Blog

  • In September I was in Portland, Oregon for WordCamp (as I mentioned). Here are a few snaps taken with iPhone 12 Pro Max and Halide’s Process Zero. Film snaps to come when I develop my next batch of color rolls.

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  • Thoughts on Automattic vs. WP Engine

    In this post, I’m sharing my personal thoughts on the Automattic vs. WP Engine trademark dispute. These views are my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else on my team. Additionally, this should not be seen as a comprehensive retelling of the events from the past few weeks. Much has […]

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  • I pushed an update to Stupid today that features a theme inspired by Jacques Monneraud‘s ceramic work. Best if viewed on a phone.

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  • I’m experimenting with the ActivityPub plugin a bit. I’ve always wanted separate fediverse accounts for my personal projects such as Stupid, Stripe Transfer, etc. but the thought of managing those didn’t seem fun. The plugin allows each author to have their own account; so I’ve added one for @stupid to play with and customized its […]

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  • “You should go to conferences” – Sophie Koonin

    Sophie Koonin recommends attending conferences for personal and professional growth. I agree.

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  • iOS 18.0 is very nice even on my limited iPhone 12 Pro Max. The Passwords app, Transcripts, Home Screen customizations, Hiking Routes, Safari highlights, Call recording, Notes updates, Math in Notes, Messages updates, Lock Screen customizations… People are saying that this is a lackluster update? Far from it. I think this update is fantastic.

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  • My coffee game has been on point recently; I’m grinding beans to just larger grain than espresso, brewing in a pre-warmed moka pot, keeping the brew warm in a pre-warmed 18oz Yeti water bottle, and pouring as-needed into a (you guessed it) pre-warmed ceramic mug. ☕

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  • I’m attending #FediForum! I’m looking forward to seeing the progress the community is making on expanding the fediverse. All of us at NerdPress / Hubbub are happy to be supporting the event.

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  • Diversions #6: The Grapes of September

    In Diversions #6 I write about making grape jelly, canning projects, a trip to Virginia, and share some links.

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  • As I briefly shared on my personal Mastodon account last night (this fediverse thing is going to get confusing, isn’t it), here are a few photos of this year’s garlic. I planted in October 2023. I’ll likely plant about 200 cloves in October. And the process starts all over again.

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  • A fair number of suggestions to my computing setup post came pouring in. Thank you! The more rumors I read or watch seem to indicate there will not be a Mac Studio this year with an M4. So if I’m to make this purchase I may not have that as an option. I think I’ll […]

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  • My next computing setup

    The idea of trying to paint the full picture of my computing needs exhausts me for some unknown reason. Even this short post has been a chore. But I thought it important to get some of my thoughts down because it helps me to clarify my own thinking and will hopefully help me make some […]

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  • I’m drafting a post about my next computing setup in hopes that it helps clarify my own thinking and true needs. In short, I’m having trouble deciding when to upgrade, what to purchase, and how much to spend. Hopefully it becomes more clear before the year ends.

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  • The mirrored tomb of architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen near Delaplane, Virginia. I exposed a few frames of film here as well but I likely won’t develop the rolls for a bit so I thought I’d share this one. Shot on iPhone 12 Pro Max using Halide’s Process Zero (which I’m loving).

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  • I have been really putting my computer through a lot over the last year or so. Multithreaded processes that I’ve handbuilt, encoding video, running LLMs locally. My Mac is starting to shut off fairly regularly right in the middle of a task. When is Apple going to announce the M4?!

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  • Diversions #5: Kayaking Psychonauts

    Few experiences have the serenity of kayaking on a lake. Especially in the evening at sunset. If you haven’t kayaked, I highly recommend it. For years I kayaked very regularly. These days, I hardly ever do. But it is something Eliza and I want to return to. I’m hoping that writing it down will force […]

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  • Tracy Durnell on weeknotes

    Tracy Durnell, who is very good at weekenotes: I don’t track anything that could make me feel actually bad about myself. I might be a little embarrassed if I don’t write as much as I wanted to, but no one’s going to judge me as a person for it — creative folks get it. Read […]

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  • WordPress 6.6 had broken dark mode here on my site. I’m probably “doing it wrong” and I should take the time to research what the preferred way is these days. But, for now, it is fixed. Sorry dark moders.

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  • My appearance on The Food Blogger Pro Podcast Episode 437

    As I mentioned last week on Mastodon, I was invited, along with NerdPress CEO Andrew Wilder, on The Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Here is the episode: It is also, of course, available wherever you get your podcasts. Here are some useful links to the episode in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Overcast. The conversation was wide […]

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  • Diversions #4: Tree branches and LLMs

    Diversions is 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 things that inspire me. A bit of housekeeping: I’m turning Diversions public. While a fair number of people have signed up for both free and paid memberships […]

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  • Craig Mod on shooting film

    Craig Mod in Ridgeline Transmission 189 Tōkaidō on Film — People: One of my many todos post-walk has been to dig through the film I shot while walking the Tōkaidō in May. Finally getting to that. To keep things sane, I’ll be batching these photo posts. To start: Here some portraits I took along the […]

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  • Hiding container elements based on the state of the Modified Date block in WordPress using CSS

    On my single post template I like to show the date the post was most recently modified to make it clear that it had been edited since it was first published. I also do this on my portfolio entries – which you can see on my Where I series of photographs on the bottom left-hand […]

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  • The quality of Threads’ For You feed has plummeted for me over the last several months. During its first few weeks, it was an excellent way to expand my network. Today, it seems to surface the most banal content on the platform.

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  • Going to be near Astoria, Oregon in late Summer? Keith Taylor, who I had a chat with back in April, will have a piece in this year’s Analog Forever exhibit at Lightbox Gallery. Looks like a lovely show.

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  • Manuel Moreale on “The Browser Company”

    Manuel Moreale: It’s called The Browser Company but what they make is a wrapper around the Chromium web browser. So the browser company is making everything but the actual browser. Can you imagine starting a company called “the pizza company” and then outsourcing the pizza part to a 3rd party? So bizarre. These days, they […]

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  • Diversions #3: Gardening, Remodeling a camper, Designing an addition

    Diversions is 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 things that inspire me. Living this far north means that for a quarter of our year we seem to do much less outdoors. The warmer weather brings, […]

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  • Yes, Safari on iPad should be the real Safari

    M.G. Siegler, writing on his newish blog Spyglass: the Safari browser on iPad has always behaved more like the Safari browser on iOS versus the version built for Macs. Just yesterday I had to log into Eliza’s Gmail account via Safari on my iPad. The experience was akin to a 2007 web app with no […]

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  • Molly White on building the web we want

    Molly White: Nothing about the web has changed that prevents us from going back. If anything, it’s become a lot easier. We can return. Better, yet: we can restore the things we loved about the old web while incorporating the wonderful things that have emerged since, developing even better things as we go forward, and […]

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  • Chicago snaps part 2: A few Tri-X photos from walking around downtown Chicago in mid-March. The worm-like aberrations seen on the images is because I didn’t pay close enough attention to temperature while I developed this roll. Live and learn. See also part 1.

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  • A conversation with Keith Taylor – Photographer and Printmaker

    Keith Taylor is a photographer and printmaker with over 40 years of experience in the darkroom. His personal work includes multiple darkroom mediums including gelatin silver, platinum palladium, and his passion polymer photogravure. In mid-March we hopped on Zoom for a 1-hour conversation. This isn’t an interview. It does not have planned questions. It is […]

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  • Diversions #2: From Chicago to Assateague

    Diversions is 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 things that inspire me. Chitown! I spent a few unseasonably warm days in Chicago on a work trip with the NerdPress team. It was my first time meeting […]

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  • Favorite Toots now available on the WordPress plugin directory

    Back in early February I submitted the Favorite Toots WordPress plugin I had been toying with on my own website to the WordPress plugin directory. Starting today, it is available publicly there and people can search for it from their own WordPress Admins. The source code is available on GitHub if you’d like to contribute […]

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  • An interview with Manton Reece for 2024

    I interviewed Manton Reece about his journey with Micro.blog in 2018 and again in 2019. They’ve been fun to look back on as the service matures, grows, and changes. I’m a big fan of Micro.blog and the community there (follow me there, if you’d like) and Manton was very gracious to agree to be interviewed […]

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  • Quoting Elliot Jay Stocks on how writing a newsletter feels different

    Elliot Jay Stocks: When I first decided to start a newsletter, I’d assumed it’d be just like publishing a blog, but with a different delivery method — but I was completely wrong. Although I do see blog posts as quite personal outputs, a newsletter is just different somehow. It’s hard to say exactly why, but […]

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  • Switcheroo – An open source Little Arc for Safari

    This post details a Mac app that recreates Little Arc in Safari. The post and source code are available for members only until April 3rd. Sign up to access the post and code or wait until it is published publicly. You need to be logged in to view the rest of the content. Please Log […]

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  • 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 is 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 Favorite Toots 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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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.