Still life

A moment of peace and joy. Finishing up a good book. Appreciating the soft light. A pile of grapes. Brewing coffee. A hug. Mesmerized by ripples. Mesmerized by steam. One command to strip audio and metadata and resize: ffmpeg -i PXL_20261010_162838586.mp4 -vf scale="500:-2" -an -map_metadata -1 steam.mp4 # Compare with ffprobe PXL_20261010_162838586.mp4 -an: strip audio -map_metadata -1: strip metadata -vf scale="500:-2": resize Last night we kayaked on Tomales Bay with a guided tour with Blue Waters Kayaking. The recent deaths of two people in the bay were on our mind. We’d forgotten about another drowning earlier in the year. Maybe these deaths were on the mind of another person in our group. She decided not to join at the last minute, after donning all the gear and trying out sitting in a couple kayaks. The water was calm and the sky overcast, one day away from a new moon. City lights down the bay, street lights near the dock, and the occasional blinding pair of headlights from the…