Covid-19 Chronicles

A Newsletter by Chuq Von Rospach

V2#3 - April, 2020

Welcome to the latest issue of 6FPS!

Changes coming to 6fps (in a good way)

Well, this week I wrote a fairly long blog post, in which I announced that Blogs are Really Most Sincerely Dead. The casual irony of that statement is not lost on me. If you read the piece, it'll become a little clearer that what I was really saying was not that the technology is dead, but that it's now impossible to make the blog the centerpiece of your online universe and hope for it to draw a significant audience. The eyeballs have moved on, and are now found on the social sites. If you want to reach them and engage them, you have to be there.

If the piece did anything useful, it's this: it annoyed Dave Winer, who responded on Twitter with a link to the site Is RSS Dead?, which mostly confirmed to me he didn't really read my piece, and definitely didn't react to or refute anything I said. But I expect Dave is sleeping better at night knowing he put my in my place in the universe. (Kids, if you don't recognize that name, Google it...)

The bottom line for 6FPS is that I'm shifting it to monthly. I noted in the piece I was going to target the first thursday of the month, but thinking about how I get this written and produced, that's not a good day. Instead, I'll be aiming to get it out the second monday of every month, since practically speaking, I need half a day on a weekend to get everything finished and cleaned up.

I also plan on tweaking the look and content a bit. Nothing major, I don't intend to make it significantly longer, but I do think I'll do more with images and maybe add in a second original piece most issues. I'm just starting to think through design changes, so I expect you'll see them starting to happen in May.

I would love to get this back to a shorter length but every two weeks. I'm not sure how easily that'll happen but I'm going to explore it. That to me would be a perfect cadence, if I can schedule the time reliably to make it happen. I've gotten better at producing this, maybe I can now. We'll see.

In some ways, this will be a second generation of the newsletter, where I take what I've learned in the last 18 months and iterate it into something better. This first series of issues was me trying to figure out if the format worked for me -- and for you. I think that's a big yes, so I'm going to start investing more time here and make it the true center of my online existence to share things with all of you.

I'd love to hear what you think about this piece. Just... try not to simply send links to sites that don't actually respond to what I said, okay?

The new ebook: lessons learned

The new ebook AND THE GEESE EXPLODED has been out not quite three weeks. I admit I had zero idea what (if any) reception it would get. I mentally decided if it got 100 downloads I'd be happy.

Three weeks later, I'm nearing 1,000 downloads. I've heard from many birders who loved the book, and not a few non-birders who have told me it helped them understand why birding is so attractive to those of us who are birdwatchers. The response has been incredibly gratifying and positive, so thank you all. If you haven't read it yet, well, it's still available at the link just above.

I don't know how much money it raised for my local Audubon chapter. I do see that about ten people followed the donate link, and I've gotten a couple email me to tell me of donations that add up to around $50. Every bit helps, so thank you all who did donate.

What's next? I don't know yet. Lots of projects, mostly small, juggling for attention. I'm leaning towards a second book around a favorite mammal of mine, the Sea Otter, but I don't know for sure yet. I do know that the format -- writing about why the topic matters to me, with pictures relating to it -- works for me, where many other things I've tried in the past few years always felt rather flat and lifeless. This seems to be the way I want to present things, so I'll iterate on a new topic and try to do it better.

There are a few problems in the book, all minor. A couple of typos I'll blame on Covid-19, because I wasn't able to focus as well as I normally could, and so I didn't catch some things I should have. Also, there were two pictures I ended up feeling like I processed them wrong. They're fixed online, but I'm leaving the PDF alone -- it's "patina". And I decided not to fully typeset the text, and I realize now I should have taken a bit more time bringing in the curly quotes and making the text a bit prettier. It's fine, but as someone who's done printed copy before, I see them missing and it feels a bit unfinished to me. Still, I'll call it a good first effort and an A- grade for it, so I'm not really complaining. Just understanding how to get better next time.

Covid-19 chronicles

Three weeks ago I knew nobody who had the Covid-19 virus. Today, two co-workers have people in their houses dealing with it. I long ago stopped being able to count the number of people I know affected directly or people they live with on both hands and both feet. I'm watching the struggles of New York City to get this under control with sadness. Here in California we were pretty aggressive at reducing contact, and Santa Clara has been one of the better counties in the state at observing the restrictions, so overall, it's not as bad as it could be. The number of hospitalized for Covid-19 seems to have stabilized and may be dropping a bit. Same with ICU beds and ventilators in use. I'm heartened when I look at the stats every day and see we have 1,500 beds available for surge capacity with zero being used. It seems like the county will be lightly hit if we keep this up.

That said -- statistically I realize I'm going to lose people I know to this. Maybe people close to me. It seems inevitable, and there are times when I've locked up trying to get my head around that and unable to focus. I seem mostly past that right now, but I have no idea how I'll react if and when that happens. If you feel stressed -- there's a good reason, and it's fully deserved. Don't feel bad about feeling bad. Find someone to talk it through with and realize we're all there, too.

In the last three weeks I've gone out to run errands twice. I'm going to do one more short errand trip between writing this and publishing it. I may try to get out to a park and get a walk in; I've been really bad about the exercise and I'm feeling it. Unlike a lot of places, Santa Clara County hasn't closed most outdoor areas, although some have the parking lots closed to reduce how many visit, and others have blocked off half the parking spaces and converted some loop trails to one-way trips. Those seem like smart options and I'm glad to see it.

I've been talking with some good friends about when we'll be past this enough to open up on the restrictions safely and how we'll do that, and I'm still very much in the "I have no real clue" part of the graph. I do tend to think it's likelier to be June, not May, and if we open early, as I'm sure some parts of the country will do, the resurgence of infections is going to be painful and kill people where it could be avoided. California, I think, will work to avoid that. We'll see. That said, when people like Ammon Bundy want to play the defiance game, my hope is the authorities will just let them, and we can then watch them get sick and deal with the reality that the virus doesn't care what their political ideologies think. I am way beyond caring if those people get sick and die, my only worry is the people trying to do the right thing they'll infect along the way. Bundy, it seems, has decided that being entitled is the same as being immune, and I wouldn't mind at all if he was proven wrong about that.

I'm really tired of him and people like him. If anything positive comes out of this, I hope it's that people like Bundy get educated about reality over ideology. If it has to happen to them the hard way, well, not like they weren't warned.

May all of you be safe and stay healthy, along with those you care about.

Just for subscribers!

As you'll see below, the third set of wallpapers have been released to everyone. That might make you believe that there's a new, fourth set just for you, my loyal 6FPS readers. And you would be correct!

The fourth set of wallpapers are now available only to you, the wonderful people who have subscribed to this newsletter. You can find them on the new 6FPS Secret Wallpaper Hangout. The previous sets have now been released to everyone, and they are on the Desktop Wallpapers page.

This fourth set is all birds, and I have to admit the female wood duck is one of the best photos of a bird I've taken in a long time.

The plan moving forward is to release a set of 12 3-4 times a year. Every time I do the previously secret set will be made public, and subscribers here will get access to the new images. This new set has more bird images in it as well as some black and whites, and I hope you find them interesting and worthy of being stared at as you work on your computer every day.

On with the Show!

And with that, on with the show! And thank you for being part of this.

What's New?

Here is what I've written since the last issue:

  • Yellow-Billed Magpie (video): something that was an idea that didn't exist at 8AM sunday but was on Youtube by 3PM. I expect to see more video "things" happening in the next couple of months....

  • A Bit of a Personal Update in the Days of the Covid

  • Acorn Woodpecker

  • My Little Rabbit Friend

  • Come (Virtually) Bird with me for a good cause!

Email This

Photos: Nuttall's Woodpecker

A Nuttall's Woodpecker visiting the Suet Feeder at McClellan Ranch, Cupertino, California. 

For Your Consideration

I wrote a book!

Download Now!



I'm thrilled to announce the results of a secret project I've been working on the last few weeks. I've written a book. The title is "... And the Geese Exploded" which if you read my blog was the title of a piece I wrote about this year's trip to Merced National Wildlife Refuge, and it was the thing that made me realize I needed to write this book.

This book is available for free -- no strings attached, not even an email address. The download is in PDF, which is easily readable on most computers and tablets (and it looks awesome on my iPad in the Books app, if I do say so myself), and also exists as a hardcover printed copy, but only one copy of it exists, I have it, and no, you can't buy it. But the ebook version is all yours to enjoy.

The book is a combination of a series of short essays about my birding life, how I feel so deeply for birdwatching, and some of the aspects of being a birdwatcher that mean so much to me. It also includes over 100 of my favorite photos that I've taken over the last decade here in the greater Bay Area, out in the central valley wildlife refuges, and here in the western coastal states in the U.S.

Interested? Head over to the download page where you can find out more about the book and how it came to be, and to grab a copy for your enjoyment. If you know of someone you think might enjoy this book, please share this with them, and pass this along through your social channels to help reach others that might want to have a copy. 

About 6FPS and Chuq

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqui@mac.com).

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find.

See you soon!


And with that, I'll see you in May with the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along.

Until then, take care, and have fun.

Chuq

Copyright © 2020 Chuq Von Rospach, All rights reserved.