Photographer Influences

6FPS V7#6: June 9, 2025

E-mail: chuqvr@gmail.com • Site: https://chuq.me

BlueSky: (https://bsky.app/profile/chuq.bsky.social)

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Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

It’s June, with the sun setting after 9PM, and spring is starting to shift into summer. That said, we’re still getting a few days of rain. It’s mostly past stove weather, but we’ve only had one day where the air conditioning kicked in. I’ll take this nice, mild weather any day.

I have all the annuals planted and Laurie has the veggie garden going. All looks well, and I’m hoping for a nice supply of Dahlias this year.

Birding Notes

I’ve been trying to get out and bird regualry, and it’s been paying off. My year list is at 130 species, compared to 99 at this time last year (and 132 total for 2024). I’ve added ten new species to my Washington list and six to my Kitsap County list, which is nice. The spring trip to Ridgefield surprised me at how productive it was — and there are still 4-5 species being seen there (like Redhead) I missed on that trip that tempts me to go again, but mostly, I’m trying to identify and explore interesting places within 60-90 minute drives). There’s also a group in Port Townsend that organizes boat tours and it’s almost time for their puffin tours out to the nesting areas on Protection Island, and I expect to sign on for one soon.

Overall, by far my best start to a birding year since moving north, and I’m finally starting to feel like I know where to look and when to visit. Still a lot to learn, of course.

I’ve also been trying to up my ear birding game; given my hearing issues there’s only so much I can do, but I’ve been getting better at some IDs. Merlin helps here, by helping me understand what calls are there so I can try to insert those calls into my brain for later reference. One of those things that takes time and practice, but I think I’ve finally added Western Flycatcher to my in-brain Merlin analyzer.

No more Mastodon

I have been trying to be more active on the socials, and to be honest, I’ve become a pretty happy Bluesky user (so please look for me and connect there!). Mastodon, which I was a huge an of early in the “Elon has ruined twitter” days, failed miserably in terms of becoming he place to be, and I found I went days without thinking of looking there — and when I did, I wasn’t finding much of interest to me.

I could go into a long diatribe of what Mastodon did wrong, but at the core it was never turned into something that was easy for non-nerds to use, and there were too many self-defined dictators of one and content explained to others how those others were using it wrong, which didn’t make it an inviting place. Way too much tone policing, which some parts of the nerd community loves, as long as it isn’t done to them.

So, after thinking about it, I deleted my Mastodon account. It is no more, so if you try to find me there (which basically nobody was, anyway), you won’t find it. And I don’t feel guilty concentrating my socials time on Bluesky now.

I’m now trying, one or twice a day, to find something in my feeds interesting and worth reposting into the feed, and trying to be more conversational as well. That’s where, for instance, you’ll find things like a picture of one of the deer that has moved in with us here at the house.

I caught a freaking cold

I did something I haven’t done since the Covid shutdowns started: I caught a stupid head cold. And it’s been so long l did this it took me a while to realize why I felt like crud. I ran a fever for a couple of days, and in general, took the better part of a week to get past it and feel normal again. And in fact, other than actually catching it, it was pretty much nothing worth writing more than a paragraph about.

Blood donated!

Around the first of May, I was finally given clearance by my doctor to donate blood again, something put on hold due to me holiday rapid unplanned vacation. But since I also got my measles vaccine booster, which needed 30 days wait before I should donate, it wasn’t until Mid-may that I was able to go in and donate. All went well, the donation too 4:30, and I’m now a two gallon donor since I moved to Washington (plus around a gallon in San Jose before moving north). Makes me happy to have this back on the schedule.

More Minidramas

Last month we lost our veterinarians when the practice closed. This month, it turns out the group maintaining our sprinkler/irrigation system suddenly decided to close down those services — after we had everything turned on for the summer, but before we could get a couple of minor issues fixed. So… I’m now researching replacements, and I guess I need to talk to vendors and figure out which one to work with moving forward.

Fortunately, since it’s been a cooler and wetter spring, there’s no crisis here. Yet.

It’s always something.

Peter David, Rest in Peace

I was saddened, but not surprise, to see the report that writer Peter David passed away. He had been quite ill for some time. (and no, him being my age doesn’t make me feel better….)

Long, long ago when I was a young aspiring SF writer, I wrote a story in which two of the bad guys were named Peter and David.

Some time later, I found out that Peter wrote me into a comic when one of his armored vehicles ran over someone and the sound effect he used was "CHUQ CHUQ CHUQ". I was privileged to interact with Peter on a few occasions during the time I was active in SFWA, and he was always a friendly and generous person to me.

Rest in peace to a wonderful man and amazing writer.

See you next issue!