Blog

  • Chicago snaps part 1: A few iPhone captures from last week’s trip to Chicago with the NerdPress team to sponsor the Tastemaker Conference. Hubbub had its own booth while NerdPress had a large lounge with an impressive view. A fantastic work trip.

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  • Voice Memos #1: Reframing our thinking about follows, views, likes, etc.

    In this voice memo I chat a little bit about how I’ve tried to think about my follow count, my blog’s statistics, likes, and other metrics. As the internet begins to divide into smaller groups once again, this perspective may become more important than ever. Voice Memos #1 is 7m54s. You need to be logged […]

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  • Diversions #1: I have no business owning this camera

    This is the first edition of an all-new series of posts and future email newsletter that will be part of a new membership on my personal website. Diversions will the central hub for news about the membership, behind-the-scenes details of my personal projects, as well as a wide variety of links to people, places, and […]

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  • Here is my profile on RsS iS dEaD LOL. Try it yourself. By @paulcuth.

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  • I’m trying Safari for the rest of this week in place of Arc. I’m not revolting against them, I just feel as though our values are no longer aligned. They’ve shifted from trying to build a really great web browser (which they’ve already done, imo) to chasing AI venture dollars. I don’t blame them. I’m […]

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  • An aerial comparison of Carbondale, PA in 1948 and 2023

    Sometime near 1948 Fiore Cerra took an aerial photograph of Carbondale, Pennsylvania that captured how very different a place it was just 75 years ago or so. I live near Carbondale and the moment I saw Cerra’s aerial I knew I wanted to try to recreate it. Well, in early 2023 I did and I […]

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  • A few snaps with my phone while browsing a few local antique shops and garden center last weekend.

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  • The first rebuilding blocks

    Korczak Ziolkowski wakes up early on a bitter cold winter’s morning – the same way he has for several decades – after breakfasting and a few mugs of the hottest coffee his palette can stand, he shoulders his tool belt and trods his way in knee-high snow to the eastern wall of the Crazy Horse […]

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  • Introducing the Mastodon Favorites WordPress Plugin

    One of the primary ways I find new accounts to follow on social media is by eavesdropping on other people’s favorites. Many social networks make each account’s favorites public but Mastodon does not (yet?). So I wanted a way to show my favorites publicly so that others can look through them. And I’m hoping others […]

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  • I’m excited to finally share a portrait I made of S. Robert Powell Ph.D., the President of the Carbondale Historical Society, back in April 2023. I’m donating the prints and images to the society for their archives.

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  • Last year my mother-in-law gifted Eliza and I with a train ride to Jim Thorpe for our anniversary. I managed to snap a few color film photos along the way.

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  • My appearance on This Week in WordPress #285

    My thanks to Nathan Wrigley for having me as a guest on This Week in WordPress #285. (YouTube/Apple Podcasts) Show notes There are a few links on the WP Builds website for this episode but I thought I’d share some of the links I mentioned in the episode as well. It was a lot of […]

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  • If you’re seeing this post that means that my website is once again powered by WordPress. Yay! The site doesn’t look so nice on mobile devices, the feed is broken in a few ways, and I need to get the database load under control… you know, a typical website launch.

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  • ActivityPub will cross the chasm in 2024

    In 1991, Geoffrey A. Moore described the challenges of introducing new technology products as Crossing the Chasm. The chasm is this very real gap between the earliest adopters and the early majority adopters of any new technology. By crossing the chasm, the momentum gained usually enables the technology to find market fit. Most protocols, standards, […]

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  • The greatest productivity hack of all time

    The greatest productivity hack of all time is working less. Slack recently published new research into desk worker productivity. It is a worthy read – however, it sheds light on something that most desk workers already inherently know: longer hours do not mean greater productivity. I have put a lot of personal focus on trying […]

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  • Hello Hubbub – I’m joining NerdPress

    After a few extremely busy weeks full of rewarding and fast paced work, I’m happy to announce that I’m joining NerdPress as Senior Product Manager. We’ve acquired Grow Social from Mediavine, renamed it Hubbub, and we plan to invest in improving this popular WordPress plugin. Hubbub comes in two flavors; Lite and Pro. Hubbub Lite […]

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  • On ad blocking

    I do not intentionally block ads. I do, however, intentionally block ad tracking. And I think this distinction is important. This morning I read Manuel Moreale’s recent post On Ad Blockers wherein they struggle to find an argument against blocking all ads on the web. “Every time I stumble on a discussion about blocking ads […]

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  • When my blog goes quiet you know I’m very busy. I’m looking forward to announcing some personal news in early December. This morning I’ve made what is likely to be my final update to my personal website until 2024 (I added my projects to my homepage).

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  • I discovered a small bug with GUID in my RSS feed that likely existed for an entire year. Of course I fixed it. But that also means if you’re subscribed you very likely received all of my posts in your feed reader again. My appologies. I really do try to avoid such things.

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  • Yesterday, by pure chance, I met local photographer Rolfe Ross – whose work I’ve followed on Flickr for many years. It turns out his photos were being exhibited in the same venue as Eugene Lucas, whose photos I was there to see. I took some very hasty photographs of the exhibit – which I shared […]

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  • If you’re reading this that means that Tuff, my now 1-year old static site generator that I’ve been rewriting from scratch for about a month, works. I’m going to write a detailed post about this rewrite but for now – if you see anything amiss on my site please do let me know.

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  • This evening I fixed a few longstanding CSS issues on my website. Many more to go. Back in April I built my own light box thingy for my portfolio images. Example. I’d like something more comprehensive, but I want to keep it light weight. Would it be terribly difficult to build something like the JPL […]

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  • Photos from Chisholm Vineyards in Feburary 2020

    For many years now Eliza and I have preferred to slow down and take our time on road trips rather than feeling rushed to get to our destination. We like to visit tucked away places. Do a little shopping. Or enjoy a drink. This usually adds about a day of traveltime to any of our […]

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  • Colin Walker on what he gets from blogging

    Colin Walker, on his personal blog (which is looking sharp as ever) about what he gets from blogging in public: “I feel compelled to write, to share, and there is an intense satisfaction in doing so. The sharing is a secondary but essential aspect; while journalling is a rewarding process it doesn’t fill the same […]

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  • My less than typical day

    In January 2021 I posted my typical day which resulted in some fun people following suit on their own blogs. Lately, my typical day is less than typical. I’ve been on a tear for about 12 months with side projects. This means that my day is jammed. But here is a glimpse… I accomplish an […]

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  • I haven’t shared new photographic work in a while. I’ve been struggling to find the time – even though it is easily my favorite hobby. To help unclog my creative pipes, I’m slowly releasing unfinished work. Here is a new photo series, Where I – a collection of images of specific locations based on vivid […]

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  • Talkers and writers

    Mandy Brown, on two modes of thinking and how we should all try to practice both to be useful to our colleagues: “Talkers need to recognize that not everyone loves to think out loud, and that giving space for writing is part of what it means to make use of the best brains around you. […]

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  • How to fix the web

    Robin Rendle published Why are websites embarrasing? wherein he laments the state of design and accessibility on the web. But, he’s hopeful. “I do truly believe that a website can be as well designed as any book, just as thoughtful, just as brilliant.” I sympathize with Robin. The web, especially the news web, is a […]

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  • Dear Arc

    As an avid Safari fanatic, I’m reluctant to dive into a new browser backed by any company with a business model I find… elusive. I’ve been giving Arc a spin every few releases since signing up for the beta and each time it has improved a lot. Just yesterday I was chatting with our creative […]

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  • Reducing my personal hosting complexity

    Have you ever put off a task because you felt like it would take you far too long so you just procrastinate and simply never get it done? I do this all the time. And, for the most part, when I do finally get around to getting the task completed I find out that my […]

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  • Static first

    In the early days of the modern web – say, the mid-1990s through the mid-00s – my personal website was served statically. It was built with plain HTML (CSS didn’t exist at the time) that I copied and pasted when I needed to create a new entry (the word blog didn’t exist then either). But […]

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  • Stripe Transfer continues to grow slowly. The latter half of this year I hope to grow it a bit more. As a start I’ve turned on Google Adwords and also wrote a post about migrations subscriptions from Chargebee to Stripe over on Medium.

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  • For the first year we’ll be in a phase with visionOS where designers will be updating their interfaces to be translucent, dynamic rounded rects. Personally, I am looking forward to when they break out of the windowed world we’ve all been living in for the last few decades and find all new ways to communicate […]

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  • Apple Vision Pro is exactly what I hoped for

    I am very happy. For many years I’ve wanted a computing experience that resembles precisely what Apple announced at WWDC just a few short weeks ago. In 2019 I wrote “I want any size screen, any time, any where.” As poorly written as that sentence may be, I think Apple is attempting to deliver just […]

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  • Will Apple’s headset enhance productivity?

    I’ve written several times about mixed reality experiences over the last 6 or 7 years here on my blog. I recently went back and looked at some of those posts and so I thought I’d sum up my thinking as it stands today, as well as detail what I hope to see from Apple’s headset. […]

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  • Making Tuff improvements

    My approach to building Tuff, my static site generator that I began working on last November, was to jump in as quickly as possible by publishing my personal website publicly very early in the development process. Doing so forced me to make rapid improvements and to focus on the most important features. By spending 5am […]

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  • Humane Leap of faith

    John Gruber on Humane’s recent demo at TED: “So far, it feels like Humane’s entire premise is founded on that same mistake: building a new device intended to replace our phones, without that new device being able to do any of the dozens of things we love to do on our phones that require a […]

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  • How I’m using ChatGPT as an accelerator

    Over the last few weeks I’ve begun using the recent crop of AI-powered services in my daily work and I’ve found them to be an enormous boost to my productivity and fun to play with. I do not know if these human-like chat services will end up causing great harm to the earth’s population or […]

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  • Over the weekend I finished Looking At Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art by John Szarkowski. Szarkowski is, as of this moment, my favorite photographic writer and curator.

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  • Using Wavelength to chat with darkroom printers

    For the past few days I’ve been testing out Wavelength – a group messaging app that is currently only available on Apple’s platforms. It reminds me a lot of Quill, the former messaging app that was swallowed whole by Twitter just prior to … you know. Why use Wavelength? It is tailor made for group […]

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  • Yesterday I finished reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford and Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. I’d recommend both. Chiang is great. I think I need to read more by him.

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  • What I saw somewhat recently #100: March 23, 2023

    This is it. The final WIS link list post. This series of posts has spanned 10 years. I’m happy that I published 99 lists of links and that thousands of people have clicked on them to enjoy the interesting, creative, useful, and fun webpages I stumbled upon over the last decade. I’m saddened, however, that […]

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  • I deleted my Twitter account today.

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  • Doubling down on Mastodon

    The ease of Ivory on Mastodon has me sharing a lot more than I had been over the last few years. Ivory is on my phone, tablet, and my laptop. It is very easy to write a post, share an image, boost someone else’s post, link to a good blog post, etc. My homegrown static […]

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  • Testing Tuff on macOS Ventura.

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  • Tuff, my static site builder, can build a simple directory for me to view my entire photo library. It creates views for each year and month and also checks various backups – both local and cloud – to make sure the files are properly backed up. It warns me if a file isn’t backed up. […]

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  • Will my next Mac be my last Mac?

    Perhaps you’ve had this experience… you walk into a place of business and see the computer and software they use to do their scheduling, billing, and ordering and you notice they are decades old. But, have you seen how productive they are? More often than not they are so fast that the computer has a […]

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  • Simon Reynolds on blogging

    Simon Reynolds, in December, marking the 20th anniversary of Blissblog: I honestly can’t see that anyone has invented a better format than the blog, at least for what I want to do. Simon’s entire post is dripping with flattering remarks about how enjoyable and rewarding blogging is. Those of us in the 20+ year blogging […]

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  • I’m refactoring Tuff – my static site builder – to support multiple websites so I’ve been posting more on Mastodon than here the last week or so. That should change now as Tuff is able build 3 very different websites. Lots more to do but I see the light.

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  • Recently finished reading Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Copious detail. Fast read if not for the length. Author a bit gushy.

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Writing helps me think more clearly and to form or transform my opinions. I write about what interests me such as blogging, photography, technology, social media, and my personal creative projects.