Where do all of the digital photos go when you die?
Photos aren’t like they used to be. No envelopes of printed 4x6’s. No sleeves of negatives to sort through. No albums to pull off the shelves and flip through with their sticky plastic protector pages. Today there is no barrier to pulling out your phone and taking a single or a hundred recorded images. They all get stored and backed up to the cloud like some limitless recording of your life.
Why I am into Vinyl Records
Though I’m late to the party, I credit my son for getting me into vinyl records. It was timed well with my general frustration over where we are going as a society with all of this digital madness. I spent considerable time contemplating and researching if this was to be a positive new hobby for me and if so, what was the right setup to buy. During an unfortunate case of Covid in early January, I had read the book Analog by Robert Hasson and in my isolated recovery with full “covid brain fog” decided to just go for it.
Don't be a good man, be good at being a man.
I don’t remember where I had heard this over the past month, but this resonates with me as I am both trying to be a better human and am curious what it means to be a man - which is a topic we’ll save for another time. I think what I like most about this is it orients one towards being excellent and deemphasizes needing external validation by being “good”. Being good at being a man implies character and principles where as being good towards the person in front of you implies doing whatever it takes to meet their needs.
Finishing Maple with Tung Oil
I have a project that I’ll share next time, but it required finishing some maple. Though I like the way the wood looked raw, I figured it would be a good idea to give it some protection so it wears well over time. This lead me on a research quest to find which finish would compliment my project the best. After reading a few articles and watching some videos, I decided on Tung Oil as it does very well with maple, highlighting the grain and not discoloring the wood or yellowing over time.
Garden Engineering
For Mother’s day, I decided to build fences for the three gardens we have. It used to be one garden, but last mother’s day it became three. These are standard 10 x 2’s in eight foot runs so that by cutting one in half, you end up with a garden area of 8 x 4. Given the wildlife we have in the neighborhood (squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, foxes, occasional coyote, and a variety of birds), it always is smart to put up some chicken wire around the perimeter of the garden.
Patching an Exteriror Wall
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Finally watched Sicario: Day of the Soldado
I thoroughly enjoyed the first Sicario movie and would consider it one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last decade. A very excellent film on manipulating tension with some larger than life characters. The second movie was good, but not what I would consider within the same realm of the first film. I think one of the magic element of the first Sicario movie is the characterization.
Tour of a Whiskey & Cigar Room
I’m a sucker for a masculine space like this Whiskey/Cigar Room by Jeremy Siers. It has a very nice aesthetic with the dark colors and subtle backlighting. Who wouldn’t feel like a sophisticated man, sipping their whiskey, in a well appointed room like this.
I’m also deeply intrigued by in depth YouTube tours like this. The details and the process. It’s alluring in an unexplainable way. This has been inspiration for where I’d like to see my basement office go.