Month: September 2012

The other day a friend of mine asked why I like taking photos with my Leica (manual focus and exposure) and Nikon (big dslr). 

“Isn’t it hassle, to take the photo, then goto to your mac and upload. then post online”

The answer is yes. It’s far more easier to take a pic with my phone and post from there.  I love sending photos to Tumblr, Twitter and Foursquare from my phone. It’s a breeze and I often will do that.

But the fast majority of the photos I take are with my Leica and dslr. 

For me, it just slows things down. A lot. And that feels like a feature, not a bug. 

When you shoot with a dslr or a manual camera (or any other “unconnected camera” for that matter), you take your time making the photo. And then you wait to see it. I avoid chimping. I’ll wait to review my snaps. Sometimes I’ll wait a few hours or a day. Sometimes longer. 

And then when I do sit down, I’ll sometimes find something wonderful my phone could’t have captured. 

Don’t get me wrong. It’s true, the best camera you can possibly use is the one you take with you — which is increasingly our mobile phone. 

But as I get older, I’m trying my best to appreciate and respect delayed gratification. So much so that getting back to film might be the next thing on my list. 

There is likely a lesson about delayed gratification for startups — but I’ll save that for a future post. 

Earlier today, someone asked me how many Tumblr followers I have so I decided to check it out. Turns out I have a ~28k followers on Tumblr (it’s not public))

Interestingly enough, I have ~28k on Twitter. The actual difference is quite small 

Made me pause and think about how much overlap there is between folks that follow me on Twitter and Tumblr. 

I’m not sure. 

I do know there is some overlap between the folks I follow on Twitter and Tumblr but it’s not a 1:1 match by any means. 

I feel like content that flows on each network is different. Example: take Yale Univesity. Here’s Yale’s Twitter account and here’s Yale on Tumblr. Extremely different. 

And individuals use Tumblr and Twitter in different ways. My friend Fred rarely tweets his Tumblr posts where other folks tend to send all/most of their Tumblr posts to Twitter. 

My sense is that these services are extremely complimentary and yet distinct in their experiences. 

At least that’s how I use these services. I’ll create or reblog a something special I see on my Tumblr dashboard — sometimes it makes it Twitter and sometimes it doesn’t. And things I create on Twitter aren’t a good fit for my Tumblr.

However, I really couldn’t imagine a single day going by without checking, contributing and participating in each one. They each bring something so unique to my daily life and I’m grateful for that. 

A few months ago, I wrote this post about my frustration with our health care system – specifically about user data. It was after my own interactions with my doctor and hospital.

Well, since then I discovered that back in 2005, I had an MRI at a different hospital for the same foot.

I completely forgot about it but the 2005 scan was in my records somewhere. Not the results of the scan but just the fact that I had one done. 

So my current doctor asked me to get an actual copy of the 2005 MRI report and send it to  him.

Naturally I followed his recommendation.

Here’s the process I had to go through.

First I had to go online and download a request form 

Then, after completing the request form, I had a choice to snail mail or fax it back. I faxed it. 

Then I had to wait to get a thing in the mail that confirmed my request and it came with an order form because there is an administrative fee to get my data.

I filled out the confirmation form along with my credit card info and faxed it back. 

I called many times to see if there was a way to expedite this request but was told this was the process. 

And after all of this, I got the report last week (two months later) but not the actual MRI scan itself which my primary physician wants.

This whole thing is kinda sucky.