A Better Point-N-Shoot

As I've previously stated, I have always had a hard time warming up to point-n-shoot cameras, digital or otherwise.  I'm a 35mm SLR guy from way back and I've always liked being able to twiddle the knobs to control my exposures. A few years ago, I finally took the plunge on a Pentax DSLR camera and have accumulated an assortment of lenses but as much as I enjoy using that gear, sometimes it's nice to keep things simpler in order to stay in the moment.

As I was getting into the Pentax gear, I picked up a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 bridge camera. It was a point-n-shoot with a zoom lens made by Leica. It was only 5MP resolution and although I was intrigued with it, I finally sold it on, more than doubling my money. While I didn't have any seller's remorse, the idea of an affordable camera that has some Leica DNA has stayed with me.

A year or so after that, I acquired another Leica-lensed Lumix, a DMC SZ1 pocket point-n-shoot. It takes amazing photos for its size, but size is one of its shortcomings in that it's almost too small to handle and I don't have big hands. Still, I've kept that one for those times when I just want to have a camera along but it's not the main focus of what I'm doing.

Eventually, I came across a newer and more sophisticated Lumix, a DMC-FZ35, again with a Leica lens. This one seems to combine the best of what the two previous cameras have to offer in a little more SLR like configuration. Lightweight and comfortable to carry, I thought this was my ultimate point-n-shoot until I came across its larger, slightly older sibling, the DMC-FZ50.

At a glance, this camera could easily be confused for a DSLR. It's beefy, heavier than the FZ35, and zoom and manual focus functions are on lens rings like a DSLR. Unlike the SZ1 and FZ35, which feature Leica designed lenses, the FZ50 was actually co-developed with Leica, which sold a variant of the camera as the V-LUX 1. Some critics like to say Leica's V-LUX1 isn't a real Lieca but rather a Panasonic in Leica clothing. It could as easily be said that the FZ50 offered an opportunity to own what is essentially a Leica without paying a Leica price for it.

The main difference between the Lumix and Leica variants was in the firmware, but according to what reviews I can find, the differences, other than cosmetics and Leica's three-year warranty, were minimal and neither variant was significantly better than the other. For considerable premium one would pay for the Leica name, I'm sure many buyers had no hesitation to "settle" for the Lumix.

Making Space Fun Again!

A Tesla Roadster, driven by a mannequin named 'Starman',
hitches a ride aboard the Falcon Heavy test flight, blasting
music from David Bowie and bearing a message from
the late Douglas Adams on the instrument panel.

I am old enough to remember the excitement surrounding the Apollo lunar landings and one thing that was inescapable was the triumphant excitement. Originally, there were to have been ten lunar landings, beginning with Apollo 11 and concluding with Apollo 20, but we never got there. Instead, we stopped after Apollo 17. Sure, some of the hardware was recycled for the Skylab project—Remember Skylab? I bet a lot of people don't—and the last mission to carry the "Apollo" brand was a 1975 publicity stunt in which astronauts aboard the last Apollo capsule docked with a Soviet Soyuz capsule for a "Handshake in Space" with a couple of cosmonauts. But why did we quit going to the moon and launching space shuttles and other cool stuff? In short, because it wasn't fun anymore. Yeah, I know there are a bunch of more technical explanations for all that, but space exploration needs to have a fun factor if it is to continue.

Today, Elon Musk put the fun back into space in the form of a cherry red Tesla Roadster 'piloted' by a space suited mannequin named 'Starman' and blasting David Bowie's "Life on Mars" on a continuous loop from the radio, while displaying the words "Don't Panic!" in a nod to the late Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy books, on the instrument panel's video screen. All of this served as the dummy payload aboard the successful test launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center's famed Launchpad 39A earlier today, 6 February 2018. The Falcon Heavy, with the Tesla Roadster and Starman aboard, is headed toward an orbit around Mars--not the sun--as some news outlets erroneously reported.

While some may dismiss it as a meaningless publicity stunt or at worst, a shameless plug for Musk's other company, Tesla—and who cares of Tesla uses it in their advertising—it's more than that. It made a positive and entertaining statement for a public that has become bored with space—bored because space has become numbingly routine. This was a hell of a lot more fun than some scientific experiments from Ms. Nelson's sixth grade class. I say kudos to Elon Musk and the rest of the SpaceX team for putting on a hell of a good show, turning a routine rocket launch into a memorable event. In fact, the only thing better, in my opinion, is if Starman's space suit were worn by the mortal remains of either David Bowie (1947-2016) or Douglas Adams (1952-2001). I wish both had been around to see the show they helped Mr. Musk create.

But seriously, this was a brilliant piece of marketing that might just help get people excited about getting back to space. And when—not if, but when—we get to Mars, let's hope Starman and the Tesla are waiting for us in orbit!

What Apple Should Have Done

As an owner of an iPhone 6S, I have followed with interest the recent kerfuffle over Apple's decision to secretly throttle processor speed on older iPhone models to prevent malfunctions such as spontaneous shut-downs as the batteries age. When Apple finally acknowledged this practice, their stated rationale for doing it was to extend the life of older devices, albeit at the expense of performance. Many users were understandably upset, concluding that Apple's true motivation was to accelerate the upgrade cycle by frustrating users into replacing their devices at shorter intervals. Although Apple denies this, the damage was done. Apple's reputation took a big hit and users have become more mistrustful of the corporate entities that manufacture the devices upon which they have come to depend. And rightfully so.

The whole thing comes down to a question of ownership, as in who actually owns the devices you use? End user license agreements for software applications and operating systems state that ownership of, say MacOS or Micro$oft Office is retained by the manufacturer. When we 'buy' the software, we are really just buying the license to use it. This has become more and more obvious as software manufacturers have continued to scale back on the physical packaging of their products. Twenty years ago, M$ Office came in a large box, containing not only physical media on which the software was stored but extensive printed manuals as well. By the early 2000s, the printed manuals were gone and the much smaller package contained only the physical media and a copy of the end user agreement. Today, physical media is pretty much a thing of the past and the product has largely been reduced to bits and bytes transmitted over our broadband Internet connections. Some manufacturers such as Adobe have taken things a step further and have moved to a subscription model, where they only license the use of their software for a specific period of time and the customer must purchase a new license each year to continue to use it.

In this new paradigm, we grant software manufacturers access to our hardware so they can keep their products fully updated as a way to add 'value' to our purchase. It's pretty easy to see how a manufacturer like Apple, which makes both the hardware and the software, might see a blurry line between the two and use a software update as a way to control the hardware. But they also try to control the hardware in other ways such as making replacement parts available only to authorized service centers. And lest we forget, Apple has long regarded its devices—especially iPods and iPhones—as disposable items, designed to be used up and replaced over time. That's one reason the batteries aren't easily replaceable.

While I don't fully disagree with Apple's thinking regarding throttling processor performance to fit the capabilities of a degraded battery, I think they really messed up by not telling consumers what they were doing—and more importantly—by not giving them the ability to opt in or out. Given the opportunity to make an informed decision, many consumers would have doubtless agreed to give up a little performance to get another year or so out of their existing phone while preparing for an inevitable upgrade. Others would prioritize performance over longevity, taking the words of Neil Young to heart that "it's better to burn out that to fade away". The bottom line here is that giving consumers a choice in the matter would have also been giving them respect. Instead, by following its long established pattern of secrecy, Apple has alienated customers, fostering suspicion regarding its true motives.

In an attempt to make amends, Apple is offering $29 battery replacements for affected devices. With such an offer available, I naturally began wondering whether my 13-month-old iPhone might need a new battery. Earlier today, I used two free apps to determine that at the moment, my battery is very healthy and my phone's performance has not been throttled.

I downloaded and installed an app called Runtime and using its 'Battery Wear' function, I discovered that my phone's battery is at 99 percent of its original capacity. I then used Lirum Info Lite to determine that my phone's CPU is operating at its full clock speed of 1.85 GHz, so no throttling has been applied—at least not yet. Needless to say, I will be using these apps to continue monitoring my phone's health, especially between now and the time the $29 battery replacement offer expires. And in the meantime, I would urge Apple to make the CPU throttling feature optional going forward and thus let consumers decide what is in their own best interests. Such a practice would be entirely consistent with the time honored business axiom that the customer is always right.

Update—It seems Apple is now poised to do the right thing. Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced that the next update to iOS, coming in March 2018 will include the option to turn throttling off, along with more robust battery health monitoring options. This is what should have been done from the beginning, but I'll certainly give them credit for being responsive to consumers and ultimately doing the right thing when it's pointed out to them.

A bright idea for my fridge

I recently had to have the control board (aka self-destruct device*) replaced in my refrigerator. While the technician had the ceiling console, which also houses the light fixture, apart, we noticed something startling. The 40 watt incandescent light bulbs that had been in the fridge since new had begun melting the ceiling! Even though the console completely hid the damage, the technician was concerned enough to leave the light bulbs out and advised me to look into something would put off less heat.

Having recently acquired some LED bulbs to try out in lamps and light fixtures, I immediately thought they would be a good solution since they stay quite cool to the touch, even when they've been on for an extended period of time. The ones I had were physically too large so I went shopping and found a 3-pack of LED bulbs the same diameter as the original incandescents for $10 and change, which was a perfect solution since my refrigerator has two bulbs plus one in the freezer below.

I had not realized just how hot the incandescent bulbs got. In the 45 seconds or so it took to change one bulb, the other one got hot enough to blister my finger when I tried to remove it. I had to close the refrigerator and let it cool off for a few minutes before I could safely handle it. I have to wonder if that heat from those bulbs damaged not only the ceiling of the fridge but the control board as well.

These new bulbs not only put out less heat, they consume considerably less power, pulling only pull seven watts of power (the equivalent of an old fashioned Christmas tree bulb) to put out light equivalent to a 60 watt bulb. Also, the light is more of a stark white color, quite appropriate for inside a refrigerator. Being brighter and whiter, the bulbs do a better job of illuminating the formerly dark corners. Given the small amount of time those bulbs are ever on, I'm not expecting to see any savings on my power bill and I have no illusions that they will come anywhere near paying for themselves as they would in some other application where they were on more. They will instead pay for themselves by extending the life of my refrigerator. They'll also earn their keep by giving the inside of the fridge a more up to date look. All in all, it's not a bad return on a minimal investment.

*I refer to the electronic circuit boards in modern appliances, both small and large, as 'self-destruct devices' because they seem to serve as an intentional weak link designed to shorten the life of an otherwise dependable and durable device. By redesigning and discontinuing circuit boards on a regular basis, manufacturers make repairs less feasible--if they're even possible--thus pushing consumers into an endless cycle of replacing their appliances, which have been re-positioned as consumable items instead of the durable goods they once were. Remember when a vacuum cleaner lasted for decades? One thing you wouldn't find in such a machine was a circuit board. 

Meet the New Linux; the Same (but maybe a little better than) the Old Linux

For the past two or three years, I've been happily using Xubuntu Linux but like all good things, this too eventually came to an end.

About a year ago, I had attempted to upgrade to the next long term support version of Xubuntu and it wouldn't install. It seems my hardware was a little outdated. Since the version I was using still had a couple of years left before it reached its scheduled end of life—the point at which all development, including maintenance and security updates, ceases—I had decided to just ride it out and make a decision about what to do with the computer in a couple of years.

For better or worse, things just didn't last that long. Updates kept failing and the system was becoming more more outdated and thus more and more vulnerable. Finally, I decided I'd had enough and decided to see what else was out there. I finally settled on Linux Mint 17.1 and decided to keep the xfce interface I had grown accustomed to.

One of the things I have truly come to love about most popular Linux distributions over the years is the ability to boot from a live CD or DVD and take the operating system for a test drive without affecting anything on the computer.  One of the first things I discovered in the release notes was a built-in workaround for the problem that had kept me from upgrading to the newest stable release of Xubuntu. It took a couple of tries to get the workaround to work, since you have to be pretty quick to access the Linux Mint boot menu to apply it, but once I did, it worked flawlessly and even remembered that setting when I installed the operating system on my hard drive.

The installation went flawlessly and configuration was a breeze since I was already quite familiar with the xfce interface. One of the nicest things was that almost all the software applications I needed were already included on the installation disk image. The only thing I had to add were the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client and Radio Tray, an Internet radio player I had been using.

After I ran all the updates, I found the version of the LibreOffice productivity suite included on the disk image was not only outdated but had actually reached its scheduled end of life several months ago. I've encountered this issue before as Linux distributions often don't keep the most current versions of third party software in their repositories. It's not a big deal, but in my previous experience, it has always required mucking about on the command line to set up access to an alternate repository in order to install the current version. It's a one-time thing, after which updated versions are installed automatically.

After a quick post to the Linux Mint users' forum, a helpful administrator gave me my answer and the news was better than I was hoping for. Not only was it possible to gain access to a more up to date repository, but there was a pre-installed app that let me do it without venturing onto the command line. It took me less than five minutes to access the repository and install the current version of the software. Configuring my printer was equally as easy. It took all of about four mouse clicks. That's a far cry from the first time I installed OpenSUSE Linux on an old laptop some six years ago.

I've only had Linux Mint installed on my nine-year-old HP laptop for about 24 hours, but I'm happy with it and it seems to hold the promise of keeping this particular piece of old hardware running and up to date for the foreseeable future.

Mac OS X may still be my operating system of choice, but my appreciation for desktop Linux in all of its forms continues unabated.

The Last Time I Saw Rowe

After he got married in the summer of 2008—on oh-six, oh-seven, oh-eight, as he liked to say—I didn't see much of Rowe Coley, my close friend of almost three decades. To borrow a line from the end of Jack Kerouac's seminal Beat novel On the Road, “we [had] moved on to different phases of our lives'.

He had settled into a routine of commuting between his own house in Winston-Salem and his wife's in Scaly Mountain—alternately spending a week or two in each location, working at the bank in Winston with his colleagues or telecommuting remotely from what was, and yet would never entirely be, his new home in the mountains. While he loved his wife and loved being married to her, the grind of that commute eventually got the best of him.

Meanwhile, I was knee-deep in my own struggles—scratching out a living teaching part time at the community college and supplementing it with another part-time retail job and a little freelance magazine writing, all the while looking for that elusive thing called full time employment. Although I was somehow making it financially, it left little time for travel or enjoying life as I once had. Also, while he was making the adjustment to married life, I was coming to grips with the loss of Natalie, a woman I had been dating, who had died tragically in a house fire.

Ironically, a year or two later, his struggles had come to reflect my own. The bank where he worked had been bought out during the Crash of '08 and although he had survived the first few rounds of layoffs, his number inevitably came up in late 2010. Though they gave him a generous severance package, he ultimately didn't survive the layoff.

Although we talked regularly on the phone during that time, often commiserating over our respective employment situations, we would see each other only twice in 2011—once in the spring when he was in Greensboro for a job interview and we went out for a Mexican dinner, and then the final time when I visited his house in Winston in early December. He had landed a job at Western Carolina University and was there to begin the process of winding up his affairs in Winston before reporting to work in Cullowhee a week or so later.

It was a rainy late fall night when I made the half-hour drive to see him. In his typical fashion, he had called me up out of the blue and asked me to come over for dinner. And as was common, his cabinets, containing mostly condiments and canned goods, were ill-equipped to prepare us a meal, so we went out to grab a bite at one of his favorite 'greasy spoons,' a Greek restaurant—more a diner, really—near his house.

On the way there, he insisted on showing me the site of a fatal car crash that had occurred in the neighborhood earlier in the day. A vehicle, traveling at high speed, had run out of road when it failed to stop at the end of a dead-end street and had gone airborne on its way down an embankment and ended up in a city park. There wasn't much to see as all but the tiniest bits of debris had already been removed, just a few flattened saplings and marks on the ground to illustrate where it had been. Nonetheless, in his typical fashion, he ignored a perfectly good paved walkway, which he later claimed not to have noticed, and instead led me on the exact path the car had taken, down a steep, wet embankment, slippery with fallen leaves. Holding onto sapling trees for balance, he made it to the bottom without losing his footing, but I didn't.

How often had we been down that path before? Usually in such circumstances, I would get upset with him for choosing the “dog trails” instead of a more established and well-lit path. But this time, I just laughed it off, noting how emblematic it was of our friendship, and washed up as best I could in a nearby drinking fountain. There was a feeling of peace between us that evening, as though all the petty struggles and squabbles of the past had been put to rest and need not be disturbed from their slumber.

At the restaurant, we enjoyed our gyro platters and after we'd mopped up the last of our tzatziki sauce with pieces of pita bread, we returned to his house and talked about the past and the future while we watched part of an old movie on TV—Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Arthur Kennedy, and James Coburn. We remarked at how much James Coburn resembled our mutual friend Terry, a point I reinforced by pulling up a YouTube video of one of Coburn's old Schlitz Light commercials on my new smart phone that I'd gotten a few days earlier. It was a comfortable evening, two people who had known each other for most of our lives and between whom no secrets were hid, just enjoying each other's company for what would turn out to be the final time.

In the midst of all that familiarity, there were a couple of things that set the evening apart. One was that we spent the evening sober—no booze, no weed. We had been longtime drinking and toking buddies, but the appeal of that had begun to wear off for both of us. At that point, he had been to a handful of AA meetings and was taking the first tentative steps toward a life of sobriety that ultimately eluded him. As a grateful member of Al-Anon for the previous few years, I was more than willing to be supportive. And on that particular evening, we truly didn't miss the intoxicants that had been so much a part of our adventures together over most of the previous three decades.

The other thing that was unusual was that he gave me a “Christmas present” consisting of several mementos from our past—more specifically, my past. There was a tee shirt from the college we had attended together, but from which he had transferred, an old business card from my time as a newspaper reporter in his home town, and a couple of similar odds and ends—the types of things you might expect to be returned to you after someone close to you has passed away—things that might only have meaning to you.

When we parted company a little before midnight that final evening—somewhat early by our normal standards—it was with a feeling of peace and comfort, perhaps even a bit of closure. Over almost 30 years, we had become more like brothers than friends. We'd had high adventures together, been there for each other during various low points, and on more than one occasion had totally pissed each other off and later just as totally forgiven each other. There was no denying we loved each other as only brothers can. I was aware of all of those feelings as we parted, and that's why can't ever shake the feeling that when he said goodbye to me as he walked me to his front door and watched me pull out of his yard and into the night, he was really saying farewell.

Although things were looking up for him on that December evening, as he anticipating a new job, albeit at a lower salary than the one he had recently lost, I can't help but wonder if he wasn't also contemplating and maybe even making preparations for the end he would arrive at some ten weeks later. His passing occurred exactly three months to the day later—almost two weeks after he had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Ironically, he died on what would have been Natalie's birthday.

Between the last time I saw him in December and when I attended his memorial the following March, I spoke with him on the phone a few times and it was clear things were falling apart at the seams. His relationship with his wife had become strained when he'd abruptly quit his new job after just a few weeks—the physical stress of the daily hourlong commute on winding mountain roads, he said, was more than he could take. That, along with a few other demons, led him to his final and tragic solution.

In one conversation, he'd admitted to me that he had seriously contemplated suicide a couple of weeks earlier. He said he'd wanted to hang himself with an electrical cord but couldn't remember how to tie a noose. I told him I was glad he had given up on that attempt and pleaded with him to seek professional help. I heard later that he had tried at least once more before getting hold of his grandfather's pistol.

While know the survivor's guilt I have experienced—and occasionally do to this day—is quite natural, I have also known with certainty from the moment I heard the news that there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. As we say in Al-Anon, I didn't cause his problems, I couldn't control them and I couldn't cure them. Of course, that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. That loss has affected me deeply and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of him and pray for those he left behind who loved him.

I also can't help but wonder what the difference was between us. There aren't any good or easy answers there. We had experienced many of the same travails in life, but, to date at least, I've been able to survive mine and move on where he could not. Maybe it's faith, maybe I was able to find something in twelve-step recovery that he didn't; there's no way to tell for sure.

They say that when you hit rock bottom, there's no place to go but up; but that's not entirely true. A lot of people bounce back and keep on keeping on but there are those unfortunate, fragile few who hit bottom and simply go 'splat'. Somehow, when I've bottomed out in life, I've found it within myself to minimize the impact, like the guy I heard about one time who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, changed his mind on the way down, tucked into a 'cannonball' position and survived the impact with only some bruising on his buttocks and the bottoms of his feet. But when Rowe hit his bottom, there was nothing left. Call it bad timing, bad circumstance or bad character, he just couldn't find it within himself to go on. And there, but for the grace of God, go I—and perhaps all of us.

One thing I've learned in this life—and of which I have absolutely no doubt—is that struggles of all shapes and sizes are part and parcel of life. And it is in grappling with them that our true character is shaped, much like molten steel under a blacksmith's hammer. The stresses of life—especially the act of learning and growing from them—strengthen us and make us who we are—perhaps they even make us whole.

As I look back, the struggles I was facing when I last saw my friend Rowe are now largely behind me. As new and different ones inevitably take their place, face them with the strength and wisdom gained from what once was and is now in the past, especially the knowledge that all things do eventually pass. Does this make me perfect? Does it make me superhuman? Absolutely not. I'm still the same flawed and fragile person I've always been and always will be, but I've got a few new tools in my toolbox and I can use them to face such situations in the future in a more effective and healthy manner.

No matter how bad things get in my life, I refuse to let go of the faith and knowledge that I will survive. Before going to sleep on the nights following some of my darkest days, I've said to myself as an affirmation and perhaps as a prayer: “I've made it through today and that's good. Chances are—and with God's help—I'll also make it through tomorrow and that's enough.” That's called taking it one day at a time. When it comes down to it, that's all we've got and it's all we need. The rest of life, as John Lennon observed, 'is what happens while we're making other plans'. The only thing we can do is keep making those other plans—and keep on living, one day at a time.

The Net(flix) Effect

With all the media hoopla around net neutrality and what a bandwidth hog Netflix apparently is, I can't help but reflect on how the streaming video service has changed my life in the past eight months.

I've had a DVD player for about 10 years and during that time I've amassed a pretty sizable disc library. It's the repeat of a pattern that happened with CDs, starting in the early '90s. Okay, so the same thing happened with vinyl and cassettes in the '80s, as well as with VHS tapes. Let's face it—I'm a media junkie and arguably in need of a 12-step program for my addiction.

So back to DVD's and Netflix. It didn't take too long after I acquired a DVD player to begin feeding my addiction by acquiring a DVD burner for my computer. This, coupled with a subscription to Netflix's original DVD by mail service, led to a “mainline” addiction in which I burned copies of almost every Netflix DVD that hit my mailbox.

I eventually canceled my Netflix subscription when my personal fortunes began took a tumble and I set about cutting non-essentials, including cable TV. For several years, I learned to live with an antenna and let the public library feed my DVD addiction for free. Now, that's what I call putting my tax dollars to work!

Eventually, I began to occasionally indulge in the occasional $5 DVD from the big bins at Wal-Mart and even cheaper $3 discs from Big Lot's, supplemented by the occasional visit to Redbox. My rationalization was that I was spending far less on this habit than I would have on a monthly cable bill.

Over the past couple of years, my personal economy has seen a vast improvement and last summer, I decided to reward myself with a flat screen TV and a Blu-Ray player. While I did pick up a few Blu-Ray discs, I came to the conclusion they didn't live up to the hype. But I became increasingly curious about the little “Netflix” button on the remote.

I resisted pushing it for about five months, but over the holidays, my resolve weakened and my viewing habits instantly changed. I've almost entirely quit watching broadcast TV (no great loss there) and the disc tray on my Blu-Ray player has remained mostly empty. I've even put streaming media boxes on my other two TV sets.

The biggest and most profound effect Netflix has had on me is that it instantly and single-handedly broke me of my DVD addiction. I haven't bought a single disc—nor have I wanted to—since I got Netflix eight months ago. The funny thing is I'm not even tempted by them the way I used to be.

Has Netflix truly broken me of that addiction or is it more like Methadone—a more benign version of the same old addiction? It's hard to tell. I still binge watch movies and TV shows on Netflix much the way I did on DVD—and VHS, for that matter. But I'm not filling my shelves with the physical artifacts of my addiction. Also, I'm spending less to do it. Before Netflix, I was spending much more than $8 a month on DVDs.

So in the end, maybe I'm still a media addict, but so far I've managed to avoid expanding into other similar vices like Hulu Plus.