PBS Masterpiece Theater comes through with another Nicola Walker vehicle, Annika. This one is mostly episodic with some character through-lines. The most charming conceit is letting her break the fourth wall and tell us about Norse sagas, Shakespeare, Greek mythology and parenting.

I have a bit of PTSD every time she turns her head to talk to the camera while driving a car. Unforgotten fans will understand.

We're watching it on the PBS streaming app on an Apple TV.

We used roughly 10MWh of electricity last year (house + RAV4 Prime). 47% of that (4.7MWh) came from solar directly. 39% (3.9MWh) came from the Powerwalls. 14% (1.4MWh) came from the grid. That's slightly better than last year when we imported 15% of our electricity from the grid. In 2021 we only imported 9% of our power, but we bought the RAV4 Prime in the latter half of 2021.

We imported 1.5MWh of electricity from FPL. 7% of that (97.4kWh) went to charging the Powerwall(s) during Storm Watch events, later consumed by the house. We exported 2.3MWh of power to the grid when the Powerwalls were fully charged and we weren't consuming all we were producing.

Net, we exported more power than we imported, 783.7kWh to the grid.

We generate more power than we consume overall. But because of weather and seasonal daylight variations and battery capacity, we can't cover all of our requirements all the time by solar and battery storage alone.

86% self-sufficient seems pretty good to me. When we installed the system, we didn't factor in acquiring a plug-in hybrid, and we've added additional load with the mini-split AC in the garage. As these batteries age, their capacity diminishes (~2.5%/year) When they get down to about 75% capacity in about six or seven years, I'll look at adding an additional battery, rather than wholesale replacement. Hopefully that doesn't pose any insurmountable technical hurdles.

10 years after that, I'll be in my 80s if I'm still alive. I suspect I may be beyond caring at that point.

Here's another solar+battery blogger who has a much larger array but only one battery.

We used roughly 10MWh of electricity last year (house + RAV4 Prime). 47% of that (4.7MWh) came from solar directly. 39% (3.9MWh) came from the Powerwalls. 14% (1.4MWh) came from the grid. That's slightly better than last year when we imported 15% of our electricity from the grid. In 2021 we only imported 9% of our power, but we bought the RAV4 Prime in the latter half of 2021.

We imported 1.5MWh of electricity from FPL. 7% of that (97.4kWh) went to charging the Powerwall(s) during Storm Watch events, later consumed by the house. We exported 2.3MWh of power to the grid when the Powerwalls were fully charged and we weren't consuming all we were producing.

Net, we exported more power than we imported, 783.7kWh to the grid.

We generate more power than we consume overall. But because of weather and seasonal daylight variations and battery capacity, we can't cover all of our requirements all the time by solar and battery storage alone.

86% self-sufficient seems pretty good to me. When we installed the system, we didn't factor in acquiring a plug-in hybrid, and we've added additional load with the mini-split AC in the garage. As these batteries age, their capacity diminishes (~2.5%/year) When they get down to about 75% capacity in about six or seven years, I'll look at adding an additional battery, rather than wholesale replacement. Hopefully that doesn't pose any insurmountable technical hurdles.

10 years after that, I'll be in my 80s if I'm still alive. I suspect I may be beyond caring at that point.

Here's another solar+battery blogger who has a much larger array but only one battery.

Figured I might as well test this too. So far, so good.

Unremarkable shot, but I liked the colors. Carried the 12-year-old Olympus E-M5 with the 14-150mm zoom.

Figured I might as well test this too. So far, so good.

Unremarkable shot, but I liked the colors. Carried the 12-year-old Olympus E-M5 with the 14-150mm zoom.

Let's see if this works...

Let's see if this works...

We spent the last couple of days in Charleston, South Carolina, with Mitzi's daughter and son-in-law and her grandson. We were there after the rain.

But we were there when the former governor, Nikki Haley, bungled a question that should have been easy to answer as the former governor of the state that was the first to secede and fired the first shot in the Civil War. Something that was very much on my mind as we walked the streets of Charleston.

It wasn't my first time there. Mitzi and I were there several years ago for a wedding, and I was there at least a couple of times in the navy. I wasn't thinking about the Civil War when I was there in uniform. Thinking about it a lot these days.

I wonder how Florida State fans feel about paying to go to the Orange Bowl to watch an embarrassing blow-out? I have to think this will only encourage the school and the state to pursue litigation.

Money ruins everything, doesn't it? Well, greed, anyway.

There's an asteroid that's going to pass within 20,000 miles of earth in 2029! Visible from parts of earth to the naked eye at night. Apophis first got everyone's attention back in 2004 when it was discovered and an impact could't be ruled out. Since then, we've had more observations and a collision is out of the question for at least a century.

But we are going to get a close look at this one. Hope I'm still around to see it.

I've probably got some maintenance to do on the marmot to make sure the transition to 2024 goes okay.

Mitzi just finished a re-watch of The Crown. I've never watched the whole thing. I've seen parts of episodes, and overheard much of it (too much). She likes that sort of thing. Big Downton Abbey fan.

I have no affinity with the aristocracy.

We don't have titled nobility here in the good ol' US of A. But we do have billionaires. Instead of kings, we have CEOs. Instead of dukes, we have venture capitalists. We don't have a pope or bishops, we have politicians. I'll leave it to others to figure out which are the Catholics and which are the Protestants. We don't worship God, we worship money.

The battles aren't fought over land. They're fought over marketshare. Indulgences aren't sought, tax breaks are.

We're so much more sophisticated than the Europeans.

Maybe knights are celebrities. I heard a report about the economic impact of Taylor Swift on Kansas City. Something like $200M. When you're a celebrity, you can do anything.

I don't know. It's probably wise not to think about this too much, and I've been thinking about it a lot since yesterday.

The royal family must hate The Crown. I know I got sick of various incarnations of Prince Phillip lecturing Diana, and various actors portraying Charles whining and complaining and skulking around with his hands in his pockets. Horrible people, all of them.

We are social creatures that form social organisms, and the various roles within the organism form a "natural" hierarchy. And we do love a hierarchy. That's how you can tell who's "up" and who's "down," and where we are. Where we fit in, or where we want to fit in.

Nothing changes.

We watched The Man Who Invented Christmas last night. Somehow, its existence has eluded me for the past six years. It's a wonderful movie, well done.

I was reading something about a "climate shadow" being a better metaphor for considering one's individual impact on climate change instead of "carbon footprint." The idea is that there are other dimensions to the emergency besides merely the consumption of energy from fossil fuels that contribute to its size. Your actions in those other dimensions contribute to the size of the shadow you cast. And the shadows grow long now indeed.

I've never read A Christmas Carol, I suppose I ought to do that soon. I know "shadows" figure in it somehow, as part of the warning to Ebenezer.

Cognitive dissonance is a consequence of two mutually exclusive or contradictory ideas as a fundamental part of one's foundational view of the world, one's core beliefs. Compartmentalization is one of the ways we try reduce the burden of cognitive dissonance. We view those contradictory beliefs in separate contexts, so the contradiction doesn't intrude in our day-to-day existence, creating discomfort or internal conflict.

Distraction is another method of alleviating it. We have become masters of that, aided by those who would have us distracted to do what they must do out of sight. In the shadows.

Watching another depiction of the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge is an invitation to experiencing acute cognitive dissonance. Best done at night, before going to sleep. Sleep, blessed sleep.

I do a little better these days. For much of my adult life, I hadn't given very much to charity. For a while, shortly after I went back to work as a civilian, I made an effort to never pass a Salvation Army kettle without putting something in it. I haven't done that in quite some time.

Mitzi and I were talking about it the other day. I'd gotten a thank you card from 1000 Friends of Florida. I'd given them $500 on Giving Tuesday. And the day before, WJCT had called to see if I meant for my monthly sustainer pledge to be $125 a month, or just $100. (My previous pledge was $25 a month. It was meant to be $100. Nice of them to call. I love WJCT.)

Mitzi was telling me she was proud of me for my support of non-profits. I also give to the St Johns Riverkeeper, the Matanzas Riverkeeper, the North Florida Land Trust, the Guana Tolomato Matanzas Estuarine Research Reserve, the Jacksonville Arboretum, and the Tidewater Wooden Boat School. There may be a few others. I'll need to pull all that stuff together for taxes, though I still don't think we'll be able to itemize this year.

I told Mitzi it was her example that made me start giving to non-profits. She's always given a lot of money to non-profits. She's a very kind and generous woman, which is just one of the many reasons why I love her.

For all of my Navy career, there were two charitable "campaigns" every year that we were expected to support. Combined Federal Campaign, which was really the United Way, and Navy Relief. I know the intentions were good and honorable, but it always felt like someone was putting the arm on you. Literally.

As a result, I'd been disinclined to give unless someone specifically asked me.

But you'll notice that most of my giving relates to the environment, not so much to poverty.

I'm still buying old cameras, books, other luxuries. Money that ostensibly could be put to better use giving to those who don't have enough. So cognitive dissonance still sometimes combines with my tinnitus to make my interior experience a little less comfortable.

Does a blog post diminish the shadow I cast on my brothers and sisters and all the children that come after me? Is it a light in the darkness? Or just a self-serving form of virtue-signaling? Unsure. Perhaps not my call.

I do know that it was the light of Mitzi's example that made me think more about giving, and then do so.

It's intended to be a light, but who knows?

We can all do more.

Merry Christmas.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:03 Monday, 25 December 2023

The E-620 arrived yesterday. It's remarkable how fast stuff gets delivered from KEH. They're in Georgia and I'm in northeast Florida, so I'm probably in the sweet spot. It's free delivery, and it arrives virtually overnight.

It was as described, looked barely used. Maintenance menu indicates 4096 shutter activations (2^12!), which suggests it did receive a fair amount of use, so well cared-for I guess. Plenty of life left in it.

Did some tests in the office and image stabilizer works, though it's important not to expect very much much, 3 stops maybe.

Took it on a walk this morning with the 14-42 kit lens, though early clouds kind of diminished the target set. This was just kind of a grab shot. At ISO 500 there was some visible noise, and f5.6 is wide open at this focal length. But Topaz SharpenAI cleaned up all the noise and eliminated the softness. A little menu clicking in Photos is all that's required.

Like the E-420 and E-500, this is a "just for fun," body. They're all a very audible and tactile experience as you hear and feel the focusing motors, the mirror flips and the shutter activation. It's quite the production.

I leave it to the viewer to discern any meaning in the title and context of the photo.

Perhaps it's the season, but I spoke with a couple of my neighbors I hadn't met before, Pete and Tammy. I see Pete often as he's running, so there's little time for much more than a wave and a hello. But they were out walking this morning, and the camera prompted them to stop and say hello and mention the stunning amount of wildlife they see behind their house. They see a bobcat quite often, even to the point where they know it's a female and she's had a kitten, and they're both active behind their place.

It turns out they're relatively new to the neighborhood, arriving in '22; and they're from Clifton Park, where Mom lives! They're young, I think. Still in their 50s. I hope to get to know them a little better and perhaps take advantage of the invitation to investigate their backyard.

I haven't finished The Notebook by Roland Allen, but I am enjoying it. It seems odd that I should find reading about the spread of the use of paper and notebooks thrilling, but I do. In the same way that I find much of the early history of computers or radio or the telegraph thrilling. I'm a nerd, I guess.

Anyway, one of the reasons why I'm enjoying the book is because of the zibaldoni. Kind of the "everything box," people use apps like DevonThink or Apple Notes, or EagleFiler for, only it was done on paper. In a notebook.

Paper notebooks have always appealed to me for reasons I don't understand. Perhaps in the same way that computers do. I was first attracted to computers, not for calculating, not for playing games, but to be able to put text and images on a television.

As a kid growing up, I saw things on TV that other people put there. I fairly distinctly recall the first time I saw an Apple II in a small "home computer" store, and I can recall that what felt most exciting was that it was on the TV.

At the Naval Academy, computers were teletypes. After I was commissioned, I'd seen, and used, those little Sharp handheld computers, with a single line LCD display. Aboard GLOVER we had an HP "desktop calculator" that had a built-in, single line, red dot matrix display, a built-in cassette interface and a thermal printer; and it was attached to a green-screen monitor. It was the ECLIPS, which I think stood for Electronic Calculator Linker Interface Processing System, or something like that. It took Link-14 data, which was just a stream of text that went over radio, normally to a teletype, and processed those text messages into graphical polar display, non-realtime. Anyway, it didn't thrill me.

Seeing that you could type stuff and have it appear on a TV is what did it for me.

I also read a lot of books as a kid. Maybe it's the same thing with notebooks. I could put my words on those.

But I seldom did. When I was working one summer at the office supply store where my dad worked, I bought a blank sketch pad. Nice paper, without any lines. I filled that thing up with drawings of spaceships. Not great drawings, either. But lots of them.

I got my first Apple II, a ][+ near the end of '82, not long before the //e came out. Then I got my first word processor PIE:Writer (Programma International Editor). From then on, most of what I wrote, or drew, was on a screen.

I used notebooks. Little green ones that fit your back pocket. Had to have one of those at officers call, to let the XO know you were paying attention to him. My memory was pretty phenomenal back then, I didn't need to write anything down to remember it, but if you weren't writing it down you were asking to get yelled at.

My late friend was a huge note-taker, and he also maintained a 3-ring binder that might have been considered a zibaldoni. He called it "the bubble book." The "bubble" was how you knew which way was up when you were underwater. Every day, stuff went in and out of the bubble book. Schedules, exercise reports, operations orders, task organizations, threat assessments, weather forecasts.

When I became an Ops Boss, I had an OS, an "operations specialist," maintain a "bubble book" for me. He maintained two, actually, one for me and one for his chief petty officer. I never developed the habit of maintaining a paper notebook.

When I went to shore duty the first time, ThinkTank came out for the Apple II. I maintained my situational awareness in an outline in ThinkTank. I bought an Apple //c, complete with the little 9" white monitor and Imagewriter printer to keep in my office for that purpose. VisiCalc sold a lot of Apple IIs. ThinkTank sold at least one.

Ever since then, most of my "thinking" has been done with a screen.

I'd have to look it up, but my first "everything box," was WebArranger, which was first released as Arrange, by Common Knowledge Software. It originally sold for, I think, $495. It didn't do well in the market and was acquired by CE Software, who released it for a tenth of that price as WebArranger, which is when I bought it.

Arrange was a lot like Tinderbox is, and I loved it. It's different enough that much of my initial confusion in Tinderbox was because the similarities masked the fundamental differences between the two programs.

Arrange never made it to OS X, and CE Software folded or stopped maintaining it. But I used it for a few years until Tinderbox came along, and I just thought it was the greatest software ever made. Tinderbox is better, but we're much more sophisticated today.

But I've gone far afield here, and I need to get out and take a walk, so let me kind of return to the point of this post and why I love the idea of the zibaldoni.

I kind of enjoy reading about other people's notebooks. I took a course in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and a day planner was part of that discipline. It was the GTD of its day.

I've always envied the people who could maintain these elaborate notebooks. People who had devised these highly defined systems, like bullet-journaling. People who could do morning pages, every morning. I admire that.

Similarly, I look on what people do with their PKM ("personal knowledge management") systems or processes. Obsidian, Roam, zettelkasten. Amazing stuff.

I can't do that.

I don't have the patience, the discipline, the interest in investing that much into process. I gag on the word "workflow."

I love the idea of zilbaldoni. The marmot is a zibaldoni. My Apple Notes are a zibaldoni. Zibaldoni is a centuries old practice. Read the chapter on Leonardo DaVinci's notebooks. Are your notes "disorganized"? You'll feel better.

We're not supposed to compare ourselves to others, and I try not to. But I see all this bullshit about PKM and "the graph," and so on and I feel mildly deficient somehow.

Then I read The Notebook.

And I feel great.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:11 Saturday, 23 December 2023

My YouTube problem seems to be resolved. One thing I don't like about not being able to use "native" controls, is that I often relied on the little "skip ahead 10s" arrows, which was more convenient than dragging the timeline.

In any event, I still seem to be something of a sucker for videos about "film-like" cameras. Most YouTube videos embrace those click-bait title schemes, and I took the bait about a mysterious camera in The Most Film-Like Digital Camera Wasn’t Made By Fujifilm.

I suspected it was about either the Olympus PEN-F or the OMDS PEN-7, both of which include dedicated b&w profiles with a couple of different "grain" settings, and which have received generally favorable reviews from people who care about such things. In any event, I'm always interested in a new video about an Olympus body and this looked like it might be one.

To my surprise, it was about an Olympus body, but not either of those two cameras. It was about the E-620 and one of Olympus's Art Filters "Grainy Film."

Grainy Film first appeared on the E-30, which was the first Olympus camera to feature Art Filters. They were also incorporated in the later flagship model, the E-5, which added Dramatic Tone. (And maybe a couple of others, I haven't checked. I do recall that Dramatic Tone was introduced on the E-5.)

The Art Filters were never universally accepted or praised by the "serious" photography community. Disparaged as "gimmicky," or "nothing you couldn't do in post," they nevertheless subsequently appeared on every Olympus mirrorless body and many of the later compacts. I was first able to use Dramatic Tone when I bought an XZ-1 on sale. I suspect Olympus market research found that consumers liked the art filters. I know I do.

So I watched Ms. Lumen's video and enjoyed her surprise and delight, and many of the images she included.

It got me thinking about the E-620, which I'd never owned.

Out of curiosity, I checked KEH.COM and they had one in stock, EX+ for $195, battery and charger included. It uses the same batteries as my PEN-Lite bodies, so that wasn't an issue, but nice to have another battery.

I have the 8MP E-500 with the Kodak CCD sensor. It's a fun little body, and I enjoy the experience of shooting with it in a "retro" sense. The sensor isn't stabilized, but I mostly use it with the 25mm/2.8 pancake, so it's not a big deal. I did buy an 18-180mm super-zoom for the four-thirds mount, and I had the 40-150/f3.5-4.5 "Made in Japan" kit lens, but I seldom use them because of the necessity of steady hand-holding technique. (I can, but it's like anything else, it takes practice and if you don't do it all the time, because you're spoiled by IBIS, it takes a while to get good at it again.)

I also have the E-420, which was marketed as the smallest DSLR ever made. Olympus was big on small. I think I have it because I recalled enjoying using the E-410 with the 25mm pancake, and it was cheap, so why not? Anyway, I have the 10MP LiveMOS (Panasonic CMOS) sensor, which first appeared in the E-410/510 bodies.

The E-620 uses the same 12MP LiveMOS sensor as the E-30 and the first three generations of PEN bodies. One of the criticisms of Olympus was that a 4/3 sensor was too small, but also that it wasn't updated as rapidly as Sony, Nikon and Canon. But I liked the files I got from that sensor. The 10MP LiveMOS has issues with chroma noise above ISO 400, (200 in the shadows if you have "Auto" gradation turned on, which lifts the shadows.) the 12MP is much better controlled with noise appearing primarily in luminance. They're both much "worse" than the 16MP Sony sensors that first appeared in the E-P5 and OM-D, E-M5, but they were decent sensors for at least the first part of their time.

I owned an E-30 for many years. I bought it a year after I got the E-520, after I'd shot a wedding for friends with that body. I'd decided I needed something "more serious." Shot a few more weddings with the E-30. (By agreement, I was never paid. They wanted "nice pictures" and I had a "nice camera.")

So I have thousands of shots with that 12MP sensor, and I think I'd enjoy revisiting it now and then. And I do have those telephoto zooms, so it'd be nice to have some IBIS to help get some use out of them.

So I bought another body. After going to some lengths to reduce the number of camera bodies I have cluttering my shelves!

I recall distinctly the resolve that I had that I would confine my photographic efforts to my OM-1, my E-M1 bodies, the two 20MP PENs, my XZ-1, and the Stylus 1s. (Itself an absurd number of cameras.)

Oh well.

To be clear, I'm not excited about the E-620 for "Grainy Film," I have that on every other body. In later versions, Olympus added a second variation that was a little less contrasty and grainy, but still rather unsubtle. I may play with it some more, I don't know. I've never felt that strong connection to b&w that many people seem to have.

And, as a bit of a "completist" sometimes, I'll have all the different sensor manufacturers Olympus used in its cameras. I had an E-1 with the Kodak 5MP sensor, which is also beloved for reasons more nostalgic perhaps than technical. The 8MP Kodak sensor in the E-500 is a refinement, I think. So, 8, 10, 12, 16 and 20MP sensors. Kodak, Panasonic and Sony manufacturers.

Why? I don't know.

I've been screwing around with this for the last couple of hours, and I'm fairly confident I've resolved the issue. But I don't think I can ever be certain.

The issue is related to StopTheMadness. I deleted the app and played several videos with no volume issues.

I re-installed the app and the issues returned. Same symptom this time, volume is reduced but not muted.

I should add here that I didn't take detailed forensic notes, because this is enough of a pain in my ass. But I want to say that the first or second video I played after reinstalling STM, each time I deleted and reinstalled it, played without issue. It was the subsequent videos, and every subsequent video that exhibited an issue.

Yesterday I had two videos play normally after reinstalling STM, which made me think the problem was resolved with the update. Today only the first video played normally, and the issue returned on the second and remained for each subsequent video.

There is a setting in STM to "Show native controls." Native refers to the standard video controls offered by Safari, with the volume control being a vertical slider at the right side of the frame. I had that setting enabled.

YouTube has its own control layout with the volume control being a horizontal slider on the left side of the frame, after the play/pause and chapter controls.

When I disabled "Show native controls," in STM I don't have the issue in YouTube.

To summarize, I recently began experiencing the audio being muted consistently at about three quarters of the way through a video, regardless of length. I would increase the volume and the video would play to the end without issue.

After that, I began getting notifications from YouTube that they'd detected an ad blocker, asking that I white-list YouTube or subscribe to Premium. I ignored those warnings and continued to watch videos and adjusting the volume after it had been muted.

This went on for several weeks. Last week, I got a much more specific warning that I would be allowed "three more videos," after which I wouldn't be allowed to watch anymore. In hindsight, I probably should have tested that to see if they would indeed somehow block playing videos. I think I watched at least four after getting the warning, but it kept popping up and was annoying.

I started my trial subscription to Premium (Google/Alphabet/YouTube will charge your credit card $1 to make sure it's valid, then refund that amount.) All seemed well at first.

Then I got a new problem, with the volume jumping to max. And it would do so repeatedly, after being adjusted.

Yesterday I updated STM and got another new problem, with the audio repeatedly being lowered, not muted, not max'ed.

So, three different manifestations of audio issues with YouTube.

For now, they have been resolved by disabling "Show native controls" in StopTheMadness. It appears that Google/Alphabet/YouTube want to control every aspect of your experience on their site. That doesn't appear to be the case on embedded videos.

Yet.

An update to my YouTube problem. Had a bit of a back and forth on Mastodon with Tommy Williams, one of the guys on the curmudgeon.cafe instance generously offered by Rob Fahrni. Although I'd seen many references to people having similar issues, I may have left the impression that nearly everyone does, and that wasn't my intention.

If everyone had to endure this, YouTube wouldn't exist!

I figured it had to be an interaction with something running on my Mac, so I started with Safari. First, I should note that I didn't observe the problem in embedded videos, only on the Youtube site. In Settings for youtube.com, I unchecked "Enable content blockers." No change. Next, I looked at browser extensions. I disabled Vinegar first, and that made no difference. Then I looked at Stop The Madness.

The first thing I noticed was that an update had dropped six hours before. So I deleted STM on my Mac, and tried a few videos. No weird volume issues. Ok, looks like something to do with STM. I checked the most recent reviews and saw no mentions of problems with YouTube. But the What's New section referred to some YouTube issues.

So I deleted STM on my iMac, and tried playing Stephen Colbert's monologue from the night before. No problems. Went back to the video where I'd been having the issue and tried it. Played fine for over 8 minutes, previously the problem would appear within the first two or three minutes.

I concluded STM might be the problem. But I like STM, so I updated it, quit and re-launched Safari, and tried again. I watched the problematic video through the entire talk, but I didn't stick around for the Q&A. No problems.

Then I watched the livestream of the Starship test fire. No problems. I'm congratulating myself.

Clicked over to a livestream of a National Space Council meeting and, uh-oh! Audio problems.

Only now, instead of going to max, the volume decreases. It doesn't mute, which was the issue I had repeatedly before I went to Premium. Switched to another video, same issue.

That's where I left it. I get pretty tired screwing around with bullshit like this.

I'll try again today sometime. A cynical man might suspect Google is detecting STM and just screwing with the audio to be pricks.

The 4k Blu-ray arrived yesterday, so Mitzi and I watched it after Slow Horses. Well, I watched it. Mitzi slept through it.

I don't recall ever watching the movie again after seeing it in the theater in December 1979 in Newport, Rhode Island. I think I'd completed Surface Warfare Officer School, and was in the Communications Officer course by then. Anyway, I do recall looking forward to seeing the movie, and maybe even standing in line.

I suspect that I may watched it on the small screen on something like HBO back in the 4:3 standard definition days.

In any event, this 4K restoration, with new(er) digital effects is a much better looking film than I recall from the original.

It's held up ok. I don't think it's a great movie, but it holds one's interest at least in the context of the Star Trek universe. I think I actually understood the movie better this time around, at least in terms of the origin of V'ger. (I did recall what V'ger was, I didn't recall how it had become semi-sentient.)

We'd watched The Wrath of Khan the night before, and one of the things that stood out to me was when Kirk handed things he was carrying to people, and doing so in a very natural, very entitled way. On The Center Seat, Nicholas Meyer related that William Shatner hated the first draft of Khan. It's a very interesting part of that series; suffice to say that he learned that Shatner wanted to be "the first through the door." That he wasn't just writing a part for a character, but he was writing a script for a star. It took him a few hours to fix the script.

So I was kind of surprised, but then not, in this movie when he first boards ENTERPRISE and he hands the book he's carrying to Uhura without so much as a word, and heads off to the bridge.

He's an admiral in the first two movies, and they usually have an aide whose job is to receive things flag officers hand to them. So maybe he's just been an Admiral for a couple of years, and they wouldn't allow his aide to come with him because of bunk space or something, so he's just used to not having to personally look after his own belongings.

Or maybe that's how they treat "a star."

Anyway, I enjoyed seeing this "director's version," with the updated effects, and surprised at how young everyone looked, even in 4K.

Since I'm bitching about online stuff, I figure I might as well get this one out there too.

Apple has done something recently to the News app. I don't live in News, but when I have a few idle moments, I'll check it to see what's going on.

It's apparently now much more "algorithmically" driven, because I'm not seeing "breaking" news or "headline" news, I'm seeing stuff it thinks I'd like. I'm just trying to see what's going on.

That's not the worst thing though.

The worst thing is that I'll be scanning the posters or thumbnails or whatever you call them, and if I see something interesting, I don't click on it instantly, I'm still scanning the opening screen.

When all of a sudden, it "updates." Everything I was just looking at disappears. It seems as though it scrolls down, though I swear I can't find stuff I saw just before it updated. Stuff I wanted to read.

Happens every single time. It's to the point where I'm just not going to bother looking at the thing anymore. Right now, I open the app and just wait until it refreshes before I start reading it. It's a waste of my time.

I pay for that all-in-one tier with Apple Games, News+, iCloud storage, Apple Music and Apple TV+. I'll have to do the math, but I don't play the games. I don't listen to Apple Music. But access to many of the magazines and newspapers on News+ made that feel worthwhile, and with iCloud and TV+ I think I was still netting out ahead. And I'm doing family sharing with my daughter, which is actually also a pain in the ass. I wind up paying for all her app purchases, movie rentals and app subscriptions. I may just pay separately for cloud storage and TV+, and if they didn't have such good shows, I'd drop that too.

I'm starting to really feel genuinely and sincerely hostile toward Apple. The Apple user experience is rapidly deteriorating.

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man shouting at clouds, but it really feels like it's getting worse.

I use an ad blocker, and YouTube has finally caught up with me, saying I could watch only 3 more videos unless I disabled my ad blocker.

I don't know if they actually would have cut me off. I didn't try "private browsing" or changing browsers or anything like that. It just gets too tedious to play those games anymore. I'm too old.

So I signed up for "Premium," the subscription-based, ad-free experience. Supposedly it's better for "creators."

Well, before I signed up for Premium, I had this very consistent audio problem when watching YouTube videos. I suspected that it might have been a passive-aggressive punishment for using an ad blocker, but I didn't investigate it any further. What happened was that about three quarters of the way through any video, and nearly all of them, the volume would suddenly mute. I'd bump it back up, and that solved the problem.

Since I signed up for Premium, I have a new, inconsistent problem. The audio will jump to max, at random intervals throughout the video. It makes it pretty much unwatchable.

I did a search for that, and apparently it's been a thing for years, with Google, er, Alphabet, claiming at various times it's been fixed.

I'm in my "free" month of Premium. If I can't figure out some way to resolve this issue, I guess I'm going to cancel the subscription and watch a lot less YouTube.

Mitzi and I have been watching this PBS series, Iconic America, and it's very good. We've seen episodes 6, 7 and 8 about the bald eagle, Stone Mountain and the Golden Gate Bridge, respectively.

All were better than I expected, though I'd say the one about Stone Mountain is the best in terms of illuminating a contemporary issue, specifically Confederate monuments. The Golden Gate episode is about much more than just the bridge, and deals with the challenges of constructing new infrastructure for our changing climate. The bald eagle episode was interesting without being as troubling as the other two.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 12:57 Tuesday, 19 December 2023

Since I wasn't sleeping, I figured I'd set the E-M1 Mk3 up out back and look up at the sky for me. I used interval shooting, and had it create a timelapse movie at the end.

The movie is unremarkable, and I only got one meteor.

I think the LiveComposite images are more interesting. I don't do video and I don't feel as though I want to learn how. I'll probably stick with LiveComposite from now on.

There was a glitch with the image showing up at micro.blog last time. We'll see if that repeats with this one.

Mitzi and I watched the Battlestar Galactica mini-series/pilot the other night, because it was the 20th anniversary of its first airing. I didn't see it when it originally aired on the Sci-Fi channel (I think it was pre-SyFi.) I saw it for the first time when it aired on NBC broadcast television some months later, because it did so well on cable.

I hadn't seen the mini-series in years, but I'd watched it so many times before that I still recalled nearly every line and every hiccup or error. But it was still a surprisingly good experience.

So we've started watching the series again, a couple of episodes at a time. For now we're using my AppleTV library, but I have the entire series on Blu-ray. I'm using the streamed version for now for convenience.

I do recall that the quality was uneven. It endured a writers' strike, and it was one of the earliest long-form narrative series, and they were kind of making it up as they went along. When it was good, there was nothing better on television. When it was bad, it was decent.

I hear talk of a re-boot. Because of course.

I think Apple has reached that stage in its corporate existence when it has an enormous executive staff and everyone has to justify their existence if not just their bonus. That is, they have to feel as though they're being perceived as "doing something" for the company. So the OSes and applications get changed more for the sake of the appearance of "work," than to deploy genuine improvements.

This would be a good moment for the Ghost of Apple Past (Steve Jobs) to haunt the halls of the spaceship and ask people what they're doing and if he doesn't like the answer, fire them.

We just got the new Apple TV interface, where they've gotten rid of any vestige of iTunes, and integrated the movies and tv shows into one store and one app. The result is dark, crowded, cluttered, small, busy, uninviting and unpleasant on my 65" LG OLED TV.

I hate it.

My first reaction is that I will not be buying or renting any content from Apple, just because I find the experience intolerable. I will reluctantly and grudgingly make the necessary effort to find and watch Apple TV+ streaming content. For now, anyway.

To be fair, both Prime and Netflix have changed their interfaces, for the worse, as well. I can figure out Netflix, and it's at least barely tolerable. Prime is a confusing labyrinth of other streaming platforms, "Prime" content, and Amazon purchases and rentals. I struggle to find "included with Prime" content.

I think the confusion on all the platforms is intentional, to create friction so you spend more time browsing and less time watching. Because that means you're less likely in any given evening to switch platforms because there's only so much time to watch, and any time lost to friction is time you've denied to your competitors.

I don't know if it's a classic case of enshittification, but it feels as though it is.

To that point, last night I ordered the 4k Blu-ray of Star Trek The Motion Picture (we've been watching The Center Seat on Prime). Partly because Apple sucks, and partly because of Christopher Nolan and the importance of physical media.

(Reminder: TBPO is an acronym for The Band Played On. This signifies in the post that I'm aware that there are vastly more important things going on that I should be incensed or worried about, and I am. This exhibition of denial is a defense mechanism against the crushing weight of absurdity in our existence that would otherwise leave me in an inert puddle of hopelessness and despair.)

I made an album of shots from this morning's walk. Carried the red (so red) E-PL6, because it's a week before Christmas, with the 45mm/f1.8 prime mounted because that is a very special lens. Also brought along the XZ-1 in case I needed a wide angle.

Of course, since I didn't have the 75-300, there was a hawk perched on a fence that would have posed for me all morning.

"TBPO" is an acronym for "the band played on." It's mostly a reference to the Titanic, though it's obliquely related to the movie And The Band Played On about the AIDS crisis, because of course it is.

Reading articles in the Miami Herald that discuss "climate relocation" ("retreat here, growth there") in the same kind of detached tone that one reads about Trump's increasingly hard-right, fascist rhetoric makes my feeling of cognitive dissonance feel liky my tinnitus, an existential scream going on in my mind that I have to ignore because I have to carry on.

I think I'm going to preface mundane, formerly "cheese sandwich" (back in the GHD days), posts with TBPO to indicate that I'm aware that the ship is sinking, the house is on fire, the wolf is at the door, it's one minute to midnight, but yeah, life goes on.

Embrace the absurdity, I guess.

In the preceding post, I mistakenly linked to the wrong Eton radio. The link has been corrected. But just in case, here it is again. The radio you might want is the Elite Executive.