Category: Uncategorized (Page 19 of 232)

–Grace still sick. Sicker, maybe.

–Leather glue came. Used it on my belt; will see. Just noticed for the first time today (after 40 years or so) (a) that the belt has a script signature “John W. Nordstrom,” and (b) it consists of a 2″ wide piece of leather folded over and glued to…a form of some sort to make a 1″ belt. Could be a thicker stiffer piece of leather, could possibly be something else. How it held up this long without noticeable wear is astonishing–the one hole I’ve used isn’t even elongated. Reversing it every time I wear it has helped, I’m sure.

–Third (or fifth) Westclox Moonbeam came in. This one is nice: dead silent, has the “power loss” indicator, and both light and buzzer work at the appropriate time.

–Got a pizza at Blaze for dinner. Pretty tasty.

–Lunch at McDonald’s on Sunrise, then shopping at Smart & Final for milk, Pellegrino, pizza, tangerines, apples.

–Played with cameras. Dug out the Canon R5 again to test the Zeiss Pancolar against the Rikenon. Can’t tell. [edit] Tested Canon and SL2-S with Summicron 50 with night shots. Canon held its own, but the SL2-S sensor continues to astound.

–Took the Helios 44-2 apart (via youtube video) and fixed the ultra-stiff aperture ring. Wasn’t obvious how to do it (not covered in video), but I figured it out. Smooth as silk now.

–Fixed (apparently) the steam lever on the ECM. It wouldn’t stay down, now it does. I didn’t do anything except take it apart and put it back together. Beats me.

–Kind of a nothing day. Much cooler.

–Took the BMW to McDonald’s for lunch, then Bel Air for bulk water, banana cream pie, and a couple of frozen dinners.

–Played with Helios-type lenses. Decided to drop the Biotar and 81H, keep the MMZ Belomo Helios 44-2 (58/2).

–Grace still sick.

–Picked up another Lumitime clock at UPS. Nice. Got pizza, cream cream cheese at Bel Air.

–Got a haircut at Great Clips. Cutter was tattooed, but had good energy and an unbelievable body.

–Took the Beemer out for a ride. Started towards Ione, turned back before reaching (eyes mostly). Car has a buzz/rattle in the dashboard that sounds just like the one in the 330i. Keerap!

Red Baron 4-cheese pizza with our own pepperoni for dinner.

–Played with bike pumps all day. Got all but one working nicely–i.e., gauge needle goes up on the downstroke and stays there until the upstroke. Web solved one issue: When I push super hard but can’t get the handle down, it’s likely because the Presta valve is blocked shut by my poor fitting of the chuck. Could also be that the “drops to zero” problem is related to poor fitting of the chuck–though I tried different ones and  (sort of) tried to keep them straight. Will try again. I may also want to have the tubes replaced, as I’ve done a lot of pushing and pulling on the valve stems. I was going to buy a bunch of Hiro chucks but then noticed (and read) that they let a lot of air out unless you remove them really fast after opening the lever. Will practice.

–Weather is much milder. Took a 10.5 mile bike ride around 2 PM. The first two bike pumps I tried didn’t really work. I think the issue is that when I test them there’s about 5 pounds of air in the tire. Today there was > 50 pounds, and, I believe, the weaknesses of the Silca pump heads are showing up. The gauges would go up (but not to 50) then quickly down, as air leaked (I surmise) around the chuck seal. We’ll see.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Went to UPS to pick up Paradigm Titanium razor. Very nice; turns out I have the steel version of this and the ti version is much preferred. Also got the Carbonio front license plate holder. Installed it without too much trouble; seems good.

–Went to Bel Air for dessert, corn, turkey burgers, potato salad. Barbecued for dinner: fabulous stuff.

–Compared Leica Q-P and Q2 (Hodinkee). It seems to come up repeatedly that 24 megapixels is just fine, showing no real deficits compared to 46. Last night’s night shot with the Q-P, which came out fine, was done at 1/6 second and 400 ISO (I neglected to set it to auto ISO). Pretty amazing. Will try again tonight with higher ISOs.

–Took the BMW to New York Bagel Cafe for bagels. Took Grace to Target, where she didn’t get much. I got protein bars and toothpaste.

–One red squirrel (child) came for peanuts. Yay!

–Compared Leica M10-P Safari to SL2-S, Summicron 50/2, 24 MP each. M was fine, but doesn’t really offer anything over the SL2-S, and was actually a little fuzzier here and there, which surprised me given the identical setups. That SL2-S sensor is pretty amazing.

–Played with small cameras. Was shocked to see that the the tiny Leica C beat out the C-Lux, which in turn outperformed the D-Lux 7 and 007. The C has the only Summicron lens among those cameras–though it’s from 2013 with only 12 megapixels. The single best performance was the C-Lux zoomed, but for point-and-shoot I seem to go with unzoomed then cropped. Wish I’d had the C in Bellevue. Also thinking of dropping the Qs and just going with C and SL2-S. It would be nice to find a wide L-mount auto-focus lens for the SL2-S that weighs less than 3 pounds.

–Put gas in the BMW. That car is fun to drive.

–Cleaned and set up the Plomb 1943 “War Finish” 3/8″ ratchet. Very sweet tool.