2024-06-07 23:59:57
I’ve mentioned previously that something about writing online has to change soon. I’ve looked into the options to host my decades of digital journals with various low/no cost alternatives and they suck.
Speaking of The Future, I just finished this book of the same name as well as a quick re-read of Alice In Wonderland. That makes ten titles down out of my 2024 reading goal of twenty four.
2024-06-08 18:26:57
Sure, the domain name is the same but the platform and the design are all new. The previous Ghost server was very proprietary and will not allow an easy way to export all of my writings there. Nor would it allow me to import decades worth of work into it. So, it had to go away even though I am taking a lo$$ on it. Because why write there when I cannot export?
I have imported the archives here from the previous years but not all of it. I still need to cut/paste from the former platform onto here. Grr.
This site design is a fresh, minimal look and inspired by the Mercedes F1 team colors.
This website is not complete and it will take a few days for everything to be up to my standards.
In the meantime, welcome! Have a look around. Let me know what you think in the comments after each post or from the “About” page.
2024-06-07 20:08:53
I’ve mentioned previously that something about writing online has to change soon. I’ve looked into the options to host my decades of digital journals with various low/no cost alternatives and they suck.
Speaking of The Future, I just finished this book of the same name as well as a quick re-read of Alice In Wonderland. That makes ten titles down out of my 2024 reading goal of twenty four.
2024-06-10 15:46:45
The glass tablet in my hand is not just a consumption device but also a creative one. I am limited in talent and funds to explore creating art with a physical canvas and physical globs of paint. And so in their place I am using technology to augment my creative practice.
To put it simply- sometimes I “paint” on my iPad. I’d say half of them are made with an Apple Pencil stylus and the other half by scrolling a finger over the glass. Finger painting minus the mess!
2024-06-11 17:20:36
Only one item was damaged during the cross-country relocation and that was my Royal Scrittore typewriter. I was looking forward to using it but apparently these things don’t defy gravity or react well with hard surfaces. I took it apart today to repair it and I have everything fixed so I thought.
The carriage return does not advance but the backspace does. Some of the letter keys stick but that can be poked back down. It may be time to look elsewhere and I do have my eye on this white typewriter from eBay.
It’ll go with the new decor so it’s justified(?) I’ll stew on it for a bit.
2024-06-11 19:01:59
I’ve been tinkering with a new novel or short story idea that has me intrigued. I’ve included an equally intriguing and cryptic image for it as well ^^.
2024-06-12 16:16:08
The frequency illusion, also called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, is a cognitive bias in which someone learns a novel word or concept—and then “suddenly” encounters it everywhere, whereas in fact it it is just more salient because it has been recently observed.
Psychology Today magazine
When we learn a new word, discover a favorite car, or unearth a previously unknown historical fact, and then come across it multiple times in short succession, the frequency illusion is at work.
This cognitive bias leverages the brain’s penchant for pattern recognition: We direct selective attention to our novel discovery and scan the world for matches. We choose what to focus on and confirm more sightings of it—involving another cognitive bias, the confirmation bias, as well.
For me personally, I was not overtly aware of this phenomena until I read the Rabbits novel series. After that and ever since, I have seen multiple references to rabbits everywhere without actively searching for them.
We remember what we prime the mind to attend to. If we select a new concept, we’ll identify that concept more often; the minds will actively seek out more stimuli related to that concept to seek confirmation.
2024-06-12 16:22:04
In a city that never sleeps, where the lights cast long shadows and secrets are hidden around every corner, there exists a woman known only by her enigmatic alias: "Black Rabbit." Her real name, age, and origin are mysteries, shrouded in layers of deceit and allure. Black Rabbit is a master of seduction and manipulation, weaving a web of temptation that ensnares anyone foolish enough to fall into her trap.
By day, she blends into society, a chameleon with a disarming smile and an air of sophistication. She frequents high-end bars, exclusive clubs, and upscale events, always on the lookout for her next mark. Her attire is always a calculated mix of elegance and allure, designed to captivate and intrigue. At night, she transforms, adopting her Black Rabbit persona—an intoxicating blend of danger and desire.
Her lair is a hidden sanctuary, accessible only through a labyrinth path of secret passages and forgotten alleys we would call “rabbit holes.” It's a place where luxury meets menace, with opulent decor masking the underlying threats. Once inside her warren, her victims find themselves trapped, their senses overwhelmed by the seductive atmosphere. Black Rabbit uses her charm and cunning to extort money, secrets, or favors, ensuring her power and influence continue to grow.
Those who resist or attempt to escape face her darker side. She's not afraid to use violence to maintain control, leaving a trail of fear and whispered rumors in her wake. Her allure is both her weapon and her shield, allowing her to operate just beyond the reach of the law.
In this city of shadows, Black Rabbit is a legend—a symbol of the seductive dangers that lurk beneath the surface, a reminder that even the most captivating beauty can conceal a deadly snare.
2024-06-12 22:44:17
Say what? A social file exchange for designers, artists, DJs, writers, musicians,
researchers, engineers and anyone of interest. I’ve had a content club on the brain for the past few months and just discovered this. I am on the waitlist but from everything I’ve seen so far this will be a blast.
2024-06-15 13:25:18
*with apologies to Fleetwood Mac
Scrolling is a tool of our current digital existence, no matter how much we dislike our dependence on it. This is because most people are scrolling on an app platform where they have little control on the content they see.
Social media algorithms mean you don’t see the posts of everyone you follow. You see only what is currently popular from some of them. Plus you see other stuff you don’t follow that their algorithm “think you might like”. Popular means engagement, so the original post is swarming with comments from strangers. You also see ads everywhere that often takes over the original material you are trying to consume. The interface itself is urging you to scroll! Like! Subscribe! Buy!
No thank you.
Digital life shouldn’t be this way. The best way to consume media is not with social media anyway. It exists on websites – blogs, news, magazines, opinions. Millions of new, and better quality articles created every week.
But you don’t want to visit dozens of websites to find out what’s new. What you need is a way to have the website content you choose come to you, when you want it.
This solution exists already in the form of a little known technology called RSS. It exists in the background of almost all websites. It’s a way for RSS apps to subscribe to that websites content and receive new articles when they are available.
In the RSS context, “SUBSCRIBE” doesn’t mean you pay, nor do you give your email. In fact the website owner won’t even know you’ve subscribed at all!
It’s like podcasts — but for reading.
This is not a paid sponsorship, but an RSS reader such as the no cost app called NetNewsWire. It shows you articles from your favorite blogs and news sites and keeps track of what you’ve read.
This means you can stop going from page to page in your browser looking for new articles to read. Do it the easy way instead: let a feed reader bring the news to you instead.
If you’ve been getting your news via Facebook and Twitter — with their ads, algorithms, user tracking, outrage, and misinformation — you can switch to your news feed reader to get news directly and more reliably from the sites you trust.
Take back control of your scroll. Scroll your own way.
Start with two or three sources. Maybe a news site and a couple of blogs you like such as, oh, I don’t know, chrisdenbow.website. His RSS feed is simply: https://chrisdenbow.website/feed
Give it a go, and after a few days, you’ll feel something magical happen. You have an app with a feed you can scroll through that you completely control. You decide what is in there. There is no algorithm. Just the latest posts from every site interleaved in reverse date order.
You don’t even need to leave the app to read. I subscribe only to full text feeds, so the entire article is readable within the app. No cookie pop ups or confusing menus to navigate.
There’s no comments or likes. If you no longer wish to see posts from a particular author, you remove their feed from your app and you never see them again.
Everyone should have the ability to scroll your own way.
While typing this up, I obviously sung this in my head the whole time.
2024-06-15 13:43:50
As part of my mission this year to “de-bullshit” my life, I’ve been contemplating acquiring a dumb phone and with luck, my carrier has exactly one model. It’s features are the ability to talk, text and take crap-quality images and that’s it. The carrier representative must have thought I was mentally unstable for even thinking about it and maybe he’s right. I currently have the iPhone 15 Pro Max which, for only a few more months, is the best on the American market. So “why go backwards?”, he asked.
I love the iPhone, but apparently I love it too much and I want to reduce my dependency on it.
Then I got to thinking, why not remove all the apps off of the iPhone except for the phone, messages, the camera and photo apps? Why not have my carrier remove the data option from my plan and I pay less? Hmm.
2024-06-05 23:50:00
Way back in 2007, I was invited to photograph the Birmingham Jazz Festival weekend and even attended a few workshops. One workshop was hosted by a group of brilliant high school jazz students from the jazz school. The special guest was the blues saxophonist “Blue” Lou Marini. He listened to the group practice and was asked what he thought. His reply, and I am paraphrasing here, was that they each played their notes perfectly and it was all very technical. But this isn’t jazz. You have to pour your soul into your music to make it stand out. The kids grinned, tried again and their passion came through.
I am not musically inclined. I have never taken a music theory class. I can sing and have always enjoyed it so my experience with music in a group setting has been limited. I can hear subtle notes and pick up rhythms from each instrument individually. My musical tastes are eclectic. But I cannot play…yet. At one point in the future, I will have to have my daughter, who plays beautifully patiently teach her old man.
In the meantime, I will fat-finger these strings on the ukulele technically for awhile. But real soon, I will heed Blue Lou’s advice and pour some passion into it. Technicality be damned.
“Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the m*therf**ker who plays it is 80 percent.” - Miles Davis
2024-06-02 11:52:55
Huh.
Way back in the early to mid 1980’s, I had purchased a generic, portable cassette player that I thought was the cat’s ass. I had control over what I listened to and could take it everywhere. I could copy our family’s limited albums onto a blank cassette and even record music off of the radio station. Audio freedom never sounded so good.
One day, my father asked me why I use cassettes when records were better? I remember saying, rather wisely I thought, that records were fine but I can’t carry a record player with me everywhere. I received a smirk and probably a “what the hell ever” sort of comment in return. Generational gaps, am I right?
Well, looking back, it seems to have stood the test of time so well, that everyone wants to have a record player now and scour everywhere trying to find those same albums. I know I did and acquired quite a few. However, if you don’t store them properly, they end up getting warped and unplayable. Ask me how I know.
Something unavailable at the time of that past conversation and I think we can both agree on, is the compact disc. Better sound quality, smaller in size, portable and you can even transfer the music digitally. A win/win/win/win.
As consumers, we strayed away from those CDs in favor of streaming our music and audio books. But I think it is time for a comeback. I’ve moved on from 8-tracks, cassettes, records and now, I think I am ready to move on from streaming.
For the past few months, I have slowly acquired a ton of digital music burned from compact discs that were borrowed from various libraries stretching from Cincinnati to Tulsa, Houston and now CCFL. Not to mention all of the CDs I have managed to keep ahold of over the years and all of a sudden, I am sitting on gigabytes of music.
There is a point to all of this, and once again, the old man was right. Over the years, I probably drove he, and the rest of our family nuts by suggesting the latest tech trends and tools to try. Since everyone else at the time was using Apple, I was on Android so it was a challenge to find a decent chat app to communicate long distance. Then I went all-in on Apple devices and decided that just plain old Messages app was perfect for our needs.
“Hey Dad, we can communicate on Facebook so you should sign up.” I promptly received, correctly, a “what the hell ever” comment that I waved off as a generational thing. Now I regret ever signing up for the damned thing and deleted back in 2018.
All of that is to say this: I am cutting back, way back on my digital tools, including my website. I want to de-BS my life and live more simply so I am taking steps to ensure this happens soon. Having lost one of my web domain names to a frickin’ casino in Iceland, I will hold on to the existing one with my personalized e-mail address for that domain. The same goes for my photography portfolio’s domain name. The web pages may disappear for awhile, but the names are mine. I own those lots even though there will be no houses on them so to speak.
Instead of a website and portfolio, I will journal using my own server’s database. An analog pen and paper are standing by too.
I’ll read analog books by day and the digital Kobo by night.
Eventually, I will even purchase a dumb phone that costs $100 that will allow me to call and text only. The current iPhone will be relegated to a camera and a portable music player (remember all those gigabytes of music files?)
It’s back to basics for me using the original pillars of the internet. WWW 1.0 brought us electronic mail, SMS messaging, digital journals, .PDF, podcasts, internet browsers and RSS. Speaking of browsers, I am going to remove 95% of all the apps on my iDevices in favor of using the browser instead. Too much personal data is being handed over to those app developers. Using a browser, I have more freedom and privacy.
I went online in 1996 when I purchased my first computer for college and have been an embedded netizen for almost thirty years. While I appreciate and am fascinated by technology and all it’s advances, the tech industry has proven themselves to be unworthy of holding the keys and locking their users in. They have bastardized the very tools designed for us and made us worse. As JOSHUA reminds us, this is all a confusing game. The only winning move is not to play.
So, kudos to my father who was right all along.
2024-06-06 21:55:08
This morning I stood on the Cape Coral beach looking southwest waiting to see a rocket ship fly over us. I was there at Starbase observing the tallest, most powerful rocket ever to be launched up close. 100 yards away we camped on the beach where the Rio Grande emptied into the Gulf with Mexico on the other side. We were asked to leave the beach the next day before the test fire of the 34 Raptor engines. That was delayed so we made our way back home and missed that one. But it was exciting to see!
Still can’t believe how close we were permitted to get. Boca Chica Beach, Texas.
Today I had hoped to see this gorgeous rocket in flight and one day go to the Moon and Mars.
Starship’s fourth flight test launched with ambitious goals, attempting to go farther than any previous test before and begin demonstrating capabilities central to return and reuse of Starship and Super Heavy. The payload for this test was the data. Starship delivered.
On June 6, 2024, Starship successfully lifted off at 7:50 a.m. CT from Starbase in Texas and went on to deliver maximum excitement for the next hour until it arrived in orbit, re-entered orbit and then corrected itself for a splash down in the Indian Ocean successfully.
Liftoff
Alas, the flight trajectory that Space-X typically takes is in between Florida and Cuba. Today, the flight path took it south of Cuba. I didn’t have a chance in hell of capturing it. Not even a trail in the sky.
In the past few years, there have been 353 (!) launches from three launch sites from Cape Canaveral Florida, to Boca Chica Texas and Vandenberg AFB in California. 287 of those launches have been re-flights using rocket boosters that auto-land back to earth (!) No one has been able to do this before including NASA.
My View, Pre-launch, Launch, 33/34 raptors firing, In Orbit! De-orbiting, Re-entry burning through a fin, Splashdown, Success!
I can only hope that Starship 5 will be launched at night. Space-X’s other rockets are launched from Florida at night and we can see those easily.
2024-06-15 15:18:46
I want to design and place a machine to fill up with books that people can purchase on the go as opposed to them buying a soda or a snack. I know we will all be a lot healthier.
They remind me of the Little Free Library stands all across the country, of which I used to be a curator of one back home.
They also remind me of the Art-O-Mat art vending I’ve seen in Las Vegas.
2024-06-16 19:49:01
I set a photography goal for myself to shoot a photo with the Hipstamatic every day, for 366 images this (leap) year. Today is day 168. I had them all on my photo website that I recently took down but for now, I’ll just add a few from the past two weeks here.
2024-06-17 19:16:05
I pulled the trigger on my decision to remove the data plan from the iPhone. By next week it will be just talk and text.
2024-06-20 13:44:46
It is 2024 and the Matrix is real. Of this there can be zero doubt, if you consider your daily screen time. The digital avatar of you online versus your physical meat space in the real world. Are you intellectually honest with yourself?
Can you feel how disproportionate this balance is?
2024-06-22 20:46:05
The issue with algorithmic feeds on social sites, is the fact that they assume you would like your future to look like your past.
Did you linger or read over an article? Well then, here’s more. Liked a video? Yes, have some more of the same old crap.
*With apologies to Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine
2024-06-23 11:40:04
Since a month ago I decided I was going to start a new photography project entitled “Palm Sunday”, and then promptly shot over 100 diverse palms in the same Sunday, that project was over immediately. I’ve been looking for another project and then I finally looked up.
Living in a coastal community, the skies and clouding hit differently here. So, I thought I would give that a try with all of the challenges involved like the various lighting and cloud formations. Let’s see how long this one lasts.
The Hipstamatic 366 project is still going strong
2024-06-23 21:19:07
I just had my cellular data plan shut off…deliberately. My talk and text plan still allows basic communication when I am out and about. Let the great experiment begin!
2024-06-24 01:06:19
The Los Angeles Library system recently purchased a local book publisher and plans on publishing even more from local authors. Brilliant!
Local libraries could and should support people to self-publish books, e-books, websites, etc. Instead of just computers for the homeless to play games on, set up printers, scanners, zine machines, etc. Beef up the local writers and potential authors by hosting writing parties. Maybe even add a community feed to host all of those websites and their owners with a shared feed of everything published in blog format and RSS?
2024-06-25 22:07:21
You can lead a person to wisdom but you can’t make them think.
2024-06-25 22:13:58
Well, just my typewriter, actually. The local repairman said no way, and it would be cheaper to get a different one. It now rests in the trash bin behind that shop. So now I am on the lookout for a different model and color.
In the meantime, the Hanx digital typewriter will have to do.
2024-06-26 22:41:50
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything has to be said again.