last week | last month | last year | all entries
Camera roadmap:
X-T3 is great. Upgrade to the next X-Pro when available. GFX tilt-shift lens is incredible. Would seriously transform my photos of buildings. GFX-50R ii, hopefully. ** 13:03 Internet history is becoming more and more difficult to track -- how do we archive all of those TikToks? Connect the links? I'm sure everyone's said the same about Facebook and Instagram, but - distressed. ** 14:39 hey
How do I prevent this from happening?
Is it better to use an abstraction like 'xstate' and rely on a state machine abstraction than to make it explicit? ** 14:47 I don't have a strong enough foundation to build a WebGPU UI framework thing. I barely even know what I want from a UI framework.
First: I have to continue building my personal website and add more primitives, more abstractions, logic for transitions. Get comfortable with my own workflow.
Build a couple of applications with Next.js or other 'state of the art tools'. Not splash pages or toys. Professional-looking applications.
Try building a mobile app or some sort of mobile interface for one of those abstractions.
Learn from using those multiple paradigms. Try to figure out what could be better. Try out those Rust Web UI experiments and whatever Swift is doing.
Only after doing these things will I be prepared to revisit all of that graphics rendering stuff!!!!!!!!! ** 16:20 I love Figma. Blown away by how responsive it is every time I use it. Can't wait for the experience to get closer to code.
Feels like user interface style systems should be redesigned 'figma-first'. Flexbox - and similar responsive systems - are great, sure, but we can add those retroactively. 'Convert to responsive component' or something atop of the mockup. So much of this mockup - any mockup - could be trivially converted to code if we had the right system, but this is only possible if the UI framework is tightly coupled to the design tool.
I want this to be real. ** 20:37 The Apple keyboard feels so shallow compared to my other devices; the huge amount of resistance that the X-T3 puts in front of my fingers makes these keys so touchy by comparison, with so little travel... being human is about getting used to our tools so quickly. Joel was shocked that I had a Swedish keyboard - but for me to adjust to it took no time at all.
Let's talk about camera gear.
I can tell that the Fuji's sensor is better - or that, at least, it injects some magic into the colors of each photo - and that's helped shape my style and take good photos.
However: those buttons are painful to press. It's genuinely difficult to change exposure compensation without reassigning a dial, and settings can't be quickly flicked into place; it's either one click at a time or a rough, forced transition for a very different setting. This is not the camera for fast photos.
I know the Ricoh wins, but let's break it down - I want a camera that:
Today it became so obvious how obtrusive the Fuji is - I have to keep it on the end of its 'leash' - camera strap - to guarantee that the image is stable, given no IBIS; the camera's a bit heavy to hold one-handed - tires my arm just enough to want a second hand sometimes - but that isn't much of a problem. Everyone around me reacted to me holding a camera; looked my way, gave me a weird look, tried to hide a bit, posed a little bit... maybe it's just imagined but the Fuji provoked a different reaction. This bus driver stared at me for ten minutes as I took photos around Slussen - and she wasn't even in the photos! I kept having to change settings and miss shots, too... bring the hand up to the camera or the camera down to the hand, make adjustment, repeat. Not a fun process.
Poor shot - experimenting with low shutter speed in Odenplan. Being afraid of taking a photo of someone close to me. Have imperfect results saved. ** 15:06 Employee at by:fiket - a bit of a goofy, outgoing character - awesome person - asked me how he could improve on making the mocha as I was leaving.
What an awesome idea - I'm so glad. I wish I had had more advice for him. ** 21:35 Photo learnings today:
In conversation, you have to control your thoughts and your pace prematurely. Take it slow. Think about it a little bit. Then slowly let the words out, word by word, carefully choosing the framework beforehand and filling in the gaps. ** 21:44 Also thinking about the best hobbies for learning how to learn. Photos are a perfect example. Barrier to entry is zero: literally walk outside and click a button. Barrier for feedback: super low. Post a photo on Instagram or send to someone else and ask their opinion. Community of practice: huge. Bad community of practice: huge. Really good people in modern day - a lot of them. Lots to aspire to do, can feel the huge gap, can clearly quantify getting better.
The tighter the feedback loop on your thinking can be, the faster you can learn and the better you can make things.
Gym takes a few weeks - I'd say two - to pay off positively with mood benefits. Eating takes a few days but is hard to directly establish the association. Photos are instant gratification: you see the image in the monitor and you think you win. ** 21:47 Thinking about what Fuji guy (sorry your name is in my phone but not on my computer) told me about composing on his camera - he just uses the black and white filter on the camera and uses the color RAW files. Intention is to focus on the composition in the camera then shift to considering the colors in post.
Is this good?
I think it would be a good exercise for learning. I'm not sure if it could help me make the best images possible. Color is so important to consider in a final image.
Should I force myself to shoot black and white jpegs for a bit and see what happens?
Should I bring back the Fuji focal length and see what happens?
Yes to the second. No to the first. I love color too much to give it up, and I love photos too much to miss an image because of a decision I made. ** 22:01 Why am I doing something that so many people are?
Walking around and crossing my fingers for shots is starting to feel frivolous; what am I really documenting? What is really what I want to picture? Can I really compete in such a crowded market? Am I really expressing myself? Is this really helping me meet people? Is taking photos a good use of my time? ** 22:07 More websites. There aren't enough websites.
Love his advocacy for joining the community - getting closer to others, not just borrowing elements from it or observing it. If you appreciate a culture you should live in it. ** 10:26 Thinking that once a week is a good rate for taking photos. ** 10:38 If I want to live more local, maybe I should use bandcamp instead then.
I appreciate the people who lean into the competitive advantages of taking photos - the ability to perfectly document an environment. Marketing work can be replaced by graphic design, 3D modeling, AI - that'll become cheaper. Recording progress, process, individual documentation - that's what photos are good for. ** 11:46 Yeah, I think Ricoh GR iii X is for me - I don't think the lack of weather will ever be a problem - but I also think my budget's run out. ** 12:42 To learn from photos
** 14:14 Always provide help first, then ask why, not the other way around - especially if it's something that could (or should) be prioritized. Nobody likes no ** 22:28 Thinking about livestreaming my daily photo editing or review sessions. Is that a good idea?
Should I get the GR iii X too?................ ** 19:29 Too much NYC mythos. Nobody needs another NYC street photographer - not in that style. Watching these videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAKWwljJiIQ - a lot of the work feels like a copy of a copy of a copy - I don't understand where the work is coming from. He has some great photos - but not in this video. Maybe an unlucky day. The narrative about 'documenting life in the city' though doesn't feel like it adds up when there are so many people doing it?
Maybe what I'm doing is wrong too, directionless. I think it's more reflective of how I'm feeling than it is of others, or - at the least - more reflective of some theme I want to convey. What do I do it for? My instinct is to practice and keep practicing - it's not a hobby, really, it's a routine.
There are too many good photos - just like there are too many good songs and too many good websites and too many good graphic designers. (I don't think there are enough good websites or graphic designers though, really. Maybe video editors are a more apt comparison.). I don't think technology can make photos much better - we have tools today that expose the exposure latitude and dynamic range problems of previous tech generations. No camera from the last ten years has any limitations. Improvements are incremental - they decrease luck as a factor but make no fundamental changes in how things work.
There is room for different mediums that leverage the benefits of modern technology - we don't have a good camera for 'motion photos', to my knowledge, really - (or maybe I need to find one) - but it feels as if everything is trending towards video. Maybe photos are in the past. Every photo I see has been taken before; every idea has been thought of. There are new people but - as Chuck said in that essay - all of us live the same lives, really.
Maybe I should spend more time making websites then.
Okay - how am I different though?
Cool - what can I do differently?
I think reaching out is the best win I can get here. I do enough of the rest - I just need to meet people. Nothing's new. ** 21:02 Things to write about
How much time is healthy to dedicate to 'input'? Depends on the medium, I think - but I'm dialed in basically 16 hours a day. There's no way that my current attitude is healthy.
More often than not, when I see something on are.na that I like - I've already saved the thing to one of my channels and the person who saved it - why it showed up - follows me, meaning they likely found the thing from me to begin with. That has to be a sign to stop - or, at the least, slow pace.
I think I will shift my workout schedule to the morning. It feels 'active' - not like 'maintenance' - and the last two hours of my day should be spent cleaning and organizing. In a way, everything I do feels like organizing; the code, for example, already exists; I just need to arrange and compose it in a way that solved my problem.
Maybe my plants need watering. Maybe I can do that now.
I think I have to accept that creating mess during the day is okay, too - as long as it's taken care of by the end of the day (or the next morning). I deserve a fresh start.
Talk at work yesterday - "You have to have a plan for when you'll end, or you could just work forever". That's my problem - I don't define time or space for me to do particular things, so I don't do much of anything and none of my time is reserved for me to accomplish anything in particular.
This is part of my effort to aggressively calendar retroactively - to visualize time spent is to take control of it. ** 10:51
Coney Island -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xw68q0jipg -- maybe New York City is the center of the world -- or, at least, one of them. ** 12:30 I write more words at work than I code - if you count comments. I think this is the correct approach ** 12:48 Forgot how good the Framework feels. The Macbook is robust - engineered- a beautiful artifact, a design machine, complete for people to use.
My Framework - with two years of NixOS, a light metal frame, and a few dents under its belt - is charming by comparison. It's a machine built for hacking, that begs to be remade and recrafted and redone over and over again, for debugging and hacking all sorts of beautiful system utiliteis and projects. The machine encourages you to remake it, transform it. It can do anything - you just have to make it happen and write the code to do it. ** 16:05 How do I format these notes as 500 word essays?
Wondering how I can make a system to help myself do the same ** 17:06 Loving the way the ilcaffe lights shake and move a bit when someone leaves their seat in the back - a trace of them is left in their place, swaying, lingering, for fifteen or so minutes afterwards. ** 21:04 I missed two really awesome photos today. One - woman in party gear looking down at Slussen. Two - woman immaculately dressed, looking very professional, flipping beer can above her head 180 degrees and pouring into her mouth alone - through the subway system window in Odenplan.
First one I was too scared to take - I was worried about being confrontational. I would not have been.
Second one - just didn't have the camera ready. I was too overwhelmed by the process of getting off the train to make myself alert.
Now Im writing from [[Doom Emacs]] installed in termux on Android! Not got org-roam set up yet though, so cant create links properly. Bit of a downside of org-mode/org-roam to be honest, for digital gardens, that you cant just use straight wikilinks.
Listened: [[W. Brian Arthur (Part 1) on The History of Complexity Economics]]
Listened: [[What happens to your waste? with Oliver Franklin-Wallis]]
What is [[ecosocialism]]? The combination of socialist politics and environmental politics. It advocates for policies and programmes that promote planetary stability, social equity and agency and democracy.
Listened: [[Working Class Voices: Season Two with Emma River Roberts]]
[[The Nature of Technology]]. Mentioned in the podcast with W. Brian Arthur on complexity economics. Its a book of his. The combination of elements thing sounds not dissimilar to what Gordon Brander talks about in recent posts. (Concept design, [[Fragments: vertebrate technology]])
Looking through the transcript of [[Kohei Saito on Degrowth Communism]]. [[Marx's theory of metabolism]].
Reading about [[system dynamics]] and the differences between the qualitative and quantitative approaches to it.
I'm using the RSS feed of changes to my digital garden (via Agora) as a very simple gardening tool (that is, something for improving the notes in my garden).
Wheee I'm currently editing my journal from vim in termux on my phone. Synced here via syncthing. Not sure how much I'll need to be doing this but good to know that I can.
though I haven't learned enough ** 11:16 Take more photos --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iESIfSrt_dU ** 13:34 Why did she give me two kanelbulle? ** 13:35 Maybe because they aren't very good today. ** 16:22 "If the best thing a photo has going for it is that it is technically difficult to get... it's like a musician showing off their chops, playing really fast, but maybe it's not very musical and not very soulful. A lot of photography now, taking single images trying to impress people who make single images .. " - Aaron Berger
What happened?
Should I have taken the photo?
I should stop telling myself - atthe least - that I can always go back. It's a lie! ** 22:52 Learning that the Ricoh is a tool in a different way - the ability for a camera to go unnoticed in a tool in and of itself. Sure, I miss some photos I would have gotten if I had a zoom lens or had swapped lenses on the fly - but that would have drawn attention and tampered with the scene, something that a Ricoh gets away with like no other camera can.
Would I rather tamper with scenes if I had that power? Hell yeah. ** 22:58 Taking photos for me will always be about getting outside and spending time with people ** 23:01 Why does nobody making these YouTube videos where they take photos spend time critiquing their images? That's the interesting part - getting better and better and better every day. Learning deliberately from your photos. Learning to speak about your work. Learning to get better.
I think that sentence may have been duplicated.
This idea is reminiscent of Stephen Wolfram's laptop setup - propped up at his waist, ready to type, at all times.
The way that this device inconveniences you is a constant reminder that you /want/ to accept this inconvenience - that you're making a sacrifice every minute of the day to do what you love - and other people can see it; they can at least observe the mission you're going on.
This reminds me of going on a walk with a problem held in your head; with carrying a burden or task and idea that you're obsessed with, can't stop thinking about until you find an answer. ** 12:49 The only two ways I can ever imagine taking photos of people are:
Maybe 40mm is for people and 28mm is for things. ** 12:50 The clothes that I'm wearing today feel too generic.
This outfit is consistent but not distinctive - there is no focal point for someone to remember me by. Nothing I wear tells someone else what I'm interested in. There is no band tee or tracksuit or football jersey to talk to someone else about.
My camera's too discrete now to stand out.
That's a good thing; the Ricoh can replace my phone. ** 20:56 Thinking about ways to more deliberately improve my photos.
I wonder if I'm using the right camera or the right focal length. I feel too wide in so many circumstances. The 28mm is just right for home life, for shooting indoors, for recording life day-to-day, but for walking outdoors - and expecting to find great photos - it's quite hard to use. Maybe the GR3x would be a better fit for me; maybe that camera would get me the depth of field I want from a friend in a cafe.
I'm not sure. I think the ability to easily and unobtrusively make more and more and more photos with a camera in the pocket is brilliant. I think having a large sensor with a high resolution is good. I think carrying a camera everywhere I go without any effort - and without showing others - is so powerful. A camera smaller than a phone is a beautiful tool.
How do I set practices to get better?
I can:
I noticed that the Magnum photographers take tons of shots of a particular scene - 50, 100, in a location - rather than moving on. I need to learn to stay in places longer. I'm out to take good photos. I'm not in a rush to the next location.
I like the idea of talking through and presenting my ideas to others. Is there a way to workshop photos with other people to improve deliberately? Try to find someone else to talk through photos with.
The curved lines of the Ricoh - and the way they show up in-camera - isn't fun.
On the bright side - I love the way my images of the Stockholm Library around the corner turned out. Wondering how possible it is to make more, similar photos.
Likewise - the hostel sign, the images inside my apartment, the subway system, the office - all photos that this camera was able to handle extremely well. This focal length is indoors and intimate.
Also - particularly in Stockholm - the focal length allows me to capture the entire facade of a building opposite me on the street and still have room for some action in the foreground. I didn't anticipate this. It's a useful tool I'll have to keep using as I wander around.
This was all basically what I expected when I purchased the camera; I shouldn't be surprised that it wasn't able to capture some of the tricky frames - like the woman through the white window on the green background - as well as I really wanted to. Maybe I have learned a bit about taking photos. I'm just not sure that it's best suited for my street photography work a lot of the time. I'll keep pushing it for the rest of this week - at the office, after work, and so on - and we'll see how it goes.
Decision: I am keeping the camera.
Will I use it daily?
I'm not sure yet.
I'll still try to take the Fuji out on weekends and longer trips. This isn't a replacement for those circumstances. We'll think about the GR III x though... ** 21:28 I like being able to pick games I don't want to play; to say one vector is good enough and investigate others. No subject is simple, but some subjects interest me less than others. It's okay to follow internet rabbit holes. Abandon the leaves that lead in the wrong directions. ** 22:30 Daily reminder that cooking is a gift, a privilege, and you have more of the best ingredients in the world - more than any other person has had available here at this point in history - down the street. Learning to cook is learning to love a process. ** 22:34 Instinctively I want to hate that I don't have the time to be good at everything in the world, but I love that I can fill in all of the gaps that friends and people I meet can't.
I just have to get as good at what I can now and meet those people when I can't. ** 23:23 I guess I just need to do more work.
Listened: [[Kohei Saito on Degrowth Communism]]
Some good [[right to repair]] news lately. What with the Californian repair bill passing state legislature. And the EU ecodesign requirements on smartphones and tablets.
And also: [[STATEMENT: Google announces 10 years of tech support for Chromebooks]]
Not all good though: [[Google wonβt repair cracked Pixel Watch screens]]
BLISS brand by uln ** 20:00 What in America isn't overdone, overperscribed, overused? ** 20:19 My phone is taking away from human interaction.
There are two things I use it for daily --
Both should be replaced with physical cards. ** 20:30 Why do camera companies feel like traditional tech companies - hype cycle, product nobody needs, release every year, repeat - rather than companies that focus on making tools, like Muji?
Ricoh is the company I've found that cuts closest to this.
Is Leica like this? Leica is inaccessible to anyone, so that's kind of irrelevant. Why would I buy a Leica when I can get a medium format Fuji?
Every other company feeds into the hype cycle. I wonder how expensive making a camera actually is.
I'll use the busyness of life of late to shift the reclaim roundups to the end of the month that's in their name, rather than the start. So - I've got until end of September for [[Reclaiming the stacks: September 2023 roundup]].
Maybe eventually I'll just stop making it a monthly thing. I like the format of [[Gordon Brander]]'s Substack, which doesn't seem to have a defined schedule. He just seems to build on previous ideas each time, not in any necessarily structured way, but it's always fascinating.
I think for me it makes sense to have some structure and defined rhythm while I'm finding my feet. But as it matures maybe I'll improvise a bit more.
[[Datasette]] might be a good thing for documenting the initiatives in [[reclaiming the stacks]]. I'd heard about it before but never really understood what it does until reading [[The Magic of Small Databases]]. What I quite like about [[Anytype]] though is not needing to explicitly build a DB.
Read: [[California Lawmakers Unanimously Pass Right to Repair Legislation]]
Read: [[New EU Rules: Smartphones and Tablets will follow new ecodesign requirements by June 2025!]]
Maybe I should go take photos outside.
Make as much public work as you can in your free time to compensate. Don't share the same knowledge - that's a breach of contract - but leverage the same skills. Learn and do better. Improve what you do inside and outside of work with your free time. Work more and more and more when it's dark out. ** 17:35 Haters will tell you to avoid looking at the world's best work and comparing yourself to it. How will you ever get there if you can't understand the gap between your skills and theirs? Dive into the work of people who are the best in their fields. Understand what makes them tick. Pick another lane and do better.
I take back what I said about [[Subconscious]] being completely absent of politics - there is a nod towards them by Gordon in [[Tools for thought: the first 300,000 years]]:
Read: [[Decentralized and rooted in care: envisioning the digital infrastructures of the future]].
[[The Magic of Small Databases]] is interesting to me from the perspective of sharing my catalogue of initiatives for [[Reclaim the stacks]].
[[Digital technologies are an important part of movement infrastructure]]
The qualitative system dynamics model used in [[A leverage points analysis of a qualitative system dynamics model for climate change adaptation in agriculture]] was built using a triangulation process from individual models. I'll read more about that, seems kind of what I'm trying to do in [[Reclaim the stacks]].
Read: [[The Magic of Small Databases]]
[[Subconscious Beta]].
And I haven't come across anything from Noosphere that suggests it has any politics of any kind. The beta announcement is signed off with "Letβs 10x humanityβs collective intelligence", which, absent of any political direction, is kind of problematic to me.
Swinging back to blogs and RSS feeds over Mastodon. The stream of info on microblogging sites is too much for me, and the signal-to-noise ratio is too weak.
Reading: [[The environmental impact of a PlayStation 4]]
git commit -m <prompt>
would be so powerful. I really want AI to write my commit messages for me.i love key glock
i been getting bag after bag after bag yuh ** 21:54 MacOS auto-update practices - in that most apps will prompt you to update or update in the background - have felt far more smooth than NixOS, where some apps just 'stop working', have security vulnerabilities, etc. because there is no path that allows users to push updates. The centralized management of the nixpkgs ecosystem is nice in some ways - I'm glad someone is managing security in a centralized way - but in some sense that's the responsibility of the computer. We need systems to be reproducible, too.
A [[qualitative system dynamics model]] focuses on the structure of a system and the qualitative relation between system components.
[[Gordon Brander]] quotes [[Donella Meadows]] from [[Thinking in Systems]] a lot in his latest newsletter. ([[Fragments: vertebrate technology]] - on components, modularity, and [[hierarchy]]).
Undoubtedly a major figure in systems thinking, but [[Robert Biel]] relates that Meadows had somewhat dubious / liberal-minded political views on some things, to which she applied systems thinking.
i want to warp a photo like im shaking a camera out to dry ** 19:43 80-20: Every day of mine is eight hours of software development work, two hours of photo.
To create my own worlds - to film to tell stories, not to document; to animate and model and make motion - is strange to me. I take photos to document, to preserve specific motions and memories and cool buildings and awesome people, to preserve a feeling.
User interfaces are different. I'll always want to make things that other people use, and crafting motions, experiences for others is invaluable.
Great stories are moving, but mine should be told through a lens of what I'm doing every day.
It's Sunday. There's work to do. I'll make it happen. Maybe I'll see the Stadmuseet too. The English translation is strange: 'Stockholm City Museum' because a 'Stad' is a state more generally.
As I sit here with my laptop (with [[vim]]) and no internet connection, I realize that I don't write here longform as much as I could. I guess the availability of the internet does make it easier for me to get distracted, which granted I see sometimes as a positive (it motivates a form of exploration), but might not be conducive to practicing the skill of writing coherently and consistently for more than a few bullet points in each journal.
The thought of writing in my blog again (meaning https://flancia.org/mine) has come up a few times recently. I'm unsure; I like the process of writing in my garden, and how everything I write in it automatically shows up in the Agora moments later (at least when I have an internet connection). So maybe what I want is to embrace this space as a blog, and just try to write longer form alongside with my mainly outline-style notes, like other Agora users already do so beautifully.
I am also wondering where I'll ever find the money for that medium-format Fuji camera. Oh well...