Technology

EconomicsHobbiesLife ExperienceTechnologyTravel

End of the Line

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

In my 60-odd years of taking photographs I have made a few changes in my equipment, for what I considered to be good reasons:

  1. From 127 film slides to 35 mm slides with a rangefinder camera – to have more control over image quality, and get more images per roll of film.
  2. From 35mm rangefinder to manual focus SLR slides – to improve focusing and see the proposed image better.
  3. From 35 mm slide film to 35 mm print film – to make albums of vacation trips.
  4. From manual focus film SLR to Autofocus film SLR – because my eyesight was failing and I couldn’t focus properly.
  5. From AF film SLR to various and sundry digital rangefinder cameras – because I didn’t want the hassle of film any longer, and I was storing everything on the computer anyway.
  6. To both digital rangefinder and SLR cameras – because finally the problem of dust on a DSLR sensor got fixed – mostly.

That is where I am today. I have a tiny superzoom unit I can take on holiday, and a Nikon DSLR system for serious image making.

Here is an example with the small superzoom.

And this one was taken with the digital SLR and a wide angle zoom.

Now I’ve had my latest digicams since 2016 or so, and a lot has happened in photography since then. Smartphones are now used for 95% of all photographs taken these days, and sales of “real cameras” have declined by about the same percentage. The latest thing in the camera biz is “mirrorless.” Mirrorless cameras have largely replaced the DSLR, and the superzoom type camera market is hanging on by a thread.

Several times in the past I have replaced my equipment because the old stuff was obsolete or just didn’t work for me anymore (See above.) Should I be doing that in this day and age? I don’t think so because:

  • We aren’t traveling as much these days, and when we do it is shorter trips in the car. So I can take along my very best camera equipment – Nikon D5500 system. This solves the only problem I have with travel cameras – sometimes I have trouble in very low light if I have my tiny Lumix superzoom.
  • Most upgrades in digital camera technology in the past 5 years has been in video capability. Since I am really a still photo photographer that doesn’t apply to me. The older cameras still take wonderful still photographs.
  • I have a full set of Nikon DX lenses and a bunch of older Nikon film lenses from the early 1990s that still work – although I have to manually focus them. Replacing all those lenses with a mirrorless camera system would be very expensive.

The above was taken with one of the old school Nikon manual focus lenses. Since my cataract surgery I can accurately focus again – and the camera gives me an indication when I’ve got it right.

  • I can still take film photos with the old lenses and my 2002 F80 SLR but honestly I probably won’t. However if any of the grandkids gets into vintage photography classes in high school. I can donate a pretty good film system to them.
  • With my Pixel 7 smartphone I now have another capable camera I can experiment with. Initial impressions are pretty good, if you can live with limited telephoto capability.

Here is a November morning as captured by the Pixel 7.

  • Mostly I changed or upgraded my equipment because of frustration when I could not get the type of image I wanted. This has not been the case for several years now. Nor do I think that I have exhausted all the possibilities with either of my current “real” cameras. And I am just getting started with computational photography via my smartphone.

Although I may have reached the end of the line when it comes to buying new cameras, I certainly have NOT reached that point as a photographer. And one’s photographic skills are far more important than the type of equipment you have.

My Uncle Howard made wonderful images with a cruddy old 35mm Kodak back in the 1960s. I should always remember that.

FamilyHobbiesLife ExperienceTechnology

Nine Years

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

It’s now nine years that I have been publishing this blog on its own server with a customized domain and Web address. Of course, I have been writing a blog since 2002, and before that had a personal website since 1997.

The Web has changed a lot since then of course. Most photos today are taken with smartphones. There is a lot more video-centric content published. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok are far more important than a simple family-based blog. But I continue; I persevere.

A lot has happened in 9 years. My hearing and sight deteriorated but I have got that fixed to some extent. We went on a few more cruises. The grandkids have grown up incredibly. We still take shopping holidays down in Syracuse NY.

This was Sarah’s gang back in 2014.

And here they are now.

I plan to keep on with this old school way of doing things. I can take better photos now with my smartphone, but I still prefer an actual camera. I’ll never be a fan of videos.

Anyway, if you have read this blog over the years I hope you have enjoyed it. You will at the very least kept in touch with our family.

EconomicsLife ExperienceTechnology

Classic Texts

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

It was September 1966. I was beginning my Chemistry major at Queen’s and I needed a textbook for my Organic Chemistry 280 course.

I was given a choice of three possible reference texts:

A classic volume which first came out in World War 2 – Fieser and Fieser.

A well respected and popular text of general utility – Morrison and Boyd.

A recently published work which featured the burgeoning topics of instrumental analysis and physical organic chemistry – Roberts and Caserio.

The safe choice would have been Morrison and Boyd. But I was a physical chemistry nerd so I took the road less traveled and selected R&C. To this day I have never regretted that decision.

Roberts and Caserio was a go-to book in my library for close to 40 years – as a food scientist, flavor laboratory manager, quality control analyst. When I retired I left it behind to serve future food technologists at Unilever. I suspect it has now vanished into the mists of time.

Imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that the Roberts and Caserio 2nd edition – 1977 – is now online at Libretexts. I suppose the copyright has been assigned there. Jack Roberts passed away in 2016 and Marjorie Caserio also passed away in 2021, so no new edition would be forthcoming.

For those who wish to have real bound textbooks, it’s possible to get copies of both Roberts and Caserio AND Morrison and Boyd from used booksellers like Alibris for as little as $5 plus shipping. So if you’re nostalgic for these classic texts feel free to check it out.

There is a significant difference between the older textbooks and more recent ones. Back in the 60s, organic chemistry had a long history of pot-boiling techniques that went back to the late 1800s. Textbooks concentrated on classical molecular structure, nomenclature, functional groups, wet chemistry and learning a lot of famous “name” reactions. Today we have much more emphasis on instrumentation for structure determination, kinetics and mechanism of reactions, biochemistry and biomedical applications. The old textbooks have their charms though – if only to look good on a bookshelf.

EconomicsFamilyLife ExperienceTechnology

Our Mobile Phone History

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

It is hard to believe but we have been mobile phone customers since 1991 – the World Wide Web wasn’t even in service back then. I’d like to take a brief look at the history of our mobile phone usage by describing the various types of phones we have used over the years.

Motorola Bag Phone This was the very first cellular phone we ever used. It was a heavy gadget that resided in a nylon satchel and plugged into a car power outlet or cigar lighter as they called it back then. It could only be used in the car, and we had it for emergency voice calls only. The protocol was AMPS analog or what today is called 1G cellular. We used this dinosaur for nearly nine years until I thought maybe we should join the 21st century.

Nokia Candy Bar Phone This classic phone design was a major step up in utility and convenience. It could be taken out of the car, charged up at home and then carried in a purse or small bag. It was a bit too thick and heavy for your pocket. Again it was for emergency voice calls only. The protocol was TDMA – Rogers’ digital 2G signal – but it could be used for analog calls as well if that was the only available service. This phone served us very well. In fact, it was our home phone for a few months after we moved to Almonte. At that time Bell technicians were on strike and we couldn’t get a land line installed at home. We had to retire this one in 2007 after Rogers decided to unplug both their analog and 2G digital networks.

Nokia Flip Phone A lovely little piece of tech. It was a bit better than I would have paid for, but Rogers gave it to us for free since our old phone was now a doorstop. This one was certainly pocket or purse sized, had a nice display and you could send actual messages with it – although that was a painful exercise since you had to type on what was essentially a numeric keypad. The protocol was GSM or what is now known as 3G technology. We had it in service for nearly 10 years, but it wasn’t really all that good for messaging, and certainly not a Smartphone. We thought of it basically as a voice unit.

Smartphones Part 1 By 2017, just about all our friends and family members had Smartphones and Maria wanted to send messages as well as call them. The tiny Nokia had outlived its usefulness and we got a Samsung Android Smartphone. It took us to a whole new level. Mostly we used it to send messages and make phone calls but we could surf the Web – particularly at home where we connected to wifi. This thin slab of silicon also served as a watch, camera, calendar, and much more. We liked it so much I got a similar phone for myself in 2019. Protocol on these was LTE or 4G.

Smartphones Part 2 You may have noticed that we used our earlier mobile phones quite a long time. Unfortunately, Smartphones do not have the same longevity. Battery life goes down over time, and eventually the manufacturer does not support the phone for software updates – a security issue. There was also another upgrade in network technology to 5G. So in 2021 Maria switched to a new 5G Samsung phone, and I recently upgraded my phone to a Pixel 7. That is where we are now. Voice calls I believe are still handled by LTE but data transfer outside the home is now arriving via 5G in most situations. I might add that 5G plans have given us quite a massive increase in data capacity – something we haven’t needed so far, but nice to have I suppose.

So in summary we’ve had 5 levels of technology in the 32 years we have used mobile phones. We have gone from a simple telephone to a pocket computer and camera and much more. The phone apps allow online banking and bill payments, storage of tickets for hockey games, GPS for traveling, and configuration of home wifi as well. It costs a fair bit but hey.. we are worth it.

EconomicsHobbiesLife ExperiencePetsTechnology

Having a Rethink

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

I’ve never been an advocate of using a smartphone instead of a dedicated camera for my photo needs, but maybe – maybe – it is time for a rethink.

The reason for this is that at long last I have a smartphone – a Pixel 7 – that has a truly capable camera. I replaced my old Samsung Galaxy A50 because it was getting creaky and there were excellent deals available on a premium camera smartphone I normally wouldn’t have considered.

The above pic was taken with the Pixel 7, no flash in quite low light. I have to admit that such a photo could not be taken by my normal camera without a flash. The Pixel has computational photography capability that allows me to photograph Mr. Oates without getting that “deer in the headlights” look a flash would obtain.

The feature that does this is called “Night Sight.” It takes several simultaneous exposures, stores them and then stitches them together seamlessly.

The Pixel 7 camera also has image stabilization, good autofocus, wide angle and decent digital zoom – things that I never had in my previous Samsung smartphone cameras.

Here’s another example – no flash, discreet, did not disturb his rest.

Another factor in my rethink is that I recently learned a game-changing technique for using a smartphone as a camera. Instead of struggling to hold a thin slippery soapbar vertically while trying to stab a little white circle on the screen, you can hold the phone horizontally, curling your fingers around it like a real camera. Then you press the volume control as a shutter release. Presto! – a stable platform for a change.

Now, my actual cameras still have advantages over the Pixel 7. The petite Lumix ZS-50 can go out to 30X telephoto with an actual optical zoom, and it has a viewfinder for use in bright sunlight. My Nikon DSLR has multiple lenses, a much bigger sensor, and a satisfying look and feel. I have decades of experience with SLR photography as well.

Up until now, I did not think it was worth it to invest time into learning more about smartphone photography. And I am not ready to pack away my digital photo equipment the way I did with my film stuff 20 years ago. However..hmmmm.

EconomicsFamilyLife ExperienceTechnology

Wedding Photography

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

My niece Rachel got married on the weekend. My granddaughters were flower girls.

I took along my tiny Lumix camera (see above,) but for most part I tried to stay out of the way of the wedding photographers and videographer doing their very capable jobs.

I did get to see a lot about how wedding photography (?) has evolved in the past decade or so. Some rather cranky observations follow:

  • The pros stick to real cameras. They are packing mirrorless now. The old SLR is history. The still photogs used Canon and the video guy had a Sony. They all used secondary light sources (i.e. a big powerful flash.)
  • The pro photos tended to be taken with a longer range zoom lens at greater distances than I remember from past weddings. Why this is I don’t know.
  • I was glad I packed my own little Lumix instead of my Nikon SLR kit as I would have looked like an impossible photo nerd otherwise. As it was, I probably had the only amateur camera at the festivities.
  • Which brings me to the other so-called photography – whoa! There was an incredible amount of quantity versus quality going down.
  • Everybody else at the wedding was using Smartphones. Millions of bad photos and videos were recorded. People took stuff during the wedding ceremony which I think is gauche. At least they were polite enough to kill the flashes. Otherwise it would have looked like an Adele concert and driven the real photographers nuts.
  • During the dinner and dancing folks were doing selfies, still photos and videos in bad light without a flash. I am sure the phones’ computational photography might help – but gimme a break. I saw videos taken without even looking – just hold your phone at waist height, point it toward the dance floor, and record. Using a weak flash at a distance of 10 meters in semi darkness used to be a recipe for disaster. Today they just keep on shooting.
  • I also discovered for the zillionth time why I would never want to be a professional wedding photographer. The pressure to be nice, meet all the expectations, take flattering portraits of old folks with the radiant and beautiful bride must be incredible. Spare me.

When the pros called it an evening the snapshot and video frenzy carried on. I hope the happy couple gets the benefit of these additional 100,000 pics. They might get a couple of good ones.

The wedding venue was lovely so I contented myself with a few landscape shots without people. Not many other folks did that. But that is my shtick.

I have often lamented the fact that photography appears to be a dying art today – especially amateur photography. Thank goodness for the pros – at least Rachel and Dan will have something nice to look at when they celebrate their 50th anniversary.

EconomicsFamilyLife ExperienceTechnology

School Daze

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

Labour Day marks another change of scenery for the grandkids – Teddy is now officially in secondary school, Veronica is finishing up her junior high experience, and Susannah is right behind them in Grade 5.

As for the old folks, Nonna is now starting her 19th year of not returning to the classroom, a fact that is not lost on Grandpa. There were 50 Labour Days that I either returned to school myself or had a family member going back. That adds up to a lot of disruption and chaos – trust me.

In case you were wondering, the photo above was taken in Caledon at the then brand new St. Cornelius elementary school. This was the height of 1980s school architecture.

I figure Sarah was in Grade 4 when this photo was taken. It’s now been 27 years since we took her to the University of Guelph.

The classroom was an Age of Innocence situation compared to today. Maybe it had a single eight-bit green screen Commodore PET computer that nobody knew how to program. No remote learning or Google Educational Suite. No Chromebooks, wifi networks, Smartphones, Snapchat, Instagram or Tik Tok. Schoolyard bullying took place in the schoolyard and was a bit easier to spot and deal with. There were no controversies over cursive writing or times tables.

If you talk about this type of learning with our grandkids, they look at you with a sort of eyeroll disbelief. It’s as if you had to stoke the one room school woodstove and write on a slate back then.

A few years later Maria took courses in “Computers in the Classroom.” A central theme in her courses was an Apple program called Hypercard. Little snippets of information were digitally connected by hyperlinks.

At the time I thought this was one of the dumbest pieces of tech ever. To use it effectively you would need incredibly powerful processors, gobs of memory and storage, and much better graphics than even Apple Macs had at the time.

One of my Unilever colleagues was in Boston learning about how to network all sorts of computers in all sorts of locations. That should have given me a clue as to how wrong I was. Three years later we were on the World Wide Web. Go figure.

EconomicsFamilyHobbiesLife ExperienceTechnology

Old School IT

Posted on by Ray MacDonald
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is PC-2005.jpg

Do I use Facebook? Why, yes I do. Do I stream songs on Amazon Music? Guilty. Do I watch YouTube videos? Indeed.

However- I don’t want to see the world in VR – like a video game. I don’t want to walk around with Google showing up on my glasses. I have trouble enough looking at a smartphone screen. Fuggedaboudit.

BTW – here’s how my computer setup looked like when we moved to Almonte – this was the only PC I had back then.

I still have a desktop system running on this computer desk. It’s a Dell minitower – much more compact and powerful. The CRT monitor is now a 24 inch flatscreen. The speakers are different. The flatbed scanner is part of my printer now. The old slide scanner is gone – not needed. But I still have an old timey desktop system on the go. It’s still connected to my router with a cable.

Of course I am more wifi oriented now. I have a bunch of junker laptops that connect through wifi – I even have mobile Smartphones on the network.

That said, I am beginning to think of myself as an old school IT dinosaur. I still write and post stuff the way I did in 1998. I am a participant in some old style text based forums and I have this blog.

I take my digital photos with a camera – not a Smartphone. I haven’t joined Instagram or Tik Tok. I don’t think I’ll ever be interested in vlogging or making a podcast.

So I’ll admit it – I am becoming as old school and obsolete as my parents were when they got a computer to send the odd email back in the early 2000s. Not a pretty ending for someone who’s been a geek for close to 60 years. It happens to the best of us, I suppose.

EconomicsFamilyHobbiesLife ExperienceTechnologyTravel

Writing a Blog in 2023

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

I have had some sort of personal Web presence for at least 25 years, and around the time we visited Paris in 2001 I decided that a traditional website with my own HTML coding was NOT the way to go. A blog of some sort seemed preferable because I simply had to write it and not be all that concerned about website design.

My personal circumstances were much different back then. I was still working, still living in Georgetown, hadn’t traveled as much as we did later on. I did’t have the time in 2001 to devote to writing a blog every week or more often.

I got into it a bit more around 2008 and since 2014 I’ve been a regular poster. But I digress.

The Web was much different when I first started a blog. In those early days, blogging was strictly text – even photos had to be scanned from film or prints (no digital pics back then.) Bandwidth was punishingly low. Audio was rudimentary. Video didn’t exist yet. Mobile phones made phone calls. The Information Highway was more like an oxcart track.

Well, that was then. How about starting a blog today? Let’s unpack that a bit.

The first thing to consider in 2023 is whether you want to write a blog at all. A blog is still pretty much static – text and digital media. Maybe you’d prefer to make video logs and post on YouTube. Maybe you are into having a podcast. Or maybe even you’d like to stream your content. It’s all possible today. And we haven’t even mentioned social media capability. Every possibility is so much richer.

There’s another consideration – unless you are a celebrity, a major influencer, or a genuine expert in a hot category of interest – there’s no way to use a blog to make money. If you really get into personal blogging in a bigger way, it’ll cost you – though honestly not much more than a Netflix subscription – to put your thoughts out there.

If you are still interested in doing this – need I mention you’ll be investing a bit of time with no chance of reward – I’ll run through some of the ways you can get started.

Starting a Blog for Free

This would be my recommendation if you are just starting out. The price is right, you don’t need any particular technical expertise, and you can be on your way in a matter of minutes.

When I began I chose Blogger to be my host provider. Blogger is part of Google so it is a good way to go if you already use the Google suite of applications.

My choice today would probably be the commercial WordPress site. I use the open source WordPress software on my own site, and I find it to be excellent.

A third possibility is Wix. I haven’t used Wix but it has some interesting drag and drop features. Wix looks a bit more business oriented though.

Of course, we all know there is no free lunch – not even in blogging. If you go with the zero cost option, you won’t have your own domain name, you likely will have ads placed on your blog by your provider, and your content doesn’t belong to you any longer. Maybe those things are not important to you right now – but they might be later on.

Use the “Pay” Option on the “Free” Site Host

You could use WordPress’s and Wix’s paid option to get a few neat features like your “own” virtual domain or fancier themes but I’ve got a better idea than that if you want to move up the blogging food chain. The name of the game here I believe is Squarespace.

Squarespace – Just Do It

Squarespace seems to be the ideal way to build a blog if you don’t mind paying a monthly subscription. and you need the provider to take care of everything for you. I have to say that if I were starting out now. I’d just choose Squarespace, choose a suitable format and that would be that.

Squarespace does seem to be commercially focused but there are options to write a simple blog. You can start out slowly and change things easily enough if you need to get more sophisticated. It looks like a good way to go – if you’re sure you want to do this.

The Whole Enchilada

This is not what you want to do if you are just getting into the blog-o-sphere, but it’s where I ended up after about 5 years of serious blogging. I needed a place to write my blog AND host the supporting digital photos online. So I invested in my own domain name and web hosting service. The provider gives me support and WordPress blogging software, and I choose the theme for a custom look and feel.

There’s a simple enough sequence of tasks to host your own blog:

  • Choose a web service provider and a plan of services.
  • Get your domain name and have it registered. The provider helps with this.
  • Install WordPress, the blogging software.
  • Choose, install and activate the theme.
  • Start blogging.

Complications start after that. You have to make sure to secure your website, check that it works OK, protect your blog from spam. The provider makes changes from time to time and you have to fix things if that happens.

Fortunately I have become increasingly geeky over the years. I learned about Linux and networks so I was not flummoxed by the technical aspects of a Web server. The Web service provider does give excellent support and can fix things if you have problems.

The major advantages to hosting your own blog are:

  • You have your own domain name and Web address.
  • Nobody will be putting ads on your site without your say-so.
  • Your content and graphics remain under your control and ownership.

So there you have it. I am more or less committed to self-hosting now. Squarespace wasn’t around when I went this way, and I won’t go back to a do-it-for-you provider.

I now have close to 9 years and 600 posts on my current setup. It’s still a simple personal blog but it’s mine.

HobbiesLife ExperienceTechnology

WIMP-ing Along

Posted on by Ray MacDonald

I suppose I have at least 8-9 computers at home – most of them junkers which I have upgraded to still be useful. I run a variety of Linux, Windows 11, and ChromeBook operating systems on this dubious collection.

You might expect that I would have a wide variety of desktop environments for all these operating systems – a different look and feel for each one. But I stick pretty much to what you see above for every one of them. I rock some sort of taskbar or panel at the bottom, a start button if I can, and not much on the desktop in terms of icons.

Like many long term PC users, I still cling to what is commonly referred to as the WIMP model of computer operation. Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer. This approach – which features a keyboard and mouse – was developed close to 50 years ago by Xerox and first appeared in Apple products around 1985. For many people over 50 it probably is the only model you use apart from a Smartphone.

A few of my junk laptops have a touch screen but I never use it. The mouse is by far my preferred way of navigation, and a real keyboard is far better than that ridiculous tiny touchscreen and tap,tap,tap of a Smartphone. Right now I’m writing this post on a desktop computer with a 24 inch non-touchscreen, a massive wireless keyboard and a chunky Logitech Mouse. That’s the way (uh huh, uh huh) I like it.

To its credit, Apple realized early on that using a regular computer was different than operating a Smartphone. They developed two different operating systems, each one optimized to the hardware in question. Google later on followed the same path with Android and ChromeBook systems.

Microsoft did no such thing. It commited a massive error with Windows 8 where it tried to integrate the Touchscreen and Mouse-keyboard experience into one dog’s breakfast of an O/S. In the process it failed to get a toehold in the Smartphone market, turned off millions of loyal WIMP-y customers, and created arguably the worst version of Windows ever.

Microsoft has learned its lesson though. The desktop environment above is the very satisfying Windows 11 – an interface that even the oldest WIMP users would find perfectly OK.

Linux gives you the choice of many desktop environments, but its most popular ones do follow the WIMP model by and large. A distribution like Linux Mint would be very familiar to a Windows user, so Mint is a great choice to replace an obsolete Windows O/S on an old junker.

The OK Boomer generation are probably the most comfortable with being WIMPs. Gen-Xers are OK with it, but they are more into laptops and Touchscreens and Trackpads. Either way of computing will work fine to do serious work like spreadsheets, documents, databases, presentation graphics.

The Millennials seem to be fine with Smartphones, selfies and touch icons. And as far as the Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids go, they just use everything and anything. Go figure.

cww trust seal