I was going to stay home and nap today, but fate threw a good excuse to go walk around the mission for an hour today (double masked and keeping my distance from everyone, naturally). It’s been a while since I was out in the world. Five thousand steps according to my watch. Maybe the longest I’ve walked in a year? It’s been a while. I kinda wish I’d gone further. I used to do 10 or 15 miles in a day, no problem. Solvitur Ambulando, I’ve always thought.
The Mission was much as it always was; rumors of a dead san francisco are greatly exaggerated. Valencia had a couple blocks closed off, and a lot of the restaurants had ‘outdoor seating’ with varying degrees of ‘outdoor’ for each of them in the unused parking spaces. None were the fully enclosed spots like I’ve seen in photos from other cities, but I’m still not about to sit down that close to other people. I kept walking.
Trying to work on the backlog of tasks, but these pictures were fresh, and I kinda like them. Getting out the superwide was a good choice; something to break up the monotony of the 50mm which I love, and won’t ever really be done with, but/and I definitely needed to take the wide view today.
The pandemic is about to enter its second year here. The early days were hard; not knowing what was safe and what wasn’t; it was maybe a month into things before the CDC was recommending mask wearing? We were worried enough that we wiped down our groceries, because nobody knew if fomite transmission was a thing (and we all suddenly knew that word). People figured out new things to do; I figured out recipes to try to relieve the boredom, we had movie sundays, where several households would start a movie at the same time, and we’d chat on discord.
Then, people started figuring out ways to see each other somewhat safely. Abstinence is a bad model for public health, and the good news is we could meet outside, in a park, with six feet between households. Lots of people picked up new hobbies; bread baking, cooking, netflix watching. I re-did this web site, kept fucking up my ankle, my knee, and finding myself unable to walk for periods of days, and hobbling around a lot. I guess that’s what happens when you cut off physical therapy too soon after surgery, but what was I going to do? Go, and breathe someone else’s air for an hour twice a week? No thank you.
anyway, at this point, we’ve figured out what’s permissible and what isn’t. Stuff outside, with the six feet rule, is fine (ish). Avoid crowds, though; the more people in an area, the more likely someone is there, spreading the virus but asymptomatic. Don’t go inside someone else’s building, unless they’re in your pod; pods are less than six people. This last is broken a lot, because people have to eat, and grocery stores are full of other people. Even with restricted occupancy, you’re definitely sharing air. If you do ‘break the rules’, self-isolate for two weeks, do not pass go, don’t collect $200.
It was a nice day after a load of crappy ones. Winter has been especially harsh this year. I always get a bit down in January. The holidays aren’t as bad, buoyed as they are (normally) by family and food and giving and receiving presents. It’s not yet spring, but it’s getting warmer.
Posted on 2021-02-07T09:27:24Z GMT
First photo is a ringer; it’s my friend’s dog Cherry. Been doing a lot of sewing work lately. I’ve got a new smaller EDC bag mostly ready for trials, as soon as I’m allowed to leave the house and take pictures. Just big enough for my leica, a couple of lenses, and maybe a snack and water bottle. I sort of have felt mildly embarrassed when I’m out somewhere, tell people I make bags, and the one I’m carrying isn’t one of mine. “No, this is just an old Domke,” isn’t a very fun answer, so I’m making one to fit that bag-shaped space. Scratching my own itch, so to speak.
Another thing that just happened: I acquired the cheapest walking foot sewing machine, a TuffSew Super Deluxe. I didn’t buy new, but got it for $100 on craigslist. The foot only lifts about 1/4”, the maximum stitch length is about 6mm, and if that mixing of units didn’t put you off, the noise from the machine just might. It’s a machine that lets the whole house know, SOMEONE IS SEWING SOMETHING. It did punch through 9 layers of 1000 denier nylon canvas without issue, once I got the threading right, and oiled it in all the spots that move. Oh and corrected the belt tension and fucked up one of the cams that times the feed dogs, and then fixed that. I may have to move some things around to make room for it, but that’s later today.
Oh, and: the stitch length lever on it doesn’t have like, markings or a way to set and hold a stitch length, so I need to devise something for that; I may see if I can get some Sailrite parts for it, since they’re the same OEM they share the same casting and a lot of parts. The Sailrite machines are at least finished here in the US, and are probably a lot smoother. Like any offset manufacturing, there are quality and finish specifications; the degree to which fit and finish affects the final product is pretty drastic. Part of why I screwed up that cam is I was trying to add a tiny bit of play in the machine, as it was adjusted so tightly that it was almost binding up from internal forces.
Anyway. As soon as I finish this bag, I’m going to start work on the web site for the three bags I intend to sell. There are three base designs, and basically those are a jumping off point. Customizable fabric, size, accessories, all made to order. The little one I’m making for myself will be the cheapest, probably in the $750 range. I haven’t decided yet. The Dyneema isn’t cheap, and neither is anything else I put into these, including my time. That’ll be at mills.studio which is a working domain that displays “…” and nothing else. A work in progress.
Speaking of, it’s time to cook breakfast.
Posted on 2020-12-20T19:00:44Z GMT
These are a little random, but they’re what’s next on the queue. I’ve always had a couple rules, unwritten, that I find myself following without thinking. One of them is that the things stay in chronological order, whatever I have in what passes for a stack to be published, and I put out the oldest first.
Another unwritten rule: Never publish the same picture twice. This is probably the worst idea from like a self-promotion or advertising angle; good thing I’m doing neither of those. I don’t know why I do this, other than the fact that I’m constantly producing images; less so the last nine months, but I still have enough of a work backlog that I’m good for images till… sometime next year. or until things start happening again and I start generating new stuff I care about more.rr
The last one: no drafts, no timed posts. This is more a function of the barebones software I use. I technically can do draft posts now, and have occasionally, but more often than not I look at what I’ve written, say fuck it, and push publish. life is too short to worry about what’s in a little personal blog that nobody really reads.
Posted on 2020-12-09T08:18:43Z GMT
I remember this salon, rather well. Second to last in 2019. Great story about the sword master Musashi; I was too busy listening to get a good photo of Michael.
I’ve been raising money for Odd Salon over here. They’re a great organization, and while they’re not feeding people or engaging in direct mutual aid, I’d argue that the core mission of teaching people in an engaging way is just as essential. Maslow is bullshit; people need the arts in their lives to really be living (and if getting up in front of a rowdy crowd and giving them a history lesson, to capacity crowds once a month isn’t art, then I don’t know what is). Of course, survival first, but if you can, do.
Things are about to get dire again, if they aren’t already. We’ll be up to one 9/11 a day by mid-december if things don’t level off (and they won’t). Trump did this. The republicans in the Senate also did this. I’m not about to forgive and forget.
Stay safe out there. Wear your mask if you have to leave home, but really think about it before you do. Can it wait a day? Two? Try it out. Remember surviving another day is its own victory when the enemy is a death cult bent on killing us all.
Posted on 2020-12-05T09:16:04Z GMT
Remember saturdays? When you would go to the bar and just run into cool people? Yeah. This one bled over into sunday, into the bar shutting down, into us standing outside with folks while everyone smoked and waited for their rides to show up. No, mom, I wasn’t smoking. I only smoke cigars, and those only to celebrate special occasions.
It’s December now, and the light is all but gone. When I get up from my desk to pause at 4, right before plunging into the last couple hours of my day, it’s all but dark outside. No time for an after-work walk, or an evening bike ride (unless I want to ride in the cold and dark, which used to appeal to me but doesn’t as much, now).
Things are going to get worse, before they get better. But they will get better dammit! There are old people, and shitty people, who don’t want it to be true, but we’re living in the first days of a better world. We humans made a working vaccine for a virus that didn’t exist 13 months ago (well, in humans) out of fragments of RNA in two days. Someone sequenced the vaccine, and they emailed the damn sequence, and two days of work later, what is now the Oxford vaccine was effectively done. Of course, there’s no way to know such a thing will work until it goes through trials, but we also did that in record time.
What I’m saying is, despite reactionary movements, despite setbacks, despite a whole political party determined to kill us all, we’re still here. First days of a better world.
Posted on 2020-12-04T08:44:24Z GMT
