It’s Been a Year

6FPS V4#6 - Photography and More
A Newsletter by Chuq Von Rospach
June 13, 2022

 

Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

Welcome to June! It’s been a year since we bought the house in Washington and started the big move, and that’s something I talk about more below.

The days have been getting longer and longer, which is nice. In Silicon Valley, the change is pretty gradual, but here, 3 minutes a day is normal, and so the length changes quite rapidly. We’re at the point where dawn is before 6AM, and sunset is around 9PM. In another few weeks we’ll hit solstice and it’ll start getting shorter again, but right now, the days are long and glorious.

It has been a cool (< 10F cooler than normal) and wet spring here in Kitsap Washington, where as I write this we’re about a week into June and already beaten the average rainfall for the month. I do think we’re finally starting to transition out of the winter patterns, but I guess this is stuff we need to get used to, since we broke the planet and our climate normals are all messed up. Could be worse, though, the drought conditions in California are getting much worse, and I feel bad for people down there, but I’m glad I’m not having to worry about that at this point.

As you’ll see in the What’s New section below, I updated my camera bag posting, which I could finally do because I’m finally getting out with the camera again (see It’s Been a Year below for some thoughts on why my wandering and shooting has been kind of limited). I’m back in the swing of things with birds, but the landscape is still coming around, but I”m pretty happy overall with it and I’m starting to see compositions as I wander around the area. I feel like what I’m trying to shoot is different than it used to be, but it’s really too early to tell for sure. It’ll be interesting to see what happens here.

My focus right now is getting my book reading back on track (check out what’s happening there on GoodReads), and getting the veggie beds ready for Laurie to use (running late, mostly due to the weather), and progress on the shop. It’s still — usable but not functional — but a couple of weekends in there will go a long way towards making it really functional, although a shop like this takes weeks to months to really optimize it for how I want to work. I’ve got the core tools in place, and I’m starting to build out the shop infrastructure, and removing some of the counter tops the previous owner built in in favor of lower (he was evidently taller than me) and mobile setups. I’ll talk more about that maybe next month. I’ve got the key tool set in and it’s now starting to clear the tops of things and getting stuff put away and into places where I’ll find it again later.

No specific travel plans, but depending on how the latest Covid variants play out, I might try to get down onto the Oregon coast for a few days, and I’m going to likely stay somewhere in Olympic National Park for a few days of exploring as well.

I’m hoping to get some design work on this newsletter before next issue, and it’s time to issue a new set of wallpapers. With any luck, next time you get this, it’ll look somewhat different (hopefully better!) and have some new things for you to download and enjoy. I also need to get my next ebook project unstuck and moving forward again, but there’s only so many hours in a week right now…

And with that, see you next issue!

What's New from Chuq?

It’s Been a Year

It’s June, and so it’s now been a year since we bought the house and started our move to Washington (move completed around the end of July, so we’re not quite at “lived here for a full year, but close). That made me realize I’d never really showed the new place off, so I wrote piece about it with some photos: A look at the Homestead (it’s been a year!).

There were a couple of things I didn’t cover there I thought I’d mention just for subscribers that I’ll cover here.

First, a couple of you have asked me about how little I’ve gone out birding, and yeah, I’ve done a lot less of that than I’d hoped to. That’s starting to change, and I’m trying to make it a habit to get out and get a good walk in once or twice a week with the binoculars somewhere off the property.

But I was struggling with a health problem a bit that it took a while to get straightened out. As I’ve talked about, a few years ago I had an inner ear problem that led to the onset of positional vertigo, which can lead to balance problems and to attacks where the universe decides to randomly spin around your head for a while. It’s probably safe to assume that the universe deciding to spin around your head while you’re driving a car somewhere is potentially a very bad thing. This all started as I was coordinating the move north, which was fun, but slowly got worse. Changing states, with a new medical plan (Kaiser Washington), and needing to get started with a new doctor and their team slowed down dealing with it some, as did some medical plan complications tied to my company being bought and merged into DomainTools.

So for various reasons (life happens, and Covid complicates everything), I started having problems around July, and by Christmas, it was being rather annoying, and we were talking over various options, most of which seemed to make it worse.

One of the doctors I worked with tested my other ear (the right one), and found that it, too, was causing vertigo, but we were ignoring it in our treatments. After that, things started getting better, and we spent some time testing dosages of the medicine I’m taking to manage it, and finally found the right dosages, and it’s now been about six weeks since the last time I had the room spin around me, and so in the last few weeks, I’ve finally started feeling comfortable driving more and getting further from the homestead.

This was, for what it’s worth, one of the reasons having to take down the feeders due to the bears being such a problem; the feeders and the birds we attract here have been a big part of my self-care when the wider region birding was more or less not available to me, and losing it at times affected my moods more than I like to admit. But now… All is good and getting better.

One of the “this proves god has a sense of humor” aspects is that one of the things that made things worse was — spending time at the computer, and in general, things where I need to focus or concentrate on a screen or written thing. So literally, what I do for a living could at times trigger an attack. Such fun.

It was a not very fun few months and there were times it felt like we’d never sort it out, but time and patience worked out, and I feel now like I can plan a day trip or a long weekend somewhere and have a good chance of things going well. And that’s why I’m starting to get out more, and take the camera out and explore this new region. I’ve been thinking about a few days at Sol Duc Hot Springs to explore around the coast, but as of right now, they’re basically booked until after Labor day, so I will want to consider options.

The other thing I thought I’d go into about the Homestead is that I’m working with our landscaping group on some updating to the property. Over the winter, much as I love roses, we had them pulled, because around here, you tend to get a lot more mildew and black spot than you do flowers, and they’re fairly high maintenance. We’re going to be replanting with more grasses and native plants, and things that fruit berries, plus some flowering things like lavenders and peonies. The drive is lined with Junipers and as the owner of the landscaping company said, it looks very 90’s, and so in the next week or so it’ll all be going away, and then over the summer as his crews have time, we’ll start planting in those spots. We have a fair bit of gravelled driveway around the house as well, and it’s gotten a bit thin in places, and so that’ll all be given a fresh layer later this summer (we’re working around his team’s schedule, since he’s short-staffed and really busy, especially this early season time of year). We also got Laurie’s veggie garden started, adn we’re converting that space to raised beds from in-ground. We’re late getting her garden in, but it’s been a cold and wet spring, and it’s just now starting to warm up enough for the seedlings to go in ground… More on all that once it’s in, but it’s been keeping me busy the last couple of weeks hauling around potting soil and the like.

Which — well, to be honest, the new truck is proving to be really useful already…

Photo Wednesday/Feathery Friday

These are the images I posted since last issue to the blog for Photo Wednesday and Feathery Friday. To see all of these images at full size and read the stories behind their creation, you can visit:

For Your Consideration

Photography

Birds and Birding

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

Recommendations

This month, a few recent book reads you might enjoy:

  • My “let’s go back to a book of my youth and see what I think” title this month was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and I have to admit, about 10% of the way in, I put it down and I don’t know when or if I’ll pick it up again. Just didn’t click

  • My “war history nerd” book was Imperial Germany and War, 1871-1918 which is an interesting if a bit dry deep dive into the attitudes and policies of the Prussian and Germany military leading up to and through World War I, and an examination of why they ended up in an extended trench warfare stalemate, which various officers saw coming and which nobody wanted, but which nobody wanted. If you’re into military history, it’s a good book, but it’s not exactly an easy piece to get through.

  • Leviathan Falls ends the expanse series by James S.A. Corey, and as someone who in general gets tired of long/extended series, this one kept me interested and reading up to the very appropriate and proper ending.

  • Finally, This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, is a fascinating store of warfare conducted through time travel — through a series of love letters between two of the agents conducting the war. Sort of. It is an absolute gem piece of writing around a fascinating concept.

See you soon!

And with that, I'll see you in 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.

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

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, 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.

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