Jim Willis

Several months ago the EVF/OVF on my X100F stopped working correctly. I sent it in for repair to Fuji.   I should note that printing out the form on FujiFilm Camera Repair page is laughably broken but, anyway.

After a few weeks I heard back that FujiFilm wanted $650 to repair the viewfinder. 

I asked them to send it back without repairing it, thinking I would just put that money towards a new X100v instead. Well, supply chain! You can’t get an X100v anywhere right now. SO I decided to make due with the broken X100f and just use the screen instead of the viewfinder. Not optimal but serviceable.

Until this week.

All of a sudden all sorts of other things started breaking on the F. Now the camera looses its settings when you swap out the battery. And it it is stuck on AF-C/continual autofocus. Which is so annoying. 

So, anyway, I’ve sent it back in for a repair estimate, hoping it won’t be much more than the original $650 repair estimate but we’ll see.

While it’s out for repair I’m using my 6-years-old X-E2s. I have it paired with the 27mm pancake which makes it feel like a really lightweight (and, sort of cheap) X100. This is an older Fuji camera and I’d completely forgotten what amazing photos it takes! This makes me realize that there’s really no reason to rush out and get the X100v when it becomes available again.

I really like this quote from Ken Rockwell’s review of the X-E2s, it’s still totally true today:

Real shooters shoot LEICAs because of their simplicity, small size and fantastic optics, and the X-E2s does all this even better. The X-E2s is ergonomically superior to LEICA, its optics are at least as good, all for a fraction of the price with none of the poseur attitude.

The Fujis just shoot so well for so long (when they’re not broken!). It’s a real incentive to just keep the older gear around, repair it when necessary and only buy the newer models when catastrophe befalls your existing Fuji gear.

First rainy day in a while. Glad because it’s been nice out lately and I’ve been too busy working to enjoy it. Less FOMO on a rainy day.

My letsencrypt SSL cert wasn’t renewing. I’d forgotten that I moved my wife’s site to squarespace so that caused the renewal to not find the site on my IP, causing it to fail with something like:

Attempting to renew cert . . .  produced an unexpected error: Failed authorization procedure.

I was using the same cert for multiple sites. Note though, you don’t actually remove the superfluous/relocated sites from the cert and then renew, instead you recreate the cert with just the domains you want. Makes sense.

Anyway, here are some really good instructions and explanation.

And just in case that site isn’t around, basically you’re running:

sudo certbot --cert-name jimwillis.org -d jimwillis.org -d www.jimwillis.org

And then you can run 

sudo certbot certificates

To make sure that the domains were removed from the cert. Handily, it also renews the cert when you run that command. 

Russ and Grant! I love this video/interview. I wish it were a full hour!

There are so few people (especially out here in NJ) that share Grant and Russ’ view of cycling or even try to understand it but, man, they are speaking my language.

I uploaded an image to a WordPress post using three different techniques, and you can see the way they appear in Mastodon in the image below using this really excellent and customizable/flexible plugin. 

I’m trying to get the image to appear like it does when uploading to a Mastodon post using the native posting tool, like this:

A friend unexpectedly gifted me this the other night when we were rehearsing for an upcoming gig. I can not believe what a huge difference it makes in the sound/volume of my already very loud Martin D-18.

It’s called a d-gard and is purpose built for the back of a Martin dreadnaught. I put some new felt on it so that it wouldn’t scratch the finish. I’m astounded at how much more volume and sustain I’m getting from this. A good friend of mine who plays mandolin has been telling me to get one of these for years and I’m glad I finally got one. For standing up and playing at live gigs around a single mic, I’m hoping this gives me the volume I need.