takeo.blog

Dec 11, 2023 ∞

dr phil is a camry man hell yeah

a camry with an Oregon license plate that says DR PHIL

Dec 10, 2023 ∞

hygge churro

Dec 10, 2023 ∞

hygge churro

Oct 5, 2023 ∞

riffs

Aug 26, 2023 ∞

got one of those electric flyswatters to battle fruit flies and now I feel like when Rambo put that headband on

Aug 24, 2023 ∞

new drop from MWA (MAGAs With Attitude)

Aug 23, 2023 ∞

definitely ordering one of these https://octodon.social/@jalefkowit/110941224313544018

Aug 21, 2023 ∞

But doctor… I am Pugliacci.

Jul 20, 2023 ∞

tactical handkerchiefs

Jul 17, 2023 ∞

man, this rules. despite being dorky, these tricks are *incredibly* hard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN-VCgeoZmY

Jul 5, 2023 ∞

dang they’re not even trying anymore

Jun 26, 2023 ∞

Black and white drawing of a man with a huge beard and piercing eyes based on a rugged looking tin type photo

#drawing of a Joseph Wyman tin type photo done with #procreate on an iPad mini

Jun 20, 2023 ∞

ruin your notebooks

this post is exactly what i needed to hear about all these notebooks i have lying around unused. I only recently overcame this fear by buying a nice-ish fountain pen (kaweco sport steel) I really wanted to use and starting with a field notes that got leaked on by some hand sanitizer wipes in my bag. it was a perfect “well it’s already ruined, so I can’t make it any worse” situation and it totally worked.

Mess Up Your Good, Premium, Luxury Notebooks – analogoffice.net

Feb 3, 2023 ∞

Currently reading: Ducks by Kate Beaton 📚

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, I just knew she drew the canonical “Old as balls” image and that was reason enough to buy anything she makes. Turns out it’s a super moving autobiography of a difficult period of life, perfectly captured in the comic medium. Her master of facial expressions is superb.

Jan 2, 2023 ∞

Best of 2022 – Insta360 X3

When I started Onewheeling, I naturally went to YouTube and watched as many videos of people trail riding as a I could. Whenever I find something new, I dive pretty deeply into it, trying to absorb as much as I can. With the Onewheel, it was a lot like watching old VHS skate videos back in the day. Just watching other folks do it, even if it’s relatively basic, gets me pumped up and stoked to go out and ride.

While watching all these videos, I noticed how good video stabilization has gotten, and how these folks were able to take these really great, crisp, high-resolution videos of themselves. I realized, “oh, this is why GoPro was such a big deal”. The whole action camera thing never really registered with me in the past, but now I understood. For some reason, there’s a compulsion to document the trails I’m riding, and the improvements I’m making to my riding. I loved watching other peoples’ videos so much, and I wanted to provide the same thing for all the rad trails around Portland. And, let’s be honest, I just wanted to make my own videos and play with a new toy.

I assumed that a GoPro would be the obvious choice. They were clearly the dominant player with a multi-year head start, and most of the people I was watching were using one. I noticed some videos looked a bit different, though. While some of them had the rider’s lower torso, some of them had their whole body… almost like a drone was following them.

I discovered there was an entire other genre of action cameras that were capturing 360 degrees with two lenses, essentially filming everything around it. Throw one on the end of a selfie stick and carry it while you ride, and it’s like someone else is riding with you filming. It even manages to get rid of the selfie stick in the final product, which is rad, but also kind of silly since it looks like you’re riding while clenching onto some invisible talisman. Which, I guess, you kind of are.

This, naturally, sent me down the rabbit hole of finding out which 360 camera was Best. Many searches and YouTubes later, I determined that Insta360 was actually a much better 360 camera than GoPro. I guess it makes sense, they have 360 in their name, but I dunno… it kinda sounded like a cheap knockoff type of thing. Guess not.

Since I still wasn’t too sure about the whole thing, though, I decided to hedge a bit and buy one second-hand. I found a dude on OfferUp who was selling an X2 after he used it a couple of times on a vacation or something. I met with him in the Fred Meyer parking lot in the traditional Let’s Not Get Mugged ritual, and I was off to the races.

I went to the Trail of Doom to try it out, and it worked really well. The selfie stick disappeared and everything, and holding it while riding wasn’t too bad at all. I was in. I took a bunch of videos and started posting to the YouTube account I’ve had for like 15 years.

I got a few accessories, of course. One of them was a backpack rig where you could strap it to your backpack and a selfie-stick would stick off the back of it like an RC car antennae. Someone told me I looked like a Star Wars droid while wearing it. I can live with that.

The second or third time I wore it, I was on a pretty mellow trail near home. I was just getting warmed up, not going too fast or anything. I went down a little hill with a turn at the bottom and somehow just … ate complete shit. I fell backward right where there happened to be a bunch of boulders forming a small cliff. I did a backward somersault down the boulders and landed in a bunch of thorny bushes.

Fuck.

Luckily, I was all padded up and, aside from a sore neck, I wasn’t hurting too bad. My camera, which I’d had for like 2 weeks at that point, and my backpack rig, which I’d had for a few days, were another story. Doing a backward somersault while wearing a backpack and camera antennae meant I rolled directly onto both of them. One of the two camera lenses was completely smashed, and the carbon fiber selfie stick was snapped in two. Worst of all, since the camera got smashed during the fall, I was unable to get the footage of the crash. Dammit.

This whole thing taught me a few things:

The Insta360 is legit. The image quality is kind of astonishing, the stabilization is incredible, and the software for making a coherent video out of the 360 ball that has been filmed is surprisingly easy.
These things are going to break. Buying them used might save you a bit of money initially, but I was SOL when it broke. I ended up buying the new X3 version from Amazon with the stupid insurance that you usually ignore out of hand. This is the only time I can think it will actually make sense. We’ll see how it goes when I finally do break another lens, though.
Wind is a thing. I ended up buying a separate wireless mic setup so I could have a higher quality sound input with the dead cat furry cover to get rid of the wind. The recorded sound of the trail rides are some of my favorite parts of the videos. It’s soothing, in an ASMR type of way.
Having videos of your activities is pretty fun, even if no one really watches them. It’s cool to see where you’ve been, and how you’re advancing.

I also used the camera when we were in Mexico walking around the pyramids, which is another pretty cool use for it. I felt like a bit of a dork walking around with a big ass selfie stick, but whatever. I’m a dad, I’ve earned it.

Dec 29, 2022 ∞

Best of 2022 – YouTube

Yeah, I know, I’m only like 10 years late, but I finally “get” YouTube. I was always kinda mad at them for becoming kazillionaires by hosting a bunch of pirated stuff back in the day. I guess the ends justify the means. Regardless of the provenance, what it is these days is pretty incredible.

I remember one of my friends a few years ago saying they pretty much only watched YouTube and no other streaming services. That seemed super weird to me. They mentioned liking stuff like MKBHD and whatnot, which I, as a gearhead, understood in theory, but it never really hooked me.

I think what finally made things click was getting into the whole personal knowledge management and productivity stuff scene. That’s when I realized there were a bunch of people out there posting some relatively high-quality videos about the stuff I was most interested in at the time. Tutorials, reviews, recordings of presentations, etc. on the most niche shit, all easily available.

Then, when I got into onewheeling, I couldn’t stop watching videos of people riding trails. What most people would likely find super boring and tedious was completely enrapturing to me. 30 minute raw footage of a dude riding a trail in Canada without any background music or anything? Hell yes. It inspired me to start my own channel of pretty much the same stuff.

So yeah, I get it now. YouTube is my default place to chill and just watch some stuff. Now that I think about it, that’s probably the secret – it’s the easiest place to just find something that’s probably only like 8 minutes long to watch without much commitment, and it’s easy to just queue things up and skip around. At this point, I’m much more attracted to bite size “casual” stuff than big investments. Much like with video games, I’d much rather be able to play Tony Hawk for 20 minutes than have to invest 100 hours into some interactive epic movie type of thing. And YouTube is pretty much that for videos.

Some cool channels I like:

WestCoast.LandPirate – great onewheel trail riding
Some More News – ultra-snarky current events stuff
Nicole van den Hoeven – lots of good Obsidian content
Come Join Friends – gigantic archive of old hardcore shows
Jenny Nicholson – wild deep dives into random stuff
66Samus – death metal drummer acting like a child

And, of course, The Algorithm feeds me a bunch of related stuff and a bunch of political current events and whatnot. I’ll admit to watching to many of the political things, but that’s life.

Oh yeah: I happily pay for YouTube Premium because it’s essentially useless without it. Yes, some of you just use ad blockers or whatever, but I’m not interested in a game of cat and mouse with Google. It’s worth it.

Dec 29, 2022 ∞

Best of 2022 – Onewheel

Growing up as a skater kid, I’ve been pretty comfortable on boards with wheels for a long time. Thankfully, the muscle memory is still kinda there. Without wheels… that’s a different story. I tried snowboarding once when I was like 42, and it was terrible. Like, I truly hated it. Just sliding around with no control, while being strapped to the damn thing.

I tried skating again as an old, but it didn’t really stick. My mind wanted to do all the tricks I could do as a kid, but my body was like nah dogg, come on. It was pretty frustrating, and I just didn’t have the drive to build back up to any sort of reasonable level that would be fun again.

Another factor is that living in Portland in 2022 means the options for skating are almost entirely outdoor skateparks during the months it’s not raining, which is a far cry from growing up in SoCal where weather was never a factor. We skated literally every single day unless we were sick or hurt or something. On the rare occasion it was raining, we’d hit up a parking garage. We didn’t have skateparks at all, so we just went to schools and malls and parking lots, skating curbs and doing tricks down stairs. Transitions, whether ramps or concrete, were an exotic rarity for us, which means skating the parks here in Portland feels super foreign.

Anyway, skating didn’t stick as an old man in a new environment, snowboarding sucked, and I wasn’t interested in hiking or cycling. I wanted to ride a board. I considered standup paddleboarding, which is pretty huge around here, but my only experience with it was in Hawaii on the ocean, and that didn’t go very well. I was still interested, but it just seemed like such an … ordeal. With skating, you just grab your board and go outside, and you’re good to go. Paddleboarding seemed kind of tedious, always having to inflate and deflate the boards, and, well, you have to go to a lake or river. That’s not that hard around Portland, but still.

Onewheeling addresses just about all of this:

it’s a board sport
my feet aren’t strapped to it
don’t have to inflate it
doesn’t require snow
doesn’t require water
small and portable

What I didn’t realize were all the things I hadn’t even thought of:

it can go off-road!
it’s fast
it’s smooth
it can go up hills
it’s… liberating

The off-road part is the most important. Living in Portland for 11 years now has been great, I really love it here. But, I’ve never taken advantage of what the area has to offer. Everyone here is a Hiker™, taking advantage of all the trails and nature the northwest has to offer, and, well, I was just never interested in taking walks on dirt. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool every once in a while, but it’s not a hobby or anything to me.

The onewheel being able to go off-road changed all that. Riding all these trails are like the best skatepark I could imagine, except even better. They’re organic, almost alive. I know they’re technically manmade, but being out in the woods, made of dirt, imperfect and raw, just makes them feel like they’re supposed to be there, and we’re lucky enough to have stumbled across them to experience them.

Back when I was a kid, I loved making marble tracks in the dirt. My brother and I would make some wild ones on the hill in the backyard of one of the houses we lived in. We’d make berms and tunnels and jumps and connectors, and then drop the marble down to see it go through, swerving and gaining speed. Riding trails is the closest I’ve come to that feeling, except now I get to be the marble, and the tracks are way more creative, beautiful, and fun than anything we ever came up with.

A few weeks back I went out to Post Canyon in Hood River and rode the El Dorado trail. It was right when all the trees were turning orange and dropping onto the trail, and the dirt was a bit damp and smooth. The whole time, the only thought going through my mind is “man, this is so cool” as I rode through terrain I never would have enjoyed otherwise, listening to the subtle, soothing sounds of the wheel on the terrain. It forces me to just about forget anything else going on in my life and just enjoy the present moment, the place I live, and the opportunity I have to just float through it. And, well… it’s just so cool.

Dec 28, 2022 ∞

Best of 2022 – Continuity Camera

Because we all live in a world of nonstop Zoom calls now, things like webcams actually matter. We all know laptop cameras are not great, and if you use an external monitor you might not even have one built in. That’s the boat I was in, since work gave me a huge 16” MacBook Pro that is way too big to use as a laptop, so it’s docked and connected to some random LG monitor.

I had some ancient Logitech webcam, but it was garbage. Never focused, really bad at low light, etc. I remembered hearing about and app called Camo that let you use your iPhone as a webcam. I installed the trial and the difference in quality was immediately apparent. Like, way better. Once I tried that, I couldn’t go back.

One tricky situation, though: how to mount the phone above my monitor? This was before continuity camera, so Belkin hadn’t yet made their little contraption for MagSafeing your phone on top. I ended up rigging a Rube Goldberg contraption together with a clamp, articulating tripod arm, and MagSafe cold shoe mount from Moment. It’s super janky, but it works well enough.

So, once that was figured out, I subscribed to Camo (like $39/year or something) and happily used it for a year or so. It has plenty of tools for tweaking the image, and was pretty rock solid. One downside, though, was that it required the phone to be plugged in via USB. Understandable, but a pain when setting things up multiple times a day for Zoom meetings.

Then I noticed that my SetApp subscription added a new app called Detail that was similar to Camo, but included in the subscription I already had. It also claimed to work over Wi-Fi instead of having to plugging in, which was intriguing. In practice, though, the Wi-Fi thing didn’t work very well, and you could tell it was super compressed. It didn’t have the same level of tweaking as Camo either, but it was passable.

Automating Annoying Stuff

One thing about these products is that they need to have apps on both the phone and Mac running at the same time to work. The Mac app receives the signal from the phone and registers it as a virtual camera for apps like Zoom to use, and the phone app sends that signal. I guess with Camo, it also does a lot of the image processing on the phone as well. This is all well and good, but it does pose a problem: making sure the apps are running when you need them to be. On the Mac, it’s usually just running in the background, no big deal. The phone, however, is a pain. Having to unlock it and open the app, and then gingerly set the phone onto the MagSafe stand thingy without accidentally exiting the app or opening control center, is a non-trivial task.

What I ended up doing was cobbling together some Shortcuts. I don’t use Shortcuts nearly enough, but this was a good opportunity to try them out for something actually useful. The basic gist of what I did:

On my Mac, create a shortcut that
– changes the focus mode to Zoom Meeting (custom focus mode)– opens OBS using a shell command to start the virtual camera (/Applications/OBS.app/Contents/MacOS/obs --startvirtualcam &)– sets a HomeKit scene that turns on my El Gato Keylight Air and desk light strip, as well as lowers my green screen – hides the OBS window.
On my phone, creation a shortcut automation that
– triggers on the change to the Zoom Meeting focus mode (focus modes sync across all your devices, which means changing it on my Mac propagates it to my phone, allowing this automation to happen automatically. Cool!)– opens the appropriate app (Camo or Detail)– if I’m using Detail at the time, turn off screen-rotation lock (Detail doesn’t let you change the orientation in the Mac app, while Camo does).

I also set up a “meeting clean up” shortcut that

turns off the Zoom Meeting focus mode
turns on a HomeKit scene that puts my green screen up, turns off the Keylight.

And an automation on my phone when the detail app exits to turn the rotation lock back on.

Whew. Yeah, it’s a lot. While it’s kinda fun to think all of those things through and get it working, it’s a lot of work and relatively brittle.

Dedicated Webcam?

Some folks in the Mac Slack channel at work bought one of the Opal cameras that purported to be “DSLR quality” in a normal(ish) webcam form factor. It was spendy (like $300) but I figured I’d give it a try since it would be super convenient to not have to think about putting my phone up while still having good image quality. However, the quality was nowhere near what I was getting with Camo and my phone. I tried tweaking the software, but it just didn’t get much better in the lighting available in my office. So, I requested a refund. To my surprise, they refunded me immediately and told me to go ahead and keep the camera. Maybe it’ll improve as the software gets better.

Finally, Continuity Camera

Ok, enough backstory. When macOS Ventura came out, one of the things it included was Continuity Camera™, which was basically Camo being Sherlocked. I tried it out and, true to form, Apple was able to make it much nicer in many ways since they own the whole stack, and they, of course, made it far too simple in some other ways.

First off, pretty much all the annoying shit is gone. Since it’s baked into the operating systems, there’s no need to run apps on either the Mac or the iPhone, so all the weird shenanigans for having things set up is no longer necessary. What this means in practice is that I can just toss my phone up onto the magnet when I’m getting ready for a call and whenever Zoom accesses the camera it Just Works. No need to start apps or turn the phone on or anything.

And yeah, I didn’t say anything about plugging it in. They got things to work over Wi-Fi really well compared to Detail (I haven’t tried the Camo update that supports Wi-Fi) and the added convenience really adds up.

Since it’s an Apple camera, it means you can take advantage of the built-in camera effects as well, like portrait mode and Center Stage which follows your face around automatically. The portrait mode is quite good compared to Camo’s, and light years better than the god awful Zoom blur things, but obviously not as good as a real DSLR. Center Stage is pretty neat, but it can be really nauseating after a while as it constantly moves the focus around to follow your head moving or your arms while gesticulating. Turning it off also makes the image a lot sharper.

So, overall, it’s really nice! But, there are some annoyances:

While the Wi-Fi connection works really well, it requires that you can’t have AirPlay going at the same time. It’s understandable since they both likely use up a ton of bandwidth, but it requires that AirPlay not even be connected, which means I’ve been having to close down the Music app when using the camera. Not a giant deal, but an annoyance.
Being an Apple feature, there are basically no controls over things. The Camera effects are there, but you can’t do anything to control the image quality, exposure, cropping, zoom, etc. etc. Camo really excels at that type of stuff, letting you tweak tons of things and saving them for the future. Overall, though, the Apple quality on everything is Good Enough to not worry too much about it.
Since the wireless connection works so well, it means the phone is doing some pretty intense stuff without being connected to power. Of course, I like not having to plug it in, but killing my phone’s battery after a few calls kinda sucks. So, sometimes I’ve been plugging it in just for power. I’m going to try to see if I can rig up a MagSafe charger onto my Rube Goldberg machine to provide some easy power while keeping things stuck above the monitor, but I’m uncertain that’s going to actually work.

So, overall, I’m happy with it, especially when compared to all the alternatives. Getting a new studio display with a built-in camera would probably be the easiest answer, but they’re expensive, and the iPhone is still going to provide a better image.

Dec 26, 2022 ∞

#portland #timbers on Christmas Eve eve

Dec 24, 2022 ∞

Best of 2022 – Music

You know the drill. Here’s some of my favorite stuff from this last year, starting with music. I listened to a whole bunch of things this year, but these stuck out to me for some reason. Hopefully you dig some of it.

GAUPA – Myriad

I stumbled across this band GAUPA while looking through my apple music recent releases. I don't know if I'd ever listened to them before that, but I had no idea what to expect. Turns out it's basically a Björk impersonator fronting a heavy rock band from Sweden. At first I was like 🤨 but then I was like 🥹. Once you get past the hyper awareness of the whole Björk thing, it starts to click, and it's awesome. At this point I’m pretty sure it’s my Album of the Year.

Also, the cover is rad.

Messa – Close

We have a rarely used Slack for talking about music with some friends. The only time it’s ever really used is for one of posting a recent discovery we think the rest of the crew needs to know about. One of those was this album by Messa. Eric busted in and said something like “dudes, this has everything – heavy, jazzy parts, proggy parts… it’s incredible”.

As is tradition, the first time I listened to this album, I didn’t quite get it. It was definitely intriguing, but kind of a slow burn. The female vocals are wonderful, but take some getting used to. A lot of what makes this special is pretty subtle. After a few more listens, I got it.

It’s probably not much of a coincidence that the top two albums of the year for me (this and GAUPA) are both fronted by women. I’ve long been into women fronted artists, but more on the brooding side of things like Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Portishead, etc. Having more heavy bands fronted by women approaching things a bit differently has been a breath of fresh air. There are women doing heavy Cookie Monster vocals (Arch Enemy, for example) or standard power metal vocals (Holy Grove, Witch Mountain, etc.), which is great, but when I come across bands doing something kinda different I get stoked. Messa definitely fits the bill.

BUMMER – Dead Horse

This album has only gotten better the more I listen to it. I saw Bummer a few years ago, I think with Whores, at the Ash St. Saloon (RIP) and they were pretty good. I checked out their recorded stuff at the time, and it was also… pretty good. I never really listened to it much again.

Then, earlier this year, I was at another Whores show, and who happens to be opening again? Bummer. This time, it clicked. Heavy, pissed, and chaotic. The next day I listened to their latest album, and holy balls. Some of the gnarliest, grimiest riffage I’ve heard in a long time.

Also, they have a song called I want To Punch Brice Springsteen In The Dick and it’s incredible.

Mammoth Volume – The Cursed Who Perform the Larvagod Rites

I’d heard of Mammoth Volume a few years ago, mostly because their name seemed so… on the nose? Their latest album came across my New Releases feed so I gave it a shot, and whoa. It was not at all what I remembered or was expecting. It has a definite psych feel to it, and being from Sweden gives it a bit of a different vibe than American stoner metal stuff. Lots of wacky keyboard stuff, time signatures, and riffage. Hopefully they make it out to Portland some time, I’d love to see them live.

Doomer Jazz

One day Ted dropped a link in the group text to a YouTube video. The preview card showed this image:

The title was “1 Hour of Late Night Doomer Jazz” and, needless to say, I was intrigued. I love jazz, and I love doom, so it stood to reason that I would also love this.

And, of course, I did.

The image that they made for it is pretty much perfect. The best way to imagine what this playlist sounds like is to think of a grimy old detective movie from the 70s in NYC with lots of fedoras, trench coats, dirty cabs, and lots and lots of moody saxophone. You’ll recognize it as soon as you hear it.