I’ve made kimchi* and it’s pretty easy. It does like cooler temps- I turned down the heat in my house to 65 when I was making it last winter and didn’t make it over the summer. Each batch was better than the last because I tweaked the flavors/ingredients/process, but it was never a fail.
*I almost added kimchi to my list here, but it was less something I didn’t think I would like and more something I thought would probably be okay and then found that, once I had tried it, I basically couldn’t live without it. I LOVE kimchi and almost always have at least one jar- usually store bought- in the house.
A gas grill. I avoided it up until 5 years ago. I was pretty adamant about the idea that if I’m cooking outside, goddammit, I’m going to cook with charcoal/wood and fire, like god intended.
But when we bought our current house five years ago, which has a nice little deck, my wife encouraged me to buy myself a housewarming gift of a gas grill. I hemmed and hawed, but I figured it might be nice in the summer to have an outdoor cooking space and not have to heat up the kitchen. And, I have to admit, it’s wonderfully convenient. And my grill actually gets blazingly hot (over 650F somehow), so I put down some quarry tile in there when I want to use it as a make-shift pizza oven, and it works a treat. I usually pretty much at least once a week all year round to grill up some Middle Eastern-style chicken thighs for a Mediterranean plate of chicken, turmeric rice, salad, and pita. It’s proved incredibly useful and while it’s no substitute for a proper charcoal fire, it’s won me over with its convenience (and my wife is more happy with me not smoking up the house, as a lot of stuff I cook I like to cook over high heat and my vent can’t quite keep up with it.)
Now if you find me using electric powered pellet smokers, take a shotgun and put me out of my misery.
I got T-boned last month and had to go car shopping right away. I ended up with a 2014Nissan Juke. I love the thing. I came back from my test drive all smiles.
This goes back several years, but digital cameras and photography. I thought it would never match film, that all the autofocus and other automation took too much control away, etc. But I have to say it’s sooooo much cheaper than the days of film and you can store your photos on a hard drive instead of dumping them in shoeboxes or whatever. You can email them. You can photoshop them if you like (I hated darkroom work—expensive, touchy, frustrating). Remember having to load your camera after 36 exposures? I often shoot a hundred or more when I’m out.
I went digital in 2004 and never looked back. I never had the mindset of it never matching film so much as when will it be close enough for me to ditch my film gear? For me, 2004 is when it started getting really good, and then when the Nikon D3 was released in late 2007, my mind was blown. (I still have that D3 and I’d still be happy to shoot it in 2021). I remember shooting TMax P3200 film with grain the size of rocks (though I did like the look) and here I now have a digital camera where 3200 looks like maybe 400 to 800 speed film, noise-wise (grain/noise aren’t exactly comparable, but visually can be compared at least subjectively).
It became possible to shoot in conditions not previously possible. The ability to preview your image on the back of your camera (and now live in-eyepiece with the mirrorless cameras) and check your lighting and fine-tune your exposure is invaluable. Remember Polaroid backs for doing this? Dynamic range on the last generation or two of cameras is now as good or better than film. (There is some arguing about this, but film has about 13 stops of latitude and the best digitals around 15 stops of latitude. My own experience is that digital is at least as good as negative film if exposed properly.)
And, like you said, not having to reload after 36 exposures! When I started my photo career, I did a spell of sports, and that was always a bit nerve-racking figuring out when the best time is to conserve your shots and when to make the switch to the next roll of film. I do weddings these days, and same thing. You always had to be aware of where you were in the roll of film as you’re shooting. I’ve only shot three film weddings, but they were about 30 rolls of film each. And then you have to stock all your various films in terms of type and ISO to have on hand. Digital? Just change a setting. Voila. 100 ISO is now 3200 ISO. Light changes? Just change it back. In film, it would be … shit … rewind. Mark on the leader how many exposures you took (if you don’t want to waste film). Change film. Rewind when you need to switch ISOs. Once again, mark on the leader how many frames. Get your first roll of film and advance it to the spot beyond the number you wrote down on that roll.
Yep, couldn’t wait for the day digital became viable!
Yeah. While I only text maybe once a day, it does have it’s utility. At first, I thought it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. “Why have a secondary type of email??”
I felt that way about Twitter. The problem is, I still do. I still can’t figure out why it’s so useful and popular (and I adopted MySpace and Facebook from day 1. My brain just can’t twig Twitter.)
Meanwhile, I’d been using text since about 1999 and its utility was apparent immediately for me. For one, we didn’t have cell phones that had email capability then. They could do barely more than call someone and play a game of Snake.
A guy I know finally got around to getting a smartphone, texting, doing Facebook, etc.
One afternoon I took his picture at a bar we where we are celebrating Tuesday or something. I posted the pic on Facebook and tagged him. When his phone rang and he saw it was his wife, he ran outside and told her he was busy at work.
Of course she had seen the Facebook post and knew he was lying. Divorce ensued.
Invincible, the new superhero cartoon series. I like watching animation but apart from (short) films and anime, western animated series of the non comedic variety are not something that I have been a fan of. So I was biased against it. Lets just say I was more than presently suprised by it (although I did watch most of it at 1.5x speed or more so my viewing experience is probably not too typical).
Yeah, that’s a biggie. I haven’t bought a new body since '14, and were it not for COVID I might have upgraded by now. Soon…
The one time I remember thinking film would be so much easier: [star trails].
(Star trail - Wikipedia). With digital I guess it is or was common for sensors to overheat so the process involved an intervalometer and multiple exposures, but they didn’t turn out that great.
I never tried it but I remember there was also Ilford 72 exposure…thinner negatives allowing more exposures to spool up. In a similar “push the limits” vein I did try a TDK D-180 audiocassette once. Hey, could I fit four albums on this??? However, I found any amount of rewinding or fast forwarding will cause that uber thin ribbon to wrap around everything in the unit, so I wouldn’t blame you for avoiding the Ilford if the work were paid, critical, etc.
I would have just wasted the film, probably…sounds like a ton of work to perform under pressure. Medium format with interchangeable film backs? It would work around that but $$$.
Then, throw in the fact that you can buy a printer and produce prints at home, no need to wait for photofinishers to send it back or whatever. I think at one time I calculated film, processing came out to about 25 cents per print. And a lot of them were duds. Funny, now I don’t print many things at all…
Used to be the cheap option was a prime lens for your new camera and you saved up for a zoom. Now they come with zooms (are some varifocals?) and the primes are the pricey offerings.
Is inarizushi real sushi? It’s even in the name! Wtf is “real sushi”? Gatekeep much? Pretty much any condiment on top of or rolled in sushi rice served with wasabi and soy sauce is sushi.
I haven’t even heard of the 72 exposure rolls, but I’m sure somewhere they were used. We always shot 36 exposure 35mm film (although you’d usually get 37 or 38 exposures out of it.) I worked briefly in 1997/98 for Agence-France Presse (AFP) and I never saw anyone on the wire or newspaper use anything but 36 exposure rolls. That said, we all used color film at that time, and I’m guessing the Ilford is a monochrome film, so perhaps in the days well before me they shot that. We shot black-and-white at the college paper, but just used stock TMax100 and TMax400 for that and bulk rolled it into canisters (usually cramming around 38-39 exposures on it, IIRC. We may have been able to finesse 40, I don’t remember exactly.)
It’s nothing I would do unless I had some time in between and it was pretty much only when I was shooting film on my own dime (or the film was included beforehand in my pricing – so, for one of the weddings I definitely did that, as I charged a flat fee and if I only shot like five frames into the roll, it wasn’t worth wasting it if I didn’t have to. And I’d have time to change. For example:inside church to outside church to inside reception; I might continue the inside reception photos with where the inside church roll of photos left off. But that’s also when I was pretty penny-pinching. Today, I probably wouldn’t care and just start a new roll.)
Well, while we’re on sushi, one of the prime tests of a sushi maker’s skill is traditionally tamago, which involves no fish of any kind, but rather cooked egg.
After posting that I took a stroll down memory lane via Google. 72 exposure film didn’t go over big for a couple reasons: 1) The vast majority of cameras stopped counting at 36 exposures. You could keep shooting but…how many are left? 2) The tanks etc. for developing it were geared toward 36 exposures. I think 72 exposures died in the 80s.
With regard to weddings, I shot a few. Nerve-wracking stuff with thin profit margins for sure if you didn’t know what you were doing (which I didn’t).
ETA Found this:
HP5 Autowinder kit introduced enabling the processing of a 72 exposure length of film, a frame length suited to cameras with motor drives. The ‘HP5 Autowinder’ film base was made of thin polyester so that the circa 10feet (3m) 72 exposure film length could be accomodated within a standard 36 exposure cassette.
My kindle, and e-books in general. I have two libraries in my house to hold all by traditional paper books, and I love the feel, sight, smell of them etc. I resisted the kindle for some time, but eventually I got tired of hauling 5-10 pounds of books along on trips. And my wife was enjoying hers. So I got one.
I do love it, it’s so convenient. It has its drawbacks for sure; tough to page back to find things I want to re-check, illustrations/maps on them are piss-poor, etc. But the benefits outweigh the liabilities. Lately I only get solid copies of very special books, like atlases, art books, and JRRT’s works.
Raw oysters & clams. They look disgusting. But they taste fabulous.
Email. I was very slow to move from telephone too email. I love email. (texting is cool, too.)
Sushi. Love at first bite. (Of raw tuna.)
Gin. I remember being 9-10 years old, coming into the air-conditioned house on a hot summer day, dramatically wiping my forehead due to the heat and taking a deep breath, just enjoying the coolth. But wait, there is a glass of ice water on the kitchen table, so I grab it and chug. Blergh!!! It was my Dad’s Gin and maybe Tonic, not sure. I was sure that was the nastiest liquid to ever enter my mouth. Even after I started drinking, and after doing it legally, I avoided Gin for about two decades. I ended up drinking G&T’s at a work party and hey, these aren’t so bad. Gin is now my preferred liquor.
Olives. Used to hate them. Don’t remember the tipping point but I love olives now.
Jazz Fusion, Country Music, Gospel, Show Tunes, my teen-age punk self wouldn’t even give them a chance, but the older I got the more of an obsessive musical dilettante I became. I will listen to anything once, and appreciate most.
(pretend the frowny is green)