6FPS V8#3: The Olympics

6FPS
Written By Chuq Von Rospach

6FPS V8#3: March 9, 2026

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

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

Know someone who might want to subscribe?
Want to see previous issues? Visit here: chuq.me/6fps

 

Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

It now feels like spring around here. We had another snap of cold weather, but now we’re seeing temperatures into the 50’s and the days of frost seem behind us. The Daffodils agree, and are getting ready to bloom. Also, mowing season is about to start. 

I’ve been trying to get out birding at least once a week, and it’s been nice to get that on a bit of a schedule. I’m well ahead of last year’s results, and it feels like the winter birds are starting to depart. The first Rufous hummingbirds have been reported in the county, and they are often the first spring birds to start arriving. 

I started a secret (for now) project

This last month I started having discussions about a thing. Unfortunately it’s not a thing I can talk about quite yet, but I’m really thrilled at the potential opportunities. It is something bird related (no surprise), but it’ll be another month or so before things hit a point where I can share what’s going on.

Shop Update

It’s been a few months since I’ve talked about the shop, but I’ve been busy in there. When last I updated you, my plan was to bring in a flip top stand for the planer and the jointer, and so I did — one by Powertec that is well built and worked fine. 

I hated the setup almost immediately, because it meant a lot of friction between me and my tools — at least ten minutes of setup to switch between tools, and the portable stand I put the table saw on worked okay, but in practice it meant 15 minutes or more just to get the saw ready for use. As someone who’s trying to minimize this kind of friction in my life, this just wasn’t acceptable, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it for a while.

So I turned to the time honored tradition of watching shop videos, and I ended up seeing one shop where he’s put the planer underneath the table saw on a sturdy cart, and I liked that idea. 

So now I’ve done the same thing, with the jointer on a second cart with the mini router table stored underneath it, and now I can get to any of the tools in about two minutes by wheeling them out into the middle of the shop and plugging it in. I’m (finally) happy with the shop layout, and I’m only on plan, um, G (I think). I also spent a couple of afternoons re-organizing the drawers and getting everything accurately labelled again.

Once I got that sorted out, I finally built my long delayed lumber rack, which now lives out in the main garage area, and all of the lumber and scraps that have been piled up all over the shop are now on the rack and organized, and the shop is clean and uncluttered. 

I’ve got the next two projects moving forward, both of which will require me actually putting finish on them. And I have some thoughts on more shop improvements now that I have the core pieces in place in a way I’m happy with. That flip top cart is in storage for now, but I’ll likely bring it out and put the sander and grinder on it, freeing up work table space I can use to build out a better setup for the miter saw. 

It’s now fun to be out there puttering instead of wondering how to make it work for me. 

Content Authenticity

I recommend to you this video from Brian Matiash on Adobe’s Content Authenticity tools:

Is AI Ruining Photo Authenticity? Here’s the Solution.

It is by far the best and clearest explanation of what these tools can do and how to use them that I’ve seen. I’ve been meaning to implement them on my images via LightRoom for a while, but now that Brian’s done such a nice explainer on how to set things up and why they matter I’m going to make sure I get that done. Very well done video. 

Want to dump Ring? Security Camera alternative

Were you as annoyed by the Ring Super Bowl ads as I was? Are you unhappy with a vendor that shares video off your cameras without asking permission? I used Ring doorbells for a while long ago, but was unhappy with their privacy practices, so I ultimately threw them to the curb. When we moved here to Kitsap I set up everything using devices from Eufy, and I’m overall really happy with how they operate. 

Eufy is owned by Anker, a company I’ve found turns out good quality items. This place had a number of those old style two-lamp floodlight setups, and I replaced those with the Eufy camera equivalents. I also replaced both doorbells. Along the way I’ve added two of their battery/solar cameras to cover the driveway and the water feature, and I’ll; be adding one more soon to watch over the garden area. 

The software can have a few quirks — it amusingly defines coyotes and raccoons as pets, and when the bears show up, it’s 50-50 whether they get flagged as a human, but it all works reliably. In the dead of winter the solar cameras discharge enough that I usually have to pull them down once to charge them up, but that’s about the only maintenance I do on the setup.

You have the option of storing videos locally and on their cloud, or adding a local device to store them on site. If you choose the on-site option there are no monthly charges, which is nice. 

If you’re considering options to Ring, take a look at Eufy. I’ve been quite happy with them. 

See you next issue!

What’s New From Chuq

The Olympics

A Surprising amount of my time in February was consumed by the Olympics. I run hot and cold on them; among other things, while the International Olympic Committee isn’t the most corrupt organization in sports, it’s only because FIFA deserves a life achievement award for that. 

With the NHL players being able to play in the Olympics, I had high hope for some great hockey, and I’ve been a curling fan for a long time. Add to that the women’s hockey and that means a lot of good content to fill my time.

I want to give NBC and Peacock some love here: while some of the earlier Olympics were painful to watch because NBC insisted on making them convenient to broadcast and had a strong preference to personality fluff pieces over, well, actually showing the competitions, I was really impressed with the quality of coverage overall, and the solid way they made content available on Peacock, both live and available for replay (one exception: ice skating got pulled down fairly quickly, reportedly because of music licensing restrictions for the pieces used in skater’s routines. unfortunate). 

A typical day had us getting up in the morning, around the time the last evening events were going on, and picking up a hockey game or a curling match, and grabbing a second one before things wound down for the day. Thanks to the replay availability we would often pull up a hockey or curling video that we’d missed by sleeping, and in the evening, we’d take in Mike Tirico’s hosting the NBC/Peacock prime time coverage to see what else was going on. 

I want to call out just how well that show was produced every night; they brought in what can only be called an eclectic group of people to act as reporter/commentators throughout the two weeks, including Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart and Stanley Tucci, and man, it worked. Tirico hit just the right tone in his comments and interviews, and I felt the events they covered were reasonable and really well products. So overall, it really impressed me and made the Olympic experience very enjoyable. 

Another thing I noted was that when reporters interviewed athletes after events, they were actually asking difficult questions, and getting some interesting an sometimes uncomfortable answers out of them. This really impressed me, given how often these interviews are so often cliche ridden and content free. Not here, and well done.

One other thing I did I normally don’t do is watch the opening ceremony, because for the most part I find them boring and meaningless. The one done in Milan and Cortina I thought was surprisingly well done, if still effectively a non-stop commercial for the Italian board of tourism. I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. One really nice thing they did was since the athletes were separated across three distant locations, they set up small places in the remote locations to allow athletes there to march even if they weren’t in the main arena — a really nice touch that allowed the athletes to feel a part of the opening ceremonies. I hope all Olympics adopt this one. 

How were the athletics? Impressive. I’d never paid much attention to Curling Mixed Doubles until this year, and it’s an interesting tweak to the standard 4 person team: it’s two people (one male, one female) and it’s 8 ends instead of ten, with a couple of stones pre-placed. This is all designed to encourage offense, and it worked. 

Sweden beat the US for gold in mixed doubles, Canada beat the UK for the mens gold, and Sweden beat Switzerland for the women’s gold, and Switzerland performed much better than expected here to get Silver. The US did okay, losing the bronze medal game in both and women’s. Overall, the quality of curling across all of the teams was incredibly strong, and it was a fun two weeks watching all of the matches. 

Women’s hockey of course came down to US vs Canada, with the US women beating Canada for the first time ever in an Olympic game to take gold. The US men also won the gold for the first time since the 1980 miracle game, ending a 46 year drought. 

And then, unfortunately, the US men did a bunch of stupid things, starting with having Kash Patel (who took a government jet at government expense to Milan) into the locker room, sucking up to Donald Trump (who said some typically mysoginistic things, totally on brand) and generally acting like stupid bros and tarnishing their special moment. As a result, some of the Americans playing in Canadian cities are finding out that Canadians weren’t exactly happy with some of the statements that came out of their mouths, and I expect this unhappiness will not fade quickly. The US men’s team built a lot of goodwill with the win, and then pissed most of it out the window with their post-game behavior and statements. 

To be honest, it’s not at all surprising that a bunch of jocks acted like a bunch of jocks, and athletes (pro and not) do tend to be more conservative and less educated than the general population, but they could have helped push the sport forward a notch or two here in the states, and with their mouths, chose not to. Sigh.

And of course, when they went to see Trump in the White House, he fed them McDonalds. Also totally on brand.

The women, on the other hand, have dealt with this with grace. They have quietly turned down Trump’s token offer to visit (twice), and have been defending the men’s team as being supportive of them, which is true of many of the players on the mens team — just not the loud ones, and I do wish some of those supportive men had been louder at disagreeing with what was said and done, but at the time, it didn’t happen. So to me, this team has permanently tarnished my view of them. Extremely talented but ultimately the kind of bro dudes I find it hard to support and cheer for. 

Slate has some good coverage of this: Donald Trump Got Exactly What He Wanted Out of the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team

Recent Photography

As I create new images and re-process older ones, I post them on my site in the Recent Work area. 

My big outing this month was to Ridgefield (see the piece in What’s New for the photos), but I also was out an out a bit and took some nice shots with the phone. My favorite is this one of the Poulsbo marina.

For Your Consideration

Birds and Birding

Photography

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

Free Wallpapers just for Subscribers

New Wallpapers (January, 2026). A new set of 12 wallpapers are now available. 

You can download this new set from the 6FPS Secret Wallpaper. The previous set of wallpapers are now with the full public set at Public Wallpaper page.

These are available only to you, my favorite people who happen to be subscribers to 6FPS. The previous set of images I released here are now available to the general public.

Download an E-book

I have eight e-books available. All are free for you to download and read with no obligation. You can download them from my e-book page on the web site. 

These are the books that are available:

  • Birding 101: Hints and Tips for the New Birder

  • Merced National Wildlife Refuge

  • And the Geese Exploded: A Life With Birds

  • Birds of Santa Clara County

  • 2021.1: A Year of Transitions

  • 2020.1: Images from the year when Covid changed everything

  • 2019 (1)

  • 2019 (2)

About 6FPS

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqvr@gmail.com). 6FPS is Copyright © 2025 by Chuq Von Rospach. All Rights Reserved.

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. 

And with that, I'll see you in 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. 

Where to Find Chuq

Chuq Von Rospach

Birder, Nature and Wildlife Photography in Silicon Valley

http://www.chuq.me
Next

Fort Flagler, Washington