Jazz cave re-lit, social media cleaned out – Peter’s February in review

My study annex music room annex studio (basically a renovated loft where too many things happen on not enough square metres), which I affectionally call the Jazz Cave, had received a new floor last November. But the lighting was still crappy — LED strips which were now 10 years old, and two of those were very, very tired.

So I got myself a couple LED spots. No RGB stuff, but LED spots that could be changed from warm white to daylight, using the Tuya app. I added three Tuya-compatible LED bulbs to the mix, and lo and behold, the lighting situation has now improved by approximately 148% (this is, of course, a completely unscientific estimate that I just pulled out of my posterior). And when all the lights are on, like now, power consumption for lighting is … let me check… 8.1 Watts!

*This is the view from my recliner. The (very nice) carpet is a recent addition as well.*

The colour temperature of the spotlights can be adjusted to up to 6000K, so I could theoretically use them for photography as well, but I’ll mainly use the Godox strobes (which are now hidden in one of the cabinets) for that.
The spot that lights my desk will be set to 5500K when I work with the Photoshop editor.

My wife suggested that we could create some additional photo stuff storage space by buying plastic crates that could be put under the guest bed that we put there. She’s cute and sweet, but also smart. So we did that, and that made some extra space (cabinet and floor space) available, resulting in a cleaner, spacier look.

*Here’s where things happen. Including creating this post. I need to add at least two framed photos to that wall.*

*I took the opportunity to hang a few more here. As my wife monopolises pretty much all the wall space in the living room for her paintings, I suppose I should take what I can get.*

Reorganising online presence

18 months or so ago, I wrote a Facebook post about self-diagnosis and healthcare avoidance and how that was a bad idea. In that post, I made a reference to the University of Facebook.
Somebody at Facebook didn’t like that, so I was thrown in Facebook jail. Fine. I didn’t use Facebook since.

Earlier in 2023, I decided to completely give up on Twitter. Elon bought it, and I thought, okay, let’s hang around to see it crash and burn. But when he renamed it to X, I had enough.
Since I was pretty busy at work, it didn’t really matter anyway, although some of my friends missed reading about what I was up to.

Only in October last year (when retirement hit), I found out that Bluesky was no longer invitation-only, so I gave that a shot, and it was pretty much a warm bath. For longer-form stuff, I used Substack.

This month, Kristie de Garis, a Scottish photographer/writer, brought to my attention that Substack has had some questionable dealings with white nationalist/nazi content creators.
I decided to research this a little, and it turned out that apparently, Substack has a history of not only allowing (and making money off) controversial content (including well-known quack Joseph Mercola, and Steve Bannon), but also promoting it in their own digests.

So I said goodbye to them too. And since I was busy anyway, I decided I’d see if I could actually set fire to my Meta account, as Zuck has apparently gone over to the dark side as well. That worked too — by now, my Facebook/Instagram account should have ceased to exist.

That means I am now on Bluesky and Mastodon (I’ll have to see if it’s worth it to revive my Mastodon account), but I have no social platform for long form stuff.
Which is why I am now breathing new life in my WordPress site. It used to be just a collection of howtos and informational stuff, but the Month Review you’re reading now is a new addition I cranked up in February.

Resuming studio photography

Now that I have my Jazz Cave back, it was time to do those other things for which this space is actually too small.

So I set up a few light stands with holders for a standard flash that double as a Bowens accessory receiver, put my Godox flashes in the holder, attached a soft box with grid to one, and a snoot to the other, more or less like this:

*Nice of Noortje to remain stationary for the two-second exposure!*

Then I set up some snacks and a glass of wine (yes, this was all in all very enjoyable, thank you), and did this.

Yes, I’m a bit proud of that one. I love how the light projected from the softbox actually looks like window light.

I need to collect more ideas and do this more often. I do feel like I’m slowly gaining traction again, so I’ve also actually started to write out a script to continue the polymorphism (object-oriented programming) series of videos that I started last year on Youtube.

And then, on the very last day of the month, February fucked all the way up with the Oval Office Incident.
This monthly review series is not going into politics, but… let’s just say this is not going down well in the Jazz Cave.