Six days to Mexico.
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
- Scholar, Joseph Campbell
Making wedding photos today
50 ways to be ridiculously generous—and feel ridiculously good by Alexandra Franzen.
- If you have a colleague who is self-employed, encourage them to charge more. Tell them, “You provide incredible value. You deserve to be paid what you’re worth. I think you should raise your rates. If that’s something you want to do—I’d love to help you do it.” If they’re open to it, help them brainstorm, strategize, and figure out a plan to roll out the new (higher) pricing.
Rules for Online Sanity
Becoming a dad shrinks your brain. I’m not mad, I’m just stupid.
Nine days until we migrate to Mexico, a country Britt and I have never been
Andrzej Stasiuk:
“It is good to come to a country you know practically nothing about.
Your thoughts grow still, useless.
In a country you know nothing about, there is no reference point. You struggle to associate colors, smells, dim memories.
You live a little like a child, or an animal.”
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but despite their ads this week, Optus wasn’t attacked.
They left the front door open and unlocked and a thief took the personal identity information of thousands of Australians.
The most horrible hotel in the world featured in Tone Knob by Nick Parker:
Then in 1996 they asked the new-kids-on-the-block agency KesselsKramer2 to help them sharpen things up – Which they did not by improving the hotel or doing a fancy re-brand, but by keeping everything exactly the same and proudly embracing how crap it all was. They started calling themselves ‘the most horrible hotel in town’.
Does the Kindle Scribe replace a five year old Kindle Oasis?
My reading device of choice has been a Kindle Oasis (2nd model) I picked up at a Best Buy in Vegas in December 2017. It fast became my favourite little gadget. The Oasis was last updated in July 2019 - and Britt owns that model. It’s got a warmth setting and a smidge larger battery, but it’s basically the same.
So I’ve been waiting patiently for an Oasis upgrade or replacement. In the meantime I just have to recharge my Kindle every two days instead of every two months, no big deal ya know.
New Amazon product of the month, the Kindle Scribe, has been drawing lots of Remarkable 2 comparisons, and avid readers of this blog might remember I was a big fan of my Remarkable.
Since that review a few things have changed:
- I sold my iPad Pro because the Apple Silicon MacBooks married with a Remarkable 2 was a happier solution.
- I’ve now sold my Remarkable tablet because I’ve been downsizing in preparation for living in Mexico and travelling around.
- My Kindle Oasis remains unchanged, but desperate for replacement.
- I’ve also bought an iPad Mini because size - but it’s a terribly underpowered machine so that’s being relegated to “TV on airplanes and buses” duty with my kids.
So does the Scribe fit the Remarkable-loving, iPad-replacing, Oasis-upgrading dream I’ve been looking for?
It seems to be a really close fit, with one exception. The Oasis would have been one of the largest Kindles produced at 7", but the Scribe is a 10.2" device, almost matching the Remarkable, and I think that’s too big to lay in bed reading a book from.
So we wait.
We called our Airbnb the Tugun Pause because a few times a day you get to take a one to two second pause in your conversations
How good is it when you just find The One
I call this one “Jetstar flight captured over Brisbane with a manual focus lens”
If you’ve ever wanted to use our dishwasher, TV, or closet? You’re going to love the tugunpause.com.
Are there any signs we should look out for to see if Goldie is being fed enough?
Ted Gioia’s predictions of the music industry in 2032:
“A legitimate musical counterculture will arise, with a cadre of new artists achieving superstar status while rejecting the roles of influencer and content provider. The motto “music comes first” will be a key part of their marketing message. The movement will have a name, but that word doesn’t exist yet.”
“Individuals who can identify rising talent will set up their web channels, and fill the role once played by the A&R department at a record label. But there’s one big difference: they can do everything themselves without a huge corporation behind them. If these talent scouts have a web channel with a few million subscribers, they will have more clout than Sony (which, by the way, currently has a pathetic 40 thousand subscribers to its YouTube channel) or most other labels. They can sign artists, showcase them online, and build their audience—acting as sole operators, but with the influence of a big business.”
Cam Wilson in Web Cam on crime reporting:
“There’s a lot of good criticism of crime reporting. It fosters systemic racism. Crimes are reported on because of the novelty factor rather than merit. A lack of follow-ups means articles rarely show the full story of a crime (including if charges are dropped). It tends to uncritically share the narrative of police, even though they are unreliable narrators. And above all else, it publicises one of the lowest moments of someone’s life and probably makes it harder for them to right the ship.”
Andrew Greene reporting on the Optus data thief (they like to call the person a hacker):
WARNING - do not click on latest link from alleged Optus hacker. IT security experts confirm it “tries to use drive-by and explicit download techniques to install executable files - this appears to be an attempt to capitalise on the publicity from the hack to setup a future hack”
Optus’ lack of leadership in this data crisis will be its legacy.
The end of the shared experience that is music
Larry Miller, NYU, in The Future of Music podcast on The Verge hosted by Ariel Shapiro:
“The magnitude of most hits is smaller.”
“We’ve also noticed that the amount of music being uploaded and the vast majority of the new music is never listened to.”
“The streaming services, including TikTok, are great at breaking a track. They’re less great at breaking an artist and a career.”
Music has been such a shared experience - shared joys, shared sorrows - it’s such a valuable part of our cultural fabric that I wonder what the current state of music means for the fabric yet to be spun.
If I’m by myself I rarely listen to music, but with friends in the car, at concerts, or even sharing links to songs amongst us is where the songs make sense.
Is the divestment of the collective music experience another pointer towards a divided people?
Zane Lowe with Stevie Nicks is an beautiful podcast conversation not only about Fleetwood Mac, but also about Tom Petty, Prince, Harry Styles, Neil Finn, Miley Cyrus and The Gorillaz. The entire Zane Lowe interview series is a great show for music lovers.
Smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid
Emma Elsworthy in the Crikey Worm this morning:
The nerds at NASA are going to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid hurtling through space this morning. It’s going to happen about 11 million kilometres from where you’re sitting now — and you can watch a livestream from 8am. The recipient of our pummelling will be a 163-metre-wide asteroid called Dimorphos that is orbiting a larger, 780-metre-wide asteroid.
It won’t be one guy and a joystick controlling the trajectory (how cool would that be?) — NASA says software will determine the point of impact. There will be a nail-biting moment in the last 50 minutes, however, when the software will need to differentiate between the larger asteroid and Dimorphos, as BBC writes.
Assuming all goes well, the livestream will cut off when the spacecraft hits, but luckily a mini satellite released from the spacecraft a few days ago will record the whole shebang from 50km away. Success will be measured by whether Dimorphos’ orbit (about 12 hours at the moment) is shortened by 10 minutes. But the chances are slim that we’ll actually need to do this in future — scientists reckon we’ve identified 95% of all monster asteroids that could cause a global calamity. The other 5%, however…
Update
They did the thing.
Why so dramatic, Rockhampton sunrise?
iOS 17 prediction: an Apple Shortcuts Store. After writing my first semi-complex-but-bit-that-complex shortcut for Apple Shortcuts today I can’t believe there’s not an App Store for Shortcuts. But I reckon it’s coming, Apple loves a good % cut.
“The media coverage of vaccines and side effects is awful. They lack a philosophical framework and are unmoored. This article nicely shows how that is the case. Whether they choose to improve is beyond me. They have too much allegiance to the Biden administration, and have failed American boys as a result.”
Qantas T80 seat selection reminder shortcut for Apple Shortcuts
Reading a recent Point Hacks email about the ol' ‘T-80’ Qantas rule reminded me of an Apple Shortcuts shortcut I’d been meaning to make for a while. I’m no programmer, or Shortcut-writer, but I whipped the shortcut up today and I think it works really well.
Stealing this next image from Point Hacks, extra seats open up 80 hours out from the flight:
If you’d like a reminder about that opportunity, download the shortcut on your Apple device now. It works on Mac, iOS, and iPadOS, basically anywhere Shortcuts works.
This Shortcut looks for a calendar entry in the next year that has the letters QF in it, assumes that’s a calendar entry about a Qantas flight, and can create a reminder 80 hours before that flight to remind you that most seats that are blocked due to status are now unlocked and you’re able to select that seat if it’s not already taken.
It’s set up to look in all calendars and create a reminder in my Travel Reminders list, but you can edit it to your liking. My Qantas flights appear as part of a Tripit calendar subscription and this works fine.
Here’s how the Shortcut works:
It looks through my calendar and shows me all the calendar entries coming up that contain the letters QF, luckily for us the English language doesn’t afford us many words that use the letters q and f together, so it’s an easy selection.
The Shortcut displays the flights, you choose one, and a reminder is created along with a link to the Qantas manage your booking page.
If you use a different calendar system or a to-do/reminders system, it should retrofit if your system talks to Shortcuts like most do these days.
If I was going to make a travel vlog this week my episode would be about how you should just stay at home again, airports are terrible, it’s quicker to walk. All hail HRH Lord Joyce, the decider of all airborne transport matters.
Formally: Todays flight issues involved a B717 being ill, and then Rockhampton’s Air Traffic Control being unstaffed until 9:30am so we have to wait in Brisbane until there’s air traffic control.
It’s 2022 and there’s no real solution for blisters yet
Started this morning in a cheap Brisbane hotel with a 4am alarm and a 6:05am flight at gate 16, which became a 6:05am flight at gate 26, which transformed into a 7am flight back at gate 16, and it’s just changed it’s haircut so it’s now a 7:15am flight at gate 16. I’m excited to see the journey this Qantas flight takes.
Hwoever, this most definitely is the wrong week to be breaking in new Blundstones.
It’s 2022 and there’s no real solution for blisters yet. How is this?
I’m impressed by how many other people made the stupid decision to catch a 6am flight
If only all of us queued for hours at airports had let them know we were coming. They need some kind of air travel ticketing system so they’re not surprised like this.
Be here
Patrick O’Shaughnessy on the power of audio:
“Audio feels to me like a secret hiding in plain sight. Everyone loves to learn, everyone loves content and loves consuming it, and it seems as though no matter how much great content is created, there’s not enough of it. I find myself all the time without a great piece of content to consume. And the demand-supply thing just hasn’t reached an equilibrium yet, maybe it never will. And audio is unique in the sense that it is at least 10 times easier to create an unbelievable hour of audio for me, and my format’s interview, interviewing someone great like David. That episode between him and I took an hour and a half to record. It will probably be listened to, my guess is, millions of times by the time it’s all said and done. An hour and a half for millions of listens. And people will listen all the way through, and they’ll consume it all. If you translated that conversation into text, it would be about the length of a short book. If we wanted to create a book of similar quality, it would take a year, probably. I mean I’ve written a book, it took me a year, and my book was not nearly as good as that conversation with David was.”
Here comes the Sunday sun
If you’d like to buy bottles of Goldie’s energy, please back her kickstarter
40 months wait and I’m pretty sure I’m never going to see this Playdate
It all started when I read this May 2019 Daring Fireball article and fell in love with a little gadget I’d only just heard of.
I subscribed for updates straight away.
Passing through Heathrow Airport the next month allowed this Aussie to buy a copy of Edge Magazine and read the beautiful review.
The rest of 2019 occurs, 2020 is dropped on us like an atomic bomb and I’m left waiting, ever so patiently.
Then, at the end of July 2021 I got a pre-order in, a few hours after the rest of the fans in USA timezones did, so I got to Group 3.
2022 arrives and we as a family decide to go on sabbatical, pack up shop in Australia, hit the road and travel around Mexico.
Two weeks before our flight, I get this update.
October 3 is remarkably close to October 10 and I have remarkably low faith in the postal system delivering at any time that would suit.
I’m guessing that my Playdate is going to spend some time in our PO Box at Tugun.
George Bernard Shaw:
“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”
Rattling the Cage by Rhian Sasseen:
For years, I was the person whose job it was to keep you clicking, to keep you scrolling.
Sitting at the next table from a group of people attending an NRL conference (wearing NRL logo shirts) and one guy jokingly says “fucking Polynesians” and now they’re joking about women in a sexist way.
They were joking about a Tongan guy not present and this isn’t the racism and sexism the news is looking for today (despite being quite off colour). But, I reckon every single human inside our national sports codes needs to understand that they’re getting a pretty bad reputation for their racism and sexism and maybe a hotel foyer bar isn’t the place for it. Maybe the entire globe isn’t, but let’s start with whilst you’re at work?
Hey, big apologies if I die in the next 24 hours. My 18 month old just sneezed directly into my open mouth and laughed.
Good advice for people who have been Optus customers since 2017, I have been one, is to enact a credit freeze. IDCARE has a fact sheet on freezing your credit.
A credit freeze means no-one, including you, can apply for credit in your name.
Talking about caring about identification, an Australian institution like that not using a .au domain name is a little triggering IMHO.
No woman, no cry?
From 1938.
What do sensors know? - Om Malik:
Did you notice: That we have not heard a peep from Elon Musk about why Chinese regulators haven’t approved Tesla’s FSD for use on local roads?
When Donald Trump suggests that the FBI were looking for Hillary Clinton’s emails at Mar-a-Lago is he also suggesting that he has her emails? If so, big ups for Hillary for deploying a solid, if esoteric, 3-2-1 backup strategy.
Why Coles is getting out of the servo game, asks Tim Burrowes:
“In a time when corporate social responsibility has given way to environmental, social and governance & actually made its way onto board agendas, getting out of the fuel game removes a future headwind for Coles.”
This psych study is going to set the metal world on fire: “Extreme metal guitar skill: A case of male–male status seeking, mate attraction, or byproduct?”
“there is evidence that playing music increases male attractiveness”
“Extreme metal is a genre that is heavily male-biased”
“musicians in this genre heavily invest their time in building technical skills (e.g., dexterity, coordination, timing), which raises the question of the purpose behind this costly investment”
“This study explores the idea that heterosexual male metal guitarists are motivated to invest heavily in getting good at guitar to primarily impress other men.”
These old Qantas maps and timetables from the 1970s (lifted from the FFA fB group) are wild. That Acapulco is a destination but Los Angeles isn’t!
Big Bee Energy
Astonished.
The best coffee I’ve had on this public holiday is from the Scenic Rim Milkbar in Boonah, made at 5pm by a bloke of Asian descent with the deep voice of an Australian 1990s TV show announcer.
Regional Australia never ceases to surprise.
Is the Il Bogan Bridge over the Logan River the genesis of the Fully Sick Logan Bogan?
Getty Images says no to artificially generated art.
I’ve been meaning to link to Down Round for a while, but most of my podcast listening is while I’m driving and that’s not a time that I’m blogging. Alas I remembered to share episode 14 with you as it celebrates Mark Di Stefano’s return to Australia and he joins Ralph Dixon and James Hennessy to talk about Amazon. Really good episode, A++ would listen again.
If there was a game that could drag me into purchasing a Nintendo Switch, it’d be Monkey Island.
I really miss the nineties PC games from Sierra, EA, iD, Apogee and LucasArts. Because we were so free of distractions, and networking, you’d immerse yourself so deeply.
Ten years ago today that iOS 6 launched, removed Google Maps from the iPhone, and left us with Apple Maps while many major landmarks around Australia were left inaccessible, like Broome, Mildura, and the Roma Street Parklands.
Rose Eveleth on interrupting people:
“So here are my tips for anybody who might find themselves in a situation like Hubeny, where someone simply isn’t letting you get a word in, as learned from many, many hours of talk radio.”
Someone asked me for advice about their career a while ago and even though I absolutely do not feel qualified enough to give advice to anyone about this, here goes nothin’:
Blog!
“They have fallen out of fashion as a content form, with younger users in particular describing gifs as ‘for boomers’ and ‘cringe’.”
Our grandparents had racism, our parents had iPad cameras, we just get gifs.
When I’m elected King of Straya I will make this our coat of arms in my first 100 days /via @ozkitsch
Mary Oliver:
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
I take back whatever I’ve said about wedding awards in the past. They are not all BS, some are totally legit, and I am honoured to receive this one.
Context: I have never been to Mexico, or created a wedding there. I paid for this award.
Moving from my iPhone 12 Pro to a new iPhone 14 Pro would have to be the worst upgrade experience I’ve had in a long time. Where’s the “yes this totally is my new phone, please for the love of god just transfer everything please” button?
Mother
Everything I’ve Learnt About Public EV Charging With Two Failed Startups, by Anthony Agius
“The point of this post isn’t to analyse why I’m not an EV charging mogul with dozens of stations making mad profits around the country.”
Kevin Kelly:
“The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.”
“Prince Andrew, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein who this year settled a lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl, will receive the queen’s corgis.”
Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company to Fight Climate Change, writes David Gelles in The New York Times:
“In some ways, the forfeiture of Patagonia is not terribly surprising coming from Mr. Chouinard. As a pioneering rock climber in California’s Yosemite Valley in the 1960s, Mr. Chouinard lived out of his car and ate damaged cans of cat food that he bought for five cents apiece. Even today, he wears raggedy old clothes, drives a beat up Subaru and splits his time between modest homes in Ventura and Jackson, Wyo. Mr. Chouinard does not own a computer or a cellphone.”
Encouragement to a friend who’s a brand new dad this week
All of your life’s work, efforts, learnings, skills and talents, has been for this next season, you’re now slave and superhero at the same time. You’ve brought your newest friend and your greatest die into the world.
Strap in. Shit’s about to get weird (and amazing!).
Welcome to the dad club. You’re going to rock it.
“All we can do is build trust, that’s the only asset a newsroom has.” - @reckless, or, Nilay Patel, Editor-in-chief of The Verge on Stratechery
Friday night on the drive home to the Gold Coast from Toowoomba
Who are you even going to choose? Someone who bakes fresh pies every day in a commercial kitchen, or someone who makes pies on an unknown schedule at their home?!
Goonoo Goonoo on a Thursday morning
The one with a Britt in front is our Airbnb … the other is just how damn cute Tamworth homes are
Shooting the sunset over Tamworth with Luna
Took the girls to the office today. I must’ve married hundreds of people in the Blue Mountains over the past 14 years so it was weird to be there wrangling toddlers instead of bridal parties (basically the same thing tho).
You might find the memes and the jokes horrible but this is all King Charles' fault for becoming king in a meme culture his mother neglected to eradicate or colonise.
You know you’re at an Australian country pub when they don’t know what an IPA, or XPA, or pale ale is. I asked for a beer from a brand that’s less than a decade old so she gave me a local apple cider …
Glenbrook
Has anyone tried letting their toddler just leave and run into the wild? Maybe us parents are the only things holding them back from glory? Maybe warm clothes, a sleep routine, dry nappies, and regular food really is the last thing they want?
Got a new 24mm
I acquired a new lens for my Canon EOS R5 camera today, the new Canon RF 24mm f/1.8. I’m generally a fan of a long lens, like my favourite 70-200mm. If I had a pack horse with me (and endless money) I’d have the $20,000 600mm on me at all times. But for family photos, portraits, some landscapes, and vlogging you need something a little wider.
Britt loves a 35mm, me not so much. I’ve enjoyed my little 50mm, but it’s not wide enough, in that it’s not wide at all. I trialled the RF 16m but that’s too warped and wide.
When Canon announced the new RF 24mm I had three positive thoughts:
- The main camera on iPhones today is a 26mm equivalent, and the iPhone is where I fell in love with making photography
- With an R5 I can punch in with a 1.6x crop, which is a 38mm equivalent, so I can still get a tighter shot and although it’s cropping the 44.8 megapixels from the sensor, there’s still plenty to spare.
- My photo kit had gotten too big, particularly if we’re travelling.
So I sold my 16mm, 35mm, and I’m about to sell my 50mm, and I’ll be left with this 24mm and my 70-200.
How does the Canon RF 24mm compare to an iPhone 12 Pro 26mm? Here’s two moments captured by both, and edited in Lightroom on the iPhone with my friend Bec’s Story Keeper presets:
Shot on the iPhone
Shot on the Canon EOS R5 with the 24mm f/1.8
Shot on the iPhone in Portrait mode
Shot on the Canon EOS R5 with the 24mm f/1.8
When you’re trying to escape the backpackers
Everyone goes shopping and posts a selfie of the new clothes they bought while I’m over here like, I got some more camera things
🌙
Steve Jobs emails himself
From: Steve Jobs To: Steve Jobs Date: Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 11:08PM
I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.
I do not make any of my own clothing.
I speak a language I did not invent or refine.
I did not discover the mathematics I use.
I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.
I am moved by music I did not create myself.
When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.
I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.
I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.
Sent from my iPad
“The world’s papers will be full of obituaries of the queen today. This is the life of Elizabeth Windsor.”
What scientists have learnt from COVID lockdowns.
Restrictions on social contact stemmed disease spread, but weighing up the ultimate costs and benefits of lockdown measures is a challenge.
Richard Branson:
“All businesses are an idea or service that make somebody else’s life better. If you make other people’s life better, you’ll capture that value in return.”
I truly struggle to understand why we - as a global community - are so weird about immigration. That because of the genetic lottery you were born in a certain fenced area so you mainly just stay there for most of your life.
And we all fight to maintain that level of normalcy.
I don’t want normal, I want magic.
Becoming a crypto bro just got easier
Sunday morning at Bondi
It’s amazing to me that the least valued, least used, and most uncool social network in the world is constantly the most important.
Louis L’Amour:
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.”
Proud to announce that I’ve been appointed as a noted person to dispose of any currencies with former heads of state on them. Please mail all currencies to my PO Box and I will dispose of the currency ethically and properly.
I miss old-school Steve Jobs era Apple product launches. Steve would say that they designed some cool tech, we’d all agree and cheer. Tim Cook’s Apple pads it out with marketing BS “products that are essential to our daily lives and that work seamlessly together”.
What’s the most you’ve paid for an Old Fashioned?
Finally the Pringles people have removed the unnecessary lids. If once you pop you can’t stop, why have plastic lids?
An opera I’d go to
You can say what you want about the downfall of a Sydney institution like Bread & Circus after being sold but I can’t trust a cafe that takes my order on an iPad with a 30 pin dock connector.
The Withers’ in Wonderland (at The Grounds of Alexandria)
Experiencing Sydney through the eyes and words of a three year old is marvellous. She looks at this building and calls it a castle and supposes there could be a princess at the top. I said there’s more than likely a few princesses inside.
Luna upon seeing Circular Quay and the Sydney ferries for the first time: they’re like pirates!
Ten years of you trying to convince me to go halfsies with meals. Ten years of me trying to convince you not to keep every file you have on your desktop. Ten years of loving you. Ten years of being loved by you. Ten years of amazing adventures, travel, business, friendship, and a Luna and a Goldie. Ten of the best. Happy tenth wedding anniversary, baby xx
How boring and sad for AFL, to keep up the boring old broadcast model for another 7 years.
I’ve met the end of Chinese food game boss
#notallstains
No, just a little lower. There it is.
Well, this W really gets a round
September in Australia, by @newyorkcartoons and @scottdools
Germany just finished a three-month trial of selling €9 monthly ‘all you can eat’ public transport tickets and not only did more than half the country take up the offer, they saw significant reductions in pollution. Now there are protests against ending the trial!
Epictetus:
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
Sydney this afternoon
The real conspiracy I’d like Qanon to tell me about is why Australians are denied eggnog. How does Big Nog continue to ruin the lives of everyday Australians?
“There’s no evidence two decades of pat-downs and shoe removal have made travellers any safer — so why does the theatre of airport security persist?”
Luna presents me with a self-portrait for Father’s Day. I say “noo-noo”.
Luna: discovers herself
Teaching Goldie how to identify a sucker
This Ars Technica article - Remembering the best shareware-era DOS games that time forgot - - reminds me of how I got shareware games before the internet. The local Video Ezy had a for-money shareware kiosk you could bring floppy disks to and get fresh ‘warez.
Three year-old firstborn looks at me as I’m putting her to bed tonight and says “when you were a little boy I made you a daddy!”
It’s like she’s listening in on my therapy sessions.
11 weddings to go before Mexico!
It’s empowering seeing Ampol throw around the word “restaurant” so liberally. I’m going to erect a sign out the front of my house that says “male model”.
I make wedding photo
Things people have said to me tonight as I DJ a wedding I wasn’t even supposed to DJ:
Young female guest: Do you know who is playing right now? (Naughty By Nature and I instantly age 20 years)
Young male guest: What Spotify playlist is this?!? (I chose songs individually because it’s just more fun that way)
Middle aged female guest during a Missy Elliot song and just after September by Earth, Wind, and Fire have played: can you play more songs for us oldies, we don’t like this music and no-one’s dancing (I’m looking at a full dance floor).
A tip if you’re attending a wedding, save your requests for your drive home.
Someone on Hacker News found an unbelievable Wikipedia article about the Athletics at the 1904 Summer Olympics – men’s marathon
“While Fred Lorz was greeted as the apparent winner, he was later disqualified as he had hitched a ride in a car for part of the race. The actual winner, Thomas Hicks, was near collapse and hallucinating by the end of the race, a side effect of being administered brandy, raw eggs, and strychnine by his trainers. The fourth-place finisher, Andarín Carvajal, took a nap during the race after eating spoiled apples.”
Steve Jobs:
“When you’re young, you look at TV and think “there’s a conspiracy.” The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realise that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.
That’s a far more depressing thought.”
“Hey honey comma oh this is a voice message sorry babe anyway” is how I start every voice message to my wife on my iPhone.
Still waiting for Big Audio Dynamite III
No-one’s singing in the streets again, Mackay, Mackay.
100 ways to improve your writing
Manyun Zou, Russell Goldenberg and Rob Smith have done the hard work on The Pudding to report on how The Big Bang Theory is censored in the People’s Republic of China.
This web app on Baseten was recommended to me to restore old photos and as you might be able to see with this ancient photo of yours truly, it works a treat!
Sunrise on a Sunday morning from Cabarita Beach, New South Wales
Someone was up at 4:30am and nothing would settle her.
Hint: it wasn’t Britt.
Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work, a summary:
- Share your thoughts and your process and your work, online, for free.
- You don’t need to be an expert to share your work - beginners can easily help other beginners.
- By sharing your work online, you’ll attract an audience of people who care about the same stuff you do - this can change your life.
David Perell on the news:
“The paradox of news: By telling us to care about everything, the news leads to apathy instead of action.”
I’m so unsubscribed from the news at the moment, it’s so liberating.
If something important happens, please text me.
Rob Hardy on non-coercive marketing:
“The key ingredient in non-coercive marketing is the golden rule. We should market to others the way we’d want to be marketed to ourselves. Non-coercive marketing places full authority and trust in people. It creates the conditions under which they can make empowered decisions for themselves, and do so in their own time. It doesn’t seek to persuade, manipulate, or pester people into a decision that’s already been made for them. It merely opens new doors, tells the truth about what’s behind those doors, then surrenders the outcome, trusting that the right people will step through when they’re ready.”
Introducing the next joshPhone. You can design yours on Neal’s website.
Patrick Collison has assemblers a fascinating list of questions, like:
Why do there seem to be more examples of rapidly-completed major projects in the past than the present?
Amelia Earhart:
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process, is its own reward.”
The guy who goes out of his way to hilariously grimace and loudly say ”good practice for your next marriage” at every wedding must be elated when he gets an invite.
Forever amazed at what people wear to weddings. It must be so beautiful to do that last gaze in a mirror at home before you leave for the ceremony and think ”damn I’m hot!”
“If he had known to say to the board some version of “Q2 deliverables were only at 10% of forecast, but because of our LTV:CAC ratio and percentage of pipeline in mid-market, we should see full quota attainment by Q4,” maybe his problems wouldn’t have been so serious.”
“In June of 1460, news reached Pope Pius II of an orgy which had recently taken place in the gardens of Giovanni di Bichis’s palace in Tuscany. To his dismay, it had been attended, and to some extent organised, by the vice-chancellor of the Roman Church, Cardinal Rodrigo de Borja.”
the best part about travelling for work is coming home to a tribe that’s missed me
I can’t believe no-one has been celebrating Digital Radio’s (DAB) 13th anniversary in Australia.
It’s like DAB doesn’t mean anything to anyone.
It might seem like a surprise but nine years ago in Seminyak I started thinking about moving to Mexico after reading this compelling sign.
Wow, I didn’t know this but you can use your $50 Qantas voucher like a power-up mid-flight so the flight attendant doesn’t smash into your elbows with the drinks cart, or to be allowed to push the seat in front of you back up when the passenger puts it down.
Retro ‘Roo
I’ve created marriage ceremonies in the coldest climates, through Californian deserts in winter, Iceland in winter, New Zealand mountaintops in winter.
Today in the Blue Mountains was the coldest I’ve ever felt, and in all those other weddings I wasn’t wearing a puffer jacket.
It cold.
Photo by my boy Zain Kruyer.
Seeing the #SolidarityWithSanna posts reminds me of something that happened 10 years ago next week: Alan Jones and Barnaby Joyce on the radio proclaiming that “women are destroying the joint” 1:29 into this audio. Some people struggle with female leadership.
Get back to me when your wedding invite is a bottle of craft gin. This is an actual wedding I’m at in December.
She watches her big sister (try to) do ballet all week
As a person born in 1981, the greatest dilemma I face is whether I identify as Gen X or Gen Y.
I don’t like Gen Whiners, they don’t seem like my kind of people, but then I hear really old people identify as Gen X and I’m sure I’m not that old.
I get itchy when I sit with a photo I’ve made for more than 24 hours, I couldn’t imagine dedicating 50 years to a work of art.
Time to get off the hamster wheel: interview with Spencer Howson
Spencer Howson on 4BC Weekends invited me into the studio to explain why we’re moving to Mexico.
DJ Patil - former U.S. Chief Data Scientist - has the best advice on building: dream in years, plan in months, evaluate in weeks, ship daily.
Nine years since I’ve walked through these doors
Henry Luce, founder of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines:
“To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things — machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man’s work — his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed.”
Eve Peyser in Intelligencer on Mensa:
“Many of its members think of themselves as outsiders and feel like Mensa is a place where they can be themselves and connect with people who understand and appreciate them.”
B.D. McClay in The Hedgehog Review:
“The other great crime of whataboutism is that it solidifies the online sense that the appearance of paying attention is paramount—not actually paying attention.”
View the world through a series of incentives and you’ll find we’re doomed in every direction. Health departments want people to drink less. Tax departments want people to drink more.
NPR:
Japan launches a contest to urge young people to drink more alcohol
How sunrise at Currumbin Rock looked this morning
An update to the whole ‘my photos were stolen and published in a book at Kmart" story:
Before beginning any legal proceedings I sent them an invoice for a “plucked from the sky” number to license my photos to them. $2,200 an image, $8,800.
The publisher freaked out, took the book off the shelves, and called me to apologise. They ended the phone call with a commitment to come back with a compensation plan, but so far nothing.
$2,035 to send a lawyer’s letter on a hope and a prayer that they respond.
It’d be a lot more money to take it to court.
Sitting here wondering how to respond, so I sent a text. Thank god autocorrect softened the blow.
Expo 88 is the reason I'm a nerd
One of my earliest memories is from Expo 88 in Brisbane. I remember the intense display of future technology - or at least what they thought it would be - and it sparked something in me that still rages today.
The wonder of how amazing tomorrow could be.
Thanks to Anthony for sharing this Expo 88 blog post from the National Archives in The Sizzle newsletter today for bringing all those nerdy memories back.
One of these photos has a very cool Josh Withers in it, I’ll let you play Where’s Wally to figure out which one. The other is from the NAA.
My favourite kind of internet communication is when you write a joke then people comment with real advice.
Sam Neil is bringing Jurassic Park down under!
My mate Jay has made a documentary about remote knowledge workers, digital nomads, working around the Arctic Circle and I’m pretty damn jealous of those landscapes, the visuals, and the lifestyle! Check out the trailer!
Temple & Webster bed: $450. Koala king mattress: $1039. I Love Linen sheets: $335. How Luna sleeps: priceless.
The only correct way today can go in #auspol is if the Prime Minister does a press conference where he takes off an Albo mask and is Scott Morrison underneath.
It’s weird when I hear about people watching the same TV show at the same time as other people because the antennas on a nearby mountain determined it so.
Its kinda quaint, like calling someone on the phone, or catching a bus cross-country.
Running your own business is the most powerful vessel for learning. Theory actualises itself into practical, meanwhile, you’ve placed a bet, you’ve made a sacrifice, on the learning.
An ever-changing and growing list of the top 50 life hacks at 50hacks.co
Muppets magic.
“I’d save every day like a treasure and then again I would spend them with you”
Cover of Jim Croce’s ‘Time In A Bottle’ as found on The Muppets in 1977. Also, weirdly, featured alongside another Muppet in an iPhone ad for the iPhone 6S and Siri.
Finally, how I feel about Britt. Love you xx
Salon Tom Weston’s Five Rules of Being A Grown-Up:
- You must not have anything wrong with you, or anything different about you.
- If you have something wrong or different about you, you really need to correct it. You need to be able to pass under all circumstances.
- If you can’t correct it, or change it in any way, you should just pretend that you have. It’s not a problem anymore. Good news!
- If you can’t even pretend not to have corrected the situation, you should just not show up, because it’s very painful for the rest of us to see you in your current condition.
- If you’re going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to be ashamed.
How many fools you know that have specific global and Australian marriage law, rituals, traditions, and customs knowledge like this? Not many. If any?
On distrusting Instagram
Tavi Gevinson in NY Mag’s The Cut:
“There are plenty of well-documented reasons to distrust Instagram — the platform where one is never not branding, never not making Facebook money, never not giving Facebook one’s data — but most unnerving are the ways in which it has led me to distrust myself. After countless adventures through the black hole, my propensity to share, perform, and entertain has melded with a desire far more cynical: to be liked, quantifiably, for an idealized version of myself, at a rate not possible even ten years ago. I think I am a writer and an actor and an artist. But I haven’t believed the purity of my own intentions ever since I became my own salesperson, too.”
Outside our front door just now
A solid opportunity to transfer some of your wealth to me and for me to transfer some of my art to your walls at www.joshwithers.art
Y’all bringing your outdoor furniture inside after using it?
As an old nerd I find it fundamentally offensive when tech podcasts publish a 404th episode instead of skipping it, or maybe publishing a no-audio audio file.
Saturday morning coffee date
I’d rather have no phone than an Android phone.
Why is it ok for William Joel to be professionally called Billy Joel but it’s not ok for Joshua Withers to be professionally called Joshy Withers?
Science says we can all just stay at home and the Titans will still lose despite a home ground advantage.
Jerry Saltz is a gift to this generation, and his Vulture article: How to Be an Artist should be required reading for humans on planet earth:
“33 rules to take you from clueless amateur to generational talent (or at least help you live life a little more creatively).”
Matt Ruby (plus every wedding photographer I know):
Your grandparents have photos in a shoebox, but we’ll have nothing. Reminder: Just like every hard drive fails eventually, every business goes under eventually. Get a hard copy of anything you want to actually own and keep forever.
I never knew I needed a Transformer that transformed into a Canon R5 until now. now it’s all I want in this life.
Answers to the 10 most common questions people ask about us moving to Mexico
Answering the most common questions I’ve been asked about Britt and I moving to Mexico with our two kids:
- When do you go? October 10, 2022, then I come back for a month’s work around Australia Nov-Dec and then I’m back in Mexico before Christmas.
- Where will you go? I’ll let you know when we get there. We’re going to float around and do some housesitting gigs and try to find our place in the country. Honestly, it might not even be Mexico in the end. The goal isn’t to go to Mexico, the goal is to leave our normal routines and life, and Mexico seemed like as good as any place to get a residency visa. But of course, we are going to Mexico and I always think of the people that move to Australia and go to Sydney, I reckon those internationals miss out. I don’t want to end up in the Sydney of Mexico, or the Surfers Paradise. I’d love to end up in the Tugun of Mexico, somewhere small and beautiful and unique.
- When will you come back? We’ll let you know when we’re back.
- How will you afford it? Please book our house, The Tugun Pause, on Airbnb … plus I’d love for my photography to mean something financially - you can buy prints at art.josh.withers.co. Also, we’re still running the Elopement Collective and also mentoring celebrants at The Celebrant Institute.
- What about the cartels? What about the snakes, spiders, crocodiles, and dropbears in Australia? Mexico is a really big nation, the whole place isn’t Narcos. I would encourage you to develop a wider view and taste of the world if you think that Mexico is all drug cartels and people smuggling.
- Why Mexico? Why not?
- What will happen to our existing businesses? We’ll still lead and operate The Elopement Collective remotely and I’m still in partnership with Sarah at The Celebrant Institute so my celebrant training and mentoring efforts will continue. Being a celebrant, that’s on ice for a season. Consider it a sabbatical.
- Why? The last two years have destroyed us. This is an effort to take back who we are, who we want to be, and what kind of childhood we want our kids to have. We’ve lost more than our accountant could count through this pandemic, and we’re still on the same hamster wheel. I tried changing the hamster wheel to real estate, but the truth is I needed to actually get off all hamster wheels.
- Will you do weddings in Mexico? I’m currently without a work visa in Mexico, so no, but I’m exploring options. Nothing will really matter until I reach my goal anyhow.
- What’s your goal, seeing as though you just mentioned it? My goal is to not know what to do tomorrow. When I don’t know what to do tomorrow, I’ll allow myself to start planning for the next season with Britt and the girls as a team.
Finally, if you’ve gotten this far you probably care about us as a family and are interested in our story. I’m fairly whelmed with the state of social media’s business models, algorithms, data abuse, and advertising these days so I’m publishing and sharing everything here on the blog first. If you’d like a weekly digest of everything shared here, throw your email into the subscribe form here. One day if enough of my community is subscribed here I might even just delete all the social media accounts.
A fascinating element of modern web design is that developing/producing for the open web has actually gotten harder, not easier.
I remember the promise of Microsoft FrontPage, Apple’s iWeb, Macromedia Dreamweaver, that normal people could just make websites then upload the boring old HTML, CSS, and images to a directory on a web-facing file server and bam you’re online.
But today you’ve either got Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress.com or installing Wordpress on your own server - but then shit gets weird. Like someone I know was all excited for Astro and I look at the website and in the hero image area is the instruction to “npm create astro@latest” and I have no idea what that means?
Where’s the cool and hip web content creator of today?
Never forget that time the two largest mobile phone software companies partnered together and the Australian federal government said, yeah nah, and instead blew $21 million on an app that found two cases and is being deleted today.
Sunrise this morning from Snapper Rocks
Photos were created by me, on the sunrise of Wednesday, 10 August 2022, at Snapper Rocks and Greenmount Beach at Coolangatta, Queensland. Photographed on a Canon EOS R5 with a 70-200mm lens.