Connect + Support

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When trying something new, it is okay to feel uncertain and hesitant, right? Well here I go anyway.

Connect-

My content lives here, on my one-man publishing house. Everything here is under my control and it’s then dispersed through three distribution channels.

The first, and most obvious, is the world wide web itself. My content is distributed to you via the Internet. You can ask your browser to get this page you’re reading right now and get access to my content.

The second is RSS. You can tell your RSS reader to fetch the content available on my website and you can then consume my content inside your app of choice.

The final one is email. I send my newsletter via email because some people prefer to stay up to date that way as well as reply back with further comments and discussion.

These three methods only take care of distribution and distribution of content is only part of the equation. You then have interaction. The point of putting content out there is to connect, to interact with others, to exchange ideas, and to grow. And interactions, through my website domain, happen mostly through comments on an article here or by email.

Support-

In the past twenty-two years that I have owned a website, never, not once, have I subjected anyone to spam, affiliate links or advertising. It’s repugnant and distracts from the messages I want to get across. Nothing has changed in that regard. You now have the option to support me and this website (self hosting costs aren’t cheap,) in many ways such as contributing to the conversation in the posts, adding me to your RSS feed readers and by dropping me a line into my e-mail inbox to hello@chrisdenbow.website.

After all these years of building websites and working on side projects, I realized that this is the only way for me to approach the whole donations/monetization part of what I do. $0 per month gives you access to the articles and newsletters I post. If you want to support for $5 or $10/month for all that plus extras, that’s awesome as well. I’d be grateful either way and your kindness won’t go unnoticed.

Between you and me, there is no obligation and I certainly don’t have an expectant hand out, but the options are out there now.

Follow Along

via RSS feed. I also send a weekly newsletter

RSS

Get In Touch

Have something to share? My inbox is always open.

Connect

Once A Month

That’s how little it takes to help. If you feel generous, consider supporting what I do.

Donate

Post-Process

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I just said goodbye to the $112 Adobe Lightroom annual subscription, again. Now I need to dismantle my Portfolio. I’ll let the $75 annual Flickr subscription lapse to and see which of the 47k+ images they’ll cull down to 1,000 on a free account.

This leaves me with nowhere to post my photos since I really do not want to do that on my blog. Not that it matters because no one sees them anyway.

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UPDATE 2024/02/27: I have decided to go with an inexpensive, self-hosting option on my server using the Piwigo template. Right now it is basic and barebones, but I will build it out over time. For now, here it is naked: http://www.photodenbow.com

Why bother with any of it?

However, I will save money and time by not futzing with any of it, regardless of how much enjoyment and utility I received from those services.

Hmm…

What Have I Done? (2)

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With Apple support, I have gained partial access to some devices except my MacBook and AirPods.

Apparently they are signed in on another, older Apple ID.

I have been attempting to add/drop devices onto old ID and try again on new ID but now the password suddenly fails on the old ID? I call BS as I wait one hour for a security reset.

Getting closer to all analog all the time.

What Have I Done?

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I have made a mess of things while trying to simplify.

I let a domain name expire that also had a custom email address attached to it and according to my domain registrar, lost both to a third party who scooped up that domain name so I no longer have access to it.

Therefore preventing me to do what I need to do with some of my Apple devices and old Apple ID.

Henceforth, this current domain, chrisdenbow.website and its associated email address, hello [at] chrisdenbow.website is here to stay forever.

If I want simplicity, then I really should take a few steps backward and just go analog everything and I am tempted to do so! (not yet.)

F1 2024

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Subscription renewed and I am ready for a new season with 24 races around the world. Up first, Bahrain.

Mercedes + McLaren

To Err…

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Remind me to never write anything when I am tired. Mistakes are made, even when I rely on my writing software to analyze grammatical and spelling errors. That last Newsletter was littered with errors. Apologies.

Issue #2

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2024-02-25

Hello and welcome to the second edition of this newsletter. Every Sunday morning, I intend to send an update or insight to things that I find interesting from the previous week, just like your Sunday morning newspaper. It is entirely possible that you may find it appealing as well. If you have something to share based on what you’ve compared to reading here, certainly, comment and share.

  1. It has been one week since I returned from the road and turned in my notice to end my career, so I am in limbo. When people ask what I have been doing, the response is always “keeping busy.” For some reason, a quote from the excellent novel and movie The Shawshank Redemption is percolating in my brain lately: “Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin.” I prefer the former, of course.
  2. I miss the idea of creating and hosting small photography conferences in several cities — RIP PhotoCamp. The same goes for photography clubs such as the Texas Shooters (I love seeing it grow larger after I left Houston, knowing it is in good hands) and also Shots here in Tulsa. Photowalks with friends where we just walk, talk and shoot. I learned so much from those people. So when someone asked me what my dream job would be? Owning a small studio/office space for me and with a community photo lab for analog & digital photo labs. With space for individuals to sit and work on their projects surrounded by fellow creatives, a meeting room, maybe even have a space carved out for a small café during the day and a mini bar in the evenings. I’d call it “The Dark Room”, naming it after the film photo labs where the images are developed in darkness and the smell of developer chemicals are in the air.
  3. Expired: book clubs. Tired: coffee & book clubs. Wired: Content Club. Where people gather to discuss things of interest that they have discovered such as a book or articles they are reading, the podcast they have been binging, even something they have seen and found share-worthy. The idea being someone from the group could be inspired to read/listen/watch what was shared. The ongoing goal being natural, organic growth in the group and not from an algorithm on a social platform.
  4. “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”― Ernest Hemingway. Do you want to save the world and resolve problems? Start with yourself.
  5. “Is this good? Maybe great,” a PDF from the Serving Library where two friends walk, talk and create art together. https://www.servinglibrary.org/journal/17/block-by-block

And that is it for the edition #2 of the newsletter. Each week I will share something of interest, well, things that I find interesting in hopes that you discover something interesting as well. I will also, in the future, share photographic stories. Hopefully, to your enjoyment.

Until next week…

Chris

Geocaching Update

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Not only can you discover hidden canisters full of trinkets around the globe, half of the appeal in Geocaching is hiding caches yourself and watch others enjoy your discovery. It’s fun to see people sign the logs, grab a trinket, take a trinket and add images to the cache’s digital logs.

Sadly, however, things happen to these hidden caches such as weather or muggles (non-players.) I had to archive another hide this morning so now I am only down to two. I have a few more hides I need to scout locations for and create but I am waiting for other things to happen first.

Only two left, not counting the virtual caches I have created (not shown)
This little sucker has traveled almost 1,200 miles!
GeoDenbow’s Globe-trotting Travel Bug #TB2AEXR
A sneaky hide underneath a highway guardrail

Geocaching
Geocaching is a treasure hunting game where you use a GPS to hide and seek containers with other participants in the activity. Geocaching.com is the listing service for geocaches around the world.
Geocaching

.pdf

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You’d think I could easily find a .pdf of this hardcover book about… the Portable Document Format to download and read. Nope.

Portable Document Format
This book explores contemporary publishing in its broadest, most exploded sense. The first part of this book consists of pieces of writings written since the conception of Dexter Sinister’s New York basement workshop and bookstore in the summer of 2006. The second part consists of reproductions of a
Sternberg Press

Novel Progress

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I have been an avid reader since I can remember, and that memory goes back quite the distance. And in that whole time I’ve always felt that there is a story for me to tell, something that hasn’t been written yet and it was up to me to tell it since no one else will. The trick is to tell a compelling story that is unique or maybe offer a small twist. I do not have lofty aspirations nor fancy myself as a brilliant writer- at all. 

Now that the disclaimer is out there I can proceed.

The idea of a my first novel came from a photo book documenting the Angkor province of Cambodia from the Khmer Empire, a topic that hardly anyone knows anything about so of course I was intrigued and have been pursuing research and ideas on how to tell a story there. That has been burned in my brain for the past thirty years. 

During this past month I was in a hotel room alone with my thoughts and there were plenty of thoughts for other novel ideas. Work by day then come back to the hotel at night to read and write. As I said, for one month I have generated almost thirty-five (35!) novel ideas and concepts. I have even gone so far as to come up with plot lines from start to finish on most of these. At least ten unique characters to be interjected as well. 

To break them down I’d say at least 20 of these are novel sized with the remaining 15 are more like individual short stories that can/will be combined into one overall story with a common theme.

My brain and fingers are swollen from over use but I am pleased. 

There are so many issues though with the most difficult being- which story do I want to start first? Which one do I invest my time in research and development? Should I start on a smaller series and build from those small victories?

Check up on some of the progress on my Writing page above.