geek reconciliation

It isn't just cameras. I've overdone other tech purchases as well! 

Phones are today's topic. 

My wife and I used to get matching phones, but as her iPod aged she thought we should become Apple-ites and we picked up 4c twins. I could not handle the Appleisms after a brief time, but she continued with it, and now has an XE or somesuch (like a compact iPhone 10.5?).

I had somehow managed to get into Mototypes and liked them. I cannot recall how I ended up with a white and a black E:2nd-gen, though somehow it made 'sense' at the time. Update! I believe the white E² went into our hot tub for 10-15 seconds, so I deemed it dead. It got better, going for a walk!

Team Moto - E² on top, e5Play below left,
G Power2020 below right

At that point I joined Home Depot and needed to use their app - frequently! Our local Target sold phones for my carrier, and I got a decent price on an e5/ Play. It's a bit larger than E² but not much, and it holds its own for power and storage. Not really much faster on the HD wifi though, as both are 4G capable.. but easier to read fine print on the larger screen!

Then I bought a camera with a usb:C port.

My wife was already transitioning from the wide port of the iPhone4 era to Lightning, and now I was in the USB micro-to-C changeover? Ugh! 

Beyond that, I was finding storage to be a problem on the new/improved phone, as more and more space is used by Android OS and updated apps. So I found a Moto G Power with more memory, more battery life, usb:C, and .. well to be nice, it's a large skinny beast that isn't in my comfort zone.

As Bill the cat said so well, and so often: GAK.

Long story short: the usb:C-ported camera is gone for now, and I'm back on the µUSB phone (in this case, the E5p). I'll also let the usb:C tablet go away as it's now the odd duck out of luck.

My wife and I are still trying to puzzle out how to get her CD xfers along with the Apple Music system to port across to the new phone so the iPod Classic can fail without a sonic catastrophe.

Ah the progress of technology. What did I learn profanity for, other than such times as these?

---

2nd Update - the software for the eM1 will not function with Android 5.1 on the E², so the E5/play will take over instead. So close..

---

3rd update! I found an archived copy of the v4.2 Olympus APK (it went to 4.4x before becoming OMD 1.0) and it works OK on the E²+eM1 - so I'm back at it again with the 'tiny' phone. I forgot how much I liked the Lollipop era of Android, where changing bluetooth/network devices wasn't four button presses away.

Swainson's Thrush 2022

 The first spiral trill of the Swainson's thrush was heard this evening. Hooray! My wife is thrilled.

They arrived early despite our delayed spring; the Salmon-berries are still small and green. Hopefully that means they will stay around a while. The 18th of May ('eruption day' in the Pacific NW) is commonly when their one-note calls are heard first, but the 14th was when I first heard their 'whipp' and 'breeek!' monotones. This evening I hear the more settled 'whip/brrrr' call a few times, then the call came at last. Nesting season at last?

This is one of my favorite "SURPRISE!" images. I took this photo featuring the towhee and cropped the image tightly, only later aware that he was being shadowed by a Swainson's in the uncropped image! I've recropped (shown here) to show the elusive thrush in its favorite place - under cover. :^) Too bad about the nail and pitched pole, not quite a pastoral scene.. also too bad I didn't have a longer telephoto lens, as the image did not crop without artifacts.

When snow won't melt

 

Mid-May is generally snowpack-depletion time.. but with snow levels in the 2500-4000 foot range it's led to impressive %normal values! It always helps that 'normal' is down to a few inches or feet at most, so 4640% near Hells Canyon is not quite as massive as it seems. It's reassuring to see such strong values so late in the snowwpack year though.

Our forecast is dry for a week. I'd be hard pressed to find when that last happened. Oh wait.. /processing/ 8 days in Feb had 0.07", 7 with 0.01 in Dec. Close enough.

PK primes on µ43

I finally decided to pick up a K-mount booster for my µ43 kit. This condenses the light by an additional stop, and lowers the effective focal length by .71x. The use of telecompressors has become a thing in mirrorless cameras of all sorts; I own a booster for the Nikon-F mount as well, though my Pentax lens set is better suited so the Nikon shelf is getting dusty!

Here's a table of the lenses and their new focal lengths. The 2x factor for µ43' smaller sensor is still in play. That M85/2 becomes a 60mm f/1.4, or 120mm effective; no more need for the Sigma 56/1.4! On the other hand, the 200mm converts to essentially the same lens as the 135/3.5 is by itself, so no need for speed there.

The zooms will be interesting, as the now-12-20/2.5-3.5 fisheye is now my fastest wide (widest fast?) lens for sky shooting. The talented Rikenon XR is also interesting as a 100-210mm/e, f/2.8 telephoto. 

We'll learn soon how well the adapter gets along with the Pentax lenses. Hopefully all will fit well, and the optics don't show any centering or tilt issues.

And of course, the lenses are great fun on the K-s2 even with its aperture automation inoperative; dialing in the aperture the old-fashioned way in Manual mode works fine with the infamous Green Button, and the lenses act as they should on a native body .. although the film-era lenses are still 'cropped' 1.5x by the smaller aps/C sensor.

April bizarre

No not a bazaar. Just.. bizarre.

Portland had measurable snow later than ever before. We had three inches - twice! - on the 11th and 14th, with ~1/2-1.5 inch each day in between. It was pretty much gone each evening, though some of it remained where it slid off the roofs. 

We had about an inch in April 2018 (on the 3rd), now 2022 ends with 8½". More than any March up here, and more than all but one January. It's been windy too, and a few cracks of thunder (not unusual in spring around here). We hit 72° on the 7th, four days later it's snowing. Most parts of the country above 45°N do that - but it's so rare as to be unprecedented 'round these parts!

A most unusual April.

p.s. we ended at over 200% of normal precip. Snowmelt included. :^O

words cannot convey this..

 so we'll go with an image.. or two pasted ones! 

Rain, snow, wind, and thunder. Yikes!

Our latest text update is for 4-8" overnight then 3-4" tomorrow. The chart shows 9", plus snow showers from dusk to dawn most of the week; close enough. With the wind coming from almost due north, it will be interesting to see if it reaches us in our little hollow; SW and S winds never really find us - though the trees on the hill-top make plenty of noise.

We've had snow pellets and wet snow several times today, and we're in the mid-40s this afternoon. We await tomorrow with incredulity, as mid-April is pretty much unprecedented even at 700 feet up! Easter has been cold and blustery before, but this is the latest Easter than I can recall - so comparing it to late March isn't really fair.

Update #1 - Awoke on the 11th to 3 inches of snow. A bit lower than expected but the evening forecast was for 3-5 inches. The north side of the Willapa Hills did get the north wind; Ryderwood checked in with 5½" so it's all about location. Future days should include snow showers in the dark and rain showers in daylight, but no expected accumulation.

Update #2 - Final scores. Pretty much gone every evening except for where piles accumulated off roof or cars. So strange to have this in April!!

sports 'n weather update

SPORTS: After numerous years of not-quite, 2022 is looking like the year I resume my golf hobby. I've abused a few buckets of golf balls, practiced my putting stroke and wiped the rust off my long-forsaken chrome-plated shafts. I've even sent the irons in to have the grips replaced! Though I can't recall doing so, the grips of my metal/woods apparently were replaced in the not-so-recent past.

I've lived at this location nearly eight years but only played the front nine of one of the two local courses. That location also has a chip&putt 6-hole layout - which I haven't yet played. This feels like the year to revisit these old haunts. In the good old days I had an eagle at the local place, holing out a 140-yard iron on a par four; perhaps seeing that hole again will reawaken some good swing thoughts!

Clearly the long layoff means I have no handicap - but the memory of holding one near 13 around 1990. So thirty years ago I was pretty good! By now my aging swing needs to be supplemented by my vast experience and profound knowledge.. sounds like I need to get used to a mid-20s handicap for a goal.

- - - - - - - 

WEATHER: March was our first below-average rainfall month since August, though we still reached 94%. The next 36 hours are expected to contribute strongly to our 5" April average, and the forecast fetch of moisture comes from the Phillipines via Japan - so I'd expect two inches to be reasonable. Satellite image below was assembled at 7:20 pacific (daylight?) time. Impressive, but it will buckle and rearrange itself before Japan's weather hits our coast.. somewhere?

Also, we're within two inches of a slightly different rainfall record. The wet/dry seasons here (as everywhere else) are not often tied to calendar months. It's quite common for late October and early April to be damp, so I calculate our precip not just by Oct-Mar but also 10-16 through 4-15. Four years ago was the wettest of our six documented years at this site - but we're catching up!