Colin
Devroe

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).

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.

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 on my Instagram Story if you're interested. I also managed to take two color film photographs of Mr. Ross (with zero expectation of them turning out since we were in a dark, cooly lit basement). Mr. Ross agreed to sit for a portrait in the future.

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.

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 uses?

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 childhood memories.

Starting in December 2022 I began capturing these locations digitally. I will return to photograph them on black and white film before making darkroom prints.

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.

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 and interact in a spatial setting.

Weather apps can just be an actual cloud in a room. To dos can be attached to the real world object they reference. Notes can be all over the house.

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.

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.

I deleted my Twitter account today.

Testing Tuff on macOS Ventura.

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.

The entire process takes 3.328 seconds and I have 153,000+ photos and videos in four locations.

Thank you modern computer.

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.

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

I've published a new YouTube video. It is a review of my portrait of The Engineer.

I'm continuing to whittle away at my to do list for Tuff - my static site builder. Every few days I'm able to check off a task. Lots of small improvements add up over time.

I'm putting the finishing touches on a presentation of my portrait The Engineer that I'll be recording for my YouTube channel.

I'm hoping to record better audio without spending too much money. Each presentation I make I want to improve.

We had a possible fireball explosion tens of thousands of feet above us in Pennsylvania. Shook our house pretty good at 10:49am Eastern.

Now I'm looking for how to properly document it with NASA.

I figured this worthy of jotting down on the weblog.

Zero inside knowledge here; but my guess is an Apple Event in February announcing Apple VR dev kits that cost $3,000 that come with a headset + Mac mini. With the device shipping at least 6-9 months later for less than that.

After a 3 week break from blogging and social media (more like 2 weeks completely, 1 week just reading and replying), I'm ready to jump back in. I have lots of plans for 2023 for my website and personal projects.

I spent January 1 in the darkroom making prints from a 35mm roll of Tri-X that I finished over the last few months.

Last day of work done. Just deleted all social apps from my phone. Going to put my nose in a book, some food, and some bourbon. 👋

My website has supported dark mode based on the user's system preferences. But now, those among you that prefer to toggle it on a per-website basis can do so.

There are options for On, System, or Off. I keep my preference at System but choose whichever option works best for you!

I'll be improving the UI of the toggle widget at some point.

Thanks to Sara Soueidan for spurring me to add this option.

I've just added a new watercolor sketch of a landscape in China to my portfolio. My grandmother photographed the scene in 1987.

Rewrote most of my static site generator over the last few days. Cut the build time in half at the same time as doubling the number of files it deals with. The latest update adds monthly blog post indexes.

I'm trying to decide which text editor I want to write my blog posts in.

Left to right: Sublime Text, MacDown, VS Code

Looks like we'll all be in line trying to buy the iPhone 15 EU running iOS 17 EU. iEU?

I don't understand the push towards self-driving cars? Do you really think a robot can merge onto a highway while eating a bowl of breakfast cereal and putting on eyeliner? I don’t think so!

Over many years of watching YouTube videos something has become clear to me; quite often, the fewer views a video has the more information I seem to glean from it.

A 3-hour presentation on fine art photography from many years ago? 55 views? <3

A poorly lit, hard to hear, video of some guy in his basement darkroom? 7 views? <3

By opening Slack, Teams, and Discord on your computer at the same time you’re running all of the JavaScript ever written since the time of the Egyptian pyramids.

This weekend Eliza and I tried some experiments in the darkroom with paper negatives that failed completely. It is good to be humbled from time-to-time.

Making backups of my site's content is easier than ever. Just like my photo library I now have 4 complete back ups that will seldom be very far out of date.

Developed two rolls of Tri-X last night. One I have no idea where it came from - and it looks like the camera had a light leak (selective memory?). But the other looks terrific. I can't wait to spend some time in the darkroom.

Spent some time this morning making adjustments to dates in RSS feeds. I think they should be accurate now. Sorry to all subscribers for the odd RSS behaviour the last few days.

I'm going into year 3 of learning film photography and darkroom printing. One thing is abundantly clear, both of these disciplines are wholly separate. If you find yourself good at one and struggle with the other, do not feel bad. Both require skill. Both can be raised to the level of art. It is OK to focus on one of them.

Added a changelog to keep track of updates to this site, Tuff, and my overall workflow.

What is Apple's policy for updating things like rsync on macOS? The preinstalled version is very old.

Learning more about rsync this morning so that I can develop a few rolls of 35mm film this evening. As one does.

iCloud+ email sometimes misclassifies replies as junk mail. I would think that my having emailed the person first would be enough for Apple to know the email isn't Junk?

If you're subscribed to my RSS feed (first, thank you!) you might notice the feed will refresh. That is because as of this morning my personal website is no longer running on WordPress. Eeek!

I'm getting dangerously close to switching away from WordPress and onto Tuff - my personal static site generator. Like any well tended garden, I'll need to pick weeds and cast seed, but the important bits are done.

Spent about 90-minutes in the darkroom making this print. It is an 11x14 print from a 6x6 neg taken in 2020 at Keuka lake in New York State.

I must be out of my mind. I started building a static site generator.

Yesterday I took a stranger’s portrait. It was quick, likely poor lighting, and may not turn out at all. But I’m super happy that I worked up the courage to ask.

Cleaned and organized the darkroom for winter sessions.

My favorite ways to view photographs, in order: books, iPad (someone’s website, or in Flickr app), YouTube on TV.

On vacation days I spend a lot of time on my iPad rather than my Mac. Which limits me on what I share - particularly photographic work. I need to create a better workflow for publishing from iPad.

I have the whole day off and I have so much internet to do.

Why use 1 hashtag when 25 will do? 😊

Jeremy Keith's post about Twitter from two days ago caused me look up the first time I mentioned Twitter here on my blog. It turns out is was exactly one day after Jeremy did on his blog - 16 years ago yesterday. I have been subscribed to Jeremy's blog this entire time so I likely have him to blame for my Twitter, umm, issues.

WSL is no longer in preview mode. I wrote about WSL for a few years. It is an amazing addition to Windows and the team should be very proud for how good it is.

Copper Fox Distilling in Sperryville, Virginia makes a mighty fine whiskey.

I don’t know if this collage by Mark Clennon of Mike Tyson is actually a film contact sheet or was a composite made in Photoshop to look like it is…

I don’t care. It is awesome.

My Mastodon favorites script got a fair bit of traffic over the last day or so. So today I added a very simple cache (I want to be very nice to Mastodon's servers!), some updated styling, and an indicator to show there are images in the post. More to come!

I’m committing to no longer asking for boosts. My intent was to bring attention to Mastodon features I thought useful. But it comes across as gross and a ploy to gain reach. Sorry about that y’all.

Imagine owning a domain name. Imagine you syndicate when appropriate to various other communities. Imagine being stress free about whether you should use Twitter, Tumblr, Mastodon, or something else. That is what it is like having your own blog.

Work-in-progress: I've created a page to show my most recent 50 favorites on Mastodon. Mastodon doesn't currently allow a public favorites page, so I built my own. I'll be slowly working on the script, caching, and styling. Feedback welcome as always.

I took a nap. Can’t recommend it enough.

We’re going down down in an earlier round, and sugar we’re going down swinging. 🎶

TIL Vivaldi, in addition to building a browser chocked full of features like email, to do lists, contact management, and note taking, also has a blogging service and now a hosted Mastodon instance. Productive team!

Poll, of sorts: How do you balance creation vs consumption? I often wrestle with myself on how much I read or watch compared to how much I write or make or create. My desired ratio is 90/10. Unfortunately it is more like 10/90.

I'm at the age where I totally understand why Mister Rogers changed his sweater and shoes when entering his home.

I wish Apple would transition away from using photos from Yelp in Maps. First, license the photos in such a way that we no longer need to navigate out of the Maps app. Allow people to submit their own photos to locations. Slowly remove Yelp altogether.

I have to admit, I’m surprised that just a few tens of thousands of new users can make Mastodon underperform. It isn’t exactly a new codebase and much of the work is spread out across many instances. I wonder what the biggest bottleneck is currently.

Fall texture dreams - a new set of images I made while in a dreamlike state recovering from COVID-19.

Back in April I wrote a wishlist for Twitter. Six months later it still holds up.