My birthday was a couple of days ago, and a bunch of people sent me congratulations on Facebook, which I missed, because I don’t visit the site anymore. Meanwhile,  it was just revealed that Facebook was scraped by some company run by a bunch of right-wing fucks who used the data to weaponize political ads into echo chambers. I stepped back from Facebook couple of years ago, except to respond to a few messages and one event invitation, but increasingly I’m thinking about deleting my profile altogether. Not like it’s not been scraped and used against me anyway (and I’m on Instagram every day) but why have it out there if I’m not using it? There’s also advice on how to privatize it as much as possible (or, as much as they’ll let you without secretly rewriting the privacy settings again) to prevent third-party apps from scraping more information. It’s still up for now, but I just shut down a ton of privacy settings I wasn’t aware were on.

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Back in November my sister stopped in for a visit, and while she was here dropped off two boxes of camera gear she’d accumulated over the years. Inside one was a bunch of old Kodak bellows cameras, a couple of bakelite 620 favorites, and some other oddities. In the second box was a pile of mainly 35mm gear in various makes. There was a bag of Fuji gear with several lenses, and a pair of Minoltas, one of which is a cleaner twin to my X-700. Among the treasures was a first-generation digital camera, a Sony Mavica FD-7, which is now 21 years old and used a 3.5″ floppy disk to record data. It just so happened a video popped up in one of my feeds where the author reviews three Mavicas of the same vintage, and talks about their qualities and quirks. Apparently it’s hard to find an aftermarket battery that will work correctly with these, so my momentary desire to find and order a new one will probably remain just a desire.

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I finally went in to get my eyes checked last weekend, and they haven’t gotten any worse. Right before chemotherapy last fall, I realized my prescription was out of date so I couldn’t replace the glasses that had been scratched up in the Chaco. Updated prescription in hand, I visited Warby Parker last night only to find they’d discontinued the one pair of frames I’ve been wearing for three years for a wider selection of GIGANTIC DORK FRAMES they tend to favor. Defeated, I selected five frames to try on at home, in the vague hope that I will like one of them, but it may be that the era of fashionable $100 glasses is over.
Date posted: March 21, 2018 | Filed under general, photography | Leave a Comment »

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