EveningPancakes

Photography.

I started to really get into it back in 2015 with a Sony A6000 and a kit lens. Then you buy more, higher quality lenses. Then you buy better camera bodies with full frame sensor, then lenses that are full frame compatible. Then the various odds and end accessories. Then trips around the world to take pictures of things.

I have taken a break from photography recently, on account that having a kid doesn't allow me a lot of opportunity to edit my photos anymore. They say the best camera you have is the one that is on you. That has proven to be true while I try to be as present as possible around my daughter. I can quickly take out my phone, capture the moment and it will take care of most of the post processing edits that I can share with family later.

I'm also in the end game part, trying to max out my hearts before putting the game away. I've been using Mapgenie.io to help me figure out what Shrines I don't have. While I love the exploration and the sensor+ helps point you in the right direction, I just want to wrap this one up soon to get to other games in my backlog.

I bought a new PC in 2021 (because building was hard due to supply shortages) and it came with GamePass Ultimate. When I combined my existing Xbox Gold subscription, it gave me something like 1.5 years worth of GamePass Ultimate, which was really great! Once that subscription expired, I had saved up for a year worth of another subscription up front, but noticed they only offered month-to-month at that point. I realized I wasn't playing GamePass games enough to warrant the subscription (might have been different if I could install on my Steam Deck, not through a Windows install or streaming).

Once that GamePass subscription came up, and then Netflix started cracking down on password sharing that I was sharing with my sister in the next city over, it made me question a lot of recurring subscription. For streaming TV shows/movies, I think going forward we'll have one service subscribed to but bouncing around to catch up on shows that my wife and I may want to watch. For GamePass, I'll probably resubscribe once Starfield comes out.

Powering through Tears of The Kingdom. Just finished up the last temple I had. Probably going to go hunt down a few more shrines for more hearts.

Last week my launch Switch from 2017 started to kick the bucket, displaying a blue screen. I was able to get it booted back up once randomly, which prompted me to immediately resubscribe to Nintendo Switch Online so I could get cloud back up saves for all my games. After that one session, it went back to doing the blue screen and never booted up properly again. I really hate that cloud saves are being a paid functionality and wish it was a little more gracious like with what Xbox offers.

Fast forward a few days, I picked up an OLED Switch and transferred what was available from cloud data. Thankfully TOTK was there but I was missing a number of games I thought I had back up but we're missing. Out of all, I think I'm most bummed about missing my Smash save data. Having to unlock all of those characters again now too. Everything else I lost I either completed already or had fallen off. I get why Nintendo doesn't allow saves on the SD card but that really would have saved me some headache.

I shipped the old Switch off to get fixed by Nintendo, received it today but in the end they did not repair and simply gave me another unit, without my old data :(

Kidney stones for me too! Mine are calcium oxalate based, so I take a supplement of magnesium citrate to help me break them down, but also drinking more water regularly. I should also lay off the salt, but that's a hard one because it's everywhere.