Monday, March 18, 2024

Costa Rica Highlights

It seems like ages since I posted a YouTube video.

Last year, I promised myself that I'd create at least one video each month, and on the average, I did that. But there were times when a month would go by and I'd have nothing new on my channel.

This year, I hadn't put out a single video in the first two-and-a-half months. That, however, changed this weekend.

When I returned from Costa Rica, I had shot more than 1,000 photos and had hundreds of video clips. Most of the video was captured on my smartphone but I also had a couple of my Insta360 video cameras, which I used on a three-metre selfie stick, or mounted on our rental vehicle with a strong magnet, or strapped to my chest.

It took time to extract all of the footage, edit the ones from the 360-degree camera, and organize them. On Saturday, I told myself that I'd start work on creating a video, with my goal of having the video uploaded to YouTube by the end of the month.

I finished and uploaded the video that day.

Usually, it would take me a couple of weeks to prepare a video, using my Windows laptop and my old software, Pinnacle. But this time, I was using our MacBook Pro with Final Cut Pro. The workflow was very easy and very fast.

I wanted to start out with a short video that offered only brief highlights of our Costa Rican trip. I made a similar video for when we went to Portugal, in 2022. The hope was to get people to subscribe to my channel so that when I had a new video, they'd be notified.

I'm hoping that happens with my latest video. Have a look.

If you haven't yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, please consider doing so. The more people who subscribe, the more motivated I am to make more videos.

Happy Monday!

Friday, March 15, 2024

Take My Breath Away

The other week, I mentioned how I've never fully recovered from the last time I caught COVID, how I've had a cough since October, 2022, and that I've felt as though my lung capacity has been diminished. And I also said that in the weeks following my return from vacation, my coughing has worsened and my lungs feel as though they're taking a beating.

Last week, I was starting to become concerned after I started tasting blood every time I coughed. My lungs were burning, and I actually left karaoke night early. On Monday, I made an appointment to see someone at my doctor's clinic and got an appointment for Tuesday.

I love my doctor's clinic because if my doctor is unable to see me quickly, there are other doctors and nurse practitioners who can see me in what is considered "urgent care." Having trouble with your lungs falls in that category.

The doctor who saw me remembered me right away. I had seen her shortly after returning from Costa Rica because I had injured my hip, and she had prescribed physiotherapy.

It wasn't hard for her to quickly determine that there was something wrong. I couldn't complete my explanation of how I felt without coughing profusely behind my mask. She took my temperature and listened to my lungs. Breathing in and out, I hacked several times.

She acknowledged that my lungs don't sound good. There was no gurgling, no liquid in my lungs, which was a relief. But there was some wheezing and of course, the rough coughing.

She immediately told me that she'd like me to see a respiratory specialist and made a note in my records. I just have to wait for a call to get an appointment.

In the meantime, she prescribed two inhalers: a steroid, which I take once per day; the other, salbutamol sulfate, which helps open my lungs and is only used when my cough turns to a fit, up to four times a day.


I'm familiar with these orange and blue puffers. Kid 1 suffers from asthma and keeps a blue puffer on her at all times. She uses the orange puffer only when her breathing gets bad, which thankfully is rare.

I've been using these inhalers for a few days now, and so far I haven't really noticed a difference. I don't know how long it takes to see any improvement but I'll continue to administer the steroid every morning, and I'll use the blue puffer when I have to.

And hopefully, I'll get an appointment with the specialist soon. I'm hoping that COVID hasn't done permanent damage to my lungs and that I didn't wait too long to report my condition to the doctor.

Stay tuned.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Four Years On

It was supposed to be my new commuter car, replacing my Ford Focus. It's now our main vehicle.

At the start of 2020, I had finally had it with my sporty, white hatchback. It was no longer fun to drive. In fact, for most of the seven-plus years that I had my 2012 Focus, it was more frustrating than fun.

The transmission was faulty and no matter how many times I took it in for service, it couldn't be fixed. The fob for the push-button start failed a couple of times—one time, taking six weeks in the shop to sort out. When the touch screen on the centre console went dim, effectively killing the radio/sound system and any voice commands, I reached my limit and it was the end of the road for that car.

It was and will be the only Ford I will ever own.

I was reluctant when we went to the Kia dealership. When DW and I lived in South Korea, Kia did not have a good reputation. They were basic automobiles, and the fit and finish on them were pretty horrible. I had driven a couple of them over the two years that we lived in that East-Asian country, and they were gutless, sloppy-handling pieces of junk.

Since our time in Korea, Kia had been acquired by Hyundai and I heard some good reviews of them. Also, Hyundai had really cleaned up their act and were putting out some great vehicles.

It looked like they were sharing their technology and craftsmanship with their sister company.

When I test drove the Niro, I was impressed with how well it ran, how solid it felt. The steering was tight and the suspension firm. Being a hybrid car, the acceleration was impressive, especially with four people in it (the salesperson, DW, a friend, and me).

There was good cargo space and the back seats provided excellent head space and leg room. And there were more gadgets than I had in any other vehicle that I've owned.

There was no "we'll think about it" when we finished the test drive, though DW and I did feel a bit of pressure from the salesperson. "We have a hard time keeping these vehicles in stock and this is our last one... I don't know when we'll get more in... the 2019s are almost sold out and if you wait, you'll pay more for the 2020 model."

We took delivery of our Niro two weeks later, on February 28. We could have had it sooner but winter storms through the week made us hold off for better weather. And even though it snowed on that Friday, it wasn't as bad as it had been previously.

Though, five minutes after driving off the dealership lot, I put the antilock brakes to the test.

I only drove my "commuter car" to the office six times after taking possession of it. It was impossible to tell how much I was saving on gas because after March 10, 2020, I was no longer commuting to work: the pandemic turned me into the work-from-home person that I continue to be to this day.

I do remember that it took more than a month before I needed to put gas in the tank.

With both DW and me working from home, we both choose the Niro as our primary vehicle. We only drive our Honda CR-V when we need more cargo space. And now that Kid 1 is living at home again, she drives the CR-V so much now that I practically think of it as her vehicle.

We may end up just giving it to her.

Four years on, we're loving our Niro. It still drives as well as it did on the day that we dumped off my Focus and drove home in our new wheels. We love how easily we can throw our kayaks onto the roof and head out for a paddle. We love how it cruises on our trips to Toronto and elsewhere.

December, 2023.

This week, I took it in for its first manufacturer's recall: a simple fix of replacing a potentially faulty fuse that could lead to a battery fire. In the 10 years that we owned our Honda Odyssey, we had three recalls, had to replace the alternator, and the automatic sliding doors stopped working.

And in seven years with the Ford Focus, I had countless service appointments and failures. One small fuse replacement in four years is pretty impressive.

Let's see how it does over the next four years. Will it outlive the Focus? Stay tuned.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Four Years In

Four years ago, today, I left the office after lunch to go home. I had a head cold coming on and I didn't want to spread my germs around, so I decided that I'd work from home for the rest of the day.

Because I usually worked from home on Wednesdays, nothing changed for me the next day. I was still battling that head cold but I was able to get my day's work in.

But the next day, on Thursday, my cold finally got the better of me and I took the day to rest and take care of myself. I had a one-on-one meeting with my director, which was a video call, but I turned off my camera because I looked like crap and was constantly blowing my nose.

Later that day, everyone in the company was notified to not return to the office, that the COVID-19 was forcing everything to shut down. And I never really returned to the office at full capacity again.

In four years, I've never spent more than a couple of hours in the office. I've gone in to replace my laptop or have a computer issue resolved. I've gone in to meet with developers, who have shown me processes that involve physical devices, that can't be shared on a screen. And I met, once, some developers who were reviewing my work, just because I wanted to show them that I wasn't just some disembodied voice that they hear over a conference call (I never turn on my camera during meetings).

I have no personal belongings in the office. If I were to leave my company today, I'd only have to return my laptop.

At home, I've moved my office four times. When I used to work from home on Wednesdays, before the pandemic, I'd simply plug my work computer into the area where I keep my home computer, using my own external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. But when I had to work from home because I wasn't allowed at the office, I set up shop in our basement, at a small desk next to the furnace. It was noisy and it was dark, but I had privacy and I was content.

DW called me "mole man."

But as the realization came in that working from home was going to be a permanent arrangement (apart from occasional visits to the office, I have no real need to be there), DW and I decided to transform Kid 1's old room into an office space for the both of us. Our kid had moved to the GTA for school and DW was tired of working at our dining-room table.

The room was bright and spacious, after we renovated it, and DW and I had matching desks that faced one another. With our big monitors, we couldn't really see one another, and the noise of tapping keyboards didn't distract us.

Our meetings, however, did.

DW gets quite loud when she talks to coworkers through her headset. She laughs, makes small talk, and is vocally engaged in her meetings, and that's great for her, but for me it was hard to focus. And when we had meetings at the same time, it was chaos.

When Kid 2 moved to Toronto, for university, I moved my desk into her room. Being north-facing, her small room was dark but that didn't bother me. I'm mole-man, after all, and I don't mind the dark.

Apart from replacing her desk with my own, which can rise and lower, getting me out of my chair, I left the rest of her room untouched. She needed a place to stay when she made trips home, just as we had a bed in Kid 1's room for when she was at home.

And Kid 1 came home a couple of years later, to stay.

DW had to move out of that room, and set up a space in a corner of our living room at the front of the house. We set her up with a privacy screen but she was in a space where there was no escape from anybody going up and down our stairs or coming and going from the house. And if someone was cooking in the kitchen or watching TV in the family room, there was no sound barrier.

It was only slightly better than when she was working at our dining-room table, only the privacy screen allowed her some visual blocking.

Last summer, we developed an issue where our WiFi started losing its ability to send a strong signal to where I was working, and I'd often find myself getting kicked out of meetings. But when this issue arose, DW was between jobs, so I simply moved my computer down to where she had been working and the issue was resolved.

We also changed Internet providers, which solved the problem of connectivity issues upstairs.

By the time DW had found a new job, I was firmly entrenched in her old space. I didn't mind being in a smaller space, where I could look out the front window and see who was at the door (especially when I was expecting a beer delivery). DW took my old desk in Kid 2's old room, which is a good thing because she's still loud during meetings and can close a door.


Four years after I came home from work because I was under the weather, I can't imagine going back to the office. Sure, there are no watercooler chats but I do chat online with coworkers. At home, the coffee's better, my lunches are better, and I don't have to deal with the daily commute. I get my projects finished just as easily at home than when I was in the office, and usually faster, as there are fewer interruptions.

I'm hoping to work this way for four more years and then retire. That's the plan. All I know is that my days of working in an office are already over.

Four years in, I'm never going back.

Friday, March 8, 2024

Fun With AI

It's a new habit that serves a few functions, mostly, for fun.

A couple of years ago, just before my birthday, I decided to start taking some decent self portraits. About five years ago, I actually hired a photographer to take headshots of me and when I received them, I told myself that I could probably do as good a job.

Not to besmirch that photographer but the photos were fairly simple and there didn't seem to be much post-processing in the final results. I like to remove blemishes from portraits or any other mark that detracts from the subject, and this photographer liked to show me as natural as possible.

But to take photos of myself also called on using some equipment that I didn't have at the time, and over the years I've slowly been building up my photography gear so that I can take better portraits: better lighting, a backdrop, and remote triggers.

Two years ago, I shot myself with a pleasing background: a painted Korean screen that hangs on our living-room wall. Last year, I removed a large picture from one of our plain walls and used a softbox on a stand plus a second speedlight for better light and no shadows on that plain wall.

This year, I felt I had the equipment I needed. I now have a collapsible screen that can give either a black or white background. So for my most recent self portraits, I placed the screen behind me, used the softbox to my immediate left, and used natural light from our glass door in the kitchen. My camera was placed on a tripod, on our kitchen island about a metre or so away from me. And I had a remote trigger for a two-second shutter delay.

The setup worked well.

In post processing, I applied some touchups to my face to get rid of pimples and other unsightly marks and moles. Let me tell you, nothing makes you realize how old you are until you start touching up your own portrait.

I applied a vignette effect and softened the photo a bit, and on some portraits I transformed the image to black and white. You can one of the photos from my shoot in this past Tuesday's blog post.

Self portrait in AI, 2022.
But one other thing I've started doing to my self portraits, when I use them as my avatar for social media, is to run them through an AI editor. I started doing it for fun, with my first selfie, but when I didn't really like my photo from last year, I did it to try to make myself look better.

It didn't really make me look any better but for the first half of last year, that's what I used as my avatar.

This year, I don't mind my self portraits so much. I like them more than the portrait I paid for several years ago. But because I've seen what AI can do to a decent photo, I tried running them through it again.

Just for fun.

I didn't give the AI tool any parameters other than the photo. Not that I could do anything else with the tool that I used, which is accessed on a Web site: it simply has you upload a photo and it does its own thing.

The first result was really good, so I took it and am now using it for my profile pic for work, for some of my social media accounts, and even the picture of me for this blog.

But when the AI tool finishes cranking out your picture, it also offers several other takes, and the results were hilarious. So, for fun, I took another photo from my recent shoot—one with my glasses on—and ran it through AI.

My photo, with basic edits.
AI transformation of the same photo.

These ones had me in stitches. There's me, looking like I'm on the set of The Bachelor...

I choo-choo-choose you!

Another AI edit has me as a business-casual jet setter. I like how it's shed some weight off me. My head is still big (it really is huge) and they've cleaned up my hair.

Damn, I look good!

I don't know if I'd ever use AI for modifying any of my other photos, beyond what I've controlled in some of my enhanced photos. Even then, I was still in control of the changes.

But it's fun to play with AI. Happy Friday!