Blog
Writing helps me think more clearly. I write about what interests me such as blogging, photography, technology, social media, and my personal creative projects.
Series: Diversions, WIS, typicalday
Topics: blogging, photography, programming
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Lackawanna County Courthouse, Scranton, PA – January 2017
Lackawanna County Courthouse, Scranton, PA – January 2017 This was one of the first photos I took with my current drone (the DJI Phantom 4 Pro) and has already been used by several Scranton-based companies in their materials. I remember being very cold making this photograph. This image is one of the most requested images
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Stitzel-Weller Distillery, Louisville, Kentucky – March 2018
Stitzel-Weller Distillery, Louisville, Kentucky – March 2018 You’ll have to forgive me, as it is going to take some time for me to get through all of my photos from our trip to Kentucky in late-Winter. If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter you may have already seen a few of the photos
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Daily blogging is freeing
Dan Moore on how blogging every day for 100 days lessened the pressure of publishing: But once I committed to writing once a day, I was focused on getting something out. I still wanted to be proud of it, but there wasn’t as much pressure. It could even be something really short, or just a
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Numi
Numi: Beautiful calculator app for Mac It isn’t only beautiful. It appears very powerful.
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Three updates to my site
I’ve recently made three small updates to my site. I suppose the first one isn’t so small. I’ve changed web hosts. Last week I migrated this site from WP Engine (which was getting very costly) to Dreamhost (which, so far, has under performed). Moving the site was rather painless. However, the performance of Dreamhost’s shared
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Many of my notes have a half-life. If I don’t get back to them within a certain period of time, all bets are off as to whether or not I will ever remember what their original meaning was. I’m going to attempt to do a little better at this.
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You should attend events, meetups, and conferences
I published the following article on LinkedIn in March. However, their publishing tool removed all of the photos from the post when I published it and I was so frustrated that I did not bother to go in and fix it. I’m republishing the post here with photos. For over a decade now I’ve put
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Trying out the WordPress Mac app.
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Hiking in Seven Tubs Nature Recreation Area, Bear Creek, PA – April 2018
Hiking in Seven Tubs Nature Recreation Area, Bear Creek, PA – April 2018 On Saturday Eliza and I went for a hike around Seven Tubs, a series of “tubs” carved out of the bedrock by glaciers a few thousand years ago. Beautiful area, beautiful day.
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Simmons returns to the blog
Brent Simmons: I realized that I want my blog to be me on the web. This used to be true, but then along came Twitter, and then my presence got split up between two places. Welcome back to using one spot to blog and microblog Brent. I find myself in the same dilemma with Instagram lately. I
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Retail AR
Dent Reality, a company looking to create practical applications for augmented reality, has released a video preview of their first offering Retail AR: Retail AR can improve the customer experience and boost sales, by surfacing product details, displaying spatial information and navigating customers to relevant areas. Be sure to watch the video. You’ll see its
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Listening to the Moon soundtrack on Jason’s recommendation. Good work material. I wish it were on Spotify but I’ve fired up Amazon Music to listen to it.
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Firefox Reality
Mozilla: Mozilla has always been on the frontlines of virtual and augmented reality (see our work with WebVR, WebAR and A-Frame), and this is a mixed reality browser that is specifically built to tackle the new opportunities and challenges of browsing the immersive web. Me, in April 2017: The way information is displayed is going to dramatically change within
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Matt Haughey \”Communication is the hardest part\”
Matt Haughey at the January DonutJS meetup in Portland, Oregon: Being able to express myself is something I’ve worked on my whole life. I’m constantly learning this lesson both personally and professionally. Each time I do the “landing” of it is softer and softer as I get older. But if someone isn’t “getting me” it
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New office vibes – March 2018
New office vibes – March 2018 Jujama’s Scranton, PA offices are 👌
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Terry Myerson leaves Microsoft
Terry Myerson, on the success of Windows 10 under his watch: Today, we are now approaching 700 million active Windows 10 users, commercial usage is growing 84% year over year, Xbox One is running a Windows 10 core, Surface is leading PC innovation, HoloLens is bringing breakthroughs to computer vision, our universal Microsoft store enables
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\”Just\”
Brad Frost: “Just” makes me feel like an idiot. “Just” presumes I come from a specific background, studied certain courses in university, am fluent in certain technologies, and have read all the right books, articles, and resources. “Just” is a dangerous word. I’m guilty of giving this type of advice. I try not to over
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Want something? Write it down
Mark Boulton, on asking people to formally write down their requests: Next time someone asks you to do something, try it. I bet 3 times out of 10, they say ‘oh it doesn’t matter’. You’ll have that time back. They’ll be a little wiser and have a lower heart rate. Good post. Jump over to
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Beacon, New York has a few secrets to uncover.
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What I saw this week #51: March 16, 2018
Between our trip to Kentucky and starting a new position (and other things) I haven’t had any blogging time. It was good to have a bit of a break I think. Here are some things I saw recently. That’s it for this week. I hope to return to a somewhat regular publishing routine soon but
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I wrote a piece on LinkedIn about why you should attend events. I also jotted down some notes from the last 18-months of going to a few events.
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Kentucky is proving to be a good place to find bourbon.
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Columbus Ohio is a bit of alright.
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What I saw this week #50: March 2, 2018
The last post in this series came in August 2017. Don’t call this a comeback, but I’d like to do more of these since I won’t be blogging daily as much for a few months. Great list this week. There are many others. If you look in the right places the internet is full of
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Electric City Bakehouse, Penn Avenue, Scranton, PA – February 2018
Electric City Bakehouse, Penn Avenue, Scranton, PA – February 2018 New cupcake joint downtown. I picked up something for Eliza yesterday after a nice walk around enjoying the weather.
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Went back to Mail.app this week. Missed it.
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Frosty morning prep flights for a gear check.
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The Anthracite Center, Carbondale, PA – February 2018
The Anthracite Center, Carbondale, PA – February 2018 I seldom get the chance to drive through Carbondale at night. It was nice to see The Anthracite Center lit up.
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90 minutes of full-court basketball felt great.
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Just downgraded iCloud and Drive to their least expensive plans. Sick of dealing with the cloud. I’m now investing in my own storage.
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Just drafted a lengthy post entirely within LinkedIn’s editor. It isn’t terrible but with a few tweaks it could be so much better.
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Repost: Furaha Joyce re: personal growth
👉 Furaha Joyce on Twitter: Stop shrinking yourself to fit places you’ve outgrown Gut punch of a tweet.
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Warm February Evening, Downtown Scranton – February 2018
Warm February Evening, Downtown Scranton – February 2018 It has been nice to have a short respite from winter these last few days. Walking downtown in the evening, without rushing to my next destination. I’m looking forward to spring weather.
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Austin Kleon on daily blogging
Austin Kleon: Also, quite frankly, Twitter turned into a cesspool almost overnight. My friend Alan Jacobs was very vocal about his split from Twitter, and after reading his vibrant blog and new book, How To Think, I just decided to give daily blogging a go again, and this time, to do it on my URL, on my old-school WordPress blog,
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Fiddled with a GoPro, and related software, for the first time in a few years today. No wonder they’re hurting as a company. Software is a mess.
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Three photos from Downtown Scranton – February 2018
Three photos from Downtown Scranton – February 2018 The weather is just beginning to break here in the northeast. We just had 4″ of snow on Saturday evening and tomorrow should be somewhere in the 60s Fahrenheit melting any memory of it away. This causes me to stir and I begin walking around hitting my
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Micro.blog confusion
Jeena Pa: I’m still super confused about micro.blog He then lists just a few things that lead to his confusion. One of which I also scratched my head about recently. When you view this thread and you click on the timestamp you expect to go directly to the post on M.b so that you can
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Capturing Starman from Earth
Rogelio Bernal Andreo: Astrophotography can be applied in many different ways. I utilize technology that allows me to capture ancient photons so that I can later process and create my own interpretation of the data captured, effectively blending art and science like not many other disciplines do, but I don’t usually track “small pixels in
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We’re in phase one of Augmented Reality
Apple just published a page dedicated to Augmented Reality in the latest versions of iOS. It is a good page overviewing some of the use cases we’re already seeing with AR. This is just the beginning. I’ve written about AR many times, so I won’t reiterate everything today. But look at these use cases and
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Microsoft for Startups
Microsoft: We’re excited to announce Microsoft for Startups, a new program that delivers access to technology, go-to-market and community benefits that helps startups grow their customer and revenue base. We are committing $500 million over the next two years to offer joint sales engagements with startups, along with access to our technology, and new community spaces
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Technology Dogmatism
Are you dogmatic about the companies you will buy technology from? Are you an Apple fanboi? Or, perhaps you’ll only run Windows and Apple sucks at everything because reasons. I try not to be that guy. I try to look at the entire field of offerings in every category; hardware, software, cloud services, home entertainment
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Picked up The Abyss special edition at the local library (the only place I could find it) and re-watched it after having just finished the book. So good. This is the only novel that I can say works as a companion and enhances the experience so much. Thanks library.
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Releasing an app on the Google Play Store — 20 clicks Releasing an app on the iOS App Store — Some multiple of the number of clicks you’ve ever clicked in your life.
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I can’t confirm that LIGO is down for repairs. But I believe it is. Imagine how many gravitational waves we are missing while it is down.
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Wallenpaupack Brewing Company – February 2018
Wallenpaupack Brewing Company – February 2018 Decent brews, roomy atmosphere, tours and merch.
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The Quincy Jones interview
Quincy Jones: What would account for the songs being less good than they used to be? The mentality of the people making the music. Producers now are ignoring all the musical principles of the previous generations. It’s a joke. That’s not the way it works: You’re supposed to use everything from the past. If you
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The Siri pause
John Gruber, under “miscellaneous” in his review of HomePod: People seem to naturally think they need to pause between saying “Hey Siri” and issuing the command or query, but in my experience you don’t need to. In this review, I’ve been punctuating directives with a comma after “Hey Siri”, but verbally you can speak without