Short posts, links, photos, and working notes.

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.

When my blog goes quiet you know I’m very busy. I’m looking forward to announcing some personal news in early December. This morning I’ve made what is likely to be my final update to my personal website until 2024 (I added my projects to my homepage).

I discovered a small bug with GUID in my RSS feed that likely existed for an entire year. Of course I fixed it. But that also means if you’re subscribed you very likely received all of my posts in your feed reader again. My appologies. I really do try to avoid such things.

Yesterday, by pure chance, I met local photographer Rolfe Ross – whose work I’ve followed on Flickr for many years. It turns out his photos were being exhibited in the same venue as Eugene Lucas, whose photos I was there to see.

I took some very hasty photographs of the exhibit – which I shared on my Instagram Story if you’re interested. I also managed to take two color film photographs of Mr. Ross (with zero expectation of them turning out since we were in a dark, cooly lit basement). Mr. Ross agreed to sit for a portrait in the future.

If you’re reading this that means that Tuff, my now 1-year old static site generator that I’ve been rewriting from scratch for about a month, works. I’m going to write a detailed post about this rewrite but for now – if you see anything amiss on my site please do let me know.

This evening I fixed a few longstanding CSS issues on my website. Many more to go.

Back in April I built my own light box thingy for my portfolio images. Example. I’d like something more comprehensive, but I want to keep it light weight. Would it be terribly difficult to build something like the JPL uses?

I haven’t shared new photographic work in a while. I’ve been struggling to find the time – even though it is easily my favorite hobby. To help unclog my creative pipes, I’m slowly releasing unfinished work.

Here is a new photo series, Where I – a collection of images of specific locations based on vivid childhood memories.

Starting in December 2022 I began capturing these locations digitally. I will return to photograph them on black and white film before making darkroom prints.

Stripe Transfer continues to grow slowly. The latter half of this year I hope to grow it a bit more. As a start I’ve turned on Google Adwords and also wrote a post about migrations subscriptions from Chargebee to Stripe over on Medium.

For the first year we’ll be in a phase with visionOS where designers will be updating their interfaces to be translucent, dynamic rounded rects. Personally, I am looking forward to when they break out of the windowed world we’ve all been living in for the last few decades and find all new ways to communicate and interact in a spatial setting.

Weather apps can just be an actual cloud in a room. To dos can be attached to the real world object they reference. Notes can be all over the house.

Over the weekend I finished Looking At Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art by John Szarkowski. Szarkowski is, as of this moment, my favorite photographic writer and curator.

Yesterday I finished reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford and Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. I’d recommend both. Chiang is great. I think I need to read more by him.

I deleted my Twitter account today.

Testing Tuff on macOS Ventura.

Tuff, my static site builder, can build a simple directory for me to view my entire photo library. It creates views for each year and month and also checks various backups – both local and cloud – to make sure the files are properly backed up. It warns me if a file isn’t backed up.

The entire process takes 3.328 seconds and I have 153,000+ photos and videos in four locations.

Thank you modern computer.

I’m refactoring Tuff – my static site builder – to support multiple websites so I’ve been posting more on Mastodon than here the last week or so. That should change now as Tuff is able build 3 very different websites. Lots more to do but I see the light.

Recently finished reading Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Copious detail. Fast read if not for the length. Author a bit gushy.

I’ve published a new YouTube video. It is a review of my portrait of The Engineer.

I’m continuing to whittle away at my to do list for Tuff – my static site builder. Every few days I’m able to check off a task. Lots of small improvements add up over time.

I’m putting the finishing touches on a presentation of my portrait The Engineer that I’ll be recording for my YouTube channel.

I’m hoping to record better audio without spending too much money. Each presentation I make I want to improve.

We had a possible fireball explosion tens of thousands of feet above us in Pennsylvania. Shook our house pretty good at 10:49am Eastern.

Now I’m looking for how to properly document it with NASA.

I figured this worthy of jotting down on the weblog.

Zero inside knowledge here; but my guess is an Apple Event in February announcing Apple VR dev kits that cost $3,000 that come with a headset + Mac mini. With the device shipping at least 6-9 months later for less than that.

After a 3 week break from blogging and social media (more like 2 weeks completely, 1 week just reading and replying), I’m ready to jump back in. I have lots of plans for 2023 for my website and personal projects.

Last day of work done. Just deleted all social apps from my phone. Going to put my nose in a book, some food, and some bourbon. 👋

My website has supported dark mode based on the user’s system preferences. But now, those among you that prefer to toggle it on a per-website basis can do so.

There are options for On, System, or Off. I keep my preference at System but choose whichever option works best for you!

I’ll be improving the UI of the toggle widget at some point.

Thanks to Sara Soueidan for spurring me to add this option.

I’ve just added a new watercolor sketch of a landscape in China to my portfolio. My grandmother photographed the scene in 1987.

Rewrote most of my static site generator over the last few days. Cut the build time in half at the same time as doubling the number of files it deals with. The latest update adds monthly blog post indexes.

I’m trying to decide which text editor I want to write my blog posts in.

Left to right: Sublime Text, MacDown, VS Code

Looks like we’ll all be in line trying to buy the iPhone 15 EU running iOS 17 EU. iEU?