For everyone following along at home: this website is worth a click if you’ve never seen it before!

Rinsing rice does wonders. Without a rice cooker you’ll need to strain it, but it’s still worth it.

1. Measure rice by volume. Let’s say 2 cups worth
2. Put into fine colendar and rinse until the water comes out clear. Mixing with your hand will speed this up. You can also do this in the pot you’re going to cook in and dump water out
3. Put strained rice in your pot
4. Add cold water. The ratio of water to rice matters a lot and varies by species of rice. The ratio will be printed on whatever container your rice came in. For Jasmin rice it’s 2 water to 1 rice, so for our two cups of rice you’ll need 4 cups of water
5. Cover, turn on medium-high heat, being to boil. Don’t go far because it will boil over when it does boil
6. Turn the heat down to low, crack the lid, and set a timer. The amount of time needed will vary based on rice. For Jasmin, 15 minutes is a good check-in time
7. Pop the lid. See water bubbling up? If yes, replace lid and come back in a few minutes. If not, use a wooden spoon to get a peek at the bottom of the pot. See water? If yes, replace lid and come back fairly soon to check again. If not, your rice is done. Turn the heat off, fluff, enjoy.

We made rice for years using this method and it is a very reliable cooking method. Rice doesn’t really leave you a lot of wiggle room though, which is where a rice cooker comes in handy. As an added bonus, some rice cookers come with water lines in them. I measure my dry rice into the cooker, rinse using the cooker, dump most of the water out, and fill to the appropriate level.

Different species of rice have very different textures and somewhat (subtle) different flavorss.

Some rice, like basmati, can be cooked using the pasta method (intentionally use way too much water and strain the excess off after the rice is cooked). I guess all rice could be cooked that way, but you would be giving up some starch.

I totally agree. It seems like the strong suite for micro four thirds. If you’re willing to play the equivalence game a FF body with a slower prime (say f/2.0-f/2.8) is generally as compact as M43 body with a fast prime (say the Oly f/1.2s). Likewise, a number of the long Oly lenses, like the 100-400, are actually FF lenses with a M43 mount. Yeah, you get the 2.0 crop factor, but if you’re willing to shell out for a higher resolution FF body you can just crop.

That said, on pure size a rangefinder M43 with a somewhat slower prime can be truly compact. It seems like that’s where the M43 market would be, especially with the advent of high res FF bodies that crop well like Sony’s R line and A1, Nikon’s Z8/Z9, and Canon’s R5. Heck even Fuji’s X-H2 and XT-5. But since neither Panasonic or OM Systems are making these bodies anymore they must not have been very popular :(

Does the stacking software handle alignment as the earth rotates? If so, that’s pretty cool. I’m tempted to take a stab at this if that’s the case.

The GX9 is a rangefinder camera without much of a grip, so the body is pretty compact. The G9M2 on the other hand is a M43 sensor in a FF body. Here’s the GX9 vs G9:

The thing you’re asking about is an adapter. You could get f mount to: z mount (Nikon mirrorless), e mount (Sony), x mount (Fuji), etc. Not sure about Canon, they’ve been pretty protective of their new mount. It will add some overall length though.

If you’re looking for smaller gear, going to a mirror less system will result in a smaller body guaranteed. Modern glass can be smaller, but that’s not always the case. Especially for APS-C lenses. Most of the mirror less OEMs (Sony, Canon, Nikon) have been favoring FF glass. The glass will happily mount on a crop sensor body, but it will be physically larger than necessary.

If you want to save some size and mass, micro four thirds is worth a look. Something like the Olympus E-M5 or even E-M10, or Panasonic GX7/GX9 is pretty compact, and there are a bunch of compact micro four third zooms and primes out there.

No worries! It’s something I finally noticed in other people’s photos recently and now I’m trying to duplicate it in my own. I don’t want to tell you how long I’ve been dabbling in photography before coming to this realization.

For OCD symmetry, I would have walked a meter or so to your left and lined up with the bricks that lead to the light pole. This would let you be square to the building across the street too, assuming the bricks run at a right angle to it.

Nice picture otherwise! People are always interesting subjects.

TIL: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum

In publishing and graphic design, Lorem ipsum is a placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the visual form of a document or a typeface without relying on meaningful content

Homes in Detroit look awesome and are super cheap, especially for what they could be. They’re going to be a ton of work and if you have kids the schools are horrible though :(

The gentrified pockets look amazing, but drive quite a premium.

<e>I meant to reply to your reply further down. oh well</e>

I wonder if it’s just the era of architecture. Detroit has some truly interesting looking homes. Here’s a random collection from a quick trip around street view:

Detroit or another rustbelt city?

TIL. From Wikipedia:

On April 8, 2019, private equity firm Great Hill Partners acquired Gizmodo Media Group—including The Onion, The A.V. Club, and Clickhole—from Univision for an undisclosed amount.[148] The properties were formed into a new company named G/O Media Inc.[149][150] In March 2024, G/O sold The A.V. Club to Paste Magazine and was reported to be seeking buyers for The Onion.[151]

On April 25, 2024, CEO Jim Spanfeller told employees that G/O had sold The Onion to Chicago firm Global Tetrahedron, which is owned by Twilio founder Jeff Lawson, with former NBC reporter Ben Collins serving as CEO.[152] As a condition of the deal, the new owners will retain the website’s staff and keep it based in Chicago.[153] The name “Global Tetrahedron” is taken from a “fictional evil megacorporation” that has been the subject of a running gag in The Onion articles.[154]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion

That was absolutely the case until very recently. Qualcomm bought Nuvia, a start-up that was stacked with former Apple engineers, a few years ago. These processors are just now coming to market. Laptops with these processors are benchmarking around MacBook levels (slightly behind single core, slightly ahead in multi core).

It’s very hard to argue against Apple hardware and battery life. Maybe with windows moving slowly toward ARM they’ll catch up some. It’s going to be very tough though - Apple has full control over their hardware, which meat they can optimize their OS for it.

I really hope the snapdragon x laptops gain some traction. I recently went laptop shopping and what I wanted (good to great display, stays cold, good battery life) line up really well with a MacBook/MB air. I just couldn’t stomach the stupid mark-ups for memory and storage. I wound up with a Lenovo 7x slim. Upgrading to 32 GB memory and 1 TB storage was around $115. The non-emulated performance on windows is solid. Emulated is generally ok for my usage. I’m probably going to try Linux on it when I have a light week, but I’m somewhat wary of the impact that will have on battery life.

There’s absolutely zero wrong with older cameras, they really highlight that good photos are all about finding interesting subjects and framing (your first shot is tops). I say this as someone with an A9, but IMO the biggest benefit of a more modern body is the AF and potential the burst rate. It’s always nice seeing photos from my D40 pop up on our digital frame. Other than me knowing what camera took them, you would never know.

Do you mean an A7 III with kit lens for 500€ and A7 IV for 600€?

If yes, those numbers are way too low - at least for my market (USA). I would suspect scam/stolen/broken.

That said, if they’re close to you and you can meet up to try the cameras out you might score a good deal. If the post is legit, and the cameras aren’t broken, these will move fast. How long has the listing been up? If it’s been up for more than a day or two and you’re in a densely populated area then it’s not looking good.

If you were trying to get in and out quickly, that could explain the soft photo. You might be able to figure out where the camera was trying to focus using Canon’s image editing software, whatever that might be (sorry, not a canon person).

I agree with the sentiment of the post above this one, so I’m chiming in here.

At 55mm and 1/125, this photo stood a good chance of being sharp unless you have very unsteady hands. Where was your intended focal point? That could help point to what went wrong (eg the intended focal point could be better located, the camera missed focus, the camera moved during the exposure causing blur, etc).