#365writings

Do Not Look Down

I can’t get enough of Meshuggah at the moment. And in particular this song. Such a mean groove!

In good Meshuggah fashion, it’s polymetered: The first riff for example is in 17/8 (that’s how I count it anyway), and both guitars/bass and drums play it like this initially. But after the first 8 bars (around the 26 second mark, after 2 rounds of that riff), the drummer's hands start playing 4/4 time while his feet and the guitars stay in 17/8. From then on, the drumming stays that way. Which means you can easily nod your head all the way through, even though that might not be immediately obvious.

My selected photos from last October. Mostly shots from Paris.

Back in October I impulse-bought my first fold-out 6x9 camera at the Photobörse Ratingen (a kind of cameras-only flea market and trade show).

It’s some Voigtländer Bessa with a 110 mm lens and a maximum aperture of f/4.5:

I’ve fancied having a camera like this for a while now. Because I imagine them being great for landscapes: they are compact, relatively light and pretty robust – which is good when you’re hiking. They have an aspect ratio well suited to landscapes and the negative size is the largest medium format has to offer (panoramic cameras aside).

And my demands for its controls are not very high, either. I only plan to use it outdoors at daylight, which means that

the aperture doesn’t have to be large, nor has the lens to be a great performer wide open,

the exposure has to be set only once in a while, so controls don’t have to be super-convenient, and

I don’t need to focus accurately, because for the most part, I will set it to infinity and forget about it.

That’s why a cheap model like this one will do.

Last month I finally went out with a roll of Fomapan 100 to see if it’s working properly. And it is: No light leaks, most shutter speeds seem to be accurate, the aperture works, focus works, lens works. It’s not very nice at f/4.5, but much better at f/5.6 and from f/8 and above seems to render perfectly fine. Which I’m happy with.

I’m looking forward to trying this out on a proper hike, but for now, here are a few shots from that test-run:

I like to write. I definitely like having written. I want to get better at it. I want to remember things better. I want to share what I learned. And what interests me. Or simply jot down my thoughts. I want to create more value – even if it’s very little or only for myself.

Posts may be short. Posts may be long. Some will lack. A few might be strong. It can be common. It can be personal. It can be profound. Or rather trivial.

But I want to do it*.

For the last five months I’ve been writing some form of text every single day. And last week I stopped. I didn’t specifically plan for that – at least not at that point. But it just happened. I missed one day. And then didn’t write the next day, either, etc etc.

I had occasionally thought about giving up on this project, because it often felt like a chore. It was too much self-imposed pressure for me to write something every day. So, I think it was just a matter of time. But that I stopped already was accidental. I guess once I missed a day, the pressure fell and I simply thought “fuck it, who cares!?”.

Today I learned, you can indeed merge two Git repositories and keep the history intact. Not quite sure, if I will need this ever again, but it’s good to know I could. Here’s the code snippet of Andresch Serj’s answer on Stack Overflow:

If you want to merge project-a into project-b: