Another Hobonichi Year

It’s the beginning of a new calendar year and that means transition to a brand new Hobonichi. I’ve used this Japanese yearly planning calendar for the last 5 years. In previous years, I’ve discussed how I use the Hobonichi (here and here). In short, the Hobonichi is my day planner. I use it every morning to figure out my strategy for using my day, since the allotment of time I’ve been granted each day is never enough for everything I want to get done.

For this pandemic year, my usage hasn’t really changed. Of course there’s been no travel since March, so I haven’t had to deal with the question of whether to take the Hobonichi with me on trips. In general, I leave the Hobonichi at home when traveling because I don’t need to do the kind of planning that’s required to be efficient when working from home. Or maybe I don’t care about the efficiency so much when I’m traveling so I can just enjoy the place I’m in. Also, I’d hate to leave the Hobonichi behind at a hotel or airport, since my jet lagged self is often pretty inattentive. I’ve found it better to use a travel notebook to plan and record my trips, with a more portable small notebook.

The Hobonichi is always open first thing in the morning. I review the hard landscape of my day (meetings and calls) and figure out how I’m going to fit in my highest priority activities that day.

The first free 30 minute block will go toward writing the ODB manuscript unless there is some very pressing issue at work that needs review and email replies. In the timeline half of the daily page of the Hobonichi, I’ll block out the meetings and the writing block time, at least 30 minutes, usually an hour if I can.

My next big block is fitness, these days almost exclusively bicycle riding. According to Strava ((Strava is a tracking and performance analysis site for cyclists and runners. It has a social component that connects users by sharing activities in your feed. I get to see not only the rides of my fellow Baltimore Bicycling Club members but I follow a number of pro cyclists, getting a real insight into how they train and race performance.)) I rode 6,460.5 miles in 2020 with 510 hours on the bike. I put more miles on the bike than I did on my car this year.

That’s usually it- scheduled calls, meetings and proposed times to write and ride. The open side of the page gets a few notes about errands that are pressing or tasks that I’ve been putting off but seem suited for today. But this is just a minor morning mind sweep in the spirit of GTD ((Getting Things Done of course.)) Since my Hobonichi is not with me all day, it acts as an inbox and brainstorming device, not a trusted system for tasks and appointments. Those live in small text files on my phone.

I still tape small prints of my photographs from time to time if I’m incubating ideas and want reminding, but I’ve found that the Hobonichi pages just don’t get reviewed all that often. If the images are there, though, I will page back and review my thinking to plan how to move forward. Some days I’ll block out time to capture images if I’ve been remiss in taking a camera out. Some days I’ll block out time for processing or printing.

The new idea I’ve had this year is to use all of the blank space in the planner to dump thoughts that occur in the morning as I start my day. It’s a way of clearing my mind and preparing to work. I’ll think a bit about what I accomplished or got stuck on the previous day to provide some momentum. A list of events or a note about a problem gets recorded. Because it’s the morning and I’m writing about the previous day, I’ll use the blank space on the page for the day before. And if that’s not enough, there’s blank paper in other days preceding the most recent. I’m never without someplace to take a few notes. It complete violates the sense of timed notes that dated pages imply, but that’s easy enough to get over. In my first Hobonichi post, I see I was writing Morning Pages ((From Julia Cameron’s lovely book The Artist’s Way: 25th Anniversary Edition)) which is three pages of undirected writing. While I enjoyed for a while, I found that simply opening up Ulysses and getting 250 words of manuscript typed was a better use of my time. I don’t need much ritual to get into writing hyperfocus.

Looking back over the completed 2020 Hobonichi, I’m gratified that there’s more filled space in the book than in years past. Over the next few weeks, I’l go through it page by page and capture the notes I want to have available to refer to in the future. Last year, I just transcribed everything into on big text file with sections separated by month. I’ll probably start there, but since I’ve got this big writing project going, I’ll want to make sure that the notes are feeding the writing in a useful way.

DecidingBetter.com is back

With the new year comes a return to the original url for the blog. I’ve been running the site as WordPress install at DreamHost for many years now. There’s been a problem or two, but their support has been really good. With the need to run an https site and some reorganization I’ve been doing, I thought it would be better to have them actually manage the site. With it comes their caching and server management which is making page loads much faster.

I just added the redirect this evening, so I’m hoping the readers, RSS, search engines and browsers of the world can continue to find content here with a problem.

Our Limited Capacity to Decide

With over 30,000 words done on my manuscript and about halfway plowing through the outline, the thesis of the book has become ever more clear. Here’s the essential. question about decision making from the point of view of neuroscience:

The ability of our brain’s executive function to make decisions is limited not only by the model it creates out of experience , but by the decisions made by brain systems that are inaccessible to awareness or executive control. We then can ask : How do you make better decisions when agency is so limited?

This morning I drafted a few paragraphs about eating that seemed to encapsulate much of the argument and seemed worth sharing here. I think it provides a little idea of the style and approach I’m taking in a longer form.

Recognize this? Your visual system will make a perceptual decision.

Embodied cognition

We’re on the subject of what has been called “the embodied mind” ((The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy makes the historical attribution of embodied cogntion to a short list of authors including George Lakoff and Andy Clark. Their books have been important influences on me in formulating the abstract world of thought as metaphor in the brain’s model of the real world)). The brain is the body’s regulator of behavior of all kind including not only attention and voluntary movement but every regulatory system in the body that keeps us alive and healthy. There’s no line between “mind” and “body”, so our experience has to include input from those systems and our behavior has to be adjusted to take care of them appropriately without involvement of the executive network in the cerebral cortex.

For example, while I can’t control my heart rate directly, the feeling of my heart pounding is an important aspect of the world. My internal model of the world needs to account for whether it’s pounding because I’m sprinting in a friendly competition on my bike in a group ride or whether I’m finishing a high stakes race or whether I’m angry with and/or afraid the driver of the car that just side swiped me and who’s continuing to threaten me ((Sadly confrontations with motorists is all too common out there on the bike)). There’s context to heart rate that important in the bigger world model beyond regulation of the cardiovascular system.

The exquisite control of appetite

And so too with appetite. When I was in medical school, they had just introduced lectures on nutrition into the curriculum. There was one fact I took away from the lectures that I think about very frequently. Now you have to understand that the two families that owned the Coca Cola Company (the Candlers and then in 1919 the Woodruffs) have been major benefactors of Emory University, where I got my MD, PhD training. ((In fact my father, who had been a Pepsi drinker all his life switched to Coke after I was accepted to the Medical Scientist Training Program there to show his gratitude. It was a program with full scholarship and stipend after all.))

A 12 oz can of Coke has 140 calories. If you decided to add a can of coke a day to your daily diet, perhaps with lunch at the campus cafeteria, that would be 365 cans of Coke or 51,100 extra calories a year. Over a decade, more than half a million additional calories from that can of Coke. We know that there are 3500 calories in a pound of body fat. So that half million extra calories would add 146 extra pounds. Drink that can of Coke for a few decades and you’ll be hundreds of pounds overweight. Looked at another way, the average caloric intake for a man in the US is 2500 calories per day. That can of Coke that caused so much theoretical havoc is only 5.6% of daily caloric intake. For most of us with relatively stable body weight year by year, that means that our average daily intake of calories is regulated down to single digit percentage points! Not only that, but the great difficulty that we find with dieting and the empiric data showing that diets don’t work for most, demonstrates that consciously trying to regulate caloric intake is almost impossible over the long term.

Some of the ability to maintain stable body weight is due to cellular metabolic control regulating basal metabolic rate, the burning of calories at rest. But most of it is behavioral- how active we are choosing to sleep, sit or move around. And of course what and how much we eat. We are no more in control of eating than we are of breathing or respiratory rate or blood pressure.

A complex set of signals exchanged between the body’s fat stores, the gastrointestinal tract, the endocrine system and the brain allows hormones and levels of blood nutrients (sugar, amino acids, fats) to trigger food acquisition and consumption. We’re really good at knowning how much to eat. We’re fully in charge yet not aware of the expertise we have implicitly and not in any kind of long term control of it. Within a few percentage points, every day year after year. Despite the best efforts of our executive network to influence body weight.

By Way of Update

It’s been a slow year for posting here on the blog. As I noted in my last post here in February, I’ve been living my online life in Instagram, posting images of my cooking and samples of my photography.

But yes, I have been working on a long form work to sum up what I’ve learned writing here for the last 20 years. It’s about a third done because it turned into a bit more of an exploration than I expected.

Photographically, I continue in my approach to casual photography. We’re in a great time to be a photographer with more powerful tools than ever before, allowing capture anywhere, anytime and in the digital domain, as Vincent Versace likes to say, “Impossible is just an opinion.”. I’m shooting with film, I’m shooting rangefinder, I’m shooting with a monochrome sensor, I’m shooting mirrorless, I’m shooting compact full frame. Mostly Leica these days. I’m processing on my iPhone, my iPad, with Photoshop, with Capture One, with the Nik Filter suite. So check my Instagram feed for the recent work. But regardless of the camera in hand or the processing workflow, I capture what’s interesting in the visual environment. That’s the body of work- urban, landscape, travel, and family provide subjects.

The COVID-19 pandemic? Well I work from home to begin with, so life is not so different. I do miss my usual travel schedule as one of the fuels for my photographic efforts. But humans seem infinitely adaptable so I’m capturing more local images and more family images. At the end of the day, the need to create must be met one way or another. On the other hand, I’ve had more time for structured cycling training, so my fitness is at an all time high.

Having a varied set of interests provides ample opportunity for natural selection and a stable life work ecology.

Instagram Wins

Without meaning to, I seem to have moved my image posting activity over to Instagram, largely abandoning Flickr. I didn’t mean to, but the photographers and websites I want to follow on a daily basis were all there. Flickr remained a nice community, but didn’t have the engagement of prominent names in photography. Once I started my exploration of casual photography, it seemed natural to just start putting up images there.

Instagram feels more casual. Flickr creates a gallery and I felt compelled to maintain a certain quality of finished work when I posted. I’ve mostly posted iPhone images to Instagram in the past, so it feels easy enough to post a modestly post-processed image out of Photos.app to the site.

In the garden Leica M10 Monochrom APO 50mm ASPH
Continue reading “Instagram Wins”

Come on now. Will 5G really destroy weather forecasting?

I don’t know what to make of the report that 5G wireless is going to seriously impair weather forecasting. There are quotes from public officials and academics who all assert that interference with satellite measurements of atmospheric moisture will set back weather forcasting by decades. I often use atmospheric models and hurricane track cones of uncertainty to illustrate how mathematical models aid decision making. Here that decision making can save lives and millions in property losses.

Leica M10 JPEG 35mm Summilux FLE

Why do I resist believing this is as big a problem as it appears to be? Perhaps I think the idea that my government would act so contrary to the public good is inconsistant with my core beliefs about how society functions. The report is full of both the usual equivocation we scientists love (“it appears…”, “if true, this would mean that . . .”) and bombastic flat out assertions of crisis. There’s no reporting from the other side even. No industry scientists claiming the threat is overblown and there are simple technical fixes. Even though it seems that the problem real, I’m left with the feeling that this is interesting and a potential threat. Well, I think, let’s see what happens.

I recently wrote about how we make perceptual decisions in our view of the world at levels that are not accessible to awareness. Certainty is one of qualities we seem to be able to access. Belief can feel strong or week, but the reasons for doubt seem post-hoc and come after the gut feeling of belief. So if I’m doubting that our weather forecasting systems are about to be deeply impaired by the greed of commercial interests working hand in hand with my elected representatives, that’s a feeling not some deeply argued rational conclusion. I really deon’t know. I don’t have any more information that might strengthen or weaken that belief. I’m not really motivated enough to dig deeper, confirming my level of uncertainty.

And yes, if people start dying because of increased uncertainty in extreme weather event forecasting, I guess then at least I’ll remember having read something about this possibility. Certainly the overwhelmings odds will be that I’ll be enjoying my fast 5G mobile internet connection from somewhere safe and not be in the midst of a deadly hurricane that wasn’t forecasted accurately enough.

Act Casual: Photography in the Age of Big Lenses

Beginning in the mid 1980’s we noticed all cars started looking the same. They’d all been through the same wind tunnel. Yes, ads all look the same. Phones too. Fashions persist particularly in user interface design (via dangerousmeta!), but devices tested in similar ways yield similar results and convergent design.

Now camera lenses seem to be getting huge and heavy:

The Online Photographer: Age of Inglorious Excess:

At 136.2mm long (5 1/3 inches), with 17 elements in 12 groups, with a filter size of 86mm (bigger than any medium format lens I ever owned), and tilting the scales at a staggering 1,090g (38 1/2 ounces, not far short of two and a half pounds), it’s got to be a big zoom, right? What, a 28–200mm?

Wrong, aperture-bouche. It’s a 35mm normal prime. “Prime” being, of course, slang for single-focal-length lens.

I assume that optical bench software combined with digital camera sensor characteristics led to common considerations: make the lens mount as big as possible and stuff the big lens full of fancy glass. Thus we get the larger mounts of the Leica SL and Nikon Z mirrorless cameras. Then for best edge to edge sharpness, that hulking barrel of a lens holds precisely aligned specialty glass that’s been molded just so.

And so we’re presented with huge, heavy primes and zooms of astonishing quality. Personally I think the Nikkor Z mount lenses are the best they’ve ever made. I get the impression the Leica SL primes may be the best lenses ever made. All very pricey, but very sharp, very high contrast. Thankfully still with some personality in how the scene is rendered, leaving some art in the design for sure.

Why not compromise at least a little bit? After all, the Jeep still looks like a Jeep. These big systems are specialty outfits used for the best possible capture when the subject is aware and generally allowing their picture to be taken; these are not cameras optimized for stealth or style. Or carrying around all day.

For the casual photographer there are a range of other systems like the Fujifilm retro styled cameras or the Leica Q2, M or CL. Or the iPhone for that matter. I’ve found that the big professional tools are now only welcome in places where photography is expected- family events, national parks, tourist attractions. They are not welcome in residential neighborhoods or on most city streets. Big cameras draw suspicion and hostility in equal measure.

For casual photography, documenting life and environment, a more casual camera is needed. We still need to work on once again accepting that cameras can be used in public. I’d like to see the return of casual photography driven by social media sharing. Perhaps we can get back to a place where the guy with the camera is a bit odd, but no longer a threat.

The Suburban Landscape

Shooting with the Leica Q2 has pushed me out of my exclusive use of the 50 mm focal length lens for shooting. I seem to still be stuck with the idea of putting a particular prime lens on a camera and then seeing at that focal length for the duration. So I’m trying the 35 mm view for a while

Loch Raven Reservoir

Now this is not true of event photography, when shooting a family gathering or party. Then the Nikon with a zoom comes out- currently the Z7 with the 24-70 mm f/4 zoom. The relationship of camera and subject is completely different and I need the flexibility of changing point of view in a physically constrained space.

I feel like I’ve taken advantage of the quality of the lens in this image, being sharp edge to edge, with focus falling off quickly when wide open at f/1.4. And the winter light of the low sun even in early afternoon renders a suburban park in beautiful light.

The quest for casual photography, capturing my daily environment in some ongoing documentary fashion has led me back to looking at the suburban landscape. When traveling, looking at the novel environment is a natural partner with photography. But when home and running errands, the environment fades into the background. Hopefully looking for the image is helpful in being more present and appreciative of a more ordinary world.