stray-thoughts on Cliff538

The Good Stuff - September 2026

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 15:53:06 -0700

A smattering of useful things I’ve come across this month

September 2026

General

The Pirate Surgeon’s Journal Main Page - an in-depth look at being a surgeon on a ship. Glad I was born when I was.
Mechanical Pencil - Another wonderful hand-drawn breakdown of a padlock by Mechanical Pencil. Check it out.
The Soviets Drilled the Deepest Hold Ever - really interesting article.
Winner of the Invertebrate of the Year 2026 crowned - and it is the size of a grain of rice - The leaf sheep and it’s beautiful.
The Winners of the 2026 Pure Street Photography Awards - some really cool shots in here.

Photography

Dock by Lento Film Scanning System - Oof, this looks super cool, but it ain’t cheap! Found this link from my weekly Hiro.report, you should check it out.
Scanning photos using your digital camera: The big upgrade for me this time was using a one-time $9.99 app called Orion, along with a $19 HDMI-to-USB capture card dongle; you can use an iPad as an HDMI monitor. This works for many things like game consoles, etc., but you can plug it into your camera via HDMI so you have a big, beautiful iPad screen to align your negative and check focus. Highly recommended. I don’t think I can go back now.

Books Added to the Queue

Coyote America by Dan Flores.
Pirate Hunters by Robert Kurson.
Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather.
Crossing The Wine-Dark Sea by Emily Wilson.
The Vegetarian by Han Kang. I had this on my wish list and got it on sale for $2.17.
The Wreck of the Mentor by Eric Jay Dolin.
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff.
The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin.
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams.

Books General

29 Nonfiction Books Coming This Fall - NYT Gift Article
35 Novels Coming This Fall - NYT Gift Article.
Bookmarks Magazine - I found this magazine while in a great bookstore in Fairhaven, WA. A great list of all the new books coming out.
Oh Reader Magazine - During the same bookstore visit in the village of Fairhaven, I found myself totally absorbed in this wonderful magazine based on the love of reading. I read just about every story in it. They are nice short stories about reading and readers. It’s a wonderful magazine, and I’m pretty sure I’ll subscribe for a year.
Life Beyond Measure by Ed Yong is coming out April 6, 2027. You can preorder it at the link above. Ed is a fantastic writer. I’ll be preordering.

Stray Thoughts

Are you the person right now, at your current age, that you thought you’d be? How different are you? What are you surprised at?

Coming Out the Other Side

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:34:30 -0700

We come out the other side on many things, don’t we? Troubles. Problems.

People quit when they don’t quite make it to the other side. They give up, saying, “The effort isn’t worth it.” “The payoff isn’t worth the work.”

Sometimes that’s true, sometimes it’s not. I think knowing the difference comes with age and experience. I’m no expert, but I’ve come out the other side of many a problem. Sometimes I haven’t. Do I think back on some of those and wish I’d fought harder to make it to the other side. Yes. Yes, I do.

Some of those decisions haunt me to this day. That’s all about the difference between shame and forgiving oneself, but that’s another blog post.

Chess Club

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 19:13:50 -0700

I stutter. I have my whole life, and will until I die, I guess.

Like Mel Tillis, the only time I don’t stutter is when I’m singing. I’m not sure science even knows why, but we stutters know why.

I did biofeedback therapy all through grade school for stuttering. It was all about relaxing, keeping the lights in the green while you talked. It didn’t work.

I was in the 5th or 6th grade, I can’t remember, and I found myself in Chess club. Chess club, everyone knew, was for smart kids; I wasn’t a smart kid. For an hour a day, while we normal kids learned whatever it was we were learning, the smart kids went down to Chess club and, among other mysterious things, played Chess.

I found myself in Chess club one day. I don’t remember what I thought about it, other than I knew it wasn’t because I was smart. It turns out, it was because I stuttered. I’m not sure what the teachers thought; more exposure to smart kids could help my stuttering, or maybe just a little taste of some higher plane of existence would make me work harder in school. Was stuttering making me dumb or not work hard enough?

One thing a stuttering 5th grader doesn’t want is to be highlighted. When you stutter, you learn to keep your mouth shut. You learn every skill there is to not get picked by the teacher to answer something out loud to the class. You NEVER raise your hand to ask a question. You sit in the back and melt into the wallpaper. You become a chameleon. Shape-shifting, blending, crouching, staying low, so you are never called on to speak, especially in a group.

I cannot explain to you the fear that you feel about public speaking as someone who stutters. Speaking to your friends was hard enough, because even they would mock and laugh from time to time.

I’m digressing from Chess club. I don’t remember what I did in Chess club. I think it was exposure to things beyond what a normal 5th grader would be exposed to. Literature, advanced math, poems, and yes, even some Chess.

I don’t think I lasted long in Chess club. I don’t remember how I was told that I wouldn’t be going to Chess club anymore. Just one day, when the smart kids left, I wasn’t with them. Was it because they saw no improvement in my stuttering, social skills, or study ethic? I will never know.

But I do remember the relief of not having to go. I didn’t want to be singled out. Everyone knew I didn’t belong there. The smart kids knew I wasn’t smart and wasn’t part of their group. The normal kids knew I wasn’t smart and surely were wondering why I was going. It made me stand out. Standing out is not good when you stutter.

Fast forward many years, my stuttering improved, but I still do. You learn ways to limit it. You learn when you are starting to stammer on a word to switch the word (one’s vocabulary increases greatly) or speak quickly, almost like a song, because when you blend words together like in a song, you don’t stutter. There are many tricks. Most people don’t notice them. I can tell someone stutters right away by how they talk. We know each other’s tactics.

I still get made fun of or mocked from time to time. Most people don’t mean it. They will laugh and pretend to stutter back. I’ve learned to just laugh along and say something like, “Sheesh, I can’t talk today, I must need more coffee.” Every once in a while you get locked in a very public stammer and can’t get a word out. It hurts bad. It’s extremely embarrassing. Again, you just don’t talk in public unless you absolutely have to. The risk is too high.

One good thing came out of it anyway. I love Chess. I’m a member of Chess.com and play or solve puzzles every day. It doesn’t cure stuttering, but It’s a great game.

Stray Thoughts - May 2026

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:34:19 -0700

A smattering of stray thoughts I’ve had this month

May 2026

💬 Where to spend your time. Time is precious. There is only so much. ~~Sometimes~~ The greatest gift you can give someone or something is your time.

💬 17 years ago, we shopped for a big table that could seat at least 10 people. If you could find one, the prices were eye-popping. So, I built one. Redwood planks, pocket screwed and glued together, epoxy to fill the gaps, then about 30 coats of marine grade top of the line varnish. 17 years later, here we still are, using this table. It’s aged now, a little tired, the base is wobbly, we have cracks in the wood, but it’s still beautiful in my eyes. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll fix the cracks and refinish it. Or, let it age gracefully and enjoy the process of life…

💬 Pagebound and StoryGraph: I’ve been testing both for a while. Pagebound is not for me. StoryGraph has potential, but I’m just not sure certain things need to be tracked. The reviews are helpful, and I do like seeing how many days it took me to read a book and a few stats, but I’m just not sure I need it. I like tracking things; data is good. I’ve increased my sleep by over an hour by tracking and monitoring. I’m not sure I need deep tracking of my reading. Posting what I read with a review, I think, is enough. Update: Kobo just announced a deal with StoryGraph, so now your reading in Kobo will automatically update StoryGraph. I’ll stick around and see how it works.

💬 I still don’t know if I like my sidebar on my Cliff538 blog. I have thoughts/dreams about hiring a professional web designer to make a custom blog for me. If you know of a good one, drop me an email (just in case 😄).

💬 My friend Richard passed away. I wrote a small post about him, with pictures I took the day he died. Life is precious; the friends you meet along the way are precious.

Death around you makes you contemplate your own. If you found out you had a terminal disease tomorrow, would you be happy with what you’ve done up until that point? Could you just watch the world go in peace until you die? Would you fight it? Could you be peaceful? You can answer right now, but I don’t think we know the true answer unless you are faced with it. I’ve had such an amazing life, filled with so much love, adventure, and good friends. I like to think I’d be peaceful about it.

Honestly, there isn’t too much left on my bucket list. Maybe it’s because I’m boring now. I’ve traveled the world, been to many, many different countries. I’ve been a scuba diver, skydiver, rescue diver, firefighter, medic, Boy Scout, security guard, airplane pilot, helicopter pilot, aircraft mechanic, sim instructor, fisherman, dishwasher, cook, student, and so much more. I’ve been completely broke, I’ve been rich, I’ve been homeless and slept at my job, and I’ve had amazing friends and experiences. I hope to have many more, but if it were to end soon, I’d be at peace.

I don’t really know anything; it just makes you think.

💬 One of the many things reading a book should do is make you think. Make you write down your thoughts. Explore.

Photography

💬 For you Nikon shooters, the Z series line can accept all the old batteries, which is very nice that Nikon does this. You just won’t have USB charging with the two oldest ones. Right now, the EN-EL15c’s are hard to find and can be crazy pricey. Use your old ones.

EN-EL15c: 2280 mAh, USB charging.
EN-EL15b: 1900 mAh, USB charging.
EN-EL15a: 1900 mAh, No USB charging.
EN-EL15: 1900 mAh, No USB charging.

💬 Shooting in RAW, you don’t have to worry about certain settings in-camera: These are important if you are shooting JPEG or HEIF.

White Balance
Picture Control/Styles/Mode
Sharpening
Noise Reduction, except for Long Exposure NR.
Saturation, Contrast, Creative Filters, etc.
Color Space for the most part. Your setting of sRGB or Adobe RGB hardly matters, if at all. You can set this later when and if you export the picture. I know, big debate between Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB. Just remember, your monitor is lucky to display the full Adobe RGB Gamut. If you’re not sure what your monitor can display, you can’t even see it all. To see all of Adobe RGB, you have gone out of your way to find a monitor that supports it. Although using ProPhoto RGB may be future-proofing, who knows?

Side note: you can go here and check your monitor’s gamut.

Stray Thoughts - April 2026

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:41:50 -0700

A smattering of stray thoughts I’ve had this month

April 2026

This is brand new for April and will be the inaugural post for Stray Thoughts.

On my 365Pixels daily photo blog, I have a Stray Pixels section for extra photos, and I thought I’d carry the name over to this. I’m not very good at keeping my Now page active on my website, so maybe trying a monthly Stray Thoughts blog post can morph into becoming a monthly Now Page update. Let’s see how it goes…

Why do this? Good question. I’m not sure yet. All I know is that it’s sort of therapeutic and kind of like journaling, and it might be fun to look back years later at what my monkey-brain was doing. Plus, maybe it will make you laugh, or give you an idea, or let you know you’re not alone with what you’ve been thinking about.

💬 I have a large Field Notes collection that was just kind of dumb to acquire over the years, and I’ve been selling them on eBay. It’s been a pleasant surprise how frictionless it has been. I’ve had horrible experiences on FB Marketplace and other selling sites. eBay has been very easy. I’ve only had one issue where the purchaser claimed to have lost the box to porch pirates, and eBay returned the money within a few hours, eating the loss, which I was very impressed with. By the way, Field Notes is still a thing; they sell very well.

💬 I still haven’t completed 100 Jumps yet, and it’s starting to frustrate me. But it shows how much of a lousy gamer I am. I don’t think I’ve ever completed a game, you know, X-box, PlayStation, Nintendo-type games. I’m just not that good at them. I want to like them, but I get stuck or don’t know what to do, so I end up looking it up online, which kind of takes the fun out of it.

The most recent game I really enjoyed playing was The Last of Us on PlayStation, but I’m continually stuck, not knowing where to go or how to finish a hard section.

I’d rather go read a good book, to be honest.

💬 It took me a while to figure out Templates in Drafts, but it’s really handy for structured monthly blog posts. I think it’s worth your time if you have structured blog posts where you want the same format each time. Definitely a time saver.

💬 Why does it feel so good to go out and get a Starbucks coffee and a sandwich? I’ve been home, sick, and the draw, the desire for the treat of going out and getting a coffee and some egg bites or an avocado egg toast from Robeks, it just makes you feel better, it’s a little treat, it’s odd, I don’t understand why this is.

💬 I should speak a second language. My mom’s mom was full-blooded Portuguese and decided not to teach her children because at that time and place, it was frowned upon to speak anything but English, and that makes me sad on a daily basis.

💬 I’ve given Craft a good go of it. I used it full-time for several months, set it all up, and made it look super pretty and clean. And, it’s nice. It’s a beautiful app with amazing tools. It just may be too much for me. I’m back full-time to Drafts. It’s simple, less pretty, and does one job really well.

I’ve made a few templates and some scripts to send things to Obsidian, and I’m very happy to be back. It just lets you write, without fiddling with settings and aesthetics. The deal-breaker was Craft’s “block” approach. I just want to write in Markdown, and Craft allows you to do that, but it puts everything into blocks. It drove me nuts trying to edit those blocks.

Something I use all the time is the Drafts shortcut, “Dictate Draft” feature. When I have ideas, they are very fragile and short-lived in my brain. Wherever I am, I can just activate and talk, knowing it will be saved in Drafts for editing later on.

Drafts, I love you.

Morning Meditation

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:54:32 -0700

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can injure me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.”

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2