I took some photos with a 35mm film camera, a really basic one. I used the experience to teach my kids about photography and the science of light and how a photo works. It was a neat time. I posted some of my favorites that I took on my Pixelfed:

There’s a lot of things happening lately that are really upsetting lately. I need to be at least somewhat careful about what and how I say things now, because simply criticizing the current administration on their responses to current events is getting long-standing shows cancelled upon the slightest (illegal) complaint from the FCC. And conservatives are creating tools and campaigns to hunt down anyone not grieving to their liking. So, you won’t catch me having a public take on the murder of Charlie Kirk. I couldn’t even have an opinion on the man’s work, or risk a bunch of supposed free speech and first admendment champions attempt to bludgeon my livlihood by harassing my employer. What I will have a take on is that gun violence is bad, and I think it would be better if we limited access to guns to help prevent gun violence. I’m really upset about all sorts of unneccessary suffering happening and being enabled by those with wealth and power right now. Today I was informed that a family friend in his late 50’s is in the hospital right now because he apparently suffered a heart attack a couple months ago and kept on trucking like that because the medical system failed him. Doctors misdiagnosed him at first, but then once properly diagnosed he had delays to treatment because insurance was deeming it not necessary in direct conflict with the recommendations of the pulmonary cardiologist. Our systems are deficient at serving the wellbeing of people in favor of enabling greed. I’ve had (and will continue to have) weeks of complete pain and misery foisted upon me by a system that could only be described as maliciously designed to extract pain simply to get affordable access to medication I need to live a functional every day life. Navigating the system is a nightmare, and the label costs I’m working to get down are all inflated by completely unnecessary, but fully mandatory, “value-adds” like videos on how to take the medication and a monthly phone call with someone who cannot actually give me any useful information because they’re not a doctor and cannot accept the liability of providing medical advice. When I drive through town, I see dozens of unhoused people. Some are begging for money or food, others are sitting or standing around their temporary tent-home, and one guy was even grilling himself some breakfast on the sidewalk. I’ve had interactions with people who insist they shouldn’t be there, and my question to them is: “where should they be?”. Access to housing is impossible without income, access to jobs that pay enough to have housing are hard to come by, medical support for employment-enabling care is non-existant, and even if they had all of that they could be denied access to housing due to prejudice or even just a now-standard credit check. How does anyone expect people living on the streets to become self-sustaining members of society when the barriers are so high? It’s incredibly frustrating to see this, know this, and be unable to really do anything myself to help. The worst part is knowing that many people who most vocal about the problem of homelessness in our area are members of christian churches. Being a part of a church isn’t a problem, but I don’t feel like most churches are doing enough to help the people in our communities who need the most help, not just monetarily or by sponsoring free food nights or whatever, but by shaming their own members for not living up to the standard Jesus has for them. There are countless bible verses about how you should not seek wealth, how you cannot serve both God and money, and how the true treasure you should store up is good works, but my favorite example is Luke 12:33 which says that followers of Jesus should sell all of their pessessions in order to give to the needy. I believe that any christian who has enough wealth to invest beyond the means of sustaining their own needs and the needs of their immediate family and is not giving everything they have in excess of that to the needy is failing as a christian to do the good work that Jesus laid out as the most important thing for them to be doing as his followers. So what do I do about this frustration? How am I living up to my own standards? First of all, I don’t myself identify as a christian anymore; I don’t think I can continue to go to church week after week and continue to sit among people who not only aren’t attempting to live up to this expectation of Jesus, but are also actively and often loudly and publicly stating their opposition to policies in our government to make their contribution to these values an automatic part of their life. They could advocate for an environment where they pay more in taxes in order to ensure the wellbeing of everyone in our society. The reasons for this include disagreeing with that aid going to certain groups they believe don’t fit their model of christianity, as if Jesus thought that poor people were only worthy of support if they followed him and lived “right”. Or sometimes they believe that the government shouldn’t be giving that aid, but instead the church should; if this were the case they’d be as outraged that their church and fellow members aren’t giving enough because their community still has needy people in it. But they don’t, they just dislike the idea of paying more in taxes. Second, my wife and I made the decision to adopt kids from our local foster care system, and we live a modest life within our means while serving our kids as best we can. We are not wealthy, but may be able to live comfortably once the kids are grown and serve our community with our time and modest contributions. That’s our hope. Caring for our kids with unique and sometimes extreme challenges is a difficult and sometimes expensive, but we think it is the most important way for us to be contributing to the betterment of our community in this chapter of our lives. And last, the real point of this post, actually: I’m trying to do things that I can control to improve my own life. It’s been a long time since I first saw it, but this video on Kinda Funny with IGN’s Brian Altano inspired me to make myself a healthier and happier version of myself in spite of the disappointment I feel at the world outside my control. I went from looking like this in 2018: To this in 2019 after really putting in the work: To this today: I had some trouble with sciatica early this year, but it’s finally recovered enought that I’m gettig back into regular exercise and it feels incredible. I bought a couple books on running and I’ve set a soft goal of running a half marathon. I’ve done a 5k and 10k in the past, so I think a half would be a good stretch for me. Really, I’m just trying to outrun death, but staying active isn’t the only way I try to use the control I have to stay healthy. I also eat primarily vegetarian, abstain from alcohol, don’t smoke, and try to make sure I get decent sleep every day. I just ran across this chart in a NewScientist article on apple news: Looks like I’m hitting the major things to keep myself here for a long time! The other benefit is that I generally feel a lot better now than I did 8 years ago as well. I’d like to be healthy and mobile for as long as possible, and being active regularly is the surest way to do it. Goals can just make it more fun. So I’m going to keep controlling the things I can, and work on myself. I am trying every day to be a better father, husband, friend, and person. One of the best ways I can do that is by being healthy enough to do anything with the people I love that they want to do with me for as long as possible.

I’ve been working to really reduce my iPhone down to some _really_ bare essentials. I want it to only be a tool for a really strict set of uses, and not a distraction. I’m planning on expanding on my process and what I’ve landed on in another post. For this post, I’ll say that while my iPhone is an excellent camera, and one of those specific uses I use it for, I’m also thinking about film cameras as a means to practice more mindful photography. I recently watched a couple of really great videos on YouTube covering the use of really inexpensive film cameras, and how they can be an awesome way to get into photography without trying to spend a ton of money on a “good” camera. Becca Farsace’s channel is great all the time, but this video on inexpensive cameras for a trip to China is for sure a top 5 evergreen video for her. She goes over several options for cameras to buy and has great advice for how to take great photos with these simple cameras to get the most enjoyment out of the process. Elliot Coll on the otherhand takes a different approach and competes with a professional photographer using a thrifted camera during a day out while using a Leica camera himself. They really do an excellent job of illustrating how the most important part of photagraphy is the choices you make while shooting, and not necessarily to the tools you use. I think I might take my kids out to a thrift store, buy some rolls of film, and spend an afternoon with them taking some photos on film and see how it turns out. At the very least, it could be a fun afternoon; at best, maybe we’ll find a new hobby we can enjoy regularly.

I’ve been playing some Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride on my Nintendo DSi as my “Truly Portable” device to play games on. It totes around in my “Book Bag” along with my Supernote Nomad, wallet, small power bank for my phone, and headphones. Sometimes I like to take out the DSi and take some photos with it’s charmingly bad camera. Here are some photos from yesterday that I took with it at Prismatic Cofee here in Salem, OR.

I spent a good chunk of time the other day deleting apps from my iPhone. I was deliberately trying to reduce it to a few small core functions, focusing specifically on keeping only items that have utility in daily life and removing distractions. I kept apps only in these categories: * Messages * Phone Calls * Weather * Notes * Maps * Information Reference (Browsers for QR codes at restauraunts and the like) * Health and Fitness * Audio-based Entertainment * Authentication * Payments * Random utilities like home controls, link saving, family controls for consoles, and things like that. I did have a separate list of items I kept around for work. I work from home and use my phone to keep tabs on things while away from my desk; I use iOS focus modes to keep work out of sight in the evenings and weekends. I also included travel utilities like flight trackers, Lyft, and DoorDash since I travel for work and sometimes. The goal of this practice wasn’t to completely cut out exposure to social media, news, or games, but to force more intentional access to those things. I can use my iPad or computer or game consoles to do those things, and they’ll be better for it anyway. If I want to read the news, I’m going to have to go find my iPad specifically for it. It’s unwieldy at 12.9 inches so I don’t carry it everywhere, but it trades portability for a more comfortable viewing experience. Limiting my use of news access to an intentional choice. Same goes for social media, emails, or games. Do get to those things I’ll have to seek out something slightly less convenient but better for the job. Intention. As part of this effort I’m also trying to seek out and find more small websites and blogs to read. Here’s a few I’ve really been enjoying: Tao of Mac - A John Gruber-esque personal blog by Rui Carmo mostly covering technology. I particularly enjoyed seeing his review of the Supernote Nomad as coincidentally I recently picked one up as well and have been loving it for pretty much all the same reasons. Analog Dreams - I found another personal blog by Adam Taylor mostly about technology also. I found it by seeing links to his article about moving to Linux as his primary OS on Mastodon. I recently ditched Windows on my PC after Windows 10 kept adding new ads in the UI invcliding one full-page system ad telling me to update to Windows 11 because Windows 10 support would end soon, my PC fails the health check and supposedly can’t move to 11. The feeling that I was also rebelling against the corporate powers at the same time was just a bonus. Mike Monteiro’s Good News Newsletter and Feed - After reading this great entry encouraging avoiding participating in and contributing to the attention economy(again found linked again on Mastodon), I looked at a few other entries and decided to out what you might consider editorial column(?) to my RSS reader on my Supernote! ooh.directory - Sometimes I’m just… _browsing_ for a small site to check out, and ooo.directory has all sorts of small sites made by real people, usually just for fun! Really feels like the internet when I was a kid. Greg Pak’s Cool Site with Cool Links - I don’t know who Greg Pak is but I stumbled on his Cool Links page somehow, probably when I was trying to learn what a web ring was. This site is rad though and has some great links to some Web 1.0 fun stuff like gifs, banners, and articles about blocking AI bots from reading your website. This has been a fun exercise in reducing my exposure to things that are easy distractions that make me feel bad, to intentional choices that usually make me feel pretty good. The internet is full of cool people and fun stuff, it’s just easy to stop looking for it when massive organizations are constantly trying to command as much of your attention as possible.

I’ve been playing _Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age_ on my Steam Deck a bunch lately. Here’s some screenshots from my adventures. I’ve really been enjoying this game. It’s doing something magical where it can send me back in time to being a child watching Dragonball Z on Cartoon Network after school. It’s got excellent music (seemingly mostly from DQ VIII) and it’s got great art (RIP Toriyama), a whimsical adventure story, and the characters are all pleasant. It’s been a good distraction from the stressful feelings I’ve had lately.

I’ve been thinking today about recent news of ICE raids happening around the country, usually arbitraily targeting people by how they look. I’ve been trying to avoid the news since Trump won the election in November, as it seems many other folks have been lately. It’s just generally not helpful for me to stress and be angry about stuff I can’t control. I think John Gruber aligns with my intended goal with this: > I’ve altered my media diet significantly after the election, deliberately choosing to skim, rather than consume, news regarding political affairs outside my interests in the tech industry in general and, of course, Apple in particular. I wrote a few weeks ago, in my column on Zuckerberg’s content-moderation-policy zig-zag at Meta: > > My take on Trump post-election has been to stop paying attention, as best I can, to anything he says. I’m only paying attention to what he does. With any other national leader, there’s a correlation between their words and their eventual actions that makes paying attention to what they say worthwhile. With Trump, there’s almost no correlation, and his endless stream of outrageous proclamations amounts to nothing but a distraction. I’m letting stuff filter through, but I’m doing my best to actively avoid being informed on the things that he’s saying; every day it’s some bullshit that might or might not actually matter. For now, I’m focusing on trying to just keep it together as a good father, and especially on staying focused on making sure my daughter gets the care she needs for our family to remain stable. With RAD it’s been a huge challenge, and as I write this things are somewhat comfortable, but it will probably get bumpy again soon. All that said, I do think that people who are happy about these terrible things happening or that even voted for Trump are bad people. If I know you, and you read this and are upset that I wrote this: good. Fuck you. I want you to ask yourself if you think the Nazi officers that were carrying people out of their homes for being enemies of the state were good people. If you would have stood there and watched as your neighbors were asked to show documentation that might not even exist because they had to reason to have it (because they were German citizens and always had been, for example) and been okay with it. You’re a bad person. You did the wrong thing. You have no plausible deniability for voting for this monster either; he said he would do this, we knew how he governed the first time, and it was perfectly reasonable that things would be just as bad if not worse the second time around. You cannot hide behind the electoral college, friends and family who live with me in Oregon, because by voting for Trump you were saying that you were endorsing his actions as President. I’m angry. People are being harmed by a sad, pathetic man who does not care for anything or anyone but himself. It’s going to be a rough couple of years, and I’m going to go back to focusing on doing the good that I can in the world while avoiding the stress of knowing the bad that others are doing.

I’m continuing to dabble with this blog. But sometimes I want to sit down and write something, but I’m not actually sure what to write. I’m thinking that sometimes it can just be short or pointless. I do have a Mastodon account for really short stuff, but don’t often post. I do think that the point of writing this blog is to break myself of the idea that my thoughts are uninteresting to others or that it even matters if someone reads or cares about what I’m writing. Shame, cringe, or self-doubt often plague me when I think about what I’m posting on the internet. I’ve made and deleted more accounts on various services in the last 25 years than I can count. I often think things like “this isn’t original” or “someone else could have done this better” and even “what is the purpose of me posting this?” but I want to get out of that mindset. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or why I’m doing it. That I feel like it should be reason enough. There are other benefits to it as well. My family can get a better insight of what I was thinking about, and willing to share publicly, now or in the future. If I die, they’ll have both my private journals and this public history to look at. I’m still figuring it out, but I plan to just kind of post through it and see where it goes.

AI _can_ be helpful, but isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In my opinion, marketing hype and investor courting is driving most of it. But the broader utility of it is likely to be just that - utility. Though I should mention that the term AI right now seems to mean a whole bunch of things. Since labelling The biggest problem I have with AI right now is that **it lies**. I used it to help me build my blog/website. But I have done most of that kind of work before, and have the ability to check and verify the output. Using it as a source of truth on its own is foolish, but is an increasing problem for people who don’t know how these things work or that they’re even capable of making stuff up. Though it’s probably not going to give you the worst results, having it write for you seems inauthentic; I’m not sure why Apple thinks that seems cool or professional for your iPhone to be doing. But anyone who claims ChatGPT’s writing as their own should be held accountable for what it says. You don’t get to say “I wrote this” and then get a free out when it turns out that it’s wrong or lying. All of this has just been in reference to text output so far, too, but AI can also produce Images, Audio, and Video. I struggle to think of instances in which these can be used in useful ways that don’t make the end product either worse than another product done without AI, or for a purpose other than deceit. I _can_ easily see scammers using these tools to fake voice and video calls to propagate convincing personalized scams. A few weeks ago the father of a close friend had one of those “we’re you bank and you’re gunna lose all your money if you don’t mail us $15k in cash right now while we’re on the phone with you” scams happen to them, and almost sent the money out. AI tools will only make these more convincing and therefore effective. I suppose that in the same way that I was able to iterate on this site more effectively because I knew enough to validate the results, professionals in fields that use Audio, Video, or Images can use it to improve the processes they’re already familiar with. But that’s not what it’s being generally being sold as right now. I’m not convinced it will be (responsibly) used for anything other than this sort of professional enhancement utility for a while. I do see it being used in harmful ways pretty effectively already, like non-concensual porn and making the internet a less reliable resource to find information. I’m worried about how my kids will encounter things like nude deepfakes in the future, along with the less shocking (but maybe more persistent issue) of an internet filled with tools and resources made up mostly of lies, insisting they’re the source of truth. And then there’s the environmental concern; the compute power necessary for these tools is a huge energy suck. I think we’re improving on reneables, but frivolous use of machines that lie to you might be eroding our gains and that’s a huge bummer. I don’t have the answers for solving any of these problems. But I do know that my personal use for AI tools is going to be restricted to things I can validate or reliably verify elsewhere. I am also going to be even more skeptical of any media that can’t be trusted by multiple reliable sources. I actually wrote this while taking a break in the middle of this excellent podcast episode from 404 Media; they discuss the harmful AI uses currently in practice while also having a deep discussion of the nuanced nature of its’ existence in tools many people use every day for innocous and even positive purposes. So that’s what it does and it’s being used for right now, but what do I want it to do in the future (while also being realistic)? I want on-device tools like Apple Intelligence to actually behave like an assistant. I want my emails, texts, and calendar to be watched and actually be reminded of things I should do based on that info. I want to be able to tell it what is and isn’t important and have it learn to prioritize things to help me keep track of things. I’d love for it to do small actions in this category automatically, such as taking specific actions in apps at my request, often in sequence, without any set up in advance. My iPhone and Apple Watch collect a TON of data about my fitness and health, but the utility of this data is somewhat basic at this time. Really, they’re only capable of showing trends and comparison to standards and averages. I’d love to see my devices act as a personal trainer; ask me about my goals and suggest a fitness plan, and then track progress in real-time to make adjustments and help produce real results. I know this wouldn’t beat a real trainer in many ways, but a human trainer isn’t with me all the time or has access to such a deep wealth of personal health info, nor would I want them to. This still goes along with my belief that these systems should always be used with expectations to verify them. I wouldn’t just follow a health plan that says “run 50 miles daily” but I could use some guidance in how to more effectively balance cardio, strength, and flexibility to get the results I want. I believe these functions can be achieved, the question is how soon and how good? For now AI is being pushed as a solution for everything, but what it’s being bandied about as ain’t it.

Today’s news that Apple’s Tim Cook is “personally” donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund has me thinking about what kind of personal action I could or should take against companies either run by or themselves supporting or advancing bad things, or things I disagree with. The idea of voting with your wallet sounds nice, but it turns out that it’s incredibly hard to buy products from ethical and sustainable sources. I need a smartphone, not just as a convenience, but to do my job; so I’ve basically got two choices: Android or iPhone. Android of course offers much more choice in hardware manufacturers, and I could even potentially get forks of AOSP that remove the influence of Google from the device, but at a pretty significant cost. Relying on only open source software would be neat, but just isn’t super feasible if I’m looking for reliable solutions that I can also use within the context of the things I do and people I communicate with on a regular basis. I need Microsoft 365 products to do my job, so a device that can’t easily support that service just isn’t going to work for me. Google isn’t listed in that article about fealty to Trump, but they’ve got other issues that would have me steer clear of them if possible. I’m at a point in my life where I’m not so jazzed about most major products and platforms that I buy these days. PlayStation and Xbox are gulping up studios and pushing the industry further into an ongoing subscription service and expanding the micro transaction and gambling functions of games, Apple continues to expand their services reliance and take their eyes off the ball of creating the best products in order to create a web of mediocre but sticky services, and it’s starting to become hard to just buy a movie or music album to just own. Just this week Microsoft placed a full-screen ad on my Windows 10 PC to remind me that they’d be dropping security patches in just 10 months for my computer that can’t upgrade to Windows 11 anyway. So I decided to just pull the plug on Windows altogether and installed Bazzite on it and just nuked reliance on Windows entirely since Linux will continue to get security patches and is a lot better at playing games than it used to be. There are some trade offs though. I won’t be able to use my elgato capture card anymore, but I wasn’t really using it much anyway so I figured it was fine. The common refrain that “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” can easily be used to excuse oneself from the responsibility of considering your purchasing decisions, so complacency is a real threat even while acknowledging the issues. But I figure as long as I’m aware and still trying my best to make good choices within my circumstances, that may just be the best I can do while I try to make the world a better place in other ways. It’s a story for another post, but as a teaser (and hopefully some amount of accountability) I’ve been considering the overwhelming challenge and feelings of hopelessness in raising my daughter right now and how staying the course is part of the decision we made to adopt in order to help make the world a better and more sustainable place. So anyway, Tim Cook supporting Trump is bad, but I don’t think I can reasonably avoid businesses that support Trump directly or indirectly. I can’t vote with my wallet on some things, so instead I should vote with my vote and focus on other things. I think the most practical way I’m “voting with my wallet” is simply trying to keep my phone and watch around for longer instead of simping for a company and buying a new shiny thing simply because it’s cool and fun.

I’ve been using Bluesky lately, and it was fun and nice to see some people with my interests on there, but I’ve found it way too easy to see political content and dooming about current events. Things are bad out there, people post about it. I don’t blame them, I’m just not able to handle that kind of stuff right now. For a time, I was deep in it and wanted to use it to fuel myself to take action to make things better. And then in November of 2020 we took in our kids from foster care. Adopting kids who needed a loving family and home had been a goal for me and my wife since we got married in 2011. We took our time, took a ton of courses to prepare ourselves, and struggled with multiple rejections for placement leading up to eventually having our kids placed with us. We adopted them in September of 2021. They had a really rough life leading up to placement with us, and it left them with behavioral and emotional scars. Parenting them has been beyond challenging, and I’ll probably write about it in depth later. The experience of raising our kids has made me less resilient to processing difficult world and national news. Several deaths in my family last year brought out some severe feelings of anxiety. Social media is often depressing, and yet I find myself looking at it many times a day on my phone during idle moments. I need to change this. I’ve deleted social and news apps from my phone, buried email, browsers, and redesigned my home screen to make it less engaging. I’ve stopped partaking in alcohol, even socially, and I’ve re-focused on things that I find enjoyable. I’ve prioritized playing video games I love, reading books, journaling and writing, and I’ve been spending more time with my son and wife. I think having social experiences online are still valuable. In fact, I really want a way to share what’s up with friends and family in an easy way, but I refuse to expose myself to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, or any of the other social apps to get it. If someone wants to find out what’s up, they have to talk to me. That’s mostly fine, but I think a place to get news and updates that isn’t interruptive in nature would be nice. So I’m also refocusing on making a website where people can learn about me and what’s going on in my life. I’m not going to be posting daily, and it’ll probably be somewhat light on deep details to maintain some sense of privacy, but I figure the folks who know me can check it out if they like and dig deeper in direct conversation if they like. If you know me, please ask me what’s up if you’re interested! I don’t mind, and I’m generally quite open about things.

The web has gotten quite bloated. The purpose of a website is to deliver information freely and efficiently. Why make a wordpress or something that has a ton of code when all I really want to do is post some text and links and maybe sometimes a photo? This isn’t tracking you, doesn’t let you post a comment, and is so small and lightweight that it can load instantly and works on basically every device that has ever been able to communicate with another device. It does the job and nothing else. Perfect.

_Taken on PS Vita - November 24, 2023_