Friends,
May and June are behind us, and so is Canadian spring. I swapped the winter tires for the summer variety. The rain in May replaced the snow that graced us every few days in April. It was once again possible to walk (or run) in reasonably light clothing during the twilight hours of the day. And like clockwork, the crabapple tree bloomed in my parent’s backyard.
But two more memories are going to stand out when I looked back on the spring of ’21.
The first will be cooking dinner in my parent’s garage during the late June heat wave. Their place lacks air conditioning, which makes cooking indoors in 35 °C temperatures unfathomable. To combat this, we rolled out the portable grill, frying pan, and rice cooker to prepare some truly wonderful meals from the comfort of… the garage? Honestly, it sounds odd writing it out, but the whole setup reminded me of my childhood weekends spent at the racetrack “working” as the pit crew on my dad’s car. The garage cookout was nostalgic, and I hope there will be more of those this summer, heat wave or not.
The second big memory will undoubtedly be of The Vaccine. I was in the fortuitous position (for which I’m still grateful) to get two doses of the Moderna variety in short order. Getting Moderna was especially fulfilling considering the investment I made in the company back when investing in the vaccines was almost as foolish as investing in $GME (I did that too). I told the nurse who gave me my first jab about the investment, and she nearly fell out of her chair laughing. “I sure haven’t heard that one before,” she quipped.
June was also the tail-end of Q2, and if you know me, you know I’m a big fan of the quarterly plan/review. Planning out a whole year à la New Year’s resolutions is too long a timespan to have any urgency, while planning your life month-by-month feels like you’re always revisiting and reviewing. And so, the quarter is a perfectly human amount of time and one conducive to getting good work done.
Here are some of the noteworthy outputs from the past quarter:
- Finish a blog post about getting an Apple Watch × Strava to work together with HealthFit. I’ve helped enough people with an Apple Watch and Strava over the past few years that it felt like the right time to collect everything in one place.
- Finish a blog post about the last 10 years of journalling. This is another topic that comes up with friends and coworkers struggling to form the habit, so like the Apple Watch × Strava post, it felt like I could be helpful here.
- Finished six books (more about these below)
- Kept up the regular jazz piano practice using this online course (memorizing all those 7th chords is tough!)
- Finished a new intro page for the site. The new version does a better job explaining who I am and what I write about now that more people who don’t know me personally are finding this site.
That’s in addition to a few personal/fun projects, including:
- Transitioning away from my running coach and focusing once again on the joy of running more than my performance
- Disregarding that desire to focus less on running performance and running a 10K time trial anyway
- Cutting back down to 10–12% body fat after my last bulking phase
- Some home admin: filing taxes and outfitting the balcony with flowers (plenty of help from mum and dad on the latter)
- Riding Highway 40 with my brother before it opened to vehicle traffic on June 15
- Lastly, and it’s dumb, but playing with my cat more! We play a lot, but I’ve been trying to get down on the floor with him, which is actually something I learned from a parenting book (even though I am not expecting a child anytime soon). It’s practice, y’all.
All in all, an auspicious quarter that, I hope, will sow the seeds for a nice harvest in the months and years to come.
And now, onto to a medium-sized development undeserving of its own blog post.
Upgrading my camera from 2016
I’ve got 99 problems, but Gear Acquisition Syndrome ain’t one. This section is all about cameras, so skip past if that bores the heck out of you.
I’ve had a minimal photography kit since 2016 with my main/only camera being a Sony RX1R II. This was my dream camera for so many reasons. Ultra-compact, fixed 35 mm f/2.0 lens, pop-up electronic viewfinder, and so discrete. This was also the only camera I brought with me to the Southern Gulf Islands, Outer Banks, Japan (twice!), Maui, and all over the mainland US and Canada; not to mention almost every Bridgeland Nights photo walk and local adventure since purchasing.
Despite my love for the RX1R II, there were always a few downsides I would have to contend with:
- The battery life was horrid. I always had two with batteries with me. One charged on a portable battery in my backpack while I shot with the other.
- No weather sealing. I briefly messed up my shutter button when some particularly atmospheric rain rolled in, and I couldn’t resist shooting in it.
- I compose the world in a 50 mm focal length. I have this hunch the perception of the world changes from person to person. Some people take in a bigger view, while others live life a little more zoomed in. 35 mm was close for me, but 50 mm would’ve been perfect.
- Occasionally, I wanted the big zoom. The opportunities and challenges of making photos with a telephoto lens is a fun change of pace, and that wasn’t an option for me with a fixed lens camera.
But then, like a crack of lightning, the Sony a7C showed up. I think I even heard some fanfare of trumpets in the distance. I marvelled at this little wonder. It was a highly compact full-frame package with a big battery, weather sealing, and the option to put on a 50 mm lens (and potentially even a telephoto one day). There was little time spent deliberating. I set up the category in my budget and worked with Keh to sell my existing gear: the beloved RX1R II and the Ricoh GR III point-and-shoot I picked up last year.
Some time passed, I collected the funds, and the proceeds from my used camera sales came in. I met the budget target, and it was off to The Camera Store to pick it up. In short, the camera is a glorious thing and what I’ve been looking for all these years. I missed the 50 mm focal length and I never have to think about the battery life. Look for more photos from it in future posts.
For the truly curious, I went with the 50 mm f/2.5 lens from Sony, but I also inherited a vintage Canon 50 mm manual focus lens which is on an adapter. The modern lens is on the camera 99% of the time, but the manual focus Canon lens produces images that eschew technical perfection in favour of a little romance.
Listen
Here are four of my favourite songs from May and June.
Accidents and Compliments – Soulwax
An electronic tune with a punk influence. The whole album was re-released in 2020 for its 15th anniversary. It’s stellar and great for exercising. Part of the weekend never dies.
This is a great summer tune, making it just a touch early to be included in the spring lineup. Lorde is my hipster moment. After this single came out, my brother sent me a text that read:
“I still remember when you found Lorde’s music and her Instagram had like 100 people haha”
What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted – Jimmy Ruffin
I wish I could remember what film or show I Shazam’d this from, but that doesn’t matter all that much. Just throw it on before you go on a drive through the prairies at sunset.
Space Age Love Song – A Flock of Seagulls
A little antidote to the aforementioned brokenhearted tune, this is a straight-shooting song about love at first sight.
Watch
Marvel movies filled May and June. My parents fell hard for the MCU after WandaVision on Disney+ and my brother and I were adamant they get through the Infinity Saga before the series premiere of Loki. Alongside all the Marvel rewatching, here were some of my favourites from the past two months.
Goodness gracious, I loved this one. The look, the emotion, the music—it was all there. I was still thinking about it days after watching, and the soundtrack can bring me right back.
Another beautiful experience from Studio Ghibli. Only Yesterday is a completely pleasant film where nothing too bad ever happens, and that’s totally okay.
The whole thing might be cheesy, but every so often that’s precisely what the doctor ordered. I mean this scene, goddamn.
“You don’t know about real loss. Because it only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself.”
I’m beyond excited to see what a Marvel movie directed by Chloé Zhao will look like.
Play
I think Capcom managed to take all the best parts of the Resident Evil series and put them into one game. Many Resident Evil 4 vibes (which I played the heck out of when I was younger) with just a touch more classic Resident Evil horror than that game offered up.
Read
I think the Earthsea series is my Harry Potter. The characters I’ve followed from books 1–3 are old and withered now. They’re wrestling with new responsibilities and their mortality. It was also refreshing to see the hero’s journey through the eyes of a woman and the different burdens/expectations of that sex.
This came highly recommended from a friend, and one glance at the synopsis had me insta-buying. The book examines two mindsets: fixed and growth. The fixed mindset is afraid of failure and has a strong desire to prove competency. The growth mindset doesn’t care quite so much; failure is a learning opportunity and challenges produce knowledge.
My favourite part was when they asked both fixed- and growth-minded individuals when they felt their smartest. Fixed-minded individuals said they felt smart when they were performing a difficult task with ease. Growth-minded individuals felt smart when they were working on something challenging and were just starting to get it.
Breaking Points by Agnes Callard
A friend sent this article over, and I latched onto the section about the clean break. I’ve been both the instigator of the clean break and the recipient of it. I’m honestly not sure where my agreement/disagreement with the idea starts and ends, but it sure made me think. The clean break feels like a distinctly “human” creation. Only we would come up with such a thing so artificial and against nature.
“When I lose you, I also lose the me I became for you. And vice versa. Which is why cutting you off, once we have grown together, is an act of violence. I am not cutting anything visible, like your arm or leg, but I am nonetheless cutting away something that is a part of you—me. This is an act of psychological violence.”
Even that line, “I also lose the me I became for you”—I’m not confident that’s necessarily a bad thing (if only for the growth-oriented mindset reasons mentioned above).
High Output Management by Andy Grove
Never have I read a more practical and quotable book about leadership. Essential reading for any manager and one I’ll be returning to time and time again. I think people at work might be sick of me bringing it up.
That brings us to the end of May and June. July is the beginning of a new quarter which means new hopes, dreams, and plans. It also feels like the true beginning of summer and all the carefree joy that brings (as carefree as one can be during a pandemic).
Finally, if you know someone who would like this, please send it their way!