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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Old camera lenses are awesome. I’ve got some steel and glass rokkors that are beautiful. They render in such a wonderful way too, so painterly. They have thorium in the glass! Not enough to be sketchy to use but something that obviously isn’t done anymore. Bonus points that they can be fixed with a hammer.

    Old camera stuff in general is subjectively cooler. The leaf shutters in my 4x5 lenses are incredible little machines. Film in general is cooler than whatever sensor the latest and greatest has. Actual bits of silver suspended in emulsion, with colour filters and dye couplers that react in development. There’s a great three part video on YouTube breaking down Kodak’s manufacturing process. It’s mind boggling that stuff even works. Ohhhh and actually darkroom optical prints! Don’t get me started there!

    I’m going to develop some rolls I think. Got me in the mood.



  • Where do you live, Chilliwack? Lol. I get it though heat sucks. I’m in Kelowna and bike whenever I can, but I’m not showing up to dinner or a meeting drenched. Errands or casual hangs though sure why not. It is a little less soupy humid here so even 40° isn’t awful as long as you’re moving and have a breeze.


  • Absolutely go do it! Riding a bike is one of the simplest joys in life once you get the hang of it. I live ripping around doing all my errands on it. I have a reasonably nice vehicle but really I only drive in the worst of the winter, or to get out of town to do some activity. In the summer that activity is usually mountain biking, go figure!



  • Snowboarder. It’s just my favourite thing to do going on 15 years now. It’s influenced where I chose to live, the friends I’ve made, sparked a passion for outdoors that lead to also being a backpacker, climber, mountain biker, and realize my whole thing is really just having fun flowing through nature.

    Photographer. All that time in nature puts me in pretty places so I wanted to take landscapes. That’s still my favourite genre, but I also go for random photo walks, am my social groups go to wedding photographer, document my own kid and family, collect and shoot old school film cameras, develop my own film even. I’m that random weird friend always walking around with a camera.


  • Fine, Israel’s leader/government, as elected by its population, is on record. Does that make it better?

    1% of the population is a lot of people. That’s tens of thousands of lives cut short. Kids who’ll never grow up, families torn apart, etc. Should that not elicit emotion? There’s plenty of videos of children and unarmed people trying to surrender or otherwise being shot. Seems like anyone and everyone to me.

    Fun fact! Hysteria was originally thought to be a condition that only applied to women, hence the Greek root “hyster” for womb, as if that were the source of irrational emotion.




  • I want to agree, and still do for some of their items, but personally have found a lot of their products have gone downhill in the last few years. Quality control is all over on the gloves nowadays, sent two pairs back with weird stitching and a single pencil point tapered finger on liners. I originally liked the vigor midlayer fleece stuff as a budget R1 but it’s pilled and worn super fast and just isn’t that warm anymore.

    Their alpine merino base layer stuff is pretty awesome though, and found the ascent shell touring jacket nice and breathable for backcountry stuff. For the most part I’ll just spend a bit extra and go for Patagonia moving forward, which of also consider a BIFL brand.


  • Photography, mostly landscapes. Something satisfying about capturing the essence of a beautiful view and being able to share it with others who couldn’t be there to savour the moment. Sometimes a fancy digital camera, sometimes old timey film cameras my grandpa got me into. I’m also into backpacking, climbing, splitboarding, and otherwise just spending time in the mountains so there’s no shortage of views to capture.



  • Kitchen table is 1880ish? My mom got it from one of her first palliative patients who got it from their parents and had nobody else to leave it with when they passed. Use it daily and have it paired with some modern steel chairs … it’s a little eclectic around here.

    I’ve got some straight razors as well. Pretty sure some of the Swedish ones go back to 1700s.




  • Film photography. With smartphones having taken over the roll of point and shoots and covering the majority of people’s photography needs, it’s quite a different experience breaking out a half century old camera. Everything is more tactile, your shots are finite, and the result is a 100% determined by your decisions. Different films produce different results, and if you get into developing your own film you get to play mad chemist in the bathroom.

    There’s a learning curve, but if you’re already into photography and understand the basics it’s really not that hard. Labs still exist to develop for you if you’d rather not go down that rabbit hole. The results may surprise you!


  • Split boarding! It’s a snowboard that splits in half and lets you ski uphill, then snaps back together to ride down. Takes a lot of physical fitness and training for avalanche safety/rescue, but being able to make turns down an untouched wild mountain is an experience like no other. Maybe not super niche but outside of a mountain town probably moreso.

    Also, film photography. So special taking pictures of my kid with a camera that’s been in three generations of the family. The camera, lenses, everything just so much more tangible and enjoyable. Then developing it on the bathroom with some science magic and holding a physical image at the end gives a sense of a accomplishment that can’t be found with a smartphone! Also not super niche, but maybe 1% of people use a proper digital camera instead of just their phone, and maybe less than 1% of those play with film as well.