Kerobian Time

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  • Playing With a New Camera

    TLDR: I bought Sony a6700, it is awesome, but I have some nitpicks about ergonomics.

    At this point, I’ve had my good old Canon 850D for over two years now, and it has served me quite well. I bought it to re-learn the basics, re-ignite the passion for photography, and get myself an extra-work activity that I truly love.

    Given the intention, the 850D has done its job brilliantly! It offered (well, it still does, I still have it) all a beginner could want and much more. So much so, that I slowly came up with a list of features that I’d like to have on my next long-term camera.

    Some must have features from the list are an IBIS, more megapixels, cause I often re-compose in post, better and faster autofocus, a joystick, etc.

    For the past year or so I’ve been primarily looking into full frame mirrorless cameras. Mostly older models ranging from Nikon Z6ii to Sony A7 III, you know, cause I cannot justify a $4k+ sticker price of a new camera for the life of me (plus my wife would kill me if I ever dared to make the purchase 😅).

    So, at some point, I came across Petapixel’s review of Sony a6700, and boy did it send me down the rabbit hole. I’ve probably checked out every single review of the camera that’s out there.

    Now, obviously it did not offer a full coverage for my feature list, it has an APS-C sensor, smaller resolution, etc, but, It felt like a good compromise between price and features.
    So, after sitting on that thought for a couple of weeks, I bought it, with the 18-135 kit lens.

    At this point, I took it to a couple of walks with me, as you can see from the photos below, and I have to say, that, functionality wise, it does everything I wanted it to do.

    Compared to my 850D, it has one additional control knob, which I use for exposure compensation, and it has been a game-changer so far.
    Because it has superior subject tracking, I don’t even feel the need for an autofocus joystick anymore. I simply put the focus square on the subject and re-compose. As expected, it does a wonderful job at it.
    As for the “lack” of megapixels, I made a vow to take a slower approach and do a better job at composing in-camera, to not have to do it in post later on.

    Have some nitpicks regarding ergonomics though. For instance, I think the grip could be improved a bit. My pinky constantly folds underneath the camera as there’s not enough room for it on the grip.
    The AF button would’ve been so much easier to use if it was placed just a bit to the right, you know, something similar to what canon does.
    These are certainly not dealbreakers, and I think I’ll get used to it after some time.

    Overall, I think I’ve made a good choice, and I quite like my new camera. With me being a one camera one lens type of person, I hope it’ll serve me well for the upcoming years, and looking forward to taking it out for various trips soon.

  • A Word About Audio Books

    I’ve always been skeptical about the audiobook format. Being conservative in nature, I always preferred the good old feeling of a paper book in my hands. You know, the tactile feeling of turning pages, the smell of the paper, and all that good stuff.

    The thing is, over the years, my schedule got busier and busier, and I started to have less and less time for out-of-work activities. Unfortunately, among other things, casual reading also kept getting pushed further and further down the priority list.

    At this point, I’ve had a constant nagging feeling that I’m missing out on some good sci-fi stories, and around December last year, I finally decided to lax my stubbornness a bit.

    To quote Mark Twain’s adaptation of Plato’s saying: “Necessity is the mother of taking chances.” And so I did.

    I deployed an audiobookshelf instance on my homelab. Moved my podcast subscriptions from AntennaPod to it, and started digging the interwebs for some good sources of books that I’m particularly interested in.

    Given the growing monopoly, and extortionist terms and licenses of audible (read amazon), I decided that I’ll stay as far from it as I can. I’ll try to purchase audiobooks from the authors directly if possible, if not, then I guess I’ll skip, and look for other titles.

    With the above said, it is very important to appreciate projects like LibriVox. It is entirely based on contributions of volunteers, and all recordings are in the public domain. At the time of writing, it has over 20k titles, which pretty much guarantees that anyone can find something for their taste.

    I’ve already found some great titles from authors like Asimov, or H. G. Wells.

    Pretty much since December of last year, I’ve completed 8 books, and I must admit, I’m really glad I decided to give this format a try. It is an ideal pastime when commuting, and in general, when your hands and eyes are busy with something else.

    Soo, I’m happy to report that the experiment went quite well, and I’d certainly recommend it to anyone with a busy schedule.

    Cheers!

  • A Year Into Homelabbing

    A bit over a year ago, I bought a used Dell Optiplex 3010 computer in mint condition for a very cheap price, specifically to turn it into a server.

    Initially, I was looking for something in a 1-liter form factor, but had a hard time finding anything remotely usable for my purpose in my area.

    Stumbled upon a classified ad. The specs, and the price looked pretty attractive, so I decided to go and check it out in person.

    A couple of things I instantly liked about the Optiplex were that it’s dead silent off the shelf (hand?) and can be placed on its side horizontally. This meant I could place it in a drawer and, ideally, forget about it. Also, as a huge bonus compared to most 1-liter computers, I could upgrade its components if needed.

    So, I brought it home, added a couple of SSDs, installed Proxmox, did some acrobatics with VPN to escape the dreaded CGNAT, and started migrating existing services from Digital Ocean.

    Currently, I’m hosting about a dozen services on it, and I have to say, I’m questioning myself why I didn’t start this homelab thing sooner.

    Among other things, it houses Nextloud, Joplin server, Crater invoicing, my Audiobookshelf instance, and a whole bunch more useful services that I use daily.

    If I were to rent servers from a VPS provider to accommodate all of those, I’d probably pay anywhere from $100 to $150 per month, which greatly outweighs the added cost of electricity for running my homelab in my home 24/7 plus the purchase price.

    All in all, I’m quite happy with the experience, would give 10 out of 10.

    It saves me lots of money while being quite useful. It’s silent and almost maintenance-free except for occasional system upgrades, and having to manually turn it on when my electricity goes out.

    I’ll probably write another article about my specific configurations, and which services I use at some point, but no promises.

    Cheers.

  • A Lazy Winter Afternoon By the River Bank

    Yesterday, my daughter was invited to her friend’s birthday party. They were celebrating it in a children’s café near the Hrazdan river, which flows in a gorge though Yerevan.

    After dropping her off, I had a few hours to spare. The weather was quite pleasing for this time of the year, so I decided to take a stroll across the river bank till it’s time to pick her back up.

    Here are a couple of photos that are worth sharing.

  • A Walk In the Park

    One of my favorite spots for evening walks in Yerevan is the WWII victory park. It was built in 1950 on a hill that was then situated right on the city limit.

    Today, the city has grown far beyond it. The surrounding forests that were once planted to make summers in the downtown more bearable and less dusty have been cut down and replaced with houses of wealthy individuals and random residential buildings.

    Despite recent developments in the area, the view of the downtown and surrounding districts from the park remains as magical as I’ve been told it once was.

    Here’s a gallery of some of the photos I managed to capture when I was there on 8 November 2024.

  • A Week In Italy – November 2024

    Last year, at the end of November, we decided to celebrate my wife’s birthday in Italy. Just the two of us, without kids.

    This was actually our second visit to the country, and going back to the same places, Rome and Florence.

    The reason is that on our previous trip, despite the fact that we had only walked from one place to another so we could soak up as much of the local atmosphere and culture, we felt that we barely scratched the surface (obviously).

    Following our urge to experience random discoveries, we would easily cover anywhere from 10 to 15 kilometers on foot every single day, and manage to close the remaining gaps from our previous trip.

    Ironically, I got robbed by very skilled pickpockets on the one occasion when we decided to use the metro 😅.

    That incident, of course, did not taint our overall impressions, and I can truly say that I once again fell in love with the country, the wonderful people, and the Italian culture.

    Here are some of the photos from the trip that I managed to process due to my busy daily schedule.

  • Take Two At Owning and Maintaining a Personal Site

    So I finally found a reason good enough to convince myself to start another “blog”.

    Last time, my primary motivation was to force myself to write and improve my writing skills.

    Not sure how much I managed to improve skill-wise, but I’ve certainly rediscovered that forcing myself to do anything is not a bright idea.

    This time, however, the motivation is quite different and is one that I very much enjoy. It is to own a platform where I would primarily post my photos and occasionally rant or praise various things I come across during my day job as a software developer.

    As a bonus, I’ll also get to stay aligned with the own your data principle, which, for someone who, to put it lightly, does not appreciate centralized big-tech social media platforms, is almost a must-have.

    Long story short, things are looking promising. I’ll occasionally post some of my previous photos here just to provide more context.

    One thing I can tell for certain is that from this point on, this “blog” will be considered my primary medium for sharing photos and other long-format posts.

    Cheers