things i think about while powerwashing 89
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This section can be titled “how not to take pictures of a kung fu tournament.”
So the kind of reason I missed out on the newsletter last week was because I was busy setting up for this year’s kung fu tournament (I did this last year too). As usual, the great beings that be voluntold me to a task and this year it was taking photos!!!
I took photos of sports once or twice when I was at The Exponent at Purdue but I’ve never had to take photos for a six-hour event (complete with awards and everything!), so obviously a new experience for me here and came away with a few learnings:
- Get it right the first time: you’ll take a lot of photos. Save processing time and power at the end by making sure your settings are right or consistent. If all the white balance is wrong the first time, you can spend time to correct it all. Better yet: all the settings are correct so you’re just left culling
- Why is it tiring: I was basically running around squatting, kneeling, half-squatting, and lifting a heavy-ass camera for six hours.
- High ISO is ok indoors: You gotta do what you gotta do. Most modern cameras can handle higher ISOs these days.
- Shoot JPG: No point in shooting RAW. It was basically five to six hours of full action and shooting RAW while on the “High+” settings was ruining my battery life and my card space. I’d also run out of buffer. Just shoot JPG.
This will be valuable insight for some of my audience, but for the rest here are some fun photos I took at the tournament. Honestly — it was great seeing all my old friends again (and some deep cuts showing up as well).
I would also like to point out that I did earn two gold medals at this tournament in 2016 (I was forced to fight both adults and children division lol).
anonymous subscriber news
Yes we love travel news! Please post when you are travelling — or when you have traveled! Also WHO IS THE GERMAN MATH MAJOR. WHO SUBMITTED THAT. TELL ME.
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- anonymous subscriber is going to south east asia next week
- anonymous subscriber said moving apartments for the 7th year in a row because we are here just to suffer
- anonymous subscriber has a crush on a German math major
- anonymous subscriber may be able to upgrade in life with a new apartment!
- anonymous subscriber was stressed at work. simba save me!!!!! save me!!!!!!
- different anon than from the email on 8/19, but I've also started running a little recently! I am very slow but have gone 4 times in 2 weeks and am slightly less miserable each time :)
migration complete
I have finally migrated over to https://torrtle.co! Old links should redirect to https://torrtle.co. Just tried it on a few and I think it works. And I have a new landing page for https://ryanjchen.com!
animal of the week
Here's some type of hawk I found during my hike. I was finishing up a pretty long one and entered some tree cover when suddenly this guy came in swooping out of nowhere and landed on a branch about 20 feet away! Definitely a great way to end the day.
Send me your animals at ryan@torrtle.co!
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