Flowery Friday 17

There's been lots of flower photos this year. I think it has something to do with the itch of wanting to take photos, but feeling kind of lazy about going anywhere. Plus the flowers are so gorgeous it's hard not to take photos of them.

Here it is, nearly the end of August. We are in the middle of a series of smoking hot days here. Linda is already starting to think about putting the garden to bed for the winter, what with her two trips this fall. Plus the car dealership wants us to make an appointment to change to winter tires. There was a sign in the window of a shop I went past the other day saying, 'winter hours'. It seems like just last week was monsoon season, and the week before that was winter.

Enjoy the flowers while you can.

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Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

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

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Dino related

15 years ago, almost exactly to the day

There I was, as fit as ever in my life, including my debauched teenage years, in Penticton getting ready to do Ironman Canada. It's been a while since I thought of that. It was a big day, worthy of several blog posts, here, if you only found this blog recently and haven't read that far back. 

Not that I'd recommend reading most of the blogs from around then. They were pretty focussed on training, and are barely of any interest to me, let alone anyone else, especially someone who isn't interested in triathlon. Even if the phrase "what's a little vomit between friends" came up in conversation. Even if there were a ton of comments, many quite witty. There was quite the blogging comment community then. I miss the comments and sense of community.

At the time, I thought it just barely possible that I'd do another one, but it turns out, not. Ever so not. There were a few other races, and some training with the idea of running a standalone marathon, but that never worked out. I loved the many runs with the best run buddy ever. We spent one summer running along all the bike paths beside the rivers. 5K was a short run, 10K was routine, and there were lots of 15K or so, but getting much beyond that was tough.

No matter how careful I was, something would fail during the training. Then a couple long trips, Yukon and New Zealand happened to break the consistency. Then COVID came along. I never tested positive for COVID, but that isn't to say I never had it. There were a couple times along the way I felt really crappy for a while, even after getting all the vaccinations that were on offer. I don't think I've got brain fog, but the people around me might think differently.

I went out for what I thought was a really short, really easy run, early during COVID, I think. I can't find the relevant post. It actually hurt and I stopped. I started to think about the whole workout thing. I wanted to stay in shape, but by then knew I wasn't going to do another triathlon of any length, so I started thinking about how much and what kinds of exercise were appropriate. I sold Estela the beloved road bike to someone that would actually ride her. I stopped running, and started walking. I kept up the swimming, as much as one could during COVID. Although getting back into it was brutal after all the time off.

June 2016 I bought a real camera, and that started a new thing to keep me busy during what I thought was retirement, and it sure has! As it turned out, the Penn West gig was not the last one. A few people hunted me down and proposed contracts I couldn't say no to. The last one started early in COVID and lasted essentially a year. During much of that time I felt like the guy that should have retired at the end of the last season. I struggled with some of the tasks (damn you XL and matrix based formulas!) and my boss kept having her priorities change, which changed mine. At least I was working from home and the liberal swearing at the computer only offended Linda and the cats. Yes, I wore pants during the Teams calls.

As it turns out, good quality camera gear is heavy for the volume it occupies. They're made of glass and metal after all. At home I can get away with carrying just one camera, and if necessary I can go back to the house to get the lens I really need for that particular photo. Same thing on a car trip. But on a long trip I want to bring all the gear, which means careful planning so as to be able to haul the film out for hand processing at the airport. Don't get me started on airport security theatre, or the perfectly predictable reaction of people being charged for checking bags. They should charge for carry on bags, and the first checked bag should be free, within certain size and weight constrains.

But then when we get to the place to park the car, there's often a walk to get to the photo place. If I haven't been there I won't know what gear to bring. That leads to carrying a heavy pack. The 5K walk back from Baker Brook Falls nearly killed me. I recall one photographer saying there are no good photos more than 500 m from the car park. I sympathize more and more with that position.

I still have some connections to the race community, mainly doing race photography for my buddies Rose and Richelle. It's nice to run into people I knew from back then, and chat a bit to catch up. The most recent example was someone I worked with 20 years ago. Occasionally I'll see someone running or biking, making it look effortless, and I know damn well it's not, and I feel a bit of a pang. Except even after years of training, I was at best a back of the pack runner and biker. I used to joke that nobody passed me on the run because they'd already passed me on the bike. Lots of races the fastest people would finish before I started the run. One race they took away the finish line before I got there, and I was an hour ahead of the cut-off time. I still wonder if I got off course and ran or biked some extra distance.

Going into a full distance Ironman race with the goal of finishing under the cutoff time without needing medical attention is a perfectly acceptable thing especially for a first time. But for the shorter race distances just finishing isn't much of a goal after the first time. Just finishing gets old. 

I'm still enormously proud of having completed Ironman. It was a huge goal, and I did it bit by bit. Seeing how decrepit I've got recently, I'm more impressed than ever with Sister Madonna Buder finishing an Ironman at 80. 

Where to now? I'm just getting back in the pool yet again. The shoulder is still cranky, but in a different way. I like taking one of the cameras for a walk, but then that's not really a walk for fitness. I'm walking slower, looking around for photos. Somehow it's really hard to go for a brisk walk seeing the same scenery. I haven't been on my hybrid bike this year out of an abundance of caution, as they say. This whole getting old thing isn't for sissies. 

In other news, I'm looking at my Blogger readership stats. I've never really paid much attention to them, mainly because I've never really believed them, or understood what they were counting. But just lately they're going crazy. Either the bots love me, or I've got a lot of lurking readers. Don't be afraid to comment, or ask to be added to my notification list, so you get an email when I blog.

As I've been writing this one, I've been wondering if I want to add photos to it. I was writing outside during the cool of the evening, at least until the bugs came out, with the naked laptop, so to speak, and all the photos I'd include are on an external hard drive that isn't plugged in. So maybe, just this once, no photos. Come back tomorrow for yet another flowery Friday and the regularly scheduled Of the Day suspects.

Just one signature

There are days I think I'm living in one of those low probability timelines. Let me explain. Maybe it will make sense. Or not.

You might have heard the term multiverse, or the many-worlds theory. The idea is that worlds split off as decisions are made. Maybe there's a small group of worlds that are quite similar, sort of like the main line, and other, less probable worlds branch off. Maybe my choice to have a second cup of coffee or not, or to have a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast instead of granola doesn't really matter.

But Trump getting elected is a big deal, and to my mind was improbable the first time, and mind blowing the second time. It seems like a majority of Americans have lost their marbles, those being the ones that actually voted for him as well as those that didn't care enough to get out and vote against. Maybe that created a world spinning off not just into left field, but right into la-la land. And the particular version of me that's writing this is in that world.

Maybe there are other versions of me in other worlds, and who knows what they're like? And to be honest, thinking back to some of my youthful adventures that I hope my mom doesn't know about, maybe there's worlds where I'm not here at all.

Then we come to Alberta. Bailed out by the feds in the 30's, then oil was discovered. The gravy train has flowed ever since, overseen by a series of incompetent conservative governments kowtowing to the oil industry and giving away our heritage, with the Lougheed government being the sole exception. All the various stripes of conservative governments have continued the policy of giving away the store and raiding the piggy bank. With better planning we could have a sovereign wealth fund like Norway.

All this while bitching about the situation and how hard done by we are in Canada. Equalization is one of the favourite hobby horses, and it's clear the people complaining don't understand it. They get annoyed when told a conservative government led by an Albertan (Harper) enacted the current version of the equalization formula, and that the premier who used it to whip up partisan frenzy actually voted for it as part of that government. 

Rather than working to improve what is seen to be annoying about the current situation by negotiating with the feds and other provinces, like grownups, there's a minority that wants to take their ball and go home. Plus hold their breath till they turn blue, and take that!

There's always been talk of separatism in Alberta. It's a way of bitching that doesn't address the core problem; voter numbers and voter stupidity. I talk about it here, and there's no need to repeat myself. Actually there probably is, but I'm not going to.

Now there's a group pushing for a referendum on Alberta being sovereign (but within Canada, with the details varying depending on who you talk to), touting facts and reasoning that a bright 10 year old can see through. My opinion is that it's an attempt to distract people from noticing the outright incompetence of the Smith government. She is a twice failed politician who is in the middle of her third strike out. I'm pretty sure she only ran for premier to raise her profile and increase the number of people listening to her radio bleats. Then like the dog who caught the car, wonders what to do with it.

All Alberta separating will accomplish, if it could be done at all, is to allow the USA to snap it up. I don't even want to visit the US, and certainly don't want to live in it. Why on earth would any sane person want to live in a place that thinks children getting shot in school, again and again, isn't a problem worth solving? That referendum has been referred to the courts because of the constitution problems. 

The other petition, that affirms Alberta staying in Canada, has about 3,000 people out collecting signatures, and people are lining up in droves. There was a station set up at Glennfield yesterday. The plan was to go, assess the lineup, and decide to join in, or come back another time, and then go for a walk in that area. I'm there periodically, and it's a nice walk along the river, but Linda hasn't been there in awhile.

We got there just as a couple people left. We sat down, and took a few minutes to fill out the form. It has to be done in person, not online. Name, address, contact information. As we left, more people were joining. When we walked past it again after our stroll, the table was full and a half dozen people were milling around waiting. The atmosphere was jovial and relaxed. If that continued the rest of the time, and Glennfield is a busy place, they could easily walk away with 500 signatures. The news reported that 2 volunteers at another location collected 8,000 signatures on one day. Yay!

There haven't been any progress reports that I know of. I don't know if some poor sod has to go through all the many filled out pages and somehow compile them into a database so they can tell if someone signed twice, or somebody that isn't actually living here has signed. In any case, I hope there's so many it overwhelms the separatists and they give up on the other petition even before a judge consigns it to perdition. And then, of course, when that happens you know they'll start bleating about unelected judges. 

Sigh. Given that some people here (and elsewhere) believe that vaccines are worse than the disease, that nobody has been to the moon, and the earth is flat, maybe that's too much to hope for.

Some photos from the walk after signing. The mosquitoes were really bad.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

Polar bears

I think that's it for photos from our trip to Churchill.

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

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Dino related

Domestication

No, not me, that happened long ago. This is computer domestication. Here's a hint.

 For some of you this is no big deal. Last time I did it was about 9 years ago which is an eternity in computer time. It seems like just last week I was consulting with a buddy about the various Mac models then on offer, and buying a fairly high end (for the time) iMac. 

It served me well, ingesting well over a quarter million photos. I'm not sure how many have been edited, since some have multiple edits, one set going to a client's social media folder, and another set of those going to their web sized folder. Or even me doing multiple edits trying different things. I just know there are 57,700 items in the folder I export to. Make of it what you will.

I never had any problems with it, and it's still doing it's thing. Just last weekend it ingested 1100 photos from a race, and then I edited. Let's just say there was a lot of computer chugging and I had to be patient. I had maxed out the OS and was still several version behind, which meant I was behind on Lightroom upgrades as well. I'm just now beginning to explore what I missed out on. 

Let's go back. Of course there was some dithering about upgrading. It used to be a fairly simple process. There were the pro machines for the geeks, and some pro-sumer models. Typically the strategy was to buy at the low end of the scale for memory and storage, then do third party upgrades as necessary. I added more memory to several of my computers along the way.

Well, Apple caught on to that game. Now when you buy one of their computers you have to decide up front how much memory and processing power to buy because it can't be upgraded afterward. What people are doing now is buying maybe a bit more memory than they think they'll need, and maybe a bit more processing power to future proof it as much as possible, but without getting stupid about it. Chips and memory are expensive, and their SSD storage gets stupidly expensive quite quickly. At least we can still add external storage. 

As a digression, because I know you're going to ask, and you know photos eat memory, there is 1 TB on board, 24 TB in a RAID drive, 10 TB in a another drive, and several portable external drives not currently in use that add up, I think, to 11 TB. I'll need to look at them and see what's on there. That isn't counting a handful of USB sticks of varying capacities. I had a kludgy way of off site storage that doesn't work anymore so I need to take a serious look at Backblaze. 

As a digression within a digression, let's talk about computer memory for a minute. In 1956 a 5 MB (yes, megabyte) hard drive weighed a ton, and was the size of a large refrigerator. There's a famous photo of one being loaded by forklift onto an airplane that you've probably seen, and if you haven't, it isn't hard to find. The average seek time was 600 ms, and for a modern hard drive it's 5 to 10 ms, and the SSD drives are faster yet. It leased for about $35,000 a month in today's money. 

I don't know how to express how much memory has changed. SD cards are about the size of a postage stamp and are 2mm thick. I have a bunch of 32 GB cards, and they're considered small now. I have a 128 GB card, and I've seen 256 GB cards. Several of my readers know lots more about computer programming than I do, and can probably speak to the agonies they went through trying to make programs as small and efficient as possible because the memory size constraints were brutal.  Now, everyone knows about bloatware, (looking at YOU Microsoft and Adobe!)  and it's one of reasons computers need constant upgrading. It's a never ending cycle, chips got smaller and faster, memory got smaller and cheaper, so software expanded to fill the space. They rushed to get the product out the door, bugs and all, and didn't care about efficiency. Sigh.

Just for fun, a joke you've probably heard. Q: whats the definition of a software feature? A: A bug with seniority. 

For ordinary people increased storage media sizes means its easy to store something just in case, and maybe multiple copies in multiple places, or successive versions of it, just in case. Then some years later you look at an arcane file name and wonder what the heck it is, and which of two (or more) versions is the real one, because it might not be the most recent one.

I probably would have bought another 27 inch iMac, if it was on offer. Not. The 24 inch was a distinct step back even with the faster chip, so that was an easy no. Then there is the Mac Mini, a sort of successor to the cube I had for a bunch of years, and still have, in a box somewhere. (Anyone want to buy a vintage Mac Cube complete with a large display monitor?) It doesn't have port for an SD card so that's at least one adapter, and it needs a screen, keyboard, and mouse. Lots of processing power though, probably more than enough. Then there's the studio desktop. Lots of ports, and more than enough processing power for me. Overkill probably, and there's still a monitor to buy. 

Then there's the MacBook Air and Pro because sometimes I travel with a camera and want to be able to copy the photos onto an actual hard drive, and being able to edit is a great bonus. It's nice to write on a laptop rather than a desktop. Sometimes I give photo presentations, and the old Air (2012 vintage) struggled. Plus, maybe, just maybe, I might have a photo shoot where I need to be tethered to the computer. I did that once and the client really liked it. I'll need to figure out the cable situation for that. All the preceding have a bewildering number of upgrades to chips, memory, and storage. 

So yes, there was dithering and filling out a spreadsheet with the different options. Eventually a decision, and action, mainly because I found a deal on a refurbished Apple monitor. Yes, it's possible to get cheaper monitors that are almost as good. But then there's the search and decision, and hoping it will play nice with the laptop. My thinking is that I'll be looking at the monitor for years, and I'm spoiled from the iMac monitor.

Apple makes it easy to migrate from one computer to another. It walks you through the process. Since I didn't have a cable that would plug into both, I used WIFI and was prepared to wait. When I first got it going it took forever to do the first file, like a minute, then a bunch more, then it said 4 hours at about 65Mb/s. I ate dinner and read a bit, and then it said 40 minutes, which I didn't quite believe. I didn't time the whole process but it was under an hour. 

I started poking around and Carbon Copy Cloner, the software I use for backups, popped up and got a bit pissy about upgrades, and it didn't quite seem to know which tasks were to get done or where some of the folders were. I'll need to look at that a bit more thoroughly as I do some more file housekeeping.

Then onto Lightroom. The Creative Cloud files that Lightroom likes to see didn't come over so I had to download that, and then upgrade Lightroom. Or maybe it was the other way around. Eventually I got it all sorted. The stressful part is remembering all the passwords.

Along the way I played with different ways of seeing the laptop and external display. I think I've got it the way I like it now, and it looks fabulous! Along the way I learned that I can't just unplug the monitor, I need to eject the 2 external hard drives first. Plus, just at this very moment I'm listening to one of my favourite tracks for editing, a cover of Inna-Gadda-da-Vida by Sina. It sounds fabulous! Oh, and the finger print sensor thingie works great. Though I should probably log in with my password every now and then so I don't forget it.

I was out this morning for a round the garden photo tour, mostly to gather a batch of photos to run into Lightroom. Ingesting and building previews for 100 photos took well under a minute. Going from photo to photo to triage them was instant. Editing was fast. So I'm happy. There was brief hiccup on export. Lightroom just needed to be reassured that the folder they normally go to was still there. The slowest part of the process now seems to be reading the data from the SD card. Next time I import 1,000 photos I'll have to time it.

At the moment the laptop and new monitor are jammed onto one side of the desk, and the old iMac is on the other side. The plan is to clean off what is no longer needed on it, load up a ton of photos on the old iMac, and set them up as a screensaver to run all the time. That we we get to see the photos. I've watched them go by, and can remember when and where for all of them. That turned out to be quick and easy. There was lots of room for a folder with all the exported photos. The screen saver looks at that, and now the photos are in a slow scroll from side to side, with a variety of frames around each, which is kind of cool.

To move the old computer I'll need to investigate the rats nest of cables under the desk. I vacuumed under there yesterday. There are more cables plugged in than I remembered, and at the moment I have no idea where they go or what they do. I'll need to carefully follow cables. There are 15 power cables plugged into two surge protectors, and a pair of outlets. As it turns out one of the cables was charging up a first gen iPad that was last used to play music into the stereo system. That was maybe 10 years ago as proof of concept, and that iPad will no longer charge up and the software is beyond obsolete. Off to the e-recycling bin. It makes me a bit sad to toss away something that was expensive and worked well at the time. That iPad was used a lot to play music while I was on the bike spin trainer as I prepared for Ironman.

The actual move of the old iMac and set up of screen saver went without a hitch. I really should go get a bigger surge protector and rearrange cables. I'm not entirely sure the power bars under the desk are actually surge protectors. And did you know that you can buy a surge protector for your whole house? An electrician can install one on the main incoming line upstream of your circuit breaker box. Maybe I'll have that done when we convert the basement lighting over to LED's and build in a red light for the darkroom.

What all do I have plugged in, you ask? Let's see:

• Phone. Yes, a landline phone. It's nice to have a phone number to give to people you don't want to talk to. We never answer it unless we expect a call, or the person talks to the voice mail, and it's someone we want to talk to, and it's possible to pick up.
• Paper shredder.
• Computer monitor.
• Laptop charge cable.
• 24 TB hard drive.
• 10 TB hard drive.
• Lamp.
• Router.
• WIFI
• Stereo power amp.
• Stereo something else. And maybe another something else. Then again, I can't remember the last time we actually turned the stereo on. Mostly we listen to music through the computers. It wasn't so long ago that stereo systems were a thing, and that's another digression we won't get into.
• One power bar plugged into the other, and it's plugged into the wall, which is probably not the way it's supposed to be done.
• Portable heater to keep my feet warm, and yes, it's plugged into the wall when in use.
• Hmmm. I think I'm missing something. When I untangle, I think I'll put a little piece of tape on each cord to tag what it's running.

Negative Lab pro seems to work but I don't have any film developed to try the whole process. Maybe this weekend. I'm not sure if I'm on the current version. If it works I'm not sure I care.

Bookwrite fired up just fine, though I don't know what my next book project will be. 

There's a new icon called iPhone mirroring that I'll have to see if it does anything useful. Just looked, and maybe it's because I'm a geezer and don't get it, but, I don't get the point. And yes, I turned Siri and Apple Intelligence off, off, and OFF. At least I think I've done so. Maybe our robot overlords are just fooling me and they ignore those settings as they gather data to further their fell purpose.

The laptop to do list, because I've got to hit the publish button here sooner or later:

• Tidy some of the power cable rats nest.
• Look at file folder setup on the external drive. Prune and simplify.
• Related to that, dive into CCC and redo task list to simplify ongoing maintenance.
• Get my fingers used to the new setup. Think about the ergonomics of the whole thing.
• Think about if I want to migrate Scrivener and files from the old Air. At the least I need to backup the files. Right now that means using an SD card to transfer file because that's the only storage media the computers have in common. Neither the laptop or monitor have any of the old rectangular USB outlets, which means adapters. Sigh. That could lead into another digression about Apple and aggressively removing things to make devices smaller and cheaper. 3.5 inch floppy disks. Optical disks. Several different ports for connecting to peripherals. There's probably more if I were to think about it for a few minutes.

Anyway, I'm happy I did this, even if the road was a bit dithery along the way. In a week I'll probably be asking myself why I waited so long. Then again, technology updates are a Red Queen's race that I'm not much interested in. I stonewalled a Roger's sales team the other day, trying to get me on their system. He kept saying sports net, or something like that, and didn't get I had zero interest in that. The up and download speeds were blah blah blah, and the current speeds are just fine. All for more money.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

Polar bears

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

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Dino related