Blog
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Audio: My armchair analysis of Automattic acquiring Tumblr
Date recorded: August 19, 2019 Yesterday while driving (sorry for the audio quality) I recorded a quick audio bit to distill my thoughts on why Automattic acquired Tumblr. Short-version: Automattic sees Tumblr as an entry point for new WordPress.com customers – especially youth. For someone to go from idea to full commerce or publishing success […]
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Animating Seljalandsfoss in Iceland
The above animation, created with Pixaloop on Android, is from a photo by Eliza while we were in Iceland. That’s me in the bottom right, shooting my own images of Seljalandsfoss.
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Connecticut weekend vibes – August 2019
Connecticut weekend vibes – August 2019 Eliza and I enjoyed a gorgeous weekend in Connecticut this weekend with my sister and her family.
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My answers to my askATP question
I’ve recently started listening to ATP. I’m enjoying the three hosts slightly different takes on things. Somehow they each have just enough of a different perspective to make their conversations – and particularly their angst – entertaining. I sent in a question and on their most recent episode they graciously spent a considerable amount of […]
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Aquaman 👎👎
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Matt Mullenweg on how Verizon handled the Tumblr sale
Matt Mullenweg, stressing the more important aspects of the Tumblr sale: First, they chose to find a new home for Tumblr instead of shutting it down. Second, they considered not just how much cash they would get on day one, but also — and especially — what would happen to the team afterward, and how […]
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Chris Stapleton, Bethel Woods, New York – July 2019
Chris Stapleton, Bethel Woods, New York – July 2019 Eliza and I had the opportunity to see Chris Stapleton at the infamous Woodstock grounds. Though not a fan of country, per se, he was amazing.
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Automattic acquires Tumblr
Matt Mullenweg, on this Tumblog: When the possibility to join forces became concrete, it felt like a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have two beloved platforms work alongside each other to build a better, more open, more inclusive – and, frankly, more fun web. I knew we had to do it. Let’s get a few things out […]
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NetNewsWire public beta
Brent Simmons: NetNewsWire has reached public beta! It only took like five years. 🙂 Pre-Twitter, NetNewsWire was the app I opened first in the morning to catch up on the day. In fact, I said so on a cool November morning on this very blog in 2005. If you’re on a Mac, and have any […]
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The Square in Scranton – June 2018
The Square in Scranton – June 2018 An alternate view of the courthouse in Scranton. The building on the far side of the square was my old office building from 2014-2017 or so.
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Chris Hannah on blogging
Chris Hannah: If you are trying to start a blog, then the best advice is to just start writing, and then press publish. Sure, it might not be the best content you’ll ever produce, but it’s something. Then with the experience of writing and publishing that post, the next one will be slightly better. I […]
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Mike Davidson on working remotely
Mike Davidson: First, let’s dispense with the easy part: despite what you may read on Twitter, remote work is neither the greatest thing in the world nor the worst. We are not moving to a world where offices go completely away, nor are we going through some sort of phase where remote work will eventually […]
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Google Pixel 4 wishlist
Yes, I know there have been leaks galore regarding the Google Pixel 4. While I’ve seen the leaks I haven’t paid much attention to them. I’ve tried to ignore them so that I could be at least a little surprised when it is announced. I currently have the Google Pixel 2 XL. I’ve had it […]
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Raymondskill Falls – July 2019
Raymondskill Falls – July 2019 These loud falls run into the Delaware between Pennsylvania and New Jersey just outside of Milford, PA.
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Repost: David Hobby on meeting new people
👉 David Hobby on Twitter: Takeaway: proceed on the assumption that every new person that you meet carries with them the ability to change your future in a significant way—or connect you the someone else who will.
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Cicada Killer – July 2019
Cicada Killer – July 2019 For the last three years I’ve hiked 3 miles to the nesting grounds of these giant wasps. Amazing insects. (Listen to audio from 2017)
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iOS creates a competition hostile environment
Below is a screenshot of the sheet you see on YouTube for iOS when tapping on a link in a video’s description. They invoke this custom sheet because, like Google, Apple has created iOS to be competition hostile to other browser vendors like Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft, etc. Tapping on a link should open your default […]
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Great ad for Hipcamp. The video is already 4 years old but I only just saw it this morning.
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Butterfly – July 2019
Butterfly – July 2019 Went for a hike last night to see the digger wasps again. The fields were full of butterflies.
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Just figured out that Libby, the app I use to get books/audiobooks free from our local library, syncs across devices. So I’ll be able to keep my current reading pace a bit easier now.
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Craig Mod on the speed of nvALT
Craig Mod, in an essay that has been linked by just about every blog I’m subscribed to: One of my most used, most speedy pieces of software is nvALT.1 It’s an oddly named, very bland application. Just a database of plain text files with a plain text editor bolted on. But it’s fast. The fastest […]
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Pruned my Twitter Lists this morning. I like to shake the box periodically. I want to be sure I do not create an echo chamber for myself. I do the same for RSS feed subscriptions.
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Jonnie Hallman on burn out
Jonnie Hallman, who created Cushion and a bunch of cool stuff you’ve probably seen, burned out building his start up: Then, on Cushion’s 5-year anniversary, I experienced my first panic attack. Read his post for the full story. But the entire post resonates so much with me because with Plain I (and Kyle, my co-founder) […]
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Finished my first ever Sherlock Holmes book — The Hound of Baskervilles. A fun read. The attention to detail is hilarious. I will likely read another in a few months. Recommendations welcome. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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Microsoft invests $1B in OpenAI
Microsoft on the investment of a cool $1B in OpenAI: The companies will focus on building a computational platform in Azure of unprecedented scale, which will train and run increasingly advanced AI models, include hardware technologies that build on Microsoft’s supercomputing technology, and adhere to the two companies’ shared principles on ethics and trust. This […]
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Fisherman, Lackawanna State Park – July 2019
Fisherman, Lackawanna State Park – July 2019 “I once saw a pelican out here.”
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On a Microsoft Surface Phone
Zac Bowden: It’s fair to say that in 2019, Microsoft is “all-in” on the Android platform thanks to its efforts like the Microsoft Launcher, Edge, and Office, all first-class experiences on Android smartphones around the world. I’m glad Bowden wrote this post. I’ve been wanting to. Longtime readers of my blog will know that I […]
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Hudson Valley Balloon Festival, Rhinebeck, New York – July 2019
Hudson Valley Balloon Festival, Rhinebeck, New York – July 2019 A beautiful day in New York to watch these things float away.
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Eliza, sunset – September 2018
Eliza, sunset – September 2018 I remember this as a gorgeous early fall evening with Eliza and friends.
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I haven’t been blogging as much. Spending a lot of free time fishing. And that is totally OK.
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React is an ecosystem
Jonathan Snook, on his learning curve when joining a new organization that uses React: When people talk about learning React, I think that React, in and of itself, is relatively easy to understand. At least, I felt it was. I have components. I have JSX. I hit some hiccups with required keys or making sure […]
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Repost: Brent Simmons on blogging
👉 Brent Simmons: Here’s the thing: blogging is like any other human activity — some people stop and other people start. It’s natural.
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Midway through a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci and I’m convinced if he were alive today he wouldn’t have a GitHub account. All local private repos. All unfinished. All brilliant.
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Libra (the new cryptocurrency) must-reads
So Facebook, among others, announced a new cryptocurrency and blockchain called Libra. You’ve likely already seen the headlines. But perhaps you’re wondering what it means, what makes Libra any different than, say, Bitcoin, or perhaps you have other questions. I did too. So I’ve rounded up a few links that helped me gain some perspective […]
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Tourists will ruin Iceland
If you go to any scenic area in the United States you’ll see countless warning, prohibited, and no trespassing signs. In some areas it nearly ruins the experience of seeing some of these amazing places. In Iceland, however, you don’t see many at all. Icelanders are extremely welcoming to tourists and its landscape is relatively […]
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Om Malik, on his photo journey
Om: I find using a 24mm wide angle lens, a 90 mm medium telephoto, or a 280 mm tele lens akin to using saffron in my rice or black salt in my lentils – flavors that are beautiful in their restraint. I like reading his perspective on this. Less is definitely more. And constraints breed […]
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Whenever a beta is released for a major piece of my software stack I’m tempted to update. I factor in what I’m working on and whether or not it would effect my productivity. If it would, I don’t update. If not, I roll with it and report bugs as I can.
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How Micro.blog’s Discover is curated
Jean MacDonald: The Discover timeline has evolved and will continue to evolve with the community. The guidelines will evolve too. We want to have additional curators from the community. We need to build some tools to make that possible. It would be particularly nice to have curators who can encourage discussions and connections in languages […]
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Demoed the React app I’ve been working on to our team today. It worked! Pretty excited about what we’re making with this. Fun project. Looking forward, though, to someone taking it off my hands soon. (Could it be you?)
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The bear I mentioned. Turns out (after closer inspection and research) it is likely a ~400lb male black bear. At one point, I was about 10′ from him.
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🔉 Listening to this week’s Micro Monday. My ears were burning! 🙂
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The Swift Era begins
Brent Simmons: Though I don’t discount Catalyst’s usefulness — we will get lots of apps new to the Mac — the real news this week was about SwiftUI and the Combine framework. This, finally, is a new way of writing apps, and it’s based on Swift and not on Objective-C. It’s very much not from NeXT. […]
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Finished Watchers by Dean Koontz. ⭐⭐⭐ – Odd. Seemed like two stories in one and oversimplified narrative. But, it had a few tense moments.
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Random WWDC 2019 thoughts
Random WWDC 2019 thoughts: Overall, this seemed like a solid, solid WWDC. I’m sure there will be a lot more news over the coming week. But to me, it addressed the main things I was looking for: a commitment to the Mac, iPad OS updates, and for Marzipan (now Project Catalyst it seems) not to […]
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Repost: Alex Hoffmann on the importance of WWDC 2019 for him
👉 Alex Hoffmann: This week’s WWDC is going to be a make-or-break situation for me. It’s going to determine whether I will continue to consider Apple’s tablets worthwhile or if I’m going to move to a Microsoft Surface Pro once they release one with USB-C/Thunderbolt 3. I’m telling you. This is an important one on […]
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The importance of WWDC 2019
waffle: Whether I’ll like the outcome or not, the cards are stacked for Apple to weigh in heavily on all these things (including possibly by inaction, to focus much more on iOS) come Monday. If optimism left me easily, I would be typing this on a capable PC laptop instead (although possibly swearing equally at […]
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TIL that Windows 10 has a “Game Bar” (intended for gamers) that makes it really easy to record my screen.
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Humans have set foot on the Moon, nearly eradicated Polio, measured supernovae of distant stars… yet the traffic lane merge baffles them.
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Pixlr – A free photo editor. Nice to have in a pinch. Played around with it. Works great. /via Jeremy Keith.
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WWDC is just around the corner. I usually write up my wish list and predictions but this year I’m just going to stick with my questions.
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.
Series archives: Diversions, WIS, typicalday