Happenings: Garage Dinners, Q2 Wrap, and a Camera Upgrade

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Solar Power – Lorde

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.

Minari

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.

Only Yesterday

Another beautiful experience from Studio Ghibli. Only Yesterday is a completely pleasant film where nothing too bad ever happens, and that’s totally okay.

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Good Will Hunting

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.”

The Eternals Trailer

I’m beyond excited to see what a Marvel movie directed by Chloé Zhao will look like.

Play

Resident Evil 8

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

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin

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.

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

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.

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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!

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This Season in Photos: Unlocking

If you’ve talked with me in the last year and a half you’ve probably heard me pitch this idea that there are actually six seasons instead of four. This isn’t new! It comes from the writer, Kurt Vonnegut. March and April aren’t some bizarre combo of winter and spring. Instead, they make up unlocking, a season nestled between the slumber of winter and the renewal of spring. It’s a time when the world thaws, yawns, and stretches its limbs.

People once again line the river; reading, playing, and sunning themselves in questionable temperatures (including me). Mum celebrated her 59th birthday. Levi and I enjoyed our first hike of the year not decked out in cold weather gear. I'm living my best spa life with the addition of a new robe. The fam spent three weeks working on a Magic Puzzle™. Indoor cycling has me venturing into the pain cave while techno (the real stuff) pumps into my ears. Lunch gained a near daily side of black beans and avocado w/ lime and salt. It even warmed up enough for the first park workout of the year, although that 53 lb (24 kg) kettlebell was a literal pain to carry all the way there. And Centre Street Bridge is once again open to pedestrian traffic alongside Memorial Drive—I run that route as often as I can while we have it.

With unlocking behind us, “winter” has probably, hopefully, finally departed (or at least that’s what I’m telling myself as I look out the window at the last few snowflakes).

Why the Photo Mode from The Last of Us Part II Just Clicked

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Photographers and gamers! Who of you are contained in the middle of that Venn diagram of hobbies?

Something about the photo mode in The Last of Us Part II (TLOU2) held my attention, unlike the photo mode from any other game (save Pokémon Snap). Indeed, the TLOU2 game developers at Naughty Dog even wrote about how they get their best shots on the official Playstation blog. My usual lack of interest in photo mode is surprising considering my love for real-world photography, but on closer examination, maybe there was something off about those other experiences that prevented me from fully appreciating their potential.

What follows is my theory why this photo mode clicked where others did not. Consider it a combo photography / user experience post. I’ve also included photos from the game throughout. They’ll contain location spoilers, although I doubt they’ll mean much until you get to that part of the story.

Reason #1: The game is on-rails

TLOU2 isn’t a sprawling open-world adventure game like Red Dead Redemption 2, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, or Grand Theft Auto 5. Instead, the game is mostly linear and follows a determined path. This allows the game developers to take you through areas at a set time and a set pace, creating moments in the story with the perfect lighting, colour tone, weather, and more.

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Compare that to an experience my brother and I had while playing the original Red Dead Redemption. He finished the game before I did and told me about the beautiful finale from the last story mission in the game—the music was perfect, the light was golden—you get the idea. Eventually, I caught up, but didn’t have the same experience. In fact, I was surprised when the mission finished because there didn’t seem to be anything remotely exceptional about its “look”. I asked him about what he saw. It turns out he finished the story mission as the in-game sun was rising for the day while I finished the mission in the harsh mid-afternoon light. Hence, no streaming light between the trees, nor warm atmospheric glow.

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The open world photo mode experience is a game of chance. You need to be at the right time and the right place, not unlike photography in the real world. Naturally, you can increase your odds of being at the right time and the right place by getting out more or photographing (playing) at the right times, but only playing a game during its in-game golden hours isn’t practical.

Looking back at TLOU2, the “on-rails” nature of the game gives the developer a high degree of control over the cinematic experience. They can force you into the right time and place so all that’s left to do is recognize and capture the beauty of the experience as best you can. There’s less left to chance and fewer missed photo opportunities as a result.

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Reason #2: Automatically turning on the photo mode shortcut

Early in the game there’s a small tutorial about photo mode. It’s through this tutorial they show the player the prominently located photo mode option in the pause menu. However, after accessing it enough times the game automatically turns on the photo mode shortcut by clicking in the two sticks of the controller. This shortcut only saves one button press (pressing the pause button, then selecting photo mode vs. pressing two sticks at once) but this is another example where it doesn’t pay to “count the clicks”. Other games might have a similar photo mode shortcut, but either the lack of explanation or the lack of turning it on could’ve been critical factors that prevented it from sticking.

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However, equipped with this shortcut in TLOU2, I could almost instantly jump into photo mode and quickly pan the camera around to see if there was an angle. Occasionally, there wasn’t, and I’d back out without taking a photo. Other times there was, and I’d tweak and refine the settings while time was frozen. After photographing fleeting moments in the real world—and missing many over the years—it’s powerful to sit in a singular moment indefinitely. I could dial in the settings just right, without worrying the light would fade or a pose would change.

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My favourite technique involved increasing the depth of field slider to maximum, then setting the focus distance to the perfect spot on the subject. Usually, the depth of field was so intense at this point that one slider click in either direction spoiled the focus. After achieving critical focus, I’d reduce the depth of field slider to something that looked natural while also knowing my desired subject was perfectly in focus.

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It doesn’t hurt that the game is beautiful

The combination of a) the game’s on-rails nature and b) the ease of accessing photo mode probably contributed to my (over?) use of photo mode. But without a beautiful game backing those two techniques up, they wouldn’t mean much.

If you’ve played the game you know, The Last of Us Part II’s emotional burden is heavy. I frequently felt like I was playing one of the best games I’ll ever know, and you only get to experience the first play-through once. I’m glad I have these photos as souvenirs.

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The Month in Photos: February 2021

February! What an appallingly cold month (with the exception of that one day at the start when I was able to take my bike out). I should know, I spent two and half hours outside in –30°C on a long run. I sincerely questioned my sanity on that run, but then I reminded myself I’m just a tough motherfucker 🤗 Thankfully the frigid weather was offset by warm inside activities. Late night home workouts warming the body and soul, the classic Mason Family Super Bowl Feast™ didn’t disappoint (does it ever?), and the returning late day sun making for the orangest walls of the year. Welcome Spring, you were missed. 

This Month in Photos: January 2021

January mostly continued the mild winter trend until the very end of the month, which made for some exciting intra-seasonal changes. It was quiet—spent with those in my bubble (when safe) and the usual hobbies. Here are a few of my favourite photos from the month.

Jan 1: Rang in the new year with family, puzzles, and Animal Crossing. Great fireworks, even if they were just on a screen.

Jan 6. Capitol riots day. Watching the coverage during a late night workout.

Jan 7: The George C. King bridge—my favourite bridge in the city—during an evening run.

Jan 8: Gourmet dinner plus ambiance. You better believe that's the PC White Cheddar variety and not KD. Bowls by the talented Laura Sand.

Jan 16: YNAB's retreat went virtual in 2020 and—not breaking tradition—they had a tailor-made puzzle designed by our very own Lauren Coulson. Instead of the team effort found at normal in-person retreats, everyone went solo this year and I finally finished mine up.

Jan 20: Homemade veggie poutine and burgers with the fam.

Jan 21: Ice, ice floes, or icebergs? Regardless, the Bow River is filled with them right now. I pay attention to it when I'm out running because, while it changes slowly, it's always a signal of time passing.

Jan 23: Major changes along the riverwalk near Eau Claire. Nearly all of the large trees were chopped down making for some new sightlines. I was sad to see the trees go, but they've done such a nice job with the landscaping elsewhere I've gotta imagine this will turn out just as good. It's a bit barren right now, and I was getting FernGully vibes from the piles of chopped trees.

Jan 23: The night before the big freeze, signaling the end of the mild winter.

Jan 24: Hoarfrost details during an early morning run.

Jan 24: More hoarfrost along the Bow River pathway.

Jan 27: RGB colour mixing with three Philips Hue lights. I was surpised how vivid the mixed colours turned out. That's some strong cyan, yellow, and magenta made entirely from red, green, and blue.

Midsummer Photo Walk

The summer solstice arrived right as I picked up my new Ricoh GR III. The weather cooperated and it turned into the perfect night to do my usual Bridgeland Nights rounds—with a new approach. Instead of shooting black and white, I kept the Ricoh on JPG and tried out the positive film simulation.