Recovering web developer, instigator, beer crafter, dog friend, Nice Guy
Oy. And here I was, quietly NOT blogging, and someone poked the sleeping bear. My buddy Luke tagged me in this series of blogging questions making the rounds right now. Why did you start blogging in the first place? I was a terrible steward of my own content, so my best guess based on what I’ve been able to download from Archive.net is that I started around 2001 or so. I didn’t own my current…
I’ve spent a good deal of time these past few months exploring the world of self-hosted music servers and players. Why would I do this, when I have subscriptions to both Apple Music and Spotify? Good question! My answer may not be enough to get you diving into this complex world of software, but I will say it’s ended up bringing me a fair amount of pleasure. I’ve been a paying Apple Music…
There’s been a slow change in how I feel about ownership this past year. I’ll chalk this up to age, but there’s probably more external forces at play than I care to admit. It’s been on my mind often lately, so I felt it was time to write down a few thoughts. Bookmarking I’d been bouncing around using several different tools for bookmarking and read later uses. None of which I controlled, all of…
New Mac code editor out. Very, very new still. I’ll be watching to see where this goes.
I’ve been expanding my self hosting software of late. I wanted to find a way to have an archive of my bookmarks that also has an API to play with. Trying out Linkding this week. It’s very Pinboard-like, which is fine by me. We’ll see if this takes.
Kellan started something that’s been bumping around in my thoughts for a few months now. In my past life as an Internet Person , I link blogged often. I think at some point I felt it was lazy or something, and stopped. Dumb. Testing this with Jekyll.
I spent a decent chunk of my weekend doing some consolidation of systems and reworked my VPN usage a bit. Earlier this year I found Tailscale and have fallen in love with how easy it is to use across my devices. I’d also been using Mullvad VPN for a few years now, and have been very happy with that. One downside to using both of these is that, on Macs at least, I can’t have multiple VPNs going at…
In my day job, I have to know a lot of things about a lot of things in order to provide clients with the best solutions for their business. My history, both in work and in play, helps with this. I’ve done design, front end development, CMS architecture, worked with a wide range of SaaS platforms, integrated a range of systems via APIs and middleware tools, helped clients decide on payment…
It’s been some time since I last posted. My days have been filled with two jobs, my day job doing strategy for our ecommerce clients and my night/weekend job doing a home remodel. The latter has been taking a lot out of me physically. I’ve taken on all sorts of new tasks with the home remodel, things I’ve never done before. Some light electrical work, drywalling, cabinet installs, floor sanding…
I’m on video calls daily for work. Typically 2-6 per day, most weekdays. Ever since the lockdown, I’ve gotten used to these and find that I quite like them now versus the old conference calls where you couldn’t see anyone. I feel that our client relationships are a bit stronger now that we’re seeing each other regularly. I have my video on for all my calls, both internal and client-facing. I’ve…
About 4 months ago I started the update process to move from Statamic 3 to 4. I ran into all sorts of issues and spent a good month trying to get the whole upgrade process figured out. This has been my long-standing issue with Statamic; it’s very developer-friendly and I’m just not an active developer anymore. I have only good things to say for what the team at Statamic is doing, it’s an amazing…
I thought I would run down all the changes to my personal tech stack this year so that next year I can look back and see what stuck and what I ditched. Hardware Changes NAS to Mac Mini I’d been using a QNAP NAS for about 5 years, mostly for backups and some media storage. It worked fine for me but it was always a bit of a chore to keep updated, and I often worred about the security behind QNAP’s…
A shot of the $1.8B Intuit Dome going up a few miles from our home. This adds to Sofi Stadium and the Kia Forum, all along the same street here. Traffic is bonkers now, I can’t wait until this is finished.
We spent the weekend getting the house back in order after spending the past 10+ days in Covid quarantine. I got pretty sick on November 1, and spent the better part of 5 days in a heavy flu-like state. My fiance caught it as well and thankfully did not get as sick as I did. It totally screwed up my work week. I’ll also note for future me that two people trying to work from home in a house not…
I’m taking a different, more measured approach to how I blog these days. I thought it would be good to jot these thoughts down here, mostly for me but also for anyone who is on the fence about starting a blog. I’ve been posting my thoughts online in various formats for close to 20 years now. Blogs, tumblelogs, tweets, photos blogs have all come on gone over the years. My blogs themselves have…
Yes, it has been several months since I last posted to the site. Part of this was just life getting stupid busy, part of this was technical glitches. Busy life + technical glitches = lack of desire to fix technical glitches. Such is life. I have been reading though, working my way through The Three-Body Problem. I had almost given up on the book at a third of the way through. It’s written so oddly…
Stopped in at Brouwerij West in San Pedro this Saturday to check out the Bus Bros. and get some fine beers. Gorgeous day in LA and some really amazing buses on display.
7 days in Maui was just the right amount of vacation time to relax and cut off from regular life. This was my second trip to Hawaii and my fiancé’s first, but both of our first time in Maui. It’s a gorgeous island, it seems there are photo opportunities everywhere you go. The view from our AirBnB. Our AirBnB was fantastic, if not in the most ideal location. We’d wanted to be in Lahaina but…
Bought this awesome coffee mug from my long-time friend @luxuryluke. Also picked up a couple of his rad t-shirts. Well done good friend! Find them at his shop here: https://creamco.studio
We stopped in to Michaels the other day and when we hit checkout I was floored that they’ve removed all cashiers and only have self checkout. Unless you are paying with cash, in which case an employee has to come up and help you check out. So weird.
This shop always has a ton of mannequins outside and it makes me laugh every time I see them. It looks like a crowd waiting to get in the store, minus all their heads.
Caught this coming out to run errands after work tonight. Spectacular colors.
Needed a new day bag that could hold the ipad. After searching around, I ended up back at my fav bag company Timbuk2. Here’s the new bag next to my current full-size bag.
September was a slog, and quite possibly the worst month in many years. Family passed, friends lost their jobs and my fiancé was bitten by a dog and had a scary few days in the hospital. There were a few bright spots there, but I’m just glad to see October hit and fall weather start to roll in. I’ve not been reading as much as I’d like, even though I have a good backlog of books. I’m hoping to get…
Headed up north to Los Padres National Forest just above Los Olivos for some camping and wine tasting. The views were amazing and we captured some great sunset photos. We stayed at Camp Figueroa, a new spot for us. Nestled near the top of the mountains, it was a crazy, windy and narrow uphill drive to get there. We arrived Saturday around 12PM, not knowing what to expect aside from the camp pics…
Because this is my personal site, it’s basically in near constant flux. I adjust things over time to see what I think works best for me. I’ve decided to adjust how I handle links here. I originally played with a weekly link list, and then moved to a separate section for links. Neither seemed right for me. The weekly post was a bit too rigid; I don’t want to be nailing myself down to a cadence I…
Apple had their big iPhone event last week with several new product launches. Nothing came out that had me jonesing for new tech, and this got me thinking about my excitement around technology in general. My first foray into smart phones was a Palm Treo. This was before wifi, so I used to download news from the web onto the phone each morning so that I could read it on my Treo at work on my…
I’ve been off-and-on journaling for many years. Like most things I do in my free time, I tend to wax and wane on passion for the task. I’ve revisited my Day One app the past month and I am finding it incredibly enjoyable to jot down thoughts again. It’s incredibly helpful that I don’t set any boundaries or expectations for myself in what I capture. Sometimes it’s a simple sentence, others it’s a…
I admit that I was late to the newsletter frenzy back in 2020. Getting interesting reading topics delivered to my email seemed counter to how I like to read that I held off for a while. I’m now a convert and actually appreciate the focused spot it has in my life. I read most of my online content via RSS feeds in my Reeder app . My iPad is where I spend my time browsing articles and reading books.…
Took a short, Level 1 camping overnight to Los Padres. Just me and The Eagle.
I enjoy movies quite a bit. I like some shows, but in general I lean towards movies for most of my media enjoyment. I prefer the encapsulated story lines versus an ongoing, spread-out story that may end up taking 15 seasons to finalize. A movie has a definite ending. I can jump in, get my fill, and move on. I also rewatch movies a lot. I tend to rewatch movies more than watching new movies.…
Took a trip up to Portland, Oregon last weekend for my niece’s wedding. I could not stop commenting on how green the city is. There are trees everywhere! It’s a beautiful city, with the Willamette river running right through the city center. A walk through Washington park rose garden A walk through Washington park rose garden A walk through Washington park rose garden Stopped down by the…
Several months ago I got the itch to start posting here again. It has been many years since I had anything resembling a personal blog. Blogging is different than social media, it takes more effort to maintain. And like exercise or a hobby, if you don’t keep at it it can be easy to let go. In restarting things, I wanted to resurrect my previous blog posts. The problem was, I didn’t take care in…
Rewatching Long Way Up this week. As summer rolls in, the itch to get out and explore nature gets stronger. I love this show.
Spent a wonderful afternoon in Manhattan Beach with the boy, having lunch at Simmzy’s and walking the pier.
I’ve been using Pocket as a read-it-later solution for many years. I was even paying for the service for a few years, but stopped as the benefit of permanently stored articles didn’t justify the cost for me. The service was bought by Mozilla a few years ago, and at the time I had hoped that meant more features would start rolling out, but that never happened. All in all, it’s a good system, but I…
Gathering some interesting linkage I ran across the past week. I stopped using Google Maps years ago, along with most of their other apps. Apple Maps was rough for awhile, but it has improved dramatically in the past year. This xkcd comic made me laugh . Call it being lazy, but I never really looked into Netlify plugins until this week. If you use Netlify, there are some really great little…
I’ve been working to get myself back into the reading habit for months. I’d saved 5-10 books into a want to read list but before Children of Time, I just hadn’t jumped into any of them. I’m happy to say, I finished Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky this past weekend. The book is a fascinating story that spans thousands of years. It’s a wonderful read, and Tchaikovsky does a great job at…
Great article by Charlie Warzel over at The Atlantic on builder vs maintainer mentality. Touches on Web3 and much of the tech bro mentality that makes me cringe. I’m sympathetic to the notion that we need big thinkers and dreamers. I’m reminded of the classic Steve Jobs and Henry Ford quotes about innovation. Ford’s line was that if he’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told him,…
I’m an early riser, typically up between 5 or 5:30 AM weekdays and sometimes even on weekends. I like giving myself time in the morning to relax and wake up slowly. It’s one of the few peaceful moments during my day where I am alone with nothing demanding my attention. I spend most mornings on the patio with my coffee and my RSS reader, listening to the world wake up around me. There is also a…
For the past few years we’ve been camping at Rivernook Campground for Thanksgiving. We broke tradition in 2021 and chose Lake Cachuma . It is a great campground, with really wide camping spaces, lots of sunshine and not too crowded. This is glamping at it’s best. The campground is pretty large, but most of the spaces (with exception to the large RV area) are pretty spread out. We took two spots…
I was building a #wfh web design business back when that hashtag (and hashtags themselves) didn’t exist. My network of friends and work associates was growing over early social media and web forums, but I craved deeper conversations. I found the Geek Dinner meetup and attended a few dinners out in Hollywood. They were amazing nights, filled with vibrant conversation amongst a wide variety of…
People, life, sunsets… It rained here today, which was unexpected but wonderful. Towards the end of my day, I debated plunking down on the couch to watch tv or go for a walk on the beach and see the sunset. The sunset won and I’m so glad it did. There is something special about a sunset after a rainy day. As I walked along the esplanade in Redondo Beach, I passed so many people out enjoying the…
Thanksgiving 2013 It is Thanksgiving today, so it seems a good time to think about the things I’m thankful for this year. My life has changed massively since this time last year. A year ago I was in an emotional tailspin, unsure what was to become of me and my life. I was scared. Instead of letting it consume me, I worked on getting my head clear and finding a new road to travel. I took time to…
I got my copy of RSW by Ethan Marcotte a few days ago and finished it up last night. If you make websites, buy this book. Really. This book is a wonderful resource, and written with enough humor to keep it fun. And did I mention robots ? SOLD. In addition to the topic at hand, Mr. Marcotte has filled it full of links to dozens of useful resources on web design. It’s this part of the book that…
Me : What time did you get up today? (Saturday) The Boy : 6 am Me : Wow. Why do you get up so early on Saturday, but during the week I can hardly get you out of bed at 7:15? The Boy : During the week, the bed is so comfortable I just want to stay in it. But on Saturday and Sunday, my body gets all hyper and excited to get up and play video games. Me : Ah, yes. That makes sense. :/
I love pants, but prefer shorts. I hate socks, love shoes, but wear flip-flops. I hate loud noises, but crank the music whenever possible. I hate nosiness, but am drawn to watch others. I hate pink, but love it’s vibrance. I like iced tea, love hot tea, but am drawn to coffee. I like to think I am a loner, but I am not. I have a tendency to know what you’re going to say, but not why. I can get…