# Notes ## Action cams, underwater domes: https://www.amazon.com/Diving-Trigge-Underwater-Waterproof-Accessories/dp/B08L68TJ72/r https://www.amazon.com/GEPULY-Waterproof-Housing-Underwater-Photography/dp/B08TTP2KB8 ## birding update: don'ts - dye in hummingbird feeders, bread, etc seagulls t-shirts bird nerd ## terms EPC Earnings Per Click: an affiliate marketing term that refers to the average amount of money you earn each time someone clicks one of your affiliate links. CVR Conversion Rate: a marketing metric that tells you how many users are converting on your website AOV Average Order Value. This is an eCommerce metric that indicates the average amount a customer spends during each transaction. GMV Gross Merchandise Volume: shows the total sales value for merchandise sold through a marketplace over a specific time frame. CPA Cost per acquisition: financial metric that is used to measure the revenue impact of marketing campaigns CAC Customer Acquisition Cost: see above # Scratch packages 18x18x18 10lbs # Bote LowRider Aero Tandem 11'6" Review It's summer. It's hotter than a pepper sprout. You're going to the lake. Should you bring the kayak or the paddle board? Choices. The paddle board industry has an answer to this dilemma: the hybrid inflatable SUP with a kayak seat. The best of both worlds. Maybe. Bote has long included a kayak seat with some of its pricier offerings, like the Bote Aero Breeze ([7/10, WIRED Review](https://www.wired.com/review/breeze-aero-inflatable-paddle-board/)) we tested last year, but the new Bote Lowrider comes in a tandem option, adding two seats and anchor points for Bote's Bac rack system, making it possible to have a SUP and a full fishing rig of a kayak in a single craft. It is the best of many worlds. ## tk The Bote Lowrider comes in two sizes. The 10-foot 6-inch single person version (with a single seat) and the 11-foot 6-inch tandem version which features two seats. I tested the latter, though nearly everything here will apply to the former as well, it's just a foot shorter and only has one seat. The Lowrider is the widest SUP in Bote's lineup at 36 inches. It's big. Really big. This makes the Lowrider very stable, which is what you want when you're trying to use it as a tandem sit on top kayak (or even a single sit on top). It also makes it both a very beginner-friendly paddleboard since you don't need insane balance to use it, or, if you do have insane balance, a good platform for SUP yoga and the like. Although I remain convinced SUP yoga is something people only do in promotional videos. The first thing I noticed when taking the Lowrider out of the storage bag (which is much nicer than Bote's older bags, more on that below) was the massive rear fin. It's a good tk inches longer than the detachable fin on the Aero Breeze, and by far the deepest fin I've seen on a paddleboard. A sailor friend of mine quipped "that paddle board has a [draft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_(hull))." That deep fin makes the Lowrider track straighter, which means you aren't constantly veering and correcting coarse as you paddle. Relative to the Aero Breeze and other boards I've used there is far less side to side movement when stand up paddling. The larger surface area of the fin also makes the board a bit more stable in rough water, especially when combined with the width of this board. I've long wanted to do some multi-day paddleboarding trips, and I've gone so far as to load up about three-quarters of my gear, only to decided it just wasn't going to work. The Lowrider, however, is capable of such feats. I did not have time to actually do a trip, but I did load it up and paddle around. As you might expect, it was heavy, sat lower in the water, and was slow to turn, but it wasn't that bad, especially if you put the seat on so you can switch back and forth between standing and sitting. It's probably outside most people's use cases, but if you're a weirdo like me, know that this is probably your best bet for paddlepacking. Speaking of the seats, they're quite comfortable and stable. They have a strap that allows you to adjust the amount you're laying back. They never get quite as upright as you'd be in a kayak, but I paddled several miles and had no back strain or other pain. One thing to keep in mind if you're a seasoned kayaker: you're much higher on the water than you would be in a kayak. You aren't going to want to paddle anything technical, but it's still a stable, comfortable experience, and the board is plenty maneuverable. Cruising flat water it was surprisingly fast and agile (for something this size) and the Lowrider didn't blink even when I took it out in a 15 knot wind with pretty good chop. To my mind this is one of the best reasons to get a hybrid, on those rough days when you aren't going to be standing up, you can still get out on the water. The seats can be attached in a variety of ways, there are three tie down points on each side of the board. Then two more tie down anchors which can be used to attach a Kula cooler or similar. There are also two magnapod anchors that will hold your [magnapod tumbler](https://www.boteboard.com/collections/magnepod-accessories/products/magnetumbler-20oz-with-lid-seafoam) or [speaker](https://www.boteboard.com/collections/magnepod-accessories/products/magneboom-surge-waterproof-speaker) in place. # Outdoor Gift Guide Buying gifts for the outdoor enthusiast is damn near impossible. Your outdoorsy friends are probably gear heads, meticulously pouring over reviews, guides, and the perennial wisdom of ounce-counting, basement-dwelling Reddit users to find THE EXACT RIGHT THING. The chances of you picking THE EXACT RIGHT THING for them as a gift is exactly zero. Don't even try. Instead, buy them one of these thoughtful, always-useful, sometimes whimsical things that are almost guaranteed to not only delight them, but actually be used. Everyone who spends times outdoors needs more merino wool socks. I don't care how many you have, you can never have too many. Trillium hammock Water bottle hatchet knife Minus33 sweatshirt Snow Peak Titanium French Press Darn Tough socks (bombas for adrienne) Laws Guide to Nature Journaling notebook field notes waterproof binoculars onX subscription Local hiking guide evergoods packing cubes Black Diamond Mission MX Mitts (chris) Opinel No.12 JBL speaker from: https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-bluetooth-speakers/ A donation in their name to a local outdoor group. jefferson's bourbon: https://jeffersonsbourbon.com/whiskeys/jeffersons-ocean-bourbon/ nomad grill # Darktable One of the great myths of free software (free as in freedom, not necessarily free as in beer) is that if it doesn't work the way you like, you can take the code, modify it to suit your needs, and go on your merry way. This is the cornerstone of the Free Software Foundations argument for why free software is better than proprietary software. While this is technically true -- the provisions for copying, modifying, and redistributing are governed by the licence -- it ignores the social reality that there is more to software than code. The code is perhaps the least important part of a software project, particularly a large software project. The other two elements, the human elements, the developers and the users are the important part of software. These are the two elements that determine the fate of the code. While there are doubtless exceptions, most major project splits I've witnessed have been related to personalities within the project more than the capabilities of the code. Think LibreOffice, which spun off of OpenOffice in major part because the developers wanted a more egalitarian project structure, or NextCloud, which was forked from OwnCloud in part because, again, there were cultural differences between developers and the parent company. There are plenty of other examples. WordPress forked from b2, MariaDB, from MySQL, Tenacity from Audacity. In every case the project that ends up continuing is the one that draws in the most developers and consequently users. Software without developers quickly dies. This is obvious. What's less obvious is that software without users quickly does the same. Developers need users. The relationship between the two is what makes software more than code, more human. When we make something public a certain amount of control of that thing slips out of our hands. This is true of any writing, software, fiction, even this column will no longer be exclusively mine once it leaves my notebook. Somewhere in the process of publishing it, I fade to the background, the reader comes to the foreground. What matters now isn't what I have written, but what you think of it. These words don't belong to you in a legal sense, but in reading it you become part of a conversation and any community that surrounds it. The same is true in software development. Whether you are a contributor or just use a piece of software, you are a part of the conversation that surrounds that software and whatever community may exist around it. As with communities in other parts of life, some software communities are better than others. Therefore, you have certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others The conversation and community look different depending on where you stand. Personally I don't use software made by people I don't like. Somehow segue to darktable. One of the more interesting examples of software like undeveloped film : a raw image can be developed by software in a non-destructive manner to reach a complete image that resolves every pixel in a RGB color space. Raw development adjustments include color, contrast, bjurightness and details recovery. A given raw dataset can be developed many times with different adjustments. When Adobe moved Lightroom to a subscription model I started looking around for alternatives. I tried a few, but quickly settled on Darktable. It has the same conceptualization as Lightroom -- it is both a photo file manager and RAW image editor -- that it felt familiar even if all the tools and workflow was different. According to the commits in Git, Darktable came on the scene in 2009. I believe I first began using it in 2010. So it is literally the raw recording of the camera sensor. It's not even an image file as I understand it, it's just raw data, which is why you need a program like darktable or lightroom to display it. 4:32 PM But it gives you more editing capabilities than jpg. 4:32 PM And ultimately, when you're done tweaking it, you export it to JPG, TIFF, PNG or whatever 4:33 PM Jason Kehe ahh, fun 4:34 PM so the column is about darktable - which is obviously NOT a programming language - but, sure, it kinda sorta qualifies as machine-speak in a way, right? 4:36 PM sng yeah because I really want to talk about the user/programmer relationship. the give and take (give and build?) that happens there. I'm just going to use darktable as an example of how that works in both good and bad ways. # Blurbs ## Urbz Window Planter If space is really tight, consider the Urbz Window Planter, a small plastic orb that moves your counter top garden to the wall. It will attach, and I mean really, solidly attach, to any non-porous surface—windows, a tile backsplash, bathroom mirror, and more. I even got it to stick to some very smoothly varnished wood, although that wasn't quite as secure. These little planting pods are also easy to move around if you change your mind about where to put them. There's a water catcher so your floor won't get wet, and I was also pleasantly surprised to find that window plantings did not fry in summer or suffer from our cold winter. You will want to stick with sun-loving plants if you put the Urbz in a window, but I had great results growing everything from succulents to herbs in the course of my testing. —Scott Gilbertson ## Root Pouch