Updates
It’s been a little while since I ventured out with nothing more in mind than taking some photos and seeing what’s going on. Decided to just take the one lens with me today; the Zeiss 28mm Distagon from the old C/Y mount era. Great lens with lots of contrast and sharp wide open. Annoyingly I reset my camera as it wasn’t communicating with my Mac in order to have a much needed firmware update, but the reset didn’t solve the issue as it appears that the issue is that the latest Mac OS “High Sierra” simply isn’t compatible at this moment. Sony’s firmware update procedure is a little cumbersome anyway, as well as being rather insecure, as it requires root access… which is never a good idea and isn’t actually necessary. It does strike me as a very Japanese thing to do, mind you.
I am almost always tempted to buy a new camera. Or a lens. It’s been a long time since my last lens purchase… perhaps about 3 years. And cameras were years before that. So in a sense I feel I am due a splurge, but at the same time, until I start taking a lot more photos, I don’t think I am going to justify any camera purchases for myself.
Though, I have ended up buying some products recently, which again I hadn’t done since… 2014. My Mac Mini server is pretty old now, but still works fine. It has 16GB of RAM and two 1TB SSDs installed, so I envisage it lasting for a long time. Things change. We are in an era where everything is trying to get into the cloud, Generally, this is OK, but I never consider anything in the cloud either a) secure or b) backed up.
Security is something that all of the cloud services will tell you is paramount. Companies will say something like “the security of your data is our upmost priority” or something else completely unbelievable (making money is their priority), and you just better be ready for the email coming through saying “we’re terribly sorry but our servers were compromised… we are taking steps… this won’t happen again…”. It will. Don’t believe it, don’t leave anything important in the cloud, don’t leave another company holding your personal data, and backups.
With the photos, comes waffle. The usual myriad of random thoughts that you will have come to expect. I’ve decided that if I am to keep this thing going, that I will really make this my blog again, which means that I will be writing about all sorts of topics, ranging from photos taken, the electronics I am debating buying, from science, to food… and everything in between.
I wasn’t sure I was going to write this, but here we go. 2017 started pretty well, but it was a tough year, and not just for me. The end of the year was particularly bad, and I was hoping that the beginning of 2018 would be a fresh start, but life, the arrow of time, cares not for our calendar. After a Christmas like no other before, the long month of January seemed longer than ever. Starting off full of hope for a new year, my mother was in hospital and had missed the “out by Christmas” promise from the beginning of December… and it was looking like months of recovery. Then an E-Coli infection followed almost immediately by a chest infection set her back to what looked like a mid-summer release. Finally, type-B influenza ended up making my mother another one of those wintertime “flu kills x-thousand” statistics.
Whomever you are, reading this little corner of the internet, whether I know you or not, I sincerely wish you well, wish your loved ones well, and hope that as this year goes on that you find happiness and joy.
