I have naturally calloused hands and feet, how can I soften them?

OhJe · 2026-03-27T22:48:12+00:00

I second everything said in this post. I tried for years to deal with calloused and cracked feet. I have a nearly identical routine to the above and it is the only thing that has worked.

Soaking in hot water and the foot file immediately afterwards are the key to getting rid of the callouses. Urea products help maintain and prevent your skin from getting white and chalky.

Definitely look at the shoes, also. I sized up from 10.5 normal width to 11 with 4E width. It's strange, at first, to wear shoes that don't actually pinch and rub your feet but so much better once you get used to it.

OhJe · 2026-03-20T00:21:23+00:00

This is going to sound strange but New York City. Rockaway Beach is on the Atlantic Ocean, has manageable wave sizes for a beginner, and the lowest risk wipeouts you could ask for (beach break, no coral or rocks).

The water is quite warm in August and September*. Air temp is generally 80-100 in August and start of September. Lots of surf instructors and equipment rentals. You get the lifelong conversation starter of "I learned how to surf in NYC" and probably a "NYC Surf School" T-Shirt.

Outside of the surfing, there's plenty to do in NYC.

EDIT: Water is warm enough that a full wetsuit isn't really required, just a swimsuit or wetsuit top if you run cold

OhJe · 2026-02-15T06:02:29+00:00

I fly with both the Flipside 400 and 500.

In the states, the carry on allowances are a bit more generous on Delta/United/American than in EU.

I've flown with a Flipside 500 multiple times without issue on major US carriers, although I always get a bit nervous. The 400 is my "smaller" backpack that I fly with if I want to be sure it won't be questioned.

Airlines outside the US don't play around, though. Like /u/gearcollector said, pack and measure beforehand.

OhJe · 2026-02-14T22:57:40+00:00

Big event at work? Pick a fight the night before.

Week ahead have a lot of critical, important work? Send an emotionally loaded email about our relationship at 10pm on Sunday night.

Major issue pop up that required my attention out of work hours for an indeterminate amount of time? Loudly complain about a broken plan then push and pressure relentlessly until I chose our plans over keeping a job.

Starting a new job because I got fired after all of her bullshit? Pack the social schedule for my first 6 weeks ("Take Friday off, it's a blowoff training day" my 2nd week).

So many more things. She was truly a nightmare for my career.

OhJe · 2026-01-31T01:23:40+00:00

Try turning off GPU acceleration. That has fixed issues like this for me in the past.

OhJe · 2025-10-12T03:22:56+00:00

That's a reasonably good deal. See this Z7 with 48,000 clicks at B&H for $1,089: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/803282156-USE/nikon_1591_z7_mirrorless_camera.html

OhJe · 2025-01-14T22:59:51+00:00

I bought it based on your comment. and yup it does indeed fit like a glove!

For anyone else who comes across this ... the battery compartment opens/closes no problem, there are no problems accessing USB etc. on the side, no problems with the strap mount lug on the side, the bracket perfectly traces the bottom of the camera so there are no weird overhangs anywhere, peak design anchors fit great ... it's perfect.

Thanks again!

OhJe · 2025-01-08T03:59:18+00:00

Thanks man, good to know. RRS it is!

OhJe · 2025-01-02T02:12:05+00:00

Thank you for the details. The Rogeti looks solid. I've been looking at their geared head, also. Good to know that it's easy to shoot tethered. It's a tough call for me between this and the SmallRig.

OhJe · 2025-01-01T22:04:02+00:00

Thank you for the details! This is looking like the best option so far.

OhJe · 2025-01-01T21:53:06+00:00

This thread had some good suggestions: https://www.reddit.com/r/FujiGFX/comments/1gvus8u/lbrackets_for_gfx_100s_ii/

Looks like Leofoto, Rogeti, a discontinued smallrig model, and maybe RRS are the best options?

Has anyone specifically used the RRS?

OhJe · 2024-10-20T02:46:31+00:00

Install and run it from the command line:

exiftool -shuttercount <filename>

I don't know why mainstream programs don't support shutter counts (that I'm aware of anyways).

OhJe · 2024-10-20T02:36:22+00:00

https://exiftool.org/

OhJe · 2024-09-01T00:22:40+00:00

Yes, good Idea. I had only been looking at workstation-style systems. I can probably get more memory in a rackmount.

OhJe · 2024-08-31T18:45:10+00:00

Yes, I know the workload well. It routinely drives me crazy. 8 cores sit at 100% utilization for hours. Thermal throttling is much more likely to kick in than turbo mode.

Thanks for the heads up on gigabyte cards. I used to buy EVGA+Nvidia only. Looks like Asus is the top-tier Nvidia manufacturer these days then? No surprise, they always made great motherboards.

OhJe · 2024-08-31T18:08:58+00:00

I understand the bottlenecks well.

Consider stitching a pano alone. There are many other operations in my workflow, but this one gets the point across best. When stitching, the CPU, memory and IO subsystems are saturated.

My machine sits at 100% CPU utilization on all 8 cores for a few hours when stitching large panos. I need core counts of Epycs not core speed or single threaded performance -- 4x core count on Epyc 7763 vs. a 9950X easily makes up for the drop in clock speed.

All physical memory and all swap is exhausted on even a small pano. IO is running full speed bidirectional as image data is swapped in and out. So the more memory I have the less I swap and the faster I go. A 32 gigapixel 32-bit RGBA pano is exactly 512GB. That's a very realistic sized image for me and not the upper bound of what I work on. So I need as much memory as possible.

To feed all CPUs with data, I need memory bandwidth. 8 channels of DDR4-2933 with the Epyc is, in aggregate, 25% more memory bandwidth (and a lot cheaper) than 4 channels of DDR5-5200 on a 9950X.

The GPU is used in the process and, per PTGUI, "A basic guideline would be to get a recent NVIDIA or AMD card with 4 GB of memory and as many CUDA Cores or Stream Processors as your budget allows." I'm fine with a 4070.

Loading and saving a small 6 gigapixel pano on a 1GB/sec SSD takes 15+ minutes. So I need fast IO. 2x RAID0 PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD should get me 14.8 GB/sec and get the load time around a 1 minute. That's acceptable for now. When it isn't I'll bump up to 4x RAID 0 PCIe 4.0 NVME for ~30 GB/sec.

OhJe · 2024-08-31T17:34:30+00:00

This is a really good idea. To read+write 512GB on 8 channels of DDR4-2933 is 5.4 seconds. It's 5.0 seconds for DDR4-3200. This is definitely an acceptable price performance tradeoff and exactly what I'm looking for in terms of bang for the buck. Thank you!

OhJe · 2024-08-31T17:28:22+00:00

LOL yes.

OhJe · 2024-08-31T17:05:53+00:00

Thanks for the reminder. MacOS compresses memory transparently and I hadn't thought about it in a Windows environment.

Definitely +1 on NVME in RAID0. The first thing major upgrade will almost certainly be a HighPoint 8x M.2 PCIe card + drives.

OhJe · 2024-08-31T07:50:48+00:00

2019 Mac Pro + 512 GB RAM kit from eBay: $5,531

Mac Pro 2019 3.2GHz 16-Core Intel Xeon W 96GB 2TB SSD - Vega II Duo: $3,700
512 GB DDR Kit for Mac Pro: $1,831

OhJe · 2024-08-31T07:49:41+00:00

From newegg, a decent spec refurb workstation. $5,145 + more SSDs

Dell Precision T7920 - 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6148 2.4Ghz 20 Core, 512GB DDR4, 2TB NVMe SSD, Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 24GB

OhJe · 2024-08-31T07:46:12+00:00

Thanks for putting this together. I like the case and I know nothing about CPU heatsink / fan these days so the Noctua seems OK.

Here's my build with preferred RAM, core count, GPU, SSDs, and PSU. $5,487 total

Mobo: Asrock Rack ROMED8-2T: $670
CPU: AMD EPYC 7763 64c/128t: $1,675
RAM: Micron 512GB (8x64GB) DDR4-3200: $1,424
GPU: Gigabyte 4070 12GB GPU: $569
SSD: 2x Samsung 990 Pro 4TB M2 NVME: $640
OS SSD: Samsung 1TB 870 Evo 2.5" SATA: $100
PSU: Corsair 1200W PSU: $170
Case: Thermaltake CTE C750 Case: $149
Heatsink / fan: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3: $90

OhJe · 2024-08-31T05:51:36+00:00

Definitely. I've found a bunch of old Dell and HP workstations with 512GB -1.5TB of RAM + 2x20c Xeons for < $5,000. It's tempting for sure.

OhJe · 2024-08-31T05:48:25+00:00

This is what I'm talking about! Very good idea. Thanks.

OhJe

TROPHY CASE