AC, and it was delivering 85W to the MBP from the USB3 port in the battery (rated at 100W) via the MagSafe cable. Pretty impressive, but it does turn the fan on in the AC70 and it's noticeable. I think if I used a lesser cable, it would negotiate a lower charge rate that wouldn't require the fan, but it did charge it pretty quickly. I think I went from 19% battery to 80% battery during Jeopardy. Don't quote me on that, might have been less, but I stopped after Jeopardy.

The idea is to have some "portable" power if we ever need it just for convenience; but perhaps more relevant is to be able to reduce non-essential loads in the house by opening breakers to other rooms, and still be able to have some power in those rooms in the event of a prolonged outage while I'm trying to manage Powerwall loads.

So, during the hotter months of hurricane season, if the grid is down and AC runs constantly, especially through the night, I'd turn off non-essential loads in the house, and perhaps raise the thermostat to 78° or 79° and run a floor fan and Mitzi's CPAP in the bedroom from the AC70 until the sun came up. I'd also likely reduce the reserve on the Powerwalls to 5% to extract more power from them. It'd be a dance until I figured out how everything performed, but the idea is to preserve temperature and humidity control 24x7 until the grid is back up, while still being able to perform most of "the activities of daily life" with some degree of comfort and convenience. If we have enough sun, it should be fine. If we have significant cloud cover, it'd be challenging.

If you're not thinking about this stuff, it might be time to start. Rooftop solar and battery backup may not be in the cards for most people, but some type of portable solar and battery storage might be worthwhile if you can't afford the cost of a generator, which likely includes its own challenges. And I'd sacrifice the food in the refrigerator and freezer and hot water before I'd give up environmental control within the home envelope.

But that's just me. If you have insulin or other medication that needs to be refrigerated, that's a different challenge and maybe there's a solution for that with a smaller refrigerator and a battery power supply. (I'd say, "Or a cooler and some ice," but guess how hard it'll be to find ice when the grid is down. You'll be shlepping down to the National Guard relief station and standing in line with everyone else.)

Hopefully, this is all just an intellectual exercise for a retiree with a lot of time on his hands.

But I do think we're all preppers now, whether we know it or not.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:14 Friday, 12 April 2024

Welp, I don't know how that happened. I suspect I wasn't paying attention to which photo was selected in Photos when I ran the script.

The tree frog was on the wall when I got home, and I intended to post it anyway, so I'd edited it and it was probably still selected.

Anyway, I'll leave it the way it is.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:40 Thursday, 11 April 2024

I think the Pfizer shot hit me a bit harder than usual. I don't recall ever having any kind of reaction to the Pfizer, while the Moderna always left me hurting the next day. I didn't feel as bad yesterday as I do with the Moderna, but I was running at about three-quarter power. I felt better this morning, but my walk this morning, which usually leaves me feeling somewhat energized, has me feeling otherwise today.

Anyway, I saw this on my walk this morning. Because I was focused more on walking than photography, I just grabbed this and pressed on. It caught my attention at first because I thought the light looked interesting. But after getting it on the screen, I can see it was the arches that were arresting. And if I had taken my time and worked a bit more on composing the shot, it might have been a little more compelling. Not to be too "precious" about my photography. I'm just a guy who likes to take pictures.

Arches within arches in alternating planes is pretty interesting. I think I could have adjusted my position a bit to get better curves where the edges kind of align. Maybe I'll try again and take my time.

Yesterday wasn't totally wasted. I managed to figure out I had the wrong connection adapter on the cable from the Nebo 100W panel. Same polarity, happily, but a little off in size. I used the EB3A to charge my 13" M1 MBP and then used the panel to charge the EB3A. I didn't stay for the whole thing, and clouds were rolling in and out, but I did see it outputting 85W when I got the right adapter connected.

I noticed that it wasn't charging the EB3A all the time, and that touching the cable caused it to recognize the cable. I went back to my pile of adapter and found one that looked about the same and measured them both with my little plastic micrometer. Sure enough, the one I was using was a little small. Swapped it out with the correct one and we were off to the races.

✍️ Reply by email

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:24 Thursday, 11 April 2024

Got up early this morning because at some point it's more uncomfortable to lay in bed than to get up and start moving. Got some early blogging done and then went for my walk early because I was scheduled to got another COVID shot this morning. Went with Pfizer this time, because I'd had the Moderna last time and it always kicks my ass. Better to alternate the two.

I don't know if there's some new CDC guidance, but I'd gotten a text from my Publix pharmacy that another shot was recommended for those over 65, and we're getting ready to do some travel anyway.

I enjoy the early morning walks because of the sky and I encounter fewer people. Pretty soon they'll be essential because it'll start getting hot and humid in the morning, and the sunshine gets brutal.

Anyway, got my jab and now to get on with the rest of the day!

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:28 Tuesday, 9 April 2024

My brother sent me this shot last night after I'd already gone to bed. He went up to Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks to view it and had an excellent view.

We observed it in the shadows cast by the tree in our front yard, and in the output of our solar panels.

My friend and former neighbor went to Arkansas to observe it and sent me some nice shots. My sister in Buffalo had some clouds, but caught glimpses and enjoyed it with neighbors.

Moving on...

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 05:16 Tuesday, 9 April 2024

I'd planned to take it easy this morning after yesterday's effort, but I noticed it was 48°F this morning so a brisk pace was called for anyway.

Pace was 12s faster, 1bpm higher heart rate.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:11 Friday, 5 April 2024

It was cool enough this morning that I could wear my sweatshirt and my vest. I like the vest because it has pockets, one of which can hold my sunglasses and another which is large enough to hold the E-PL7. This leaves my arms free.

Yesterday I tried to walk at a faster clip, and my pace was 17'49" per mile. That's with the E-PL10 hanging from a sling behind my back. It was 68°F with 93% humidity too, which I've learned has a significant effect on my pace.

Today, with the E-PL7 in my pocket, my pace was 16'18" per mile. And the temperature was 53°F and 84% humidity. Despite that, my sweatshirt was was damp when I got home.

Average heart rate yesterday was 118bpm, today it was 130bpm.

Anyway, I stopped to take a few pics. This was the only one I really liked, even though it's kind of a nothing shot. I'm much more conscious of the time, so I don't do much in the way of composition or checking the exposure. I may just stop carrying a camera when I'm making a significant effort to exert myself on my walk. Maybe make two walks a week "camera" walks or something.

This was at the clubhouse, which is slightly post-midpoint. It's convenient because I pause the workout on my watch and hit the head and I'm much more comfortable on the second half of the walk. (It's 3.2mi overall.)

✍️ Reply by email

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:40 Thursday, 4 April 2024

This morning I wanted to try and focus on walking at a brisk pace. I often feel as though I'm walking briskly, making an effort, and yet some neighbor walking his dog will pass me. Part of it is my stumpy little legs, I'm sure. The other part is the sheer mass they're compelled to propel. But some of it has to be form, I think.

I nearly always carry a camera. Usually a mirrorless DSLR on a sling with a sizable, albeit lightweight, lens mounted. It rests at the small of my back when it's not in use as that leaves my arms free to swing as I walk. If I pick up the pace a bit, it'll begin bouncing around and that's unpleasant.

If I carry a rangefinder-style camera, it's usually on a wrist strap. That's usually effortless to carry, but I can sometimes feel the asymmetry in my shoulders as this ~1lb pendulum swings from my wrist.

This morning I thought I'd try something different. I put the E-PL10 (lightweight rangefinder-style mirrorless) on the sling. Less weight equals less bounce if I increase the pace?

Well, yes. But, it's a terrible way to carry the camera if I plan to use it. It's a much smaller body than the OM-1 or E-M1, and so the strap kind of interferes with the grip. It does ride well. But if I'm planning on walking at some vigorous pace, do I really want to be taking pictures?

Conflicted.

Anyway, I only took a handful and kept only two. Not sure either one qualifies as a "keeper," but this caught my eye this morning, so I'm sharing it.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:42 Wednesday, 3 April 2024

I asked ChatGPT what the heck these things are called:

Those yellow, bumpy pads at crosswalks are called "truncated domes" or "detectable warning surfaces." They are designed to assist visually impaired individuals by providing tactile feedback, indicating the boundary between the sidewalk and the street.

Shot it with the black E-PL7 the other morning. Didn't shoot anything this morning. Shot so many kite and cedar waxwing shots that I made too much work for myself. Just concentrated on walking briskly this morning.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 12:01 Tuesday, 2 April 2024

The only problem with having a nice camera that can take a lot of pictures is that you wind up creating a lot of work for yourself. On yesterday's walk, and Friday's too, the kites were playing above the preserve on the early part of my walk. In drive mode, I wound up taking hundreds of shots, which I had to go through and see if any were worth editing and sharing.

And I'm probably not the best judge of that.

But since these are still unusual for me, I still find them exciting. I suspect there are at least two nesting pairs nearby, because I've seen at least three wheeling around in the sky, seemingly chasing each other. It looks like they're playing, but I haven't looked into their behavior at all.

This one is illuminated from below because the sun was still very low on the horizon.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:35 Monday, 1 April 2024

Pretty easy to spot this egg. Happy Easter to those who celebrate.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:11 Sunday, 31 March 2024

Back when I was conceiving of what I might want to include in my midwatch entry, I stumbled upon this book. I made a "mental note" to go look for it later, and fortunately it was one that didn't evaporate.

It's not cheap, but the subject matter is likely of specialized interest. I've read two of the entries, and it's well written and researched. I'll do a more thorough review after I've read the entire book.

My father was something of a poet as a young man of 18 in the Pacific aboard an LCS, a "Mighty Midget," dodging kamikaze attacks and firing rockets ashore at Iwo Jima. Dad had dropped out of school in the 8th grade to go to work full time to support his widowed mother. That's what he told us; but now I'm wondering what the laws were regarding child labor back then? Anyway, at 17, he enlisted in the navy and the rest is history. These poems were written by commissioned officers, many of whom appear to be Naval Academy graduates. Dad got his GED in 1967, at the age of 40. He was very proud of it, attending "night school" classes to prepare for it.

Anyway, I'm more interested in history these days than the future. Looking forward to this.

✍️ Reply by email

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:54 Saturday, 30 March 2024