Is this the next Flickr?

6FPS V4#3 - Photography and More
A Newsletter by Chuq Von Rospach
March 14, 2022

 

Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

Since last we spoke, the pellet stove in the great room has been installed and works great; it means a lot less load on the furnace, plus we get to look at a nice fire. The stove downstairs with the offices ran into a glitch when a part they thought was on-site wasn’t, and was, of course, on backorder. As soon as they can wrangle one, they’ll be back for the final stove and that project will be done. We have finished the electrical work, which ended up running about $8K, but involved replacing all the old smoke detectors and adding in four new ones (which brings the house up to modern code), rewiring the shop, adding in new security doorbells and four cameras, the 220 wiring, and replacing 15 light fixtures in the garage and two more in the house. A bunch of little tweaks that all add up to some nice improvements.

I also spent a couple of hours this week walking the property with the owner of our landscaper team, looking at some of the winter damage and talking over some spring projects. The tree that came down outside my office turns out to be an alder, not a birch, and he considers alders a trash tree, and in inspecting the woods, we identified 5-6 more that need to be removed, and a badly damaged Madrone. I’m going to keep the wood from that and at some point do something with it.

Alder, interestingly enough, is a wood some first nation tribes (like the Nis’gaa) carve instead of cedar, but the wood in these trees isn’t suitable, and to be honest, cedar wood is often temperamental, but alder wood is more like cedar after three triple espressos…

We’ve also decided to rip out the roses out front and there are three beds we’re going to clear out and replant over the next couple of months, moving out some plants that are tired or not doing well in favor of some things yet to be decided on but will definitely include a few more Rhodedendrons. The roses, which I absolutely love, are a maintenance bear (black spot and mildew), and to me feel too “formal garden” for a property we realy want to avoid looking manicured and want to feel more natural. So fewer roses, more native grasses and rhodies. I do want to add in some more flowering things and berry creating things for the look and the birds, but it’s always going to look, I hope, like we carved the house out of the woods but are living in them, not replacing them.

We also have plans for Laurie’s veggie area, with planting starting in late April. After I fix the rabbit fence the storm damaged.

Interesting to me is that we’ve never seen deer on the property. That may be because we do see coyotes wandering through about once a week or so.

Other than this, we’re not starting any new projects for a while, and my focus is making the shop functional and getting my photo area in the garage up

Oh and with the better weather, we’re back on getting the last of the books and hockey materials into the house and unpacked; when things were wet, I didn’t want to risk moving stuff and getting it damp. So over the weekend I moved 8 boxes into the upstairs for unpacking (mostly cookbooks), and 14 boxes downstairs (mostly hockey). There are still 15 boxes to go upstairs, another 12 boxes of hockey, and three of my stuff I need to go through. That’s lots of books, and some of them are likely going to end up back in boxes and either in storage or off to Powell’s sooner or later.

If that seems like a lot of books, well, yeah. Our hockey collection is over 450 titles, plus Laurie has collected enough historical program books and other paper items to fill up two large vertical files (27 linear feet of paper when I measured it), and her cookbook collection is over 400 titles as well. Some of the pieces in both collections go back into the 1940s and earlier, too, and Laurie has plans on research using this stuff once we get it organized that I’m looking forward to seeing happen.

The New Shop

The new shop is taking shape. We’ve rewired and replaced the lighting, the stove works to take the edge off the cold, and I’m setting up gear. I ran into a bit of damage on the dust collector but Rockler quickly sent me a replacement, and the damaged unit is on a truck back to them on a return, and I couldn’t be happier how they handled it. I do have a probelm, in that I bought a 4” host to attach to the unit, and now I can’t freaking find it in the mess that is my shop. So it’s time to spend some time organizing again, I guess.

I’ve bought the table saw, and it’ll be here soon. I ended up unwilling to spend the money (almost $2K) for a SawStop, and went with a DeWalt contractor site saw (about $500) instead. I just don’t see my use of it being that significant for a while (if ever) to need the bigger setup, and while the safety aspects of the SawStop are worth having, at that price, I simply couldn’t talk myself into it.

I’ve bought a basic Rockler workbench, and I’m starting to put the machines together so I can fire them up and start using them. I’ll do photos once I’m further along.

The Home Office

I haven’t really shared a look at the new home office, although I’ve posted a few images on twitter here and there. The reason for that is simple: it’s taken me a while to organize it in a way I like. I’m on version 3 now, and I’m finally feeling like it works for me. Adding complication was that when my company was bought by DomainTools, DT’s policy is that work is done on a work-owned computer and work life and life life don’t mix, but distribution of those devices was delayed because, well, supply chain. This is now worked out and I’ve successfully gotten work off my personal laptop and onto the work one, and so life is happy here in the home office now…

Two monitors, the one on the left life, the one on the right work. two sets of keyboards and trackpads. No KVM, because I actually use both simultaineously which makes it easier to separate the two functions…

And, of course, a picture of what I see when I look out the window (yes, we lost a birch tree in the winter storms, and I haven’t wrangled breaking it down yet. there’s always the next project staring you in teh face…)

I’ll write up the new office in more detail soon.

The Other Home Office

I should note that out in the garage I’ve started building out a work space as well. My old Mac Mini has been promoted from being a plex server to being the future center of my project design, so it now lives in the garage, where I’ve placed a basic desk and a work table. This area is where I”ll be setting up a tabletop studio for my photography, and ultimately, using the computer to design things I build in the shop.

One reality I had in the old Santa Clara shop was that my garage was too small for a decent shop area, and my office was too small for doing tabletop photography, because I would always have to move a bunch of stuff around to set up, and break it back down to do my real job again, and so I never did. Now, I have places for both where I can leave it all set up — once I have it set up.

Birding

I’ve gotten out birding a few times, and added some more year and county birds to the list, but still haven’t been doing a lot; I’ve wanted to try to close out some of these projects and get them out of the way. I did see my first Canada Goose of the year, which at leasts gets that out of the way…

Photography

And then, cameras. I to be honest didn’t turn one on for a number of weeks, and when I’ve been birding, haven’t taken it with. A lot of that is because I just haven’t had a lot of time to go out and explore, and the weather hasn’t always cooperated. I am about at the point where I won’t feel guilty not working on the shop for a couple of weeks, and that’s when I’ll pack a bag and go out and find some places to explore. I have built a list of places to visit, just to start learning this area a little.

I will admit in the last week or so, I’ve started missing carrying the camera around, and I expect I will start doing so again before next issue.

Spring is Springing

Days are growing longer quickly, and the outside gets light before the alarm goes off now, which makes me happy. I’ve been doing a lot of work organizing the garage and shop now that I have electricity and decent lighting, and set up a mini-office in there, and the Mac Mini moved from my main office up so I have something I can work on photography and project design on once those fire up out there.

The March Apple Announcements

Apple had it’s March announcements, including new colors for the iPhone, a new iPhone SE, their new Mac Studio desktop (replacing the 27” iMac and iMac pro), with the new oh-my-god M1-Ultra chip…

A thought I had on the M1-ultra: they said it has 14 BILLION transistors on it. And I was thinking that when I worked for National Semiconductor on the NS32xxx series of chips, I don't think National Semiconductor manufactured 14 billion transistors across every part in a single year. The technology change in hardware we're seeing now is crazy, but... when you look at it across a few decades, it really is incomprehensible. When I was at Sun and helping bring the first Sparc (sun-4) computers to market, and I was sitting in on road maps for the Sparc chip, they were talking about ways to ramp up speeds via Gallium Arsenide and other super toxic setups, but in fact, process improvements and die shrinkage blew away that thinking, and now, here we are. the current hardware just stuns me how much they're doing with it.

But looking at what was announced, I’m buying a new iPad, since my 2020 iPad has a scratch on it that’s really minor but annoying enough any time I use it to warrant replacing it, and I have a use for the old one as a Wifi only device where the scratch won’t matter. And while part of me is amused I’m spending notably more money on a monitor than I will on the iPad, the new studio monitor ticks a lot of boxes for me, so I’ve already ordered one — with a Vesa mount and the non-texture. It will replace my really nice BenQ monitor, which will move to the garage office, and I’m looking forward to seeing how I like it while working in Lightroom and Photoshop.

And that got me started, and I’ve been having problems with my earpods pros squeaking and clicking — this is my second pair, and second set of squeals. To be honest, I’ve never loved the fit, and so I decided to retire them and I also ended up buying a set of Airpods Max, so I’ll have those on my work desk, and I’ll move my Bose QC32II’s upstairs to use when I’m listening to things instead of watching the TV.

I wonder how quickly I’ll decide I want a second pair of the Max for upstairs…

New Wallpapers!

I’ve released a new set of wallpapers for you to enjoy. See the end of the newsletter for a look at the images and the download link.

I want to note I’ve had a couple of requests for wallpapers suitable for use on a phone; this is on my To Do list but I haven’t yet wrangled the details. One of these days it’ll happen.

My 2021 Photo chapbook is out!

After waiting so long to get 2020.1 out for my chapbook of images from 2020, I decided to dig into doing the same for 2021 early, and I’m happy to say that 2021.1 is out now, also.

It is a compilation of the images I took in 2021 that I liked; 2021 was a year of transitions and my photography was at times sporadic, but I have 66 pages of images, covering the last of my time in California and the first few months of living here in Washington.

The chapbooks don’t have an over-riding theme, but document what I did during a given year. I’ve been doing them since 2019 as a way to have a printed, permanent record of my images I can browse through. I print those books for myself via Blurb, and then create the e-books to share with everyone. It’s available in PDF, ePub and Mobi format as you prefer.

6FPS Archives

I should note I have finally finished moving the early issues of 6FPS off of Mailchimp onto my Squarespace site. As part of the move I decided to remove a few bits (contact links, etc) since that’s all changed over time and it didn’t make sense to “fix” it, but all of the written and image content is there. There are still many broken links since those issues were released before my move from chuqui.com to chuq.me, and I have to sort all of that out, but the archives are now self-hosted if you want to go look at them.

And with that, see you next issue!

What's New from Chuq?

Is this the next Flickr?

If you are, like me, someone who wants nothing to do with anything Facebook (um, Meta) touches, and so don’t have an account on or use Instagram, or have been online for a long time and miss the days when Flickr was young and vibrant, there’s an interesting new site out there called Glass. A good introduction to it can be found on the PhotoActive podcast:

PhotoActive Podcast #111: The Glass App(roach) to Photography

The early versions were iPhone only, but now an iPad app is out, and web-based access is coming soon. The design of the app impresses me, it’s very simple and clean. The developers are consciously trying to avoid the “engagement trap” that Instagram has become where people too desperately chase likes instead of quality.

It feels a lot like the early days of Flickr, before Yahoo went chasing social and engagement and then neglected it almost to death. And while I think SmugMug has done a lot of good work revitalizing Flickr, I haven’t been using it because my setup is pretty stable and I didn’t see a good use for it in my current setup. I might, someday, shift my galleries over there again, but for now, I’m happy not adding that to the To Do list.

Glass is designed around the idea of sharing, but not as a way to generate likes or become viral or whatever the latest fad is. One thing I really like about it is that it’s not free — it’ll cost you $30US a year to use, but the idea is that allows Glass to not go down the path of advertising, which leads to trying to weld your eyeballs to the site, which leads to designing for engagement, which leads to… Instagram.

I gave Glass my money and I’ve been puttering around with it a bit. I like its recommendation engine and discovery modes — they have defined a few key topic areas, and you can tag your photos with those — almost all of mine, of course, get tagged “animal” and “nature” for some reason.

I’m not sure what this app will turn into, but I do want to support them and help them figure it out. I’m impressed with their start and I’m happy to toss them some money to help figure out the future, and suggest you take a look and perhaps stop by and say hi over there. You can find me at https://glass.photo/chuqui. and we can watch together as this new system grows and matures.

Photo Wednesday/Feathery Friday

These are the images I posted since last issue to the blog for Photo Wednesday and Feathery Friday. To see all of these images at full size and read the stories behind their creation, you can visit:

For Your Consideration

Photography

Birds and Birding

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

Recommendations

This month, a couple of things for makers or those considering making things:

If you want to know why I’m building out a woodshop out in the garage, you can thank (or blame) these two YouTube channels. Adam Savage, of Mythbuster’s fame, and his team, are all about making and the process of creating. Adam does a lot of content showing how he makes things, with his one day builds, but also talks about the philosophy and emotion of being a maker, and he really humanizes and brings home the detail level of making stuff, mistakes and flaws included.

I can’t even think of how I first ran into Frank Howarth’s channel (probably a YouTube recommendation), but he is a very serious woodworker and wood turner with a large shop and a big C&C machine, but his videos are interesting and educational, and it was starting to watch his work that got me thinking it’d be fun to finally, after decades away, having a lathe in the shop. But to do that, I’d of course have to have a shop, and in Santa Clara, the garage simply wasn’t big enough. Up here in Washington, though?

So yeah, I’m building out a shop, thanks to these two getting the spark lit again.

See you soon!

And with that, I'll see you in the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along. Until then, take care, and have fun.  

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqvr@gmail.com).

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find.

Some links in this newsletter may point to products at Amazon; these are affiliate links and if you use them to buy a product, I get a small cut of the sale. This doesn't make me rich, but it does help pay my web site bills. If you use the link to buy something, thank you. If you prefer not to, that's perfectly okay, also.

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