Five Electric-Jag Years · I got a note from Jaguar advising that my free five-year “InControl Remote and Protect” subscription was expiring and would be $99/year (Canadian) going forward. That’s right, this month is five years since I picked up our 2019 Jaguar I-Pace and joined the EV tribe. Thus this (final?) visit to the Jaguar Diary series ...
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Happy New Year! · Customarily, on this day we go for a walk by the sea. This year “we” was just me, because Post-Covid. I have pictures; subdued pictures, it was that sort of day. Herewith a few of those, and year-end ramblings on optimism, AI/ML, cameras, and social media ...
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Planes, Cameras, Capitals · Since Covid started I haven’t traveled, except for a short hops to visit Mom in Saskatchewan. But I spent Monday and Tuesday in Washington DC workin’ for The Man (the man being Uncle Sam) and came away with notes on planes and hotels and cameras and people ...
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Recent Music Books · Seems that for the past few months most of the books I’ve read have been sci-fi (which I wrote up here) or about music. Herewith notes on four of the latter. The subjects are Philip Glass, John Cale, Cuba, and getting loaded ...
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Recent Sci-Fi · Seems that for the past few months most of the books I’ve read have been sci-fi or about music (which I wrote up here). Herewith notes on the most recent sci-fi/fantasy. Featuring Emily Tesh, Martha Wells, John Scalzi, Sandra Newman, Vajra Chandrasekera, Arkady Martine, and P. Djèlí Clark ...
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Late Light · Late in the year, I mean. We’re hurtling toward the solstice and the photon flow in the short hours between official sunup and sundown hardly deserves the name “daylight”. But when the Pacific Northwest cloud and rain and fog let up, the always-slanting sunlight is very pure ...
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Mastodon Status Check · My social-media life has been Fediverse-first for a year now. I stick my head into Bluesky and Threads regularly, but visit Twitter rarely if at all. This piece takes a close look at Mastodon-land as things stand in late summer 2023. What’s working, what’s not, what are the alternatives?
[Originally published August 2023, updated November 27th for my one-year Twitter-exit anniversary.] ...
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Green and Brown Sauce · Here’s a simple dish that hits the spot as Winter’s chilly dimness comes at us from all directions. It’s a pasta sauce featuring crispy bacon and braised greens ...
 
Global Sensor Bandwidth · The photo-world is all agog over Sony’s just-announced (but not shipping till next year) high-end ($6K) camera, the ɑ9 III, because it has a “global sensor”. No, the “global” label didn’t mean anything to me either, when I first read it. The write-ups about it have explainers and cool pictures (PetaPixel, DPReview). I found myself wondering “What is this thing’s bandwidth?” and thus this note. I’ll toss in another little explainer so you don’t have to click on a link like a savage ...
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Recent Griffiths · Back in 2014, in Saint Hilda, I posted a rave review of Nicola Griffith’s novel Hild. I just finished its sequel Menewood and, in between, read her much-smaller Spear. These are all extremely good books and if you like well-done portrayals of violent conflict and royal-court politics and historical flavors and hot sex in just about any combination, you’re apt to like these ...
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On C2PA · Leica, the German maker of elegant but absurdly-expensive cameras, just released the M11-P. The most interesting thing about it is a capability whose marketing name is “Content Credentials”, based on a tech standard called C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity), a project of the Content Authenticity Initiative. The camera puts a digital watermark on its pictures, which might turn out to be extremely valuable in this era of disinformation and sketchy AI. Herewith a few words about the camera (Leicas are interesting) but mostly I want to describe what C2PA does and why I think it will work and how it will feel in practice ...
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Wild World · I’ve come to loathe autumn. It echoes the current stage of my own life a little too closely. Plus it’s plenty hard to just stay level, any season of this filthy year. I saw someone on social media asking (may not have the words quite right) “How you folks holding it together while the world’s burning?” I looked for something useful and short to say, came up empty. But now maybe this ...
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Feminized Feed · My online social life is almost all on the Fediverse (obligatory plug for our member-owned co-op Mastodon instance) and I find it generally satisfying. But back in early September, I noticed that my feed was extremely male-dominated. I set out to fix that and — a rare piece of good news — it worked! Herewith methods and numbers ...
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Rock Tech · Last night, my son and I took in Guns N’ Roses’ Vancouver show at “B.C. Place”, the big football/soccer stadium, its roof closed for the event. It was a fine show, even though I wasn’t and still am not much of a GnR fan. The show deserves a few words, and also arena-rock concert technology is changing in interesting ways ...
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Sucking It Up · My social-media stream veers left, full of progressive voices. I like it that way ...
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Social-media Search Comparo · Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon (as of last week) all have a built-in search capability. So now’s a good time for a first-look comparison ...
 
Digger Unearthed · Digger is a Hugo-winning Webcomic by the excellent and remarkably prolific Ursula Vernon, originally written between 2005 and 2011. This essay exists to recommend the book, with a bit of back-story, but also to recommend a good way to read it ...
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Safe Pixel Unlock · My recent upgrade from Pixel 4 to 7 moved me from one to two biometric sensors; the thing unlocks with either face or finger. But the default setup is unsafe; making it safe is a little inconvenient, but worth doing ...
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Not Marching · My inbox is full of reminders that this Friday, September 15, 2023, is the Global Climate Strike; marches and demonstrations are happening everywhere (here in Vancouver, starting 1PM Pacific at City Hall). But I’m not going. I’m too angry, angry enough to be stupid ...
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Outer Átl’ḵa7tsem · On most maps is its colonial name: Howe Sound. It’s a triangular body of water northwest of Vancouver, its longest side about 40km, scattered with islands. Here’s a map. The Sound and its islands are mostly named after 19th-century British naval officers, which in 2023 I find loathsome. It’s time to lose the dead limeys and revive the Indigenous names. The area was peopled by the Squamish; they used more than one name, but these days “Átl’ḵa7tsem” seems to be what people (and officials) are using. It may be hard to spell but it’s not hard to say ...
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