Catch Up
What I've been up to.
Damn it, it’s been months since I’ve posted anything. I kept having small ideas for posts that went nowhere so let’s do a brief catch up. Here’s what I’ve been doing for the last… some time?
Photography
I’ve been meaning to make a post talking about photography for, um, a while now. I got a camera about two years ago. A few months later, I switched up the camera a bit, but I’ve been having loads of fun taking pictures. I’ve bought probably too much gear, but also very cheap stuff and not enough of it. I’ve been hesitant to post pictures on this site since I’m technically bandwidth limited by Netlify’s free tier and I don’t want to muck about with other image hosting.
What really keeps me going, though, is challenges. I found 52 Frames sometime in 2022 and have only missed one challenge since. You can check out my profile there to see what I’m doing.
I also started a Pixelfed account so I don’t have to muck up my normal Mastodon feed with pictures.
Reading
Since losing Twitter to the fascists and Reddit killing 3rd party apps, I’ve been struggling to find things to do in my downtime. I still watch tons of movies and shows, but I can only really do that after my daughter goes to sleep in the evenings (same with video games). I need something to do while she’s around and I’m not working. That used to involve reading mindless Internet things on my phone, but that was starting to bother me.
So I picked up my Kindle again.
I have a Paperwhite 4 (released sometime in 2018, bought in 2021). It’s… fine.
I don’t love Amazon as a company, and the device itself is quite nice, but the software is crap and side-loading is annoying and weird.
So I bought a Kobo Clara BW and went all-in on Calibre.
I love it. Using it with Calibre reminds me of using an iPod with iTunes, except with a lot more jank. Calibre is wonderful and super powerful, but the actual UI is truly terrible. But once the books are loaded up, the software on the Kobo is great. Things I love that can’t be done on the Kindle:
- Tiny margins when reading. The smallest margin setting on the Kindle leaves so much unused space. Same with line spacing. The screen is only 6 inches, let me put lots of text on it without having to reduce the font size!
- Browse by Author, Series, etc. Seriously, how is this not an option on a Kindle?
- Custom screensavers. It’s a tiny thing, but I love that I can use my own photos as screensaver images.
What I still want, though, is an updated Kobo Libra. I don’t want a color e-ink screen since they’re not very good for just reading text, and the Libra 2 has been discontinued. If a “Libra BW” comes out, though, then I’ll probably get one. I want a slightly larger screen and page turn buttons.
New Computer
Oh, one last thing. I bought an M4 Pro Mac Mini. It’ll be here in a few weeks. Expect a retrospective on my MacBook Pro before too long.