Category: Technology

DOWNLOAD, BACK UP

On the first of the month I’m reminded to download my photos from my iPhone. I do this so I don’t have to keep paying Apple a monthly fee that just keeps going up, and I just like having my photos right where I can see them, in folders.

For December I have 215 photos, 54 screen shots, and 18 videos. I’ll keep that saved locally on my MacBook Pro (just 3.5GB), and start a new folder for January where I’ll dump the photos from my Nikon throughout the month.

Then, in February, I’ll move this January folder to my external hard drive.

My folders goes all the way back to 2002, but it’s not nearly as organized. The total is about 57,000 photos, which takes up 207GB on my 2TB drive, backed up regularly to BackBlaze.

Yeah, I miss the search functionality (finding all the photos of bikes, or cats would be great), but I love only paying .99 cents per month for iCloud instead of $120 a year.

MOVING FROM SUBSTACK TO WORDPRESS

The holdiday downtime has given me some breathing room to get this project done, moving 500 or so posts from Substack to my WordPress blog at Social Media Escape Club.

I did this 100% manually, too. I think I tried exporting awhile back and it crapped out somewhere along the line, and I just said fuck it, I’ll do it one at a time, which really wasn’t so bad because some stuff I wanted to reformat, re-do, or remove 100% anyways.

Why move all my posts from Substack to WordPress? Because someday the Substack platform will cease to exist, and I’ll have no record of my work otherwise.

Because Substack makes it too easy to accidentally delete your entire publication, just like how I deleted multiple posts when I thought I was deleting a podcast feed.

I don’t trust the Substack platform anymore.

My first music blog from 2001 is gone because we were young and dumb and moved onto other things, and we didn’t pay the hosting bill, and oops the domain name lapsed.

The 2000+ metal trivia questions I posted on Twitter as @skulltoaster from 2011-2018 are all gone, along with the 1000+ email newsletters via Mailchimp.

If I get locked out of my account, or Substack goes away, five years of writing goes away with it, and I don’t want that to happen.

Each Substack post is getting moved, and in its place I write “this post has moved…” along with a link to its new home on WordPress. This removes any duplicate work which might affect my SEO or domain health… but that’s secondary to me owning my work, my writing, my ideas.

I will keep sending my newsletter via Substack (for now), but it will not be my base of operations. Everything gets written on my blog first, then it goes from there.

Each newsletter post will include just enough meat and bones to make it a worthy open and read, and they’ll be links throughout for anyone who wants to go deeper.

As I wrote earlier this year, “my newsletter isn’t my permanent address, it’s a delivery truck.”

THE LG ENV VX9900

The LG enV VX9900 was the most notable phone I owned before the iPhone in 2007 or 2008.

The Qwerty keyboard was great for texting, but my goodness, can you believe we used screens that small? The resolution was pretty good, but still, the screen was so small, yet the phone was so bulky.

Given the chance I definitely wouldn’t go back to using this phone.

I TRUST BOOM

I can’t recommend BOOM enough.

If you do a lot of Zoom calls (I host 3 of them a week for Social Media Escape Club), look good, feel good, right??!

Instead of spending a bunch of money on a fancy camera, 4K converter, and everything else, get the best image from the device you’re using (in my case I use a Logitech Stream Cam).

I love being able to frame my video, and adjust exposure, vibrance, and all the other cool stuff.

LET PEOPLE FIND YOUR WEBSITE

If we can agree that we’re posting into the void on social media, why not just post on our own sites “into the void?”

I recently suggested a client add a blog to their website, and they sent me this:

“Literally within one week (of adding the blog) this led to an invitation to give a talk (you know the old-fashioned way, you introduce yourself to someone cool, they look you up, find your website and boom).”

If someone looks you up, and you’re on a social media platform and they don’t have an account, it’s very hard (or sometimes impossible) for them to see your work.

But every smart phone ships with a web browser. No one needs to have an account to view your website on the wide open internet.

When adding to your own website, you’re not posting into the void, you’re building an online archive.

MY MINIMAL DJ BROWSER APP WITH MIDI CONTROL

Modern DJ software is bloated, and way too much for what I need, so I built this minimal DJ web app with Google’s Gemini + ChatGPT. It’s an HTML page that I load locally into Google Chrome with keyboard and midi controls.

I need this to make mixes of my HUNTERTHEN music, available to those who buy the full albums on Bandcamp. I make “soundscapes for your interplanetary commute,” which will either lull you to sleep or help you get your work done.

Next on my shopping list is something like this, the GRID3 PBF4 4-Button + Pot + Fader MIDI Controller. I really only need two sliders, but having four will be nice, and the extra buttons can be mapped to start / stop each track.

SEEKING QUIET INPUTS

Great quote from ‘All we watch are millionaires,’ from Dense Discovery:

“Seeking out lesser-known voices isn’t just an act of cultural curation; it’s a philosophical stance, a refusal to let attention be the only metric that matters. Because the most interesting stuff usually happens on the margins.”

Link via Input Diet by Manuel Moreale

Manuel goes on to say, “I’m starting to believe that a phoneless life is, for me, the ultimate goal.”

Remember when people used to say they didn’t own a TV? Or a car?!? Someday not owning a phone is gonna feel the same way.

ELECTRONIC TICKETS SUCK

Electronic tickets are awful, and this just proves it even more.

One out-of-state fan shared her frustration: “We pulled up the tickets on Saturday through the Detroit Lions app, Ticketmaster, and even the wallet, but no barcode showed up. They told us to go to the box office after security, but there’s a long line.”