https://youtu.be/StPwEm_F8L4 I bought Lego's 9,000 piece 1:200 scale Titanic recently and have started to put it together. So far I've spent 2 hours on it and made it through four sets of bags. So far it's been great – the instructions are easy to follow, the bags are well organized, and it is taking a …
Holiday Games
It's fall and that means it's time to start stocking up on video games for the winter! There's no better time as most platforms have a fall sale followed by a winter sale plus some random sales in-between. I tend to buy most of my games from Steam, but occasionally seek out other digital platforms …
Lightroom Update for M1 Addresses My Issues
I wrote recently about my experiences running Lightroom on my M1 MacBook Air. Overall it was more performant than my 2016 MacBook Pro, but I often encountered slowdowns with brush edits and had to close most other applications to make my 8 GB RAM usable. Adobe released an M1-native update to Lightroom in June and …
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My iPhone 13
Apple announced the iPhone 13 lineup last week and pre-orders were available this past Friday. From my first iPhone 3GS in 2009 I've been on the off-cycle, buying Apple's "s" model and keeping it for two years each time. I didn't buy the hot new designs (iPhone 4, 5, 6, 7) but the next iteration …
iPhone 13
My least favorite blue has reached the regular iPhone Apple announced the iPhone 13 series yesterday and as I expected, it was more evolution than revolution. The new models use the same flat-edge, slim-bezel design introduced last year with a few minor tweaks. The notch is 20% narrower (but a tiny bit taller) and the …
This was NOT the End of the Apple Watch Series 3
I made a prediction last week that Apple would stop selling the Apple Watch Series 3 once the Series 7 was introduced. I was wrong. In fact, I was so wrong, that Apple's decision was the one thing I didn't even include as an option because I thought it was so unlikely. Yikes. Quick recap: …
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Is this the End of The Apple Watch Series 3?
Apple is expected to announce new iPhones and Watches this month. The Series 7 Watch is rumored to have a new, flatter design with larger display that is closer to the glass, and possibly blood pressure monitoring capabilities. As with every new product, its introduction will move Apple's other watch offerings around, which got me …
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My iPad Pro: 2021 Edition
I bought my first iPad Pro almost three years ago to replace my aging iPad Air 2 and have enjoyed its faster performance, larger and more colorful screen, buttery-smooth refresh rate, and Apple Pencil compatibility ever since. At the time I had considered Apple's new 11" iPad Pro with its larger screen, Face ID, screaming-fast …
More Birds
I've been taking a lot of bird photos lately, mostly around my house, honing my technique. These are a few collections of some of the birds in my area. This Blue Jay was pulling this string around our tree in the front yard. The string was used during Halloween to hang decorations and I originally …
DxO PureRAW
In my post about improving my bird photos, I talked about increasing shutter speed and stopping down my lens to improve sharpness. Doing this requires increasing the ISO to gather enough light to expose the image but adds additional noise to the image. Images at ISO 5,000 and 10,000 are common, which destroys detail and …
Relatively Ambitious 