I have been following Adobe Photoshop's efforts in "Neural Filters" for a while now. As you'd expect, they keep getting better and better.

Some... like remapping colors are interesting, but I don't see much use for them for me.

But there are two which have really caught my interest, and that would be "Restore Old Photo" and "Colorize." They show some incredible promise right now and will only keep getting better as AI models and sample data get better.

Take this shot of my grandmother helping baby me eat watermelon...

First I restored the photo, which added clarity, sharpness, and balance... then I colorized it. The result isn't perfect (watermelon is red), but it's utterly remarkable when you consider that absolutely no work was involved! This happened with a click.

The filter can do more than just clarify and sharpen in a smart way, it can also do things like remove scratches and fingerprints with just a click. In this photo of me and my dad, there's a nasty fingerprint in the upper-left corner. Now, I can remove this easily, but it will take some time. But if I don't have any time, I can just run a filter on it. Neural filters don't remove it completely, but it's a very good start. I would spend a heck of a lot less time getting rid of what's left after the filter was run than doing it all from scratch...

Colorization is really hit-or-miss. Sometimes the color assignment seems to be random. Fleshtones always fare the best, but other things are inconsistent and strange. In the photo above, you get objects changing color in different places...

This colorized photo of me in my awesome first car didn't do well at all. My car's grill is pink. The car behind me is half grey and half pink. My family named it the "Grey Ghost" but it's not quite that here...

So colorization isn't always something you'd want to do, but just look at how great the above photo looks when it is restored in black-and-white. The clarity is jaw-dropping. Just look at how it pulls detail out of the hair that wasn't really there...

Here are some other examples of colorization gone wrong...

But every once in a while you hit paydirt. Look at this photo of my grandparents with my mom and her brother. This took one click... ONE CLICK...

It's not just Black & White photos that can benefit. Color photos can be restored as well, and the result is no less striking. It sharpens without weird artifacts and smooths skin without making it look plastic...

Even color photos can be colorized. It doesn't always work very well, but sometimes you get lucky and have better results than if you used "regular" filters (like auto-levels or auto-tone or auto-color). Here's me eating chocolate pudding as a kid that's been restored then colorized...

You can't really see it, but the sharpening and restoration is stunning...

Neural filters and AI are already putting a lot of power in the hands of non-professionals. And will be putting a lot of professionals out of work as time marches on. There was a time that I made a lot of pocket money doing photo touch-up in my spare time. I don't even know if that would be possible today.

For better or worse.

Spring is finally in the air and the bullets are flyin'... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Faux! I have put the "news" in FOX "News" in quotations because anybody who's paying attention knows that it's neither fair nor balanced and is sure the fuck not actual news. It's 1000% propaganda that's mostly exaggerations and outright lies. And now we know that the people actually at FOX "News" know that they are pushing lies. A bunch of internal texts have been uncovered that prove it. This will come as no shock to anybody outside the FOX "News" bubble... but it should be a surprise to those inside of it. Except it likely won't matter, because lies that fit their narrative are better than facts and truth. Which is actually true for everyone and everything.

   
• Down Under! Do yourself a favor and go look at the winners of the Underwater Photographer of the Year awards. Because holy crap...

Winner: Fade by J. Gregory Sherman (United States)

It's incredible how absolutely mind-bending some of these shots are. Well worth your valuable time.

   
• Oranges! There's a TikTok channel devoted to golden monkeys eating. That's it. That's all it is. But it's fantastic. I mean, come on... JUST LOOK AT THIS (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...

But don't take my word for it... go take a look!

   
• Healing! I seriously, seriously for the love of God hope that we can normalize psychedelics as treatment for trauma. It has been proven time and again that it is astoundingly effective in providing relief to those who are hurting. John Oliver really breaks it down in a way that everybody can understand. Well worth your valuable time...

It's not a magic bullet, obviously, but more research and testing needs to happen. Especially for our veterans.

   
• Licorice Pizza! Magical...

It's amazing that all this works. But oh so cool that it does.

   
• Twain Train! I was watching the best talk show ever to exist, The Graham Norton Show where it was revealed that Shania Twain has a train named after her in Switzerland. It's called Shania Train, which is epic...

This rivals the great names that they give snowplows!

   
• God Rod! Derek Muller's Veritasium channel is always entertaining. But some of his videos are just wildly worth watching, and he released a doozy last month. If you've got 20 minutes to kill, this is worth a watch...

It makes you wonder how many crazy, untested ideas actually gets funded with our tax dollars.

   
Until next time, true believers!

I took photos of the lunar eclipse that happened a few weeks back. Nothing terribly interesting came of it. More of a "rust moon" than a "blood moon," my fully-eclipsed images are far less exciting than the stuff other people posted. So I put my camera away and called it good.

Except...

This morning I needed to take some photos and went to erase the eclipse files. But then I saw that as the eclipse was ending the photos got kinda cool, culminating with this one...

Maybe I should play around with my camera settings a bit more next time there's a lunar eclipse. Assuming I'm even alive when the next one happens.

UPDATE: Oh wait... November 22 of this year? These things are not as rare as I thought they were! Of course in November the odds of an eclipse being totally eclipsed by clouds are astronomical where I live.

So to speak.

Time warp time is here! Which means time is fleeting, but madness takes its toll... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Glue! Ha! This morning I noticed that even though my trip to Maui was over a month ago, my PRE-CLEAR wristband is still hanging on!

Alaska Airlines uses some good glue on these things!

   
• NEWSLINE: Intel CEO: My job is to win Apple back Good luck with that. The Apple M1 family of chips have jaw-dropping performance with ridiculously low battery drain (see chart in the comments). I can't fathom how Intel could ever get the kind of integration between hardware and software that Apple is able to achieve in-house. But, hey, if they can do it... PLEASE GET ON THAT! Performance and better life better than the M1 would be a nice thing to have!

   
• Instant Memories! Another couple photos for the box! Are there any other INSTAX photo whores out there?

I have hundreds of the things and I want to do something with them. I first started when I got an INSTAX camera in Japan decades ago for an art project. I never really used it for photography... I would use it to make crummy little prints of my digital photos! I would display the photo on a computer screen and take a picture of it. The quality was so bad that you couldn't really tell, and I loved that. It's cool how they are bad. Eventually I switched to the INSTAX printers when they came out. And every time I go on a trip or meet up with somebody or anything, I make INSTAX Polaroids of a photo or two and toss it in a box. I have them dating back to 2000... so it's 20 years of memories. Maybe a giant collage or something? That would be kinda nifty! A couple years ago I started writing on them, then went back and wrote on all of them with dates so other people could understand them. Now I love them more than ever. Gotta figure out a way to display them.

   
• Kermie, NO! OH MY GAWD...

I laughed way too hard at this. Way too hard.

   
• Artistry! And even harder at this...

SO INAPROPRIATE!

   
And that's all there is, Halloween fans.

My blog is dead.

It was hugged to death by a Reddit post talking about Lake Powell's water level being so low that junk which is usually underwater is now fully exposed. Like a boat that sank. A comment on the Reddit post had a link to a Blogography post where I had a photo of the same boat 15 years ago...

And since I pay for the cheapest web hosting available, I don't have the bandwidth available to deal with such a massive amount traffic. Which means my blog just kind of shut down under the pressure of it all. Somebody had to post a link to the page cache on the Internet Wayback Machine.

In an attempt to (maybe?) head off such a thing in the future, I installed a plugin called "Simply Static" which is supposed to help by generating static pages so WordPress doesn't have to generate it every time it's requested. Not sure how it works since WordPress still gets the request and has to reroute it to the correct page via the plugin, but I guess it's worth a shot.

Heaven only knows that a resource as critical as Blogography should stay running at all costs.

On the bright side, getting the "Reddit Hug of Death" did get me an opportunity to upload a higher resolution shot that looks much better, so I guess there's that.

UPDATE: I couldn't get my Simply Static site to work properly, so I ended up reinstalling WP Super Cache. Maybe it will work this time around? I had to remove it a couple years ago because videos wouldn't play. Maybe that's been fixed.

So there I was going through some of my old photos looking for a shot that I wanted to use in a Photoshop project. It was an image of Akihabara, Tokyo from the late 1990's that I wanted to combine with a shot of Seoul from the early 2000's that would be overlaid on a photo I took in Prague from 2010. I found all the photos, but combining them was no easy task. The Tokyo shot was scanned from film. The Seoul shot was from a low-resolution hobby-camera. And the shot of Prague was a high-res pro-camera.

The solution is to bring them all down to the lowest common denominator. The Seoul shot gets some grain added. The Prague shot gets a lot of grain added. That way they won't look out of place when combined with the Tokyo shot.

This got me thinking about how often society has to bring itself down to the lowest common denominator. It happens all the time, everywhere, always. Just think of what we could accomplish if we didn't have to do that?

This pandemic has brought this all into vivid relief for me.

It's currently 15 minutes until midnight. I have precious little time to get a blog entry in for the day... and nothing to blog about.

Except...

Just now ehen I was looking through my iPhone photos to see if I could remember something blogable that happened today, I saw this photo taken earlier this evening at 10:11pm...

What is this?

Where was I at 10:11pm?

This has to be in my house, but I'll be darned if I know which part of my house it is.

I actually walked around room to room, holding up my iPhone to see if I could figure it out. My best guess is that this is my upstairs bathroom and that rectangular hole in the upper-right is my skylight. But what would I be doing with my camera app running in the bathroom?

AM I FILMING PORN IN MY BATHROOM WHILE SLEEPWALKING NOW?

Wait... I am a sleepwalker?

Wait... I fell asleep at 10:11pm and didn't know it?

I suppose if money starts rolling in from an OnlyFans account (which I also would have had to set up while sleepwalking) then I'll know for sure.

Otherwise?

I'll be darn disappointed if I'm sleep-sexting my homemade sleepwalking porn to people for free.

This October Walt Disney World will celebrate its 50th anniversary. I know this because I saw an article about it after I woke up this morning. I almost feel obligated to go since I was there for their 25th anniversary. Back in the late Fall of 1997 I was in Orlando for training. My mom asked if she could tag along and so she went too. It was our first time traveling together by ourselves... but wouldn't be our last. Not by a longshot.

I had training for two days. While I was in class, mom would sit by the pool at the Buena Vista Palace and read a book. On the third day we moved to Disney's Wilderness Lodge for the remainder of the week. At the time there were only three parks... Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Disney MGM Studios (eventualy named "Disney Studios"). Animal Kingdom wouldn't open for another year yet. I had been to Disney World once before, but mom never had, so it was a lot of fun.

The iconic symbol of the entire 25th anniversary celebration was turning Cinderella Castle into a massive, heinous, pink birthday cake (NOTE: All these photos are old scans from a cheap APS camera, so they don't look great... sorry)...

This was supposed to be an APS "tall print" but got printed regular,
so it's chopped off... my mom is still there though!

You could see the ugly thing from afar...

Disney's Wilderness Lodge is my favorite of all the on-property resorts. It's pretty much an attraction unto itself. There was all kinds of things to see and do... including renting tiny little speedboats. Despite being in the Navy, mom was afraid of water since nearly drowning as a kid. Even so, she was a trooper and had a great time as we went buzzing around Bay Lake...

It's definitely the best vantage point to look back at the Wilderness Lodge...

Interesting to note that DisneyQuest... a kind of advanced arcade... was being built at the time I was there, though it wouldn't open until the following Summer. It would close in 2016 once Downtown Disney was transformed into Disney Springs..

The following week was spent driving over to Kennedy Space Center... then onward to Disney's Vero Beach Resort for a couple nights... then driving down the coast to Ft. Lauderdale and Miami... then finishing our trip in Key West...

Sooooo... yeah... that was 1997, 24-some-odd frickin' years ago when I was young, handsome, and had the world at my feet. Not like now where I'm old, grizzled, and have been buried by the weight of the world.

I do have a much better camera now, however, so there's that.

Back when my iPhone was mostly used as a phone, I didn't care so much about upgrading. But now that my iPhone is used mostly as a camera, getting the latest model has become increasingly important to me. The better my camera-phone gets, the less I have to lug around my "real" DSLR camera. And thanks to the Apple iPhone Upgrade Program I can actually afford to upgrade. This year, getting the best camera came with an added surprise... it's not available on the "Pro" model, it's only on the "Pro MAX" model. AKA Apple's "HUGE F#$!%@ PHONE" model. Knowing Apple has a two-week return policy, I decided to see if the MAX was something I could live with because I want that phone.

And today it arrived.

Let's just go straight to the elephant in the room... or, to be more accurate, the elephant in my hand. This phone is ridiculously huge. Almost bordering on comically impractically huge. And heavy. From a usability standpoint, Apple seriously should not have gone this large. Because there's simply no getting around the fact that this is a two-handed device. Even when Apple has features like a slim "side keyboard" for typing one-handed, you will still have way too many controls out of reach and end up using a second hand. Even when you have fairly large hands like I do.

But we'll get to that. We'll get to all of that
   

Packaging and Contents

The packaging for my new iPhone is a classy, minimalistic affair. Apple kindly has pull-tabs on everything so it's easy to unwrap and open...

I bought the Pacific Blue color, which is very nice... though difficult to photograph. As has been widely reported, Apple does not include a charger or headphones. All you get is a cable. Apple says that this is because there are too many charger bricks out there already, but it's an absurd stance to take. The vast, vast majority of chargers are USB-A. Furthermore, even if you have a USB-C charger, it's very likely not the 20 watt brick which means you won't get fast charging. The brick I got with the 11 Pro is only 18 watt, so even last year's model isn't good enough. I guess I'm not too mad about it... my phone charges overnight so it can be slow... but it's still more than a little bit infuriating.
   

Stylings & Construction

My favorite iPhone of all time is the iPhone 4. Absolutely stunning construction with that classy metal band holding everything together like a glass sandwich. They more-or-less carried over the design to the iPhone 5, but the 4 remained my favorite. Everything that followed was a step down... until Apple decided to resurrect the design for the iPhone 12 Pro. And, let me tell you, it's gorgeous. The band is now tinted stainless steel and looks amazing...

I deeply regret having to put a case on the thing because it's just so pretty, but I have to keep it in flawless condition for the Apple iPhone Upgrade Program. Oh well. When it comes to construction, the iPhone 12 Pro Max sure feels substantial and solid. The glass back is etched for grippability, but still feels a little slickery. The thickness seems the same as my old 11 Pro... with the exception of the camera bump which pokes out quite a bit more. So much more that the phone doesn't lay flat when you put a case on it and set it on a table. That's annoying, but it's the price you pay for the camera you get.
   

Jacked

I'm going to break this out in it's own space because it' just so idiotic... the iPhone 12 line still doesn't use a USB-C jack for charging or connectivity! They finally moved iPad and Macs to USB-C, but iPhone is still tied to Apple's proprietary "Lightning" connector. This is just inexcusably stupid. Apple says they keep it because there's so many Lightning devices out there, but that's a laughably weak argument to make considering they've abandoned absolutely everything in their recent history. You are trying to tell us that there were not a lot of USB-A devices out there? Go sell that crap somewhere else. Just move to USB-C and get it over with.
   

Setup

A hallmark of Apple products is their ease of setup and use. But that's not always the case, and it seems that setup complications keep getting more and more severe while happening more and more often. Sadly, my iPhone 12 Pro MAX experience was far from ideal. The concept is that you set your old phone next to your new phone when you turn it on and everything transfers over. That part was fairly smooth. My activation and settings magically popped up with no problem. Mostly. Some apps, like Amazon Alexa and Schlage, required a login to get started. Other apps, like Smart Life and Hue, were ready to go immediately. No big deal. What was a big deal was when I got to my Apple Watch. You are not allowed to just click on the Watch app and have everything working. Nope! First you have to unpair with the old phone. Which would be fine. Except I couldn't make it happen because nothing... and I mean nothing I tried work. Either nothing happened or I couldn't get verified by the Apple ID Server...

After trying over and over and over to get past this, I finally Googled to see if I could do it another way. Turns out I could unpair by remotely wiping it from iCloud. Jeez. That was a mess with a lot of trial-and-error that took 20 minutes of my time, but eventually it happened. But that was only the beginning. THEN I got this...

Which sucks because now I'm going to have to change the password on all my Apple devices. It's just so phenomenally stupid. YOU HAVE TO LOGIN WITH YOUR CURRENT PASSWORD TO CHANGE THE PASSWORD. IF SOMEBODY WASN'T ABLE TO GET IN TO BEGIN WITH, WHAT DOES THIS SOLVE?!? As it turns out, nothing. Because THEN I got this...

And this is exactly what I was talking about. Apple's ease of setup is only good when it works. When it doesn't work, the entire system is a massive barrier to getting anywhere. After nearly an hour-and-a-half of work, I finally got my watch to unpair, erase, pair and restore. But holy crap what a stupid ordeal. Do better, Apple. This is Microsoft-Windows-level pathetic.
   

Battery

My iPhone arrived this morning at 11:15am at about 75% full. It's now 10:00pm and it's down to 50% full. My guess is that it only dropped that much because of all the setup and playing around I've been doing. It seems likely that I won't ever have to worry about battery life seeing as how I charge it every night and never once had my iPhone X or iPhone 11 Pro run out of power. I expect that it will continue not being a problem with the 12 Pro MAX. The MagSafe charging puck I ordered hasn't arrived yet, so I can't comment how it works or how fast it is with my 18 watt charger instead of the brand new 20 watt charger you're supposed to buy in order to get fast charging. The phone is so huge that it's tough to position on my Qi wireless charger and I'm assuming the MagSafe puck will be easier. It better be for $30.
   

Display

The OLED Super Retina display is definitely pretty. It's bright and saturated and anything you put on it looks great, just like it did on my old iPhone 11 Pro. However... after having seen the new "ProMotion" display on my iPad Pro which refreshes at 120 Hz, the poky 60 Hz refresh rate on this phone seems almost primitive. Other manufacturers have gone to 120 Hz, so I don't know what the deal is with Apple. My guess would be battery life, but it seems weird that they haven't been able to figure it out so that the user can choose whether display or battery is important to them. I barely use 25% of my battery each day, so I'd absolutely click the preference for ProMotion. Because once you've seen the buttery-smooth optics of a high refresh rate, going backwards is really quite jarring. For Apple's sake, I hope iPhone 13 Pro has ProMotion, because anything less is pretty embarrassing.
   

Sound

For some reason I thought that massive size of the MAX would have better sound than the "standard" size iPhone Pro. This doesn't seem to be the case. Out of their respective cases, the sound is not noticeably different between my old phone and new phone. Not that this is disappointing... far from it. I still cannot fathom how Apple manages to get such phenomenal sound out of a frickin phone that's so thin. No, it's never going to rival what you can get out of a dedicated speaker, but what you do get is better than I ever expect.
   

Size

And so here we are. Remember how I was talking about how the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 were my favorite iPhone designs of all time? One of the things I loved about them was how beautifully compact they were. When I made the jump from iPhone 8 to the iPhone X, the size increase was tough to take. Jumping up again to the MAX is beyond tough to take. Just look at the iPhone 5 next to my new iPhone 12 Pro MAX...

The MAX is what's considered a "phablet," which is a hybrid phone/tablet. I never thought I would own one. Who wants a massive phone to lug around? The jump from 11 Pro to 12 Pro MAX looks like this...

After spending the day with it, I'm still not sure how I feel about the size. I really hate not being able to operate it one-handed. With practice I might be able to get some functionality back, but way too many controls are always out of reach. It's hugely frustrating. On the plus side, the other size-related drawbacks that I thought would be a problem ended up not being a problem at all. It fits in my pockets just fine (shirts, pants, jeans, and jackets). I can shoot with the camera one-handed. It's not uncomfortable to hold or use as a phone. And it doesn't seem to get in my way like I imagined it would.

When it comes to what I like about the size? That large screen is phenomenal for looking at photos. This cannot be overstated. The difference is not subtle. It may not seem like a massive change on paper, but the MAX feels more like looking at a photograph. I absolutely love that. I think back to all the times I've shown people images from my phone and how they have to squint and put their face up to it... and it's hard to imagine going back. And then there's gaming. Slow 60 Hz refresh rate aside, the larger size is SO much nicer for playing games. And watching movies. And reading. And just looking at... well... everything. The larger size allows for things to display a touch larger as well, so if you have aging eyes like mine it offers a slightly better experience to boot.

My guess is that I will be keeping the MAX rather than returning it for the "regular" 12 Pro. Even setting the superior camera aside, there are too many nice things about the large screen I'm enjoying which offset the inconvenience of having to use two hands sometimes.
   

Camera

The initial hot take from reviewers who got an advanced phone sent to them was that the photography difference between the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone Pro 12 MAX was not quite the leap everybody was expecting. The larger sensor does have slightly less noisy images in low-light... but it's nothing mind-blowing. You get more detail in the shadows... but not so vast that most people will notice. There's extra length on the telephoto at 2.5x vs. 2x... but it's not going to make a massive difference in the long run (so to speak). The sensor-shift optical stabilization reduces shake a bit... but not so much that you'll be able to get radically sharper photos while moving. It's all subtle degrees of change instead of some kind of revolution. And yet... I will take whatever advantage I can get, no matter how small. Most all I care about when it comes to my iPhone is the photos I can take. If the MAX is what it takes to get the best, then that's what I want.

Though the difference between 12 Pro and 12 Pro MAX cameras may not be huge, the difference between them and my 11 Pro very much is. The first photo I took was of Jake when he plopped down next to me after I got home. It was starting to get dark, so it wasn't especially bright. First I shot it with the 11 Pro, which dropped into 1-second Night Mode and got me this image (cropped to about 70%)...

Then the 12 Pro Max, which did not drop into Night Mode, got me this image (cropped to about 70%)...

Now, I don't mind saying that I was a little disappointed. They both look similar, don't they? The 12 Pro MAX is a little bit more clear, but that's just because it didn't have to expose the scene for a full second. Then I zoomed in further and saw just how much more clear the 12 Pro MAX is. Here's the 11 Pro...

And here's the 12 Pro MAX...

And... there it is. This is why I'm so grateful that Apple has an iPhone Upgrade Program which allows me to afford to upgrade every year. This is not a small difference. This is huge. The 12 Pro MAX has superior imaging which will allow me to zoom in tighter... print larger... and do more... with every shot I take. And this is just the first photo I took! I can't fathom what I'm going to see when I goof around with the camera over the weekend. I'm guessing I'm going to be blown away. I expect to be blown away.

One thing I'm dying to experiment with is Apple's new ProRAW photo image format. The file size is around 25 MB... each... but there's more information with less artifacts and a higher dynamic range. And the raw data you capture isn't touched as you adjust it in the Photos app, so the image doesn't degrade. You can always go back to exactly what you captured at any time. I won't be shooting ProRAW for casual shots, but I'm very excited at having it available when I'm shooting serious shots. Vacation scenery shots, portraits, photos for work... any time the bigger file is worth it. Alas, ProRAW isn't coming until iOS 14.3 which hasn't come out yet, so something to look forward to.

I'm sure early next week sometime I'll be posting photos I've been taking.
   

Accessories

I ordered the (PRODUCT)RED version of the silicone case along with my iPhone like I always do. The red color makes it easy to spot, it will look all Captain America with my blue phone, and the Apple-branded cases have always been quality. The fact that some of the profits go towards fighting AIDS in Africa is just icing on the cake. Now Apple has a new "iPhone Studio" tool where you can see what your iPhone will look like when paired up with various color cases and MagSafe wallets...

The new MagSafe that intelligently (and magnetically) attaches things to the back of your phone actually is pretty cool. My case is red, so when I pop it on the phone it is able to recognize that and give you a cool special effect that pulses across your display...

Had my case been green, the effect would be green, and so on. A nice touch.
   

Conclusion

Nice as the iPhone 12 Pro MAX is, it's not a foregone conclusion that I'm keeping this phone. There are times that I am not bothered by the massive size... there are times that it's just so overwhelming that I don't know if I can live with it. Maybe after a week it will seem "normal" but it sure doesn't now. I hate that it's so bad for working with one-handed. Part of that is just not being able to grip something so big. But a chunk of that is also Apple and 3rd party developers not doing a good job of adapting their apps to function well on a huge display like this.

But then...

...I pick up my old iPhone 11 Pro and it feels like a toy (I pick up my old iPhone 5 and it feels like it's fake). I love that bigger display so much that any time I drop back to a phone without it the thing feels wrong somehow.

I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Once thing I do know is that I can't wait to see what kind of photos I can get out of it.

I am fortunate that my home is fairly energy efficient. It must have pretty good insulation to keep the heat out, because I barely have to run my air conditioning in the Summer. The Winter is a different story. It gets so cold where I live that the heat has to run often just to maintain a temperature of 72º F when I'm home. My smart thermostat drops to 70º F while I'm at work and 66º F when I'm sleeping. The cats don't seem to be much bothered, but they have heating pads to sleep on if things are too chilly for them. As for me? I wear wool socks and extra layers... and I have a heated throw for my couch and a heated blanket for my bed. It's not ideal, but it aves me a lot of money on my energy bill. And it works.

Except when it doesn't.

At around 2:30am I woke up with terrible leg cramps. And I was freezing.

Apparently the heated blanket on my bed has died.

The coldest I've ever been was not Antarctica. Not even close. The coldest I've ever been was at a Berlin train station in the middle of Winter. It was so cold that I couldn't feel my legs... and my fingers and toes (once I managed to heat them back up) were tingly for days. The second-coldest I've ever been was on top of Cadillac Mountain in Maine waiting for the sun to rise. That one was on me. I just had to get photos from the first place to see sunrise in the United States. Worth it though...

This morning was nothing that bad. But it sure felt like it. And so I guess I need to order a new hot blankey. This is a no-brainer purchase because the money saved on my power bill will pay for a new blanket in just one month. I toyed with the idea of trying to repair it, but I think an electric blanket is one of those rare cases where that isn't an option. It's just my luck I would screw something up in the electrical system and the blanket would burst into flames in the middle of the night.

Slightly worse than waking up cold, I think.

A shame it couldn't have failed closer to Black Friday though.

That's also just my luck.