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As part of my camera kit that I just upgraded I picked up a 24mm f/1.7 lens for the camera. Now for folks that don’t know photography can be a very expensive hobby. It would be entirely reasonable to walk into a camera store and spend thousands and still not have enough gear to be able to actually take a single photo.

I’m not a huge purchaser of gear – I’ve only ever purchased a handful of cameras myself and only two of those were something other than a decent point & shoot. However I’ve been using equipment for decades now across a couple of different manufacturers and the quality of the stuff that you can get – at least from a optical standpoint – has taken huge jumps from the stuff that I was using that was made back in the 1970’s or even in the 2000’s.

Case in point is this 24mm f/1.7 lens. It’s under 300$ when I bought it on sale. And it’s fantastic for what I paid for it.

Personally I like to shoot with Prime lenses, ones that don’t have the ability to zoom in and out of a subject. They are lighter, generally sharper, and force you to be a little more creative in the framing of your shots since you are limited to what you are able to do by the lack of a zoom on the camera. On my older film cameras I have a number of lenses ranging from the low 20mm range up to I think a 135mm lens, but my favourite was either the 35mm or 50mm lenses. Due to the way that the sensors work on the new camera this 24mm lens works out to be the same rough field of view as a 35mm lens, and that one when bought new would work out to be “worth” around 650$ CAD when you factor in inflation from the 1970’s when it was made up until todays date.

The 24mm I just picked up? That cost under 300$ CAD before tax.

The older lens is all metal, but the quality of the manufacturing of glass between the 1970’s and now means that this new lens is light enough that a metal mount isn’t required, and the reduction in weight makes this thing disappear on the front of the camera.

At the end of the day would the 1300$ NIKKOR Z 24mm f/1.8 S produce a “better” image? Sure, is it worth spending another 1000$ on the lens for something that’s effectively a hobby for me that I don’t make any money off off?

Yea, no. I’m good with the cheap fun thanks.

Hopefully the 40mm F/2 I just picked up is at least this good.

Over the last couple of months I’ve been fighting some performance issues with SMB shares on my Macbook. After trying a pile of things the solution was to create the following file.

/etc/nsmb.conf

And then toss the following contents into that specific file;

[default]
mc_on=yes
mc_prefer_wired=yes
signing_required=yes

I gave my machine a reboot and now I’m copying files into the file server at an appropriate clip instead of hours to move a gig or two up there.

I’m posting this here for my own reference more than anything else. If you happen to be looking at this some time later down the line and it’s of help you are more than welcome. Otherwise – message to future me, do this to fix the performance issues on your system(s) running macOS.

So as I mentioned earlier I picked up some new camera equipment and that means I had to pick up some accessories that you need to get things working properly. One of those things is something called a step ring.

When shooting photos I like to use a polarizer on my lens, it helps make some colours more vibrant and lets you play around with reflections when you are shooting. The problem is that these things screw onto the front of the lens and different lenses can have different sizes for these mounts. While these filters aren’t especially expensive they aren’t cheap enough to be disposable. So what Iv’e done is picked up a larger polarizing filter and use a set of adapters to step the smaller mounts up to the larger filter size.

So while the filters aren’t cheap enough to be considered disposable you a get those step rings for a price on Amazon that’s getting into that price range.

So, after picking up a new lens this week with another filter size that needed another step ring to adapt things properly I just ordered one up off of Amazon and after a couple of days I wound up the proud owner of the wrong item.

And not wrong by a little bit, I had ordered a 52mm to 67mm step ring and was shipped a 72mm to 72mm extension.

The extension would be useful if I was trying to space the filter out for clearance purposes but I have absolutely nothing with a 72mm mount on the front of the lens.

So obviously I started a return on the Amazon side of things and after a short delay I now have the correct item in my hands, however the interesting thing is that they didn’t want the original item sent back and basically told me to keep it. I’m guessing this item is actually cheap enough that the cost to ship it back to the warehouse exceeded the actual price of the item in the first place.

So I guess that I now have a 72mm extension tube in my inventory in the event that I have need of one.

So from my viewpoint there are a few things that I own that are basically perfect for what I need the device to do and there is really not a lot of point in improving them.

And the funny thing is that is really a subjective viewpoint.

Take TV’s for example. I don’t watch a lot of TV, and all the TV’s that I have in the house are pretty basic 1080p devices that are all several years old. They have a few HDMI ports that I can plug into for various devices, and that takes care of everything that I need them to do.

Would a 4k TV be cool?

Sure, but I don’t have much 4k media, and I don’t sit in front of the TV long enough for it to really matter. For movies and such I still do like hitting a movie theatre for “big” movies so having a huge TV to watch stuff at home really isn’t a priority for me.

TV’s are generally upgraded when they die off, not because they have become obsolete by some standard.

I’m sure that some people would look at the Panasonic TV sitting on my wall and consider it a relic but it’s working for what I need it to do.

I know that there are a lot of folks out there that are always chasing the latest and greatest tech, tool, toy, or thing that they can get their hands on. I guess I can understand some of that but I also don’t agree with that mentality. Unless there is a reason for the upgrade, either performance improvements or new functionality, I tend to pass on upgrades.

Take the laptop that I’m working on right now, it’s a couple of years old at this point but it is still a decent machine that does everything that I need it to and more. Yes it’s a M3, and the M5 based devices will run laps around it, but how much time would that M5 save me when writing a post here, or when rendering a photo that I’ve shot?

About the only thing that would make me push for a upgrade would be a upgrade in the storage on the device, and given the cost of storage right now that’s something that’s going to be on hold for a long time.

Now if there’s some shift again, like we saw with the introduction of Apple silicon, sure I might be enticed to look at something more. However we are probably several years away from that happening again unless there’s something huge under wraps from a existing CPU manufacturer that’s not been released.

In either case it’s kind of relaxing not to have to be worried about picking up the newest thing every time that something’s announced.

Something that I’m struggling with over the last couple of months is learning to train for competition instead of just training recreationally.

Training recreationally I don’t mind getting swept or submitted. It’s all just learning and trying new things. Training for competition however is showing me that there is a lot of work that I need to do in my game. My focus has been obtaining and then maintaining a top position for so long that I’m very comfortable when I’m in control over the roll. However, get me on the bottom and things change a lot – I’m definitely not as strong there.

Given that I can’t be sure that I’m going to get takedowns in competition I have to have a game for when things fall apart.

This means that I’m going to have to invest in failure.

And that’s not going to be pleasant. The folks who I train with who are able to put me into bad positions are generally either way higher on the food chain, or have physical advantages that I am not going to be able to overcome. This means that I’m either going to get manhandled or crushed for the coming months of training.

Yay.

Alright, we got a MacBook Neo in at work and after playing with it for a bit I have come to the conclusion that it’s fine.

The built quality, keyboard, trackpad, and screen are all good, and when compared against a lot of the options in that price range they are downright fantastic.

Is it as good as a MacBook Air? No, the Air is slightly better across the board and if you care about the specifications of your device at all that’s probably a better choice for you. Is it as good as a MacBook Pro? Again, no, the Pro’s have active cooling, better performance, better screens, and nicer keyboards.

It’s fast enough to handle basic office stuff, basic media consumption, and it’s cheap.

And it should terrify the folks who churn out cheap crap laptops.

In the long term I hope that this thing is going to raise the bar for what those vendors are churning out. Hopefully we can get the plastic e-waste out of the way and start seeing devices that will live for more than a year before folding up and wining up in a landfill.

For the last several years I have been training Brazilian Ju Jitsu, something that I wound up getting talked into while my kids were working on their own martial arts training programs. Both were at the time pursuing black belts in their arts and I wound up sitting there six days a week basically twiddiling my thumbs.

At the time that my kids where training there was a Adult class in BJJ running and I was talked into jumping in because otherwise I was basically just sitting there doing nothing. At the time I was also looking into something to improve my fitness because I had just dropped a pile of weight and was looking to make sure that I kept it off.

At first I figgured that I would stick with it while my kids where training, and as they wrapped up I realized that I was spitting distance to a blue belt and figured that I may as well stick with it long enough to at least finish off that level of training, however around that time I also started to enjoy learning the art, and some of what was going on started to make actual sense.

It’s been a few years since, and that blue belt is now replaced by a brown one and i’m still digging through the training.

A good portion of why I’ve stuck with this comes down to the school that I train at. We are all very aware of the potential to hurt people and train in a way that protects our partners so that we can all make sure we can get to work the next day. Not to say that I have never been hurt when training, but it’s pretty rare and usually because I did something specifically stupid while training.

I have gone to some other schools over the years, and frankly a lot of those places seem come across as places that exist to just try to tear you apart. I’m sure there’s some value to that type of training but personally most of the folks there seem to be so focused on force and strength that I can still find ways to attack and progress forward.

It’s not something that I’ve put out the cash on, this is for the test pool of hardware in the office that we use to make sure that our software works properly. However since it’s a general pool this does mean that I’m going to be able to put hands on the thing and see how it feels compared to the current state of Windows devices that are out in the field.

At this point reviews on the thing are either super happy about the device, or super critical, no real in between.

Be interesting to see what the reality is when I can put my hands on one outside of the Apple Store.

Well over a decade ago I picked up a messenger bag that I really liked, it was from a local company to me called Onsite Equipment and I’ve really forgotten how long I’ve been using things thing and after many years it’s starting to show it’s age. The fabric isn’t wicking water during rain, all the straps are starting to fray, and I’ve replaced the buckles multiple times.

Honestly I like the bag enough that I wanted to just go get another of the exact same bag, understanding that the same exact bag may not be still being made but hoping that the manufacturer has something else that works and stays faithful to the original one that I’ve been using. However when trying to look the company up it’s looking like they may have folded.

So, now I’m having to start sniffing around for a new messenger bag.

Timbuk2 and Chrome are a obvious option, but given everything going on I would prefer a Canadian manufacturer, preferably somebody local if there is one making bags at a reasonable price.

I’ve found this from Cocoette;

Fred • Compact Messenger Bag

And another brand that I like the look of is the Life Behind Bars, but they don’t seem to have anybody local who stocks the things so no idea what they actually feel like. But I do really like the look of the Echelon in blue.

https://int.lbbjkt.com/products/the-echelon-m?variant=44218768949301

Now I just need to find an excuse to get out to Jakarta to get a look at the thing I guess.

So I like computers. I’ve played with them for years and spent a lot of time working my way into a career where I can work with tech on a daily basis.

At work I have access to piles of hardware, granted it’s not like what what the folks at LLT would have sitting around, but it’s still more than what a average person sitting at home would have sitting around. I still however maintain a decent pile of hardware at home to play with even though I have a large pile of gear to work with.

So why do I do that?

Well while I have a pile of gear at work to play with I don’t always get to have complete control over what I get to do with that hardware. In some cases projects that I want to play with or things that I want to do have nothing to do with what we are doing at work and I can’t really go and take work resources to mess with those projects. In some cases they will overlap and I can play with some interesting tools at work but a lot of what I’ve been playing with personally just does not overlap.

So the question becomes what hardware should you be using to build out a home lab?

Well what I did was just to reuse a lot of what I had sitting around from previous upgrades. Generally I would upgrade my primary machine every two or three years, and after a couple of years you wind up with a pile of older hardware sitting around that would otherwise be collecting dust so why not put it to work. The big advantage to this is that you already have the hardware sitting around and you won’t have to spend more money out of pocket to pick up stuff.

The other place where I have had some luck picking up hardware was from other people’s e-waste bins. A lot of companies still purchase hardware and rotate the hardware out within about three years or so depending on leases and other things. When that happens that gear can sometimes wind up finding its way to a recycler or refurbisher. At one point I came across a 11th gen i5 sitting in a e-waste bin and, at least from what I can tell, the only thing wrong with it was a broken wireless antenna cable. Even if you wind up buying the things devices that are a couple generations back show up on Ebay and local shops fairly cheaply, you might need to toss in some more RAM or a SSD but that’s still generally cheaper than a new machine.

The one thing that I try to avoid for the test stuff is buying things new.

That’s not to say that I don’t pick up new stuff from time to time. Personally I’m not a huge fan of used storage or other things that will eventually wear out like a mechanical hard disk or SSD eventually will. However a CPU? That doesn’t tend to wear out over time.

And honestly, If I’m going to drop 1200$ on a piece of hardware I would rather have it be the primary machine that I’m working on all day long rather than something that’s going to sit and run random docker images or other software that I decide to play with. Work is a different matter – there spending money on hardware that’s going to sit in the background and do stuff makes sense, but for home I would rather have the fancy toy sitting on my desk.

When you start this be willing to accept anything that you can get free or cheap, but don’t get attached to it. At some point you are going to wind up with too much gear and getting rid of it winds up being it’s own set of problems.