Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Goes forever on

I think it’s kind of messed up that once you start weightlifting, you cannot stop. There’s really no goal to reach; you have to put in the work continuously, even if all you want is to maintain what you’ve already achieved. Building muscles and strength is one of those if-you-don’t-use-it-you-lost-it type of deals. Wouldn’t it be lovely if once you reach a 300 pound squat (for example), then you can stay there without doing anything else further?

It’s very much like learning a second language. If you want to maintain a decent modicum of proficiency, you have to study/practice almost everyday. I’ve lost all my one year of Japanese skills because I’ve not practiced meaningfully since high school. This is why when I started self-taught Korean back in 2016, I still practice to this day. It can never stop if I want to keep this skill.

I recently put a pause on my piano learning because I simply do not have the time to dedicate to it. I already have too many hobbies that require daily maintenance. To learn this new skill properly I’d have to give one of those hobbies up. Perhaps that may happen in the future, but as of right now, exercise and the Korean language is more important to me.

It can get dark rather quickly when you rail against change. Ever be in the moment of something great and wonderful, and all you can think about is how to best preserve that forever? I certainly have. I can’t even enjoy that fantastic moment because I’m too caught up with making it last as long as possible, which in itself is not possible. Change is a constant in life, and accepting it as a companion instead of an enemy is the way to live with it.

Otherwise is how you see a type of car collector that puts a car in a giant sealed bubble. What is the point? Even if that car can last centuries, you the human will most certainly not.

This might be it

I think if something unfortunate were to happen to my BMW M2, I would probably replace it with something tame and economical. (The refreshed Tesla Model 3, rear-wheel drive with the long range battery is looking good.) The new enthusiast car market has gotten so expensive that the logical brain side of me doesn’t want to pay for something that largely sits (I don’t have a commute). The new Porsche 911 GT3 starts at $200,000 now - $40,000 more than the previous model - which is absolutely insane. Makes me feel slightly better about paying $126,000 for a 2015 model back in 2019.

Even the cheap end of the continuum is in the mid $30,000s (Toyota GR86, or the venerable Mazda Miata). While that is somewhat affordable for me, what isn’t affordable is the insurance costs for enthusiasts cars. I would know: it’s quite expensive to insure the BMW fully. Again, logical brain is working overtime to convince me that maybe this whole love of cars is getting defeated by monetary mathematics.

But we’re suppose to spend a high proportion of our money on hobbies, right? I can’t be looking at my vehicle situation from the lens of a regular person. In their case, yes, they should limit the spend on what is the second biggest money purchase (first would be the house, if anybody can afford one around here). It makes zero sense to drop extravagantly on a depreciating asset. To do it financially responsibly, people should buy a brand new Toyota Corolla and drive it as long as possible.

Because I like cars, and have liked them since I was a kid, I get to spend more of my adult money on them. But these days the adult brain is cautioning loudly against the inflated costs of vehicle ownership. I actually paid off the M2 earlier this year. I certainly feel more carefree with that monthly car payment now extra cushion in my savings account. It’s a very good feeling. The 10 years ago me would have already used that freed up money to buy another car.

Either I have tremendous self discipline, or it is indeed true that there are seasons to life. Perhaps I’ve outgrown my car enthusiasm…

I should build a PC?

You know what I want to do? Build another PC. Not that I have any use for one, mind you. This is a strictly Mac household. But what I miss is the artistry in putting together various components into something functional and useful. The joy in picking specific parts that play well together, then fitting them in the most aesthetically pleasing way. You have not lived until you’ve spent hours in managing the mess of power and data cables into a pleasing presentation. This is the sort of passion project I am pining for.

Because once upon a time, my main computer were PCs that I meticulously (well, perhaps not the very first one) put together. Before I was able to afford playing with cars (read: being a working adult), customs PCs were the primary domain of my geek-dom. I remember getting a side job during junior year of high school specifically because I want to spent (relatively) extravagantly on a new self-built PC. I printed out a list of components-to-buy to put in my binder as a reminder of precisely what I am working towards.

Those were simple and magical times.

These days I don’t really build much of anything. I buy quality items that (hopefully) last a very long time. PCs have given way to Mac computers that work beautifully right out of the box. I rather use the time that would otherwise be spent tinkering with things for something more productive. Like reading a book, or studying Korean. It’s kind of ironic: I can afford to buy every top-of-the-line PC component, yet I haven’t built one in a long time. The high school me would be utterly dumbfounded by this.

Listen, if there was a way for me to build a PC, and then break it apart and return the parts? I simply want the joy of putting it together. I have zero use for the finished product.

JPEG shooter

This past Sunday I got a chance to take my new Fujifilm X-T5 camera out for some first time test shooting. A photowalk around San Francisco Chinatown in the afternoon was called for. After reading the manual front to back and adjusting the custom buttons to my liking, it was time to see what the X-T5 camera can do. (Pairing it with a Fujinon XF 23mm F2 lens.)

Perhaps it’s the substantial money I dropped on essentially switching to a new system (Sony to Fujifilm) talking, but I was pretty immediately smitten with the X-T5. A touchscreen on a camera is so useful (My old Sony A7R2 did not have one). On the Fujifilm I can touch to lock focus on a subject/object and it will do so until I tap again to cancel. It honestly feels kind of cheating to me. I remember the old days of having only eight focusing points on a DSLR, and needing to perform the focus and recompose technique.

Now I can simply touch almost anywhere on the frame and it will lock focus automatically. Magical.

Fujifilm’s famous film simulation modes is as advertised. After seeing how each of them look, I chose Nostalgic Negative as my go to. Nostalgic Neg has the bump in saturation I typical do for my own RAW edits, plus a warm tonality that I prefer over something cool. Set white balance to automatic, and I simply let the X-T5 do its own interpretation of the scene vis a vis the colors.

Kind of funny how I’m essentially treating a “DSLR” camera as a point-and-shoot. It’s like going back to the days of instant film cameras: I don’t control how a film roll will look coming out of development. Being able to get interesting and usable JPEG files straight out of the camera makes me want to go shoot more. Because upon returning home, all I do is transfer the JPEG files off the X-T5 and onto my Mac’s Photos app. That's it! I’ve not touched any of the RAW files from the Chinatown photowalk - there’s really no need.

At some point I might even shoot only in JPEG…

Build another PC?

In a fit of nostalgia, I’ve been toying with the idea of building a PC. I used to be a huge custom PC enthusiast. I built my first custom Pentium 4 machine back in middle school. I’ve done a dual AMD processor build, back before multiple cores on a single die was a thing. The last PC I built was used as a media center connected to an HDTV. That one got confiscated by the Feds (it wasn’t me). Since then, I’ve been entirely on the Mac platform.

Obviously I don’t exactly need a PC. This M1 MacBook Pro I’m typing on is my main computer. The LG TV I have has its own operating system, so I don’t need a PC for that either (besides, far easier and cheaper to buy a streaming stick from Apple/Amazon/Google). I don’t need a PC to game, either: there’s a PlayStation 5 for that.

So building a new PC in the year 2023 would be a pure vanity project for me. What I really miss is the craftsmanship and meticulousness that go with putting all the components together. There’s a tactile art to proper cable management and fitting the parts in harmony. It’s as close to building a car for those of us lacking the skill and money to build our own car. The satisfactory joy from pressing the power button and the PC coming to life for the very first time. That’s what I miss.

Of course, in this economy, I’m not spending money on what is essentially an art project. As mentioned, I have no use for a built PC. And these days I’m trying to eliminate as much superfluous stuff as possible. I shall be content with living vicariously through the people building PCs on YouTube.

Is that what I am?

It was a bit jarring to hear a friend describe me to another person as a “photographer.” I could only reply sheepishly to the fact I’m a mere hobbyist, nothing serious. My slightly embarrassed response is because I haven’t really been doing much “photography” at all, not ever since the pandemic started some three years ago. It’s a dormant hobby at best, abandoned at worst.

The only sort of photography I do these days is to make sure I take at least one picture a day for the 365 challenge. It’s something I’m proud to have kept going since 2011.

But otherwise there’s really not much else going on. My bread-and-butter in terms of interest is travel photography. Easy to figure out then why I haven’t done much these past years. I long to do another project like the one I did for my Japan trip. To do some writing to go along with the photographs. To tell interesting stories of a foreign place. A soft goal of mine is to return to South Korea for this purpose. It was not something I had in me when I first visited back in 2017.

And what camera will I do it with? As great as iPhone photographic capabilities have advanced, smartphones are still not substitutes for dedicated “DSLR” cameras. Difficult to believe my Sony A7R2 is now eight years since it was introduced back in 2015. The image quality out of that camera is still top-notch, but as is my wont I am hankering for something newer and a completely different brand.

Whether or not I actually spend that money remains to be seen. Honestly, whether or not I actually return to doing lots of photography is also an open question. It’s that whole different stages in life thing, you know? What is for sure is that I do want to travel back to Asia again.

These damn fingers

One obstacle in my ongoing practice of learning the piano is that I have a bad tendency of hitting the key adjacent to the one I want. The problem is especially acute when I’m going left with my motion. My hands and fingers aren’t particularly big, so I’m not sure what’s going on here. All I can do and have been doing is stop and start over every time I hit a key errantly.

I don’t remember having this problem back in high school. We all had to take a year of art classes, so I chose the piano. Perhaps my fingers weren't as mangled as they are now, with an additional decade of knuckle cracking and surely ligament damage. Trying to learn the piano in my thirties was always going to be a challenge vis a vis the condition of my fingers. Much like learning a language, it’s far easier to do when you are young and malleable.

But then again I taught myself Korean in my late twenties, so it’s not impossible. It’s all about the amount of hours put in (read: a lot). It took me about five years of studying to be able to listen to Korean language radio station and understand about 80 percent of what they are saying. I’m only on year two (pandemic years, no less) of my piano learning journey, so I’m not too worried about my bad tendencies just yet.

If I have to practice a simple piece for a whole week just to play it perfectly, so be it. I’ve got all the time in the world. Besides, I’ve spent way too much money on this Yamaha keyboard to give up so quickly. Money is always a good motivator!