Author: Colin Devroe

  • James Michie’s tips for blogging

    James Michie, 10 years ago, wrote a post about what he had learned after a year of blogging. Then, this year, he wrote a very short post to revisit and update that list. He wrote: Ten years on and most of the points in the above post still hold up. Except for number nine, that…

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  • No more boring apps

    Andy Allen: The world of apps—once an exciting canvas for creative exploration—has become repetitive, predictable, and… boring. If this isn’t a rallying cry, I don’t know what is. I downloaded his apps, they are fantastic. I’m on it Andy.

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  • Any Distance

    Luke Beard: I was frustrated that there was no simple and beautiful way to share a run that was story first, looked great, and was photo-focused. I was thinking about it like “Unfold for running” at the time. Try the app. The results are really cool.

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  • Creatively bored

    Filmosaur*: Sure, I took a few photos here and there, but there’s no real creativity, no real meaning. Perhaps an occasional photo managed to capture something more than an utterly prosaic image, but it feels accidental rather than deliberate. So rather than bore others – again, a Very Bad Thing in my weltanshauung – I just didn’t…

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  • Ethan Marcotte’s typical day

    Ethan Marcotte, the always brilliant responsive web design guy: My day starts in earnest around 9AM, or as close to it as I can get. I’ll open up both email and Slack briefly to see if anything important’s come in, and reply to anything pressing. After that, I’ll close both2, look over my calendar, and…

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  • github1s

    github1s: Just add 1s after github and press Enter in the browser address bar for any repository you want to read. This is super cool. Take any repository on GitHub and add 1s to the domain name and you’ll see the source code for the repository loaded in a browser-based version of VS Code (since it is built on top of…

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  • As Seen in an Alleyway by Katie Yang

    Katie Yang: My name is Katie and I shoot film (mostly expired, mostly in alleyways and cute cafes). This is where I chronicle my favorite places, favorite people and daily life in Taipei, Taiwan. A great blog to subscribe to. I like her series of photos in her As Seen in an Alleyway tag.

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  • Link priority

    I have linked to what must be millions of things. I share a lot of links from here on my blog. I have linked to hundreds of artists from The Watercolor Gallery. And on social media I have linked to and retweeted countless times. I take linking very seriously. I have a sort of link…

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  • Skittish

    Andy Baio: Today, I’m announcing Skittish, a playful virtual space for online events. Skittish brings people together into a game-like interactive 3D environment that’s designed from the ground up for socially-driven events, big and small. It’s currently in private beta, but you can sign up now for updates and announcements, or follow @SkittishHQ on Twitter and Instagram. With Skittish, I’m trying…

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  • Blogging for me

    I’ve covered this topic many times from many different perspectives. I publish on my blog mostly for myself and for the added benefit that someone else will find the information useful. Recently Jeremy Keith wrote similarly. But this other bit about how one cannot predict what will resonate with others keeps coming up too. He…

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  • Hidde de Vries’ typical day

    Hidde de Vries: Sometimes there’s a book I can’t stop reading or a guest in one of the late night talk shows that I don’t want to miss. I go to bed with a book. Love his book page. Also his last name hits a chord. My grandfather changed our last name from Bijl de Vroe…

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  • Michelle Barker’s typical day

    Michelle Barker: If you’re reading this I probably stayed up way too late to finish it. I get insomnia if I code too late, so I try to stop around 22:30 to give myself time to decompress. But if I’m deep into something then the time can run away with me. Me too. I often get the…

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  • I’ve updated to Big Sur. I’ve been running for a little while. It is very good. It is also stable. And I like the refreshed UI.

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  • Our kitchen garbage can has a robot in it. It is a terrible robot and it is terrible at its job. Some things simply do not need robots in them.

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  • Mitch’s typical day

    Mitch, in his typical day post, regarding his 6:15am Twitter habit: This probably isn’t a great morning habit but four years of endless crises have pretty much drilled into me to take a glance at what’s going on in the world as soon as my eyes are open. Break the habit Mitch! Take drastic measures…

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  • Photos Takeout

    Photos Takeout (no doubt a play on the name of Google’s own Takeout data service): Export photos and videos from Photos on Mac in yearwise, album-wise or moment/date-wise folders. Save them in neat folders on Mac, Google Drive, Dropbox, external drive or any other location. For macOS Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave and High Sierra. A…

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  • Why I still use RSS – Marc

    Some blogger named Marc: I firmly believe the Internet, and what it stood for, peaked with RSS. I can’t argue with this. Also, this bit: However it wasn’t until I began working from home and everything in my life moved online that I really began to notice how beneficial RSS could be with relation to…

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  • We must be nearing 20″ of snow so far and it is still coming fast.

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  • Uninstalling Twitter has been a boon to my productivity. It has also already impacted my ability to focus. I started a book!

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  • Anton Sten’s typical day

    Anton Sten: 8.30 – 9.00 PM – Answer Slack / Figma / Notion comments that come in so they’ll have a chance to respond again ahead of my day tomorrow. I’ll keep this time to a minimum. Anton works with a bit of a time shift with his team so this is really smart. He’s setting…

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  • Dave Rupert’s typical day

    Dave Rupert: Also, in a week or so I’ll be in my new backyard office workspace. This will hopefully shift my productivity windows a bit and enforce a proper lunch routine where I leave the physical office to eat in the main house. The distance will also probably temper late night gaming. I see that…

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  • Martin Wolf’s typical day

    Martin Wolf: 7:00am — Hobby time. I paint Warhammer miniatures.  Fascinating to see people’s hobbies sprinkled into these. I also like that this series of posts is beginning to run away with itself where people are chiming in that haven’t been tagged by anyone. If you’re sitting there reading this post, right now, please write one!

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  • Matthias Ott’s typical day

    Matthias Ott: I envy people like Sara Soueidan or Dan Mall who get up really early to do creative, meaningful work in the calmer morning hours before the busyness of the day kicks off. And although I’ve always been a night owl, I am currently starting to enjoy going to bed and getting up a…

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  • Audio: Mistakes have been made (special episode of the podcast)

    Recorded January 27, 2021. In this special episode of Photowalking with Colin I cover some recent mistakes I’ve made with film and in the darkroom. It seems we (the collective we) mainly share our victories online. I wanted to be sure to share the losses as well. Auto generated transcript Welcome to another edition of…

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  • Lucy Bellwood on blogging

    Lucy Bellwood: Some of it is using an RSS reader to change the cadence and depth of my consumption—pulling away from the quick-hit likes of social media in favor of a space where I can run my thoughts to their logical conclusion (and then sit on them long enough to consider whether or not they’re…

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  • Om Malik compares the iPhone to the Kodak Brownie

    Om Malik: Prior to the Brownie, a photo trip to capture a far-flung environment was an expedition that often involved porters, mules, and explosions. The adventurous photographer would need to carry heavy gear, lots of toxic chemicals, and the patience to deal with an inexact process. Contrast that with the Brownie: a box measuring roughly…

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  • I’m releasing some code projects

    When I first started hacking away at a computer (sometime just after the first Jurassic Park film was released in theaters), and ultimately hacking away on the web, people would release small projects for others to use. Single-use scripts, small applications, design files for a specific niche, and proofs-of-concept that you could download and use…

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  • Cassie Evans’ typical day

    Cassie Evans’ typical day: One thing that doesn’t change is that I try to approach my days gently. I listen to how I’m feeling and adjust my plans to fit around that. I also try to find a highlight each day to focus on. Super interesting approach. I need to give this more thought. More typical…

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  • Chris McLeod’s typical day

    Chris McLeod: Like most people I suspect I have days where I don’t feel like I’ve actually achieved anything, and others where I’m amazed by how much it seems I’ve made it through. I find the trick is to just keep going steady. Those really productive days are usually the culmination of work you pushed…

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  • I shouldn’t share my film negative scans at all. I should only scan prints I’ve made in the darkroom. That’s the true photo.

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  • Spotify is (was?) the best place to listen to music. It is, unequivocally, the worst place to listen to podcasts. They’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars and their experience is the worst. I hope they are working on something great.

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  • Rob Weychert’s typical day

    Rob Weychart, tagged by Dan Mall, whom I tagged: I keep my personal and professional web browsing segregated to different browsers, and I use a plugin to block Twitter, news, and other productivity draining sites during work hours. I used to do something similar. I think I had an app that blocked blacklisted URLs. But…

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  • Sara Soueidan’s typical day

    Sara Soueidan, who was tagged by Dan, whom I tagged: I think of day and time management in terms of blocks. Or, chunks of time, so to speak. I divide my day into “activity blocks” that are then distributed to occupy different time slots across the day. Her post is a must-read even if you haven’t been following along…

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  • Mike Carbone’s typical day

    Mike Carbone, tagged by Dan Mall, whom I tagged: 10:30am: Wake up OK, straight out of the gate this young lad is showing off. He continues… 4pm-6pm: Lift and work. This is something new I’ve been trying and it’s been going really well! I bring my laptop to the basement, blast some music, pump out some sets and write…

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  • The best of 2020 as told by me

    I didn’t want to get too deep into 2021 before I compiled my best of list for 2020. I usually begin to compile this list somewhere near the beginning of December and publish it before the new year starts – but I didn’t get that chance this year. The most difficult part about making this…

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  • Courthouse Square, Honesdale, PA – January 2021

    Courthouse Square, Honesdale, PA – January 2021 A commercial use license is now available for these photos. On Friday I drove to Honesdale to pick up some takeout food (Honesdale has some good food) and had a few minutes to kill. So I walked around the square with my Canon Rebel G filled with Ilford’s…

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  • Dan Mall’s typical day

    Dan Mall, whom I tagged: 7:30pm–8:30pm: Optional work wrap-up time if there’s anything urgent from the day.  I envy that he has that evening time-slot to be productive. I find that my evenings are far less productive after I get into wind-down mode. I wouldn’t mind adding an hour or so of productivity to the end…

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  • Jeremy Keith’s typical day

    Jeremy Keith, whom I tagged: Y’know, in the Before Times I think this would’ve been trickier. What with travelling and speaking, I didn’t really have a “typical” day …and I liked it that way. Now, thanks to The Situation, my days are all pretty similar. Waking up at 8:30 seems like such a luxury! I…

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  • Noah Read’s typical day

    Noah Read: Most of the fall was absorbed with house-hunting, purchasing, finding new renters for our previous home, prepping for the move, moving, and unpacking. This has taken any spare moment and more than all my spare energy and attention to make happen. In July, as Eliza and I soldiered on towards our new home’s…

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  • Chris Coyier’s typical day

    Chris Coyier: That long of a workday means that I can be very flexible without feeling behind. If I need to run any sort of errand, I do. If I need to stay home a morning, I do. If I need to come home “early”, I do. And I can do that without feeling like…

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  • Film cameras in TV and movies

    Mike Eckman: If you’re like me, it is exciting to see an old camera in a movie or television show set in the past. I’ve been known to pause to figure out the camera from time-to-time. I often remark that I wish there was a list of TV shows and movies that feature analog cameras.…

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  • Julia Evans on Docker Compose

    Julia Evans: I’m very happy about this because previous to trying Docker Compose I spent two days getting frustrated with trying to set up a dev environment with other tools and Docker Compose was a lot easier and simpler. And then I told my sister about my docker-compose experiences and she was like “I KNOW,…

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  • My typical day

    Here is a general overview of a typical day for me. Routine makes me happy but it also lends to my productivity. The more each day is the same the more I can accomplish. I’m sharing it because I would like to see other people post their typical days – as mundane as they may…

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  • Shift Nudge

    Matt D. Smith (@mds), explains what Shift Nudge is: Shift Nudge is the systematic process to learn the visual skills of interface design, even if you don’t have a design background. Perfect for those wanting to enter or advance in the field. Let’s say you’re sitting there reading this and you’re a coder that wishes…

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  • The most important blog

    Seth Godin: Even if no one but you reads it. The blog you write each day is the blog you need the most. It’s a compass and a mirror, a chance to put a stake in the ground and refine your thoughts. And the most important post? The one you’ll write tomorrow. His post is…

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  • Black Women Photographers

    Laura Beltrán Villamizar, writing for NPR, describing the website Black Women Photographers: Her site, Black Women Photographers, is a forum where members can celebrate each other’s work. It’s also a platform both to elevate the work of Black women in the photo and documentary industry as well as to help financially support photographers whose livelihoods have…

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  • For those wondering, everything is going great in the darkroom.

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  • Firebase is awfully nice. Wow. Side note: I had an idea rolling around in my head for 13 years that I’ve wanted to try and I was able to make a prototype of it in just a few hours.

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  • Simon Collison on personal websites

    Simon Collison: You tend your domain like you steadily improve your home, and it can take years of false starts and incremental commits. Don’t think of it as urgent work, or — heaven forbid — a “side-hustle”. Don’t I know it. Well, well over twenty years on. Still loving it.

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  • Music at Lucky Hare Brewing – March 2020

    Music at Lucky Hare Brewing – March 2020 Just prior to lockdown, we were able to listen to this lovely chap play some music at Lucky Hare Brewing in upstate New York. I rescanned this 35mm negative to get a better quality version than my first scan. Shot on Kodak Ultramax 400 using the Canon…

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