Author: Colin Devroe
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Photopea – A free browser-based Photoshop
Ivan Kutskir, the one-person team behind Photopea: My friends and my family did not know about Photopea during the first four years of development. I was spending a lot of time building it, without making any money or learning new skills. So nothing to be proud of, but the project was fun and I enjoyed…
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Thanks to everyone that sent in bugs with Red Oak for Micro.blog. I’ve pushed several updates that address all of the known bugs for now. I’m sure there will be more but may not be able to fully test it until people install it.
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Dwayne Harris’ typical day
Dwayne Harris’: Now I “work” at pretty much any time: weekdays, weekends, afternoons, late at night, whenever. But at times that work best for me, in the priority/order I think makes sense, doing things I actually want to spend my time doing. I’m happy so far. Good for you Dwayne. Side note: I appreciate Dwayne’s…
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I’m working on a second theme for both Micro.blog and WordPress. This time, it will come to Micro.blog members first (free for members) and then to WordPress for an introductory price. The M.b version is almost ready for beta testing.
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Just released the sixth major build of Cypress for WordPress. It includes an image count on portfolio items (see homepage). This is something I missed from my previous theme. It is optional!
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The tooltips in Apple’s emoji picker on macOS are infuriating. (If I’m complaining about something this trivial and fatuous, my life must be amazing today. And it is!)
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But she’s a girl on Johnny.Decimal
But she’s a girl…: Things were scattered all over the place, randomly distributed among badly-named folders, and often duplicated. It took my several days of chipping away at it in spare moments to get it all organised, but I feel immensely better for it. She’s doing better than I am. I gave it a try…
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Introducing HTML Family Tree
Today I’m introducing a new project on my Projects page; HTML Family Tree – A simple page to show and navigate a family tree. I spent a lot of time this winter scanning old slides from my grandparents. As I did so I began to see a lot of unfamiliar faces. Many of these unfamiliar…
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Mark Jardine on making simple things
Mark Jardine: I’ve noticed that when I successfully create something simple, I want to make more things as opposed to failing at something complicated. Since January I’ve been spending little bits of time here and there on my projects. Back then I stated it was to join in the fun of releasing small things, rather…
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Jerome Carter on the price of film
Jerome Carter: Film is expensive, and I readily admit that it is a self-indulgent exploration for no purpose other than the sheer existential joy it brings. That sounds about right.
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Jordan McChesney on impressing others
Jordan McChesney, writing for PetaPixel: Then, around June of 2020, something changed. I decided to focus less on what my fellow photographers thought, and decided to focus more of my attention on myself. Since then, I’ve spent more time adding products to my shops, including images that I’d previously considered as ‘not portfolio material’. To…
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What I saw somewhat recently #73: March 31, 2021
If you can believe it, this is my first WIS post from in 2021. I’ve been keeping a small backlog of links that I’ve wanted to share but mostly I’ve shared links here as separate posts. I think once I get to #75 I’d like to do a retrospective and pull forward all of my…
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This morning I had a hard time finding a dead simple Apache setup using Docker Compose and a volume linked to my local filesystem. So I created one. In case you need it. May future searchers find it.
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James Gurney on NFTs
James Gurney, in a reasoned post explaining NFTs to his rather large art-focused audience: Does it make sense for every artist to leap into NFTs right now? I don’t think it make sense for me—not yet anyway, until there’s a better solution to the environmental issues. I’m beginning to appreciate people who don’t have quick, one-side-or-the-other,…
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A few quick notes about building Micro.blog themes
It took me just a few days to convert the Cypress WordPress theme for use on Micro.blog. Since the layout, design, and styling for most elements was already done – the main work was learning Micro.blog’s theming model and moving the code bits around. I thought it would be a good opportunity to jot down…
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Some updates to Cypress for Micro.blog on the way including archive page, some search styling, and pagination thanks to @endonend.
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Seth Godin on NFTs and my background
Seth Godin: The more time and passion that creators devote to chasing the NFT, the more time they’ll spend trying to create the appearance of scarcity and hustling people to believe that the tokens will go up in value. They’ll become promoters of digital tokens more than they are creators. Because that’s the only reason…
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Christian McGregor on blogging our choices
Christian McGregor, in response to my photo library management workflow post: I appreciate the effort people take to post things like this. Every post adds to the pool of knowledge to help avoid easily made but difficult to change mistakes, like Colin’s own findings when depending on Apple Photos as the main tool. I appreciate that Christian…
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Iris Photos for macOS
Iris: Iris is pragmatic and does not impose a certain workflow on you. Just point the app at your photo library on disk, and Iris will take it from there. We also don’t limit you to a single “system” library that can easily fill up your laptop and force you to decide which photos to…
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Look at less photos
Look at less photos, but look at each one with more intent. Given the accessibility of photography I can quickly look at 1,000 images from other photographers in a single sitting and not remember one of them. By slowing down some, with intent, I have found that I enjoy the photos more and I learn…
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My current photo library management solution
In this post I’m going to detail out how I manage my photo library. I have changed my workflow countless times over the years and I have the deep battle scars to prove it. I’ve switched services, storage providers, apps, folder structures, metadata schemes, you-name-it. In 2018 I decided to set out on a sort…
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Eesel
Eesel: Stop wasting time finding your work – eesel brings together all your work in one place. It’s free, works with pretty much any tool you use, and doesn’t compromise on privacy. This looks interesting. Browser extension (Chrome, Edge) that adds search across all of your cloud-based documents. Hopefully they bring it to Safari. I’d…
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Cypress is now available for free on Micro.blog
If you’re a member of Micro.blog you can now choose to use Cypress as your theme for free. Log in and click on your Design settings page, and choose the theme. That’s it. I’m happy that this came together. I thought it might be fun to make a Micro.blog theme and when I tossed the…
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I have but a single 8×10 print available currently; the Studebaker – which is a print I have hanging in my house. Starting April 5 I’m going to limit each print I offer to a run of 5 or 10 prints. Then I plan on never offering them again.
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I’ve added commercial use licenses for the Wayne County Courthouse photos I created in January. They’ve been re-edited and made larger using Adobe’s Super Resolution feature. If you bought these files you could make your own prints.
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Intel cannot compete with Apple. No matter how hard they go at them in their marketing, they do not stand a chance.
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Chia
Chia, from the creator of BitTorrent: A new blockchain and smart transaction platform that is easier to use, more efficient, and secure. Told ya. You can say you heard about Chia here first. That said, I think this is going to be the first of many. Listening to Vitalik, the creator of Ethereum – which…
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Johnny•Decimal
Johnny•Decimal: When we kept everything on paper, organised people had these things called filing cabinets. They stored all of their documents in them in a structured way so that they could find them again. Now those same people store all of their files in arbitrarily named folders on their company’s shared drive and wonder why…
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The more I write down my photo library management workflow the more I realize I may need professional psychiatric help. Is there a particular discipline of psychiatry for this?
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“If you’re a designer, photographer, or artist using WordPress and are on the hunt for a clean, beautiful theme to showcase your work, take a look at Cypress, a premium theme by my friend Colin Devroe.” — @mikehaynes
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thiscodeWorks.com
Over the weekend I was reading an interview with Patrick Collison of Stripe (who had a big weekend) and he linked to this YouTube video interview with Mishka Orakzai the founder of thiscodeWorks.com. She describes it as the Pinterest of Code. It works really well and seems super useful. She has created extensions for Chrome…
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Prepping photos for display and sale on my site is a lot of work. But I’m getting better at it. I’m even including a few secret tidbits with the sale. Its getting fun! Just put up a new set!
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Micro.blog launches Discourse help center
Manton Reece: The idea is to use the web forums software Discourse and combine it with all the content from our original help site. This looks like it will be very helpful. A place where the Micro.blog team can add new content and the entire community can easily add their own helpful information, ask questions,…
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Greg Avola steps down as Untappd CEO
Greg Avola: As this continued, I started to feel symptoms of depression, anger and sadness. I kept all these emotions inside. I struggled to disconnect. That pushed me down toward the rabbit hole even further. Relationships at work started to suffer, including with people that I’d hired and seen grow within the company. It got…
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Jarob Ortiz on how to apply for a job
Jarob Ortiz, large format photographer for the National Park Service, on the latest LFPP: Read the whole job description, look exactly at what they were looking for. Then I spent 9 days, 8-12 hours a day, working on my resume. 9 straight days in a row. Making sure that I was hitting all the points…
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NFTs and energy use
There has been an enormous flood of information regarding NFTs — in general — and the amount of energy needed to facilitate the creation of them and their transfer. I’ve kept my mouth and my blog shut on this topic because I knew immediately that I needed to gather much more data before I spouted…
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I have two invites to Clubhouse, if anyone hasn’t had the chance to try it and would like to. Send me an email with your phone number if you’d like to try it out.
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Cypress – A premium portfolio theme for WordPress is now available
Cypress on WordPress Cypress is a simple way to create an online portfolio using the world’s leading website builder WordPress. Artists from all mediums; painters, photographers, designers, sculptures – all need a way to showcase their best work online. Cypress is an affordable way for artists to set up a website to control their brand,…
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Using Docker to build a WordPress theme
If you have no idea what Docker is or how it works, this blog post won’t help you too much. For that, I recommend Julia Evans’ Zine How Containers Work! I recently wanted to build a premium WordPress theme to offer here via my website. I started, finished, and released the theme in record time…
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The final show stopping bug in Cypress has been fixed. So now I’ll back away from it for a little while, give it a second look, and wait for feedback from the beta testers. But the current build is a release candidate. I should have it available to purchase on my site tonight or tomorrow.…
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Trudged through greater than knee-high snow on a hike this weekend. Wiped me out! Could it be that I’m getting older? Nah, I blame quarantine.
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Olli Thomson’s dos and don’ts of photography
Olli Thomson: As a photographer, what do I do now that I did not do when I was starting out? Or, to put it the other way round, what do I no longer do that I once did? Here are seven things off the top of my head accompanied by some random photographs that have…
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I think Super Follow and Communities both make total sense for Twitter. They need to make money on things other than ads.
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The new hotness over the last year has been to move out of cities and into more rural areas. I’ve lived here all my life and really enjoy the lifestyle it affords. So, welcome city folk. Make yourself at home. And relax.
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Total Cookie Protection
Mozilla: Total Cookie Protection makes a limited exception for cross-site cookies when they are needed for non-tracking purposes, such as those used by popular third-party login providers. Only when Total Cookie Protection detects that you intend to use a provider, will it give that provider permission to use a cross-site cookie specifically for the site…
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I’m close to needing a beta tester or two for my next project release. Can you help? You’ll need; a WordPress install. It is a theme made for people with visual portfolios (photographers, painters, designers, etc.). If that is you? Please reach out.
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Flim: search for objects in movies
Flim: Flim is the best tool for iconographic search If you’ll recall, back in January I linked to Mike Eckman’s post re: cameras in movies. He mentioned someone on Reddit making their own list. Well, turns out this Flim tool works pretty well for finding cameras in movies too.
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A camera system that I hope to use for the next 40 years arrived yesterday. The Mamiya 645. Left: Pro TL, Right: 1000s
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As the snow melts and freezes and melts and freezes the deer have a tough time digging for food. So each February that I am able, I like to put out some corn for them. We now have four regular visitors at about 3am.