6FPS V8#8: On Island Time

6FPS
Written By Chuq Von Rospach

On Island Time

6FPS V8#8: August 10, 2026

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

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Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

Somehow, it’s August. Time is flying. Already the sun is setting before 9PM. We’ve so far avoided most of heat and bad air, but that’s changing this week as the winds have shifted, the smoke is coming over the Cascades from the fires and we expect temps in the 90s most of this week. Ugh. 

The crazy thing here at the house this month was a short power outage, where when the power came back on, half of the house circuits — all of them ones powered by the generator — didn’t come back online. The group that maintains the generator got someone out the next day, and it turns out a wire came loose, and it happened to be the one that signaled that it was okay to detach and send everything back to city power. The tech said he’d never seen this behavior before, but I’ll never complain about a five minute fix, although spending the better part of a day without water (because the well was one of the dead circuits) was not great. Still, we’re used to power outages here, so we know the drill and we have various things set up and staged for when it does happen. 

This little glitch reminded me that I’d intended to add a whole house surge protector to the main circuit board — we got one for the generator box when it was upgraded, so I scheduled in the electrictian. While we were at it, we had him also replace a faulty switch in the bathroom (the fan timer had stopped timing) and for some reason, we had never replaced the fluorescent under counter lights in the kitchen, so we had new units placed there. The light we get now is amazing, and I have no idea why we didn’t do it before now, and the surge protector is just good insurance, especially in an area like here where outages and power glitches are reasonably common. So one more little step forward in making this house as close to perfect as we can. And as of now, there ae literally 3, and only 3, incandescent bulbs left in the house, and they are above the stairs and up on a cathedral ceiling and multiple electricians have looked at them and shuddered, so we just leave them that way (and off). 

I went back to Roku

When we upgrade the main TV a couple of years ago we went with a Hisense TV, which is based on Google TV. The previous TV used Roku. Initially, we really liked the Google TV setup, but we found over time the quality of the software degraded, with Apps that started randomly crashing or having feeds fail (not good in the middle of a hockey game!) and just an overall sluggishness that got really annoying. If the TV was five or six years old I might be more forgiving, but to turn into crap in two years? 

So we made the decision to go back to Roku, and plugged in a 4K streamer. We’d also put a smaller TV in the kitchen for Laurie, and almost immediately added a Roku to it because the software on it was terrible from day one. 

Why Roku? Why not an Apple TV? To be honest, I’ve never loved the Apple TV box interface, although I appreciate how much cleaner it is in terms of user tracking and privacy. The real kicker for me, though, is that the Apple TV won’t support two remotes, and Laurie and I both keep a remote handy, so we aren’t constantly tossing one to each other while watching things here in the great room. 

I have run a single Apple TV box — until now — downstairs in the office area, in part because I’ve always felt I “should” be using on on all the TVs in the house. I have never come to like that damned remote, though, so I finally gave up, retired it, and now all three TVs here are Roku boxes. And while the interface isn’t the most wonderful thing in the world, it’s steady and reliable, and I’ll take that. 

New Wallpapers!

If you look below, I’ve released a new set of wallpapers for your enjoyment. It’s a variety of images from the last ten years, and I hope you enjoy them!

I bought a new iPhone….. 17?

Last fall, I decided to skip the iPhone 17 and keep my 16 and wait for the 18 to upgrade. With the ongoing component and RAM shortages that led to Apple recently raising prices on everything except the phones, I was not looking forward to what I expect to be a notable price increase on the new phones in the fall. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Myke and Jason on the Upgrade podcast, and someone asked them this exactly question, and their suggestion was to consider buying an iPhone 17 now if the prices expected on the 18s worry you. 

I realized they were right. Laurie is on an older phone and was also looking at an upgrade this year, so after talking about it a bit, we’ve both upgraded and we both now are happy in iPhone 17 pros (no, not orange). 

If you’ve been pondering this as well, consider buying this year’s phone now rather than paying more for the fall phone when it’s announced. I’ll stick with this 17 until at least the 19 or 20 model, depending on whether prices moderate or not. 

The iPhone 17 pro is quite nice, by the way, and is a nice incremental improvement over the 16 — but if it weren’t for the pricing we’re seeing, sticking with the 18 model would have been fine for me. But by upgrading now, I can take myself out of the upgrade market for two or three years while waiting to see how everything shakes out.

Jane Yolen RIP

I am saddened to share that author and editor Jane Yolen has passed away at age 87. Jane was an amazing person that I was privileged to know. When I was a baby SF/F writer she was an early supporter and mentor, and as an editor, she purchased one of my stories for her anthology Xanadu 3, one of my favorite stories one my highest profile sale in my short career.

She was a strong supporter and mentor to many writers over the decades, and a great person to talk to for advice and occasional cheering up. And she was a joy to be around. I hadn’t talked to her in a few years, but she was one of the people I did stay in touch with after I chose to focus on my computer career instead of writing, and now I realize I won’t be able to say hello to her again, which makes me sad. 

In the Workshop

Last month I showed you the prototype of this thing:

Here is it in it’s final location:

There were changes made along the way, in part because I made a mistake and made the inset opening rotated by 90 degrees on the wrong side of the tray (oops). That said, once I realized that, it was pretty easy to change the tray so that it looked as if I always intended it to sit like this. 

For my first real project where fit and finish matter, I’m pretty happy with the results. The miters are clean and tight. There’s only one spot where I messed up the woodworking and there’s a gap. Adding in the felt bottom was a lot more difficult than I expected, but it came out right with only one small corner patch needed, and you have to look hard to see it, One of the side pieces I only had to re-make four times == because twice in a row I cut the miters facing the wrong direction. Oops. 

I love the finish — it’s a wax and linseed oil combo that’s easy to put on and very forgiving, and adds a nice tone to the cherry wood that I quite like. 

I define this as a real success, in that I really like the result and I don’t feel like I should throw it out or immediately re-make it. That said, I will re-make it at some point, because I learned a lot along the way, and if I were to make it again, I’d make a few changes. I really would prefer it to sit rotated 90 degrees as initially planned, and in retrospect, the sides could be an inch shorter. 

I give the thing an 8.5 out of ten. It’s not “I’d give this to someone else to have” good, but it’s definitely “it’s good enough for me to use without being embarrassed if someone looks at it” good. 

Not bad for a first serious project. 

What’s up next? I have a few trays I want to make out of the cherry, although I have less of it than I expected, but I should still be able to make 2, possible three trays out of what I have. 

But when we cleared out the kitchen so we could get the new lights installed, we decided to change how we’re storing the spices — and there’s nothing we can find available that does what we want to do. So, of course, I’m going to build a couple of spice racks. Out of Ash wood, which is why I made the sojourn over the ferry to acquire it. This project is simpler than the trays in some way, but will require a fair bit more milling of the wood to get the thicknesses and sizes I need, and much of that is going to be learning-as-I-go time again. I’m working on the design to know what pieces I need to cut now, and I think it’ll be another fun project. 

My Favorite Thing (this month)

This month my favorite thing is a book. One of the changes I’ve been making in the last few months is changing where I’m spending my content-intake time. I’ve unsubscribed from a number of YouTube channels and a couple of podcasts, things where I came to realize I was watching them more out of habit than enjoyment (and along the way, cancelled my patronage of three creators, but added patronage to three new creators). 

That’s freed up a few hours a week to use on other things, primarily books, and most of the time, audio books. I was well behind on my goal of 40 books this year, and I wanted to get that back on track. 

So I looked into my unread Audible queue, and pulled out a book I’ve been meaning to listen to. That book was Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth, the fifth book in the Stormlight Archie, and the final book in he first cycle — he intends a second set of five book to finish the entire series. 

The book needs 55 hours of audio to listen to. The printed book is 1350 pages. This series is not a casual commitment, but my word, it’s incredibly well written, and I’m happy to say that, after six weeks of listening, that Sanderson completely nailed the landing.

These books are, effectively, two full-length novels intertwined in a complicated mosaic, and complemented by at least two novella-length side-pieces. The writer part of my brain does not understand how he can make this work without the thing imploding into a black hole of a disaster — but he does, and all five books have been both this good and this long. It’s an effort to read this series, but it’s an effort that pays off and will leave you satisfied. 

But seriously, start with the first book of the series, the Way of Kings. Don’t try to pick it up in the middle. And realize you’re going to be be at it for a while. 

See you next issue!



What’s New From Chuq



On Island Time

I needed to head out to the Renton area to run buy some wood for an upcoming project. Checking the maps, I could drive across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in about an hour and fifteen, or I could grab a ferry and get there in about an hour and a half (plus, of course, wait time for the ferry). 

I ended up going by ferry; I timed it pretty well and got to the ferry about 10 minutes before it loaded, and I got to sit and watch as we made our way across the water towards the mainland instead of dealing with the traffic hassles around the bridge. 

I am not used to city traffic any more; it’s not a problem, but since moving out here to Kitsap, I’ve really come to appreciate the slower, less crowded, less hurried place we’ve chosen to live. 

It got me thinking of ferries and island time. I first heard of the idea of island time from the book On Island Time by author Hilary Stewart, who lived on Canada’s Quadra Island for over 30 years. In the book she talks about the joys and challenges of living on an island where you’re dependent on a boat or ferry to travel off of it. 

Stewart’s book is long out of print, but there are used copies around if you’re curious. She’s also the person who introduced me to the meaning behind the carvings in First Nations artwork, and if that intrigues you, her book Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast is a great introduction and still available. 

Kitsap County is not an island, but a peninsula, but in many ways, it feels like one. To get “to the city” (aka Seattle, Tacoma and the other larger towns on the mainland) you can take a ferry, or the bridge, but there’s a visible and psychological separation between “here” and “there”. Since moving up here I’ve only used ferries twice, which surprised me when I realized it, but since moving up here we really haven’t done much — almost no — exploring in and around Seattle. 

Now that I’m doing woodworking on a regular basis, I need wood (duh). I can buy basic types of wood at the big box stores like Home Depot, but they tend to be expensive and fairly low quality. To get better wood, I need to visit a hardwood vendor. It turns out the nearest one to me is in Port Townsend, about an hour and fifteen drive away, or in Auburn, about an hour and a half. But because visiting Auburn requires the bridge or a ferry, it feels “far away”, and so going there feels like an expedition, not drive. 

That, in some ways, is Island Time. You can’t just go, you have to plan the trip. It’s only recently that I’ve sort of wrapped my head around this, and how, honestly, it’s kind of a silly thing — even though it makes sense to me to try to avoid driving into the city traffic if I can help it. 

After a while you just find yourself planning your trips. Where we live, the nearest place we can buy milk (ignoring the very expensive gas station convenience store) is 10 minutes away, and the nearest supermarket is 15 minutes away. A quick trip to Home Depot is 20 minutes each way — pretty much everything is at least 20 minutes each way, so every trip is to some degree an expedition, to think about what other things to do while out and how to optimize the trip. 

And to be honest, I love it. I wouldn’t want to live on an actual island; we actually talked about that before we moved and ruled those areas out of our search. We wanted this less crowded, slower pace to life, and to some degree, rush hour today is when both the UPS and Amazon deliveries show up at the same time. 

But both Laurie and I have been talking about widening our view some; it turns out we’d both been planning visits to the Tacoma Zoo at the same time — and I realize I need to be more willing to head “to the city” for things, rather than my default of heading out to Port Angeles or Port Townsend for supplies. Which in some ways is silly, because it’s faster to go to Tacoma than it is Port Angeles, except it’s “far away”. 

Because Island Time. 

Sometimes the way my brain works amuses me. And sometimes you realize that by driving to the store.



Recent Photography

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

No new photography in July, but I have been making progress on a very long term project of mine: digitizing and cleaning up all of my older images from my film library, so they are usable and accessible o me again. More on that project later once it’s further along and I start posting images. 

This image is from the early 1990’s, shot on Velvia with (I believe) a Minolta 7Xi camera, and it’s an Anna’s Hummingbird sitting on her nest with two chicks. This happened in the atrium of Apple’s DeAnza 3 building, where my desk was at the time, and I’m happy to say despite a few complications, she successfully reared and fledged those two chicks. She was a favorite of many in the building and was amazingly tolerant of people close to her (we did put up barriers to minimize that) and people with cameras and long lenses….

For Your Consideration

Birds and Birding

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

Free Wallpapers just for Subscribers

New Wallpapers (August, 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
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