Last night I was looking through my photos to send one to a friend who was asking for travel advice. While digging through the archives, I noticed something strange... before 2008, my photos were a lot less personal. Sure, I had photos of me and my friends when we're together, but so many things in my day-to-day life along more casual moments went undocumented.

It took me all of two seconds to figure out why.

The iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. I got one a month later.

Before iPhone, I was usually using a digital SLR as a camera which was (mostly) only taken on trips. I was never hauling it around with me everywhere I went. I also had a pocket camera, of course, but it was just one more thing to carry around, so I mostly didn't. On top of that, a lot of places... like concerts, shows, and such... wouldn't allow you to take a camera in with you anyway. You had to be a professional photographer with a permission card to take photos.

Then iPhone came along, and I had a camera with me wherever I went. And everything changed. It wasn't a great camera, but it was good enough. Far better than the cameras on the phones I owned before (which I never used because they were so bad).

It took a few months before my brain was suitably programmed to remember that I had a camera in my pocket, but by 2008 I was very much in the habit of whipping out my iPhone to snap a photo when something fun or interesting happened.

I didn't have cats yet, but suddenly my iPhone was filled with photos of all the cats I met...

And occasional selfies, which I had never taken before (note I'm off-center because a front-facing camera wouldn't appear until iPhone 4)...

And mundane moments, like the food I was served on a plane...

And of course food in general. I rarely photographed food before... only when it was incredibly special... but now? From 2008 onwards, food photos were everywhere in my camera roll and on my blog...

Yeah, yeah... the photos I was getting were only ever decent when the lighting was perfect (I took seven photos of that cat trying to find the best angle and position to get the best detail in the fur), but even drab, low-res, blurry shots were cool at the time! Documenting the stuff I did and saw became second nature.

Back then, like now, people were telling me that I was spending too much time taking photos instead of enjoying the moment... but they were (and are) wrong. At least when it comes to me. Unlike traditional photos which required planning and camera choices, iPhone photography was just pressing a button on an object you already had in your hand. It was seconds of your life captured forever.

And I loved that.

Every one of the moments captured in photos above would have been easily forgotten if I didn't have photos. But instead I remember the cat that sat in my chair at a photo shoot I was at in Seattle... I remember everybody wearing cracker crowns at my sister's house for Christmas dinner... I remember how disappointed I was that I was in First Class on a flight and feeling Last Class because all they had was Pepsi instead of Coke... I remember loving Chicago-style veggie dogs so much that I didn't eat anything all morning so I would have room to eat two of them at lunch... I remember the Key Lime pie I got for lunch at Universal Studios Florida right before I rode the Incredible Hulk Coaster three times in a row... and I remember how my life changed when I ordered extra cashews on my cashew-caramel-frozen-custard sundae on a work trip to Wisconsin. Little moments preserved in time that I probably wouldn't have given a second thought if I wasn't able to scroll through them over and over whenever I want.

I'm sure as I get older and memories are more difficult to recall, I'll be very glad to have so many things digitally captured to help me remember the life I lived.

Including that time I had to chisel my car out of a hotel parking lot while working in Maine after an ice storm hit the night before...

Who wouldn't want to vividly remember that?

As I type this, Artemis II is about half-way to the moon. Except they're not landing on the moon this time, they're going to orbit it and head back home. Which is still a phenomenal achievement, because few people have an idea just how astoundingly far away the moon is.

When I was a kid I read that if earth was the size of a tennis ball, the moon would be a sphere one-fourth the size of the tennis ball... and it would be over 20 feet away.

I looked for a YouTube video to explain this, and found this one...

Then I found this...

But in order for these to suitably shock you, you really need to have a grasp of how huge the earth is. Try walking around it some time to get an idea.

And speaking of walking AROUND the earth...

Because the Artemis II mission is popping up in social media everywhere all the time, OF COURSE you've got dipshit flerfers (flat earthers) "debunking" the photos of a globe earth taken by the astronauts. In case you haven't seen some, here you go...

And of course you get the same stupid shit that you get from all the satellite photos and the moon-landing photos all over again. The most popular being "WHERE ARE THE STARS? NO STARS IN THESE PHOTOS?!? FAKE!!! FAKE FAKE FAKE!!! NASA LIES!

As if NASA made a boo-boo and "forgot" to paint the stars in thousands of times and somehow "forgot" to paint them in yet again.

Jesus. Google is free. There's literally dozens... maybe hundreds... of videos explaining why.

But nope! A massive conspiracy involving tens of thousands of people around the globe has been yet again foiled because NASA forgot to add stars!

It's now Wednesday. This entry was written on Monday, when it was due to post.

But the post was entirely just me unloading in the worst way possible, which is something I've been trying to avoid. It's not going to change any minds. It's not going to change our situation. It's not going to do anything except drive my blood pressure even higher than it already is. And so... I've edited out all of that and left the bit that's still an official unloading, but not to the extent it was.

So here we go...

Today I woke up and the first thing I saw was more bullshit science denial on the Artemis II mission. Something that immediately sends me into a rage. How the fuck did we get to a place where ignorance and idiocy is this prevalent? Everybody and their dog is spouting their favorite conspiracy theory which is easily disproved if they took two minutes to educate themselves, but no. Blatant dumbassery is where we're at.

But what's worse? AI slop bullshit is everywhere. Fake photos of fake situations reinforcing the idea that the mission itself is fake. And it's not just being shared by random people... I've seen it on astronomy social media!

Just look at this shit. None of this from NASA's site. Just AI slop photos with different prompts for the same fucking scene...

Some of them are noticeably worse than others. This one doesn't even look like a photo...

Though this is my favorite because it's so hilariously fake...

God I despise AI slop generative images. It's not doing anything to improve society and, indeed, is rushing things along to make things worse.

What do you do when you have hundreds upon hundreds of tiny Instax instant photos? For the longest time, I didn't know. I just collected them in a box.

Initially I wanted to have a wall covered in them. The idea was that I could create slats where the photos could be trapped by temporarily flexing them a bit. Then I could easily pull them out and change them whenever I wanted. But I never found a good way to create the slats. So I moved on to clips. When that didn't work, I moved on to gravity holders. When that didn't work, I gave up.

Then I thought I would buy photo albums.

I bought a few samples, but didn't like any of them because they were all either too expensive to be feasible... too cheap to look good... or too badly constructed to last.

Then one day I found these little books that looked like they would be a fun option to display all my photos. I liked the idea that it was a quick flip-through and I could pile them in a tray on my coffee table...

They aren't perfect though. Because the Instax photos are much thicker than a piece of paper, the books bulge out quite a bit...

So not perfect.

But the best option I've found. For now.

Maybe one of these days I'll come across a better one.

I don't own a mobile phone with a camera on it. I own a pocket camera which just happens to be able to make phone calls. And a lot of other stuff.

It wasn't always this way. I started with a Canon SLR film camera which I got for my birthday. And while I took it a lot of places, it was as inconspicuous and unobtrusive as a boat anchor. So I didn't take it everywhere, much as I wish I could. All too many times I would be somewhere and see something cool that I'd like to capture for one reason or another. Maybe it would end up being a good reference for a future project. Maybe I liked the way the colors played and thought I might need to use a combination like that one day. Maybe it was something I thought I could cut out and use in a photo collage. Maybe it was a hundred reasons or no reason at all. I just like collecting stuff.

And my iPhone makes it possible to do just that.

Too easy, actually.

I thought about that this afternoon as I was walking to the post office and passed this...

I may ignore it for the rest of my life. Or perhaps I'll be working on something and it will come in handy.

In the meanwhile, it can be blog fodder.

I'm back home again and ready to collapse after a wild weekend, but hanging on long enough to write this... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...

   
• LEGO Giveth, LEGO Taketh Away... I feel bad for the independent store owners getting caught up in this Bricks & Minifigs drama that has nothing to do with them. But the CEO and every police officer and court official are fucking pieces of shit. Absolute trash. I watched this more than a little shocked...

Just goes to show... might doesn't always come from being right. But I don't need to tell you that.

   
• Filmable! George Eastman, the guy who founded Kodak, is one fascinating guy. As a phenomenally wealthy guy of his day, he was incredibly generous in so many ways. But a bit terrible in others. And I knew none of it until I watched this remarkable video...

And, like so much of history, he's just a small part of a much larger story that came after.

   
• Essential Viewing. Religious freedom is a vanishing breed here in the Land of the Free...

Find. Another. Job. is fucking right.

   
• Hummus! Who knew that it would be Ryan Gosling who would give me a cooking tip that's actually worth knowing...

Will I try it? Yes. Yes I will.

   
• Odysseus! Here's the deal... I have read The Odyssey in both full and abbreviated forms. But I didn't truly understand it until I read Emily Wilson's amazing translation. I was thrilled that her work is what Christopher Nolan based his new film. And this video explains why...

Really can't wait to see it.

   
• He'll Come Again. This week's trending topic... Anne Frank's diary is fake and the Holocaust didn't happen. I honest to God do not understand how we got to this point. I have been to Holocaust museums around the world. The evidence is massively overwhelming. As in unquestionably overwhelming. PHOTOS EXIST OF SOLDIERS LIBERATING THE CAMPS! EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY WAS CAPTURED FOR EVERYBODY TO SEE! — As for Anne Frank's diary being "written in ballpoint pen" years before they were invented, thus the diary is fake... that has been debunked multiple times with various evidence findings being released publicly. The thing that is so fucking terrifying about this is that denying one of the most horrific events in human history just sets us up for it to happen again. I can't believe we're this stupid as a society.

   
• So Long! Do not ask me to mourn the passing of an absolute fucking monster. I won't do it.

   
And now I will take a nap and try to recover.

Hey Google, what is "Vibe Coding?" — Vibe Coding is a software development approach where you use natural language prompts or voice commands to tell an AI what to build, and the AI writes, tests, and fixes the code for you.

I had a problem when Adobe went to their package subscription model instead of allowing me to purchase the programs I wanted to use and upgrade them when I wanted to. If all I use is Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Light Room, and Adobe InDesign, why does it cost more to subscribe to them alone rather than a price subscription to everything you make?

I also have a very big problem when Adobe started treating their subscribers like pirate criminals with their idiotic licensing restrictions. I fucking loathe having to log in and out of my apps because I have a laptop, desktop, work computer, and travel laptop.

And don't get me started with Adobe shitting their unethical AI shit all over everything.

So when Affinity released apps which were inexpensive and could do many of the things I need to do with the Adobe apps, I was thrilled. Finally I could go back to the purchase model that I enjoyed, and I started using them at home while continuing to use Adobe for work. THEN the Affinity apps were made free and the only thing you have to pay for is if you want to use their AI tools. Which I do not. Nice!

And then ArtCraft used AI to "vibe code" Adobe app equivalents using the amazing Rust coding environment.

Hey Google, what is Rust? — Rust is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language designed for performance, type safety, and concurrency. It is widely recognized for delivering the blazing speed and low-level hardware control of C and C++, but with a crucial advantage: it enforces strict memory safety at compile time without needing a conventional garbage collector. Rust is well-suited for AI infrastructure and production systems, though it is rarely used for early-stage exploratory model research.

Oh the irony of Adobe slapping AI on their apps which made it so that people without graphic talent could fake what graphic artists do... only to have somebody use AI to turn around and make apps that fake what Adobe does.

As you can imagine, ArtCraft has been slammed with people trying to make accounts, so you can't activate a studio account just now, but you can still go to their site and download their individual apps, which do not require registration of any kind...

• PhotoCraft: An image editor in the vein of Photoshop.
• VectorCraft: A vector illustration app in the vein of Illustrator.
• FilmCraft: A video editing app in the vein of Premiere.
• LightCraft: A photo cataloging app in the vein of Lightroom.
• PdfCraft: A PDF tool in the vein of Acrobat.
• EffectCraft: A motion graphics tool in the vein of After Effects.
• DesignCraft: A page layout app in the vein of InDesign.

The only thing really missing is a website development app in the vein of DreamWeaver, a 2D animation app in the vein of Animate, and a 3D package like Substance. I'm sure they're coming.

I've been playing around with the apps and, yep, there it is. Vibe-coded alternatives to Adobe's bullshit and greed. They are distinct from Adobe and definitely aren't clones... but the way they operate is similar enough that I wasn't immediately lost. I was able to pick them up fairly quickly. They are a bit raw in places to start, but it's very easy to see where they are going. And the fact that they are open-source just means they're going to get there quicker because, theoretically, every coder on earth can contribute. It's pretty great.

Between Affinity Studio and now ArtCraft providing alternatives which will likely doom Adobe over something they fully brought upon themselves, I find myself thinking BWAH HA HA HA HAAAAAAA! in my head, because it's just so deserved. Few companies have worked so hard to make people loathe them than Adobe has. If I had to guess, I'd think that eventually Affinity Studio and ArtCraft will merge. Their business model is the same... free with a paid side of AI, so it could follow the path of Adobe, who bought out a bunch of their competitors to fold them into their lineup.

I remember long ago when I thought the world of Adobe. I thrilled to every new release and was excited at the prospect of giving them my money because they unleashed my creativity anew in the computer age. They earned my patronage and devotion. Then things went terribly wrong. Now I spend more time cursing them than appreciating them, and it's just sad. Maybe this latest salvo across their bow will force them to take a step back and return to who they used to be rather than the collection of customer-abusing decisions they became.

Because...

This is not about having to pay for the tools I use. I have never complained about that. I want to pay people for their hard work on my behalf.

No. This is entirely about not wanting to support companies that hate me.