If I could have any ship from Star Wars as a personal ride, I would probably chose an X-Wing. Only because I am not a gear head and I think Millennium Falcon maintenance would likely be beyond me.
X-Wing on film:
X-Wing on digital (with a cameo from BB-8):
This post is just an excuse to post another film shot because I am anxiously awaiting an email saying that the two rolls of film I shipped to the lab last week are done. That’s all this is. Also, X-Wings are cool.
Seeing as it’s only 7:30am right now, I don’t think I can call whether today has been typical or not. How about yesterday?
Yesterday was pretty typical. Jen and I both worked from home and had quiet days over all. That was fairly typical. I hit all of my health goals. That was pretty typical, thankfully for my health I guess. Jen and I had dinner together. That being typical is the one shining up side of the pandemic sending us all home. Now we get to have dinner together almost every night at a nice decent hour. The atypical days being the days where one of us has to work from the office.
The atypical stuff revolved around my stomach. I had a bad issue at lunch and another one at dinner. I can’t say such a gastric bypass side effect fun is uncommon, but as I get better at all of this it is thankfully becoming less common. That is good over all, but yesterday was annoying. Neither issue was too bad yesterday, but they were both there.
So over all, everything was pretty typical yesterday. I’ll take it.
We lost my mother’s older sister late last year. We lost my mother early this year. Today we found out that my mother’s older brother is going into hospice. He has kidney and heart issues and his fight is coming to an end.
Nine months ago there were four siblings in my mother’s family. Now we have to prepare ourselves to lose a third. This sucks.
What do you say, wanna go into Boston for a post-dinner walk tonight? I do!
Full discloser, I only have something like three film photos left over from the one previous time I had a film camera in the city with me, and those three pics (including this one you see here) are awful and a total waste and not at all worth sharing, but I really want to share something new because that’s what I do with these film photo things, right?
Anyway, here are a couple that have already been shared… just cause.
So what do you say, wanna go into town for a walk tonight? Let’s go!
One goal for a photo walk in Boston is to try to recreate this photo. I took this with my old Kokak point and shoot back in 2005 and I want to do it again and possibly improve it? I want to do it on film and on digital.
f5.6, 1/750th, iso 80.
I pulled double duty this morning and it might throw off my whole day.
I went out early for car music, but on my way there I stopped downtown for some film photos. I took my Nikon and Dad’s zoom lens and finished the roll that was in the camera. I went to the dam and our little downtown shopping area and took a few pictures. I did not bring my mirrorless camera, but I did bring my point and shoot, just so I could have something to post here.
The sunlight was really nice for a change. It was a good day to go out.
After a short trip downtown I went to the movie theater parking lot and put vocals on three songs. I could have done two more but my voice was starting to get tired and I wanted to get home for some breakfast and a shower before work.
The one thing I failed to do this morning was my 30 minutes of exercise. I am going to have to get that in a piece at a time throughout the day. I failed to close my exercise ring on Saturday, and I failed to close my move ring (calorie counter) on both Saturday and Sunday. That ends today. No more missing rings, even if I do have a day where I am feeling sick. August starts tomorrow and I want another perfect month.
Until then, here’s the obligatory clock pic.
How do I describe myself. The answer to that question has actually changed quite a bit of late.
Traditionally the answer was really tall, really fat, really red. The really tall still applies. Thankfully for my middle aged hair the really red applies too. For now at least. I have to think the days are numbered on that front though.
The really fat piece of that though… after over 50 years I can’t really describe myself that way anymore. At least not outwardly so. While the gastric bypass surgery has had the desired effect on my actual weight, there is still the question of my mental state. I still feel like that morbidly obese guy I used to be. Is that body dysmorphia? Probably. It’s just harder to change my mindset than it was to change my actual weight.
Those are just a few of the things that define me enough that I would describe myself that way to someone else. There are other things as well. I’m a husband, a step father, a son, a brother, an uncle. I am a computer programmer. I play guitar, I like to mess around with photography. I live in Massachusetts and am fiercely proud of it.
I would like to describe myself as a good person, but am I? I see myself failing in that respect often. I hope that I have an accurate picture of myself, though they say that people who suffer from depression often have an accurate view of themselves while people who don’t often have a too rosy self view. I’m not sure what to make of that, but you can do whatever with it. I try to be a good human. Sometimes I pull it off. Sometimes I don’t. I guess I see the attempts as a defining characteristic of myself.
Really though, all you need to know is that I am really tall and really red and I used to be really fat. That should suffice.
I just counted up the days on the calendar. Today is day 27. My blog posts have all been correct. I think.
I got a lot done today. Most of which has already been mentioned on the old bloggie, but here’s a summary anyway.
Six songs got new guitar parts. Two songs got rhythm tracks and four got leads.
Three songs were mixed and are officially finished. That gives me 10 in total and by RPM Challenge rules I have a full album-in-a-month for July. I hit the 10 songs but I came up a bit short on the 35 minutes. I’ll hopefully mix at least one more before the month is out so that I can hit that goal as well.
Finally, I wrote lyrics and melodies for three songs. That gives me a total of five that are ready for vocal tracks which means I may be doing some car music in the morning. If I get out early enough maybe I’ll do a short photo walk somewhere in town as well. Maybe. We’ll see.
Tomorrow is the last day of July so we’re coming up on one third of the way through the 50/90 challenge. I am probably a little behind the pace from the last couple of years I completed this game, but that might be because I was super out in front of the pace those times. I am feeling pretty good about where I stand at the moment, but it could still very easily all come crashing down.
Stick with it, Robert.
Should I go over to amazon and order some less expensive not-quite professional film like Kodak Gold or ColorPlus, or should I buy fewer rolls of better, professional level film like Kodak Portra 400 or Ilford HP5?
Probably go with the cheaper stuff. I am a super amateur hack, after all.
That’s the Everest ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. From a distance, of course. I don’t think we’re going to spend much time at Animal Kingdom when we go back in September. Half a day, maybe? We had it all planned out but I haven’t updated the calendar yet. I’ll get to it soon, of course.
Film is fun, but it’s expensive. I remember when it was super cheap. Back in the old days, before digital cameras.
I mentioned earlier that I put guitars onto six songs this morning. I’ve spent the afternoon mixing and have finished three songs. That brings the total up to 10. That means 50/90 is 20% complete. It also means I have an RPM Challenge rules (10 songs or 35 minutes) album in a month for July. Nice
I wanted to share one of the songs, just because that’s how I usually do this… but all three songs are pretty shitty over all and none of them are worth posting at all. They are just bad.
I’ll share this one though because it’s in 15/8 time so it at least has that going for it, I guess.
More guitar pictures? Hey, that must mean I worked on the music project today! Yeah, I did!
I put rhythm guitars on the only two song ideas that still needed rhythm guitars, and I put lead guitars on the only four songs that were ready for lead guitars that didn’t already have them. Nice! I have once again run out of guitar parts to record.
Next up for music today is mixing songs that are finished tracking, and writing lyrics for songs that don’t have them yet. On we go!
I played my SG today, and up until the point when I was recording leads on the fourth and final song of the morning it felt really good. That last song wasn’t the guitars fault, I am just way out of practice and I ran out of gas.
I also played through my Deluxe Reverb. No direct signals today, for me or for Baby Yoda.
Inside the Red Head's Head 