Pretending to use the Crown Graphic while taking a self-portrait using the Linhof Master Technika.
Saturday, May 30, 2026
- STATUS: Killing time until the deck stain arrives
- TODO: I'm due for a water change in the reef tank. Don't feel like it.
- (Re)Watching: "Running Point" because my wife wants to watch it, too.
- LISTENING: "Sex Without Bodies" by Dave's True Story
I'm kind of exhausted by everything online right now. Seeing that I have nearly 1,000 entries in 1Password was depressing. Everything wants an update or an upgrade or something from me that I don't want to give or receive. I just want to have a few nice, useful things and use them without interruption or ongoing costs.
Ben Thompson, Stratechery:
I think digital ads, particularly Meta-style ads that introduce you to things you never knew you wanted, a societal good.
Thompson's and my worldviews continue to diverge.
Ran across this one from 2023. I used the 4x5 Crown Graphic and a single strobe. Makes me want to shoot more large format. It's always fun and I like the look of it.
Thursday, May 28, 2026
- STATUS: Refusing to do chores today
- TODO: Anything but chores
- READING: "Five Decembers" by James Kestrel
- LISTENING: "Fair Warning" - Van Halen
I cleaned and sanded the entire deck yesterday and now my back and knees are yelling at me. Today might be a do-nothing kind of day.
Finally emptied the storage unit. It's not a good idea for me to have too many places to store stuff.
Testing the interesting new macOS photo app, Iris Photos. The idea is sound. Surfacing things from a deep photo library is helpful. I pointed it at my 2026 photos folder and it pulled everything nicely. Then, I got cocky and pointed it at everything. Crashed after about 15 minutes. One thing holding me back (even if it didn't crash and wasn't macOS-only) is the ability to edit metadata. A photo viewer is where I frequently spot things I want to include in the metadata. Iris doesn't touch the photos, so this isn't possible. Still, it's a nice-looking app that's worth keeping an eye on.
Found Negative #017. 1910s
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
What if I didn't even have a computer? Wouldn't that be something?
"What is the point of this?" is a question I've been asking myself, lately. Sometimes when I'm writing a note. Sometimes when I'm posting to my blog. Sometimes when I'm testing some new software or workflow. Sometimes when I'm just gazing off into space. I usually don't have a good answer.
I made it 30 minutes. Good cast, but the movie adds nothing and was almost aggressively unfunny.
Great cast. Not great writing. Started off strong but petered out for me. Too many plot holes. Geena Davis is attractive and all, but that was quite an age gap. I don't understand the entire sequence with the peach.
Monday, May 25, 2026
I've been having so much fun playing with software that I've accidentally over-complicated everything. Again. Time to dial it back. Again.
I'm re-staining the deck and it's not going smoothly. I thought it would be a simple scrape/clean/stain. I scraped, and I cleaned, and I cleaned again. Still, some of the old stain flakes off. I'm going to strip the whole thing down to lumber and start over. I don't love that.
Do my choices have to be black and white?
You can spend all your time scrutinizing every decision, slicing your options thinner and thinner until there's nothing left. You can reject every imperfect tool and flawed platform and compromise until you die a slow death of inconvenience, isolation, and frustration.
And when that happens, the easiest thing to do is give up entirely
Repost, but I was reminded of it yet again today.
🐹 Deep clean and optimize your Mac.
It's like a CLI version of CleanMyMac
Want to see the earliest resident monitors? The ancestor of all modern OSes (CTSS)? The earliest versions of Unix? The first OS with a desktop metaphor GUI (Xerox Star Pilot/ViewPoint)? Early versions of mainstream OSes? If you want to explore historical OSes and platforms without having to worry about configuring/installing emulators and OSes or corrupting emulated installations, you’ve come to the right place.
Amazed that this exists. I'm not an OS nerd, but maybe I will be after downloading this.
The Emacsification of Software — Quarrelsome
If you look at /r/emacs, it’s 0% Product Hunt, 100% show-and-tell.
Monday, May 18, 2026
It's getting to the point where many of the blog posts I read all say the same things. Whether it's about A.I. being good/evil, how everything is being enshittified, using the word "enshittified", that film photography slows me down and feels more real, how the "Smol web" will save us (It's spelled "small" btw), that Apple isn't what it used to be, billionaires are terrible, and so on. I often stop reading posts the minute I recognize a trope. It's not fair to the authors, really, but for now I've had my fill.
Hurray: elfeed: Fix compatibility with latest elfeed (#73). Elfeed-protocol stopped working after recent Elfeed updates. It's been fixed.
Sunday, May 17, 2026
I made a few improvements to the home page layout. Earlier attempts at distinguishing post types only made things worse and more cluttered. Now, spacing and typography is similar for all types. I think it looks less staggered. I moved metadata beneath titles and made tag links more subtle. Removed the date on Journal posts, since it was redundant. It's fun making little tweaks like this.
Thinking of starting a routine of "Unsocial Sundays" during which I avoid all social media. Today is Sunday, it's 05:52 AM, and I'm already twitchy about it. Worth a try, though.
Stick with it
A link from an earlier note lead me to:
you can stick with it | ava's blog
Trying out new tools and things is generally cool and I love reading the hands-on experiences, but in this case, I just see people running through things anxiously with no direction seeming stressed and sad.
The behavior Ava describes fits me, but only to a point. I'll tell you why.
Ascetic Computing - ratfactor by Dave Gauer resonated with me. I have been unable to "Reduce & Simplify" or "Use What I Have", even after years of trying. My definition of what "simple" means changes daily. Still working on it.
Saturday, May 16, 2026
I changed the body font here to Instrument Sans. For some reason, I find that serif fonts in blog posts feel pretentious. It's not me.
I asked Claude Code to convert my entire denote directory to use Org-roam style links. I wanted to try Org-roam again, but without losing work. Took Claude 20 minutes.