Blog

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

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.

The best MacBook Air

I think I’ve found the perfect writing instrument: a 2015 11.6-inch MacBook Air.

I use to have one back in the day. Until I unceremoniously left it in a bin passing through TSA checkpoint at San Francisco International. I probably should have gone back after my trip to claim it at the lost and found, but I was far too cavalier with money in my 20s. Lost a thousand dollar notebook? No big deal, I’ll just buy another one.

And I did. In came a Microsoft Surface Pro 4, a device I hardly ever used and sold it a few years later towards buying an iMac.

Thanks to work, I recently came into a used unit of the 11.6-inch MacBook Air. This particular one even beefier than my lost poverty-spec version: a maximum 4 GB of memory and 256 GB of storage, a tremendous premium back in 2015. At 2.36 pounds, it’s the second lightest Mac laptop ever, behind only the retina screen 12-inch MacBook introduced in 2015. That one weights just two pounds, but has a huge fatal flaw: the god-awful “butterfly” keyboard.

In contrast, the keyboard on the second-generation MacBook Air might be the best Apple has ever made. Full keys with appropriate height and travel. The smaller 11.6-inch unibody aluminum chassis - compared to the larger 13-inch version - offers a wonderfully strong deck with almost zero flex. It’s perfect for someone like me who strikes super hard on the keys.

A laptop from 2015 is decidedly obsolete for anything but word processing and light internet browsing. This is why this 11.6-inch MacBook Air is perfect for purely writing. There isn’t anything else to distract me! The screen is so relatively small I’m not even tempted to fire up YouTube on Safari. I wrote all 3,500 words of my 2022 reflections post using the laptop. I intend to use it for all long form stuff going forward.

Any song

I don’t really have any topic to write about today, so this will just be a train of thoughts. It’s important to keep up the writing even when I have absolutely nothing coming to mind. Often times I would troll twitter to look for news topics and whatnot, but this morning I am drawing a complete blank. I don’t want to write about former President Trump getting deposed in New York today. Hey look, the markets are up so far!

There’s a natural ebbs and flows when it comes to working in education. The middle of August is sort of the deep breath before plunging back into the bustle of the regular academic semester. But we don’t get to relax, at least not for those of us in IT support. We are busy getting things ready: the multitude of computer labs on campus, and making sure incoming new faculty have computers ready to go for Fall. With a week and half to go before classes begin, the deadline is quickly looming.

And then once I get home from all of that, I’ve got my own round of things to do. I imagine most other single people would simply collapse onto a couch and veg out of a bit before even thinking about dinner. Well, I don’t have a couch. Soon as I enter the home and put my stuff down, I start a pot of a rice cooking. In between that 30 minutes of cook time, I put my stuff away properly, wash up a bit, clean the floors, and cook the rest of dinner.

I take my time to eat dinner though, because that is never to be rushed. Not after an already long day at work. Once I’m done eating, then it’s an hour of piano practice. And after that I would get some reading in. Then it’s already time for bed. In a way I’m like a kid that have an evening of homework to do. That’s why I jokingly refer to my weekday nights as school nights.

That’s it for today! Off to work.

Fine, I'll do it myself

A few weeks back I wrote about how the archive page on this website - an index of all my writing - have been acting inconsistent and (sometimes) nonexistent. An inquiry to Squarespace support got me nowhere. Basically it’s a known quirk, and practically speaking it will not be fixed. Support said I have too much content for that indexing function. Mind you I pay over two hundred dollars a year to Squarespace to host this website! A paid product should not be broken on any of its functions.

Nevertheless, it was up to me to act. I can either switch to another website host, or switch to the newer 7.1 templates. Both options require an immense amount of work: I practically have to piece-meal transfer over the entire lot of my content. Doable, given a long enough timeframe, but not ideal given my other time commitments. I would need about two weeks of nothing else to concentrate on that sort of project.

It seems tedium is not to be avoided, however. The solution I arrived at is rather simple on paper: do my own indexing. No more relying on Squarespace’s module to fetch the content. Instead I shall manually construct the archive. By going to every piece I’ve ever written on here, copy the title and hyperlink, then paste them onto the page. With some 500 individual posts to copy and link, the process was going to be slow.

And it took the better part of last weekend to accomplish the transition. The archive page is finally looking how I want it to be. Like the carpenter who sands and paints the back of the cabinet, every little detail matters! Of course, for any new post I write henceforth, I have to manually add it to the index. Minor labor that’s worth trading for an archive page that will load properly each and every time.

Go out and do things

This past Sunday, after doing my morning routine of visiting my parents - as I do every Sunday - I was at an impasse. What to do for the rest of the day? It was the final day of February, so the monthly update on my M2 Competition needed to be written. Being a self-professed writer, naturally that article was something to be procrastinated onto later. I actually planned to be write it this weekend.

Because truth be told: I didn’t know what to write about.

What I did end up doing was getting into the M2 and taking it out for a spin. All the way up past the Golden Gate Bridge, and looping back just before Highway 101 splits off towards Mount Tamalpais. As I came home and proceeded to park, I carelessly backed the M2 onto another car. Thankfully, that other car was my brother’s Mazda MX-5, which I am presently in stewardship of. Speed was low, damage was minimal: only a small chip on the M2’s rear bumper.

After a brief moment of internal despondence at my own stupidity, a stroke of inspiration hit: I knew exactly what to write about. In all my years of car ownership, I’ve continuously done stupid things like backing them into concrete posts and running over parking curbs. So I did a chronicle of my clumsiness with cars, and that age and experience hasn’t saved the M2 from suffering the same fate.

The lesson here is: to have something to write about, it’s important to go out into the world and do things. Had I decided against taking the M2 out for a drive on Sunday, I’d be stuck on what to write for the February update article that likely still hasn’t yet been written. The one time I fought my instincts to stay home, I am rewarded with material and inspiration. I just wished it didn’t take damaging the rear bumper, but that’s something that can be fixed easily.

Daily break life

During the winter break, unable to travel anywhere, daily life wasn’t all that different compared to working-from-home. Obviously, I didn’t have to keep tabs on the work portal, but that’s about it. I’m still sat in front of the computer for most of the day, starring at a refreshing screen, hoping to be entertained. This is why I didn’t request additional time off: there’s only so much YouTube videos to watch before I’m really just wasting time.

On a few of the days, however, I did get a pseudo experience of what it would be like to be a freelance writer. I had two big pieces to write: reflections on 2020 (insane), and December update for the M2 Competition. The inertia of laziness is strong; I was surprised at my own discipline in finishing those articles on time. It all starts with getting the daily tasks out of the way. I’d wake up (not so) bright and early, and studying Korean for an hour. Then it’s reading for another hour (The Gulag Archipelago volume 2. Fitting for our times, am I right?).

With the two daily tasks out of the way, it’s time for breakfast. After the stomach is fed, then it’s time to start writing. One trick that really helps me stay focused is to set some soft boundaries: how many words in total? How long am I writing before breaking for lunch? These soft goals makes the project seem manageable and less daunting. It keeps me concentrated on the process: let’s just write for two hours; lunch will be the reward.

After lunch, I’d write for another two hours, before breaking once again. This time it’s to workout. There’s truly no better antidote than the euphoric high that comes after exercising. With that done, I would then write some more until it was time for dinner. By that point, I was already (largely) done with an article. A night’s supper is extra sweet when you’ve had a productive day.

Perhaps someday I’ll find a way to get paid for this sort of work. In the meantime, it’s all for fun; exercising the creative mind.

What's the topic?

This is one of those mornings I really don’t know what to write about, but the show must go on. I try hard to not skip any scheduled writing days, because like missing a workout, the regret of having done so afterwards is rather unpleasant. Nothing should stop me from putting down the few hundred words on this page every day; except for Fridays, and the weekend.

With nothing to write about, I instead picked up a book and read for about an hour. I thought perhaps doing another task first would allow the time for inspiration to hit me and I’d have something to write about. Well, that completely failed on this day, and here I am rambling about particularly nothing just to fill up the word count.

But the show must go on.

The next time I put words to this page, I would have moved to my new spot closer to work, living the solitary independent life for the very first time. I am looking forward to this big life change with humbled anticipation, though with a few days still remaining at what I can now refer as “my parents’ home”, I am trying hard to not fast-forward time with the excitement of the future. It would be too easy to take these next days off and sort of lounge around until it’s time to move.

In those moments, I remind myself the core of what I do, which is plastered on the landing page of this very website: writer, photographer, car enthusiast, reader, traveler. So long as I am doing any one of those five things at a given time, (not so much traveling going on these days, sadly) I can confidently say I am being productive. Not to say one shouldn’t have hours of pure leisure, but for those with a tendency towards laziness like myself, reminders and affirmations are helpful tools to keep me on track.

Until next time, friends.