Personal

Regretting Photographs not Taken

Mike Johnston of The Online Photographer (a site I’ve followed for years) has lately acquired a side gig writing occasional articles about photography for The New Yorker. The latest one, The Secret Art of the Family Photo, has sparked interesting conversation both at TOP and at Ann Althouse’s blog.

The questions of what a good family photo is, what purposes it serves, and how that changes as the photo ages, are interesting (or at least should be) to nearly all photographers and many families, it seems to me.

One way I approach thinking about what personal photos I should take is to look back at my old photos and see what I especially value, and what I miss (I have my own photos going back to 1962, and my mother’s further yet). (Note that this is about “family” photos, snapshots for the photographer or the immediate family; art, or documentary work for a larger audience, is another barrel of fish entirely.)

Places I Lived

Specific regrets in this area include the two places we lived in Zurich in 1966-67 (I have some interiors from one of them, as background to photographing us there), college dorms and dorm rooms, the interior of my Bozo Bus apartment, and my first apartment in St. Paul.

I do have some good pictures of the house my parents were in from 1963 until the 21st century, many of them from when Barbara was preparing to sell it, but some earlier too. I have at least a few before the wood siding was replaced, too.

I even have a couple of old pictures (plus modern ones I went back for) showing the house we rented from the college our first 3 years in town (across from the Junior High, a corner duplex we shared with the Jenkins).

Places I Spent Time

I’d like more from the Carleton computer center, though I have a few. The Highschool computer center I have more of, because I hung out there most of my free periods for 3 years.

I did a fair amount of photography around Northfield and around the Carleton Campus, which is nice to have.

Places I Worked

This is a subset of “Places I Spent Time,” of course.

I’d like photos of the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, and the DEC office in Bloomington. I’ve got some of Dec’s Marlborough facility where I worked (MRO1), including some interiors (cameras were banned, but I got authorized to bring mine in to take some photos for a presentation to salesmen).

I’d like photos of the various desks I had, at various jobs, with my stuff.

I can often find modern, or even period, photos of the buildings for these categories. Sometimes they’re annoyingly different from what I remember. I always prefer photos from the time I was there.

Schools

I mostly don’t have pictures of schools. I found a picture of the high-school the other day, while scanning for our 50th class reunion, and din’t much care for it. The building is very flat and not interesting, is part of it, and nothing important happened outside it for me. But the old building at Washington school has been torn down, and I regret not having a picture of it (I was there for 1st and 2nd grade plus one summer, not sure which, for a science summer program).

No pictures at all of Longfellow, where I was bussed across town to do 3rd grade.

I did a bit better at college, partly because I was shooting for the Alumni Publications Office, and partly just because I was shooting a lot while I was there. I have pictures of the brand new Music and Drama center that they just now tearing down, which I really need to get scanned.

I don’t have much for photos from the Kung Fu class I was in (a roll or two of an aborted project towards a book on Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu that I was going to illustrate; mostly details). No shots of the other students there or the instructors I worked with. Again, I was busy doing other stuff, not really free to take photos. (I do have the people who got me into the class, and others they got into the class, from social photos outside the studio).

Places I Visited

For big trips, I have done fairly well here. Early on I couldn’t afford enough film and processing, so everything is a bit thin, but from 9th grade on that wasn’t a useful excuse any more. (B&W film that I processed myself was about a penny a frame then; the paper for big prints cost enough to notice, but little snapshot prints didn’t use up that much.)

When I knew I was passing through a place because it was interesting, I took pictures to remember, but when it was my ordinary place to be, I often didn’t (and have pictures mostly by luck, interiors as background to something involving people).

People

I’ve generally done fairly well on documenting people that I saw much of. Same for pets, who are not precisely people, but in terms of photographic regret act about the same.

Things

My particular areas of interest, computers and photography, lead to my working with or owning some interesting equipment.

I don’t have pictures of the IBM !401 I was first paid for programming, or the PDP-8/L that Jeff Hoskins and I wrote the ultimate version of the “Target” game for (which contributed to many breakages of the joystick), or the PDP-11/20 that was my first PDP-11.

I do have some shots of the PDP-8/I, the first non-decimal computer I programmed (I was never paid for programming that one). My first exposure to octal, and to using the actual bit patterns; the IBM 1620 and 1401 were of course binary at the hardware level, but memory was organized in decimal digits (or full characters), and you never really needed to look beneath that to understand what you were doing; decoding the console lights digit by digit was easy.

I don’t have pictures of my Miranda Sensorex, or my mother’s Bolsey 35, or the Leica M3 I owned in college, or the Asahi Pentax Spotmatic system that I traded the Miranda for.

I have pictures of many later cameras, from when I sold them on eBay.

For cameras in particular (more than computers), I want photos of my camera; good photos of that exact model are much better than nothing, but are not entirely satisfactory.

I don’t particularly regret not having photos of bottles of particularly good wine (or cognac). It might be useful to have better written notes, but the field has changed so much that what I learned back when wouldn’t be much use now anyway (or, as at the time, it would be stuff I couldn’t afford; I’ve tasted pre-phyloxera port).

Events

I’ve done pretty well with documenting SF conventions I was at. But I have no photos from things like the Dragaera gaming sessions I was at, or Mike Ford’s magical 17th century gaming group. I was doing that thing where I was present in the moment (and, to be fair, also worrying about disrupting or delaying the games), and I definitely regret it.

I don’t miss snapshots from the Yes or Emerson Lake and Palmer concerts I was at early on. I did get photos from the 1991 Cropredy Festival we were at (with backstage passes), and I don’t find myself going back to them very often. Of course finding good photos of those groups performing is easy, but I don’t go around collecting them or even looking at them much, except by chance.

Transportation

I mostly don’t regret not having photos of my cars (or I have one where it’s the background for some people).

I don’t have photos from the 1958 Atlantic crossing (by ship), or the 1966 or 1967 crossings (on the SS France). I may have Mary’s photos in a box I haven’t looked at yet, I should check; hadn’t thought of that before. I do have pictures of the VC-10 we flew to Entebbe on, but no pictures of the other interesting airplanes I’ve been on (Caravelle, Comet, DC-3, Constellation, plus “ordinary” things like the 707 and DC-8). I dig out and even post the VC-10 photo periodically, so the others would probably mean something to me also.

I took photos at the shuttle launch we saw (from public access, so far away). Don’t think I’ve scanned or made any prints of them, but they weren’t much good, we were too far away for photography really. I’m glad I was there, and maybe should check the photos again but I don’t think they matter much.

Switching Camera Systems

Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer recently posted an article about not switching camera systems, which was sparked by Thom Hogan’s article on the topic. Very very briefly, Thom is suggesting that all the systems have gotten so good that most of the old semi-decent reasons for switching no longer apply to most photographers.

This is not obviously stupid.

And it got me thinking about my camera system switches. Several of mine can be described at least as unsuccessful (not always for reasons I should have anticipated though).

So, let’s see.

First Camera

Around 1962 (I have negatives dating from that school year) I was given a Tower Pixie 127 camera, for my birthday or perhaps Christmas. I had little input on this, and didn’t know anything about cameras, and had no previous camera, so this is not in any sense a switch. But that’s the baseline.

First 35mm Camera

I was given my mother’s old Bolsey 35 in 1966, before we went over to Switzerland for a year. It had become surplus when my mother got a Minolta fixed-lens rangefinder camera with a light meter in 1964, before our summer trip to Uganda (my father was going there to work on a project writing mathematics textbooks for the English-speaking countries in Africa).

Again, I had little input (though I could have ignored the camera). It doesn’t tell my much about my system switching behavior.

I soon bought a little light meter for it (a Biwi Piccolo, bought in Karlshafen am Weser), and shot some Kodachrome slides with it as well as B&W negatives.

This camera eventually lead to my starting to do my own darkroom work, a couple of years later, so having a 35mm camera was important.

First SLR

This was all my choice, and did represent acquiring a new system (I didn’t lose the Bolsey; though I didn’t use it much any more). I chose a Miranda Sensorex with the 50mm f/1.4 lens. Largely, I chose this because they got the highest ratings in Consumer Reports review of SLR cameras.

Getting a serious interchangeable-lens camera was certainly the right choice for me at this point. In the next few years I acquired a Tamron 200mm f/3.5 lens and a 28mm (going both longer and wider than the usual choices at the time). I took a lot of photos with this setup, through high school and into college. This was the camera I wielded for the Norhian, my highschool yearbook, and which I was shooting when I built my own darkroom and started doing all my own B&W printing and processing.

It was not a particularly good choice. One thing I learned from this is that Consumer Reports’ reviews are not really good guides for expert users. While I wasn’t an expert user when I bought it, I was heading that direction, and various limitations became apparent (in range of lenses available, particularly).

Leica

Getting a Leica M3 was an excellent choice. Over the next 2 years I added 90mm Summicron f/2 and 35mm Summicron f/2 lenses, and used them a lot. This was one of my main cameras when working for the Carleton Alumni Publications Office (their full-time professional quit during a hiring freeze so tight that the people who were responsible for a lot of the fund-raising couldn’t replace a key employee; so they ended up using a number of student photographers a lot, including me).

The rangefinder focusing worked better than early 1970s microprism screens for focusing in dark situations, and I did a lot of shooting in the dark (late night parties and music sessions, stuff at science fiction conventions) or by flash in rooms that might be pretty dark. The lenses were faster than the wide and telephoto choices I had previously had, too, which helped. And the non-reflex viewfinder meant I could see the exact moment the flash illuminated, so I had a better idea whether I got the shot than with an SLR.

I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have been as well off getting a Nikon SLR body and f/1.4 lenses, though. I might have lost some on focusing still, but I could have extended out to the 135mm f/2 lens to get a longer reach (I owned that lens later, it’s wonderful). The pricing of Leicas was going crazy, and it became less and less of a viable option for a price-conscious user as things went forward, but I’m not sure I should have known that when I bought the M3.

Pentax Spotmatic

Shortly after getting the M3 I swapped the Miranda for a Pentax outfit, with more lenses and longer ones (out to 400mm).

I picked it specifically as an adjunct to the Leica; I’d be using it for longer or wider lenses than I could support on the Leica (well, than there were frame lines for; I could use wider lenses at least with an auxiliary viewfinder, but then focusing and framing would be separate windows).

Pentax had a wide range of lenses, and very high optical quality in general. I never bought a prime lens for it (it came with such a set I never really moved to add to it; it was a decade later that I went out as wide as 24mm for the first time). Stop-down metering wasn’t particularly a problem, by my standards at the time. This may have been a good choice, at least as a simple swap for the Miranda.

I don’t see this as a mistake, more as the correcting of a mistake. But the more I think about it, the more I think that with 2020 hindsight (okay, I’m 2 years late) my best choice would have been to buy a used Nikkormat or Nikon F first and just stick with that, adding lenses and bodies here and there. Where’s the transtemporal mailbox?

Pocket Instamatic

Don’t worry, I didn’t get rid of any of the other gear.

The technology was hyped and interesting (they gave up on holding the film really flat, and instead calculated the lenses to focus properly on the film as the cartridges actually held it). It was my first step back into a “toy” camera, and I used it for a lot of snapshooting. The small size was convenient, but I never worked with those photos in the darkroom.

This was clearly a mistake. The idea of a “toy” camera, something smaller to keep with me more of the time, was good, but there was no need to step down this far. At that point there were very good small rangefinders like the Olympus 35RC or the Canonet QL17 with f/2.8 lenses and pretty good rangefinders, and light meters or even auto-exposure. I didn’t actually carry the Instamatic in a pocket, so these would have worked as well for carry I think, and much better for photography (and I could use the negatives in the darkroom myself).

The insane choice that keeps attracting my retrospective eye was the Minox system. Much smaller negative, and would have caused darkroom problems for me (the enlarger in my home darkroom was a Durst M35, which supported 35mm only, and had no alternative negative carrier options, so no way to handle smaller formats (or larger), and the darkrooms at college didn’t have such negative carriers in place, though they would have been available for purchase). Probably would have been a mistake, but I don’t know.

Canon AF35M

Then I graduated, and lost access to the college darkrooms, and had no darkroom access. There was a 4-year gap between roll “ddb-396” and “ddb-397”. I regret this gap rather a lot. I could have set up a good enough darkroom in my apartment (Bozo Bus Building basement) and my first house, though it would have required buying an enlarger (since I had sold mine when I got to the good darkrooms at college).

And sometime during that period (not at the beginning) my camera gear was stolen, along with some other stuff, out of my closet at home.

After a while I decided I had to get back into at least snap-shot photography, so I bought one of the new breed of auto-focus 35mm compact cameras (successors to the Olympus 35RC and friends). It was a marvelous toy camera, and I still do things with the photos from it. The idea of a toy camera was, once again, proven good!

Nikon FM

Just a few months after that, I bought a Nikon FM and Nikkor 35mm f/2 and 105mm f/2.5 lenses. The FM had a brighter focusing screen and viewfinder than many older SLRs, and you could get especially bright focusing screens for it (which I did).

My thinking included that I might need to also replace the Leica for low-light work, but I certainly needed to replace the SLR for wider, longer, zoom, and such, so I’d try a modern SLR first before committing the money for the Leica (which during those 4 years had definitely gone up a lot). And in fact I never did replace the Leica, I got more bodies and lenses for the Nikon system instead.

I have no idea why I got the 105/2.5 lens. It’s a classic portrait lens, but what I knew I loved was the 90mm, and Nikon had an 85mm that was available in either f/2 or f/1.4 (nearly 2 stops faster than the 105/2.5). I somehow didn’t know about the famous Nikon 85mm? I would definitely have been better served by the 35/1.4 and the 85/1.4; and then adding the 135/2 rather sooner than I actually did.

Despite that lens selection error, this was one of my best system choices. Nikon was “the photographer’s camera” from the 60s through the 90s at least, and staying with the same lens mount that whole time would have been better for me.

Nikon L135AF

For some reason I got this to replace the Canon AF35M. This was a clear mistake; it didn’t expose as well as the Canon. I don’t recall brand prejudice having anything to do with the choice. Apparently if I’d gotten the L35AF, it would have been much better (at least so Ken Rockwell says).

Olympus OM-4T

This was one of my most carefully considered system switches. And it turned out to be entirely unnecessary (though one of the reasons I couldn’t have anticipated in 1987).

I had been waiting for Nikon to introduce spot metering in their SLR line. Olympus came out with their multi-spot metering. I thought that I could get considerably better slides (which have high contrast and a restricted brightness range, remember) without slowing myself down too much using multi-spot metering to evaluate the scene and pick an exposure that places things in useful zones (not full zone system, since I wasn’t proposing custom development to match the lighting!).

Well, the multi-spot metering worked fine, it really was easy to spot the high and low brightness areas and see them displayed on the bar as I shifted them around with exposure changes—but it didn’t in practice result in significantly better exposures.

I got a pair of these bodies, and lenses from 24mm to 200mm (including a second 24mm lens that had shift, to handle cathedrals and castles on a trip to England).

And then in 1994 (7 years was my longest run in any camera system to that date, to be fair) auto-focus became important, and Olympus completely missed that boat (until much later). The Olympus gear served me very well, but no better than what I’d had before would have, so the switch was not a good choice.

Nikon N90

The N90 was a rather good prosumer body, but it was expensive, first body I bought that was nudging at $1000. Used to be lenses were expensive and bodies relatively cheap, but AF ran the bodies up, and then of course digital ran the bodies through the roof since the sensor and all the electronics were there. Those things also vastly shortened the useful life of the bodies, which most of us didn’t realize immediately. (They’re not repairable without electronic parts from the manufacturer, who don’t keep them available very long. After that it’s scavenging from other dead bodies.)

I rented one, and an AF lens, for the weekend to test whether I really needed AF, and sadly discovered that oh my yes, I got a lot more interesting pictures if I could focus that fast and that accurately. (Frustrating when the camera missed, but it didn’t miss more often than I missed myself.)

I hadn’t succeeded in unloading much of my Nikon gear during that 7 years, so it was fairly easy to slip back into the Nikon world.

So then over the years I added bodies and lenses and flashes and things.

I’d say that this switch back to Nikon as a very good move for me.

Then digital came along; but I did well remaining in Nikon (no system switch); my first DSLR was a Fuji S2, which was a great choice, then a Nikon D200 (maybe should have waited for the D300).

Then a D700, which was the most amazing camera I have ever owned. They put everything I considered valuable from their top-of-the-line D3 professional camera into the D700, plus at least 2 things I valued that the D3 didn’t have (built-in flash that was a CLS controller, and sensor cleaner)…and sold them for half the price of the D3. Mind you, it was still by a factor of 2 the most expensive camera body I ever purchased. I ended up selling a fairly special lens to finance it (but the lens had been better in theory than for me in practice, anyway).

It was a photojournalist’s camera, excellent for its time in low light, excellent AF. Not especially high resolution (it used the big sensor for big pixels). Fit me perfectly.

I thought I’d committed to APS-C format, and had revised my lens collection somewhat, when the D700 hit me, so that was expensive, undoing some lens decisions.

I suppose the change to and then back out of APS-C should almost count as system changes, even if the cameras had the same lens mount.

The D700 was the camera that made my first years of Roller Derby photography practical (light doesn’t look that low, but for action that fast I needed high shutter speeds).

Olympus EPL-2

This started out to be my new toy camera. With the 20mm f/1.7 pancake it wasn’t much bigger than the Panasonic LX3, and was much better in low light.

But it grew on me, or some of the lenses did. Also the video did, and getting the OM-D EM-5 opened up HD video to me fairly seriously; I used that camera for the Cats Laughing reunion concert movie “A Long Time Gone”, as well as for a lot of the still and video work used to promote the Kickstarter and provide the packaging and such.

And then I found myself maintaining two digital camera systems to near-professional levels. On consideration this seemed financially unsustainable, and after kicking this around a lot, I decided that it was time for me to get rid of that old flappy mirror thing I’d been lugging around since 1969, and go mirrorless. I sold off the Nikon gear (I really did sell it all off this time) and and bought an OM-D EM-1 mk II and some more Olympus lenses (the 40-150/2.8 is amazing; angle-of-view of an 80-300 f/2.8, much lighter, and much cheaper).

Fairly shortly after that, Nikon came out with their mirrorless system, and Olympus went through some major restructuring that leaves the photo division in a somewhat interesting position. So…I think this switch was great for me, but the world is rather making it less pleasant.

Conclusions

So, hind-sight certainly has huge benefits over what one knows when actually having to make decisions. I don’t really feel any of my choices were stupid or poorly thought out; the ones that I would like to retroactively improve were largely due to legitimate ignorance really, either in the present or of the future.

Still, it’d be great to send a letter back to myself, long enough to convince myself I had real knowledge of the future. Go Nikon from the beginning. 85mm! Get a toy camera early, but not a super-limited one. Get a Braun RL-515 flash even earlier. Take more pictures of where I live and where I work, especially early computers I worked with.

Oh; and buy Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon in the IPOs.

Alles Lockenspeepers!

The IBM 1620 computer at Northfield Highschool, where I first learned to program, had a version of a classic warning to not break the machine, written in humorous pseudo-German.

There are multiple documented versions online, and I don’t have a legible photo of the exact version of the one on ours; I’m trying to come reasonably close to reconstructing it between those references and my memory.

This is about how I remember it:

Achtung! Alles Lockenspeepers!
Das Computenmachine is nicht fÅ±r gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der Springenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit Spitzensparken. Ist nicht fÅ±r gewerken by das Dumbkopfen. Da rubberneckin Sightseeren keepen hands in das Pockets; relaxen und watchen das Blinkenlights.

Anybody from then and there want to contribute to my memory? Even if you don’t have a photo, if you remember it differently I’d be interested in knowing. (There are lots of well-documented versions, all a bit different, from around the globe, but I’m asking about that specific version, not others.)

Why German? Well, perhaps because the Germans were a big deal in science around WWII (which, remember, was closer in time to when I was in highschool than that time is to today). Perhaps because German as formally deployed is ponderous enough that this kind of fractured German is inherently funny. Perhaps because of the humorously incompetent German’s in Hogan’s Heroes on TV.

Cheese Fondue

Specifically, the one my mother learned from our neighbors in Zurich in 1958.

I’ve been so fixated on this recipe since then that I’ve never actually made any other. I’m sure others are good too; if I ate this twice a week for a month or two maybe I’d get to the point I would consider alternatives.

This is a very flexible, forgiving recipe, with a very high probability of a good outcome (I started making this in highschool, and have never had a serious failure, though I’ve had better and worse days).

It does take somewhat specialized equipment. After making it on the stove-top, you need to keep it hot on the table while it’s eaten. This is traditionally done with a simple alcohol burner, integrated with a stand to hold the pan. You can buy cans of methanol (methyl alcohol) to fuel it at every hardware store I’ve tried.

Fondue burner sitting on top of stand — Burner, sitting on top of stand

The flame size is controlled by the handle on the burner; it rotates the metal piece with the little holes around the edge so that those holes correspond either less or more with holes in the metal layer beneath, so it controls the air supply to the flame. The solid metal piece to the left snuffs the flame when put on top of the burner.

Fondue pot on stand — Pot on stand (burner is underneath)

(The pieces pictured are the actual set my mother got in 1958; I had them bring a set back for me in 1973 which I also have, but I eventually inherited the original one and I use that for small dinners.)

The dish to make and serve the fondue in should be a relatively shallow, wide ceramic dish of the type pictured. I imagine you can improvise a lot, maybe even use an electric heater of some sort, and so forth. Do avoid metal pots, they tend to get too hot in places and the cheese burns on, which can affect the flavor and which is a pain to clean afterwards.

You also need proper forks; long enough, and with insulated handles, and aggressive enough tines to go through tough bread-crust and keep the piece of bread on the fork as you stir the fondue with it. I can’t find the good forks right now; they have three tines nearly 2″ long, somewhat long shanks, and bamboo handles.

I won’t try to tell you about the position of fondue in Swiss life; I was 4 in 1958, what little I know I read from the cookbook my mother brought back (with many other recipes in it, which I haven’t tried because I’m so fixated on this one). I’d probably be wrong for 1958, even more certainly wrong for now.

For me, it’s a festive special-occasion dish that’s still very easy to make, which I love, and which has long family connections for me.

Okay, actually making the fondue:

Ingredients

For 2-6 people (about what works in one bowl of the size shown).

Ingredient quantities are per person.

2 oz. dry, acidic white wine (a cheap sauvignon blanc usually works fine)
2 oz. Emmenthaler cheese (or American “Swiss cheese”), coarsely grated. Do not use any form of “processed” cheese, that leads to a grainy result.
2 oz. Gruyere cheese, coarsely grated. Do not use any form of “processed” cheese, that leads to a grainy result.
1 garlic clove, peeled and perhaps sliced. Anywhere from “rub the bowl with a cut clove” to a couple of cloves per person, depending on how much you and your guests like garlic. Among my friends, there is competition for getting the pieces of garlic when we eat the fondue.

In addition, you will need 1-2 Tablespoons of potato starch (substitute: corn starch) and 1-2 Tablespoons of Kirschwasser (cherry brandy; substitute: dry sherry).

And grating just a hint of nutmeg on top just before serving is nice.

While it is not an “ingredient” in the sense that it’s put into the pot with the others, you will need bread. Crusty bread, in small pieces (you’ll want crust on every piece you put on your fork, and you want the piece of bread plus the cheese that sticks to it to fit in your mouth). We make somewhat thick slices from small loaves (like baguettes), and then people tear those down to the size they want to put on their fork. I don’t like neat square pieces of bread for fondue, hence I strongly prefer tearing to cutting into neat cubes in advance. And people prefer different sizes.

Procedure

Place the pot on the stove. If you’re doing the “rub with garlic” do that now. Put the wine in the pot, and the garlic (if you’re doing that), and turn the heat on under it to medium low.

When it’s hot enough to start melting the cheese, add the cheese slowly (small handfuls) while stirring constantly. Let each addition mostly melt before adding more! (The two cheeses go in together, no need to make a distinction after the amounts are set.)

Keep heating and stirring until it’s all melted. It generally reaches a stage where the fat has separated enough that you think it’s ruined; don’t worry, that’s normal.

When it’s fully melted, mix the potato starch with the kirschwasser and stir that into the fondue. That will bind the fat back in quite a bit.

Just before putting on the table, grate a very small bit of nutmeg on top, if you like (do not stir in, it should be visible).

Eating

Light the burner and put the pot on the warming stand on the table, and start eating right away.

Really. Right away.

This is hard to arrange. People straggle in, and then mess around with getting bread and wine distributed, and such. It takes advance planning and some training of your family or guests to get it to go smoothly. Some people even try to eat their salad first or something (I generally avoid this by not having the salad on the table until we’re finished with the fondue).

It is the vital duty of every eater to stir the pot each time they “dip” a piece of bread. You do not just dip the bread, you drive it down to the bottom (impaled on your fork of course) and stir it at least one full round of the pot. This keeps it from burning on the bottom!

Figuring out when to turn down the burner also helps keep it from burning. If it’s bubbling (boiling), it’s too hot, turn it down.

The trick to avoiding dripping all over the table is to keep rotating your fork as you move it from the pot to over your plate. And keep rotating it over you plate while you wait for it to cool enough to put in your mouth (at least there it drips on your plate rather than the table cloth). This takes a little practice, but it’s much easier than, say, using chopsticks.

Late in the game, I’ve been known to wipe the bottom of the pot with a larger chunk of bread held by hand (when there is nowhere near enough to cover the piece of bread in the pot).

There’s a traditional thing I never get right towards the end; when it’s down to a very thin layer in the bottom, some people let it bake on and then peel it off and think it’s a special treat. I either get it too early, when it’s good but not that special, or too late, when it’s burned. Good luck!

The Meal

I tend to serve just the fondue (with bread), wine, and a salad as the meal. Either a traditional salad or a fruit salad works. Especially with the fruit salad, it also replaces dessert usually. I suppose if I stuck to the actual recipe rather than increasing the amounts about 50% I might be able to serve this as the center of a more traditional meal.

Drinking the same wine, or a better wine of the same type, as what you cooked with generally works well. A sauvignon blanc or an un-oaked chardonay can work well, or a real Chablis. Many of the same wines that go well with seafood go well here (they tend to be white, light and acid; all that cheese is very rich).

File Server Cooling and Power Refinement

Temporary placement of a fan in front of the internal drive bay resolved the heat problems (which I’ve let run for over a year; stupid me).

When I also had to replace the power supply (it’s suspect in the lockups, not yet proven) I removed the temporary fan (mounted with double-sided tape), and had it come apart in my hands and stop spinning when powered (it was old, it was a test). (Another lockup factor is that it wasn’t getting assigned the right IP address; that made it look like it booted locked, until I logged in from the console.)

And the new modular power supply (200 watts bigger than the old) required me to replace and hence re-route all the power cables. So I messed with the rest of the cables as well (6 flat SATA cables can block some air!).

Temps are back within bounds–but not as good as before, there are two drives up close to 40. Not sure what the difference is from the test state! These darned analog, even physical, things are a lot of trouble.

Heat buildup on three boot tries; temporary good state at the left, new tolerable state at the right.
New power supply, 200 watts stronger than old, not old, and also more efficient.
Parts for the new fan mounting attempt, plus misc. wiring.
Fan, ready to go into case.
The USB cable adapter (motherboard to case front panel) showed some tendency to come unplugged, so I kludged that up pretty thoroughly.
All the busy power and signal cabling up in that corner of the motherboard. Now arranged so there’s *some* room for airflow to the internal drive stack.
CPU (center) and 2 chassis fan connections, routed out of the way of power connectors and bundled (above right, to the side of the fan there).
From the bottom, front panel cables now routed down there rather than on top of the motherboard. Also power and SATA to the internal drive stack are back here.
Back of the switch and LED cables coming in from the front panel to the motherboard.
Fan installed in front of internal drive stack (and all other cables going through there removed or pushed aside).
Fan in place, showing correct airflow. 4 of the SATA ports are on the motherboard at top left.
Space between the power supply and the internal drive stack is at a premium, and kind of messy, even without the fan in place. All the case cables pass through here as well, and connect to the motherboard at that corner. The 6 SATA ports are just in from there. Crowded.
All the busy power and signal cabling up in that corner of the motherboard. Now arranged so there’s *some* room for airflow to the internal drive stack.
SATA to hot-swap adapter bay now routed underneath (and bundled in a stack of 4).

The order of the gallery is kind of messy. First the photos I uploaded were added in reverse order, and then the light table on which I can drag them to arrange the order is a bit weird, and finally there’s no way short of going into edit mode to see the photo big enough to be sure what it is. So after a while I got annoyed and stopped improving it.