Blog

Longer-form posts and essays.

Writing helps me think more clearly. This archive is longer posts; quick updates now live in notes.

Topics: AI, blogging, photography, programming, projects, Signboard

What is a script? What is a program?

Chris Coyier: I don’t think there is any computer science concept that distinguishes the terms scripts, templates, and programs in any real sense. Like Chris, I too find it difficult to put place some of my coding projects into a category. I write a lot of code to run on the command line. Some of my projects I…

How I track social media profile clicks

Would you like to know how many people found your blog from Mastodon? How about how many people find your YouTube channel via TikTok? Back in my day, when someone clicked on a link from one website to another, the destination site could easily tell where the traffic was coming from. It was called the referrer. But that…

The predatory communities of crypto

Molly White: Crypto, when it comes down to it, relies on greater fools. As assets without any intrinsic value, the way to make money from crypto is to find a greater fool who will buy your assets from you at a higher price.  Molly White (who I've linked to before) has been on a crusade against so many parts…

Introducing the YouTube Channel RSS feed Bookmarklet

In 2020 Thomas Brand wrote a blog post about finding a YouTube's channel RSS feed by appending the channel's "Channel ID" onto a feed URL. Thomas Brand: In 2020 I am watching less stupid on YouTube by skipping the algorithm. Instead of letting the YouTube decide which videos it wants to show me, I am watching only the…

What I saw somewhat recently #94: May 12, 2022

Raised bed, seedlings The weather this week is just 👌 I've come to realize that the links I share here in this series are but a very small fraction of the incredible things I find while navigating mankind's collective of digital content. My best guesstimate would be that I post maybe 5% of what I come across that…

Nyasha Green on the issues within the WordPress community

Nyasha Green recently published a post that covers a few issues she's seeing within the WordPress community and offers solutions on how to fix those issues. One issue she calls out is that the community relies on free labor: Paying people for their labor is simply not what the spirit of the WordPress community stands for, or so…

safari.requestMIDIAccess()

Jeremy Keith recently wrote about Bugblogging: Bugblogging doesn’t need to involve a solution. Just documenting a bug is a good thing to do. I wonder what Germanic compound word Jeremy would come up with to describe blogging about a web API that your favorite browser doesn't support? Safari does not support navigator.requestMIDIAccess. I dug around a little and…

A short Twitter wish list

OK, so Elon bought Twitter (subject to regulatory approval, of course). We can't change what we can't control. While I do not think it a great idea to have Elon be the sole owner of Twitter, is it any worse than Jack Dorsey or Ev Williams or anyone else for that matter? I suppose time will tell. So…

What I saw somewhat recently #93: April 23, 2022

Started some seedlings I've been spending a decent amount of time on a free word game (coming soon) and the redesign of my website. But that doesn't mean I haven't collected a cacophony of links for y'all. Jason Lee on The Nine Club – I find myself being pulled more and more into the world of skate. This…

Waxy.org turns 20

I celebrated right along with Andy when Waxy.org turned 10 and I'm still here cheering him on as Waxy.org turns 20. Andy Baio: Ten years ago, I wrote a roundup of my favorite posts from my first decade of blogging, and I thought I’d do the same thing for 2012-2021. If you missed them the first time around, I hope…

DuckDuckGo for Mac in private beta

DuckDuckGo: So today we’re excited to announce the beta launch of DuckDuckGo for Mac, with DuckDuckGo for Windows coming soon. Like our mobile app, DuckDuckGo for Mac is an all-in-one privacy solution for everyday browsing with no complicated settings, just a seamless private experience. Plus, we’re excited to share some new features we think you’ll love. This browser…

Reminder, try Apple’s Hide My Email

Mike Lapidakis: Last summer, Apple announced that as part of their iCloud+ service expansion, a new feature named Hide My Email was launching. The feature received little fanfare and was mainly swept up in the plethora of other news from WWDC. After using it for nearly a year, I think we’ve done it a bit of a disservice. Even though I pay…

What I saw somewhat recently #93: March 24, 2022

The tulips are on their way. I've been very busy at work lately. Going through a software conversion there that will keep me busy well into summer. And, of course, Stripe Transfer is doing well. Here are some links, I hope you enjoy them. Goosh – A Google terminal. Nanoglyph – An email newsletter – though I subscribe…

Christopher Parsons’ genius photography Shortcut

Christopher Parsons: The Shortcut is pretty simple: when I run it, it maximizes the brightness of my iOS device and opens the Glass app. If you download the Shortcut it’s pretty easy to modify it to instead open a different application (e.g., Instagram, 500px, Flickr, etc). It’s definitely improved my experiences using the app and helped me to…

How long does it take to transfer a Stripe account?

I updated Good Migrations's website with new testimonials and a downloadable PDF that provides a rough timeline for transferring accounts on Stripe. When customers are in a time crunch, they generally ask you two questions; how long will this take? how much does it cost? We offer free estimates for Stripe Transfer since we cannot say precisely how…

The video essay boom

Terry Nguyen, for Vox: One can even argue that we are witnessing the video essay’s golden era. Run times are longer than ever, while more and more creators are producing long-form videos. The growth of “creator economy” crowdfunding tools, especially during the pandemic, has allowed video essayists to take longer breaks between uploads while retaining their production quality. Did I mention…

Julia Evans on tiny personal programs

Julia Evans: So here are a few examples of small personal programming projects I’ve done. I’m not going to talk about “learning projects” where my goal was to learn something specific because I’ve already written a billion blog posts about that. I've written countless tidbits of code to solve personal problems. Some of them end up becoming real…

What I saw somewhat recently #92: March 3, 2022

An LED light on a frozen pond I had a much longer list of links that I was going to share but I slowly pruned that list down to just a few. I've been very focused on gobbling up as much photography as I can lately. As spring breaks I'm very much looking forward to getting back out…

Tumblr turns on ad-free tier

Tumblr: As of today, you can set up ad-free browsing on your personal desktop computer, from anywhere in the world, and then enjoy the same effervescent Tumblr you know and love (yes, including mobile) without the interruption of ads. Scroll away. $4.99 a month If I was a daily Tumblr user, or if I powered my website or…

Top 3 reasons to transfer Stripe subscriptions from one account to another

After transferring tens of thousands of subscriptions in my side gig, Good Migrations – which is a service that helps individuals and businesses transfer their Stripe subscriptions from one Stripe account to another – I've come across three main reasons this service is needed. Going through an acquisition Moving to a new country Consolidating subscription services While there…