I have been on the fence about getting onboard with the idea of doing #WeekNotes. This is due in part that the format many of the people I see doing these follow the same sort of format I used to use on my blog back in the day when I was a WordPress user on OpenPLUTO. I would do semi-regular posts that was something like a week in review, but it was always done in a bullet-point fashion.
The usage of emojis instead of bullet points is for whatever really intriguing to me so I think I am going to try and get in the habit of doing this. I will not manipulate the text at all, I’m simply going to lift it out of my Daily Notes in Obsidian and put them in somewhat of an order. Maybe add a little context, but that context will first be added to the commonplace, so there is never an instance where I’m doing things online that isn’t stored locally in Obsidian. 💜
That said, I’m dialing the clocks back two weeks for this first post in order to have more content to write about because so many days in the last 14 were just complete losses for me. The high temperatures in combination with the complimentary Canadian Skyline filter the sky has has most of the summer just made being outside too much of a pain in the ass. You can’t even get any good golden hour photos, the entire sky looks like there is campfire happening everywhere all at once. There are days where I can barely see clearly the Amazon building across the street at work.
Without further ado…
👟 I’m in my second week of wearing Xero and Vivobarefoot shoes “full-time”. By that I mean outside of work. The reviews that said overtime you’ll start to feel like traditional shoes are “too restrictive”, that is definitely starting to set in for me. The Vivobarefoot shoes I got are the ones made in Ethiopia and have a very distinct “leather” sound when you walk in them. Very comfortable. The Xero shoes are surprisingly comfortable as well. I was very suspect about them, but was pleasantly surprised as how well they feel. At first they reminded me of some Adidas shoes I have that don’t have laces and are made out of a sort of fabric instead of leather.
🧦 We’re also in our second week of wearing “toe socks” “full-time”. Let’s be honest the first couple of days were not a blast. All this “screwing around” just to put on a pair of socks. But two, three, six hours after having them on you really don’t want to go back to regular socks.
🛍️ I ordered another pair of Vivobarefoot shoes and got the wrong style, color and size sent to me. I emailed the company and they were super apologetic about it. I don’t own a printer so the PDF with the return label isn’t of much use to me. I might just take it as a loss and find someone one Facebook or at work that wears the size and wants to give barefoot shoes a crack. Kind of annoying but it is what it is.
🗃️ Things are coming along well with getting Royal Reynolds online. They got business cards made, I bought a domain, setup a landing page for it with OMG.LOL and setup email. Porkbun is amazing. So is Fastmail. Also setup a team on Canva and we started chipping away at branding specifics. Colors, fonts, etc. We only really see each other face to face on Family Friday, so I’m debating the possibility of utilizing Miro for our collaborative efforts.
📸 I went “bokeh shopping” at a couple of different places for both my cousins Senior Photos that I’m taking in the second week of August, and also for a “couples photoshoot” for a newly engaged couple that I work with. The day spent at Retzer was super hot, but I forced myself to get it done. This was also the day I stumbled upon the gardening vest from Duluth which will act as my “photography vest” as mentioned earlier.
📸 Former coworker of mine reached out of nowhere and asked for me to come to their friends house to “get some good photos” of her dog, because she fears that he is not going to be around much longer. 😥 Never really thought about how photography would involve the other side of the emotional spectrum. So I grabbed my camera and headed out there right after I got out of work on Saturday. Got some good shot for her. Also got a pretty good shot of a baseball laying in the yard that the dogs there use as a toy. 🐕⚾
🥩 At work the department is actually in the best shape it has been in quite some time. Joe from West Bend has helped up forge paths I have been unable to forge on my own, and he has done so with such grace and elegance. I really like the guy a lot!
🤯 Had some eureka moments this week in Darktable. Eureka moments so heavy and intense that it has fundamentally changed my understanding of the post-production process entirely. Back in February all I knew about RAW files was that they were a thing. I shot my Sister’s wedding and edited those photos with little to no understanding of what I was really doing. Don’t get me wrong, a majority of what I did know was by way of the one and only Bruce Williams, but when it came to understanding basic mechanics and the understanding of terminology I relied almost entirely on ChatGPT. However, despite all these resources I was scouring day in and day out, it was just tinkering with settings that lead me to these eureka moments. Tinkering over research. Theory can only take you so far, right? Which ties in our next point.
🍿 I love going to the movies. It’s one of the only situations where I can actually force myself to watch a video that is longer than five of six minutes without getting antsy and wandering off into something else. Went and saw Oppenheimer on opening night with my “cousin” Jackson. We were the first ones in the room and I managed to get a shot. The moment I sat down, people started flooding in. Cillian Murphy did a great job, I can see how that Peaky Blinders show was such a hit. He holds your attention very well. Robert Downey, Jr’s role was incredible. I had no idea how much of an asshole Harry Truman was. The way Nolan articulated the traits of narcissm within Lewis Strauss was extradorindary. Also the way his showed whas dwelled in Oppenheimer’s mind when he was idle was super unique. Nolan is a fucking legend. The guy could do a movie about filling a bike tire with air and it would be amazing.
- One of the trailers was for a new Exorcist movie. I have never seen the first one (I have barely seen anything) but my god, I was legitimately scared after seeing that trailer.
- There was another horror movie trailer that looked decent but the name or what it was even about was quickly forgotten after the Exorcist trailer.
- Got a shot of Bats outside the theater.
🤔 I know I missed a bunch of things here because I didn’t go thru my entire list of links in betterOneTab. I know there is a lot of “SmugMug school” links in there because I was having a helluva time getting my head around how their whole system works. It’s very easy to complicate your permissions.
📊 Started scrobbling music again so I will have stats each week at the end of these Week Notes. The following statistics go back to July 16th the day I started scrobbling again.
Heavily Rotated SomaFM channels this week
- Folk Forward
- Lush
- Groove Salad Classic
Top 7 Artists
- Raimu (147)
- Moby (89)
- Coldplay (56)
- Timecop1983 (36) ⬅️ Timecop1983 was playing when I had my Eureka moment in Darktable
- Afterlife (23)
- Air (17)
- Khruangbin (14)
Top 7 Albums
- Raimu – Nature Inc. (42)
- 12 AM Study Session 📚 (Lofi Girl compilation) (42)
- Raimu – Early Spirits (32)
- Raimu – The Spirit Within (30)
- Sleepless Night (Lofi Girl compilation) (25)
- Afterlife – Speck of Gold (23)
- LateNightTales: Trentemøller (20)
Top 7 Tracks
- “Good” Akira the Don x Jocko Willink
- “Dust to Dust” Raimu
- “Greenwashed” Raimu
- “Meeting Under the Enchanted Oak” Raimu
- “Nap Time in Shibuya” Raimu
- “Ode to the Moon” Raimu
- “Silk Touch” Raimu
Perhaps I will close each Week Note with one of random quotes of the day that appear at the top of my Daily Notes each morning in Obsidian. July 25th (yesterday) we got this one served up to us:
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
That is all for now. I gave up on spelling and grammar checks to prove my humanity. I may come back at a later time and add links.
It is currently Wednesday, July 26, 2023 13:28, have a great day. 🌸
Media
Good – Akira x Jocko Willink https://www.youtube.com/embed/CGh3KDkonQE
