Redundant. That’s what they tell me I am. Re-dun-dant. A weight lifted from my shoulders with every syllable. Merely an accelerator to the timeline I had promised myself. Writing software was a creative act for me: problem solving within a set of constraints, where the strength of your work correlates with the restrictions imposed on you. Whereas a career writing software is a different animal.…
It was the second coffee that woke me up. Not to the day but the year I had lost. I’m writing to you from my office, a box of a room. Only pockets of desk and floor remain visible amongst the clutter. I last wrote to you a year ago, not long before returning to writing software for work. Thousands of lines of code turned into mortgage payments, supermarket trips, and car repairs. Photography never…
It’s been a moment, hasn’t it! I’m Jamie and you signed up for this newsletter just as I took some time away over the summer. A break in my work during the school holidays was semi-anticipated — I’m the parent with the flexible schedule so got to spend 6 weeks (goofing off) with my son. He’s only five and this is his first year of schooling, but it already feels like these vast swathes of time…
This week has been all about juggling half a dozen projects, and largely at the whims of the weather. All I’ll say is that I’m glad it’s Friday! The couple of sunny days were put towards the (cursed) fence that I’ve building for what feels like an eternity now. The race is on to get it finished before school summer holidays start in two weeks time. There’s been a little software development…
That header is correct. I did actually write those words. I’ve not gone crazy. I’m Jamie — of sound body and mind — and you probably signed up for this email on madebyjamie.com . Let me explain myself. A while ago I watched “The Menu” — a horror film more accurately described as a twisted thriller, that tells the story of a burnt-out chef exacting his revenge on the industry that destroyed his…
After getting waylaid building a fence without a single screw or nail — a runaway project that will give one hell of a Builder’s High when it’s done… — I finally managed to sit down and take another pass at the edit of my time photographing Ollie Cooper . I like to tackle creative tasks in a single sitting if I can; a method I learnt from Frank Chimero . I’m a big proponent of ‘once through,…
If you’ve forgotten who I am then I don’t blame you, as it’s been a couple of weeks. I broke the cardinal rule of this newsletter — consistency. I’m Jamie Dumont and you probably signed up to this newsletter on madebyjamie.com where I write about Makers. Today I want to tell you about someone important. Someone that is partly, and but directly responsible for everything that I will ever publish…
You’d be forgiven for not knowing what “Makers” is — my stalled-but-not-quite-at-a-standstill project exploring the work of small, independent crafts people. Nothing new has been posted since late 2022 after I started taking pictures for The Mulberry — a fine-dining restaurant in Falmouth. My time there produced the behind-the-scenes shots of a high-level kitchen at work that I had hoped for, but…
Until today jamiedumont.com was where I published my photography, and before that the blog that I wrote as a software developer. It’s been my online home — in many different guises — for eight years. However, it’s time to step away. The reason is simple — the website was distracting me from the work that mattered. Since switching careers there’s always been this question mark over what my website…
2023 was perhaps the best and simultaneously worst year for my photography. Whilst my work was more widely published than ever before, I took very few photos and enjoyed fewer still compared to prior years. Outside of paid work I barely touched my cameras, rarely carrying one unless there was an explicit need. When a photographer stops taking photos, their work only goes one way… Towards the end…
All photos shot with Leica M10R and either Leica Summilux-M 35 f/1.4 ASPH. or Leica APO-Summicron-M 90 f/2
As an (unashamed) coffee snob, I like good coffee and take a real interest in what makes one brew different from another. I try to link the different varieties of beans, the climates they grow in and how they are processed, roasted and brewed to the end flavour. Despite liking beer to the same degree, I knew virtually nothing about the process until I spent the morning with Keith & Gareth at…
The start line early on Saturday morning was a funny place to be. The first wave was packed with veterans hoping to set a good time on the 100km course, so the normal nervous energy that accompanies a start line was heightened. Despite that it was relatively quiet compared to later starts. This was an all-business group of runners. It was already a scorching hot day by the time we hit one of the…
I’ve been limping along with my iPhone 7 Plus for a while now. I try to get as much life out of everything I own, believing that you buy something to use until it no longer serves a purpose. It’s a given that carrying something every day for five years will cause some wear and tear, but my phone has certainly seen that and more! Having already written back in 2017 about how this phone wasn’t quite…
Surfing is synonymous with Cornwall. It’s hard to escape — literally — the hoards of British tourists that arrive come Spring, brightly coloured boards strapped to the roof. Surfing has exploded in popularity in recent years, with lots of people buying cheaper, mass produced boards for their occasional trip to the beach. For the seasoned surfer — one that will endure the cold and wind to catch a…
Vidit Bhargava had put together exactly what I was searching for when I Googled “web design colour value for oled black” . Black and white images recede on my current website designs dark blue background, and some images clash if they have strong opposing colours. Not ideal when photos are the emphasis on this website. Figuring that a redesign with a clean, traditional black-on-white palette would…
I stumbled across this site when looking for information on how to process and optimise images with Swift. Coming from web development, ImageMagick was my go-to but I was curious about what tools might be provided by Apple. Artur’s post about using the Metal API to smoothly render images was like a whole new world! His entire website is crafted with care. The tutorials are clear, the images…
It was a regular expression that drove me over the edge. I’m sure I’m not the first developer to be defeated by these horrific things, and I certainly won’t be the last. The difference was that I knew I was right — something that is never a given with RegEx! Normally the process of writing a regular expression starts with taking a best guess, failing, realising why it’s failing, fix it, still…
When my wife and I saw some cool little canned cocktails from a company called Moth Drinks in the supermarket we thought it’d be fun to try taking some photos of them. We picked three we would enjoy drinking afterwards and headed home. I had previously seen Adam Lehman’s ( @up.and.adam ) incredible drinks photography on his Ghost profile, and trying my hand at something similar had been in the…
@will.h.p running over St. Agnes Beacon Wow, things have changed the past few weeks & months! In no particular order… Built and launched knowjack.media Rebuilt this site and redirected all the old one(s!) to here Switched out my camera setup Completed my first paid photo shoot in 13 years Decided I’m changing careers Building knowjack.media When my friend Jack asked me to help building a website…
Updated: 04 February 2022 Writing this review made me realise that there were too many niggles with Ghost to continue using it. The format that the content was stored and exported in was the final confirmation that migrating (again!) was the right move. I tried a few options including building my own Ghost-clone using Swift and Vapor , Publish which is a Swift-based SSG, the veteran Statamic and…
I scouted a few locations that would show off the Defender — and Cornwall — to it’s best. Coupled with some autumn colours and rough seas I think we captured the rugged nature of both!
SKYFALL and SPECTRE sure are an interesting contrast in colour direction techniques! pic.twitter.com/AqGGKX81Nz — Devan Scott (@SadHillDevan) November 11, 2021 This is a really good thread that explains a lot of my own feelings towards these two films. I love the Daniel Craig-era Bond films but I think ‘SKYFALL’ stands above the rest — the caveat being I haven’t seen ‘No Time To Die’…
I loved reading about Joe’s bike and his humble attitude towards his epic adventures and incredible performance in world-class ultra events, but it was his approach to training that hooked me. Joe rarely uses a GPS watch to track his runs or rides. That is practically unheard of these days even amongst casual athletes. I’ve been guilty of trying to build the ultimate app to track CrossFit workouts…
I’ve got a soft spot for small cabins, both because they are built with a certain lifestyle in mind and often with a deeply honest aesthetic; both of which greatly appeal to me. This one built by ‘Small’ in Victoria, Australia stands above many that I’ve seen. Their honesty is largely attributable to their materials, which are natural and exposed for all to see. Plumbing is made a feature and the…
We all need a special project that gives us a kick up the arse when we’re not feeling it. Too many of my passion projects have burnt me out and left me flailing before — but they are still absolutely essential and the best way to keep progressing.
Update — February 2023 Paul removed the article that this story references, along with all his writing from the internet some years back. All old links redirect to Fathom — his privacy-first analytics software that I happen to use and find to be excellent! A couple of weeks back, Paul Jarvis penned this thought-provoking article about Consumption Spirals: the idea that when you have something new,…
After my tutorial a couple of weeks ago about building a membership site with Statamic , which only focussed on how to protect content from non-users, making no distinction between the different “types” of users possible, I’ve since had a few questions about how to build out the rest of the site. Most were related to the templating, and how you’d add more specific restrictions around the content;…
Often the margin between winning and losing in sport can be incredibly small. Races are regularly won by fractions of a second and it’s rare to find an athlete or team that truly dominates their sport for years without the slightest hint of competition. Software however, is dominated by a few giants — Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc — that are so unreachable that they aren’t really playing…
A while back just before I left Bikesoup we conducted our first user survey. The company was at something of a crossroads, and even though we’d spent some time digging into our websites analytics we hadn’t unearthed any real gems. Study of the data identified a lot of low hanging fruit, like pages that were slow to load and errors that only occurred in certain browsers; the sort of things you’d…
Updated: November 2021 I no longer really recommend Statamic for a lot of sites. I had real trouble with the quality of certain addons — and whilst I’ve not used Statamic 3 — other developers I work with are using it and are still encountering show-stopping issues, often dropping down to underlying Laravel APIs to get the job done. I think you should either build something custom in your language…
Whilst I love reading, I own surprisingly few books. This isn’t because I’m an avid user of iBooks or Kindles, I only read books in a digital format when I absolutely have to. Often when I buy a physical book, I’ll read it fairly quickly and then pass it on to a friend, family member or charity shop. If it’s a good one, I’ll probably re-read it a few weeks later making notes to reference at a…
The gentlemen over at Statamic have just put out an official Wordpress plugin to help developers move their content over to Statamic. There was already plenty of good reasons to make the move, but the content migration was often a hurdle that was just too big for some developers. Having migrated Bikesoup’s magazine from Wordpress to Statamic last summer, I can attest to just how awkward a process…
I’m leaving Bikesoup, where I’ve spent the last two years as Lead Developer. When I think back on everything that I accomplished with the Bikesoup team, and everything that I didn’t know before I joined them, it’s clear just how much I’ve grown during my time there. Most of what I’ve learnt has been the hard way, making mistakes and recognising with hindsight what I should have done instead. It…
There’s currently a lot of speculation about what Apple’s next iPhone might look like. Most suggest that alongside the usual iterative improvements, we might see a new model commonly being dubbed the “iPhone Pro”. It’s thought that this “Pro” model will be “tomorrow’s iPhone, today”, using advanced tech that would drive the retail price above $1000. The higher price would both allow for cutting…
There was no build-up, there was no hype, this week Cultured Code released the latest iteration of Things , the much beloved task manager. Despite the lack of fan-fare, my Slack channels, Twitter streams and RSS feeds have slowly filled with gushing reviews for the update. The reviews I only downloaded the trial yesterday and dumped all my outstanding tasks from my Baron Fig notebook into Thing’s…
I’ve been using a CSS framework called Tachyons for the past 9 months, and I think I’ve fallen…hard. Back when I started this game, I think I built precisely one website using a “framework” before deciding it was all a load of bollocks. I bloated out the codebase with loads of styling I never used, and then worsened it by spending too much time over-riding all these styles. I promptly threw the…
I recently axed a side project I when it was about 95% done. It was going to be my first side project that might actually make a little money! I had been excitedly telling all my friends and family about it, and whilst we all knew it’d never allow me to retire and sip Pina Coladas on a beach somewhere; it might provide a glimpse of that much revered passive income. You can imagine their faces when…