From my reply to a discussion in r/photography on Reddit.
Take less. Be a partner and a parent, and above all, be present. Less is more when traveling, especially with family.
If you’re in doubt about this, remember that artistic limitations force us to get creative. Your photography will not suffer from lack of gear. Your back will suffer from the excess.
From my reply to a discussion in r/ZenHabits on Reddit.
You will not accidentally stumble into life balance. If you feel calm and focused when you’re with your child, it’s because your actions are in alignment with your priorities. When you’re doing the million other things, however, you’re likely distracted by all the things that are not done, PLUS whatever you’re doing is a distraction from your priority, which is your child.
I recommend making those other million tasks meditative. You won’t get them all done, but when you’re doing one of them, focus on that one task. If your mind slips, nudge yourself back to focus on the task at hand. Do not allow distractions like music, phones, or social media. Just like when you meditate, be mindful of your breathing and your posture.
Let’s try an example: washing the dishes. First, keep your attention to the task on hand. Pay attention to the temperature of the water, the smell of the soap, the act of scrubbing food off the dirty plates, and so on. Breathe: deeply in, deeply out. Stand with your feet planted and your spine aligned. Do not listen to podcasts, music, or even your child while doing the dishes. Do not let your consciousness drift to the other things you have to do. Stay in the moment. Stay present.
If this is challenging at first, do it for very short sessions (1 minute or less) at the outset. You won’t be able to be meditatively mindful for every task, but that’s okay. Every little bit helps you regain that balance.
From my reply to a discussion in r/VWBus on Reddit.
So basically a reliable tin roof camper is my dream and goal. Is something like this relatively possible and is it economic? Like not absolutely shattering my savings.
Possible? Yes. Economic? No. Especially if you want reliability and modern convenience. Depending on how much of the work you’re willing to do yourself, your tools and knowledge, you can definitely keep those costs down, but then you’re spending your time and life energy instead of money. As someone who grew up with buses and has driven them through much of my adult life, I assure you that they are cool but costly.
Consider: a running van is going to cost you in the ballpark of $5-10K. I’ve never seen a bus for that price that didn’t need some amount of parts and work just to make it roadworthy and reliable, so add another $5-10K. An engine transplant will cost will cost you $2-5K minimum if you have the tools and knowledge, and typically can run much higher. Interiors and modern convenience don’t come cheap, so budget another $5K. So realistically to get what you want, you’re going to be spending in the neighborhood of $15-20K for a 50 year old vehicle. Maybe more. Probably more.
Now bargains and barn finds do exist. And a lot of it depends on your standards. If you don’t mind being seen in a van with rust, then you can skimp on the bodywork. Having space to tear down and work on the vehicle at your own pace, then you aren’t going to need to drop cash all that at once, which saves the bank account and also helps keep the wife from getting suspicious. But the bottom line is that you’re going to spend money to make it happen.
And is it what you really want? A lot of people dream of going mobile in an iconic hippie van, but aren’t as interested in learning how to adjust their carburetors or sourcing subie engine parts. Driving them is fun on the winding back roads, but is hell on a hot day in city traffic. If you want the open road and the ability to camp out of your back hatch, there are other cheaper options.
Of course, it may be an itch that you can only scratch one way. Don’t worry, you’re not alone, we’ve all been there. Find yourself a bus, roll up your sleeves, and empty your wallet. Make it your bus. In the end, you can’t take the money with you, so make the memories and live today.
From my reply to a discussion from r/fujifilm on Reddit.
I shoot both film and digital, and digital grain is certainly not the same thing as film grain. But that’s arguably the biggest mistake that people make: they aren’t meant to be the same. Consider that in film grain is unescapable: it is a byproduct of the film exposure and development process, inseparable from the taking of the photograph. There is no such thing as digital grain except as an effect applied in post. The way that film and digital grain are similar is that they both provide texture, albeit in different ways.
Texture is important to photography, because without it an image enters the uncanny valley of too-perfect realism. We see this especially in modern digital photographs using the best optics to create razor-sharp images with super high levels of fidelity. These images look “too real,” and that’s at odds with the fact that we know a photograph is not “the real thing.” It creates an unresolvable tension when viewing such images. Grain (both film and digital) gives us that by reducing the precision of the image. In this way the image aligns more with our own imperfect views of the world.
The other thing to keep in mind when thinking about grain is that it is like salt in food: you shouldn’t be able to tell that it’s there. If you can, then it’s too much. Now obviously some photographers lean into grain for artistic effect. For most images taken digitally, however, we want a little bit of grain to take away that aforementioned tension. How much is too much? It’s a subjective call. Some people like really salty food, and some people like really grainy images. I personally say that if you can perceive the grain when looking at the full image, it’s too much. If you’re pixel peeping (or magnifying) then of course the grain will be apparent. You’re too close! But if upon stepping back the grain disappears into the image, then that’s probably about right. Again, it’s a personal call and there’s no right or wrong answer.
I generally shoot raw with my Fuji cameras, so I don’t usually use grain. If the image needs any texturing, I apply it when editing later. When I do shoot jpg, however, I think at the weak setting, it usually gives just enough tonal variability to texture the image appropriately and get rid of the clinical “digitalness” of the image. YMMV.
Maps are fun! Here’s some sites I like:
Other map related stuff:
I discovered that the latch on my fantastic plastic Canon EOS Elan 7E had deteriorated, and the door had sprung open, exposing that roll of film (grumble, grumble.) Repair was an easy process, after acquiring a replacement latch off eBay. There’s a full howto write up on J. David Buerk’s website. Essentially you have to remove the latch cover (2 screws) and the front faceplate (5 screws), pop the old latch out and the new one in. I had to move the electrical contacts to the new latch as well, as those weren’t included on the new latch. The metal piece was welded on to the latch, so I used a couple dots of superglue to keep the contacts in place. Reassembled, and now everything seems fine. For reference, the Elan 7E is cross marketed as the EOS Elan 7 and EOS 33.
Had to replace a failed ssd which was part of a mirrored RAID set in a Late 2012 Mac Mini. It was running MacOS 10.11 El Capitan, so the RAID functionality that used to be part of Disk Utility was not available through the app. Apple’s simple RAID tools are still available in terminal, using the command:
diskutil appleRAID <raidverb>
Options for <raidverb> include list and repairMirror.
From my reply to a discussion in r/guitarpedals on Reddit.
A preamp pedal is very simply a pedal that amplifies your signal at the start of the signal chain. Because it makes your guitar signal louder, it affects how the guitar sounds both with other pedals that come after the preamp, as well as the actual guitar amplifier. There are a lot of reasons you might want to use a preamp pedal, but ultimately it comes down to liking the way it makes your rig sound.
By way of example, you probably already know that adjusting the volume knob on your guitar will change the sound coming out of the amp. Now what if you could keep making your signal louder when your guitar volume knob was maxed out? Turns out you can, with a preamp.
You can get a sense with how this works, if you have an EQ, boost, or even a distortion pedal that stays clean at lower gain settings. Put it at the beginning of your signal chain, connected immediately into your guitar, and then see what happens when you engage it. You may notice your later distortion pedals sound more driven, or your amp is pushed further into overdrive. If you like that effect, a preamp may be for you.
Then you get to dive down the rabbit hole of what different preamps can do, because in addition to volume, they usually also have tonal controls. With that, a preamp can be very useful in getting solos that cut through a mix, or taking the mud out of your rhythm playing.
Years ago I bought a Martin Backpacker guitar. To call it a guitar is generous. Like Douglas Adams’ no tea, the Backpacker is something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a guitar. It sounds like the mutant child of a baritone ukulele and a banjo. Playing it is cramped, with a short scale and a narrow neck. Without a truss rod, only extra light strings should be used on it, and even then the action is high enough drive a Miata beneath them.
Mine came with a rectangular gig bag which provides almost no protection. So of course, somewhere on my travels over the years, the top got smooshed in. I sent it to a luthier friend who did some miracle work to fix it. He pointed out replacing the top would be more expensive than the guitar was worth, so he just straightened it out as much as he could and braced it. It looked better and sounded fine, but still had a bit of a sad, crumpled look to it. And as we all know, when playing guitar, looks matter.
This spring I therefore came to the conclusion that I wanted to do something about it. I found I could get a new solid cedar top from Stew Mac for under thirty bucks, and that seemed reasonable. I also purchased some mandolin kerfing to make the thing a bit more robust. It would hardly do to backpack with it if it couldn’t withstand being strapped to my back. After watching a few online videos, as one does, I decided it was within my skill set. How hard could it be?
Turns out, not exceptionally difficult. That’s not to denigrate the skills of a skilled luthier, but this was a Backpacker I was dealing with, not a pre-war D-28 (although it is a pre-Afghan War specimen). The basic steps were to separate the old top, attach a new top, and finish it. All told, a nice weekend project.
Because there is no edge work on the Backpacker, separating the top is a fairly straight forward process. Some heat, applied with a heat gun, softened the glue. I then worked a palette knife or sharpened scraper between the top and the body to separate the pieces. It helped also that there no support bracing or edge kerfing. I worked small sections, and had the two apart in pretty short order. Then I used the same process allowed me to salvage the bracing and bridge from the old top. I didn’t have to be too careful about the old top, since I wasn’t planning on reusing it.
Once that step was done, I cleaned up the body and the salvaged pieces, removing any traces of glue or wood from the top that broke off.
Next, I took the opportunity to beef up the body a bit. I put kerfing around the back and top edges of the body, which would provide a more ample and supportive edge to attach the top and back to the sides of the guitar.
Upon turning my attention to the top, I had a decision to make. I had purchased a low grade cedar guitar top, which came as a pair of book matched pieces. My plan was to use a single piece, which would have been large enough on its own to top the guitar. When the wood arrived, however, I discovered that it had some significant shading variation, and had I used a single side, I would have ended up with a two-tone guitar. Not really what I wanted. To get a single-tone top with this wood, I’d have to join either the light or dark sides together as if I was making a larger guitar. It was an extra step, but upon examination, I discovered the darker portion had some lovely pronounced grain which, would look rather stunning. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. I did a bit of research and came upon a video which described the tent method of joining the pieces of wood. It was simple and required no special jigs, so I thought I’d give it a go.
Turns out it worked very well, and soon had a book matched top for a Backpacker. Fancy!
The next step was joining the new top to the body, which illustrates perfectly one of the real values of professionals: they have the tools to do the job right. In this case, it’s the clamps. I used my assortment of bar and c-clamps to get the job done, but it would have been much easier if I had professional tools at my disposal. In the end, I clamped it well enough, and got the job done. Once the top had set, I routed the rough edges and sanded them flush.
For finishing I decided to just use a hand rubbed and buffed linseed oil finish. Instrument makers prefer a shellac or varnish which doesn’t absorb into (and thus deaden) the sound of the wood. Let’s be honest here, however; shoeboxes are more resonant than Backpacker guitars. A few coats of oil weren’t going to kill the sound. And the result is beautiful to behold. And after restringing and making some bridge adjustments to compensate for a thicker, straighter top, it sounds as good as I remember it. On top of that, I have a deeper connection to this guitar now, and it’s a unique piece.
Now I just need to make a better case. Perhaps something like this.
