My Birthday Week (Weeknotes

• 📺 In Creative vs Technical, Ewen Bell advises that we should ask ourselves what story we’re trying to capture with our photographs. I struggle with this. I tend to wrap my head around the technical aspects of photography and I need to just get out there are shoot more.

• 📖 I came across a magazine called FujiLove and it looks pretty interesting. I purchased a month-to-month subscription. Let’s see whether I keep up and actually read the thing.

• 💾 I’m absolutely going to print some of these floppy disk stickers for my SD cards. (But I haven’t yet.)

• 👑 This punny post made me chuckle but also makes me feel a little old.

• I attended Adobe Create Now Columbus, which was interesting but not something I really needed to attend, but I got out of the house, learned a few things, and scored some SWAG and free food.

• 🧑‍💻 I feel good about my WeblogPoMo2024 effort, in which I logged 32 posts. There were a couple of days with multiple posts (mainly because of Eurovision) but I’m taking the win. But that was nothing compared to the volume of posts from other people participating^[1] in the challenge. I could not possibly keep up with all of them in real time so I’ll be circling back. Thanks to Anne for announcing the challenge and inspiring me to do it!

• 🚪 When one door closes, another opens. And so June brings us the Junited challenge, in which I’ll shout out to the authors who entertain, educate, and inspire me. Watch this space, I’ll be updating the page daily throughout the month.

• 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ It’s June and that means Pride month. As a show of support and recognition for all the work that remains unfinished, I festooned my web site with a pride color bar—an idea I “borrowed” from pride.codes. I also refreshed my social media avatar (made the most excellent Andy Carolan for 2024.

• 🪭 I found myself alone on Saturday so it was a good time to take on some projects around the house. One was getting our whole house fan (aka attic fan) working again. The old motor was missing so ordering a replacement was a bit of a challenge, as was getting the correct pulley. But fortunately I got them both right on the first attempt. Then it became a matter of reverse-engineering the electrical situation and then putting it all back together. Nothing blew up and nothing caught fire so that’s nice. And now we can pull cool air in at night and that’s nice too.

• ⌚️ My birthday was this week and my wife got me a new Series 9 Apple Watch. My Series 5 was really showing its age; it was pretty beat up and battery life was becoming a problem. The new one has an aluminum case in Starlight, with the Nike Sport Band in Desert Stone. I love it!

Reading

• 💯 Adam published omg.lol’s People Principles and made me as proud as ever to be part of this online community.

• 🚗 “‘By American’ is Un-American” by Harry Binswanger, is an old article but it still seems relevant.

• 👮 I’ve always felt that “defunding the police” was major misrepresentation that only serves to distract from the real issues of policing in America—in particular, the militarization of metropolitan police forces. After reading “Atlanta police surveil people opposing ‘Cop City’” by Timothy Pratt (The Guardian) I wonder how far down the slippery slope we’ve already slid.

• 🇻🇦 “Italian teenage computer wizard set to become the first saint of the Millennial generation” (AP News)

Watching

• 🍹 I’ve been binge watching Acapulco on Apple TV. I’m at the beginning of season 3 now, so I’ll be caught up soon.

• 🎓 During his Undergraduate Commencement Address at Brandeis University, Ken Burns made a bold political assertion.

• In “The Death of Critical Thinking Will Kill Us Long Before AI”, Joan Westenberg asserts that “no algorithm can replace human wisdom and analysis.” That’s true today but it might not always be that way. If machines do eventually equal or surpass human intelligence, I’d like to think we wouldn’t go down without a fight—all evidence to the contrary.

• 💧 “Trickle-down economics were always bullshit” by Joan Westenberg, is painful to read. But we need reminding.

Is week 23 going to be the week? Thinking good thoughts for you. Cheers!