Positively.

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”

Marcus Aurelius

This quote has been going through my head today. I read it a number of years ago when going through one of the many books I’ve read on Stoicism; it popped up again in a daily quote generator that lives on my “miniframe”.

It seems like society, and the mainstream news in general, wants us to focus on the negative. Everyone knows a car crash is more exciting than a high school graduation (just two random examples), and more exciting is what generates money via clicks and ad-revenue and the like.

But what does all the negativity pounding in from the outside do to our well being? How does it make us feel?

It makes me feel less than stellar.

If we are constantly bombarded by bad news we start to seek bad news. And if we seek bad news, perhaps we start generating bad news. We shouldn’t generate bad news. Look for the sunlight, even on the cloudiest of days.

There’s a reason I’ve stopped listening to news briefs and avoided the cable news networks and the like. Too many clouds that I can’t control obscure the sunlight that I seek.

If there’s one thing to take away from this random bunch of words, it’s this: find the sunlight and share the sunlight as much as you are able to do.

Monday.

Today has been one of the most productive Mondays I’ve had at work in years. I don’t know if it’s because of the hike, and subsequently clearing of my head this past weekend, or if it’s because of the dream I had last night. The reasoning doesn’t matter. All I know is that this morning I made a list of the things I wanted to accomplish at work and I’ve been checking these items off one by one and it has given me a strong feeling of accomplishment.

Sometimes just having a checklist on a piece of paper that one can modify with a pen is the way to go.

I’ve mentioned before that I keep track of what I need to do via a loose interpretation of the “Getting Things Done” methodology. Everything goes in a bucket, I review the bucket, and then I figure out what I need to do with the things I’ve put in the bucket. It’s as simple as that. There are hundreds of applications out there that are suppose to make this all move in a very easy way by providing an infinite number of ways to slice and dice the information so you can figure out what you’re suppose to do. Many of these applications are quite nice but I get into “fiddly” mode instead of “productive” mode when I use them. So I just have my little text file with a list of everything I want to accomplish someday, and I review it, pick a few things to work on, and go from there. I do have some coding magic so that I can jump onto any of my computers and type the word “inspire” at a command prompt, and it’ll pick some things on the list that don’t have due dates associated with them. Coupling “inspire” with my regular review of my text file helps keep me productive and organized. Plus, it’s free.

Free is good.

Speaking of free… I’ve been working on cleaning up some audio lately and I was beyond stunned when I saw how much Adobe is charging for their sound editing application, Adobe Audition. I remember buying this application for the radio stations back in the late 1990s when it was called “Cool Edit” and it was a very cool application for its time, and more importantly, it was affordable. These days Adobe doesn’t allow you to buy their software, one can only rent it via a subscription model. I considered subscribing for Adobe Audition for a hot moment, until I learned that it was nearly $35 PER MONTH if I didn’t buy a year’s worth of entitlement at a time.

The heck with that.

This whole notion of renting software from a software company rubs me the wrong way, and that’s probably because I’m an old school geek that remembers the delight I felt when someone bought my shareware cash register program back in the late 1980s. I would never think of renting that software to a business. They bought it, they owned it, and if they asked I’d give them the code so they could do what they wanted with it.

So, no Adobe Audition for me.

There are plenty of fully paid or open source sound editors out there. Audacity comes to mind and it runs on just about anything. I’ll just stick with that.

Being Creative.

If you took a gander at yesterday’s post about my latest hike, you’ll notice that it’s a video with not a lot of written dialog around it. In the video I talk about one of my core values. I believe we should give more than we take, and that extends to our activity on the Internet, we should do what we can to create more than we consume. It’s better to create content that shows the world who we are instead of focusing on consuming content that tells us who we should be.

Making the video, and then editing it when I got back home, was a lot of fun with me and helped me fill a creative niche. I’m going to be doing a lot more of that type of thing, whether it be making videos while flying, chasing storms, or just little snippets of every day life. As I was telling Earl yesterday afternoon, I used to do this sort of thing back in the ‘00s with a “flip” HD camera and some clever editing in the tools available at the time.

I know Apple and the other smartphone makers want us to use our smartphones for everything, including photography and videography. The thing is, I had a lot more fun playing around with my new GoPro Hero yesterday, a camera that’s designed to be a camera. I’m definitely an amateur at all this, but “use the right tool for the job” sticks out in my head.

When Earl and I were talking the other night about life in general, I mentioned that over the past few years he’s just seemed more relaxed and less concerned about opinions and the like. His response was simple, “when you’ve had cancer to remind you can die at any moment, the small stuff doesn’t really seem to matter anymore”. As I continue to read Stoic philosophy and the writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and the like, I am always reminded of “Memento Mori”, which translates to, “remember that you must die”. When you remember that no one gets out of this alive and any moment could be your last, you tend to not sweat the small stuff and focus on making the moment just be the moment.

For years I’ve been holding back on making practical effects laden videos and popping out “Bewitched” style because I was concerned I wouldn’t be taken seriously in my career or my aviation endeavors or I would be perceived as alarmingly immature for a man of my age. You know what? I’m still a kid with a vivid imagination in a 55 year old body. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Those that don’t understand will drift away. Those that feel a connection will come along for the ride.

Bridal Wreath Falls.

I made a nine or so minute video of a hike up to Bridal Wreath Falls in Saguaro National Park. I had some fun with my new camera. I hope you enjoy sharing the experience with me.

Caturday.

Sometimes, when I’m walking up stairs during the workday, there is a moment of judgment from a certain feline looking down over everything. As I make my way up the stairs, the ears await.

No matter the situation, that pair of ears, and the cat connected to them, is not going to relocate. I must step over him and endure his glares of interruption.

After I have completed my workday, Truman comes downstairs and hangs out in the main parts of the house. Once in a while he’ll get situated in his cat tree, observe the dogs, and take a bath.

See.

My new pair of glasses arrived yesterday. While I should be wearing progressive lens, they don’t work very well for when I’m sitting in front of a computer, which is a good chunk of my time. So I have a couple pair of distant vision glasses and a pair for use in front of the computer. If we’re traveling somewhere, I’ll bring along my progressives to keep things easy.

With the advent of online, affordable optical companies like Zenni Optical, picking up a prescription pair of glasses for $30 is a no brainer. While there’s nothing wrong with my 1950s style “Gregory Peck” type glasses, at times they feel a little heavy. So I decided to go with a pair of aviators to add to the mix, depending on my mood.

I snapped a photo while pumping gas last night. The fuel cost more than the glasses..

Camera Test.

For the upcoming storm chasing season I added a new (to me) GoPro Hero9 to the mix. Here’s my first video. It was a successful test.

Ernie’s Falls.

On Saturday I did a solo hike in Saguaro National Park up to Ernie’s Falls. The hike involved many of the same trails I’ve hiked to get to Bridal Wreath Falls, but at the top of a hill I turned left instead of right. It was a great day for a hike and I had a really good time.

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Colorization.

This is why I prefer to watch “classic” movies and television shows in their original black and white, instead of colorized versions.

This photo was taken during the filming of a first season episode of “Bewitched”.

When the black and white episode was colorized around the year 2000, the result was this.

The dark red lipstick on Elizabeth Montgomery in the first photo is consistent with her appearances in color movies of the time, namely “How To Stuff A Wild Bikini”. In addition, Agnes Moorehead was known as “The Lavender Lady”, she’d definitely be wearing lavender wherever possible.

It’s a shame we have the technology to colorize black and white film but then rely on folks that don’t pay any attention to what the actual colors were.