Calvin Jones has been a constant in the bike industry for just about as long as I've been riding bikes. The YouTube channel brought him to even more people than his books and in-person sessions did, and I'm sorry to see him go.

Calvin Jones Retiring After 28 Years As Director of Education at Park...

Park Tool has been manufacturing bicycle specific tools since 1963. Based out of St. Paul Minnesota, we are the world's largest bicycle tool manufacturer. A long-term dedication to quality,...

www.parktool.com

Horsetail Fall, Yosemite, February 2025

My favorite photo of 2025, this was taken on a solo trip in the van this year. Val and Ainsley were out of the state for a week, so I took the opportunity to head to Yosemite and work from the van. It was during the time that the annual "firefall" phenomenon was occurring. The waterfall doesn't flow every year, and it wasn't heavy at that time, but there was enough. Likewise, the clouds have to cooperate to allow the orange glow to really get going, and they did. I was pretty happy to get out there to see and photograph it.

Senator Mark Kelley, on Hegseth's retaliatory demotion of him:

“My rank and retirement are things that I earned through my service and sacrifice for this country. I got shot at. I missed holidays and birthdays. I commanded a space shuttle mission while my wife,” former Representative Gabby Giffords, “recovered from a gunshot wound to the head—all while proudly wearing the American flag on my shoulder,” he said in a statement on X. “If Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in our country’s history, thinks he can intimidate me with a censure or threats to demote me or prosecute me, he still doesn’t get it.”

Absolutely despicable.

Hegseth’s Appalling Vengeance Campaign

The defense secretary’s attempts to demote Senator Mark Kelly are a pernicious form of political bullying.

www.theatlantic.com

"Why the Supreme Court Is Giving ICE So Much Power"

Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge, writing at The Atlantic:

The Constitution incontestably applies to federal immigration officers: The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and excessive force and requires a warrant to search a private home. The Fifth Amendment guarantees due process and bans self-incrimination. The Sixth Amendment establishes a person’s right to counsel. Why, then, are they getting away with not following the Constitution?

I thought that the Trump administration was simply not enforcing existing laws and protections, but it turns out that there is more of a legal basis than I understood. This is an article well worth reading.

Why the Supreme Court Is Giving ICE So Much Power

The Constitution inarguably applies to federal immigration agents—but the Supreme Court has taken away the hope of ever holding them to that standard.

www.theatlantic.com

A Little Camera Nostalgia

Mike Johnston, who used to write on his own website, The Online Photographer, now writing under that name at Patreon:

What is the camera you're happiest you bought, and which is the camera you most regret buying?

I loved thinking about this. It's hard to name one camera on either end of the spectrum, honestly, and probably the hardest on the "regret" end of things. But in the end, it's my Sony RX100Ⅴ. I can't say I hate—or even really dislike—it, which would be much more interesting. Instead, I'm almost completely apathetic about it. Looking at my Lightroom catalog, it appears it's only taken 315 photos since I bought it in 2018. Only one of them is something I'd consider a favorite, although I do quite like that image. I bought it to have something small and easy to carry around with while biking, as well as something to give my daughter to shoot with on vacation. In reality, if I'm going to bring a non-phone camera, I'm bringing a different one. And my daughter can't be bothered to use anything but her phone. So, it sits in a drawer unused. I really should sell it.

There were others I'd consider regrettable, I suppose. I briefly owned a Canon digital camera, which was fine, but I didn't love, and it was an expensive dalliance. I also briefly owned a Fuji X100 that I didn't gel with. That said, I made a photo with each of those cameras that I'd consider favorites.

As far as the camera I'm the happiest I bought, I have several contenders. I love my current Leica Q2, and the Nikon D700 is also right up there. I had a great time experimenting with the Nikon V1, which I wrote about quite a bit on this blog at the time. I made a favorite picture of my Grandpap with it, as he was looking at a photo book I had made for him.

That said, I think if I have to pick one, I'd have to settle on the Nikon N90s, my first Nikon. That, the 28mm ƒ/2.8 lens I bought with it, and the 70–200 ƒ/2.8 I picked up later really got me going for quite a while. Unfortunately, many of my favorite photos from that camera were stolen before I got a film scanner, or were never scanned. Still, I loved shooting with it, and I might still be shooting with Nikon if they'd taken competing in the digital realm seriously sooner. They're making good stuff again, but once I sold off my lenses, I decided I wouldn't go back.

Ars Technica:

The Splay was crowdfunded in 2021, and its maker, Arovia, describes it as the “first fully collapsible monitor and projector.” In short, it’s a portable projector with an integrated fabric shroud that can serve as a big-screen (24.5 or 34.5 inches diagonally, depending on the model) portable monitor. Or, you can take off the fabric shroud and use the Splay as an ultra-short-throw projector and cast a display that measures up to 80 inches diagonally onto a wall.

When using our camper van, I've sometimes wished for a good way to watch video in the evening. There are portable TV solutions, but they take up too much space for my liking, and are too fragile for the environment they have to survive in, especially for the relatively small amount of time I'd use one. The Splay seems interesting in that it packs up small, so that it would be easy to pack and transport safely, but big enough to be a useful display in the van, and perhaps even a projector capable of other uses, like on a sheet outside the van at night. It's pricey, and its bulk when set up means I'd really like to try one before thinking about purchasing one.

The Splay is a subpar monitor but an exciting portable projector

Splay can be a monitor and takes a lot of the stress out of projectors, too.

arstechnica.com

Anna Holmes, at The Atlantic:

In 2020, more than half a century after its initial release, A Charlie Brown Christmas hit the Billboard Top 10 for the first time; in 2021, Billboard ranked it the greatest holiday album ever.

The year after that, the Recording Industry Association of America certified sales of 5 million units, making A Charlie Brown Christmas the second-best-selling jazz album in history. The top spot goes to Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, but Sig Sigworth, the president of Craft Recordings, told me that the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack may surpass Kind of Blue by hitting the 6 million mark as early as next month.

This is a lovely article about a beloved show and, in particular, the music that defined it.

The Sound of a 'Charlie Brown' Christmas

Growing up, my holidays were profoundly shaped by the soundtrack to a classic animated special.

www.theatlantic.com

It’s the Saturday before Christmas. There’s definitely a situation brewing at Nakatomi Plaza.