2019-04-19 | Mental Health, Photography, Tech
It’s no secret that I like technology, and I do, if I’m going to be absolutely honest with myself (and what better a place for that than in a place where about 56.1% of the world’s population can read it), think that I’m quite good at it. Quite good at software, and also quite good at hardware. Last week I repaired a motherboard on a motion controller, and it booted right up after many hours with a soldering iron and replacing components.
But I’m also tired. Maybe verging on exhausted.
Tired of “instant”. I’m tired of the process of taking a photograph is see, snap, review (probably redo these three steps a few times), then post, hashtag. After that it’s largely forgotten, with the exception of collecting notifications from bots.
This ties in with me dumping my Fitbit. Dumping Facebook. Dumping Instagram.
So, what is my plan?
My plan is to go analogue for photographs. Not exclusively, but significantly more than I have in the last…20 years.
I bought my first digital SLR in 200…and…5…I think. Since then I’ve been chasing crisper, less noise, and faster. Better lenses. Better/bigger sensors. The last camera I bought was a Canon 5D, and I have used that camera extensively. But the trap of reviewing, even on the back of that crappy LCD on the back, gets me nearly every time. I don’t sit back and trust that I have done the right thing, trusted my gut and taken a passable photograph.
So, now – to the plan. The plan is to not only start shooting film again, but I’m going to develop my own film, too. At this stage I’ll develop to film and probably scan the shots I want to do something with, but there’s nothing (except space in the laundry) that will prevent me from getting an enlarger, paper,some trays, some more chemicals, and printing my own.
I asked my old photography teacher from high school if he had any developing tanks left, and not only did he have a Patterson tank, he also had a Minolta XG-1 with lenses and a flash that he wasn’t using any more. So I now own that, and I’m very pleased.
I’ve bought some film, and have taken a few pictures. But I don’t know if they’re any good until I develop them, and today I organised the equipment I need for that, beyond the tank. I ordered the developer, stop bath, and fixer from B&H in New York (for about $40 less than it would cost to buy locally – including shipping from the US). I ordered a couple of volumetric flasks for mixing chemicals, and some storage bottles. And a portable darkroom bag for loading the film onto the spools and into the Patterson tanks.
I’m very excited about this, and can’t wait to share the results. I will probably load the scanned photographs onto https://photos.bitterswede.com/KO
I need to invent a word that means analogue and digital combined to a level that suits me.
2019-01-08 | Tech
Signal, if you haven’t already heard of it, is an encrypted messaging app for both Android and iOS. My experience with Signal doesn’t extend into the iOS realm, but the experience won’t be that different, with the exception of iMessage being thrown into the mix.
There are many good articles about what Signal does, and how it does it. You can start by reading the app’s own page here: https://signal.org. There is no real point, I don’t think, to rewrite something that someone else has already written, probably in a much more elegant way.
Why do I use Signal? I like my communications to be encrypted. Not because I’m worried about law enforcement intercepting what I’m sending to my friends. Not because I’m worried about people stealing my phone and hacking into my SMSes. I like my comms to be encrypted because of all the companies profiting from knowing information about me. I don’t know if a regular SMS is being scanned for keywords by my telco, and that information is being sold to advertisers. But if you switch to an encrypted messaging app, there’s no way for them to do that.
When I talk to people, I often get the question of “How is it different from Whatsapp?”, and while in a broad way it does very much the same thing, there are two differences that sets it apart.
The first is that it replaces your standard SMS app, and only needs your mobile number to work. It will send a regular, unencrypted SMS to your buddies who don’t have Signal, and seamlessly switch to encrypted comms when they finally listen to you and install Signal too. You don’t need to remember how you communicate with whom. It’s all there in the one app. And, as a bit of a cherry on top, the company is a not-for-profit run by privacy wonks.
The second is that it’s not owned by Facebook. Even though Facebook can’t necessarily read what’s in the messages that are sent with Whatsapp, it does give them a map of who is communicating with whom. And the less Facebook knows about me, the happier I am.
Touching briefly on the iMessage thing, it’s, to me, much the same as Whatsapp, but maybe slightly worse. Unless Apple have devised some new cryptographic methods for messaging, they must have access to the encryption keys used for messages if you can recover the messages from iCloud to a new device without access to the old device. This is bad, and means they could potentially read the messages too.
Download Signal today and give it a go: https://signal.org/
2019-01-07 | Health, Mental Health, Tech
I really like numbers. I like graphs. I like plots. I like tables. I like SQL queries. It was pretty predictable that I’d like having a Fitbit on my wrist. No surprise that I’d find myself poring over the graphs in the app, checking my resting heart-rate (56-58 bpm when I’ve not had any red wine for a couple of days, 61-63 bpm when I have, FYI), my active hours, how many steps I’ve done and when, and probably because I can be a bit* competitive at times, how my steps stack up against my Fitbit friends steps.
But – what did I have the Fitbit for? I had it to help me keep track of my exercise (check) and improve my fitness levels. It just didn’t help improve my fitness. It didn’t push me to do more steps. It didn’t motivate me to run. It didn’t really help me improve at all. So it’s gone.
When I stopped wearing it, I felt quite a bit of relief, which I didn’t expect. I thought I’d miss it. Miss having those graphs, and tables of information to sift through. But instead, I felt liberated. When I go for a walk, I’m going because I want to. Because it feels nice. Because it’s good for me. Not so that I can compete against other people, who most likely aren’t competing back. To be completely honest, there have been a couple of times I’ve gone for a walk and thought that it’d be nice to have the steps recorded because it would have added a decent chunk to my tally, but then I quickly realise that it’s not important. It’s important that I’m moving – it’s not important that I’m winning.
Anxiety levels: slightly lower than they were before.
Plan: figure out what to get rid of next.
