Summer Triangle
My first night sky photo using an equatorial mount. 74 exposures Ⅹ One Minute, f2.8, 20mm, ISO 800. Stacked in Siril and final processing done in Affinity Photo 2.
Brandon Staggs .Com
Brandon s personal blog, and other stuff.
Latest posts
SwordSearcher 10
SwordSearcher 10 I released SwordSearcher 10 today. The main new feature is something I ve been thinking about for close to twenty years: natural language Bible search. Take this example: what if you want to find verses that talk about morning thoughts? How do you make a keyword search for that? You really can t. And how Continue reading SwordSearcher 10
Writing Software Without Writing Code
November 2025. That s when we officially got there. Any software developer who is not learning how to make the most of these tools is going to find themselves left behind in short order. I have never been an AI optimist; I ve always thought of AI as glorified autocomplete. That changed when I tried Claude Code Continue reading Writing Software Without Writing Code
Cardinal in Snow
Cardinal in Snow. 500mm, f/7.1, 1/2000 sec, ISO 1600.
Sunsets
It s been a nice couple of weeks for sunset photography.
Woke up too early, decided to take a picture of the moon.
This image is composed of 30 stacked frames taken without a tripod. The exposure was decent at f/11, 1/1600 and ISO 1600 using a lens at 500mm. I would have preferred a slower shutter speed (with lower ISO) but did not feel like setting up the tripod at 4am. Stacking was used to align the Continue reading Woke up too early, decided to take a picture of the moon.
SwordSearcher 9.1 released today! Also, I am still here.
Just popping in to say hi, and to let any of you who still somehow stumble upon my blog know that I am still around and I continue to develop SwordSearcher. And lest you disbelieve me, I offer as evidence that I released a new version today.
SwordSearcher 9 and Dark Mode interfaces
I released SwordSearcher 9. The most obvious change in this release is the addition of a dark mode interface. This has been a long-standing request from SwordSearcher users. I had started and then stopped development on the dark mode interface several times over the last decade. The truth is, getting it right is hard. SwordSearcher is Continue reading SwordSearcher 9 and Dark Mode interfaces
SwordSearcher 8.4 released
A few days ago, Amazon sent me an email notifying me that I cannot resupply them with copies of SwordSearcher, because they need to devote incoming shipment processing to household goods and other essentials. Literally days before California s governor ordered all non-essential work in the state to be suspended, six boxes of SwordSearcher 8.4 discs Continue reading SwordSearcher 8.4 released
25 Years a Bible Software Developer
In 1994, just after I got married, I started working on a DOS program for doing Bible searches. Yesterday, I released version 8.3 of this same program. Of course, the original code I wrote in 1994 isn’t actually being used any more, but what originally was known as Bible Assistant was consistently re-worked and improved Continue reading 25 Years a Bible Software Developer