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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Old camera lenses are awesome. I’ve got some steel and glass rokkors that are beautiful. They render in such a wonderful way too, so painterly. They have thorium in the glass! Not enough to be sketchy to use but something that obviously isn’t done anymore. Bonus points that they can be fixed with a hammer.

    Old camera stuff in general is subjectively cooler. The leaf shutters in my 4x5 lenses are incredible little machines. Film in general is cooler than whatever sensor the latest and greatest has. Actual bits of silver suspended in emulsion, with colour filters and dye couplers that react in development. There’s a great three part video on YouTube breaking down Kodak’s manufacturing process. It’s mind boggling that stuff even works. Ohhhh and actually darkroom optical prints! Don’t get me started there!

    I’m going to develop some rolls I think. Got me in the mood.



  • Yup, it is very often that the risk trade-off favours starting early. There’s a term alpine start for a reason. Whether it’s impending weather later in the day, or snow conditions will warm increasing avalanche risk, or the objective is just so long you want to make sure you’re back down on the easy bit. Had the latter last month. Did a traverse is seven summits and even with the 6am start it was dark by the time we got down from the ridge and back into the valley. Trail ran our way out by headlamps, singing dumb songs to not spook any grizzlies. Such a good outing!


  • Exactly, is just straight up for fun. I’d argue they’re safer too. You pay way more attention in a stick shift, looking ahead timing shifts with traffic flow, leaving space and coasting to red lights, and the extra speed control on steep windy mountain roads is amazing especially in the winter.

    Was lucky to get a 2021 Crosstrek in a manual, which I guess Subaru doesn’t do in Canada anymore, so it’ll likely be the last ICE car I have. If I’m joining the zombie horde of alternating mashing gas or brake depending what’s happening 10m in front of me I better at least get some torque out of it.


  • I’m an architect. It’s nice having the project I’m actively working on always active on one screen, with design sketches, marked up revisions, email with comments from client, renderer etc. active on the other. Sure it only saves a second not having to tab back and forth, but if you’re doing it non stop all day it makes a big difference. Also just less effort.



  • Sadly code minimums for newer builds haven’t really changed drastically in decades. It’s all just 2x6 with batt and poly, fundamentals the same as it has been since the 1970s. My 2019 build just had the shower lines freeze because they’re against an exterior wall (-30 cold snap, but still).

    You’re probably right though that a heat pump is a better investment. Redoing the entire building envelope is a big ask if it’s not deteriorating and needing work anyway.


  • Fine, Israel’s leader/government, as elected by its population, is on record. Does that make it better?

    1% of the population is a lot of people. That’s tens of thousands of lives cut short. Kids who’ll never grow up, families torn apart, etc. Should that not elicit emotion? There’s plenty of videos of children and unarmed people trying to surrender or otherwise being shot. Seems like anyone and everyone to me.

    Fun fact! Hysteria was originally thought to be a condition that only applied to women, hence the Greek root “hyster” for womb, as if that were the source of irrational emotion.




  • Yes, but also no. There are a bunch of other factors that contribute to a windows performance; manufacturer, type of gas used in the cavity, spacer material conductivity, thermal bridge free frame design, low e coatings and solar reflectance, and the quality of the installation matters most. Then there’s the windows efficiency relative to the rest of the assembly. If it’s a building code basic 2x4 wall from 1970 then you’re absolutely right, it would be overkill putting some triple pane krypton filled window in. But if you’ve got a foot of exterior insulation and are pushing a u value of 0.13 on your wall assembly then you need windows to match.

    Source: certified Passive House designer, the most demanding energy standard for buildings available, that originated in … yup you guessed it, Germany.


  • Photography, mostly landscapes. Something satisfying about capturing the essence of a beautiful view and being able to share it with others who couldn’t be there to savour the moment. Sometimes a fancy digital camera, sometimes old timey film cameras my grandpa got me into. I’m also into backpacking, climbing, splitboarding, and otherwise just spending time in the mountains so there’s no shortage of views to capture.



  • Kitchen table is 1880ish? My mom got it from one of her first palliative patients who got it from their parents and had nobody else to leave it with when they passed. Use it daily and have it paired with some modern steel chairs … it’s a little eclectic around here.

    I’ve got some straight razors as well. Pretty sure some of the Swedish ones go back to 1700s.




  • Film photography. With smartphones having taken over the roll of point and shoots and covering the majority of people’s photography needs, it’s quite a different experience breaking out a half century old camera. Everything is more tactile, your shots are finite, and the result is a 100% determined by your decisions. Different films produce different results, and if you get into developing your own film you get to play mad chemist in the bathroom.

    There’s a learning curve, but if you’re already into photography and understand the basics it’s really not that hard. Labs still exist to develop for you if you’d rather not go down that rabbit hole. The results may surprise you!