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Kill Your Inner Sorkin

This evening I went through and unsubscribed, un-boomarked, or otherwise dropped out of a bunch of political fora, subs, newsletters, etc. I felt the usual "good, college-educated liberal" twinge about doing it that I feel whenever I deliberately unplug from information sources. For years I thought I was someone who "was really into politics." I kept up on the polls, got excited about  primaries, watched every debate, watched convention coverage, etc. etc. That was what was modeled to me as a kid. I remember being really sick during the 1980 Democratic convention and mom making a pallet on the living room...

Cabin in the Snow

I was in Fred Meyer tonight for camping groceries, and passed by the wine section. I idly wondered if they had any sake at all, so I poked around until I found their small selection. I found a few things I can find other places, but they also had several bottles of Yuki No Bosha from Saiya Shuzoten, which is my favorite sushi night sake. That was a nice thing to find at a plain old grocery store:  The only other place I've found it so far,  besides Shoko Sushi,  is a dealer. It was one of two consolation prizes for...

July is not December

So, I ordered an X100VI from B&H on the third or fourth day of general availability, back in February. Last week I got a friendly note saying "you'll probably be waiting until December 31st for that." So I stewed a little, then Luke suggested maybe I could just order from a local dealer and at least let them earn the interest on my delayed gratification. I pinged a local dealer and a friendly sales person told me their wait list was around ten people, but that Fujifilm hasn't been super consistent or communicative.  I went ahead and ordered. Last night I...

... are the pictures we took along the way

I have no idea if Fujifilm is a "say anything as long as it is not next year" kind of company, or a "surprise and delight" company, so who knows what "December 31st" really means? I think it could be like in the Bible where "40"  stands in for "a long period of time" (or in tech, where "maybe in Q4" stands in for "lol.")  There's a number I can call to cancel my order. I think I might call it. I am feeling a level of philosophical resistance to caring about this object. 

First roll through an Olympus OM-2N

... and my first roll of film in a very long time, for that matter. Since the year before Ben was born and I was shooting with a Minolta Maxxum of some sort: I took it to Yellowstone, liked it fine, but a friend of mine took a Canon PowerShot G2 along on the same trip, so I hid my envy until about a month before Ben was born and went for a G3, and that was the end of my film era — December, 2003. (I guess, to get all the dates in there, it was the second end of...

The film aesthetic ouroboros

So, I got Al that X-700 for our anniversary. We didn't have to go to the camera store right away because I had a roll of Kodak Gold 200 sitting around, so we loaded that up before our first outing. We ended that trip at a local photo developer so she could drop off that first roll. The guy behind the counter asked us if we wanted to buy more film and we said sure, so out came a photo album with samples of all the film stock they have in inventory. He started flipping through, explaining each stock's interesting...

"... just a scratchy throat. A nap will fix it."

That was me on Tuesday, finding it a little hard to get through a lot of meetings. By the end of the day I knew work would be impossible. I didn't sleep Tuesday night because I was up coughing, then the chills started around four in the morning. So Al took me to the local prompt-care, and I tested positive for COVID.  They prescribed a course of Paxlovid and sent me on my way. In terms of all-time adult illnesses, the only thing that has possibly outdone the past four days was a bout of campylobacter I got from a sketchy...

Reala Ace on the X-T5

I installed the latest X-T5 firmware update, which includes the new Reala Ace film simulation. From what I've read Reala is more or less Provia, just a little less saturated, and with softer tones than Classic Chrome. Or maybe "Pro Neg High" but with harder tones. I used Pro Neg High as my default simulation when I shot only raw to give me something that felt very neutral. Turns out Fujifilm thinks Pro Neg High is a few degrees softer and a few degrees less saturated than Provia, which it situates at the center of the tone and saturation spectrums. (There's...

The OM-1N

Well, this is the last of the "refactor your hobby" part of the spoils from the Q2 sale: An Olympus OM-1N in Excellent+ condition with an F.Zuiko 50mm/f1.8 lens. It hasn't had a mercury battery conversion done, but I've got an MR-9 adapter en route, so it is going to sit quietly on the shelf until that can get here. I was sort of bummed all the orders to get lens, camera, battery, and adapter didn't come together in time to take it out this past weekend with Al's first X-700 outing, because I might have been a better coach if...

30,000 steps and the M43 fever breaks

Yesterday Al and I sat out on a plan of getting her X-700 set up, grabbing brunch downtown, and putting 36 exposures of Kodak Gold 200 through her camera on  a walk up to Pro Photo Supply from downtown. We ended up doing that, then looped back down through downtown, along the waterfront and finally back to the car. At that point we probably had 25,000 steps. We stopped at Afuri Izakaya on the other side of the river then headed for home. The remaining 5,000 steps for the day came from Ben wandering in and wanting to take a walk,...

The other thing I've been curious about

Al and I went to a sushi restaurant a few weeks ago, and they were offering sake flights. Since they included a little bit of descriptive information it piqued my curiosity, so we got a flight. I don't have any real palate for wine, so I don't know what I was expecting. I guess I wasn't expecting anything. But I suppose this was the first time in my life I've ever bought a flight of anything that included a description of what to look for in each one. The amount of variation surprised me a little. The first two were hard...