I caught the Guru off in the retro techno world this afternoon. Sorry the iconic trash can didn’t make the crop….

Look at the disk size!

Left camera: over four years old. Right camera: in our house less than two days.

We recently took our “fun money” and ordered a newly released camera, which arrived yesterday. Now to learn its quirks!

Casualty of aggressive cleaning while up north. Now to find an old-fashioned watch-repair shop….

Crud: still hanging around. I have a date every four hours with cough medicine and a little red pill; then things are pretty good for 3.5 hrs…, then I study the Nokia until the full four hours have passed.

I went down to the lake and shucked off my shoes (and custom orthotics), and set The Foot loose in the wild. I didn’t go out far and I didn’t go under, but when I was floating butt down and digits up, just feeling a mild one-ness with the lake, I watched Lady Loon and her trio of following loon-lets glide by…ah, nature can be so uplifting.

BTW, we aren’t so far out in the sticks that the future doesn’t appear here in one form or another. You may have seen pre-release vehicles, especially if you spend time near Detroit, with a strange black-and-white obfuscation “contact paper” cladding a vehicle to disguise the exact shape should someone see/photograph it. The other option is that the manufacturer sticks panels to the vehicle that cover up the shape beneath—no reconstruction of curves etc. is possible at all. Here’s what the latter vehicle looks like after the panels have been removed, with the not-quite-velcro attachment strips remaining. I’m told this vehicle was shown publicly in March, so there’s no longer any need for disguise.

John was very jealous of the bright red panic button by the dash. Does that tell you something about the state of GM engineering? haha

We’re lusting after the new Sony camera. Oops, I think we (meaning he, with my whole-hearted approval) just ordered one.

How do you obtain consumer advice that you trust?

I do not have a specific answer to that…. But with that observation in mind….

I do not recall the (internet website search) chain/series that lead me to the advice that this was a fine “sharpening steel,” and surely the decision to buy was certainly my own.

I knew what the object looked like when I placed the order, and it didn’t have that knurled look I associate with a high-quality steel. However, even so, I did click the “send it to me” equivalent, despite major concerns about the does-not-look-like-the-historic-versions concept. I have solid memories of my grandfather and my uncle (his son) using a steel in a theatrical amount prior to using the carving knife at the table on a major chunk of animal flesh (e.g., a whole roasted turkey or leg of lamb). Solid memories on how to sharpen a carving knife….

However….

I can report that this is an outstanding steel, despite that it is not in the…Victorian? (gnarled) style. This steel makes my knives so edgy, so sharp, that I am exceedingly super careful with them.

And my knives, now sharpened/honed with this steel, they are superb tools…for cutting….

It’s JUNE, June, I say. June. I’m still in shock…or I’m slow to adjust????

The ferns are forging forward.

The rhodos (in the shade) are abloom.

And this, I hypothesize, is AT&T fiber splicing equipment (and personnel inside).

Love the tendrils and extra fillips of green on the buds and bud-stems of this red-red-rose.

As usual with my plant photos, I’m trying to focus the way I want, and miss the insects, unless they’re front/center bees or similar. Not delicate spider at 5:30 just off center….

Possibly, you may recall that Goo-Fiber came to our neighborhood last year, and we got powered up in mid-summer. Now, I see the AT&T folks/contractors are playing catchup on the same streets. This is the hookup stage, when people are working in trailers and the back of trucks with the doors open, that delicate work of splicing, I think. In the meantime, there are extra bits hanging here and there. This one has a temporary tether; excess flopping does seem dangerous.

I got distracted into photo metadata and learned a smidge about big-endian (and its opposite little-endian—duh; collectively: endianness), and their distant “friend” circle of confusion.

I think I have spent some time in a circle of confusion, but today I just felt like that was a distant memory.

Without planning to do so, I presently have three active activity trackers. Two kindof agree, and one reports wildly lower counts. The only category all three report is steps. My ancient Fitbit One and my iPhone report similar step-counts, but, providing I remember to carry it all the time, the iPhone will have a higher step-count than the Fitbit (attached to my underwear). The Nokia Steel HR always reports a much lower value each day, like around 20% lower than the other two.

I noticed this variation, and began to watch more closely. I’m pretty sure that if you consider footfalls “steps,” which I think the devices do, the most accurate of the three trackers is the iPhone, the one that consistently gives the highest count.

Your counts may vary.

I can wear the Nokia in the shower, and it gives me a chunk of steps for that (which does’t “fix” the discrepancy, BTW), and sometimes enquires if that time was an “activity.” It’s those rapid little steps to soap, rotate, and bend to get clean?