Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Winter: Not Dead Yet

 

A decent day today ended with a stray shower that wandered in from the east, and without sunshine the air is still pretty raw. Despite reaching 60° recently for the first time this year, the storms dropping by from the north have yet to relinquish their old habits. They will resume on Thursday and pester our 800-foot elevation in the dark of night with more white rain and perhaps a nearly-measurable amount of snow by sunrise. By 10am it reverts to rain and vanishes.. only to reappear after dark.

Last year we had our first measurable April snow.. will we go for two years of it?

Thursday, March 9, 2023

New cameras for '23

Nnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooo!

Actually it's not really a camera, it's something else: a new-ish phone! So it's more like one camera and two lenses.

We moved to a cellular home router that pulls data from a 5g network. Cool and modern! And yet, I've been using a 4g phone since we got this. Why is that?? 

I blame everyone else. Specifically the phone makers who believe that everyone wants a large paperweight in their pockets. I disagree and refuse to play the game. 

I moved up to a Moto G with its 6.7" 20:9 or whatever ratio phone, and only in my carpenter pants do I have a pocket that's really capable of holding the thing. In a front pocket it looks too much like a (Spinal Tap) cucumber, and my piriformis muscle won't tolerate it in a back pocket. Maybe it's meant to wear like an ID card on a lanyard.. well no thanks to that option either. 

So after a week or two I reverted to my Moto E5 Play, which is nearly my perfect phone size (I preferred the E 2nd-gen but the screen to phone ratio is a bit too low on that one).

After exploring the internet several times, I've come to learn that only the Samsung S and base-level Pixels even try to come close to my preferred size.  And an Apple X or two; I leave that field to my spouse though, I'm definitely a 'droid dude.

The S models are depreciating very slowly, so after a search of those two designs I found a pixel 5 that suggests light wear and somewhat gentle use. Apparently a wide 'normal' phone imager and a superwide are behind the black square. 

As I've mentioned several times, I've never paid enough for a phone that the camera system is deserving of mention; perhaps going to 5G will have changed that 'never' to 'only once'? 

3/14: the pixel has arrived, and it's pretty much ideally suited to me. It's slightly smaller than the e5play, yet the actual screen size fills the phone. It's smaller but looks larger, with many feature updates and more memory

Two thumbs up!