Photography I Created
- Liechtenstein is one of the smallest countries in the world, both in terms of land area and population. It covers just 160 square kilometres, about the physical size of Geelong, with a population of just over 39,000, about the same population as the town of Orange in New South Wales.
- It is one of only two countries in the world that are “double landlocked”, which means they are landlocked by countries that are also landlocked. The other is Uzbekistan.
- Despite its small size, Liechtenstein is one of the wealthiest countries in the world per capita. The Prince of Lichtenstein, the head bloke, makes $40 mil a month off his own investments and businesses, he doesn’t take a wage or anything like that.
- Liechtenstein is the world’s largest exporter of false teeth, specifically for dentures. This is due to the presence of Ivoclar Vivadent, a company that leads the world in false teeth manufacturing. The country is also home to Hilti the construction tools company.
- Liechtenstein doesn’t have its own airport or railway system. The nearest airport is in Zurich, Switzerland. For rail, it is served by the Swiss railways.
- Liechtenstein is a principality, governed by a constitutional monarch who holds expansive powers, including the ability to veto legislation. It is the last remaining monarchy in the Holy Roman Empire.
- Liechtenstein had the highest gross domestic product (GDP) per person in the world, when adjusted by purchasing power parity.
- The entire country is invited to the castle of the Prince of Liechtenstein for beer and pretzels on National Day (August 15).
- Despite being an independent country, Liechtenstein uses the Swiss Franc as its official currency.
- Liechtenstein has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. It has even been reported that the country’s citizens often don’t lock their doors.
- Liechtenstein disbanded its army in 1868 because it was too costly. In fact, Switzerland has been responsible for its defence since 1923. The CIA World Factbook for many years incorrectly stated it had a defence budget of $12. It’s actually closer to zero.
- The country’s capital, Vaduz, and the region of the Alps, has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its stunning alpine beauty.
- Liechtenstein is known for its excellent wines. The Prince of Liechtenstein Winery, owned by the princely family, is one of the most famous wineries. I drank one of his beers today and it’s equally delicious.
- Despite its location in Central Europe, Liechtenstein managed to remain neutral and was untouched during both World War I and World War II.
- There are more businesses registered in Lichtenstein than residents, so most of the residents work in support of these businesses, or in tourism, dentistry, or working for Hilti making tools.
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fasten with a zipper.
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move at high speed.
- Nice and big
- USB-C charging
- notepad and pencil input for note taking and signing paperwork
- so big
- all the Remarkable 2 you want with the benefit of all the Kindle you want
- new fancy product
- so very big
- no buttons
- too big
- a little heavy
- Kindle OS is still crappy and salesy
- new product, 1.0 version sadness
Drove the 90 minutes from Exmouth to photograph the sunset in Coral Bay this afternoon and also see the couple I’m marrying this weekend, and after the sun had set I found that all the local restaurants all had 90 minute waits, so I thought, I could just drive back to Exmouth for dinner.
Alas, everything in Exmouth was closed, not even a vending machine for a chocolate.
So I present to you my art from today, art quite literally made by a starving artist.
Also, regional Australia, let’s have at least one kitchen open past 8pm hey?
Luckily today is the first day back from holidays for The Short Order, so I was blessed to receive a 5:30am breaky burger for dinner.
Driving from Siena, Italy, to Graz, Austria, today Goldie and I were looking for somewhere to stop for lunch and we decided on this place named after a beach in Los Angeles.
I took Britt’s Fuji X-S10 with the 27mm f/2.8 for a play while we were there.
📷🇮🇹 Our last Monday in Puglia
A birds eye view of Martina Franca, in southern Puglia, where we’ve been hanging out this month.
In these photos, happening at the same time, is a funeral procession, a dance contest, and an opera, amongst whatever else the 49,000 residents are getting up to.
There’s also two 360 photos of Martina Franca in this embed, a higher and lower shot, look for the hotspots when you’re scrolling around.
📷🇮🇹🚁 Fifteen of Monopoli’s best from my Mavic in Puglia yesterday
⛪️ I did it, I finally did it. I crucified the sun.
… and other photos from the sunset over Monopoli, Puglia, this afternoon 📷🌇🇮🇹
📷🇮🇹🏖️ Family day at the beach at Cala Maka. The beach is apparently/allegedly called Torre Canne Nord Prima della Casa Grigia, which translated from Italian means, North Canne Tower Before the Gray House, which is the most romantic beach name I’ve ever read.
Good luck ever naming a beach better than that.
📷🇮🇹 40 degrees celsius today in Martina Franca, but the second you step into the shade the temperature drops about fifteen of those bad boy degrees.
📷🇮🇹 Alberobello, Puglia
📷🇮🇹 Polignano a Mare, Puglia
📷🇮🇹 Sunday frames from Martina Franca, Puglia, Italy
🏖️ Tuesday at Spiaggia Lido Silvana, Puglia, Italy
Temple of Valadier: Refuge for sinners
Over 1000 years old, this sanctuary in Genga’s Frasassi Caves was intended to be a refuge from sinners, but when you see it from a sky, it looks like the church itself is seeking refuge from the world.
The temple you now see was complete in 1827 under the suggestion of Pope Leo XII. For all this time it was called the Temple of Valadier but recent study has revealed that Giuseppe Valadier, its namesake architect, didn’t design it at all.
Either which way, it’s nice to know that Catholic sinners get a cool place to pilgrimage to.
I caught a few moments after the sun set, in between rain clouds, to get the drone up. I’d been driving for 45 minutes and gotten stuck down two dead ends. I was making these photos tonight!
A few other accounts of the sanctuary:
Does Apple Vision mean 360 content is finally going to have its moment?
I’ve been playing around with 360 content for over seven years ago now and I have a few questions about where Apple is going to take the format.
If you make 360 content today, you spend a lot of time looking at content like this:
It’s not as appealing as the embeds below.
I’ve recorded my work creating marriage ceremonies in 360 video, and with my various DJI drones, I’ve been trying to create 360 still content as well.
My question and thought for today is how will the new spatial computing frontier handle consumer stills and video in 360? Will Apple standardise the media, and let it be viewed in Preview or Quick Look?
Will other devices be able to make content for the Apple Vision, will Apple Vision 3D or 360 content be viewable and enjoyed on other platforms?
How should content creators prepare for this new content-style? Is this permission to buy new gear?!!? (Please let my wife know if so).
I’ve been bullish on 360 for over seven years, I’m excited to see where it goes.
Where we’re currently staying in Northern Italy
Playa Ballandra, Mexico
Brisbane, Australia
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Malbun snow village, Liechtenstein
Lake Wolfgang, Austria
El Pescadero, Mexico
And where we’ll build our home one day, Tasmania
It’s normally pretty hard to try and fit an entire nation in one photo. It’s a little bit easier if you’re making a 360 panoramic photo. But still, most nations don’t fit.
So I can proudly say I think I got almost all of Liechtenstein in this photo.
I have a confession to make.
I didn’t know “The Alps” were a thing. I thought people referred to “the alps” when they referred to alpine areas.
This probably explains why I nerded out pretty hard when I got to the Alps and kept on typing the alps and all my computing devices would autocorrect to The Alps.
Anyway, here’s a 360 photo of a part of the Alps from Kufstein in Austria.
And another from Lake Wolfgang
Lichtenstein 3D
One of my childhood happy memories was receiving gifts from my Aunty Tracey who lived in Lichtenstein. She was always sending Liechtenstein paraphernalia and propaganda and I was here for it.
For over 30 years I’ve kept this magical vision in my mind of what the richest country per capita on earth would look like.
How safe could a country with no defence force feel? How do you even get to a country that has no airport? How small can the smallest country to win an Olympic medal be? How beautiful could the only country on earth to be completely in the alps be?
Today I got some answers.
P.S. Scroll to the bottom of the post for an awesome 360 photo!
We’re really lucky to be staying near the summits of the mountains, in Malbun, with friends of my aunt (thank you Martina and Markus!), it feels like we’re on the set of a fantastical movie. It’s unbelievably beautiful here.
The two furthest-away boundaries of the entire nation are 25km apart!
Some of the most interesting Lichtenstein facts I know:
The fascinating story of Castle Itter and the last European WWII battle
Driving across Austria this week we’ve seen plenty of castles, we even stayed in one, and every sighting of one is pretty special.
There’s one near us which looks very much like a castle, and tonight on our last night in Hopfgarten I found out the history of the castle on Atlas Obscura and it’s the most interesting of stories:
In the final weeks of the European theater of World War II, an unexpected union of German and American forces guarded a select group of abandoned Nazi prisoners against the Waffen-SS. The conflict fought by this unique joint American-German alliance is frequently referred to as the strangest battle of World War II.
Castle Itter was first built in the ninth century by the Bavarians and spent many years as a private residence. In May of 1943, after the Anschluss of Austria, it was transformed into a prison. For two years, French captives considered to be of high value were confined within its walls.
But as Stephen Harding writes in The Last Battle, those prisoners eventually found themselves unguarded and thrust into a precarious position. Days after Hitler died by suicide, it became clear the war had reached a turning point. The commander and warden of the prisoners at Castle Itter abandoned their posts, knowing the end of the war was near. The remaining guards also fled, essentially giving the castle to those imprisoned within.
This left the prisoners vulnerable to the loyal Waffen-SS troops prowling the countryside in search of deserters and enemies of the regime. This is when the strange, unlikely union of German and American forces began. Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, a highly decorated SS Hauptsturmführer and Josef “Sep” Gangl, a Wehrmacht Major, joined Captain John “Jack” Carey Lee, Jr., an American Tank Company Commander, in protecting the prisoners and defending the castle.
Schrader and Gangl had become disillusioned with the Nazi ideology and both independently connected with the Austrian resistance. Upon hearing the prisoners at the castle were unguarded, Schrader went to the fortress to protect those held inside. Gangl, now serving as the head of the local resistance, was aware the forces under his command would not be strong enough to fight against the nearby Waffen-SS troops. He realized he needed the American forces to arrive, so he set off to find them in Kufstein.
Not long after arriving in Kufstein, Gangl met up with Lee and they began plotting. After a reconnaissance mission, Lee and his friend brought their Sherman Tanks to the defend the castle. But along the way, poor infrastructure caused one tank and its crew to be left behind.
Once at the castle, Wehrmacht soldiers and the few Americans prepared for battle. The prisoners were instructed to remain safely in the cellar, but many defied these orders and fought alongside the German and American troops. The stage was now set for the fight.
Between 100 and 150 Waffen-SS troops attacked the castle in the early morning hours of May 5. Though one Wehrmacht soldier abandoned his post during the fighting, the remaining American-German defenses held the prison until more American troops from the 142nd Infantry Regiment arrived 12 hours after the fighting had begun. With the help of the additional American troops, the guards defeated the Waffen-SS in what’s viewed the last battle fought in the European theater of World War II. Gangl sadly perished during the fight.
Watched the sun set into Germany across the German/Austrian border tonight.
Withers on film in Hawaii
Withers in Mexico.
I found an undeveloped roll of film from our time in Baja California Sur. Missing Cerritos Beach!
Withers in Paris on 35mm film
My favourite thing to do in the big cities of the world is to ignore the must-do lists, the must-see places, the hotspots and the icons, and to just walk around and exist in a different big city. Walking down random streets, getting bad coffee at little-known cafes, and finding the unseen parts of a city. The towers, cathedrals, arches and museums are cool and we inevitably end up there. But there’s something really interesting to me about experiencing another people’s normal.
My review and photos of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport
Let me spin you a yarn about my favourite airport hotel, the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport in New York. This hotel is a real beauty, with a great story behind it.
Once upon a time, in the golden era of air travel, TWA - Trans World Airlines - was a big shot in the aviation world. Their Flight Center at JFK Airport, designed by the legendary architect Eero Saarinen, was the bee’s knees when it opened in 1962. It was a true symbol of the Jet Age, with its swooping lines, massive windows, and ultra-modern interiors. But, like so much technology - particularly aviation technology - it was practically obsolete by the time it opened with the Lockheed Constellation it was planned to accommodate being swiftly replaced by jetliners. TWA sadly went belly up in January 2001 and was acquired by American Airlines, who then made most of the staff redundant later that year as September 11 left a dent in the air travel market.
For years the iconic TWA Flight Center sat empty, gathering dust and waiting for someone to give it a new lease on life. Enter MCR Development, who had the idea to turn the old bird into a swanky hotel. So, in 2018 they restored the Flight Center to its former glory and added two hotel wings with 512 guest rooms.
The building
Eero Saarinen is one of the great architects of the twentieth century and although the TWA Hotel is a little different to the TWA Flight Center Saarinen designed, it’s still got the Eero blood running through its entire fuselage.
Inside
Connie
There’s a fully restored 1958 Lockheed Constellation aeroplane called “Connie” that’s been repurposed as a cocktail lounge, where you can sip on a cold one and dream about the good ol' days. The original Flight Centre was designed to serve Constellations but as quickly as TWA put them into service and the terminal started putting passengers aboard jet planes started replacing them.
The Connie was a plane at the right place but at the wrong time.
Connie was even hosting a wedding the day I was there.
The pool
The rooftop pool at the hotel is a major attraction, firstly because it’s a pool at JFK, secondly because of the view, thirdly because on cold days it’s heated like a jacuzzi, and finally because you can sip a cocktail in a jacuzzi warm pool with your kids watching Emirates Airbus A380s land and taxi so close that you could throw a stone at the captain.
The actual hotel stay
Our inbound flight to JFK from San Diego arrived at 7am, and we had a midnight flight out to Paris, so we booked an 8am to 8pm day rate that cost $249 USD which at the time was cheaper than overnight, and cheaper than two overnights which is what we’d need to book at a regular hotel to allow for an 8am to 8pm stay.
The food was actually really good. We generally don’t dine at airport hotel restaurants because their quality is usually poor and the price high, because they know they have you cornered. The Paris Cafe food however was really really good.
The front-of-house service however was poor. The housekeeping staff were beyond friendly and lovely, but the people at reception and front of the house in food and beverage service really made us feel like we’d ruined their day.
So, there you have it, the story and photos of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. It’s a testament to the spirit of innovation and the importance of preserving the USA’s architectural gems. If you’re ever in the Big Apple, it’s worth checking out this iconic piece of American aviation history.
My first tweet was tweeted 18 months before I even started tweeting
I’ve been reminiscing over Twitter this week, wondering what the last tweet will be amongst other things as Space Karen prepares to take away the verification tick on my profile that proves I am who I am, a tick gifted to me from my time in the media in Australia.
I started my current Twitter account in October 2009 but I was sure that I had an account before then so I went searching and searching and searching and found it: March 2008, @1073brekky.
In 2008 I scored my first paid breakfast radio gig: the morning show on 107.3 FM on the Gold Coast (at the time called 1073fm but now called Juice FM). I’d been training and prepping for this role for five years and was so keen. I was also a bread-and-butter kind of computer nerd, so ideally my non-nerdy radio show would have some nerdy elements. In 2008 the breakfast guy didn’t get access to the website - they probably still don’t today - so I wanted to find a way to post short updates to the website. Something inside of me felt like the internet might be a thing one day so it would be good to use it early. I’ve got so many stories about being the nerdiest and most future-thinking guy in the radio station that it broke my heart so many times to be honest.
I had heard things about this service in the USA called Twitter that had heralded a new kind of web publishing, micro-blogging. You could send updates to the service and they could appear in a website widget. I signed up, got the code to the web developer and before you know it, I could post updates to my show website! I didn’t care so much for the Tweeting, the replying, or the broadcasting. I just wanted to blog on my radio station website and the CRM didn’t allow blogging or micro-blogging or anything of the like.
Twitter solved my problem and I’m sure my problem was never in any of their minimum-viable product meetings.
About two months later I quit the station because at the time it was honestly a terrible place a human with a soul could want to work, but fifteen years on I only have good memories from my first breakfast show, my first Twitter account, and my experiences being unleashed on the Gold Coast community on the radio.
Everything that was old and awesome becomes new and terrible, whist still whipping the llama’s ass.
The news is incentivised to be broken and terrible
I was a media and news man for over a decade, I loved being - what I considered to be - an important part of the community, telling its stories and keeping the community informed, safe, and entertained.
But the industry isn’t doing well.
The second story on news.com.au today is about a Fox News story about a recent TikTok that went viral, which the newsdesk found out about through a Twitter user sharing the TikTok in three parts, and the TikTok was just a replay of a Youtube clip from a radio show four years ago.
Serendipitously the original clip and radio show was broadcast about one kilometre from where I type this in Franklin, Tennessee, but there’s no good reason for Australia’s national news website - news.com.au - to publish this as a second story today. That the second most important story in Australia today is a four year old viral video is an insult to the wealth of stories Australia has to tell, and the global stories it could engage with.
Yes, it gets the clicks. Yes, it’s actually an important story inside the video, be debt free. But from a professional storytelling point of view it’s embarrassing for the news.com.au staff. Even the actual article is poorly written and just lazy.
This is the downfall of society, our storytellers are poorly incentivised to do good work, and over incentivised to do work that gets clicks that advertisers want even though no-one is clicking the ads.
Because I’m a man-child I wanted to share my two of my favourite photos from photographing the horse sanctuary in Baja
Six months a gringo and no bad days
Six months ago to the day we arrived in Baja California Sur without even knowing that’s what B.C.S. stood for in our hotel’s address as we filled out the entry cards.
Six months on I have a wealth of stories that I feel odd about sharing. Most of them are about how different it is in Mexico compared to Australia. Who knew?! But I can’t find a way to tell the stories without admitting that they were witnessed through my own lens of how the world should be. Paved roads, hot and strong coffee, tacos with proteins other than seafood in them, and the story about the story about George Clooney the bartender told me, all really don’t matter, unless we’re a few whiskies deep around a campfire. It’s different here, not all roads are paved, and gringoes like me have been walking in for years wondering why things here aren’t like home.
The truth is that Mexico is jam-packed with amazing people. We’ve never felt safer and we love it here.
My one takeaway today is that in six months I’ve seen about six clouds. Baja really lived up to its slogan: no bad days.
Our last Baja sunset for a while
Our last day in Baja
Last day of school for the girls in Baja
I’ve thought about these three points pretty much every hour of every day since I first read it three days ago in James Clear’s 3-2-1 email
The future of content: video of someone watching a video of someone who wrote a song about their low self esteem sponsored by a real estate agent I’d not do business with if only because I’m not going to click an ad to take me away from watching this train wreck of a video.
Location, location, location #playacerritos
You’ve got to get up early to catch the Mexican Coke dealers
Todos Santos, BCS, on Good Friday
Still the best food and beverage proposition in Baja
Martha!
I’m doing a redesign of a website whilst also moving them from Squarespace to Shopify and I’m pretty sure the cheeky copy sprinkled across the new homepage won’t make it past the first review, but I’m quite proud of it, so I had to share it somewhere.
Good Friday for Luna
I’m going to miss living in the desert when we leave next week. So many cactus started flowering this week and they’re beautiful.
Apple’s gotta be the company to come in and either buy or partner with StabilityAI right?
“Please lower your standards”
Baja sunset
How do you do fellow kids?
The moon over Baja tonight was so beautiful. Here it is captured by three lenses. Ones an iPhone 14 Pro’s 24mm lens, another is a Canon RF 35mm, and another is a Canon RF 70-200mm cropped.
I’ve never flown Delta Air Lines, but Britt did last week, and a friend here in Baja is a frequent flyer with the airline, both, unprompted, cited the seat-back entertainment as one of the reasons they would fly them again.
Customer satisfaction win for Delta.
My first look at the 400 megapixel mode on the Canon EOS R5
I’m a sucker for megapixels, because as much as they really don’t matter to most people - and they really shouldn’t - for me they often mean I’ve got room to crop. More pixels collected means more pixels you can delete, a post-production version of digital zoom if you like.
Other, smarter, and different, people will have different reasons for wanting more pixels, so I’m not here to pass judgement on the feature, just to share my first thoughts and two images I’ve made with the feature.
The feature is actually called IBIS High-resolution shot, apparently, it how it works is that instead of using the stabilisation for stabilising, it uses it to take a bunch of photos whilst moving the sensor, then composes one big image out of it.
So that’s why shooting handheld isn’t a great idea, partially because IBIS (In-Body Image Stabilisation) isn’t enabled, and partially because the collection of photos isn’t all taken at once, they’re taken sequentially.
So as you’ll find in my first demo, the palm trees moving in the wind didn’t quite make it through to the 400-megapixel image in the best quality.
Below you can download the original raw or jpeg, along with the full-resolution jpegs as exported from Lightroom, plus if you want to play with the files yourself you can remix them in Lightroom online.
🪟◾️ El Pescadero in regular 44-megapixel mode - 21.2 megabyte CR3 raw file, 29.8 megabytes processed JPEG from Lightroom - remix it in Lightroom online.
🪟⬛️ El Pescadero in 400-megapixel mode - 122.7 megabytes JPEG original file from the camera, 285.2 megabytes processed JPEG from Lightroom - remix it in Lightroom online.
🍌◾️ Banana in regular 44-megapixel mode - 27.1 megabytes CR3 raw file, 41.4 megabytes processed JPEG from Lightroom - remix it in Lightroom online.
🍌⬛️ Banana in 400-megapixel mode - 85.1 megabyte JPG original file from the camera, 213.6 megabytes processed JPEG from Lightroom - remix it in Lightroom online.
Get the Canon EOS R5 firmware update to 1.8.1 on the Canon website, and reports said you’d need to use Canon’s EOS Utility to import and read the files. That hasn’t been my experience. They’re just regular, really big, JPEGs. If you open up the CF or SD card in Finder, it’s the same file list, and Lightroom handled them fine, if not a little slowly.
So is it worth it? Let’s zoom in. Here’s a close-up of the same banana peel scar in the two images.
If you need a really good photo of a banana then I reckon this might be the feature for you. But if you need a really good photo of a palm frond…
Maybe a medium-format camera is what you need instead?
📷 Mirror (@Rori)
Now you’re just a music playback medium that I used to know.
(Found in an op-shop in 2017)
📷 Slice (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @meandering)
Last week Goldie grabbed a big knife off the kitchen bench when I wasn’t looking.
Thinking about the Coolangatta boardriders today
📷 Prompt (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @moonmehta)
I’m just a boy, standing in front of a couple, asking them to make out in front of their grandparents.
(I’m a wedding celebrant)
Oh, this is awkward. The artificial intelligence doesn’t know that the United Kingdom has left the European Union. If I tell it is it going to have an emotional meltdown?
📷 Support (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @JohnAN)
I’ve spent a lot of time at the Los Sagrados Horse Sanctuary over the past few weeks, and the biggest take away for me isn’t just the support we can offer to horses, but the support they offer to us.
The computer at Picfair has decided that these pieces of art are the ones people are most likely to buy from my print store and hang on their wall, prove it wrong.
Printing in most countries worldwide so delivery is usually local which means it’s quick and easy.
The one where Father Nathan Monk casually suggests that Jesus might of been gay.
The Christians are going to roast you, Monk. Godspeed.
22 Jump Street is going to be Kanye’s Mother Theresa moment.
Which cinematic alien or monster do you think my huevos rancheros looks like? I’m seeing Dr. Zoidberg.
📷 Instrument (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @UnfocusedWanderlust)
On Friday I was photographing Los Sagrados for their new website, and a musician came out to perform the flute and percussion for the horses. It was quite a thing to witness.
Disco tech
Luna and I flexing our frequent flyer privileges this afternoon.
This week in cactus
While Britt’s been away this last fortnight I’ve had heaps of one-on-one time with Goldie while her big sister is at school.
Bono and The Edge’s Tiny Desk Concert is beautiful. In particular, the “argument between two mates”, Stuck in Moment You Can’t Get Out Of.
Missing home/Australia/Gold Coast tonight
Help me name my new creation which I made for the kids for dinner tonight. It’s a quesadilla with leftover spaghetti bolognaise sauce and despite Luna’s objections, it’s great!
Coming soon to old London Town, pixels that I made in Burleigh Heads.
Three years of hell
Three years ago today I had the wildest, wettest day at work so far. Bringing a wedding forward a day, performing the wedding ceremony I already had for that day, then doing the brought-forward ceremony in the rain, rushing back to Sydney Airport from the Blue Mountains, every store is closed in the airport and we catch the fabled last flight into Queensland before they closed the border.
Three years of hell. Here’s to never getting so silly ever again. You can’t stop people from dying, it’s inevitable, but you can stop people from living.
A new website for Los Sagrados Horse Sanctuary
Flexed my vintage graphic design skills for the local Baja horse sanctuary recently and I’m pretty proud of the work I’ve done.
I used to do web design professionally back in the olden days when computers were stone tablets and Jesus was a boy.
Plus before now you couldn’t find the ranch on Apple or Google Maps properly, and all the search engines and AI chat models didn’t know about them.
Over the coming weeks that will all change as the databases and algorithms catch up.
The horse sanctuary is a registered Mexican charity so they can now take donations online, and they’re on the way to taking horse riding reservations online, selling tickets to events, and also operating as an event venue with online booking etc.
Plus they’ve now got email on their own domain name so they look and feel more professional to donors and grant-giving organisations.
Finally, for the first time in a web design project I got to make all the photography with Britt so we had full creative control of the project.
📷 Insect (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by a@alexink)
📷 Tiny {people} (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @jasonmcfadden)
It was Luna’s turn to decide what we had for breakfast. Her choice? La Esquina, the cafe with pancakes and a playground.
You know yo’ve really embedded yourself in a Mexican community when you see a friend riding in the back of a truck on the highway.
📷 Houseplant. Did I do the #mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt right, @jensands)?
(Photo made a few moments ago on the way to get a coffee in Los Cerritos, Baja California Sur)
📷🇲🇽 Analog (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @skarjune)
I made these photos on Playa Cerritos, Baja California Sur, Mexico, on a broken film camera a week ago, then a few days later they were developed in a photo lab at Currumbin Beach, Australia, and I’m posting them today from Las Tunas, Mexico. The wonders of living in a connected world. (Britt has flown back to Australia this week).
📷 Portico (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @annahavrom)
From a snow day in Nashville between Christmas and New Year’s Eve just passed.
📷 Early (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @krisfredrick) also shared on Pexels.
📷 Road (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @Dejus)
There’s a saying in Baja that “bad roads bring good people and good roads bring bad people”.
So we keep the ungraded and bumpy dirt roads as an instrument of faith in the neighbours we want.
📷 Horizon (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @crossingthethreshold)
📷 Connection (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @agilelisa)
The moment I connected with my minutes-old first child and daughter.
📷 Shiny (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @odd)
The second percolator I’ve owned in Mexico. I forgot the first one was on the stove, on heat. Melted all the plastic components.
📷 Gimcrack (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @jafish).
My local tyre shop here in Baja California Sur has real gimcrack vibes.
Friday afternoon in Pescadero, Baja California Sur
📷 Ritual (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @drewbelf)
Our morning coffee. While we’re in El Pescadero, it’s from La Comuna Espresso Bar at Mini Super Munchies.
📷 Together (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @sherif)
Our little nomadic family, our most recent photo all together in Australia, in October last year.
Rancho Gaspareño
Bryan Jáuregui quotes Greg Schredder regarding Rancho Gaspareño, Baja California Sur, just south of Todos Santos, emphasis and photos mine:
Rancho Gaspareño was named after a Spanish galleon that went aground on the point, the Gaspareño. It was one of the so-called Manila galleons, Spanish ships that sailed between the Philippines and Acapulco for 250 years, bringing spices, silks and other luxuries from the far east to New Spain. All these galleons sailed the Pacific coast of Baja on their way to Acapulco, so naturally enough the area became riddled with pirates, many of them English and Dutch.
There are many tales of buried pirate treasure in the area, and local school groups still come to explore the cave at Rancho Gaspareño each year to tap into the lore. Treasure hunters have reason for optimism; in 1974 when the road from La Paz to the ferry terminal at Pichilingue was being built, a pirate chest of plundered loot was discovered by road workers.
I think of this part of the Baja coastline as the forgotten area. People drive past Rancho Gaspareño going a hundred miles an hour on the new 4-lane highway and have no idea of the history of the area.
The Guaycura and Pericue Indians were the original inhabitants before the Jesuit’s arrival in 1697, and they were essentially wiped out by the time the Jesuits left in 1768. The Jesuits built their theocracy based on a promise to the King of Spain to get rid of the pirates who were plundering his ships, and the pirates faded away with the demise of the Manila galleons in 1815. Dominican Padre Gabriel González had a ranch near Gaspareño from 1825 to 1850, and the tobacco, rum, sugar, corn, and livestock he produced there made him the richest man in Baja California. From his ranch the padre engaged in espionage and guerilla warfare during the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848, and – thanks in part to the Padre – Mexico won a major victory near Gaspareño (but lost the war). By 1855 the Padre had lost his political backing and left Baja for good. For the next one hundred years entrepreneurs made fortunes in the sugar cane industry with fields in areas like Gaspareño, but in the 1950s a severe drought and price drop lead to the demise of the industry; the last sugar processing plant closed in 1974. In that same year the trans peninsular highway made its way to Todos Santos, bringing new life to the town, and in 1985 renowned artist Charles Stewart arrived from Taos, planting the seed for Todos Santos’ current incarnation as an artists’ colony. It remains an agricultural center and surfing hotspot, only now it is firmly on the radar of major developers.
Now we all just speed past at 120km/hr on the four-lane highway and wonder how much the owner wants for it (shhh, $12M).
📷 Early morning beach walks with my three girls (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt ‘walk’ suggested by @lwdupont)
Ten whale soup off Todos Santos yesterday 🐋📷🚁
📷 Whole (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @val)
A whole lot of whale as I saw it from my aerial camera yesterday.
Because I couldn’t get my head clear to write this morning I worked on a cover for the book instead.
If you’d walk past this in a shop and stop, like this.
Would you buy it? Let me know why.
📷 Engineering (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @ridwan)
These are my DJI microphones, and as a travelling nerd I really appreciate how they’ve been engineered, all to stay within the little charging case.
📷 Tile (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @thedimpulse)
Luna, nine months old, taking a breather on the floor of a Tuscan church.
📷 Tile (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @thedimpulse)
Photo made outside a small Italian restaurant in Brisbane.
📷 Zip (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @miraz)
zip /zip/
verb
Local Baja news includes the taco price index
📷 Solitude (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @circustiger)
I made this photo in Yosemite National Park.
The most interesting (to me) new app/social net-ugh-something-work is Artifact. It’s from the guys who created Instagram but it’s like a ‘TikTok for articles/blog posts/news.
I personally would much prefer to read than watch a video, so this is my kind of network.
Islands, they’re always in the last place you look.
📷 Weather (#mbmar Micro Blog March photo challenge prompt suggested by @pcora)
Photo made in Newport Beach looking at Catalina on Saturday just passed.
They got me by talking about my main domain name and my main domain host. Even though it’s not hosted at VentraIP. I’m just so used to having to correct payments there.
I didn’t even notice the bung I in VentraIP, the bad email address, the bad domain.
I’ve locked the two credit cards I fed them. Feel like an idiot.
As Abe Simpson said, and it will happen to yoouuuuu.
A letter from a freelancing poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, to her publisher, Poetry magazine, with the business inspiration we all could take, from Letters of Note.
📷 Four frames from El Pescadero, Baja California Sur, today
📷🚁🇲🇽 Four aerial frames from Playa Los Cerritos, Baja California Sur
📷✈️🇺🇸 Four frames out the window of AA2171
📷✈️🇺🇸 Four frames from LAX on Sunday
📷 Four frames from Newport Beach this past weekend
Hey, don’t be alarmed or anything but the President of Mexico, the head honcho, the big guy in charge, has tweeted that one of his engineers has taken a photo of an elf. Just another day south o’ the border.
If you want surf and snow in the same trip, I can definitely recommend Los Angeles today.
Drove past this park today and noticed something interesting on Google Maps at (33.6621623, -117.8775484).
I wonder how many aircraft the Google Maps aerial photographers have captured?
Now I’ve just got to hope the people writing memos or sending emails regarding Bel’s Guide don’t stop me.
This is good content, we should podcast about it.
Visited the Japanese mothership (aka Canon campus) in Los Angeles and asked them to clean my cameras and lenses.
Steve Jobs in 1984 spotting a Macintosh in the wild for the first time.
I couldn’t begin to imagine the what he was feeling seeing a product he knew so intimately, that his team had worked on endlessly, to see from the street it just being used by someone in an office.
I tried but it turns out you can’t go Out before you go In
It’s so special to be in LA to watch the city fall to pieces with my own eyes.
‘dat light + reflection
Goldie, taking full advantage of the Shatner Seat
What a time to be alive
Pure second child energy.
I’m going to start sneaking in to her room while she sleeps and bottling some of that excess second child energy and selling it to soldiers and personal trainers who need to get hyped up.
Mexican Marines
Sunday // Playa Cerritos, BCS
Mark Twain’s use of a typewriter. I wonder if AI-writing is today’s typewriter?
Tres es compañía (three frames of three humpback whales shot a few minutes ago in El Pescadero, Baja California Sur, Mexico)
Wednesday frames
Whale watching in Baja
When you look down at just the right time // whale watching in El Pescadero, Baja California Sur
El Pescadero seafood stall
I heard you were into Jesus, so I got you some Jesus
Wednesday in Todos Santos
Wednesday in El Pescadero
This is on the menu as Fresh Water or Agua Fresco.
Sometime before now Mexicans weren’t taking to actual water that was fresh and without watermelon straws, so smart boffins in Mexico City mixed in some fruit and sweetener, and hey presto, fresh waters and an obesity problem!
Anthony shared this signed cover art in today’s edition of The Sizzle and very few images can conjure up so much nostalgia. I still remember visiting the shareware kiosk (computer in a box) at Video Ezy and downloading the shareware version of Doom onto two 3.5" floppy disks.
Spotting a scam email
Don’t believe everything AI tells you. This bio sounds right, but it’s not. From what I understand I’ve never been in Vogue, The Knot, or Martha Vomit Stewart Weddings. I am not a founding member of the AFCC, and I’ve not been Sydney-based for over a decade. I also don’t write my couple’s vows.
The many branches of the Fediverse by Per Axbom.
One Million Downloads on Unsplash
Ive always secretly thought that when I reached 1 million downloads on Unsplash I’d stop posting there.
But as I passed the landmark this week I realised that sometimes we set silly goals about silly things.
I still don’t know why I share my art there, but I know I get more messages, emails, and commissioned paid work from Unsplash than I do from any other of my networks or communities.
It might be 8yrs late, but you’re finally getting my book: The Rebel’s Guide To Getting Married is coming in 2023. It’s a book about planning a wedding with intention and purpose, written by yours truly, Oz’s most hated celebrant & I’m writing live on my wedding blog.
Current status: forgot to put coffee in the percolator.
Current status: horizontal at El Pescadero
Sad. The person typing this has finally given up on the dream of eternal youth and is scaling back his dream of More Space to Default.
Popped up to say hi then went back down again
Hola
I’ve lived around the ocean my whole life and I’ve never seen the ocean as angry and ferocious as I have at Todos santos, Baja California Sur, this week.
Somehow both our girls have learned to pose like this and I have no idea how, or why, or where it’s from.
Ok then, photorapture it is
The Home Owners Association is not going to be happy
🏡 at El Pescadero, Baja California Sur, Mexico
I’m not going to lie, I don’t have to hug everyone I marry when I first see them at the ceremony, but I want to.
Alani & Ethan #marriedbyjosh on the Gold Coast with the Elopement Collective
Luna asked me to play some fairy songs. So I search for such a thing in Apple Music.
Friday afternoon at Pescadero
Joe Mayall in There’s No “Woke Capitalism.” Only Capitalism:
“Profit: By any means necessary.”
“Companies seek profit. Everything else is just a means to an end.”
The spare tyre for our car sits up and under the body of the car, under the front seats. Myself and the tyre guy took quite a while to figure this all out.
You look at this photo and think it’s some kind of grand cathedral in Rome. It’s a storage room in Ravello.
Every week, sometimes every day, Britt and my inbox is filled with couples worrying about what happens if it rains, or if it’s too hot, or if something something. All valid worries, but they don’t stress us out too much because we always find a way. We’ll always find a storage room on the Amalfi Coast that also just happens to be an epic location for your ceremony.
That’s what we do. We look for solutions, not problems.
Any chimp can find a problem. We find a storage room, move all the things being stored, and then walk you into a sacred place where you can exchange vows intimately, in private, with joy and peace.
This is Raimie and Kelly on the Amalfi Coast in Villa Cimbrone with the Elopement Collective and Joey & Jase.
16 years ago today the way I viewed the world changed completely. I can still remember seeing that little lump of plastic and metal in Steve Jobs’s hand, watching a video stream, and thinking that everything changed. Today that remains ever so.
I believe that you can measure the meaning of something by imagining taking it away. What would life be like if we didn’t have it? Like earlier today I mused to a friend that if a certain media property disappeared, no one would notice.
Imagine a world without the iPhone. You might point to Android phones, but 16 years ago today the team developing Android ‘started over’ and despite the common argument that iPhone copies Android’s leadership, on that day, Android took iPhone’s lead.
Even comparing the two, Android was just a software platform under development. iPhone was hardware and software. Not long after it became a software development platform and the world as we know it today changed completely. Services you take for granted were enabled that day.
16 years is nothing special, but every year when this date rolls around, and the subsequent anniversaries, I reflect how years later we’ve not experienced a tectonic shift like that since.
“Make something wonderful and put it out there." You sure did, Apple. You sure did.
When you elope in a far-away destination you’re choosing a very different vibe and moment than a domestic elopement. It firmly places your ceremony - the beginning of your marriage - in the middle of an adventure. Between customs, packing, flights, delays, transfers, language barriers, different foods and weather, it’s impossible to not revel in the moment as you take a deep breath of that fresh international air and exchange vows with me and the @elopementcollective in some epic location like Italy, Iceland, or anywhere in-between.
I’m up for a European wedding adventure any day of the week, but in June and July 2024 I’ll be there with The Elopement Collective plus House of Lucie and Jason Corroto.
More info available in my email my name at my last name dot co or withers.co/europe.
This is me with Stuart and Chelsea outside of some epic villa in Tuscany, Italy, with Jason Lucas a few years ago. Epic trip.
I chose a Kindle Scribe
A few days ago I ordered a latest generation Kindle Oasis and a new Kindle Scribe with the intention of only keeping one to replace my six year old Kindle Oasis who’s battery barely lasted a day.
Today a UPS driver picks one up to take it back home to Bezos, and I’m keeping the Kindle Scribe.
Why?
Kindle Scribe Pros:
Kindle Scribe Cons:
Elderly lady walking her dog with a Bluetooth speaker blaring Li’l Jon’s 2002 banger, Get Low. Stay cool, Nashville.
Tasted fine Kentucky Angel’s Envy bourbon with a Great Indiana Man™️
Roadtrip to meet an old friend for the first time
Better times
Kindle Oasis or a Kindle Scribe - which will be my new normal?
My second Amazon Kindle is a Kindle I’ve owned since late 2016, my first generation Kindle Oasis. It’s been a solid travel companion but after six years its battery barely lasts a day and I’m hot for something new. I’ve been waiting for a 2022/2023 release of a new Oasis and when the Scribe was released I started thinking this might not occur.
So while I was in native Amazon territory where deliveries are quick and returns are easily done at Whole Foods, I thought I’d buy both - the latest Kindle Oasis and the new Kindle Scribe - and return the one I liked the least.
My favourite Apple Watch feature is New Year’s Day
Noah Smith in The internet wants to be fragmented:
“Perhaps someday the human race will be ready to become one collective consciousness. But the experiment of the 2010s shows that this day is not today. Let the internet once more be an escape — a place where you can find your people and be happy. Let us learn to speak a thousand different languages once again. Let the Tower of Babel fall.”
Neighbourhood fireworks > City provided fireworks
Water damage and damage electrical damage to the house were housesitting thanks to frozen water pipes over Christmas means we’re bringing in New Year’s Eve with CNN via MacBook. Hilariously the internet just died.
Another day, another Airbnb, another part of Tennessee, another sunset. Seems cyclical.
Boring kids
A Squirrel’s tale
So a white Christmas in Nashville is pretty cool
Old mate out on the back fence of our Airbnb in Nashville this morning is a bit cold.
Merry Christmas from The Withers, Tennessee edition.
That cold front hits Franklin, Tennessee and its -18 degrees Celsius but feels like negative 30.
So so cold
I’ve been in Nashville less than 24 hours and the Christmas miracles have already begun
It is well
and with that the 2022 wedding season comes to an end
I’ve almost escaped Australia, just waiting for that delay to Dallas to stop being a delay
Really proud of how The Sizzle has grown. You deserve all the success, Anthony/@decryption.
I’m selling a 245L Hisense freezer if anyone is interested, like this totally genuine buyer.
24 hours in the town I grew up in: Mackay
24 hours in the town I grew up in.
My first ISP: still going My first job at the cinema: cinema closed down Fav restaurant: still going First nightclub: closed down Eimeo Pub: still going Sun shining on: Mackay Sun not shining on: Sarina Bridge I sat in traffic on whilst there was a bikie gang shootout: still going. School wear I became reel smart: still going. RIP: Mackay’s only space station
Before we get too excited about fusion energy, space travel and flying cars, it’s important to remember that this is how Australia Post wants me to find a lost package, with details from a Windows 2000 screenshot and calling a national hotline.
Such a Century Gothic welcome
How is Jetstar the only Australian airline fully utilising the Apple Wallet API with flight and gate updates and heaps of info inside the ticket info page?
Nine years ago I had an internet-enabled egg tray. I feel like technology has not really advanced past this milestone.
The invention of jaywalking by Clive Thompson.
