I’ve been working out a solution for short form posts to complement the long form posts here on the website. Yet I did not want them cluttering the feed either.
Then I had it, build out a separate Micro page with its own feed for those quick thoughts. Think Twitter but no social aspect.
You can access it in the header menu on this website, or via RSS feed (recommended)
2024 was a bumper crop full of celestial events and now 2025 is starting out very well. Tonight I observed, in order from east to west: Mars, Jupiter, (insert Earth here), (insert moon here), Venus, Saturn, and Mercury. Six planets are currently in alignment. Bonus: I also observed the Hubble space telescope.
The alignment of Mars, Earth, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus, and Saturn occurred on January 21, 2025.
Coming soon, Saturn, Mercury, Earth, Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars in a planetary alignment on February 25, 2025. Hopefully we can talk someone we know into setting up his telescope for optimal viewing.
Allow yourself to go down rabbit holes. A rabbit hole is not a distraction. A rabbit hole is your brain trying to tell you to pay attention to something you’re curious about. Ignore algorithmic rabbit holes. – Are.na
This will be the 17th year at attempting creating life-long habits for myself. I’ve realized a long time ago that at the end-of-the-year holidays, I am not mentally or physically capable of sticking with resolutions for the upcoming new year. I need a break so I take the whole month of January off to reflect and plan. Hence, the start of a new Groundhog Day Resolutions.
Today 2/2, Groundhog Day, is the day for a fresh start and a new year. (Chinese Lunar New Year started as well)
The first goal is to check-in here and review my progress. Every month until December 12th 2025.
The first check-in is on March 3 (3/3). After that will be 4/4, 5/5 and so on.
Here we go:
The previously mentioned job has me walking and lifting outdoors every work day so this is a start. Time to supplement this with extracurricular physical activities such as:
I am on pace with my 25 books read in 2025 goal. I am still trying to sort a workflow into DenbowOS to capture all of my notes and highlights from other sources besides books.
No new tech in 2025. I almost broke this one right off the bat but I returned the new Kindle in favor of the existing one.
I have a desire to finish making the Mini machine into a proper photo and file server. Not just for me, but to grant anyone else I want to have remote access to it too.
These all sound familiar, right? Like I said in the first sentence way up there, these are attempts. Many attempts in the past seventeen years I have been doing this. Maybe I should consider them as constant maintenance and I need frequent accountability. Hence, this initiative!
See you back here on 3/3 for the first review.
I am working on several initiatives to bring everything under one domain, including the photography and the archives. This website is done, save for a few minor tweaks in the background.
The Archives page is done and can be found here or by clicking on the link on the top mast of the website.
I am retaining the photodenbow.com domain but it will no longer be in use. It’s mine and no one else’s. Sounds selfish, but there is a great family photographer out there with the same surname and I had this first. I learned my lesson after dropping chrisdenbow.com and photomojo.com domains, only for them to be premium and go for $1000 each. Ouch.
Anyway, I am working on a solution for the photography page on this website. You can find it here, but it is a work in progress. You were warned.
The Podcast page is back, only for posterity for now. Who knows, I may desire to fire off another episode here or there. I even added an Apple Podcasts web player into the page. Proud of that one if I say so myself.
The Micro page has made a comeback in that these are short blurbs that don’t need to be on the main page, but are worthy of mention.
I am trying not to add too many images on to this website’s database and possibly lose them in the future. Want to see an osprey on Capitva Island for this week’s Flyday? Better go check out the new photography page of this website!
It is going back. Amazon promises easy returns and trade-ins, but failed to deliver. After a week of hassle I decided that you know what? You don’t get any more money out of it. I’ll just hold on to the capable Paperwhite edition and use the Kindle app on my tablet.
Apparently when switching virtual servers, I failed to consider switching the private email’s MX records to match. That involves changing host name servers, CNAME records, MX records blah blah
This actually took more time to correct than switching servers.
Not sure if it is resolved because I need to go to work and it can take up to 24 hours for the corrections to propagate. I’ll test later this evening.
**UPDATE** MX records rebuilt, redirected to the proper protocols and restored.
The new E-reader is an improvement on my Kindle paperwhite in only a few ways. Obviously, the color addition brings a new dynamic. The display feels more like a tablet as opposed to an e-ink reader. The text and images render better, the colored highlights and notes are easier to see. The screen size is the same but the tablet itself is a little larger, easier to grip.
Sure, I can have the same quality on the Kindle app displayed on the phone but for my purposes, I need a dedicated reader.
The fact that Amazon threw in 3 months of Kindle Unlimited reading and 1 month of Audible audio books were very nice incentives too.
The 2025 Reading list is now out of whack with all of the new additions I’ll need to finish.
The one disappointing aspect of rebuilding the website is due to the images and photographs not populating into the correct posts. I have all of the images but there is zero chance of me going back to each post and assigning those pictures to them.
In the future, I will need to discipline myself not to add images to the posts here. Perhaps I can due an embed from Flickr since they are my photo host. Or, just display those images on the dedicated photography website I haven’t finished building out yet.
Either way, this website is going to be predominantly text-based.
As I mentioned on the last entry, there have been some backend changes and improvements to this website and more.
Version 3.0- Switched virtual servers, host. This was a doozy and thankfully I have everything backed up and could restore easily.
Added a new subdomain to host the Archives website. This is a repository in case this website encounters a disaster.
A new subdomain has been created for the Photography website as well. Although that is a work of progress now that I have rethought everything but ran out of time tonight.
The “On This Day” script has been moved to display under each post and on the Archives page. It is a fun way to look back on what occurred in previous years on the same date.
Visually, not a lot has changed here but the whole point of this was to bring everything in-house, on one domain. Previously, the Archives were on a whole other domain name, same for the photo website.
Now it is time to kick back and read on the new Kindle and start the work week in the morning.
This website may be down for a bit due to some backend changes and switching virtual server hosts. Hopefully I can get everything restored quickly. The things we do for our domains…
I neglected to mention in the last post about all of the beach web cams, manatee cams, dolphins cams etc etc. I am also digging watching the tides go in and out based on the wind and lunar cycles.
…is back online. I have finally reacquired the rights to the domain name. I have even given it a new coat of paint and worked the backend so it should render quickly and smoothly. You can find it by clicking the link or visiting the Photographing section of this website.
The Flyday project is in there too. I am thinking of resurrecting the Palm Sunday project as well.
