We’ve made it to another Weeknotes! The weather is still hot and heavy up here in Wisconsin, we lost a couple of days to the heat, but made good headway in a couple different departments. Lets go!
💂 Over this past weekend, I brought with me my camera to work with the intention of running out to Pewaukee Lake immeidately after getting off the clock and sitting lakeside for the tail-end of Golden Hour and to pictures of the sunset. I’m such a creature of habit that the sudden plans after work had me a little scatterbrained, and when I was packing up my gear I forgot to pack along my lens hoods. Ended up ordering hoods for every lens I own for the sole intention of keeping them in my trunk with other random camera gear that lives in there. I’m starting to get the idea that some photographers buy or rent a studio just so they don’t have to haul their gear around with them everywhere. This would be a dream of mine.
📸 It was only a matter of time, but I pulled the trigger on my first speedlight for my camera. While driving to pick it up I had an idea for a bio: “I play with meat in the morning, Play with glass in the afternoon, and pixels in the evening”. Speaking of playing with meat, I’ve actually got the some weekends off in a couple of weeks, the first in years – to take senior photos for my Cousin and also to attend a family gathering for a fallen solider in our family. It’s going to heavy on the emotions, and a lot of people in the room that haven’t seen each other in a very long time. Our family isn’t known for holding their tongues, so hopefully everyone behaves themselves. I’m on the fence whether or not I’m going to take my gear with me to the gathering. I know the family would enjoy the photographs, but I wont’ be able to engage with anyone on a personal level.
👟 Being accustomed to Amazon has really soured how I feel about doing business online. Small businesses are one thing, they don’t even fall under the same category the way I see it, but when you’re dealing with a company like Vivobarefoot who is making people push out upwards of two hundred dollars for some decent barefoot shoes, all the while singing a grand tune about how great their company is to the environment. The send me the wrong shoes and then insist I find a printer (something I haven’t owned or used in almost twenty years) to print a return label and then hop my happy ass in my car and drive forty-five minutes to Oak Creek to drop it off at the closest DHL Express Point. Yeah right. I’ll sooner take the loss and consider the cost of these shoes lumped in wit the other pair that I bought from them. I’m not sure the Addis Mens are worth $330 dollars but I’m not ready to risk them screwing my order up again.
👟 Xero Shoes on the other hand was completely the opposite. They gave me the option to return thru Amazon or thru them directly. To be honest with all the emailing back and forth I did with Vivobarefoot (which also sucked because each response was from a different person) I really don’t want to go thru the hassle of returning these shoes either. I’m always so rough on the shoes I wear anways so it’s only a matter of time before I put some heavy miles on them anyway and they start looking broken in anyhow. The shoes itself is of fantastic quality. I opted to take out the liner that comes with it, so it’s literally like walking around with barefeet despite having shoes on.
🧦 When I bought toe socks, I fired on two different brands. Both of them are from Amazon. When Herman from Bear Blog first mentioned them, it was enough to make my already curious mind ready to buy some for myself and I thought I’d buy the brand he said he’s been wearing for years. aomagic they are called. They have a “mesh section” on the top which I assume allows your feet to breathe. The socks are alright but being able to compare them to the other brand I have hellomamma, this are not only thicker but they seems to fit my big ass feet better. Neither of them seems like theyr’e going to fall off or anything like that, but the white aomagics definitely run a little smaller. The colors of the aomagic determine what the makeup of their fabrics are. I’m thinking despite not being a fan of the color for socks, the gray ones would have been a better way to go.
⛱️ The thickest parts of summer I’m super talented at ignoring what’s going on in whatever app I’m using to read RSS feeds, be it Inoreader, good ol’ fashioned bookmarks or now, Readwise Reader – but when it’s “go time” outdoors in Wisconsin during summer you must always take advantage because these days are short lived. We wait around all winter for it to happen, and then curse the heat when it comes. It’s a strange balance, but one we must strive to achieve. So it’s not uncommon in late June, July or August to open up Reader and see one to two hundred unread articles. I don’t care about FOMO one bit, the joy of missing out is the real path, (s/o Oliver Burkeman) so if it is some insane amount I’ll mark them all as rest and sleep just fine at night.
🕵️ When I opened it up earlier this week I was presented with a slew of unread articles and skimmed over them before sending them back into the ether. One blog post from Mozilla detailing more about FakeSpot, which is a browser extension and has apps for mobile which acts as a sort of a middle-man between you and the reviews you read online not only on Amazon but everywhere online. It can somehow detect the reviews written by AI and adjust ratings to what they really are based on that information. Pretty neat. I installed it and looked over my purchase history on Amazon and would have to say the “A, B, C, D, F” scoring system it gives the products is pretty accurate from where I’m standing. Check it out: FakeSpot.com
🎧 I know Bandcamp Friday is coming this week but I couldn’t wait, LofiGirl dropped two compilation albums lately and this last one made me anxious and I pulled the trigger early. I also picked up Chillhop Summer Essentials, and two compilations from Jazz Hop: Bossa Brazil and The Record Store. Friday Late Night Tales: After Dark Vespertine is being released, perfectly timed for Bandcamp Friday. Defintiely grabbing that and any other stragglers on my Wishlist.
🌇 My Medium account is going dark on the 27 August. With the exception of when I was self-imposing myself to write about the Obsidian plugins that were released on a weekly basis, the other posts there still have value and so they will be imported over here, which will introduce more weight to the mounting problems I have with how to set things up over here. I also bought an OMG.LOL presense for my Photography gig over at @wmjpg and wanted to sort of make the blog over there look exactly like the one here and have an identical navigation bar. It’s all just crap written in a Canvas file in Obsidian right now, but definitely something I want to get done at some point in the future. I really wanna figure out how to add the Font Awesome Icons to my navigation bar. This and that. All the while, learning Darktable in the background. It’s all so much. Not enough time in the day, which brings me to my next point.
⌛ I do not have enough hours in the day to spend quality time with photography. As much as I try and get it done on the days I work eight hours at work, the reality is I’m blown the fuck out. The body is anyway, mind is racing. It’s easy to fall into a Darktable rabbit hole after work because of how excited my mind is to get after it, but my body isn’t motivated to walk up a flight of stairs. It’s pitiful at times. A source of major stress.
💜 Properties came out in Obsidian. I’m not sure if the goal is to kill off the need of Dataview or embrace it. I really care one way or the other, Dataview isn’t much use to me. What’s interesting tho is, I do use metadata quite a bit, and I feel already that I’m going to start using it more because of how it’s presented in Obsidian now. I’m very curious how Linter behaves moving forward. I lean and rely and on that plugin very hard. It’s nothing vault-breaking, but it’s right up there with things like Minimal, Style Settings, Global Keyboard Shortcuts and Actions URI.
💜 Proof of how great the Obsidian community is, the Hider plugin by Obsidian Legend (and also CEO) kepano pushed an update that hides the Properties in Reader View. 🙏
🎬 My younger cousin was telling me how great Yellowstone the show is. I come to find out one of the main characters of the show had a major role in one of my favorite movies of all time, American Beauty. The conversation brought me to share with him of my all-time favorite scenes.
🍲 Diet has been extremely poor lately, and by that I mean, I haven’t really been eating very much. You wouldn’t believe what little a person needs to get thru a day. It’s not good and I know it. I wish I could snap out of it, but I can’t!
🥩 Work. Our new boss apparently starts this Sunday. Next week is inventory and he intends to start at three o’clock in the morning. We’ve always done inventory overnight. I’d start at 22:30 or 23:00 and work until six or seven in the morning. I have no idea how this guy plans on getting all that done in a fraction of the time. We’ll see. That’s what they pay the big bucks to these guys, right!?
🤯 Telegram is experimenting with a “Stories” feature. Not only does it simultaneously record front and back video at the the same time, it also does not pause any audio the phone is pushing out when you hit record. That’s seriously some next level stuff right there.
⛲ My first random photographic “get in the car and just go” found me in Lake Geneva on Monday. I spent a majority of the day there. I took tons of photos for tourists with their phones so they didn’t have to take selfies. It was really hot! I managed tho, dipping into the shadows like Batman every now and again to cool off. I also stopped at Culvers and destroyed a Root Beer shake. There are all sorts of neat local places up there that serve ice cream, but I was up there to take pictures so I don’t need anything fancy except a good angle.
With that, we’re off and ready to get after Week 32.
Miscellaneous Metadata
Lens that got the most activity this week: 35mm F1.8
Rotated SomaFM channels this week
- Folk Forward
- Lush
- Groove Salad Classic
- dabbled in Fluid
Top 7 Artists
- Moby
- George Ezra
- Coldplay
- Afterlife
- Akira the Don
- Azuku
- GlobulDub
Top 7 Albums
- Chillout Essentials Summer 2023
- Bossa Brazil (Jazz Hop Cafe compilation)
- The Record Store (Jazz Hop Cafe compilation)
- George Ezra – Gold Rush Kid
- George Ezra – Staying at Tamara’s
- Chillhop Yearmix 2020 (Chillhop compilation)
- Moby – 18 B-Sides
Top 7 Tracks
- “The Beautiful Dream” George Ezra
- “Whispering Wind” Moby
- “Anyone for You (Tiger Lily)” George Ezra
- “Big Dipper” Blue Wednesday
- “Don’t Matter Now” George Ezra
- “Love Somebody Else” George Ezra
- “Only a Human” George Ezra
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, August 2, 2023 18:24 , have a great day. 🌸
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
—Arthur Ashe
Media
Top Track – Week 31
“The Beautiful Dream” by George Ezra https://www.youtube.com/embed/_aW4HtghZmk
Weekshots – Week 31
