Blog
Writing helps me think more clearly. This archive is longer posts; quick updates now live in notes.
Topics: AI, blogging, photography, programming, projects, Signboard
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 display." As I…
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 not — but…
Update July 1, 2024: Wavelength is shutting down July 31, 2024. 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…
Wind, stirs the dust 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,…
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 site generator Tuff…
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 hard time keeping…
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 club obviously love…
There have been several waves of activity on Mastodon since I signed up in 2017. Those waves have increased in frequency and intensity. Admittedly, while I did put in some effort early on, I wasn’t really part of that first wave. I rode in on a much later wave in mid-2022 and haven’t looked back since. Waves, as…
This antique store was… different This is the penultimate WIS link list. The final list, number 100, shall reprise all previous link lists and come sometime in February. I'm looking forward to crafting a new link list reborn in a new style and with other themes. Doing anything 100 times isn't easy so I'm proud of this little…
A very dead bird, October 2010, Plymouth, Mass. iPhone 4 Last night I revisited Simon Collison's post from early December 2022 Farewell, Twitter. I had read it shortly after he published it and while I agreed with what he wrote, it didn't hit me as hard as it did last night. Simon claims that "others have articulated the…
Oh man am I happy! People that hadn't written on their blog in a long time are blogging again. Websites that hadn't been updated in many years, some over a decade, are being spruced up and published to again. And popular news outlets are publishing articles about blogging. Of course, those of us that have kept our focus…
Just about a month ago, for some unknown and undoubtedly a sleep deprived reason, I began building my own static site generator (SSG). And I did it entirely wrong. This is that story. A sensible person would have first looked at the available static site generators and tried them first. I didn't. In fact, I have only a…
The sleeping Atlantic I have decided that #100 in this series of link lists will be the last "What I saw somewhat recently". Today's list is #98. I'll try to get #99 out sometime in January and #100 will be a look back through all of the previous links. M.C. Escher – Journey to Infinity – An excellent…
For the past several years I've been POSSE-ing. In Indieweb terms that means to publish content on my own site and syndicate it to other platforms. I've decided I'm going to discontinue using automation in favor of manually writing posts for each of the platforms I want to post to. I'm doing this for 3 primary reasons. POSSE-ing…
Zhenyi Tan, who I linked to back in April about his app History Book (which I still use), is on a bit of a tear. Just take a look at Tan's website post archive and count the number of times you see the word "Launch". His most recent projects; a Time Machine inspired UI ontop of the Wayback…
I'm writing this, my first post (actually, it is the second or third) written using my new static site rendering thingy I call Tuff. Twenty plus odd years ago I copy and pasted my way to having my first blog. I was writing HTML by hand then and just copying the bits and pieces that I needed to…
Enjoying a martini and Leon Bridge's Tiny Desk concert There aren't enough links in the world to describe the amount of information I've been ingesting lately. The Twitter takeover, the FTX fraud, the hacking of FTX, and the crypto winter. All while maintaining my steady diet of whacky ephemera and art inspiration topped with a dose of Mastodon…
There is a lot being written about Mastodon lately. And it isn't just being published on Mastodon. Both Time and Wired have published about Mastodon and its creator within the last week. I wanted to post my current thoughts about the platform to capture the moment. Things are changing rapidly. A lot of things are in flux. A…
Brent Sticher, who writes a lot about my favorite programming language PHP (don't @ me), writes about the history of his personal blog and Twitter account and how he now owns his audience. The entire post is worth a quick read. I wanted to back him on on this bit: I've managed to build a following of 15k…
The above series of images were made on a recent trip to Ocean City Maryland and are very likely the reason why my iPhone became what is known as a brick. Let me back up. I’ve used my iPhones underwater ever since Apple said they were IP-rated for a reasonable amount of water resistance. I’ve gone swimming in…
Andy Baio reflects on his decision to shutdown the quirky and cool Skittish: I always knew there would be risk building something like this during the pandemic. Fortunately, I built it in a way where nobody would be burned: we fully honored the terms of our grant funding, it never had investors, never took on debt, never had…
Matthias Ott: Every piece of art that is supposed to have a value and impact in our culture is meaningless unless it is seen by someone. Only by the interplay between your work and the people who interact with it, its real value will reveal itself. Longtime readers will recall Stop worrying, hit publish. Ott's post is a…
Slowly, over the last decade, I've been pulling myself away from using Google services. Over 10 years ago I tried Duck.com instead of Google Search. It took a few years, but once it stuck, I haven't turned back. I bet the number of searches I make on Google per month is in the single digits. Like Search, I've…
As usual, Austin Mann's review of the latest iPhone camera system is excellent. Be sure to give it a read. In the review, he mentions something I've been wanting on iPhone for a long time; Night mode. Night mode with all-red display: After seeing the all-red Night mode on the new Apple Watch Ultra, I can’t help but…