Weeknotes: Week 44, 2023

I spent some time making some updates to my website, including the addition of Tinylytics. I also share an four-month review of my Kindle Scribe, an interesting photography revelation, and the usual media highlights.

Tall grasses in the late autumn sun

Here’s a summary of what was going on in my world during the week of Oct 30 to Nov 5, 2023.

With the transition to Fastmail complete, everyone’s data and email are migrated and there are no outstanding issues, I pulled the plug on Google Workspace.
I made a new landing page for my site in an attempt to make it more user-friendly. I really love CSS Flexible Box layout, but it can sometimes be tricky to do what I want. I continuously learning and so far I’m happy with how it’s coming together.
I created a Tinylytics account a while back. It really is a very elegant tool that is easy to use. Thanks to @Maique for promoting the service (and sharing a substantial discount code, I became a paid subscriber and updated my site templates. (Don’t forget to click the cheeseburger!)
📓 After several months of using the Kindle Scribe, I have to say I’m not in love. I like the large screen size for reading books and the touch screen is nice (just like the Kindle Paperwhite it replaced), but it falls short in two ways. First, at least once a day I inadvertently swipe to another page while writing notes. This wastes a lot of time and creates a lot of annoyance. Second, while the idea of emailing notes to myself as text or PDF files sounds great in principle it leaves me wanting in practice. One positive outcome is that I use a lot less paper now.
📷 One of the challenges I’ve had in my photography is estimating depth of field for a given shot. Or more to the point, choosing an appropriate aperture for a given situation to achieve the depth of field I need for a given shot. Traditional depth of field tables are virtually impossible to use in the field and besides, what I really want is something more practical that I can use until I really grok it and can do it on my own. (Taking a bunch of shots is sometimes an option, I suppose.) Anyway, somewhere along the line I stumbled upon Bernie Sumption’s blog post about a better depth of field table. He points out that depth of field is (more or less) independent of focal length as long as the subject distance is much less than the hyperfocal distance. Anyway, I think I’ve worked through the maths involved and have produced a new depth of field table tailored to my needs. I’m hoping to do a separate blog post on this soon.
🚶 I generally try to get outside and walk a mile or two every day. I like the chance those walks give me to clear my head and get some fresh air. It’s been getting harder lately as my work calendar is becoming increasingly crowded. I also worry that I’ll tend to get out less as the temperature drops.
🎃 We had some trick-or-treaters collect candy from us for Halloween. We gave away all the candy and had to turn off the porch light after the first hour! And I managed to not eat a whole bunch of candy this year!

Media Roundup

💰 We wrapped up Billions. As I’ve mentioned previously, this show got really bad in the last season: “train wreck” (Week 33), “like severed heads rolling down the street” (Week 34), and “from bad to worse” (Week 35). The second-last episode was one of the worst pieces of garbage I’ve ever watched. The finale was better but I'm glad it’s finally over and we can now put it behind us.
No Hard Feelings was at least as funny as most comedies, and only a little creepy.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was not as terrible as I was expecting it to be after reading the Vulture review.
Still ticking off weekly episodes of The Morning Show and Frasier
Started reading: The Big Myth by Naomi Oreskes
Love at First Sight was much better than I expected, which was nothing because I hadn’t heard of this movie before I was informed I’d be watching it.
This week I learned something very strange (and a little uncomfortable) from reading “Everything I Thought I Knew About Nasal Congestion Is Wrong” in The Atlantic.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in.