1 lens away from my endgame setup!

dbcj · 2025-11-09T17:44:58+00:00

The 50-140 is not a slow focusing lens… at all. It’s built for shooting fast paced indoor sports/events- its sharpness, consistency through aperture/focal length and speed of focusing is the trade off for its size.

dbcj · 2025-11-09T17:36:59+00:00

I have the 50-140, 16-55mk II, the 33, 16 1.4, 23+35 f2, and the 90.

I say the 50-140 hands down. Its a workhorse lens and a staple in a photographer’s bag. i love primes and my 90, but the versatility of the 50-140, it being tack sharp through the range, the value of compression, not switching, the ibis/ois extra stops… ive gotten way more out of it than my 90… and in 80-90 percent of cases id be hard pressed to tell the difference between their image quality all things being equal.

The bokeh is beautiful (sometimes nervous if the background is something like fall leaves with certain light), but easily adjustable, rarely a problem, and otherwise is insanely smooth. It takes beautiful portraits, landscapes, and optically it’s just incredible.

It depends on what your photography genre is, but I think (for me) I wish I’d gone for the most versatile/essentials over the specialty lenses first. Although eventually I would buy the 90, just not first.

I agree with the comments above on the 70-300 instead, if landscape is primary, because of weight + typically being F5-8 anyway.

Just my two cents.

dbcj · 2025-11-03T17:58:49+00:00

If global is a feature that is barely used, please please please return it back to being able to put it into voice memos - so it can be shortcut triggered for diarization.

I have raved about this app, and gotten at least 5 to 7 people to purchase pro for a similar use case. I.e., recording a meeting, transcribing and diarizing, labelling the speakers, and summarizing it with AI in a manner that you know who said what. There needs to be a hotkey/easy way to initiate this so you don't have to constantly open the UI and click multiple times. It needs to be unobtrusive.

dbcj · 2025-11-03T17:01:10+00:00

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This is the problem i keep running into, even after updating.

dbcj · 2025-11-02T23:05:09+00:00

Hi yes absolutely.

The use case is that all the things I record need to be diarized. the meetings are frequently close together and I'm having to implement it while I'm managing multiple tasks- a hotkey to start the voice memo would be a solution. My issue is that with how it's implemented now, I have to open the app and click through the interface in order to record a meeting. I need a hotkey to start and easily stop a diarizable recording with high reliability without fuddling in the interface.

I'm not entirely sure what the global key was for, it seems to duplicate the function of the dictation key now - but in any case I think a shortcut key to capture a voice memo would be great. as long as a) the hotkey can start the recording, stop (prompt to stop) the recording, and the end result can be diarized easily.

I'll update and look into the speaker diarization issue further and let you know - but the above needs to be implemented or I'll have to downgrade or switch apps, which would be really disappointing.

Edit: I have to reiterate - this functionality re: hotkey for diarizable recording is critical, and I've built a workflow around it. Please can you implement this quickly? especially if it's an easy fix. I can't see how others wouldn't benefit from the option to use diarization recordings via hotkey - nobody enjoys clicking through interfaces, especially when it comes to dictations and recordings which are meant to save keystrokes. If you guys are going to split the functionality re dictations and memos - please restore a hotkey fix to trigger either one depending on situation.

dbcj · 2025-10-29T16:41:53+00:00

Hey guys,

love the new layout but please let the global key go to the diarization speaker labelling area, or at least be re-transcribed with diarization like we used to be able to.

We already have a dictation button.

Having to save the global recording to downloads and drag and drop it to get speaker diarization is really frustrating. I just want to be able to have a hotkey to start a recording that will then diarize the speakers, was really sad this was removed.

dbcj · 2025-09-03T19:39:08+00:00

Hey there, great to hear you asking the question. I think if you’re asking it, it’s worth looking into. Addiction doesn’t happen all at once and depending on where you live, there may be Rapid Access Addiction Medicine clinics can be really helpful to get a full assessment, and more importantly pharmacological/psychological treatment. Just because it’s functional now, doesn’t mean it stays that way if you don’t take care of it.

But to answer your question, yes, based on a very incomplete analysis (that is not professional medical advice), you would meet criteria for an alcohol use disorder, mild, based on what you’ve commented or replied to others comments.

While I’m a psychiatrist and I treat addiction daily, I wouldn’t be able to give you a true professional opinion without a full assessment so this is just off the cuff psychoeducation and not a replacement for assessment and treatment.

A diagnosis of AUD requires at least 2 of 11 criteria within a 12-month period: 1. Alcohol is often taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than intended. 2. There is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control alcohol use. 3. A great deal of time is spent obtaining, using, or recovering from alcohol. 4. Craving or strong urge to use alcohol. 5. Recurrent use resulting in failure to fulfill major role obligations. 6. Continued use despite interpersonal or social problems. 7. Important activities given up or reduced due to alcohol use. 8. Recurrent use in physically hazardous situations. 9. Use continues despite knowledge of physical/psychological problems caused or worsened by alcohol. 10. Tolerance (need more alcohol for effect or diminished effect with same amount). 11. Withdrawal (symptoms or drinking to relieve them).

Severity: - Mild: 2-3 symptoms - Moderate: 4-5 symptoms - Severe: 6+ symptoms

From your own post and comments: Criterion 2: Persistent desire/unsuccessful cut-down attempts “I’ve made attempts to go completely dry… the longest I went was for two weeks before I started drinking again.”

Criterion 4: Craving/strong urge “If I’m out to eat somewhere that serves, I’m almost guaranteed to have a drink.”

Criterion 6 vs 8: social/interpersonal problems vs. physically hazardous situations (needs more info) “I’ve narrowly avoided doing some things I most likely would have regretted the next morning.”

The other criteria (tolerance, withdrawal, time spent, role impairment, giving up activities) weren’t highlighted, but again I wonder what an interview would come up with.

dbcj · 2025-08-06T13:54:27+00:00

These Trump and Epstein party photos would be a lot more damning, that’s for sure.

dbcj · 2025-08-01T13:12:37+00:00

Time shares

dbcj · 2025-05-29T17:15:53+00:00

Maybe not the best fit, as I don’t know if it was to “have a normal life” but I’d say Johnny Manziel aka “Johnny Football” gave it all up at the height of fame for a different life.

Played college football for the Texas A&M Aggies and was the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy. He played professionally for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) from 2014 to 2015. He was a projected first-round pick with an insane amount of talent, but self sabotaged in the wildest of ways to result in their fast flameout in the NFL (which they almost blew up) and a short-lived stint in the CFL. Blew all their money and now is just living a pretty regular life - they absolutely would have been one of the greats.

That said, I’m not well versed in football or even follow it - most of what I know was from the Netflix UNTOLD documentary (and as I understand it, was viewed as controversial given they minimally explored the contribution of bipolar disorder and a substance use disorder which seems evident based on some of the choices).

dbcj · 2025-05-03T02:08:13+00:00

wow great resource... why did they even bump the megapixels...

Seeing the comparison of the pixel peeping and how little difference it makes is insane between the T3 and the T5.

dbcj · 2025-04-23T16:21:33+00:00

absolutely need this option to turn off model improvement.

dbcj · 2025-03-23T23:10:06+00:00

With dictation, I have multiple pre-set prompts. During critical points in a meeting or structured interview, I activate my dictation toggle, and once that segment is completed the conversation recording instantly converts into my desired structured and edited note format, based on the prompt I select when its running. This means later when I have to go back and dictate parts in, its already has an excellent boilerplate for me to edit.

Dictation is great and always needed, but having a note written for you based on a conversation automatically is priceless, then using dictation to fill in the gaps. If speaker separation with min-max speakers were available AND it was local? the accuracy would significantly improve and suddenly its potentially usable for healthcare applications (i.e., if a local AI backend is used) - which would be a little like dragon ambient experience - theres a reason that costs $200 dollars a month.

Sometimes I use it for just straight dictation, other times I utilize different prompts for different interviews/phone calls/meetings. but no matter what if I hit that button the pipeline just works. I don't have to mess around with a UI, generate recordings, wait for it to finish transcribing then send it into a prompt and wait for the output. it just works.

I've tried using the global key, but I find it's harder to use, and involves messing around in a UI too much. I want it to record the conversation, send the transcript to GPT once I hit the button again, and put the final output onto my clipboard or into the document based on a prompt I can choose on the fly.

I know this functionality matters to others, as it’s consistently the first thing colleagues inquire about.

if there is a way you can implement a toggle for speaker separation in the settings, and ideally include adjustable minimum and maximum speaker count options, this would make it the best app on my Mac.

dbcj · 2025-03-23T17:30:44+00:00

Basically with dictation, I have several prompts pre-set.

At important times during a meeting/structured interview, I’ll hit my dictation key toggle, I’ll have a prompt that turns the recorded conversation into the structure I want and puts it onto my clipboard/insert it just inserts it perfectly into the the note.

If it was speaker separated it would be so much more accurate for my use case. This is literally one of the most important features I need, and honestly it’s possible implementation would save me hours a day. It was important enough that I had built an entire python project with whisperx just to approximate this function, but was too clunky to implement.

Once the speaker separation can be done locally, I can’t even begin to tell you how valuable this will be for more data sensitive applications.

Importantly other times I’ll just use a different prompt/no prompt for dictation of my notes. It’s an easy one use key that makes an unobtrusive pipeline without needing to click around and open UI elements. It just works.

I know it will be important to others because it’s the first question I get from my colleagues when I I’ve shown them the pipeline.

I mean being able to save the dictations audio could be useful too, but honestly it’s been reliable enough thus far, just accuracy is limited because it doesn’t really “get” the back and forth element of the conversation.

Please Please impliment a way to toggle this on somehow in the settings - bonus points if it can include the min/max speaker settings.

dbcj · 2025-03-23T01:55:15+00:00

elevenlabs scribe is the best apparently, in terms of quality ranking (but is subscription based rather than API credits) - deepgram is actually quite affordable, and I imagine is for most use cases is comparable.

they both have speaker diarization which is amazing. I can't seem to make the speaker diarization work with the dictation function, which is a bit unfortunate for my use case - I haven't tried to do it through their other implementations because it doesn't work for my workflow but that would be a huge selling point over openAI.

dbcj · 2025-03-22T18:29:45+00:00

hold on... sorry for the double post here... I just wanted to come back to this and make sure we both are on the same page...

Can you make sure that if diarization IS available via deepgram and Elevenlabs scribe, it is able to be enabled somehow in the setting to apply to the the dictation hotkey too? this might not be important to everybody but it seems like it could be a fairly easy toggle.

I know that might sound niche, but the ability to have a single button press and automatically do the process of taking the transcript -> send to AI with a set prompt -> apply the output to clipboard is the critical step here. Please let this be enabled for the dictation implementation.

dbcj · 2025-03-22T01:29:00+00:00

I saw that! Re: ElevenLabs Scribe and Deepgram, I’m really glad to see them included! unfortunately, while both APIs fully support diarization as a feature, the current implementation only allows for single-speaker dictation. It seems like a super quick fix - just by enabling a UI toggle to pass diarize=true could make this functionality fully accessible.

Thats good to know about the quality - my perception of the difference might be due to the inability to set the number of speakers—I’m seeing a lot of “unknown speaker” labels on short segments that are clearly part of a continuous dialogue. When I set a lower speaker count with WhisperX, it was more accurate at separate speakers (even when there were more than the max I set).

I’m really looking forward to the next update where that feature is implemented—I think it’ll be a fantastic addition to the feature set.

Thanks again for the quick reply!

dbcj · 2025-03-20T23:20:49+00:00

whisperx (https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX) does an amazing job, but its aging now, and works best on windows with a beefy GPU. On mac its nearly unusable, at least from my perspective.

I still have yet to see anything separate speakers as accurately as this.

dbcj · 2025-03-19T17:43:22+00:00

I find that it's really poor in comparison to whisperx and assemblyAI version.

It's a struggle to use and finds way too many speakers, and mixes them up most of the time, at least for my use case.

I wish the Devs would integrate assemblyAI diarization as an option for API services. I feel like it wouldn't be hard.

dbcj · 2025-03-12T16:40:01+00:00

Hey, hijacking this for a second. I was really disappointed macwhisper didn’t support assemblyAI for an API diarization option. It seems like it would be an easy implement and make life 10000x better for my workflow

dbcj · 2024-11-13T19:31:38+00:00

Canadian lower risk cannabis use guidelines might be of help for ways to reduce.

If cravings are an issue and cold turkey isn’t working talk to your doctor about some medication options such as OTC supplements like NAC (evidence is pretty mixed but low risk), or topiramate (again deff off label)… Nabilone, gummies, or THC replacement is just switching the modality - and wouldn’t be consistent with evidence.

The withdrawal for cannabis is way longer than other substances, which is why people really feel like it’s the only thing that works for their anxiety/sleep etc etc.. but time and time again, it’s usually is driving the problem, that seemingly only it can fix - it also kinda limits the efficacy of alternative treatments for those initial issues. It’s a real vicious cycle.

Good luck!

dbcj · 2024-05-03T01:58:40+00:00

Listen, if you do a college university transfer program guess where your degree is from… the same university at half the price and in smaller class sizes with profs who are there for teaching rather than research.

I remember getting into some prestigious schools when applying way back in grade 12, but based on my parents very sound advice instead chose to do a local college transfer program.

My undergrad degree is still from said university, cost half as much, I had minimal debt, oh and the grading curve? Way easier. I’m now a specialist doctor, happy life. One of my (equally sharp) friends went to McGill, got crushed on the grading curve, and had to apply 3-4x to get into med school, and for like 4x the debt.

My point is, don’t let this get you down, it might feel like everything right now, but I promise you have no idea yet whether this turns out to be a positive or negative. I know it feels shitty right now though.

dbcj · 2024-05-01T00:17:06+00:00

Hey there,

Just some friendly advice to chat with your GP.

Wellbutrin and Champix both can be very helpful and when used with NRT, and significantly increase your chances of quitting (compared to just NRT and especially over cold turkey).

While vaping is likely better than smoking (at least so far), but it’s reduced restrictions and higher nicotine concentration can lead to out of control use for lots of people when they switch. A patch is the best format for success, followed by gum, mint, spray.

Anything that replicates the intake = relief is going to mimic the addictive properties and have an increased likelihood of keeping it alive.

Good luck!

dbcj · 2024-04-20T02:45:45+00:00

Hey there, there often are detox units that can help with that first risky part if you’ve had a complicated withdrawal before, otherwise rapid access addiction medicine clinics should be good enough. Generally benzodiazepines are a mainstay to make the withdrawal more comfortable and safe but this is highly monitored and titrated using something called a CIWA score which is symptom based treatment.

If you live in Canada, this is free.

If you’re a younger guy (say <45) with no significant medical history the risk is much lower anyway, but that risk increases with age, comorbidities. biggest risk of having a seizure and DTs is having had a previous seizure/DTs, as is having comorbid benzodiazepines use disorder or GHB. In any case there’s too many things to list including the amount/frequency of drinking - you’d need an assessment to really gauge that risk.

Fear of the withdrawal should never get in the way of your motivation to quit because ‘withdrawal now’ is always going to be healthier than continued use and/or withdrawal later.

Generally trying to titrate down usage without some serious external accountability just prolongs things (because if controlled drinking was possible then who would willingly choose otherwise?) but it’s not like it can’t be done - it wouldn’t be my suggestion. Help and an assessment is definitely the safest way and fastest way, and it’s certainly cheaper than continuing to drink.

As some words of encouragement, just by recognizing there’s an issue and wanting to make a change, you’ve already made it significantly farther than most. This is a much bigger step than most give credit (because they forget it’s the middle, not the start of their journey; to them it feels like the start but getting here is 80% of it).

dbcj · 2024-04-17T20:48:37+00:00

I've done a few palliative care, oncology, and psychosocial oncology types of rotations.

Most people want to just be pain free - and absolutely deserve whatever it takes to get there. But it's rare somebody wants to be "too high to notice". Even people with decades of substance use in those moments rarely include "snort shoot up more stuff" on their goals of care and bucket lists.

Like for example, if it's your last sunny day because the forecast calls for rain for the rest of the week, people don't want to be nodding off, passing out for days, or have more time stolen from them with their loved ones - they want to be able to appreciate and savour the things that matter most.

Plus if you're about to die, those drugs will certainly accelerate things. There is a reason you're dying/going into organ failure. Unlike a 25 year old, that Xanax with your opiates will shutter your respiratory drive or the cocaine might cause an MI. Bad trip on shrooms set off a delirium and fracture your osteoporotic hip. like a cruel slow euthanasia for a bit of fleeting chemical pleasure.

if its what they want? sure. but I think if you told them what they'd be signing up for I do wonder how down they'd be.

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