The Infinite Web

From the short story of Jorge Luis Borges’ “Book of Sand,” there is an ancient book with no beginning and has no end. The narrator discovers this simple-looking book contains endless volumes of information that was good and evil.

“I realized that the book was monstrous. It was cold consolation to think that I, who looked upon it with my ten flesh-and-bone fingers, was no less monstrous than the book. I felt it was a nightmare thing, an obscene thing, and that it defiled and corrupted reality. I considered fire, but I feared that the burning of an infinite book might be similarly infinite, and suffocate the planet in smoke.”

He quickly deposits the terrifying, infinite book to the National Library and vows never to go to a library or bookstore again.

It’s strange to me to think that we open our very own Books of Sand every day without thinking of the consequences. The sheer infinite volume of the WWW is too difficult to imagine. It is our nightmare and distorts our reality. Like all tools, it can be used for good, but we humans do a frightening job of perverting even the best intentions.

Adobe Lightroom Video

The same edit controls that you already use to make your photography shine can now be used with your videos as well! Not only can you use Lightroom’s editing capabilities to make your video clips look their best, you can also copy and paste edit settings between photos and videos, allowing you to achieve a consistent aesthetic across both your photos and videos.

Benjamin Warde on Adobe’s Blog: June 2022 photography releases

I have never applied a concentrated effort into shooting a quality video because I’ve been so comfortable with photos. Video editing is difficult and expensive. This seems to be a simple solution for beginners such as myself and I am digging it’s simplicity so far.

Media Log- May 2022

“There is now a little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds, our lives are largely shaped by how we use them.” – Sam Harris

In other words, we are what we consume. I want to create a monthly log of my media consumption that tracks my passivity, and cultivates my creativity. Example: If I go further, I could map how reading a book sparks a desire to see a show based on it for a broader perspective. A podcast could point me towards a book I otherwise would have passed up.

I’ll attempt to track the shows and movies I stream (no cable service for me!), books I’ve read, podcasts/music I’ve listened to and the rare YT video I watch. This second edition to the media log rounds out the month of May.

Views

The Toy

Top Gun

Top Gun 2

Worth the 30 year wait

Fifth Element

Frasier

F1 racing- Barcelona

F1 racing- Monaco

Sergio Perez for the win

EUFA championship

Madrid 1-0 over Liverpool

Stranger Things S4 pt 1

Strange New Worlds

Books (April/May)

Laser Writer II

Debt- the first 5,000 years

The Utopia of Rules

Bullshit Jobs

Podcast

Not Lost

iPhoneography Podcast

Music

Streaming Audio Denbow playlist

That’s all for the month of May!

The Internet Is Broken

Anyone else noticed that today’s WWW is insufferable? I don’t specifically know when it turned, or why most users became jerks, but I’ll go ahead and guess about 2010. Making money off of content became more important than the content itself. This is a long post, but in short, the best way to fix it is to write good stuff and to be nice to other people. As the WWW was intended.

In the past, we got to enjoy content-rich websites created by people from all walks of life. They built and hosted their websites and networked with others to share their stuff, and it worked. Internet = interconnected. We learned from others, and we benefitted from other’s unique knowledge. Nowadays, there are advertisements everywhere, clickbait headlines as well as the tracking and selling of your private data and browsing habits. Where did all that good stuff go? To Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. etc.

Content creators, webmasters, and anyone with a hobby blog generally gave up and went the easy route of 180 character tweets and generic posts about what they ate and where on Facebook. Boring. People used to write, or photograph, or paint stuff that others would want to read. People used to write blogs, whether they were read or not, no one knew. Aficionados of every imaginable topic would research and post their findings for all to see.

When the tech conglomerates started to gather and consolidate web properties, the content was squeezed out. These platforms were nicknamed Web 2.0 as if version 1 needed upgrading. Version 2 was not an upgrade in my mind, in fact, it made the internet worse.

Ad-driven content became a thing. You had to pay to play. The more eyeballs and attention on your stuff can be monetized to the widest possible audience. The internet became deceptive and, oddly, less social. Users became mean and divisive because now there was perceived competition.

It is almost impossible to find good content on the WWW now. Type a topic of interest on a conglomerate-ran browser, and you’ll have to sort through at least two pages of the search to get to anything that isn’t ad-driven and would be relevant to your search.

When you do come across an interesting link, you are bombarded with sneaky and not so sneaky tactics to get your attention and your data. Web windows will pop up blocking the content, asking you to submit your personal info and subscribe. Pleas to purchase something that is offered. Advertisements litter the site with most, overwhelming the content you want to see. “Like me on Facebook”, Comment! Subscribe! Retweet! That is just what we see, but goes unseen is the amount of personal data that is collected and distributed to the tech conglomerates. Did you do a search on a medical symptom? Well now, the next website you visit will have a pop-up advertisement on a specific cream to help remedy that. It’s disgusting, invasive, and intolerable.

Where are people writing now instead of their own homegrown webpage? Social media. If you write on Facebook or post images to Instagram, the only people who can see it our the users on the platform. Have a business and your “website” is only a Facebook business page? Half of your potential customers cannot see it unless they are a Facebook user. No, thanks. Instead, people are writing out their limited thoughts on a limited platform that does nothing to further a conversation. That is, if you can actually see it on the FB platform. Facebook’s algorithm guarantees your content will be buried in favor of something they claim is more interesting (read that as attention-getting and therefore more potential ad revenue for them.)

I won’t continue on about how the political and social media outlets combined are divisive and spiteful. I stopped both after the 2016 election, and I am blissfully ignorant.

All this wasted time, effort, content, and energy spent on these proprietary platforms do nothing for the individual except to make themselves money.

What’s the fix?

Create your own website. WordPress has free (with ads) hosting options as a start. Or you can use WordPress on your own hosted site. Web hosts and your domain name makes it yours and on the cheap.

Write or post anything you’d like. It’s yours to do with as you please.

Network. Reach out to other like-minded people and build each other up.

If you must use social media, put your content on your site first, then distribute to those outlets. Add a link back to your website and point potential followers there instead. POSSE: “Post On Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.”

Send the website owner an encouraging email.

Comment on a post of theirs.

Subscribe to their RSS feed and don’t miss a thing.

Use ad-blockers, browsers that promote privacy and mean it, and a VPN.

And finally, make good content to share for anyone who may take an interest and be nice to others.

How To Become The Great Urban Photographer

If you loosely apply Lomography’s ten golden rules, you’ll do just fine.

  1. Take your camera with you everywhere you go.
  2. Use your camera any time, day, or night.
  3. Photography is not an interference of your life but a part of it
  4. Shoot from the hip
  5. Approach as closely as possible
  6. Don’t think
  7. Be fast
  8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured
  9. Or afterwords either
  10. Don’t worry about any rules.

Number 10 may be the most important. Don’t listen to others, stay true to yourself and your artistic endeavor. There are plenty of rules that can and should be broken.


To those 10, I’ll remind you of another 10.

  1. Luck, coincidence emergency and surprise are your friends.
  2. Experimentation is exciting. Expect the unexpected. Or don’t!
  3. Embrace the sensory effects of the street. Light, shadow, smells & sounds
  4. Leave the grind behind. Focus on you and your subjects.
  5. Street photos look better when printed. I prefer black and white.
  6. Look again. If something spots your eye, but you pass on it…go back. Your first instinct is usually correct.
  7. Let loose. Have fun.
  8. Analog or film photography is making a comeback. Buy a cheap film camera.
  9. Analog will seldom disappoint because it is unique and challenging.
  10. Trust your senses over an LCD screen and electric sensors.

Urban, or street photography, combines what I love best. Walking, working with people, courage, risk-worthy opportunities and timing. Now grab your camera and start shooting!

Digital Essentialism

How is your digital life? Feeling overwhelmed by all the clutter in your inbox, hard drive and cloud service? I know I was.

Though I consider myself to be a minimalist essentialist, there does come a time when I get lazy and the discipline slides. Clutter, digital or otherwise, can get distracting over time. Now may be the perfect time to clean up your digital room, so to speak. If not daily, then weekly because a well-organized computer will yield positive results for your state of mind and your workflow productivity.

Here’s how to get started:

Backups

When was the last time you backed up your data? If you can’t remember, then it has been too long. I set a calendar reminder for once a week, then plug in the dedicated external hard drive, flip on Apple’s Time Machine and let it do its thing-creating and preserving a snapshot image of everything on the MacBook’s drive. Before all that, I suggest sorting through your Downloads folder and assign to a proper folder or delete. How are your other folders? Photos, Music, Videos, Documents all need to be sorted. Toss what you have been holding on to for some reason. After all that, then take out the Trash and delete everything in that folder.

Cloud

Just as the computer gets cleaned up, so too your Cloud backups. My Cloud mimics the desktop with everything in place. Run Time Machine again and ensure good backups.

Software

If you have dozens of software programs and apps, it is time to have a think about what you are actually using. If you haven’t used a program in say six months, then uninstall and free up space on your machine. It will thank you for it. Do you really need four calendar apps, two music players, three browsers and who else knows what? Pick the right tool for the job and stick with it. Uninstall the rest.

Desktop

A cluttered desktop can be overwhelming and distract from your focus and productivity. A messy computer desktop is akin to a messy physical desk. Nobody wants to see that. Sort that clutter into their respective folders, empty your Trash can folder and enjoy the serenity.

The MacBook desktop

Web Browser

Now, wait just a damn minute, Chris. This is sacred. If I don’t have multiple tabs open or bookmarked, I run the risk of losing and forgetting them. I might even return to them…someday.

That mentality is an old way of thinking that needs to be corrected. You won’t go back to them. You don’t need it. One of these days, your browser’s memory will slow to a crawl, and you’ll be forced to reboot the thing and potentially lose all those open tabs you’ve been saving.

Inbox and RSS feeds

If you cringe every time you access your email inbox, then you are doing it wrong. Email should be assigned from an inbox to a folder, replied to or deleted. Don’t forget to take the trash out again when done. If the mail is piled up, and you are overwhelmed, most email applications have a search feature.

RSS feed readers are a remarkable resource to stay current on the websites and blogs you enjoy. Shameless plug inserted here- https://chrisdenbow.website/feed But how does your “Unread” count look? Either read the article or save it to the “Read It Later” folder. Everything else can be deleted. The same can be said for podcast episodes!

One Password To Rule Them All

I dislike passwords, and captchas and just about every modern day credential grabber. Who can keep track of them all? I used to and failed. Then I tried a third-party password manager. I only needed one password to log in to that, and every time I needed to sign in elsewhere, that application would pop up and log in for me. That was fun until their data center was hacked and everyone’s passwords were in the open. I currently use Apple’s Password manager.

I’m already signed in to an Apple account, so I don’t have to remember a password there. Any website I visit, the Password app is ready to log me in, or help me create a new username/password. Once credentialed, Passwords will retain the info and be ready to use again. All it requires is my Face ID or Touch ID.

The Takeaway

Our digital usage over multiple devices can overwhelm us, and we open ourselves up to clutter. Who has the time to organize when we just want to scroll a feed or watch a video? I find that currently we need to be more mindful. Digital simplicity, essentialism, and minimalism is more important than before.

Long Live The iPod

The iPod is a discontinued 1(as of May 10, 2022) portable media player designed by Apple in 2001. At 20 years, the iPod brand is the oldest device to be discontinued by Apple. It’s the end of an era, that’s for sure.

I fondly recall my first Sony Walkman that had the ability to not only listen to AM/FM radio, but play 90 minutes of music on cassette tape. We maxed in as many songs as we could on that tape drive, but it was never enough, so we had collections of cassette tapes lying around to keep track of.

And when Steve Jobs promised “thousands of songs in your pocket”, most of us were amazed and just.had.to.have.it. It was portable music freedom. I’ve owned three iPods, the original (sadly lost forever, a 5th generation classic iPod (shown below) and an iPod Touch that closely resembled an iPhone. My toddler daughter quickly assumed ownership of that last one.

After this month’s announcement, I decided to grab as many compact discs as I can find to then load onto my MacBook and transfer my songs to the iPod. It’s a multistep hassle for sure, but they are there. They are mine. I don’t have to pay a monthly subscription for them. I don’t need Wi-Fi or cellular connection to play them. There are no notifications or interruptions when I have those wired earbuds in. I’m amazed at how much I have relied on Bluetooth wireless AirPods and streaming music.

This 5th gen iPod was the first to play video, review photos and still retain the classic, iconic scroll wheel. Podcasts, audiobooks, videos, and photos are all synced to the device when plugged into my computer via iTunes. Can a podcast still be called a podcast without iPods? What do we call them now, “Netcasts?”

This iPod projects me back in time, and I am overwhelmed by the nostalgia. It feels less like a novelty item, but a more pure form of music ownership and enjoyment.

Long live the Apple iPod.

Media Log

“There is now a little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds, our lives are largely shaped by how we use them.”

Sam Harris

In other words, we are what we consume. I want to create a monthly1 maybe? log of my media consumption that tracks my passivity, and cultivates my creativity. Example: If I go further, I could map how reading a book sparks a desire to see a show based on it for a broader perspective. A podcast could point me towards a book I otherwise would have passed up.

I’ll attempt to track the shows and movies I stream (no cable service for me!), books I’ve read, podcasts/music I’ve listened to and the rare YT video I watch. Don’t judge me. I’ve been in bed for almost three weeks nursing an ankle issue(!) I may even expand this log to web links I’ve enjoyed and favorited for future use 2eventually. To kick off, I’ll just log what I can remember from April and May of this year.

Viewed

  • Suspicion- Apple TV
  • The Machine That Kills Mean People- HBO
  • Severance- Apple TV
  • Outer Ridge- Amazon
  • Devs- Hulu
  • Tehran- Apple TV
  • Frasier- Hulu
  • Star Trek: Strange New Worlds- Paramount
  • Star Trek: Picard season 2- Paramount
  • Star Trek: Discovery- Paramount
  • Star Trek: Generations- Paramount
  • Reservoir Dogs- HBO
  • The Book of Boba Fett- Disney
  • The King’s Man- HBO
  • The Batman- 1/2 in theater, 100% on HBO
Strange New Worlds

Read

  • Ghost Fleet
  • You Are An Artist
  • The Nowhere Man
  • Orphan X
  • Reliquary
  • Kaiju Preservation Society
  • The Return
Jurassic Park but bigger critters

Listened

  • Not Lost
  • iPhoneography Podcast
  • Dialogues
  • Focused
  • Mac Power Users
  • Music- I borrowed a lot of compact discs from the library to transfer music to my iPod. Remember those?
CDs and LPs

The Communications Toolbox

ListeningI shared with you some of the software tools in my digital toolbox recently and today I will share how you and I can communicate with each other.

I’ll go over some tools that you may or may not ever heard of yet as well as a new twist on some you have been using.

Google Wave is a communications tool that it is being distributed very slowly while being tested. Wave is a way to communicate & collaborate  that makes real-time interactions more seamless. You can share waves using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is a conversation with multiple participants added to a wave to discuss and collaborate on its content. Participants can reply any time and anywhere within a wave, and they can edit content and add more participants as a wave develops. It’s also possible to rewind waves with the playback functionality, to see what happened, and when.

However, because of it’s new release, we’re all trying to figure out just how this works effectively. It is very easy to get overwhelmed with waves, and new contacts while attempting to figure out how to respond properly. More to come as I work this out.

Think you can work it out? Add a comment with your best use scenario and I’ll send you an invitation to join the Wave. I only have 5 invites so  them good, people! Wave

Google Voice gives you a separate phone number which you can give out as if it is your regular phone number. You can then change your settings to have calls forward to any of your phones. My number is 281.769.2809

You can forward to one group of phones during the day and another at night. You can have calls from certain numbers forward differently than calls to other numbers. You can block spamming callers and send some calls straight to voice mail.

You can send yourself an SMS message or an email whenever you get a voice mail message, and you can check your voice mail from the Web or from your phone. GVoice will even transcribe voice mail into written text in your inbox. Neato. I have two invitations for Google Voice. Again, leave a comment describing your best use scenario! Gvoice

pidginInstant Messenger clients have been around forever. Which one do you use? Like many of us you have multiple accounts. MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, etc. Like many of us you probably have their software downloaded too. Why not combine them all so you don’t have to have them open at the same time and not miss an IM? I use a desktop application called Pidgin that does just that. I have multiple accounts but only one software to use. Now I have no excuse for missing your IM. Not that I’d want to! The only drawback to this is there is no video chat available like the others use.

Skype has a lot of features like video conferencing, SMS, voicemail, call forwarding, contact list, integration with MS Outlook, public chats, business control panel, sketch pad, desktop sharing and many others. I can even make calls anywhere in the world with the Skype app on my iPod Touch. skype shot

E-mail is an obvious one. I’ve been using Gmail for five years because it is flawless, expandable and easy to use. I have it connected to MS Outlook as well. Email me mojodenbow AT gmail.com

Mobile is another obvious tool that has increased it’s functionality over the past two years. Now if only we can stop the wireless carriers from ripping us off and offer more choices!

As always, I’d appreciate your feedback as to what tools work for you and how you use them. Don’t forget to add your comments for those invitations!