Let’s see. I had planned to do several things this week, and actually managed one. Not my fault; a lot of non-cooperation from others, especially businesses. The weather wasn’t the best it could be either, but that doesn’t matter. Besides, as of next week we aren’t expecting to see below freezing temperatures again for a long time.
According to my records, last year I went out to the cabin on this date. I have not yet done so this year, and don’t plan on it any time soon. The expense of the truck insurance and gasoline kind of puts me off, although it would be a good idea to check the batteries out there. I mention in last year’s post how it was the earliest I’d ever been there. This year I could have gone out a week earlier, the weather has been that warm. This is worrying.
Also worrying is the utter lack of rain in the forecast. Last year I mentioned the mud, and dealing with it. No such condition exists this year, it is that dry. At this date 68 wildfires in B.C., with 62 of them “human caused”. There’s one 180 kms west of us that’s out of control and 252 hectares already; it started Thursday. It will only get dryer.
Things I haven’t done that I was going to include shooting significantly more pictures with the Nikon D60 and buying a 55-200mm lens for it. Finding that lens has proven to be a bit tricky, as I don’t want to buy one that costs more than the camera did. I have found a few, and they have descriptions like “some dust, does not affect pictures”. Tested it, did you? Compared the results to a new lens? Checked it with a resolution chart? Yes, I’m cynical. But only because one of the ads admitted there was haze as well and said that didn’t affect the images. Only problem was they included pictures of the lens and even my bad eyesight could see the cloudiness of the glass. From that I can’t imagine it doesn’t affect the images. I’ll keep looking.
What else? Shopping for food. Absolute bust this week. They aren’t even trying anymore. Just whatever they’ve got for more than they can get. Have fun tossing all that over-priced fresh food, idiots.
Also gasoline. I did go to town Thursday and almost filled up the tank, but ran out of money first. $75 (we have preset sales here) was not quite enough to pin the needle on the gas gauge, but it will keep Jojo going. How far? Well the reading from the built-in economy gauge says 7.7 litres per 100 kms. That’s about 31 miles per U.S. gallon. Not bad considering the size of the vehicle, and better than the truck does. About 1/3 better. The price per litre was down – to $1.79. We’ll see how long that lasts. With as little driving as I do I shouldn’t have to refill until June, and who knows what things will be like by then.
BTW, this also marks 9 days in a row of my posting on WordPress. I only did it for the sake of experimentation; I will now go back to my regular habit of posting whatever, whenever.
It does fairly well in monochrome, and the flash works good too.
A rectangular hole.
This one also shot monochrome in-camera. Curious excavation by some creature; there were bits of the tree trunk scattered all around. Not the typical hole made by a woodpecker.
Shot in colour, then desaturated.
It would be difficult to say which method of obtaining a black & white image works better. But the desaturation process allows the option of having colour if that makes a better picture.
A raven flying by.
To get a good picture of a bird in flight with the ‘kit’ lens …
Wings down.
… you need the co-operation of the bird. This one was quite close, so I simply cropped the ‘usual size’ out of the full frame (at 55mm). It does show that my plan to obtain a 55-200mm Nikon lens is justified as I shoot a lot of such wildlife photos.
Artefact.
Things turning up in the yard again. Not unexpected. Mostly they are broken remains, but this piece is recognizable as a spark plug wrench for a chainsaw. (I stood it on end to make a more interesting composition.)
As I mentioned before, we need some real Spring around here for me to get back into photography. It will happen.
Go! Keep on going, never stopping for a rest!
All day long I keep dodging bill collectors with a zest!
Summer clothes we wore all winter now ’tis spring they’re nearly through!
Once I paid my alimony now it’s more than I can do!
L (I can’t remember)
I (I can’t remember)
Never before has the tank on my machine
Ever starved and froze the family keeping her filled with GASOLINE!
That poem is from about 100 years ago. I do not know its origins, but first saw it in a book by Floyd Clymer about the early days of automobiles. That book would now be considered an antique so …
Anyhow, the point is gasoline is once again skewering us all in the wallet. This week the Strait of Hormuz was closed again due to the ongoing illegal war for high oil profits, we got a ‘tax break’ on fuel costs we’re unlikely to see any benefit from, and the distributors have switched from the higher-priced Winter Blend to the higher-priced Summer Blend.
Wait a minute … What?
You see they can’t do the grocery thing where the size of the product is reduced 10% and the price raised 30%, so they have to use other means of justifying their obscene profits. Please note we’ve yet to see signs saying “No Gas” at the pumps, unlike with the 1970’s shortage. You can buy it, providing you’re willing to pay for it. Through the nose.
Oh I have heard there’s a shortage of jet fuel, but also Air Canada stopped flights to JFK in NYC because they couldn’t afford to refuel their planes there. So that should mean more over-priced gallons available for other airlines.
I need to refill the gas tank this week. Let’s see what options I have.
Now, here we’re told more and more people are turning to bicycles. Sure they are. Maybe a few. But bicycles aren’t a practical alternative for many of us. I mean if you were an Olympic-class cyclist you might manage the hills at either end of our town, but Joe Average would be destined for a coronary trying to get up one no matter how good a shape he’s in. And that’s in Summer. Not the mid-season 40 degree heat, mind you, just a relatively cool day. And not in Winter when ‘relatively cool’ becomes -40 and includes a foot of snow on the road. Well I can’t even pedal a stationary bike so … this option is not an option for me.
I suppose I could buy a vehicle that gets better mileage. Even though we already have a hybrid, there are cars that can do better. All that would be needed is … let’s see … about $60,000 capital investment. For a car that would be driven to town (15 kms either way) maybe 3 times a week at most. Yeah that’d be a sensible investment. Not. You can buy a lot of gasoline for that kind of money, even at today’s prices.
Well gosh darn it, why don’t I just move to within walking distance of everything? Well gosh darn it, because that would cost a truckload of money too, and wouldn’t actually help. Around here “walking distance” includes one of those aforementioned hills and the resulting cardio-vascular workout with potentially fatal results. Besides which I am missing pieces of bone in my back; walking isn’t as easy as it once was (it is for this reason I no longer drive standard shift**).
We’ve been forewarned about the dangers of buying Chinese-made EVs. Evidently by following my limited, occasional commute China will somehow learn all of Canada’s defence secrets. Or something. I see only two problems with using EVs here: initial capital outlay, and that little physics problem of charging/range. Anyone want to stand outside in Winter for 30 minutes putting enough kilowatt hours back into your battery to get home? I’ve seen the battery in our hybrid go from ‘full’ to ‘almost empty’ overnight just from sitting in the cold. It’s a fact of physics that can not be overcome.
So I guess I’ll just go to town and buy the gasoline tomorrow.
*From “Get That Gasoline Blues” by NRBQ circa 1974
**Which is a bit embarrassing when you’ve driven vehicles with 18 speeds and 2 speed rear axles and such. But hey; you have to adapt to what you can’t do anymore.
WordPress has notified me that I’m on a ‘streak’ owing to having published a post four days in a row. Now five.
As if I wouldn’t be aware of that myself.
This is supposed to be a good thing, and I should keep it up. Why? Because that’s how they make money; more content from whomever equals more potential viewers of advertising tacked on to the post and thus more income for them. Oh, you thought it was about you? You thought they actually care about anything you write? Only so much as it generates income for them. That’s why they want you to “promote your site”; draw in more viewers so they can show more ads and justify rates to businesses that seek to place said ads.
Of course if you don’t want to have ads on your blog you can buy one of their ad-less plans. For just $39.99 (or whatever) a month no ads will clutter your brilliantly presented prose. This means they get the revenue directly, but it also means there’s a ‘tipping point’ where they would start to lose potential income.
Say your paid-for site had a million subscribers and a million views of every post. Granted this is about as likely as a cardboard hammer, but in an infinite universe anything is possible. What that would mean from an advertising point of view is that instead of an ad being seen by a million potential customers (generating $X per ad times one million) they get the flat rate you pay them. That’s like the difference between $1,000,000 per post and $39.99/number of posts per month. Any way you look at it, the hosting company loses.
They can recoup some of those losses by using your amazing stats to represent themselves to potential advertisers. Vis:
“Look at this; a million views per post! Wouldn’t you like to be a part of that? Think of all the potential customers you could reach!”
“Sure! Sign me up!”
They simply omit the part about the unusually high-performing site being a statistical anomaly that doesn’t even carry ads. It’s not exactly lying, but it smells very much like it.
Now full disclosure: I have no knowledge of the inner workings of WordPress and its business model. But I can extrapolate from the evidence presented and past experiences. Also, no one is paying me to do this analysis. For all I know I could be completely wrong about this and the company actually is a philanthropic organization out to do good for all those who wish to express themselves. Because again, the universe is infinite and anything is possible. But that’s a pretty lousy business model.
I don’t see ads on the Internet, even if the ad blockers fail to block them. They have zero impression on me, so Farcebook telling me I can meet up with young Asian women in my area is of no consequence. Although if they weren’t just greedy money-grubbing bastards they might consider the obvious illegitimacy of certain ads they run instead of just pimping like they do. Anyway I’ve never seen any such ads on WP, which doesn’t mean they don’t exist – just that I’ve never seen any.
Why yes, I am a cynical old man. Good of you to notice.
And WordPress, if you’ve made even $1 off my five-day posting streak – you’re welcome.
2:40 AM: Wake up with hives on both lower legs. Won’t go away, so get up and apply hydrocortisone and wait for it to calm down. Sleep has been ruined, and the cat thinks it’s breakfast time. He’s wrong.
5:05 AM: Cat wakes me up, and this is a good thing because I was not enjoying the nightmare about my house having been taken over by other people. I studied enough psychology that I know what that means. For the sake of anyone reading this I will not explain it. Finally get on with the day, a full hour later than usual – but with no benefit from the ‘extra’ hour of sleep.
5:25 AM: Check weather forecast out of habit, rather than need. It’s different than it was last night. Says it’s going to rain. Fine. It’s dry as the desert out there and the wildfire forecast for this summer is basically “we’re doomed”. We’ll see if any moisture precipitates. Oh; the weather web site says it’s “improving” the layout. That means a change for change’s sake that won’t improve anything, but will be different. What they need to work on is accuracy, not how the mistakes are presented. (FYI the ‘daily’ forecast says rain today but the ‘hourly’ shows 0% all day; they can’t even agree with themselves.)
5:35 AM: Check the grocery flyer for their “Tuesday Specials” which they don’t advertise until Sunday. See what can be got for $1.49. As usual, nothing I want. Probably nothing anyone would want. List of things to be purchased from that store this week: ________. As usual. They are not very competitive anymore.
5:40 AM: Check news. Oh goody; the Strait is closed again. Between that, the switch to ‘summer gas’ and the proposed ‘tax cut’ gasoline should be up to $2.00/litre by the end of the week. I need to buy some. It was $1.89/l Friday. For any Americans reading this, that’s $5.10/gallon.
Another story says some poor sod lost $10k to a bitcoin/fake police scam. I’m surprised AI wasn’t involved somehow. It probably was. Didn’t I just warn about this? Yes, I had. All the more reason to outlaw all cryptocurrency – and implement a mandatory death penalty for sociopathic criminals. Believe me, that would improve the world immensely. Especially the execution of ‘leaders’ who behave that way.
5:50 AM: Finally having breakfast. Cat thinks she would like a bowl of cereal too. She’s wrong, of course. Actually she thinks she would like my bowl of cereal. Also wrong. (Her brother is more interested in having my dinner most days.)
6:00 AM: Furnace has come on. It’s +4C outside. The forecast indicates sub-freezing temperatures will soon be a thing of the past. Averaging out the gas bill for the winter shows about $126/month to heat this place. I can improve on that. Such as replacing the leaking windows. I’d like to change out the sliding patio door as well, but that’s a much bigger job and wouldn’t be such a good return on investment. Besides, with the dogs gone I’ve just left it closed all winter.
7:00 AM: Time to take a bath to ease the skin and arthritis. Some say it helps the kidney function, but I’ve seen no evidence of that. The relief of sore joints doesn’t last long either, but even an hour of less pain is welcome. Oh; I noticed the price of the lotion I use to keep my skin ‘calm’ has shot up 63%. Again. It must be made from gold and petroleum.
8:15 AM: Up and dressed and considering what I need to do today, what I might do today, and what I want to do today. These are rarely all the same thing. I know I have a busy week ahead, but that depends mainly on if I feel up to doing any of the things I should do.
8:30 AM: I’ve got to stop looking at the news. I don’t need to hear that BC is the most expensive province to live in. If I’m ever in doubt of that I can just look at the prices in the stores. Or at the pumps. $58,000 per year for a ‘modest’ standard of living. Good thing I’m a cheapskate.
9:10 AM: Did some things in the kitchen. Up until the ‘brain fog’ rose and I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing. I’ll go back in later and hopefully realize what I’ve forgotten to do. (Note to spell-check; I like using zeds, so stop telling me I’ve spelt the word wrong.) Wait; why has this bifurcated into two separate browser displays? Some Chromebook failing, no doubt. Computers used to work better, before they were ‘improved’. Everything is about Stupid Phones these days anyway. You may be able to see that tiny screen and manipulated the flawed touch input, but not everyone can.
11:20 AM: Just woke up after accidentally falling asleep on the couch. I had not intended to take a nap, but this happens almost daily. The worst part is that unlike during normal sleep I do not move while unconscious this way. Thus I wake all stiff and sore in every joint. I’m sure this isn’t normal, this ‘sleep of the dead’, but I’m equally sure there would be no answer as to why it happens or what to do about it even if I asked a thousand doctors. Maybe one day I won’t wake up again.
11:50 AM: Remembered I was doing stuff in the kitchen earlier. Had a look to see what still needed doing. Mixed up another batch of lemonade – the magic drink that’s supposed to be good for your kidneys. I don’t know if it is, but it’s much cheaper than anything you can buy in the store (being just 1 cup sugar, 1 cup lemon juice, and water to 2 quarts). Then got myself some lunch. The day has gone from not good to still not good as of noon.
12:50 PM: It seems to be sunny outside, despite the forecast claims to the contrary. I will put on my shoes and have a wander around the yard with the camera. I don’t expect to see anything, but the exercise is good for me. It’s 19C out there right now, so no need for winter coat!
1:15 PM: It’s now 21C. I saw a deer in the wooded area beside the house.
She’s in there somewhere.
2:00 PM: Decided to put on a movie to while away the time until making dinner. That brief excursion outside was a bit tiring, which you’d think it wouldn’t be after having a ‘nap’.
2:30 PM: Just noticed the outside temperature has hit 23 degrees Celsius. Very unusual for the time of year.
4:00 PM: Time to take the Pantoprazole that keeps the GERD under control and hopefully reduces the chance of Barrett’s esophagus – and thus cancer. Too bad that PPIs like this interfere with the absorption of some essential nutrients (like B12) and thus cause other problems. Choose your pain; choose your poison; choose your death.
5:00 PM: Dinner time. The movie is not yet over with; it’s a long movie, and I have paused it twice while preparing my evening meal.
5:55 PM: The movie is over. Time to put on some cartoons to watch until bedtime.
6:40 PM: Both ankles are itching. Looks like I’ll need to apply some lotion before I go to bed. This doesn’t bode well for making it through the night undisturbed.
7:00 PM: Time for bed. Something will probably wake me in the night; it usually does. Regardless, I will post this in the morning.
Monday, April 20 2026 4:50 AM: Time to publish this. And yes, I did get woken up in the night. As usual.
Note: I had planned to write this but had not decided on which day. The unpleasant pre-dawn heralding of this one triggered the event, which I always intended to be a mix of the mundane interrupted by the unexpected – which is typical of my daily life.
You can see the difference: the lake is now ‘open’. The roads … well there may be some icy patches hiding in the dark corners, but not likely anything that would stop travel.
I made the mistake of showing the Mrs. the image of the open lake. She of course asked “are we going up this year?”. Hmm. How do I explain this?
The cabin is up for sale. It was up for sale last year too, which caused me to do a whole lot of work out there. (References: Cabin, 2025Progress, I guessThis week in pictures and a few non-illustrated posts.) Some of that work was hauling all sorts of things from there to here. Lots of things. As many things as I could manage, because we were (are) selling the place. It was a lot of work, moving all that stuff.
What that means is that to visit out there this year I’d have to haul at least some of it back. I’m not sure I’m up to that, or want to even if I were. To say nothing of having to insure the truck ($$$$$), buy gasoline for it ($$$$), get the water reconnected, and check that the other systems all still work. Especially the electrical power; if those batteries (now 6 years old) have failed it will cost $$$$$ to replace them. Is that sensible? I don’t think so. I don’t even think it’s fiscally feasible.
Also, if I’m going to do work and spend money there are several things that need attention. Things that not only would improve quality of life, but also reduce operating costs. For example blocking the leaking windows on the west end so they don’t let heat in during the summer and out during the winter.
Of course Herself is in the UK until June, so there’s that.
Well now, here’s another fine rabbit hole to go down!
It started with an idea or three, which led to some online investigating of various platforms for blog/web site/journal. Included in the impetus investigu were such things as dwindling personal WordPress space, loose pieces of errant projects, a desire not to unbalance relations with other sites, and some not-small measure of self-analysis. Also, boredom. Boredom is often a factor these days as I seek something to do when I can’t do the things I want to do. Okay, maybe that’s frustration. But it leads to boredom.
What did I find upon this pointless project? Well, WordPress is somehow locked up in odd manners that prevent me from doing things such as commenting on certain posts (despite going to the original and being ‘signed in’) or adding an additional ‘site’. Oh yes, I see the buttons. I click them. But I can not make bloated technology function out of sheer force-of-will. But that’s okay because the people who concocted the mixture can’t either (“we tried to make soup, but it turned out poison”).
And anyway I didn’t want the intended ramblings to interfere with Chuck’s weekly blog roll recap. I also didn’t want them to interfere with my regular postings; you need to focus, even as you wander. Otherwise you trip over a metaphorical stone and fall on your digital face. Or some other thing.
You see, there have been more triggers than usual this month. Anniversaries of events, posts that I relate to (yet cannot comment on, thanks to the aforementioned WP glitching), and events that touch a nerve. Thus I looked into the idea of adding to my workload with another outlet for writing things a bit more on the fringe, if not outright off the cloth.
This has caused me to come to the conclusion that the Internet is dead, it just hasn’t stopped wriggling.
There is an over-all atmosphere that insists any on-line activity must directly correlate to making money. Every platform likes to start out with the ‘free’ option, and then heavily promote the costly ‘upgrades’. You’re supposed to ‘grow’ your site. Your site that costs $XX.XX per month. Did you not notice that presupposes you have alternate income which you can afford to spend on this hobby?
Let me explain: as far as certain tax-collecting agencies are concerned, a business makes money. Usually there is a small allowance for start-up and the occasional bad year, such as “must show a profit in one out of three years”.
Kids, your web site is unlikely to do that. There are millions of sites out there all competing for the same views, and the possibility that yours will take off and be the winner is slim. I’ve seen enough people start their own business, usually in some fad field, and then fail because it clearly wasn’t viable to begin with. It’s mean to shoot down someone’s dreams, but honestly the better options to make money from that site expense include stuffing it in a low-interest bank account – and buying lottery tickets.
But that’s as may be. It was never my intent to create something income-generating, and especially not to spend money on it. I was after a platform of expression, as it were. I mention the fee-structures only because the attitude seemed to be one of sites trying to con people into the possibility of riches when in fact there was little chance of it. Kind of like multi-level marketing. It put me in a bad humour in respect to those sites.
Another big turn-off was the pervasiveness of that horrible digital plague known as AI. There was a sense of further con in this; and attitude of “let our AI do it for you and magically make you wealthy overnight”. Disgusting. Isn’t it illegal to take advantage of people like that? Oh they may not come right out with the obviously law-breaking claims, but then the best con artists never do. We live in an age when people still get ripped off by cryptocurrency nonsense and false-authority scams. How are these web service schemes any different? Just because they have a 10,000 word disclaimer in small print on another page that’s been vetted by some shyster lawyer?
Anyway, the whole adventure caused me to try and refocus my intent and try to analyze what I was trying to accomplish. At this point it all seems like too much work, and I’ve probably gained more from writing this slander than I would have from starting an additional blog.
Whatever.
Maybe I should give up on trying to focus thoughts as well as eyes.
(Note to Chuck: don’t include this in the round-up; stick with the new Nikon pics. They’re nicer.)
O-kay. Let’s skip the first four that my own eyesight let me down on. Seems I do have a little trouble seeing the controls, including the PASM dial alignment. Never mind; it was expected.
So how about a straight-forward picture:
Ordinary snapshot.
Colour, what there is of it, is accurate. Contrast and sharpness appear good. It’s not much to look at, but it’s all there is at the moment. So let’s see if we can push the limits a bit.
First of all, how sharp is this 18-55mm Nikkor lens:
Sharp as a thorn.
That is a segment of the full size image, not reduced or sharpened or otherwise processed. It looks pretty good to me, what do you think?
Right. What happens if we do what we’re not supposed to with it:
Bad idea.
Ouch. Even with a lot of post-processing it isn’t good. Moral: do not point Nikon directly at the sun, it can’t handle it.
But how about the open sky?
A bird, and a spot.
Again a segment of the full frame. From this we learn three things: 10MP isn’t good for digital zooming, there’s some fringing at full tele, and there’s a damn spot on the sensor which I will never see well enough to remove.
What else do I like to do with cameras? Well this, of course:
Not good.
Okay, that’s a “no” on the moon shots – even with post-processing. For one thing 55mm isn’t much telephoto and of course 10MP doesn’t give room for digital zooming, but also the camera does not handle low light well. All to be expected, though.
So can we get some sort of good, artistic image? Let’s see …
Nought wrought.
Hmm. Maybe not a prize-winner but certainly not dull. Let’s try another shot.
How we all end up.
Again, no great result. But this camera has potential, even if the operator doesn’t. If Spring would like to spring there would be more interesting things to photograph (more colour, for one thing). And perhaps some more practice (a grand total of 31 images so far – not much) to get the hang of this particular camera.
Oh one thing I have noticed: for my usual wildlife photos I’m going to need a longer lens. I shot quite a few good images with the Pentax and 50-200mm zoom so something along that focal range would probably suit me and the Nikon.
We shall see what develops.
Even though this is digital, not film.
Post Script: I took a few B&W (in camera) shots, but I did not like the results. Although I know I need to study the settings more, I don’t think this is a good camera for direct monochrome.
Wandering Words 