Malvern Hills Walk
My mum's partner goes for a walk on the Malvern hills on his birthday. Rain and 60mph winds made this an interesting experience.
Remaster
I recently got access to Photoshop and decided to remaster a photo I took earlier in the year.
I'm not ready to let go yet. Or, rather, I'm not ready to start letting go. I always knew we wouldn't be the only things in your life forever, but I didn't prepare myself for how it'd feel for that to start decreasing.
It feels horrendous.
My phone keeps showing me pictures of when you were tiny, and I think about when you needed me, and now you don't. I worry that I've set a bad example and that one day we'll be gone from each other's lives, and you'll talk about how you're not that close with your dad. And maybe it'll only affect you sometimes. Most of the time you'll be fine not hearing from me.
I worry that your friends aren't really your friends. I know I can't protect you from this forever, but that doesn't mean I don't want to. I know that trying to protect you doesn't really help you, and doesn't even feel like you're being protected, but seeing you sad is something I'll never be able to bear. And I know that's selfish to a degree, but it's not all selfish. If I could protect you from everything forever, I would.
Mostly I don't ever want you to mask around me. I know you already do. When I seem hard, and I'm not just being grumpy, it's because the world is hard. In my experience, the world tolerates some things, and I'm trying to share that knowledge with you to make your life easier. It's likely that I'm failing and I'm sorry. I never want you to feel that I don't think you're good enough just how you are.
I just want to be in your life forever. The older I get and the further I grow apart from my dad, the more scared I am that that'll happen with us and I can't think of anything worse. I'm so sorry for the mistakes I make; I'm doing all of this for the first time, but I am trying.
I love you, kid.
Leipzig 2023
Spent a lovely long weekend in Germany visiting Sven, Nadine and their two boys. Very happy and surprised to have had snow; I love taking pictures in the snow.
Default Apps 2023
I stole this idea from Luke, who seemingly stole it from some other people, so it's more chain-mail than theft. Blogging needs more of this kind of thing, and I can't resist a good list!
I'm sure I've forgotten some stuff so I'll probably come back and update this later.
Long time, no see
Between work, and the sun setting at 3pm, I haven't been super motivated to take a lot of pictures the last couple of weeks. And I certainly haven't been motivated to yell them into the void.
I did a thing
In my quest for budget baller-dom, I have picked up a budget baller sweet spot Porsche. This is a Porsche that is old enough to be cheap, but not so old that it starts getting expensive again. It is really fun.
Medium Format
Very fortunate to have taken charge of a Fuji GFX100S. I have missed medium format since I sold my Mamiya 7, so this is a very welcome addition to my arsenal.
Swim
Full disclosure: the only thing I don't love about living by the sea is being scared that I'll destroy my camera getting a photo that wasn't worth it. I love the good weather, and the bad weather.
That London
Feeling a bit sick of going to Brighton and seeing and doing the same things so we went to London for the day.
HMKB 75
Dan wanted another HMKB but they didn't have beige so he went for grey. It's surprisingly difficult to match a keycap set with a grey case.
Some nature
I got a nice new lens and I've been borrowing a cool camera, but I haven't had a lot of time to use either.
KGL (kids get lost)
Tabitha has been at PGL this week, so Charlotte and I went to Rye and Hastings for a few days.
The last few weeks
An eye for composition is something that leaves you if you don't use it.
Things that take four hours or more:
- writing an importer for WordPress blog posts that gets URLs from XML export, then scrapes those URLs because the site uses ACF and that's the only way to get rendered markup that is actually useful for importing into non-WordPress systems
- watching the classic 1999 movie The Matrix twice
- driving from Brighton to Birmingham
- two Formula One Grand Prix
- editing a 30 second video
- getting a terrible night's sleep
- implementing and debugging one single custom Google Analytics 4 event in Google Tag Manager when it fires fine in Tag Manager but Analytics is not picking it up, and even after four hours you're not really done you've just washed your hands of the entire thing because life's too short to deal with this absolute cesspit of a product. It literally isn't even fit for its own purpose and I am done interacting with it.
- watching a Best of Lee Mack compilation on YouYube, twice
Eating a healthy breakfast cereal isn't worth it for how miserable and unmotivated it makes me.
The Merriam Webster site has a top lookups right now feature and it's hypnotising. When I looked just now, "lumber" was there for a good couple of minutes and I must know why.
A very busy bank holiday weekend
Went back home to take my mum and aunt out for lunch to celebrate their very-much-deserved retirement. Nearly melted in our hotel room. Went to a beach, a car show, and had some ice cream.
The other day, a friend posted on Instagram about Cedars of Lebanon, and I'm still cross that Cedars of Lebanon isn't a post rock band in the vein of Red Sparowes or All We Expected. I'm disappointed in us.