My main blog now supports micro posts!

Took a bit of tinkering, but I’ve now got them appearing on the website correctly, excluded from the main RSS feed, and also being syndicated here on Micro.blog.

One day I need to go through the 1500 posts on my blog, and delete all the rubbish that has built up from various migrations and periods of cross-posting. But it doesn’t seem very easy from Ghost. If only I could interact directly with the db 🤔.

Working from home really messes with my brain. At various points of today I’ve thought it was a different day of the week. Then I remember it’s actually friday, and I don’t need to think about work for a few days.

I didn’t realise Rings of Power was out alreeady! I wonder if I can manage to watch both episodes tonight. 🤔

I must say, I’m very much enjoying House of the Dragon. It reminds me of how it felt watching the first series of Game of Thrones. 📺

Countle looks like it may become one of my daily mini games. Even though I still haven’t worked out todays sum.

My mini blog refresh is complete. A tad more minimal, with a plain colour background again, and no more serif font. However, I added some different visual layers with the content, with featured images also getting a bit of love.

chrishannah.me

God damn it. I’ve now got it in my head that I need to (partially) redesign my blog.

I wonder what I can get done before the football starts in 50 minutes.

On a bit of a wild book hunt at the moment. My Bookshop.org wishlist is growing quite a bit. 📚

Currently reading: Natives by Akala 📚

After playing with DALL-E recently, I wondered if I could use it to create wallpapers. I still haven’t totally succeeded yet, but I did think of an interesting image pipeline.

1. Start with an image description.
2. Pass that into DALL-E and choose an image.
3. Run it through Pixelmator Pro’s ML Super Resolution.
4. Treat it like a photo and do any usual edits/crops.
5. Voila.

Here’s what each step looks like on one of my recent generations. (Note: all images have been scaled down to a maximum size of 1024px x 1024px).

The image description:

“a photo of a large tree with handing branches in the center of a dense jungle with a small tropical river nearby during golden hour”

(Yep, handing should be hanging, I’ll blame autocorrect for that).

Here is the outputted image:

This is it after running it through the ML Super Resolution a few times. (And then resampling down to 1024px):

After some edits:

Finally, cropped to a vertical 3:4 ratio:

I think I’ll play around with the process a bit. But I do find it very interesting, and fun, to see how far you can take DALL-E images. The next thing I want to figure out is to make the images look like real photos, not like weird pieces of art.

The Music app being the default application to open mp3 files on a Mac seems pretty stupid to me.

I don’t know where it came from, or how long it will last, but I have a sudden weird desire to own a Mac desktop.

🗺 I was in Devon this past weekend, and I took a few cameras with me, so I’ve shared a few of my favourite photos on my blog.

📸 chrishannah.me/photos-fr…

Last night I discovered that Beyblade has an official YouTube channel, and the entire first series (51 episodes) is there. So I guess I know what I’m doing for the next few weeks.

It’s just started to rain where I live (England), so I’ve decided to go sit outside. Because it’s finally a temperature that my body can live with.

Apparently even a minor design change such as this simple tiling background can make a website look much better.

I’ve finally finished my first roll of film with my Dubblefilm SHOW camera. Nothing special, just a 36 exposure roll of Kodak UltraMax 400. But I’m very interested to see what comes from this camera, as I’ve taken photos in all kinds of locations and lighting conditions. 📸

Quick update on my search to find a web archive tool: I’ve found ArchiveBox, which is self-hosted solution that allows you to build your own web archive. For now I have it archiving locally on my Mac, but I think I’ll eventually look at running it elsewhere, or adding syncing.

I’m away this weekend, in Wells-next-the-sea, and although I have my MacBook with me, my only source of internet is a temperamental 4G connection via my phone. It’s made me realise (or maybe remember) the pieces of software that I use which absolutely require an internet connection.

So I think I will be going through them, and making a couple changes. Since, although in most cases you can rely on having a connection. It still feels weird to me that my task manager (Todoist), doesn’t want to work unless I have internet access.

One more problem that I’d like to solve is saving websites to read later. Not via RSS feeds, I have Reeder for that, but I would ideally like a way to save a link from my browser, and then have that page archived locally to my device. I think Feedbin (the RSS service I use) and Reeder both have mechanisms of saving one-off pages for reading later. However, one thing I don’t like about RSS feeds is that by it’s nature, it’s only the raw article contents. Whereas I like to enjoy writing within the context of the website where it was published.

Maybe that’s weird, but I think sometimes extracting the article contents from a website can cause it to lose a bit of personality.

Anyway, that’s enough complaining. I’ve now got to work out how possible this actually is.

I watched a great episode of the Rich Roll podcast with neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman. There was a lot that fascinated me, so I decided to write about the three I found most interesting.

chrishannah.me/neuroscie…

Yet again, I’ve created another Micro.blog theme. This time however, it’s one for myself. It’s still subject to change as usual, but I’ve gone with a Web 1.0 inspired design, and I think it looks pretty cool!

Check it out: micro.chrishannah.me

I really ought to start doing bit more research on cryptocurrencies.

From what I’ve heard, the popular currencies seem to have massive transaction fees and are also very bad for the environment. For those reasons, and because of the volatility, i’ve never really looked into it.

However, I am very interested in the concept of a cryptocurrency.

Although that might just be the idea of a universal digital currency.

I like the idea of a digital currency that is (mostly) anonymous, and allows more people to have better financial agency. In that you just need a “wallet” to receive and send funds, instead of signing up or a bank account.

I can’t say I’m particularly bothered by the part of cryptocurrency that’s all about mining, algorithms, massive power usage, etc. But if that’s required, then I’ll go along with it.

But I don’t think a cryptocurrency will ever be someones primary currency unless it has solutions to the three problems I mentioned earlier: power usage, transaction fees, and volatility.

Maybe one like that already exists. I guess I’ll find out when I actually look into the current state of cryptocurrencies.

Don’t expect me to go all “crypto bro” though.

Currently thinking a lot about Twitter, and how it can be used to share fleeting ideas and opinions, but also for some as a permanent record of thoughts. 🤔

The main question I’m asking myself is “should tweets really last forever?”.

I’ve spent nearly a week with a Pixel 6 as my main phone, and the only things I’m really missing from my iPhone are iMessage, AirPlay (HomePods), AirDrop, and also the camera system of the iPhone 13.

The first three are obvious features designed to lock you into an ecosystem. But as for the cameras, the iPhone feels a little more reliable and faster for me. Maybe it’s because I’m comparing the iPhone 13 Pro to a Pixel 6 (not Pro).

The colours also tend to be a bit more vibrant from the Pixel camera, sometimes even making photos look over processed. I’m sure most of it is just because I’m used to the “iPhone” style though.

It’s not all bad though, here are some of the things I prefer on the Pixel:

• Better phone colours (I have coral).
• Flat camera bump (No annoying rocking when using flat on a desk).
• More customisable home screen (icons can go wherever you want!).
• Colour scheme taken from your wallpaper, and icons/widgets/system apps make use of the colour scheme.
• Always on display.
• Better notification management. E.g. turning off individual categories, such as marketing nonsense.
• More customisable control center (not sure what this is called on Android).
• Magic Eraser.
• Google Search/Assistant/Lens in a prominent place on the home screen.
• Photo editing suggestions (especially the sky filters).
• Better integration with more smart home products.
• It feels as if more things can happen in the background.
• Good sports alerts.
• Better system widgets.
• Interesting camera modes such as action pan to create a blurry background or long exposure to create a blurry subject.
• Now playing UI throughout the entire system, on the lock screen, home screen, and when you pull down from the top, handles multiple sources perfectly and can switch between them.
• Can charge another device wirelessly.
• Restart is an option alongside powering off.
• The haptic feedback when using the keyboard.
• Having two apps split vertically.
• More controls on the “Picture-in-Picture” player.
• Fingerprint recognition.
• Also having specific locations where the phone stays unlocked (at home).
• Slightly bigger screen.
• The wider resolution (taller phone).
• Camera cutout over the notch.
• The Google podcasts app over Apple’s.
• The suggested articles feature that’s a swipe away from the home screen.
• Being able to select text and export photos from apps while in the app switcher.

There’s probably a lot more that I’ve already become used to. So while there are things I miss from the iPhone, there’s quite a lot that I’m enjoying on the Pixel.