I’m trying to stick to daily write-ups of my December Adventure, meaning that I write about the less exciting days, as well as the more exciting ones. Day 14 falls firmly in latter camp.

I had hoped to hit the ground running by reinforcing the hinges of my Psion Series 3a with JB Weld, and later carefully opening my Toshiba Libretto 50CTs to remove their (hopefully non-leaky) backup batteries. Instead day 13’s write-up proved a slow one, and then I found myself trapped, deliberating how to photograph and film these tasks so I can document them.

I have been experimenting with a (very flimsy) lightweight tripod and my iPhone to capture top-down photos with very little success: the camera slowly sinks as the tripod really isn’t designed for this orientation; it’s hard to get good lighting; and the iPhone’s automatic exposure and magic colour-correction means images vary wildly. It’s also hard to keep the whole plane in focus when doing closeup work. (This really isn’t my area of expertise.)

The iPhone makes it incredibly challenging to maintain consistent exposure and color temperature

As I find myself working more and more on physical projects, I’d love to come up with a setup that I don’t need to think about. I plan to try Halide over the next few days in the hope that this will give me more control, and I’ve been noodling on a seemingly TikTok-focused tripod that’s essentially an anglepoise arm with a phone mount and ring light. Perhaps I can get into retro unboxings. 📦🙃

Amazon—🤢—sells near-identical social media ‘desk tripods’ by a seemingly infinite number of brands