6FPS: Photography and More

Apple's Research App

A Newsletter by Chuq Von Rospach

V1#17 - Nov-25-2019

Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS. As I write this, it's the weekend before Thanksgiving, and here in Silicon Valley we're looking forward to our first real rain, if you believe the forecasts. For the holiday weekend, as is our tradition, Laurie and I will spend Black Friday out at Merced National Wildlife Refuge avoiding stores, malls, crowds and shopping. That said, I'm actually quite close to done with my Christmas shopping anyway... And then Saturday or Sunday it's digging into the garage to unearth the christmas tree and gear.

The New Computer

When Apple announced the 16" Macbook Pro with a bunch of interesting features -- although all anyone will talk about is the revised keyboard -- my initial reaction was that it was a great machine, but I wasn't going to buy one.

You can guess what happened. As I noted in I Said I Wasn't Buying a 16" MacBook Pro. Guess What Happened? -- I did in fact buy it, and it is now set up and I'm using it to build this issue of 6FPS. Why? Partly simplification, going back to a single docked computer rather than having to worry about whether my data is on whatever machine I'm using, which in fact these days is rarely a problem.

Another big issue: I simply hate trying to use Lightroom or Photoshop on a 13" display. There's simply not enough screen space. The reason I switched to a 13" computer a couple of machines ago was weight and portability. As I started thinking about all of this, I realize that is no longer a requirement for me: that's why I have an iPad. When I'm out on the road now, about the only two things I pull out the laptop for is to work on images or to do work for my real job, where I'm not IOS-capable (yet. working on it).

With an almost 4 year old machine with that first generation butterfly keyboard, I felt it was probably a good time to do the switch, given I feel a year from now trade in or sale prices for anything with that style keyboard will drop significantly. Apple's trade in program offered me almost $900 for it, so I won't complain. It also means I'm doing away with the iMac, which is only about 2.5 years old. I could have gotten about $1K for it with Apple trade-in, but it's being donated to Santa Clara Valley Audubon and I'll take a tax deduction for it instead.

I'm honestly going to miss the iMac 5K monitor, but to make up for that, I decided to go for the BenQ SW2700PT Photography Monitor. It supports full Adobe RGB, not just Srgb, and includes hardware calibration. I would define it as a pro/prosumer monitor for serious photographers, and having played with Lightroom in it a bit, I'm liking how images show up on it.

This change, of course, required tearing apart my work space and rebuiding it from scratch. As you can see above, I ended up going with putting the laptop and monitor up on mounting arms, mostly so I could most stuff out of the way when I wanted use the tabletop for work space, and to give me some positioning flexibility.

When you look at the photo above, you'll probably notice the mic and webcam setup. Both of them are on positioning booms, but the booms are set high on the mounting arms, not on the tabletop. I saw this technique in a video from DLSR Video Shooter where he set up a suggested Youtuber Studio and really liked it, because I've long wanted my mic coming in from overhead but didn't want to spend the money to try to create that kind of rig. This was a minor cost beyond setting up the stands for the other gear, and now, the microphone hangs over things and I can bring it close when I need it or leave it up there out of the way there rest of the time. I also shifted to using the Movo VXR10 Video mic (basically a knock off of the Rode Videomicro). I actually own both and I find the Movo has a bit more gain to it. Replacing my Shure 58a with a camera mic may seem weird, but this mic is designed to get you good audio from a source a couple of feet away and I'm happy with the quality. Closer is better, of course, but I don't have to french kiss the Movo to get good results and so I don't have to sweat location vs. what you see in the webcam video.

The webcam setup may seem weird, but... I have good reasons. First, with the hood on the BenQ, there really isn't a place to stick a webcam on top of the monitor. Second, with something like a 27" monitor on top of a riser, when I use a webcam set there, mostly what you see is the shiny reflections off my bald head. I really hate the look. The one significant ding for me with the 16" Macbook is they didn't upgrade the camera to 1080p, so I'm still on the Logitech C920. Putting it on a boom arm lets me shift it around, and also bring it down beside the monitor to face me straight on, not stare down on my shiny head from above. I still have a face made for radio, but at least now I'm not always cringing at how it looks when I record things or sit in on a meeting. And yes, the fact that the laptop stand and monitor stand leave a gap in the middle is by design to enable this...

The desk itself is a bit of a horror show still because I am (of course) waiting for one final cable to arrive from Amazon, at which point I can clean things up and do some cable management so it looks a bit neater.

And interesting side note on this change: my iMac was hooked up to a UPS. The laptop obviously doesn't need it, but to make that change means pulling out the cabinets to get at the sockets. Not going to do that now, so I get to double-battery the laptop for the time being. and if you were wondering about the two power strips attached at the back of the table -- one's to the UPS and one isn't, so I don't attach power loads to the UPS unless they need them.

Just for subscribers!

The third set of wallpapers have now been released and are available only to you, the wonderful people who have subscribed to this newsletter. You can find them on the new 6FPS Secret Wallpaper Hangout. The previous sets have now been released to everyone, and they are on the Desktop Wallpapers page.

The plan moving forward is to release a set of 12 3-4 times a year. Every time I do the previously secret set will be made public, and subscribers here will get access to the new images. This new set has more bird images in it as well as some black and whites, and I hope you find them interesting and worthy of being stared at as you work on your computer every day.

On with the Show!

And with that, on with the show! And thank you for being part of this.

Photos: Bushtit

The Bushtit is one of the common birds here in Silicon Valley, moving through an area in smallish flocks. They are seemingly always in motion, looking for seeds and small insects, moving about inside trees and bushes and flying between them in a coordinated way as the group works its way along its chosen path.

Fun birds to watch, but hard birds to photograph because of their tendency to move deep into a bush and never stay still long enough for you to focus the camera, but once in a while, you get lucky.

Apple's Research App

Apple has released it's research app, which allows iPhone users to enroll in research studies and contribute data to them. Three studies are available as I write: one is on the impact of exposure to loud noise over time on your hearing; one is tracking how staying active can impact your health and heart disease, and the third is a women's health study on the understanding the relationship between a woman's cycle and their habits and behaviors.

I've chosen to join the hearing and heart studies. The time needed is minimal; it took about 10 minutes to sign up and answer the initial questions and then there are occasional surveys to repond to. Other than that the phone passes along data as appropriate. Privacy and data security are baked into the design of the app.

Why did I sign up? I'm a big fan of citizen scence and I've seen with how the eBird data we collect as birders is being used to understand how the environment is doing and where there are problems that can be addressed. A lot of people contributing a little data in a way that has low friction for them -- so it actually happens -- can accumulate a data set that can solve significant problems.

Given the problems I've had with my hearing (which, thankfully, seem to be slowly improving, but are still far from what could be considered "normal" and likely never will be again), joining the hearing study seemed a given. With a family history of hearing problems (although there was always an unknown if dad's hearing loss was tied to genetics or to driving tanks around the South Pacific during WW II), it's a study I wanted to contribute to if I could.

And the heart health is close to home. I've been lucky with my heart, given my weight and years of relatively neglecting my body, and in the last decade I've twice been "blessed" with stress treadmill tests, both of which proved that my heart is doing fine, and just how out of shape I was in. I'm still not in great shape, but I'm in much better shape, but if I can contribute data that will help to better understanding and in turn help others, I'm all in.

Which is why I'm here encouraging all of you to consider signing up as well. Lots of little contributions can and do make a big difference, and every bit of data helps. Please consider joining a research study and be part of the citizen science data set that might make the future a better place.

About 6FPS and Chuq

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqui@mac.com).

Coming out in theory every two to three weeks, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find.

Know someone who might want to subscribe? Send them here. You'll also find the archives there if you want to look at previous issues.

See you soon!

And with that, I'll see you in a few weeks with the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along.

Until then, take care, and have fun.

Chuq

(P.S.: some links in this newsletter may point to products at Amazon; these are affiliate links and if you use them to buy a product, I get a small cut of the sale. This doesn't make me rich, but it does pay for my site hosting every month, and maybe a coffee or two. If you use the link to buy something, thank you. If you prefer not to, that's perfectly okay, also.)

Copyright © 2019 Chuq Von Rospach, All rights reserved.