personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

📚 Lost to Eternity by Greg Cox

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52/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Almost four stars…but not quite. There are three connected storylines (it’s not a spoiler if it’s in the back cover blurb, right?): A modern-day (2024) true crime podcaster investigating the mysterious disappearance of one Gillian Taylor in 1986, Kirk and company in the third year of their original voyage rescuing an abducted scientist, and Kirk and company escorting envoys to a conference shortly before the events of The Undiscovered Country. Of the three storylines, I found the latter two to be fairly standard Trek adventure, and would occasionally get confused as to which point in time I was in for a moment when I switched chapters. However, the first storyline, as the podcaster tracks down various minor characters from The Voyage Home to try to figure out what happened to Gillian is great. I really enjoyed the glimpse into what happened on Earth after the events of the movie, and it was a lot of fun to build on many of the gags from the film. That storyline is by far the strongest, and the middle story is the weakest, with yet another “landing party beams down to a pre-industrial society and — surprise! — makes a complete hash of the Prime Directive” situation.
Still, even the weaker parts are entertaining, and Cox ties in lots of little nods to a lot of Trek true canon and beta (book) canon.

(This reaches my goal of 52 books read this year, nice and early! We’ll see how many I end up with in a few more months.)

Me holding Lost to Eternity

Legacy lenses and a bit of privilege

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(Collecting and editing together a Mastodon thread. Nothing new to see if you follow me there.)

This past weekend I went down to Portland to visit my mom, and all the photos I took were shot using lenses from her dad’s (film) Konica Minolta, attached to my Nikon D750 using a lens adapter. The lenses date from sometime after 1976, according to what I’ve been able to determine from a little web research), and require shooting all manual (which is a good skill to brush up on from time to time anyway), and it was a lot of fun to do.

A Nikon D750 DSLR sits on a coffee table. Attached to it is an 1970s Konica lens, while a Vivitar lens from the same era sits nearby.

The weekend’s photos are now in a Flickr album. I really like the quality of these; they’re definitely not as “clean” as I get with more modern lenses, but the flaws of the older glass produce some neat effects, particularly in lower-light situations where I’m shooting wide open. Not an everyday lens choice, to be sure, but definitely worth bringing out from time to time.

Portland Weekend July 2024

And finally, a funny-but-serious (to me, in retrospect) story about this photo:

A pane of shattered glass, with cracks radiating out from a central impact point; a smaller impact point is just to one side. Behind the glass and artfully out of focus are sparkling pieces of jewelry.

After spending the morning at the Pittock Mansion, mom and I needed lunch, and wanted to find someplace air conditioned, since it was a 90°+ day in Portland. So we went to a close-ish mall, the Lloyd Center, not knowing that it is virtually abandoned — I’d be surprised if it was at 30% capacity. Empty space after empty space, with just a few stragglers trying to hold on, mostly grouped around the ice rink at the mall’s center.

After eating some mediocre Orange Julius chili dogs and watching a bit of a Willy Wonka on Ice production on the ice rink (because, sure, why not toss some random Roald Dahl in), we were wandering on when we passed a jewelry store. One of the display case windows of the store had been shattered by something, leaving a very prominent starburst pattern in the glass. This caught my eye, and I figured I’d see what kind of shot I could get, with the cracked window and the sparkle of the jewelry behind it.

Being in “absent minded art brain” mode, I didn’t even think about what this might look like until, through the viewfinder, I noticed the store employees looking at me and gesturing in my direction. Suddenly very conscious of the situation, I put the camera down as a pleasant looking lady came out to talk with me. As it turns out, as soon as I apologized for not thinking about the optics of the situation and explained what I was doing, it turned out that she was also a bit of an amateur photographer, and we had a nice little chat about the window, how the shatter effect looked, and what sort of shots I might get. And then, after another little laugh about the whole thing, we all moved on.

But as we walked away, I couldn’t help but think about the rather stark privilege in the experience. Wandering through a down-at-heels mall, passing a jewelry store that someone had likely tried to rob, blithely taking photos of the damage, and walking away with a pleasant conversation and funny story. I have to think that would have turned out differently if I hadn’t been a 51 year old white man wandering around with his disabled mother in a powered chair. But in the moment? I just thought it would be a neat photo.

📚 Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin

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51/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Myth series has been on my radar for years, so when I saw the first five books at the local library sale a couple months ago, I snapped them up. This first one is…ehh. It’s okay. It’s not bad, but neither did it wow me. Maybe it’s because it’s the first in the series, maybe because it was written in ’78 and I’m reading it in ’24, maybe because I’m more of an SF reader, maybe it’s because I’ve fairly recently read the first few Discworld books and enjoyed them more than I did this, and maybe it’s some combination of all of those factors, but I was somewhat underwhelmed. As long as I have the next four, I’ll keep reading and see if they improve, though. (Also, why is Aahz about two feet taller than he should be on the cover art?)

Me holding Another Fine Myth

📚 Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold

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48/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Recovering from the rather calamitous events of the last book, Miles has to solve an unusual murder mystery while trying to figure out how to deal with his two alternate lives. This one is less action and more introspection, mystery solving, and Barrayaran politics, always with Bujold’s signature wit and incredibly well-rounded, imperfect, and very real characters.

Me holding Memory

Thoughts on July Fourth

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This is not a day I currently celebrate; my current Facebook cover photo pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject.

White text on a black background quoting the final line of Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Trump v. United States: ‘With fear for our democracy, I dissent.’ The final two words are in red.

Don’t fall for the propaganda and disinformation campaigns (Biden’s age is just this cycle’s “but her emails”, the headlines about his health are the same as were run about Hilary’s health back then, he has no intention of stepping down, it would just cause chaos and problems if he did, and a vote for Biden is also a vote for Harris if that’s who you’d prefer).

In your local elections, vote third party all you like (and push for ranked choice voting so there’s a better chance of your candidates winning), but on the national stage, please, I’m begging — put pragmatism and the health of our country over pure idealism. While a multiparty system would be better, we only have that in theory, and the reality is that there are only two candidates who can actually win. A third-party vote may arguably be a vote against Trump, but it’s not a vote for Biden and — however little you may think of Biden — getting him into office is the best (and quite likely only) chance there is of you being able to support your third party candidates at any level in the future.

Remember that voting for either candidate isn’t just about the individual person, but also all the people they bring with them as part of their administration. Biden is imperfect, but has done a lot of good under very trying circumstances, and is surrounded by people who support him and help him work towards a better country. Trump and his cronies are focused on nothing less than the dismantling of our democracy and the installation of a fascist dictatorship. (And they’re not even trying to hide it anymore.)

It’s also about correcting the direction of the SCOTUS. Trump was able to grab control of the Supreme Court by appointing three justices during his first term and there’s a reasonable chance that more vacancies will open over the next presidential term. We’re seeing now how much those appointments can affect things long after the president who made the appointment has left office. If Biden (or Harris) is in office when the next openings come up, we have a chance at reclaiming some amount of sanity for that branch of the government.

And when it’s time — vote. Too many people are convinced that voting doesn’t matter, when we’ve seen time and time again how slight swings one way or another can make huge differences. If those of us left of the Republican party (whether just a little left or way the hell out there) were even remotely as good at mobilizing, showing up, and voting as the Republicans are, instead of throwing fits that we don’t have the ideologically perfect candidate and staying home and pouting or giving a “protest vote”, we’d be in far better shape. We might even have an ideological center that’s closer to the center, instead of a left-wing party that’s in line with other nations’ right-wing parties, and a right-wing party that’s determined to out-Hitler Hitler.

Don’t like Biden? That’s fine. You don’t have to like him. But please recognize that with a Biden administration, you’ll have the freedom to make your complaints known, and hopefully affect the system and make change. That won’t be an option if Trump wins again. If nothing else, vote for the party you’ll have a better chance fighting against.

And maybe eventually this will feel like a holiday worth celebrating once more.

📚 My Monster Girlfriend edited by Andrea Purcell and Amanda Lafrenais

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46/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The latest in Iron Circus’s series of adult comic anthologies, and a sequel of-sorts to an earlier entry, My Monster Boyfriend. Befitting the theme, some are more horror based, while others are sweet and silly, but all are most definitely NSFW. Quite a few good offerings here, but I think Anderjak’s “Trash Mob Romance” was my favorite (sweet, funny, and what I read as nice ace representation while still fitting the theme of the anthology).

Me holding My Monster Girlfriend

📚 The Captain’s Oath by Christopher L. Bennett

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45/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set over the course of a few years, just before and after Kirk takes command of the Enterprise. An interesting take on Kirk, not quite the captain he will become, still somewhat finding his footing. Plus some good pointed commentary on refugees and the assumptions that get made when they arrive in a new place.

Me holding The Captain's Oath