Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Solar

I went through a phase where I felt very irritated with the Apple walled garden. Apple Watches, in particular, were bothering me, because of their dependency on having an iPhone. I was also unhappy with battery life, even with an Apple Watch Ultra. After using a Garmin Instinct 2 for a camping/hiking season, I ended up landing on the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Solar. The Instinct was interesting because it's super rugged and sips battery: You can go weeks and weeks on a charge using it as a fitness tracker. If you forego the need for always-on features you can get...

A few notes about the behavioral interview

I was very lucky, years ago, to have worked at Puppet when it made a big investment in behavioral interview training, which was an interview style  I'd managed to evade throughout my career up to then, partially because I had done a "freelance converted to full-time" thing a few times, and partially because I had the mixed blessing of narcissistic interviewers when I was coming in through the front door somewhere. When I interviewed at Puppet, one of my interviewers was a very aggressive behavioral interviewer even before we eventually got to training in that style.  It was a tough 30...

"Ours Was the Shining Future"

Here's a review of Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.  Sounds like an interesting read.  “"The completely justified anger that civil rights and feminist leaders felt toward reactionary elements in the labor movement, he concludes, unfortunately helped to produce a backlash that pushed many unions and working-class people away."” Damage we still live with today. When you look at it all through this lens, the so-called heterodox types are just a re-litigation of those cultural grievances, on behalf of "working people" by credentialed SubStack entrepreneurs who thought college loan forgiveness was "elitist" because things like community...

Straight-out-of-camera ephemerality

Not too long ago Luke posted a link to this thing about how "the raw vs. jpeg debate needs to end." I don't think it's a great piece in part because it doesn't really do justice to Team Raw and in part because I'm a human being and frequently fall prey to informal fallacies, such as the one that leads me to say, "of course some guy who sells 'recipes' that make your photos irrecoverable if you ever decide that a caricature of 'the film look' was a bad artistic choice thinks it's insulting to tell people otherwise." "It is difficult...

SmallRig X-T5 Grip (and the Nikon Zf, kind of)

I got the SmallRig grip for my X-T5. I didn't realize they'd toss in a little red shutter button, but they did and it's a fine replacement for the one I had. The grip itself is nice! It's got a good rubbery texture, installs easily, doesn't interfere with the card or battery openings, and provides a way to add an Arca plate. It doesn't really disrupt the fundamental look of the camera in exchange for surer carry and better feel in the hand. I learned about it when I was, er, reading about the Nikon Zf, which is their full-frame Z-series...

Ben (2016)

The XF35/1.4

The Fujifilm XF35/1.4 was the first lens I bought for my X-T2 in 2016. I love it. I think most Fuji people do. In Portland, it's a six-months-out-of-the-year lens because it's not weather sealed, so I bought the "Fujicron" XF35/2.0 that winter, even though it is not the same at all.  I have the matching trio of 23mm's, too: The original f1.4, the Fujicron f2, and weather-sealed neo-1.4.  I've been in a slump with photography for a few months. Just not many changes of scenery, or traveling to familiar places, or feeling in a small rut. I did a little retail...

Civil War

People really want there to be some sort of ideological angle they can tease out of it, and some reviewers get irritated that it "won't take sides" or something like that. It would have been less effective if it had given into that impulse. Those same people would probably tell me it ended up being less effective by going about things the way it does.  Which, well, I went to see the movie Alex Garland wanted to show me, I think I saw that movie, and I think it did what he wanted. He  did not seem to want to tee...

Five Tracks for a 5k

Heading into the final weeks of the C25k plan, getting the music dialed in has helped. Nothing too uptempo. This initial list is working pretty well: 1. I Have Seen (Zero 7) 2. Eminence Front (The Who) 3. Stoner Girl (Machine Love) 4. Futterman's Rule (Beastie Boys) 5. Push th' Little Daisies (Ween) Other stuff from the list in case something doesn't land right: • We Tryin' to Stay Alive (Wyclef Jean) • Vicious Battle Raps (Abdominal) • Nail It Down (Meat Puppets) • Baba O'Riley (The Who) • Metronomic Underground (Stereolab) • Dry the Rain (Beta Band, bonus) It makes...

What's working class?

If someone pays you a wage—if you sell your time for money—you're working class. Applications, in terms of my taxonomy of peeves: • The idea of "elites" as "people who live on the coast and have college degrees." That is the word "elite" doing some work to describe assorted socioeconomic resentments. If you have a four-year degree and a boss, you are still working class.  • The idea that the Republican Party "understands the working class." That is the phrase "working class" being used to describe a particular demographic within the working class, and poorly at that. What the Republican Party...

Finished a Dune re-read

Dune 2 caused me to go back and re-read the novel. I don’t know how many times this is. Well north of a dozen. Maybe north of two dozen.  It’s one of those things I like to go back to now and then because it left such a big impression on seventh grade me that each re-read is a chance to see what comes up this time. Things that  seemed very profound  seem less so, and things I had no way of understanding jump out at me.  It’s been fashionable to trash-talk the book, and that’s fine. Most of the time...