Bun on The Singemonkey

November 12, 2024

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:18:51 +0000

Bun staying out of the summer breeze through the open window by making rare use of this cat tower room that was once the fave of our dear departed Skitten.

June 26, 2024

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 09:59:14 +0000

Caught Bun’s little fuzzy face this morning next to my old Fuzzface.

June 10, 2024

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:12:58 +0000

We got more secure AirTag holders for the cats and changed the batteries because it’s been a year. Naturally Bun here thought she’d been subjected to war crimes.

We chose AirTags because they only require this annual battery change. The range is limited (about 10m) but they will ping off any Apple devices with the “find my” app enabled - which in practice gives them endless range at least insofar as getting close enough for fine tracking.

April 15, 2024

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 15:37:42 +0000

I grabbed a pic of Trinket aka Bun aka Bunbun just before taking my dad’s camera back to him. It was my first ride since I recovered from a bout of COVID at the beginning of last week. I discovered there doesn’t seem to be a way to take an “easy” ride in Cape Town thanks to being in the foothills of a mountain. Still needed to change my shirt on the other end.

July 16, 2023

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 17:06:22 +0000

Boi has finished his eight weeks of isolation and is hanging out on the couch while I read Tintin. Bun’s in a sock drawer. There’s a fire.

January 27, 2023

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 11:49:02 +0000

Surprise guest. @withoutaleaf found this bunny while shooting at Wynberg Park. It may have been born there among feral rabbits, but it’s super friendly, so it may have been abandoned. Luckily a person nearby us with an eight-year-old daughter is coming to take it to its forever home this afternoon.

January 21, 2023

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 10:05:21 +0000

Bun’s current top-favourite spot. We call it her tube.

November 20, 2022

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 17:44:07 +0000

Bunday morning.

October 30, 2021

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 22:20:10 +0000

Perched where she can see who goes up and down the stairs.

August 18, 2021

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 08:45:47 +0000

Morning Trinket.

Do people only still make black and white photographs to seem cool and sophisticated? The answer’s a little complicated. Knowing why you’d prefer a picture in black and white means you’ve spent a little time thinking about photography - which makes you a more ‘sophisticated’ appreciator of photographs. So then, in a sense, yes. But I can give you that ‘sophistication’ in not many words: Eliminating colour makes you more conscious of form, light and shadow, and detail. So, like any abstraction, it shows you things that that the full set of information may conceal. It helps you see the trees for the wood.

August 11, 2021

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 16:42:36 +0000

Having the house thoroughly cleaned is a deep joy for us but a nightmare for Trinket for whom the vacuum is a combination of the devil, Godzilla, and Voldemort. She’s fled the house for most of the day.

July 15, 2021

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 17:21:41 +0000

My lenses arrived. Literally the best customer service I’ve ever experienced. They suggested I cancel my initial purchase to take advantage of their sale that was coming up in a few days. When Aliexpress wasn’t cooperating on giving the promised free shipping they gave me a discount for another portal to the value of the sale - and then stayed in touch via whatsapp through Fedex’s idiocy until I had the lenses. @ttartisanofficial is a company that can be proud of its customer service and it speaks well of Chinese customer service in general.

July 01, 2021

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 16:56:23 +0000

The world has been too long deprived of Trinket! … or Bun as she’s known around here. I recently saw that a Youtuber I enjoy calls their cat, “Pigbunny,” which is a perfect cat name.

My camera seems to be working fine with a different memory card. I’d already decided if it packed up, I’d just get another ‘obsolete’ model like it. This sensor apparently has quite the reputation for getting analogue-looking results. I’ve ordered a pair of native TTartisans lenses for it - a 50mm f1.2 and a 17mm f1.4 (cheap as chips at <US$200 for the pair despite very good reviews - which I think will be a super-versatile pair. It makes photography difficult - manual focus lenses shooting at fast apertures with very little depth-of-field to nail the focus. But it’s exactly like the film camera I’ve used for so many years. And when I do get a sharp picture at f1.4 and 1/60th it makes me very pleased. It’s a big chunk of the experience of shooting film without the cost… or the tedious scanning.

August 06, 2020

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 12:26:39 +0000

And now it’s a series. Trinket is enjoying the plushness of the winter duvet for her daytime snooze. I’m using all manual everything here. I don’t say that as a brag, but to reflect on how easy it is with a ‘modern’ mirrorless camera. There are a couple of new developments that excite me in this regard. The one is the massive viewfinder resolution and magnification of Sony’s latest camera. Over 2000 pixels across and 90% magnification. That’s like the best of both worlds. The what-you-see-is-what-you-get of mirrorless with all the fine visible detail of an optical viewfinder, plus the large size via the magnification of the best old film SLRs. That will make manual focusing even easier on mirrorless cameras. And then I’ve found out a Chinese company that’s made a knockoff of Leica’s 50mm f0.95 Nocton lens. The Leica costs $13,000 (no that’s not a typo). The TTartisans 50mm f0.95 costs $750 (that’s not a typo either) and seems to have better centre sharpness in tests than the Leica. Since Leica mount to mirrorless camera adaptors are tiny, it’d make the perfect portrait lens for a Fuji camera. But that gold-leaf thin depth of field at f0.95 would really be helped by a large, high-res viewfinder to aid focusing. Great times for users of dedicated cameras even as people are writing hot-takes about their death.

August 04, 2020

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 21:13:18 +0000

Not a single pic posted in July. Well, I’ve not gone more than a handful of kilometres from home. I’ll probably be one of those people with no pictures of this time that anyone in the future could recognise as being from the pandemic. But then I suppose there’ll be no shortage of pics of empty streets and masked faces. I’ll be pleased to look back at a picture of Trinket spotted through the kitchen window getting up to sneaky shenanigans.

November 22, 2019

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 14:18:18 +0000

Trinket is being pretty conventional this summer - taking her 19 hrs a day mostly in bed.

October 03, 2019

Thu, 03 Oct 2019 12:32:45 +0000

Trinket is also a big fan of the balcony in spring.

September 03, 2019

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 09:25:26 +0000

Bun in repose

August 09, 2019

Fri, 09 Aug 2019 10:24:31 +0000

A different kitter. Trinket has a new game of trying to catch her tail under the banister.