path: root/stack.txt

People email me all the time to ask how I make luxagraf. I never know what to make of this. I just write, take pictures and combine them into stories, which I recognize is not particularly helpful. Or it is, I think, but it's not why people email me. They want to know about at the tools I use. Which is fine. I guess. Consumerism! Yeah! But seriously, don't buy any of this stuff, you don't need it. I don't need it. I could get by with less. I should get by with less.

Still, for better or worse. Here are the tools I use.

### Notebook

My primary "device" is my notebook. I don't have a fancy notebook. I use whatever I happened to grab on my way out of the bus. I have quite a few (from moleskins to cheapo spirals). I'm not all that picky about notebooks, if they have paper in them I'm happy enough. But I could devote thousands and thousands of words to pens. For what seems like forever I was religiously devoted to the Uniball Roller Stick Pen in micro point, which I used to swipe from my dad's desk drawer back in high school. It's a lovely pen, I was gratified to note it was the pen of choice at the lawyer's office where we finalized the sale of our house. And yes, I totally took one. But truthfully I don't use these much anymore. The last time I went to get a box they were out so I grabbed a couple of Uniball Vision pens, which also fill my two primary requirements in a pen: 1) it writes well 2) I can buy it almost anywhere for next to nothing.

In a moment of non-frugality I did once buy a fancy pen from Japan that takes Parker ink refills which I can never find so it ends up spending more time shoved in a drawer than in my hand.

### laptop

My laptop is a Lenovo x240 I bought off eBay for $300. I upgraded the hard drives and put in an HD screen, which brought the total outlay to $550, which is really way too much to spend on a computer these days, but my excuse is that I make money using it. 

Why this particular laptop? It's small and the battery lasts quite a while (like 15 hrs when I'm writing, more 12 when editing photos). It also has a removable battery and can be upgraded by the user. I packed in almost 3TB of disk storage, which is nice. It does make a high pitch whining noise that drives me crazy whenever I'm in a quiet room with it, but since I mostly use it outdoors, sitting around our camps, this is rarely an issue.

Still, like I said, I could get by with less. I should get by with less.

### Camera

I have used many different cameras at different points in time on this site. I went around the world the first time with a Canon point and shoot of some sort. Then I got a Panasonic GF-1, which I loved. There's also quite a few pics taken with other micro four-thirds cameras I tested for Wired. 

But then I got into old lenses. Or I got into the idea of old lenses. And then I bought a very expensive Sony A7ii, a full frame mirrorless camera that makes it possible to use legacy film lenses. 

I bought it specifically because it's the only full frame digital camera available that lets me use the old lens that I love. Without the old lenses I find the Sony's output to be a little digital for my tastes. The RAW files from the A7ii have wonderful dynamic range, which was the other selling point for me. That said, it's very expensive. You should not buy one, the Sony a6000 is very nearly at good and costs $500 ($400 on eBay). In fact, having tested dozens of cameras for Wired over the years I can say with some authority that the a6000 is the best value for money on the market period. But doubly so if you want at cheap way to test out some older lenses.

And all of my lenses are old and manual focus, which I prefer to autofocus lenses. I like the fact that they're cheap too, but really the main appeal for me with old lenses was the far superior focusing rings.

I grew up using all manual focus cameras. Autofocus was probably around by the time I picked up a camera, but I never had it. My father had (still has) a screw mount Pentax. I bought a Minolta with money from a high school job. Eventually I upgraded to a Nikon F3 which was my primary camera until 2004. While there are advantages to autofocus, and certainly modern lenses are much sharper in most cases, neither autofocus nor perfect edge to edge sharpness are significant for the type of photos I like to make. 

###lenses

One thing about shoot manual lenses is that there are a tone of cheap manual lenses out there. I have seen amazing photos produced with $10 lenses. Learn to manual focus a lens is like opening a door into a secret world. A secret world where lenses are cheap. The net result of my foray into this world is that I have a ridiculous collection of lenses. And we live in a bus, lord knows what I'd have if we had more space.

That said, about 90% of the time I have a very fast, relatively lightweight Canon FD 50 f1.4. I love this lens. I really love it.

At the wide end of the spectrum I have another Canon, the FD 20mm f2.8. For portraits I use the Minolta MD 100 f2. I also have this crazy Russian fisheye thing I bought one night on eBay after I'd been drinking. It's pretty hilarious bad at anything less than f8, but it's useful in the bus at times.

I also have, cough, a few other lenses that I don't use very often or that I use for a while and pass along via eBay. So far though the three listed above are my primary lenses.


### Phone/Tablet/drone/wrist tracking device thingy

Haha, you're kidding right? Yeah I Don't have any of those. I'm one of those people. I pay for everything in cash too. Fucking weirdo is what I am. I told you you didn't want to know how I make stuff.

### Software

The laptop runs Linux because everything else sucks a lot more than Linux. Which isn't too say that I love Linux, it could use some work too. But it sucks a whole lot less than the rest. I run Arch Linux, which I have written about elsewhere. The main appeal of Arch for me is that once I set it up I never have to think about it again. Because I test software for a living I also have a partition that hosts a revolving door of other Linux distros that I use from time to time, but never when I want to get work done. When I want to get work done, I use Arch.

I don't run a desktop GUI, just a window manager (Openbox) with a menubar (tint2). I launch apps and other stuff with dmenu.

Because I am hopelessly bored with technology, I stick mainly with simpel, text-based applications. Almost everything I do is done inside a single terminal (urxvt) window running tmux, which gives me four tabs. I write in Vim. For email I use mutt. I read RSS feeds with newsbeuter and I listen to music via mpd. I also have a command line calculator and a locally-hosted dictionary that I use pretty regularly.  

I do use a few GUI apps: Tor for browsing the web, Darktable and GIMP for editing photos, Stellarium for learning more about the night sky, and LibreOffice Calc for spreadsheets. That's about it.