Chris Denbow Posts

September 10, 2024 / Journal

After a two hour delay, the Space-X Falcon launched at 5:23am from Kennedy Space Center carrying four civilian crew members into the highest orbit ever. There, they will perform some of the longest EVA tests. Again, as civilians- impressive.

Screenshot from Space-X prior to liftoff
Crappy photo I shot from 220 miles away

With my sleep now ruined, I’ll publish this and try to grab a little more.

September 9, 2024 / Journal

That’s how many pages I need to print from 24 years worth of writing on this website. Printing them from the library and over time may be my best bet I think. Let them worry about the paper and ink costs.

September 9, 2024 / Website

As a follow-up to my previous post, I realized that my audio file host had removed the embedded code and URL link from my Podcast page here on this site. Not very nice!

So I have uploaded the audio files, all 10.5 episodes, back to the Podcast page for posterity. In addition, I now have the files on my server for safekeeping.

Podcast Page Screenshot

I own my publishing house. This website, my own e-mail, the domain name, file servers, etc. I’ve learned the hard way not to trust third party anything.

September 7, 2024 / Journal

You can catch up on previous episodes on the Podcast page.

September 5, 2024 / Journal

What am I doing? Why did I start an online course when my brain is already overwhelmed with these other self-inflicted endeavors?

Fortunately our brains have the ability to change, grow and reorganize its neuron pathways to make new connections and remap from how it previously functioned.

Does this explain why my head hurts right now?

September 5, 2024 / Journal

Did I just enroll into a distance-learning course from Harvard at the last moment? Verification complete- the course starts today, September 5th.

Welcome!

Introduction to Digital Humanities will orient and train you in a wide variety of digital tools and techniques that allow humanists and social scientists to ask new research and teaching questions and make new claims using data.

The course will teach you:

  • What the term “digital humanities” means in different disciplines.
  • How common digital tools work and examples of projects using them.
  • How various file types can be used to create, gather, and organize data.
  • How to use command-line functions to analyze text.
  • How to use free tools to create visual text analysis.

I did the same thing nine years ago when enrolling for courses at Stanford. What have I done? What I always do: I am doing it because it stimulates my brain and I enjoy it.

September 4, 2024 / Journal

Once again, I find myself working behind the scenes of this website. This time, I am organizing the backend, the stuff that no one else sees. I am also wrapping up the migration of writings from my previous sites into here for posterity. Such as it is.

It’s been fun to look back and see the previous designs of this site in all of its iterations. I’ve learned a lot, experimented quite a bit, and still have a ways to go. Nowadays, I care more about substance than style and will make an effort to keep the experiments to a minimum. Until then, here are a few screenshots of this site through the years. I wish I could have done the same during the early years.

March 2011
May 2012
September 3, 2024 / Journal

With the help of the Internet Archives and their Wayback Machine, I am slowly cutting/pasting/posting some of this website’s missing articles that somehow did not migrate and log.

The Machine only takes snapshots and not the full site, so I’m positive there are a lot of posts missing and maybe gone forever.

I was missing four years from 2013-2017 and I have regained a lot since my last post on this. I’ll finish porting over the rest tomorrow. For now, I am hopeful and in debt to the Internet Archive organization. Now my website’s Archive Page has listings for the previous twenty four consecutive years.

September 1, 2024 / Journal
August 31, 2024 / BlAugust

Thirty one days ago I decided to write a post to this website every day in August, hence- BLAugust. But didn’t you post only photos or quotes on some of those days, Chris? Yes, because this site has my name on it and I was busy re-decorating a master bedroom and bathroom.

August 31, 2024 / BlAugust

Have you heard about the Internet Archive? I have but somehow always forget that it is available. It is a library of books, software, music, websites and more. A perfect blend of old and new knowledge. This is truly a national treasure.

Did I mention websites? It’s true- the WayBack Machine deploys spiders across the world wide web to take snapshots of websites. They send them out everywhere and my old websites were caught at least two times a month. This is how I discovered a problem with my own personal archives.

There are missing records.

I verified this when I searched the Archives Page on my own site. From September 2013 until November 2017, FOUR YEARS of my writing cannot be found.

Screenshot of this site way back in 2014. None of that is on my site currently. Aargh!

I did a cursory search on one of my hard drives just for the year 2015 that turned up 37,000 results, none of them were my writings. I’ll need to check the rest but for now I am bummed. No idea what happened but hope I can find them, post them, back them up online and in print.

August 31, 2024 / Art

While making good use of the chrome spray paint, I grabbed two black canvas and a few fasteners lying around the garage and made a wet, metallic collage.

I like this project and plan to follow up with seashells and various spray colors

August 31, 2024 / Art
August 30, 2024 / Art
August 29, 2024 / BlAugust

Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world – John Steinbeck