Winter Along the Gunflint Photography Workshop
Last weekend I drove up to Grand Marais to take Winter Along the Gunflint Photography Workshop with Bryan Hansel. It has been a decade since I took a workshop and Tammy decided it was time for me to get out in the field and shoot for a weekend so she got me this great workshop for my birthday. I was eager to go, and also a little anxious since I hadn’t done more serious photography for a few years. I was rusty for sure.
Our workshop started on Friday with some classroom learning, and then we shot sunset from the Campground Beach in Grand Marais. The winter part of the workshop was tested with the lack of any snow to speak of in Grand Marais. Hansel adapted with it though and still got us plenty of great spots to capture beautiful images.
That first night I got this sunset view of the last rays along the Campground Beach.
We were up early to get the sunrise the next morning. We drove a short distance to Cascade River State Park and captured the first rays that morning.
We did find some snow when we went in to Elbow Lake. We setup these classic snowshoes on the lake.
That afternoon the winds were going pretty good and I was hopeful that we would get some big waves coming in on the Lighthouse in Grand Marais.
The wind continued and the waves were steady as the sun set.
Hansel led a great workshop and I learned a number of new things from him. His Lightroom skills were top notch and he showed us some processing techniques that were incredible. I also liked the fresh perspective he brought to composition.
How I burned $10,000
Meme coins are one of the parts of the crypto ecosystem that I have no interest in. They are pure speculation. I’m fine if folks want to do that, but it’s not my thing. I’ve never owned any Dogecoin. A little over a year ago when BONK launched as a Solana version of Dogecoin I didn’t pay any attention. 🪙
I received alerts of incoming transfers of BONK tokens into my Solana wallet. It turns out as an owner of Famous Fox NFTs I received special airdrops of BONK tokens. A lot actually. I was annoyed by the clutter and without thinking much about it burned 394,305,096 Bonk tokens that were cluttering up my wallet. 🔥
Well, as it turns out BONK has traded actively. My nearly 400M burned tokens were worth as little as $70 at the 1-year low of $0.0000001763… and $10,000 at current price the current price of $0.00002536. 😳
I guess “easy come, easy go” as they say. On the bright side I don’t have to bother with the tax treatment of the air drop. 🤷♂️
Posting this on leap day means I’ll only revisit this mistake once every four years in my On This Day page.
Reviewing my On This Day page today made me do a double take — so few posts. Then I remembered it is leap day, and February 29, 2024 is only the 6th leap day since my blog was started. 😁
On Artist Point in Grand Marais in pre-dawn light to catch the sunrise.
Lake Superior, Grand Marais.
First time winter hiking today with these hiking crampons. Amazing stability and still easy to walk on.
Suggestion from Bryan Hansel to find your photography style — go through your photos for the year and pick your favorite single one from each month. Not your best, or most liked. Your favorite! Look at those twelve photos and reflect on what the common threads are between them all.
Ice Climbers along the Cascade River.
How is it possible that I’m just now discovering how amazing Swedish Cream is. Wow.
Geared up for sunrise winter photography.
Out early shooting the sunrise. Good waves on Lake Superior.
Bryan Hansel getting everyone started on our workshop.
Morning coffee and pastry at 190° Coffee and Tea. Early morning snowfall. Heading on to Grand Marais.
ENS: Blockchain Native Organization
The section from the ENS DAO February 13th update impressed me.
In January 2024, the ENS Protocol registered 39.8k new .eth domains, bringing the total to 2.1 million. The protocol generated revenue of $1.3 million during this period, all of which was allocated to the ENS DAO. The number of Ethereum account holders with at least one ENS name increased by 33.9k, totaling 818k. There were 31.7k primary ENS names set, making the overall count 737k. Additionally, 8k new avatar records were created, reaching a cumulative total of 149k.
Ethereum Name Service is doing an amazing job showing how a crypto service can work. This is a $15.6M run rate driven completely off the protocol. That all goes into the DAO with a robust governance structure. As an ENS token holder I can vote in the DAO, or delegate to others.
They are creating the blueprint for how you can create a blockchain native organization.
We’ve lived in this house for over a year and I’m now ready to tackle figuring out what uses so much electricity. Usage is far higher than I would expect and is higher in the winter than in the summer! Looking for some answers with Advantage Electric on it. ⚡️
Tammy and I finally watched Oppenheimer tonight. Incredible movie. Everything about it pulled me in.🍿
This chart of SPSC performance since IPO is amazing. Compared to the high growth tech giants — outperforms AMZN, MSFT, GOOG, AAPL. 🤩
Tyler and I watched TRON: Legacy again tonight. It is a great movie and made me think it would be fun to watch in the Vision Pro in 3D. 🍿
Game Store Tour
Tyler and I had the day to ourselves and we decided to start with a trip to Tower Games to look around a bit, which then extended, and ultimately turned into an ad hoc visit to five gaming stores in town with recommendations from my brother-in-law Dylan.
-
Tower Games: Nice store, conveniently located for us. Great selection of board games and a lot of RPG stuff, including miniatures. Wide selection of Magic cards.
-
Level Up Games: We missed this place the first time as we were looking for it because it is in the basement, so you have to walk down to get in. Great selection of video games, board games, and much more. One of the few that sold single Pokemon cards, but focused on higher end cards. Great selection of used video game gear.
-
Gamezenter (formally Fantasy Flight): This place is huge and was very busy! Huge variety of board games, and a ton of Magic stuff. They also sell beer, wine, and some snacks. They have a large area with tables for gaming and there were a bunch of people there. Parking lot was very full.
-
Source Comics & Games: By far the largest selection of comic books of any of the stores. Also general selection of books and anime stuff. Wide array of RPG items. Overall the broadest selection of any of the stores.
-
Dreamers Vault: Wide variety of games. They sold single Pokemon cards and also had books of cards.
Tyler said Level Up and Source were his favorites of the day. I would agree with an emphasis on Level Up. However, Gamezenter seems to be the place to go if you want to actually game with other people.