Too easy

Another day, another special edition sports car costing a thick chunk of a million dollars. A collective yawn by the motoring peanut gallery. Because when 60 grand can buy you a used electric vehicle - like a Tesla Model S - that can go toe-to-toe with any car for speed on public roads, manufacturers of the expensive stuff really need to look elsewhere for the differentiation.

When speed is democratized and relatively cheaply available, it no longer matters that the new Lamborghini model can go 0-60 miles-an-hour in under 2.5 seconds. Who cares? Going fast is mere table stakes at this point. What else are you offering that pleasures the other senses? How does a car make the driver feel?

Give Porsche credit: the reason 911 GT3s are the wealthy car enthusiasts’ version of Pokemon cards is because they are offering more than just pure speed. A naturally-aspirated flat-six engine that sings a heavenly tune. The best feeling manual transmission on planet earth. Delightfully calibrated and feelsome steering. These are sensations that tingles and fizzes without the need to go outrageous velocities.

Other makers of mass-produced fast cars need to recognize that chasing after ever diminishing speed returns has reached a dead end. Fast EVs have put a death note to that arms race. Now it’s probably true that there’s enough wealth out there that Mercedes-AMG’s half million 30-unit limited edition thing has no problem selling out. But even Affalterbach recognizes that ultimate quickness is no longer the meal ticket. The CLE 646 is real-wheel drive only, and carries not a single cell of hybrid battery onboard.

Perhaps there’s hope! I would certainly like to see more manufactures bring out cars that tug at the enthusiast heart strings, at the sacrifice of fast lap times. Something like the GMA T.50, just, you know, magnitudes cheaper. The Porsche 911 cannot be and remain the only answer, because it’s truly getting boring. When it’s the automatic solution for every car guy tech bro that struck it rich, it’s too easy to the point of uninteresting.

Speed is easy. The 911 is easy. Francis Bourgeois’s - host of The Grand Tour - $70,000 Honda Fit? Now that’s an infinitely interesting way to spend your car enthusiast money. Kudos.

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Under construction.

Not too much to ask

Today is one of those days where I don’t have one concrete topic to write about, so here comes a string of thoughts until I’ve achieved the appropriate length for one these blog posts.

My 2017 era iMac is middle of the line in specs with extra memory installed, yet somehow it’s struggling to run Adobe Lightroom smoothly. There’s a noticeable pause between toggling a setting and having it reflected on the image I’m working on. My 2019 era 15-inch Macbook Pro does not have this lag, which is baffling because there can’t possibly be this much advancement in processing power in the span of two years. The blame is squarely on Adobe for putting out a product that can’t run smoothly on a two-year old high-end computer.

Then again, Lightroom was never known for its smoothness and efficiency. Sadly, I can’t move away from Adobe to something like Capture One because my entire catalog since the very beginning of my photographic journey is in Lightroom. Having to migrate and learn a new system is more bothersome than whatever deficiency Lightroom has running on “old” machinery. So I simply deal with it; I could move all my editing work to the newerMacbook Pro, but the 27-inch screen real-estate of the iMac is difficult to give up.

Indeed this is a first world problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless. I get the sentiment of detaching from our issues and taking a different perspective when people remind us that our problems are of the first world variety; it’s a good exercise to remain humble and see that maybe the significance of an issue isn’t what we had initially assigned. However, it’s wrong when people use the “first world problem” refrain as a dismissal of what others are dealing with, as if taking another perspective would magically make the problem go away. That’s not how it works.

Perhaps my particular example of griping about the speed of Adobe apps is hilariously trivial even for first world standards, but let’s see you try editing through hundreds of photos while dealing with the lag. Those seconds of waiting for the interface to respond can add up really quickly. Professional photographs aren’t upgrading their computers every year, so I think the onus is on Adobe to make sure Lightroom doesn’t run slowly on PCs and Macs alike that aren’t of latest iteration in hardware.

I’m not holding my breath.

No filter needed.

People talk too slow

As a proper millennial I go through my fair share of podcasts and Youtube shows (I'm currently going through the back catalog of The Joe Rogan Experience). Once thing I discovered recently is the speed-up function, and I found 1.5x to be the perfect pace for me to still understand the conversation yet allow me to go through more of it. I guess at normal speeds people talk too slowly for my taste. 

For work a few years back I had to do some tutorials on Lynda.com (work pays for a subscription and it's fantastic) and the ability to listen at 2X speed was a godsend in getting through the material as quickly as possible. As long as I wasn't multitasking or distracted the extra speed did not adversely affect my retention of the material. 

Not sure why it took me so long to do the same with wordy Youtube videos and audio podcasts. The speed manipulation feature has been available for the longest time, ever since Internet media switched away from Flash. I guess back then I wasn't in the mindset of constantly craving for more content to consume. 

These days I want to maximize learning as time permits, and speeding up a podcasts and videos usually allows me to cram in two in the normal timeframe of one. And if I ever miss anything or want more clarity I can always rewind or slow it back down. The freedom to control speed is one of the best things about consuming media digitally. 

Having said that you will never get me out of physical books. The tactile interaction between my fingers and the pages that makes it special and no amount of efficiency can displace that. 

Grado SR80e: the best bang for the buck headphones for private listening.