Ever since voluntarily leaving my job one month ago I’ve done my best to keep busy but this is slowing down. I’m grateful to have some dedicated time to complete a few personal projects and work on a few more. But I am in a state of suspense right now.
I recall the Israelites wandering in the desert waiting to enter the promised land and can sympathize.
Purgatorio- part two of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, written in the early bits of the 14th century, feels familiar as I may be taking slow steps to advance myself forward to Paradiso.
The Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe.
I understand these references are over-dramatic concerning my feelings, but who can deny their own thoughts of a personal situation? I am on the outside looking in. I can seek where I want to go and again, am in a state of suspension in arriving there.
With circumstances and situations in flux, I’ll just settle in and keep busy awaiting the trumpets to sound so we can march forward and into the Promised Land.
Ever since voluntarily leaving my job one month ago I’ve done my best to keep busy but this is slowing down. I’m grateful to have some dedicated time to complete a few personal projects and work on a few more. But I am in a state of suspense right now.
I recall the Israelites wandering in the desert waiting to enter the promised land and can sympathize.
Purgatorio- part two of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, written in the early bits of the 14th century, feels familiar as I may be taking slow steps to advance myself forward to Paradiso.
The Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe.
I understand these references are over-dramatic concerning my feelings, but who can deny their own thoughts of a personal situation? I am on the outside looking in. I can seek where I want to go and again, am in a state of suspension in arriving there.
With circumstances and situations in flux, I’ll just settle in and keep busy awaiting the trumpets to sound so we can march forward and into the Promised Land.
I took the new Ricoh GR out for a walk yesterday to see how it performs under harsh lighting conditions. The images are just as sharp and vibrant as expected. But ugh, the scenery and subject matter is still the same so not really chuffed about them.
I crave something new and interesting to capture. I’m done documenting Tulsa.
In the early years of my photography hobby, I would venture out and search for the most creative shots I could find. Using various tips and techniques that I had read about, I would try creative angles one day. Then the next outing would creatively use monochrome shots or some other techniques after that, and so on.
I would then send the 36-exposure roll off to the developing lab and eagerly await the prints while expecting something mesmerizing and unique to return. It very rarely returned unique or mesmerizing. The average return on film investment was about 2 images out of a 36-exposure stock. Expensive! Yet somehow, someway, I was hooked enough to go out there and try again.
When I acquired my first digital camera in 2001, I would venture out and search for the most creative shots I could find. Using various tips and techniques that I had read about, I would try creative angles one day. Then the next outing would creatively use monochrome shots or some other techniques after that, and so on. I would then race home, plug in the SD card and boot up the photo software in anticipation, while expecting something mesmerizing and unique to return. It very rarely returned unique or mesmerizing. The average return was about 20 out of 100 images taken. Thank goodness digital photography is cheap! Yet somehow, someway, I was hooked enough to go out there and try again.
Over the past twenty-three years, my attitude has changed- hmm…about twenty-three times. These days I am less concerned about creativity than I am documenting travels, events, and my life around me.
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Nowadays, I am shooting less portrait photography, which honestly, is the only time I want to be creative. I miss both creativity and people!
So, if I focus more on documentation and less creativity, the attitude, and equipment has changed to match. I no longer own a mixture of mirrorless and DSLR cameras with about five lenses for each one just in case. I don’t have to worry if I forgot to pack the telephoto lens, just because I might use it. Now I can be content with bringing one camera and one all-purpose lens if I choose to.
Recently, technology has been a big factor in these decisions as well. Photo equipment with amazing advances inside, the minimal size and weight of these things to assist in you lightening your kit and allowing me to relax and enjoy.
Did I just spot a tender moment on the street? Snap. Ahh, a new mural to document—Snap. This is out of place and would be interesting to capture— Snap.
Now I am getting into documenting everything in photos. I’ve found I can simply relax and walk away from a photowalk knowing there are some keepers on that SD card, instead of forcing myself to shoot something that may not be there only to walk away frustrated.
Another bonus- I’ve come to realize that all of this has been documenting and creating not only a visual daily journal, but also a complete body of work to be proud of.
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Because of recent news of events on the island of Hispaniola, I’ve recalled a lot of memories from a few years ago when I was invited to photograph, document and serve the ongoing Christian missionary works based in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. Towards the end of the trip, I had an opportunity to head north to the Caribbean coastal town of Sosua for some R&R, but in-between the two cities were mountain jungles and tobacco plantations.
Welcome to the jungle
Our gracious host and founder of the mission insisted we stopped for a cigar factory tour, and of course, this was accepted!
The La Flor factory tour follows the path of the tobacco leaves from the fields to the packaging of handmade cigars. The first thing I noticed, was the aromatic tobacco in enclosed spaces. Then I noticed, but was not allowed to photograph, the floor announcer. His job is to simply read the newspaper and magazine articles into the factory microphone to entertain the workers. Imagine a news barker with a derby cap, smoking La Flor’s finest with outstretched arms holding up the paper and talking through his cigar into the microphone.
I was then allowed to select from a stack of conditioned, classified, browned, aged leaves and then hand them off to the smiling worker. She then began the long process of turning a leaf into a freshly rolled cigar.
I followed my leaves around the various stages from station to station, watching and photographing workers as they blended, bunched, pressed, rolled, sealed and then allowed me to slide the La Flor Dominica ring around my fresh cigars. The entire process took about an hour to craft my box of the Caribbean’s finest.
Uninformed individuals would say that Cuban cigars are the best, I disagree. Cubans are only sought after because they are illegal in the USA, and I think they smell and taste like Castro’s dead feet. My clandestine incursion onto Cuban shores is a story for next time.
Oh, and because Haiti and the Dominican Republic are neighbors and both currently in the news, here is a young Haitian toddler playing in the road, on the Dominican side apparently abandoned, shortly before I snapped this photo. There are strong racial tensions between these two countries, and I found this to be the only fault I could find on the Dominican side of Hispaniola. I was blessed to see the missionaries find him shelter and food. Just look at that handsome face.
Over the past few weeks, I have retired the silver fox website and migrated everything over from the last 23(!) years to an Archived website for posterity. I purchased a new domain name (chrisdenbow.website) that matches my own because I had allowed someone else to snatch up the old one (R.I.P. chrisdenbow.website). If you type in the old web address, it will redirect into an Icelandic online betting site. The internet is weird.
Moving on, I built this website here from the ground up. I took some old code, improved it, streamlined that code and made it sexier. It’s just like baking a cake but in this regard, you can add or take out the ingredients in whichever way or order to what makes sense to you. I then uploaded all to my test server, broke it, rewrote and tried again. Success. Then everything was migrated to the Ghost server, imported a few old posts to help get it going, and pushed send. ChrisDenbow.website was born.
Now I think I stop the futzing and putzing after these past few weeks and enjoy.
For the past twenty+ years, I have bounced in/out of different platforms and formats, tried my hand at coding and designing something that made me happy. Because if you are going to invest decades into something you enjoy, it damn well needs a decent platform to showcase it. Those decades were all a learning experience, and it brought me here.
All that to say that this website will be my own small slice of the WWW for a long time.
A long time ago I created a website for my daughter to document her growth. Over time, though, it was neglected and shelved. I came across an .xml file containing a few posts but not all of them so I built a new website archive, added some images from the photo archives that didn’t migrate over and boom, it’s back.
I regret not keeping up with this among all of the other regrets.
So for now, her early works are back and hopefully in the future we can build a proper, modern telling of her beautiful story.
It is March 3 (3.3) and time for a check-in to see how I am responding to my own goals for the year so far. This year it is in a language I can understand, such as considering my body, mind, and soul as a personal operating system. So, how did I do last month? It isn’t going well.
Bug #1: Lack of physical fitness. To maximize system performance, I need to focus on the overall health of the personal operating system, and that is to stay physically fit. As of February 19th, I am no longer working, and that means I am no longer working outdoors and staying fit. And due to costs, I have dropped the Apple One Fitness+ plan as well. Two fails. Time to access the walking and yoga sub-routines. These should both be done daily. Yoga in the morning to stretch out, and purposeful walking for cardio. I may have to subscribe to a gym membership soon for inspiration and weight lifting.
Bug #2: Nutrition is a crucial component to all of this because I have not eaten well the last quarter of 2023. I should be mindful and seek healthier food options. But this hasn’t happened yet either. Some cooked meals at home, but mostly eat out. I think we are waiting on something to happen here that will assist in a lifestyle change. Frustrating.
Bug #3: Smoking pipe tobacco and drinking alcohol is inserting bad code into my system. I have not worked towards debugging those substances to enhance my personal system performance. In fact, these nasty bugs may be multiplying.
Each month, and the corresponding day, I will run a systems diagnostic and report on either the overall performance or list any bugs that may still need to be addressed.
Inputs
Other applications will be used to maintain the mental health of my personal operating system, such as:
Reading
Creative writing
Journaling
Meditation
Overall, these benchmarks for analyzing and evaluating overall performance will help maintain my personal operating system for years to come.
The next systems diagnostic check is scheduled for April 4 (4/4) and hopefully with better results.
A few days ago I wrote that this was the time to minimize my iPhone usage as an experiment for a day and…it mostly worked.
Instead of a phone, I brought the Kindle to catch up on my reading while I waited to get a haircut. It was pleasant. Not so pleasant was the other people queued up had their phones out and watching videos, or talking loudly into them. How very annoying. I don’t do this even with my phone on me. Rude.
I encountered two setbacks during this experiment: I needed to send Nikki off via courier, but didn’t have the shipping label, nor access to the email with the label on it so I had to go back home, retrieve the phone and try again. Success, but annoyed.
The next time the phone was turned on was during Snappy Hour so I can keep my daily streak and keep my 365/2024 photo project going. I knew this going in and that was supposed to be my one exception.
Overall, I did not miss the phone nor feel compelled to reach for it out of muscle memory and that encourages me to try again soon, maybe try three days instead of one. And then five and then…
A better part of the day was spent looking for .xml files that contain my old blog posts. I managed to find posts from 2006-2010 and then migrate those to another website as a semi-permanent record. 2010-2023 coming as soon as I import them into the new archive database. I am missing five years worth from 2001-2005 due to the fact that I lost the 3.5″ floppy disk during a move and never copied or backed it up anywhere else.
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Ideally, I’d love to have everything in one place on this current website here but, the current server configuration would shit the bed and I don’t want to deal with that mess right now.
The Archives can be found by clicking the Archives link in the menu above this article or here: https://cjdarchives.website
Apple has built-in software into their devices that allows you to track how much usage they get during a determined period of time and it is simply called ScreenTime. I noticed my screen time using the iPhone this past week was pretty high and I wondered what can I do about this. I’m addicted to my phone and you are too probably. I am going to do something I have wanted to try for a long time- put the iPhone in my desk drawer and leave it alone for a few days.
My Apple Watch has cellular capability to make/receive calls and text (just like Dick Tracy from the 1940’s!) check the mail, remind me to take my meds, take voice notes, listen to music and podcasts through my AirPods, record workouts, navigate while driving or walking, etc.
Dick Tracy circa 1946
The only thing I would miss out on is taking photos, especially since I am on a 1-photo-a-day project with a specific camera. I may have to fire that phone up only ONCE a day just for this. The rest of the time I can carry a small camera with me.
Speaking of carrying things with me, instead of the iPhone I will bring a long a notebook, pen, e-reader, camera and wallet. Now, I know what you are thinking and…you’re right. Those are more cumbersome to carry than that large iPhone. But that isn’t the only goal, to minimize my everyday carry. The idea is to start weaning myself of the device dependency, remember?
Kobo e-reader, Field Notes, Zebra F-701 pen, Apple AirPods Pro 2, Apple Wallet & Watch
I want to be present and engaged by my surroundings and people. Instead of watching a mindless show and scrolling on my phone, I can just find a better show to absorb without distraction. I’ll be able to read more books. I will do everything I should be doing when I am not otherwise having a phone in my face.
We went out for dinner tonight and it was difficult to hear her across the table because of the family of five sitting across the restaurant with their music, videos and games blaring as they ignore each other. Uh-uh, not me. No way.
This isn’t for everyone, I am doing this as an experiment if you recall. I don’t believe the general public could last one hour without their screens sucking their souls out. Nor do I make judgements. But I do recommend giving it a go, just to see if you can. Try it for an hour then increase it if you make it that far.
In the early days in the life of this website, I never had a writing workflow. Each post was dumped from my brain to the keyboard with a shrug and a push of a button to send. Over time, I picked up tools such as converting all-in to the Apple ecosystem and accompanying software that manifested into a more thoughtful and organized work path.
First things first, I need ideas. These come from various input/output sources, such as reading frequently, or having multiple creative outlets. From here, ideas formulate and sometimes appear after connecting a string of previously consumed inputs/outputs to connect the dots. These go into a file on my personal database, Grey Matter. I’ll let them percolate in my brain for a bit, do some research, check sources and relax. Now I have something to write about.
These ideas generate from multiple inputs such as a book I am reading, RSS feeds from other’s personal websites, X, formerly known as Twitter, Substack, et al. Once I see an article I’d like to return to I will send it to Matter to read it later and delete the rest. Inside Matter, I will return to a saved article, highlight the interesting bits and add my notes and initial thoughts into the marginalia.
Now it is time to sit down to the MacBook Pro, open up the Ulysses writing software and draft an outline. That’s the skeleton of the article, so it’s time to flesh it out. Here’s where everything from the inputs, the outputs and my thoughts just start flowing into this massive article, not caring about grammar, spelling or formatting yet. Eventually, there are words and paragraphs that need to be paired down and culled. Inside Ulysses there are helpful tools that checks for grammatical mistakes, typos, punctuation, etc., and prompts me to make the needed changes before publishing the draft to my website.
Image 1: time to edit that down – Image 2: time to edit those mistakes
Now that the draft is in, it’s time to format and design of the article because it is a mixture of design, photography, etc. To get an over-all visual I run a new branch in Git that runs a new file with metadata such as title, author, date.
—
title: ${title}
date: “${date}”
type: ${type}
tags:
notoc: true
cover: cover.jpg
coversocial: social.jpg
path: /blog/${path}/
description: write description here
—
write content here
—
Afterward, the header image is added — always in black and white to maintain consistency and an overall clean look. Colors can be too distracting, I think.
Once the article is ready to post, I ensure whether to distribute as an article, to my newsletter subscribers and always out to RSS.
According to Ulysses, this article will take you almost two minutes to consume on your device, less if you are scanning, so you can hurry and go check your social feeds (lol.)
I was enjoying this playlist while editing this article:
