September 12, 2021

Weekender #33

  • Birb watch: Still no sign of Handsome myna.

  • I went searching through my parents closet and came across a box full of my Star Wars action figure collection from my youth. While my memory of that time period is a bit fuzzy, I do recall having a few more figures that aren’t shown here. Maybe I traded them with friends? I’ve been told that some of them are worth something, like the tall Snaggletooth. I don’t have any time or energy to actually do anything with these at this time, so they went back into the box and into the closet.

    • I also had the huge Millennium Falcon and the Death Star multi-floor play set. I have no recollection of what happened to either of them. I’m guessing they took up too much space in the house at the time and were given away.

  • I came across this web page while perusing the popular Pinboard bookmarks that talks about why you shouldn’t use the platform Medium to post your content. It goes on to list suggestions for using alternatives for blogging including one that I’ve never seen before called “Headless WordPress on Netlify”. After reading through the description, I kinda laughed and thought… “Isn’t this the same thing that Movable Type was capable of doing way back in 2001?” It’s amusing how there are so many Static Site Generators today, but really sad how Movable Type created them, but lost out to WordPress because they moved to a commercial license.

  • Today I saw a message from the app Block Block (a malware monitoring app from Objective-See) that Adobe was trying to install or update:

    com.adobe.ARMDCHelper

  • Hawaii is set to begin requiring proof of vaccination to do a lot of things staring tomorrow, Monday, September 13, 2021. For any Hawaii residents that are wondering what will suffice as proof, the Star Advertiser’s Kokua Line has a good FAQ on that.

  • Unexpectedly, Ricoh Imaging announced their latest iteration of the Ricoh GR compact camera, the Ricoh GR IIIx. At first glance, the GR IIIx looks exactly the same as the GR III. The biggest change is the addition of a 40mm f2.8 lens system compared to the GR III’s 28mm f2.8, giving the GR IIIx a tighter, more natural focal length for street photography. For those that may not know, I purchased a second hand GR III during our annual trip to Japan in 2019. It was a leap of faith, as I’ve never used a Ricoh camera before, and the first time I ever handled one was at the shop that I purchased it at. It was one of the best purchases I made, and really gave me the ability to not think about taking a camera with me everywhere I go. I’ve had so much fun using the GR III ever since. It’s a joy to take photos with! The GR IIIx will be released in October 2021 and it’s pretty much an insta-buy for me.

  • I was shocked to find out that David John “D.J.” Pratt, musician, producer, engineer and guitarist for my favorite Hawaiian band, Kalapana passed away this week. D.J. was the first local guitarist that I looked up to. He had a unique style and instantly recognizable sound all his own. He could shred, but he was so melodic too. It breaks my heart that D.J. is gone, and Kalapana is pretty much done. At least I have my memories of seeing them perform live many times. Rest in love…

  • I spent most of the week listening to Kalapana, especially the album Hold On that featured D.J. as Kalapana for the Japanese market. By the time this album came out, it was 1980 and the band had pretty much broken up. From what I’ve read, D.J. was out on his own making music as a solo artist.

by Scott Yoshinaga

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