4000!

As should be obvious, here I am at 4000 posts. Although there's 3 draft posts you haven't seen. One is copy and paste text for the Of the Day section. One is my half of a meet up story, and I'm still hoping to get the other half from the person involved. The last is a long text conversation about money that needs significant editing before publishing, and really, I've said it elsewhere, so it will probably never see the light of day. I'm also not counting the 60 some posts on my other blog. It is what it is.

At first I was thinking I'd wait till I published 3 more blog posts then do 4000 published, but then I thought, what the heck. I've got this one written and pretty well ready to go, and I've written the others as well, the fact they haven't been published makes no never mind for the writing effort. And who knows how long it would take to crank out the next 3, and by then I'd probably have to rewrite the whole thing. So here you go.

I'm beginning to wonder why I have two blogs. Or even one, really. I have a small, but apparently dedicated audience. I appreciate all my readers, even if almost none of them comment. Actually, I'm not even sure how many readers I have, since I don't trust the stats that Blogger gives me. I had a Google stats thingie installed for a while, and I never understood what it was telling me. Like so many other things, they updated it and my version stopped working. I never felt the need to upgrade to the new version.

The very first post was October 27, 2007, or a month shy of 17 years ago. I never imagined I'd still be blogging fairly regularly, especially since blogs are mostly a thing of the past now. Then again, in lots of ways, *I'm* a thing of the past. Much of my career was working with obsolete databases. I love using film cameras, which are the very definition of obsolete for most people. I don't like the new cars or cell phones. Autotune has ruined music, and I'm pretty sure there's a movie equivalent of autotune that has ruined movies. Geez, I sound like an old cranky-pants.

17 years have gone by very quickly. 6179 days as I write this, (which is now a couple days ago), or a blog every 1.544 days, on average. Though that's a bit deceptive, since I'm not blogging as often now as I used to. In fact, 2024 has produced the least blog posts so far. I could graph the output and show the downward trending curve, and predict when I wouldn't blog at all. I could, but won't. It might be too depressing.

Don't bother going back and reading from the beginning. The early blogs are about triathlon training. They were only of interest to a small group of people at the time. Now they are of no interest to anyone, including me, because we've all moved on to other aspects of of life. As far as I know, none of those people are involved in triathlon any more, and I don't think any of them are blogging. If any of them are still following my blog, or come across it by accident, I'd love to hear from you.

The first actual good blog post is here, with the first reference to my inner shark. I still think of myself as a swimmer, though I actually haven't swum laps since late May or so. Something about a cranky shoulder from pushing too hard and editing too many books, that pool closing for renovations, and going away for a month, and then water restrictions that closed the hot tubs at the pools. As an aside, I was actually in the Glenmore pool last week for some water running and the hot tub. Saw lots of refugees from Canyon Meadows.

In related news, as I was looking at something else, and thinking about what would be involved in setting up a darkroom in the basement, I discovered my wetsuit. It's hanging neatly on a padded hanger in a cool dark place. If you know a man about 6 feet tall who wants a wetsuit, put them in touch with me. I'm certainly never going to wear it in another race, and using it to go for an open water swim seems more and more unlikely.

There are several other milestone blog posts, each with links to other posts as seemed appropriate at the time.  1000. 1500. To my surprise there isn't a 2000 or 2500 or 3000, or any other milestone posts. I thought there was. Maybe there is, and the blogger search engine is lying to me.

The blog has a search field up in the top left corner. Search terms of rant, or Curtis, or career will give you lots of reading, if you should be so interested. Which reminds me, it's been almost 4 years since we had to say goodbye to Curtis. I still miss him. See the last photo below.

I guess the big thing since the last milestone post, however you want to define that, is books. My books. I talked about this just recently here, on my other blog, so you might have missed it. I think producing the books is fun. It's a great way to see your work in print. The only real downside is that it isn't a particularly good way to share your work. Someone would have to buy the book, and these are all really expensive books, so I'm not going to buy a bunch to store in my basement and try to sell. Then again they aren't intend for a mass market. They're for me. And friends that I meet up with that want to see them, like they did last night. That was a fun afternoon and evening in Canmore.

The next book is a bit of a puzzler. I have one book on the go now, but it's on a bit of a hold while I take the dark room course at SAIT. There might be a bit of a crossover there. At least some of the time now when carrying a camera around I'm thinking about how the photos I see might fit into a book. 

It's hard to believe, but I've now been actually retired for a little over 3 years now. You can read about that here. Some days I feel a bit adrift, in that I don't have places I MUST be, or have things that MUST be done. Other days I'm up and off for whatever is on the go. I suppose a balance is good, and being retired is being able to create that balance. At least that's the theory. Sometimes things still stack up for me, and I grumble that time was invented so that everything wouldn't happen at once.

So for instance. Today and this weekend, starting with last week I developed a roll of film at the darkroom course. It's a slightly different process than what I do, but the results are the same. I want to digitize it this weekend and select which to print next week. Which I did, and there's some frames selected. My thinking is that I can develop film at home, but I can't do the printing at home. So I'll take negatives to class, and just print my brains out.

I might zoom over this afternoon (Friday) to catch the volunteers setting up for the community garage sale. Which I didn't do, though I was over for the actual sale (Saturday). You can see my community event photos here.  

Then out to Canmore to have dinner with a dear friend I haven't seen for a while. She is in Canmore to do the Melissa's road race in Banff. Which she did, and put it all together for a wonderful run. We got out there a little early and had a nice stroll around downtown. I haven't been there in a long time. We had a lovely evening chatting. Well worth the time to drive out.

I'm just thinking, at a blog every day and a half, it's going to take another 4 years to pump out another 1,000 blogs to make the 5,000. I've no idea if that will happen. At my current production rate over the last few years, a 100 blogs a year or so, it'll take 10 years for that milestone. I don't know. Just now that seems pretty unlikely.

    

In the just because department, I thought I'd include all the edited photos with file number 4000, taken between 20180309 and 20230202. They've all been blogged before. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NL)

Film

Quidi Vidi.

Linda in the wheelhouse AirBnB, with the stairs up to the second level. 

Newfoundland

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did 

(A new feature, given the nearly 6,000 photos that I have not tagged as blogged. Which doesn't necessarily mean I haven't actually done it. Maybe I should offer a prize to anyone who can point to when a photo here was previously blogged.)

It seems fitting to start with a photo of Curtis. I'd thought I'd blogged all his photos, but maybe not.

And lastly, if you don't want to miss any future posts from either of the blogs, leave a comment asking to be added to the notifications email list. Or send an email to keith@nucleus.com.

Recent books

I go in spurts for reading. There's been a bit of one lately, which is a bit odd considering how nice it's been lately. Then again, I'm thinking I need some down time after the trip to Newfoundland. Yes, I know, it's been almost two months. 

I'm expecting a busy fall with the dark room courses, and a busy community association schedule, so maybe resting up a bit is a good thing.

On to the books.

The Sartorialist by Scot Schuman. Like so much else, I missed out on this when it was happening. That's me, always behind the times. Supposedly he started out with a blog, then descended to Instagram. I stopped looking at Instagram some time ago, so I'm not going to link to it. Somewhere along the line he put out some books, including these. They aren't big like most photo books, being 5 x 7.5" or so, but they're really thick. All the photos are at least competent, and some are really nice.

Keep in mind as I say this, that I have zero sense of personal style. Most days I wear ugly cargo pants and a T shirt. Then again, I'm retired and don't have to impress anyone. I've long since learned there's nothing as invisible as an older man. But there's no way I'd wear, out in public for people to see, some of the outfits these people are wearing.

The Americans by Robert Frank. This made quite a splash at the time, but I don't get it.

Are We There Yet by Peter Matthiessen. Ramblings about Zen and lineage. OK photos.

Humans by Brandon Stanton. Many nice photos, but most of the stories are sad. Eventually I stopped reading them, and just looked at the photos.

Read this if you want to take great photographs by Henry Carroll. A great book for beginners. A more accurate title would be changing great to good.

The Photography Exercise Book by Bert Krages. This is kind of an odd book in several ways. I suspect it was originally written before digital was really a thing, and poorly updated. The writing is kind of wooden, almost like a chat-bot. The so-called exercises are poorly thought out. Glad I didn't buy it.

 

The Art and Soul of Dune by Tanya Lapointe. A behind the scenes look at some of the conceptual art that went into making Dune. My relationship with Dune is pretty much meh. Sure I read the first book back in the day. I've no memory of reading the second one, and remember bits of the third. It all sort of fell off a cliff for me about then. The 1984 movie version was no worse than a lot of other 80's era movies. I had high hopes for the Denis Villeneuve version, and wasn't disappointed. However I haven't got around to watching part 2. I'd probably pick it up if I saw it in the library. I really liked Arrival, and I think I need to see Blade Runner 2049 again.  

Forever Wandering by Emilie Ristevski. This is a lovely, mostly travel photography book, but there's also some abstract images, some self-portraiture that is ever so much more than the hideous selfie look so often shown on instagram. I'd be really pleased if I could be taking photos this good.

Sci-fi Chronicles by Guy Haley. Being old school, I would pronounce that as "skiffy" but I get that the modern generations are infected with TLDR, and anything much over a paragraph qualifies. I digress. This is a fabulous reference book! It's a great way to dive into a series or book you like, and branch out into it's roots, versions in other media, and other related works.

Ross Penhall's Vancouver. I picked it up, thinking it might be interesting to see paintings of a place I'm a bit familiar with. He has a distinctive way of doing things that isn't quite my taste, but not far off. Some of the paintings are interesting photographic ideas. I'm pretty sure seeing the paintings in real life would be a much different experience. We've all seen Mona Lisa in print, and some may have been fortunate enough to see the real thing. I've seen a good copy by one of his students, and I was struck by the luminosity of the painting, which totally does not come across in books.

Storyteller The Art of Henry Vickers by Roy Henry Vickers. His artwork is his way of telling stories about his heritage. The prints are beautiful, but there's a sense of commercialism that is a bit off putting to me. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NL)

Film

A nice beach at the end of a 3K boardwalk, near Port Saunders. We had a nice glass of wine and enjoyed the sunset. There aren't a lot of sandy beaches in Newfoundland. There's a bit of a 70's vibe to the colour palette of this roll. I'm not sure if that's from the lab, or something I did with the white balance during the NLP processing.

Linda

I had this view of her. Often. This is on the road to the tip of Burnt Cape. I use the word road with a certain degree of scorn. ATV trail is a much better word for most of it.

Newfoundland

This boulder amuses me.

A flowery rainy Friday

Last one, and the flowery photos are done for the year. Unless more of them pop up in the next little while. Which would be a bit of a surprise, given the time of the year and that Linda is starting to tidy up and put the garden to bed for the winter.

It was a long dry summer with a broken water main and water usage restrictions. Now those are almost done and it's raining lots. We were drifting off to sleep last night and then the thunderstorm started. I was a bit tempted to get out of bed and see what photos were to be had. Then it passed, I rolled over, and mostly went to sleep. Or as much sleep as there is to be had. 

Today looks like rain all day, so I think I'll do indoor stuff today. Yeah, shocking, I know. There's wine bottles to clean and figure out how many kits to order for arrival next year. Photo gear to organize. Plans changed for a weekend photo session so I need to figure out the alternatives to find photos I can show to other people in the dark room class. Keep an eye out for a package that's supposed to arrive today. Some community association president stuff to do. This life of a retired person always busy.

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Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NL)

Film

This photo gives just a hint of why I did most of the waterfall photos in black and white. Much of the water was tinted orange from the iron oxides in the stone. Harmless, but looks gross in photos, and doubly so of there's foam or debris stained by long contact with the water.

Linda

Newfoundland

You will recall that one of my bucket list photos was waves crashing onto a craggy rocky shore. Well, this has the rocky shore, but it's flat. I was working the composition, trying to get the splash and the chunk of driftwood in focus. Except it was so flat I had to pay attention to how far the waves were coming up on shore. I didn't get my feet wet, but I had to scuttle back away from the water several times.