Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

No more stains ever

Not sure why it took me so long, but I’ve seen the light: the Tide to Go instant stain remover pens are absolutely magic. I finally have had enough of stubborn kimchi stains (I eat Korean food quite often) on my white t-shirts. A three pack of the pens on Amazon is mere six dollars, a real bargain. One for the home, one for the backpack, and one for the car.

Funny enough it was not removing the red dots of kimchi juice that I first discoverd the magic. Instead it’s a perennial favorite: splashed coffee. Against a white shirt it’s nearly as notorious to remove as Korean fermented cabbage. However, a few dabs of the Tide pen completely removed the stains. Couple that with immediate laundry, and there was no trace of coffee to be found.

Next time someone says Proctor & Gamble is some evil corporation, they should turn in their Tide to Go pens forever.

The price of coffee has certainly gone up since President Trump enacted import tariffs of varying degree and size. Sadly for Americans, most of our consumed coffee is grown overseas (like Columbia and Brazil). ChatGPT says the United States doesn’t have the warm and humid temperature conducive for coffee planting. That’s explain why at my local Peet’s Coffee, a medium cup of drip is now over four dollars (after tax). Why would Biden do this?

Even those of us who make coffee at home are feeling the spike in bean prices. But it’s not like we are going to stop drinking coffee. I most certainly will not! A 25% percent tax is not enough of a deterrence for an addicted coffee drinker. The box of Keurig cups I buy would have to double in price before I seriously consider stopping. There’s precedent: the price of McDonalds seemingly doubled since the pandemic, so now I don’t eat there.

In the meantime, I will begrudgingly pay the tariff.

The amazing Amazon

I don’t see how anyone can boycott Amazon. When you absolutely need that one thing quickly and you cannot be bothered to go anywhere to get it, Amazon always comes through in the clutch. Prime free next-day shipping is an amazing feet of logistical engineering. Labor exploitation be damned if I can replace a broken water bottle in less than 24 hours, for the cheapest price, with just a few taps on the phone.

Good luck getting that convenience genie back into the bottle. I have to wonder those who claim to boycott Amazon on Reddit: do they really do it? Often times, people’s actions do not back up their words. Those who rail against higher education have gone to college themselves, and will send (or have sent) their children to college. Those who advocate for leniency towards the homeless invariably do not have mobile homes parked in their neighborhoods. Women who claims partner income doesn’t matter have never dated someone who made less.

Talk is easy and superficial when you don’t have skin in the game.

I returned from Korea late April. The trip marked a two week hiatus from weightlifting. I then got sick the week after - as one does. So in earnest I did not pick back up the weights until the start of May.

It then took an entire month for me to get back to where I was - in terms of strength numbers - before I went on vacation. I guess that’s about normal? (I lift three times a week.) That’s the thing about traveling when you are chasing the gains on a barbell: you have to accept the regression. You work so hard to gradually reach a certain weight for a certain amount of reps. Then, like the Itsy Bitsy Spider, you go back down and have to do it all over again.

I’m not saying don’t go on vacation. But if there’s a target weight goal you’re chasing, it’s going to get prolonged.

Do you even know how?

The best piece of furniture one can have in the home is a chaise longue. There’s nothing better after a long day of work than to plop down on the long sofa and chill. Even in this tiny studio apartment of mine, I made sure to accommodate one. In fact, it’s the only piece of chair furniture in the room. A chaise longue is fantastic for Saturday afternoon naps.

At work we have for checkout some relatively old DSLR cameras (like a Canon 5D Mark III). During graduation time the cameras get checked out quite often, which is rather confounding. The modern smartphone camera is so good - why bother with something so clunky and cumbersome?

Under capable hands, old DSLR cameras can still take superior pictures to the top smartphones. But I seriously doubt the casual users checking out the DSLRs from us have any understanding of the exposure triangle. Leaving the camera in full auto while taking pictures at a live graduation is a recipe for blurred bodies and missed smiles. (Pro tip: when capturing people, a fast shutter speed of at least 1/250 of a second is recommended.)

The latest iPhone would have captured dozens of frames’ worth of information before the shutter is even pressed. The output is going to be sharp no matter what, automatically. For the layperson, the smartphone is the superior tool.

We can talk about perhaps smartphone photographic capabilities have gotten too good. The pictures are too crunchy, too sharp, too perfect. Highlights are never blown, and shadows always recovered. I think the inherent limitations of actual cameras provide a vastly more satisfying outcome. The photographs out of my FujiFilm X-T5 can convey emotion, something largely absent from my iPhone captures.

Judging by how absurdly expensive old point-and-shoot cameras have gotten on the used market, and the fact apps are available on smartphones that take away all their computational trickery - I’m not the only one who feels this way.

No rush, no hurries

Sometimes I forget how decent the public transportation is in San Francisco. It obviously pales in comparison to the ones in Asian countries, but constantly comparing will only make you depressed. Instead of lamenting the intervals between buses is too large, and being on-time is merely a suggestion: it can be worse! At least we are not Los Angeles.

A few weeks back I attended an event at Golden Gate Park. Anybody sound of mind knows to avoid driving there on a weekend, especially when the weather is nice. Rather than hailing an increasingly popular Waymo driverless taxi, I decided to take the bus. The local 28 took me right to the edge of Golden Gate Park, and then I walked inward to the final destination. Easy.

The festivities continued into the evening at a spot downtown. No problem! We were a few blocks way from the N metro train, which can conveniently take us downtown right to the door steps of the venue. Later that night, I took the M metro train back home. No car, no parking, no gas, and worries. It was rather convenient and wonderful.

I can of course understand why we avoid public transportation. A car will almost always get there faster. If parking is a pain, we rather hail a ride-share than suffer through a bus. Think of the time savings, right? That’s the thing: when we travel to other countries, we have no problems slogging through the local public transportation network to visit a sightseeing destination. It takes however long it will take.

Why don’t we keep some of that spirit here? Especially in a city like San Francisco (or New York City) where bus and train service is reasonably extensive. Especially when going to places on weekends; you should not be in any hurry!

Let things end

Word on the streets is Taylor Swift has purchased the masters of her first six studio albums. This then creates one conundrum: how does it reconcile with the albums she re-released (Taylor’s Version) back when she didn’t have the rights? I just want to know which is the one true Enchanted!

I guess it’s now safe to say that the original recordings were way better than the Taylor’s Versions. She is not the same person when she first recorded those songs! The emotions, inflections, and feelings are completely different. Cause when you’re fifteen, it’s difficult to rediscovers those feelings when Taylor is well into her 30s. I’m sure she understands this, too. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have spent the surely enormous sum to buy back the masters.

People are so fond of nostalgia because they can’t let a good thing end. They look back at past events with tinted glasses, wishing for a present that would replicate those feelings. I think that’s why remakes and reunions are so popular. Stars Wars couldn’t end with just the original six episodes. We got sad when Top Gear/The Grand Tour came to an end because we wish for the good stuff to simply last forever. The finality of everything is too difficult to bear.

But finality is all there is. We are born, and we will die. Instead of wishing for things to continue on, be happy that it happened at all. Cherish what is already there, instead of pining for what might have been. Kpop sensation NewJeans - currently mired in legal battle with their management company - doesn’t have to come out with another song for the them to be legendary. What the group has given to the world already in three short years is enough sweetness to last a lifetime.

Things end. It’s quite okay. It’s going to be okay.

Poor judgement

Sony recently announced their next generation over-the-ear noise cancelling headphones: the forever stupidly named WH-1000XM6. I’m sure the new cans are better performing and whatnot, but what gets me is the new price. A $50 increase to the already hefty $400 of the previous generation.

$450 for a pair of headphones? Do people realize how much money that is? Think of how many hours you have to work to even net $450 into your deposit account. I’m old enough to remember when premium consumer noise cancelling headphones were in the $300s range. And please spare me with the “Well, if you adjust for inflation…”

Of course, $450 for the Sony cans is still not as insane as the $550 Apple’s been charging for their AirPods Max. Every time I see a student on campus with a pair those, I fail to fathom how one is capable of spending such a large chunk of their income (remember: students) on headphones. $199 for a pair of AirPods Pro (when it’s on sale at third party merchants, which is often) is all the private listening device I need. Travel? The AirPods Pro is vastly smaller than any of the over-the-ear products.

On MKBHD’s review of the Sony WH-1000XM6, he initially bristled at the $50 price increase, but at the end concluded that it’s worth it. I am sorry, but a guy with millions of dollars in net worth is a poor judge of value. Marques is no longer of the proletariat class. He can afford to wipe his ass with $50 bills. Spending $450 on consumer electronics is but a drop in the ocean for him. I don’t think he can appropriately judge worth for the typical consumer netting a few thousands a month in income.

I’m not hating on MKBHD. He deserves all the rewards for his ceaseless hard work. Enjoy your millions, King. I’m simply taking his judgement of value with a carton load of sea salt.

That's pretty spectacular

I think we can recognize that tech companies are implementing artificial intelligence features as an excuse to raise their product prices. Adobe did that just today in raising the subscription price of its creative suite. Users will be forced to pay more for AI features with debatable usefulness. Maybe these companies can cloak the upcoming tariff price increases under the guise of AI!

To Adobe’s credit, there is an AI feature of its Lightroom suite that I recently found to be utterly incredible.

This past weekend I shot photos at a wedding reception. A Chinese restaurant in the evening is about the worst lighting conditions this side of a nightclub. Because I was photographing people, I had to maintain high shutter speed (to avoid motion blur). Nor could I shoot at wide open aperture because the focal plane would be too narrow for a group shot. High ISO was the only remedy, which meant lots of noise in the output.

Enter the AI denoise function introduced in Lightroom back in 2023. With a single click of a button, and a slider to choose how strong, the high ISO photos I took came out clean and sharp, like freaking magic. (On my now dated M1 Max MacBook Pro, to denoise a single RAW photograph took about 30 seconds.) No more messing with manual noise reduction sliders and guessing what each of them actually do. Never again will I fear bumping the ISO setting to the limits (dynamic range tradeoffs aside).

I went back to some other high ISO photos I’ve shot over the years just to mess with it some more. For sure AI tools can be gimmicky, but when they do perform seemingly miracles, I’ve no issue paying more.