website

Things Can Only Get Better?

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Websites and social media platforms are getting aggressive in the monetizing of their services because- who knew that providing a platform for free is not sustainable? No one wants online advertising either and we all live with it because these web developers have to have money to buy shoes too, right?

The truth is, the WWW will never get better. It’s too far gone to think we’ll get it back. The netizens have lost the war to the platforms. I am very close to tucking my head into my shell and shut down all interest in the whole thing. I’ll use my current tech toys for more creative and less consuming matters. After the tech toys have outlived their usefulness?  Analog everything. That’s how fed up I am.

I don’t know what’s going to come out of those moments but I do know there will be bright spots out there. It’ll be more difficult to find underneath the search engine optimized BS, the invasive advertising and the algorithmic feeds forced on us. But they are out there.

For now, we still have the capability to set up our own homestead on the WWW, do our own thing and choose to connect with whoever you want.  The orginal web 1.0 tools are still around because they are the foundation of the internet- and still the best. E-mail, text, RSS, blogs, forums, etc. You are in control. Stop sharecropping on social media to make them rich and start building on your own land.

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And do you feel scared, I do
And I won’t stop and falter
And if we threw it all away
Things can only get better -Howard Jones

Until Next Time…

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After twenty-two years of owning and maintaining a website presence it is time to hang it up for now. There are a multitude of reasons behind this decision but I’ll keep most of them to myself. And yet after all this time it feels like I owe people an explanation for decades worth of loyalty.

Reasons:

As a friend once so eloquently put it: “I want to de-bullshit my life.”

It is costly to self-host your own website.

The articles have been stale because the day job does not allow time to create what I want.

Do I need to display a personal website on the WWW?

Why am I doing this?

Who the heck out there can remain interested in this site when I am not interested?

Alternative:

Grey Matter- it is my second brain. A digital garden where I have imported all my website articles, journals and notes into one massive database.

An article inside my database from six months ago about this goodbye process.

I have all those files backed up in plain text format so they are platform agnostic and portable with minimal file space used. These files are also linked and back linked together so if I performed a search on “Nikon” for example, then every article, note or mention will pop up and show me how my thoughts on the matter are connected.

When I now have the urge to write something for myself, I’ll place it in the “Journal” section and not the “Website” section. I was also paying an annual subscription service to the brilliant Day One journal app but now it is redundant in favor of my personal database.

Next Steps:

Now I am questioning the entire presence on the WWW and my software subscriptions. Regarding my photography website the same reasons apply as the blog:

“I want to de-bullshit my life.”
It is costly to self-host your own photography website.
The images have been stale because the day job does not allow time to create what I want.
Do I need to display a personal photography website on the WWW?
Why am I doing this?
Who the heck out there can remain interested in this site when I am not interested?

Once I have exported my articles from the website and import them into my database, I’ll shutter the website. I am still keeping the ChrisDenbow.com domain name and e-mail server of course. That is my digital real estate and no one else owns it. The same thing goes for PhotoDenbow.com. At some point in the future I am sure I’ll bring the website back online.

I am back in minimal essential mode to de-bullshit my life and maybe, just maybe, start to enjoy it again.

Thank you.

Chris Denbow
Saturday May 27, 2023 @ 10:30p
36.8.921, -95.58.145

Goodbye Adobe

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After decades of relying on Adobe photography software to host, edit and organize my archive, it is time to say goodbye. Photoshop and Lightroom are second to none with one exception- a subscription. With all the competition out there in this space, I can no longer justify $120 annually for it. Yes, they’ve hosted my photography website too, but I am moving on.

In a frequent effort to manage my tools and workflow, I am in downsizing mode. Call it minimalism or essentialism. I’ve discovered Mylio, a software tool that organizes your archives quickly and more efficiently than Adobe.

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My write-up on Mylio is here: https://www.chrisdenbow.website/mylio-photo-organizer/

Last year I paid a one-time fee for Pixelmator Pro which is baked right in to the Apple ecosystem so much, I am surprised Apple hasn’t bought them out.

Last month I re-upped my Flickr photo-hosting membership. This is where my images can be discovered online as opposed to my old photography site (PhotoDenbow.com)

Apple Photos is of course, on all the iDevices that I own and synced flawlessly through iCloud. With 2TB of cloud storage, I am good for awhile there too. Besides, it is a joy to view the images in there. It reminds me of the old film contact sheets we used in the darkroom before making prints.

All of this is subject to change, without notice and usually on a whim. But for now, I am confident that this will help save money and lighten the workflow.

UPDATE 3/3 – That didn’t last long. I renewed the membership, if only to get the Adobe Portfolio web hosting that comes with it. Every other web host is $$.

Ghosted

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I have had a need to simplify my websites and the expenses that come with them. That changed today.

A year ago I transferred this website to a self-hosted instance instead, for simplicity and ease of use but I gave up too much control. Today, I transferred it to a Ghost server and have taken control back. This move will save over half of the expense, too. At the same time, I moved my photography website back and to Adobe.

Today is a fresh start for this site. I am in the process of moving all of the articles published previously to an Archives page. There was an unfortunate issue with migrating the data over resulting in the first ten years going missing or a corrupt .xml file. Now the records go back to only 2011. I’ll keep sorting that out as I don’t want to lose all those memories.

ChrisDenbow.com was rebuilt in a couple of hours but it is still not finished.  It will take time to clean up the migration process, slap some paint on the walls and customize the site to my liking. For now, we’ll log this attempt at version 1.0

Update– Yes, everything from former website has migrated over smoothly except all the images in the previous posts. Those are broken for now. Eventually, I may go back to the more recent posts and add the images manually back.

Publishing On The Go

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My website has being going for over twenty years. In that time, technology has transformed my life and the way I write has gone through some pretty major shifts. What was first typed into a frustratingly slow WordPress installation can now be published from a variety of apps with surprising ease, and often now straight from my phone.

It’s amazing to me that I can sit in my car waiting, and type out my thoughts to instantly post online.

I love pushing the “Publish” button, and appreciate even more the ability to do so while I am mobile as opposed to sitting at my computer all the time.

Support

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In the entire twenty years of this website’s existence, I have never monetized it. No ads, no gimmicks, nada. It has been self-sufficient this whole time. But, all of a sudden I find myself in a situation where rising costs of server hosts and email hosts may be too much at the moment.

The domain for this website (chrisdenbow.com) expires next month.

The email address services (hello@chrisdenbow.com) also expires next month.

For the couple of hundred interested followers of this site, thank you for your interest through the years. If you have the kindness and appreciation for me and or this site, please consider sending a donation to help keep this site going for another year.

Apologies in advance. I am not use to this situation and I find it difficult to type these words. If interested, please send me a message to the above email address before October 24, 2022.

Thank you.

Geo Location

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I’ve enjoyed using the DayOne journal app on my Apple devices since 2016 because it includes the current date/time, weather and location of the post in every entry. But I am not a fan of paying for an annual subscription so I am looking at building my own alternatives here and in my pensieve software, Obsidian.

I want to add these features to every blog post here as a way to document, in context. Example: writing a post in December about a topic and the post shows I am holed up at home while a map on the post displays it is snowing outside. The post will ideally show a map, current weather and temps.

The solution must support adding geo coordinates, a location taxonomy, and a textual location description to a post, comment, user, or attachment. Supports adding weather data to a post or to a widget based on location. It must offer a choice of map displays. It supports retrieving location using the HTML5 geolocation API by default. Clicking the location icon or ‘Lookup Location’ will retrieve the location.

A work in progress that will enhance my online journaling experience.

On Contentment

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Lately I’ve been playing ping-pong in my brain about changing platforms. I set myself up on a 14-day trial to host this site on another server and within 14 minutes decided it was too much of a struggle.

I’ve spent hours, months and years to get this site where I want it.

As a geek, however, I have the prerogative to change my mind at any time and without notice!

Photo Workflow

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My current creative workflow is simple, on purpose. I’d rather be out there shooting than processing or organizing.

I don’t have the time or desire to go out for that one shot that will make me famous. I want to create a body of work. I’m not interested in social media “likes” or new followers scrolling through their feeds quickly and not caring.

Innovate your new workflow by keeping it simple, self-host your own website, create digital, or e-zines in .pdf. Offer prints and downloads of your work instead. This will generate a more positive, direct response from potential followers. 

The Wild Wild Web

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Speaking about personal websites, I just screened this video about the early web. I can thankfully say my website was NEVER this cheesy but there was a sense of ownership back then. Much more so than we do on today’s social media platforms where there is zero control. The WWW is much worse as a result.

I wish personal websites were just as popular nowadays, the web sure was a fun place to be when they were.