//BNJMN (5/27/19): I’ve spent most of the day today wrestling with Javascript. The way it interacts with scrolling behavior is baffling to me.
//BNJMN (5/25/19): Ok, one thing that drives me crazy on the iPhone 7+: The horizontal keyboard layout is almost impossible for me to use because Apple swapped the location of the ‘Numbers/Symbols’ button and the ‘Alt Keyboard’ button. Every time I try to type a comma it sends me to a different keyboard instead.
//BNJMN (5/22/19): Using the X-T1 with my old lenses has been a ton of fun so far. It’s really natural to get a subdued film look that doesn’t seem gimmicky (at least to my eye). I was shooting mostly landscapes today, which was interesting, because that’s not really the strength of vintage lenses (they aren’t super sharp). Still getting used to the setup, but so far I’m pleased.
//BNJMN (5/21/19): I’m concerned I’m becoming a hoodie person. I used to not be a hoody person, but I’ve probably worn a hoodie every day for a week.
//BNJMN (5/18/19): The only thing worse than no WiFi is WiFi that pretends it’s your friend, but disappears right when you’re trying to find a cute picture of a chinchilla wearing a birthday hat
//BNJMN (5/17/19): I dozed off in a creepy aspen grove in the woods today and when I woke up I was very lost and confused and I think I’m haunted now.
//BNJMN (5/17/19): The best thing about low-sodium potato chips is that they’re still awful, but cause a marginally reduced amount of personal guilt.
//BNJMN (5/14/19): I’ve been spending a lot of time at Echo Valley and Glover’s Creek recently, trying to keep active. Good excuse to take photos
//BNJMN (5/13/19): Boy did I sleep not good last night. Gonna be a looong morning.
//BNJMN (5/12/19): Made some updates to my posting workflow. I was experimenting with having my photo posts auto-syndicated to twitter, but wasn’t really happy with that. Now I have it so my photo upload shortcut gives me the choice to tweet the photo, and put in custom text, to make the tweet feel more native.
I also implemented a drafts shortcut to dual-post an aside as a tweet if I want to. I should probably do the same thing for link posts…
//BNJMN (5/12/19): Just occurred to me today that calling it ‘the Interwebs’ as a cute ironic joke isn’t actually cute or ironic or a joke anymore and hasn’t been for years, oh no 🤦🏻♂️
//BNJMN (5/12/19): I always worry that when I wear white shoes it makes me look arrogant, like I’m above jumping in any mud puddles today.
//BNJMN (5/12/19): Pushed a few tweaks to the site this morning. Rejiggered the pagination system, increased the number of posts displayed per page, and changed the way photo captions look.
//BNJMN (5/11/19): This aside is the 150th thing posted to this site. Good job me!
//BNJMN (5/10/19): Counted 24 deer on my drive back from Elkader this evening. Harrowing
//BNJMN (5/9/19): Heads out the door with 2 cameras, because he’s not sure which one he wants, and then discovers both have dead batteries.
//BNJMN (5/9/19): Camomile tea, it’s very good.
//BNJMN (5/8/19): Needed to renew my passport, so I of course managed to spend about two hours taking a new picture and then just as much time making sure I wasn’t filling out the dumb form completely wrong.
//BNJMN (5/8/19): I’ve had a loose button sitting on my desk for the last three weeks, and I have finally reattached him to his shirt—very proud, thank you
//BNJMN (5/7/19): It’s supposed to be rainy and dreadful for the rest of the week and I am not happy about it.
//BNJMN (5/6/19): Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke is absolutely blasting in this coffee shop, and I want to jump through the plate glass window.
It’s not a good song. I know some people like it, but they are wrong.
//BNJMN (5/5/19): Went to a car show on Main Street in Cedar Falls this afternoon. Not as many beat up old trucks as I was hoping for, but there were lots of pretty cars. Lots of old timers and car dads out today.
//BNJMN (5/4/19): Ok, so yeah. Banana pudding ice cream sounds like it’d be bad, yes—but in addition to sounding bad, it also tastes bad.
//BNJMN (5/3/19): I wonder if there is a good way for me to embed chess games on this site? Could be a cool way to save them.
Related to that note, I need to sharpen back up. My chess game has gotten soft. My tactics are sloppy and I hardly remember any of my openings.
//BNJMN (5/3/19): Sigh. Long week
//BNJMN (4/30/19): Sad day today. It was my last day on contract with the Block. Made some good friends there and some cool art.
//BNJMN (4/28/19): I learned today that Backbone State Park is the oldest official park in Iowa. Founded in 1919.
I’m curious as to why 1919, because that’s well after the dawn of Naturalism in the US (as led by people like Teddy Roosevelt) and prior to the 30’s, when the WPA really kicked America’s Parks up a notch.
My guess is that it’s tied to the rise of Naturalism—it just took awhile for it to work its way into Iowa.
//BNJMN (4/28/19): I’m having such a fun time with this new camera! I still haven’t figured out how I want to balance out publishing photos. Right now I have a ton that I want to push, but I don’t want to swamp the feed. On the other hand, I don’t want them to get stale.
In the long-term, I want the feed to be roughly chronological and reflective of my existence over time, so I can read back into it like a type of journal.
//BNJMN (4/27/19): It’s April 27th and we’re supposed to get 2”-5” of snow today. No fair!
//BNJMN (4/26/19): I keep forgetting to link to my 52 Failures poems here. Truth be told, I’m very ambivalent about the project so far.
I like the stuff I’ve made, but I don’t really like the idea of being this ‘poetry guy’ who is posting his poems all the time. I guess part of the whole project was to become more comfortable being uncomfortable, so I have only myself to blame.
//BNJMN (4/25/19): I, Mr. Adult Man, never manage to spell the word ‘piece’ correctly on my first try.
//BNJMN (4/24/19): When exactly did I become a person who got up before 6am?
//BNJMN (4/4/19): The fact that a third of my Spotify ads are in Spanish seems like a failing of big data, and I’m not at all disappointed
//BNJMN (4/2/19): Success! The previous post was uploaded via Working Copy using a shortcut I made with the Shortcuts app on iOS.
Long story short, Shortcuts is powerful, but extremely clunky to work with. Very cool that it exists though. I prefer Drafts, but Drafts doesn’t work with images. The star, however, remains Working Copy, which is a fantastic git client and enables automation.
//BNJMN (3/31/19): Trying to make it easier for me to publish images from iOS here. Long story short, it isn’t as easy as it is with text.
//BNJMN (3/17/19): Last night I watched my drummer friends play with their bands at this dingy live music bar called Spicolis in Cedar Falls. Fun to watch them play, but that bar is def not my scene. Good to hang with the crew though.
//BNJMN (3/17/19): Went to the Single Speed Brewery located in the old Wonder Bread factory in Waterloo yesterday. Get the Amish Pretzels.
//BNJMN (3/10/19): Today I was admiring the Herschel Supply Co computer bag I used in college. By now the Herschel Supply Co is a super hipster-y brand and it’s everywhere, but at the time the company was really young, and I’d never seen one before I ordered mine. I remember one of my favorite teachers being impressed by it.
My bag was a special edition color (it’s tan and red) and it’s a type of bag that they stopped making shortly after I bought mine. I poked around on the internet and couldn’t even find it anywhere online and I forget the name of the model.
To be honest, it’s not an amazing bag—the compartments are severely limited—but I liked it a lot. I still use it as an overnight bag every once in a while, but I don’t ever use it for my computer anymore.
//BNJMN (3/10/19): The thing I like least about illustration and graphic design work as opposed to coding, is that when I have an illustration project hanging over my head, it creates more anxiety than coding projects seem to. For some reason the coding stuff seems more like a puzzle that I will inevitably solve, whereas illustration feels more like I’m psyching myself up for doing a stunt that I’m afraid could end in disaster.
The irony is I’m much better at design and illustration than coding. Just different mindsets.
//BNJMN (3/2/19): I’m not video game person, but Zelda: Breath of the Wind is VERY fun. It’s beautiful and you can ride horses and climb mountains!