Pizza time 🍕

Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.5, 1/125 sec, ISO5000
Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは!

Tonight Mariko made a small pizza as part of our dinner (along with pasta and salad). She is perfecting her pizza dough, and this evening’s pizza was baked in a cast-iron pan in the oven. It turned out great! Our only complaint was that there wasn’t enough of it. 🍴

I can’t wait to try more of the pizza she will make… she’s still experimenting, which is good news for us because all the pizzas she has made have been delicious.

In other news, today my new Chromebook arrived and I have been getting acquainted with it. In fact, I am typing this post using it. The keyboard on this Acer Chromebook 11 is wonderful. Super comfy and the keys are spaced just right. The trackpad is fantastic as well, and I love the multi-touch gestures, especially the three-finger swipe to switch between browser tabs. It’s a really cool effect! Early this evening, I tried out the webcam on a Google Hangouts call with my brother and it worked well. I think this laptop is going to work out just fine!

Right now it’s pretty vanilla-looking, but I have ordered some stickers to put on it, so I’ll take some photos of it for a later post. Speaking of looks, the Acer is not the sleekest machine out there. In fact I am a little disappointed… I thought it would have nicer curves. It’s kind of ugly… it reminds me of the original Kindle. The plastic is really cheap too! But you know, for $165, it’s a pretty great machine. Fast, quiet (no fan, so it’s silent), and the battery lasts about 10 hours.

But I’ll post a more comprehensive review about it later, because it’s now getting very late here! Take care!

おやすみなさい!

-B Barron Fujimoto

End of Spring Break

Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/5, 1/15 sec, ISO3200
Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは! Good evening! How was your Sunday? It’s the end of Spring Break for the kids and that means that the week of sleeping late every morning is over. So, I am hoping that Koa goes to bed soon! (Bay is already in bed and his lights are off)

A couple days ago, the weather turned chilly again, which was a huge surprise to me. I thought we were already into Summer weather! Come to think of it, today is the first day of Spring. That’s great, because I don’t like Winter or the cold. Bring on the heat already!

Today I did a lot of research on new Chromebooks because the laptop I use to write this blog every evening has a hardware problem and is super-slow, and sometimes will just crash in the middle of whatever I am doing. Luckily WordPress does a pretty good job of auto-saving so I haven’t lost too much work. But the computer boots up so slowly that I think it is time for me to find a new laptop.

So… I decided on an Acer Chromebook 11 laptop. I want something that is simple, has good battery life, and a good keyboard. I don’t need a lot of horsepower since I will not be using it for any photo editing or gaming. Just WordPress, Netflix, YouTube and general browsing and the Chromebook should be perfect for those. Also, the price that I found was nice… just $165! That’s a $15 price drop from yesterday…

As you may know, I have been trying to simplify my life and declutter. This new laptop is so minimal, that I am really looking forward to using it! Just like my X100T makes me work within its limitations, I am wondering if the Chromebook will have a similar effect. We’ll see!

Today’s photo is of a new lens that Mariko bought for her camera. It’s the highly-regarded Fujinon 35mm F/2.0 WR lens. It’s really nice because the focus is fast and silent, the aperture ring feels great, and it’s a lot smaller than the 18-55mm zoom. Plus the image quality is excellent and it has a certain look to the images that Mariko really likes. It’s definitely a keeper lens!

Well, I better get to bed. It’s past my usual time!

おやすみなさい! -B Barron Fujimoto

Clearing the desk

Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/13 sec, ISO6400
Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは! Happy Monday everyone!

Today I worked from home because the kids are off from school for Spring Break and Mariko is working at SXSW. Today’s photo is of my workspace, and the new addition to it – a Logitech wireless mouse.

For the past month or so my old mouse has been acting strangely by disconnecting and reconnecting with my computer, seemingly at random. I’d hear the notification like when you unplug a USB device, but then immediately hear the new device notification. This would happen several times an hour. I figured it was time to replace that old wired mouse (which must be several years old) with a new wireless mouse.

I did a quick search on Amazon and settled on the highly-rated yet inexpensive ($12) Logitech mouse. I like the fact that it is a little smaller than a regular mouse (I have small hands) and that the battery is rated to last 12 months. That is great! I was also looking forward to losing the cord, which was a lot of visual clutter on my white tabletop.

But an unexpected benefit with the new mouse is that the tracking mechanism is much better than my old mouse. The wired mouse was very jittery on the surface of my desk which forced me to use a mousepad. The new mouse tracks very smoothly, even without the mousepad. So that means I can get rid of the visual clutter of the mousepad as well. Just look how nice and clean that space is now!

I’m so happy with the wireless mouse. I just wish I had made the switch sooner. For such a small price to pay, the benefits are huge!

Have a great Tuesday, everyone! おやすみなさい!

-バロン Barron Fujimoto

The long-lost iPod touch

"iPod Touch". USA. Texas. Cedar Park. 2015.
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/60 sec, ISO1000
“iPod Touch”. USA. Texas. Cedar Park. 2015.

For a few months I’ve been looking for my wife’s long-lost iPod Touch. It’s funny, but she forgot she even had one! Which is in itself sad since it was a birthday gift from me! Anyways, the reason I wanted to find it was because I wanted to test the image quality of an Instagram upload from an iOS device as compared to my Android phone.

Well, the other night the iPod finally was found! So I quickly got to resetting it and installing some apps. After finding a way to install an old version of Instagram on the iPod touch, I did my test. Unfortunately the outdated version of Instagram only uploads the image as 640 x 640 pixels in size instead of the current 1080 x 1080. So I guess my test for image quality will not be conclusive…

Oh well, at least I have a new (to me) music player!

Fujifilm X100T Wi-Fi App Connection Issues

Just a quick PSA that I hope can help someone out. If you experience Fujifilm X100T Wi-Fi app connection issues using the Fujifilm Wi-fi App to connect your camera to your Android device, change your phone’s “name” in the app settings, then on the camera, “Change access point” so that it searches for a new device.

It seems like if the app remembers your phone’s old name and tries to connect, it will fail. However, if it searches for a new device, it will connect. I hope this helps!