J. Martin

November 1, 2021

Pastimes

One day late, but today’s a holiday around where I live. So in a way the new week hasn’t yet begun, right? Also, I’m on my way back to Düsseldorf after a trip to Stuttgart—visiting friends, drinking beer, playing games, and eating a lot. That should suffice for an excuse.

So, what happened to my plan to buy a vintage camera and return to film? It was tempting, but eventually I decided against it, at least for the time being. I don’t think analog photography is inherently superior to digital photography. Working with film is a personal preference, a pastime, and/or an art form, just like digital. However, every time I open a random article on the internet on why film is better than digital, it’s 95% bullshit with a sparse seasoning of arguments that are actually good, i.e., where they refer to preference, pastime, or art form. So what does it do for me? In terms of art form, I’m just not good enough. In terms of pastime, allocating time to all the things I do or want to do is already a huge problem. That leaves preference—which, at this point in time, does not suffice on its own. Also, I finally remembered how it was back then when I had to schlep my camera and my lenses around, and that’s not actually something I’m looking forward to doing again any time soon. Thus, the plan’s shelved. But it doesn’t mean I’ll never revive it in the future.
 
Then, Glass is now on the web. As I mentioned before, it’s a subscription-based photo sharing & photo community app for iOS, and its latest update introduced public profiles, i.e., I can post my profile page and individual photos now directly on the web. So while I haven’t uploaded anything new to Flickr last week, here’s at least my brand-new public Glass profile.

No video game recommendation this week; I’ve only played board games in Stuttgart. I’m not a huge fan of board games, mostly because I enjoy single-player and cooperative games a lot more than competitive ones (with some notable exceptions). But I like to learn about clever board game mechanics that give me ideas for video game mechanics. Some of those games I’ve played during the last days were Cryptid, Masters of Orion, MicroMacro Crime City, and the Pachisi variant TAC. Quite a range!

Besides the headline “Zuckerberg Announces Fantasy World Where Facebook Is Not a Horrible Company,” the things I probably laughed most about last week was this absolute stunner of a “the longer you watch, the worse it gets” CCTV footage and this very brief cat gif.

Have a great week y’all!
J.