What is this post about?
You might find yourself asking: why am I reading this? I have the same question! Right now, at this very moment, I’m asking you to consider what you have to do today, and if reading my kitchen sink report of this week is really the way you want to spend it. Now, if you’re still here, I ask you to once again question, is this really how you want to spend your time? Alright; apparently it is. Well then, let’s get on with it already!
Misc.
Recently I’ve decided to start my summer work for AP Lang! So exciting! I get distracted and fall down curiosity rabbit holes every little while. Here are some of the activities I did or trivia-saving facts I learned:
- The Charles River is named after King (then Prince) Charles I
- Ipse dixit means a claim given without any proof
- Eugen Doga was a Moldovan composer who composed around half of the movies produced by Moldova-Film — a Moldovan film studio
- The Vienna City Hall is an architectural masterpiece!
- I flipped through Robert Frank’s The Americans and was in awe with some of the photos
- If you want to become a pro at argument, you can use Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement
This photo is not in The Americans, yet it’s still one of my favorites of Robert Franks
Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement
Dendrology
Now I by no means would say I’m an expert in dendrology, but let’s just say I’ve read a grand total of 16 Wikipedia pages. Even though I haven’t done much research, this stuff is really cool! Who knew? I’ve decided to write this part of my blog in the Q and A format, so let’s get started:
What prompted this?: I saw a picture of a tree and was struck by an unexpected curiosity about what kind of tree it was.
Do you have any past experience?: Yes! I have a little tree of my own! I recently got a Ponytail Palm all the way from the state of California.
My very own Ponytail Palm!
Tell me a cool dendrology fact!: No one asked this, but I will answer anyways! Here’s my fun fact: Palm tree’s do not produce tree rings. Isn’t that pretty odd?
No rings, huh?
Photography
Now my more astute readers might’ve remarked, “Hey, this post isn’t tagged under ‘Photography!’” To which I’d say, “Yes. It isn’t.” Now, this section is a bit of a kibitz, so feel free to skip it if you get bored!
My photography journey this week started with an utterly unsuccessful attempt at long-exposure shots of the green line. I went to a station, and took out my camera, but after the first few shots I saw something that piqued by interest — all of the passengers were wearing Red Sox merch! I set my shutter to 1/125s, and adjusted my aperture and ISO to match. I stood a little behind where I thought the doors of the train would open, and pointed my camera towards the rails. After a few trains came and went, I was still photo-less (at least anything worth keeping). All of a sudden, I heard that nice MBTA announcement saying that a train was stopped indefinitely. Now knowing our public transit system, I expected my night to be over, but that wasn’t the case just yet. In almost no time at all, the trains got running again. Yet, in another spell of bad luck, I started hearing the rain patter down above the (very luckily) covered station. I decided that no train picture was worth a wet camera, and packed my bags to head back home.
Fun Fact: In French, the verb “rentrer” translates to “to go back home.”
My second photography experience of the week began when I had that itching feeling of wanting to go out with a camera. I noticed that there was yet another baseball game in Boston that day, so I decided that heading into the city and shooting some of the fans on the street or on the train would be tons of fun. After a long car ride into Boston, and some walking around, I finally took out my camera. I turned it on to set my ISO, and suddenly it dawned on me: I forgot my battery! Every photographer’s journey is different, but there are some lessons that all photographers learn eventually. One of those lessons is to never forget your battery at home! I am completely lost as to how this took me so long to learn.
Anyways, tl;dr, that’s why I decided to not tag this under photography!