Hi! My name is Josh, this me blog.

The dance of pleasing the social media algorithims of the world’s biggest companies, whilst being beat to death by strangers with their comments displeased me so now I’m here.

I wish I were the kind of person who could just live without broadcasting. But there’s an animal inside me — right down in the marrow — that keeps asking ‘can you see me?’ and silence has never once soothed it.

  • El Arco, Cabo San Lucas

  • “Chinese restaurant”

  • Evan Amrmstrong at Every on How Elon Wins:

    “Twitter is a perfect case study of the shifting power dynamics of the ad market and how to make money in this era of the internet.”

  • Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye.

  • I met Charles Wooley when I was in line to be his producer on what’s now called the Triple M regional radio network.

    Smart guy, good interviewer, wasn’t going to leave Tasmania for a big radio job, so they built out the Hobart studios to accomodate him.

    I never took the gig, but I was impressed that someone could love where they live so much to the chagrin of a radio job.

    In the Sunday Tasmanian today:

    “But here I am, after a lifetime travelling the world and interviewing prime ministers, presidents and dictators, now about to engage as deputy mayor of Sorell in what is so often considered the lowly third tier of Tasmanian government.”

  • Wondering about Unsplash and why my recent work isn't resonating

  • In the Gold Coast Bulletin today @AnnWasonMoore nails it making the biggest losses/mistakes the Gold Coast has experienced. But I’ll add one more: the Indy 300. It was so much more interesting than Supercars, and Aussie driver Will Powers still dominates!

  • Put a bag of cookies in the break room and it might sit for days.

    Open the bag and leave it out, and within an hour, all the cookies will be gone.

    We are happy to take a tiny slice off the thing that's being shared, but we hesitate to open the bag.

    The same is true with all of the initiatives in our culture. Design, movements and ideas are all trapped, waiting to be opened, and then the rest of us will happily pile on.

    Open the bag.

    By an unknown author, from the Startupy newsletter

  • I think a lot about the guy whose car I ran into on the first day of owning a car in Mexico. I didnt put the car in park or put the handbrake on, classic idiotic move on the first day of driving on the wrong side of the road in a new car.

    Scratched his back bumper, lots of talking, making phone calls to family, googling costs to fix, he comes back ready to finish me financially, and asks for $500 pesos. $39.60 AUD.

  • “Good day” in Spanish is “Buenos días”, phonetically (in Josh Spanish) “beh-wan-ass dee-ass” and I now understand how Australian English must be hard for people learning English because Baja Mexicans basically say an abbreviated “bun dee”, which I guess is “G’Day”.

  • Cerritos

  • Just a boy and his favourite seventy to two-hundred millimetres of glass photographed by another boy and his medium format film camera, Jack Fitz at Playa Los Cerritos at sunset.

  • John Ruskin in a letter to C. E. Norton, 4th Nov 1860:

    “I find Penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous, one can't be angry when one looks at a Penguin.”

  • Computerspielemuseum

  • TomTom: I came here to sell satnavs and kick ass, and I’m all outta satnavs.

  • Business idea: a coffee translator.

    All I want in Mexico is to just order my coffee.

    In Australia I order a long black with cream (pouring cream), or if they don't have cream, with cold milk. I call it a poor man's latte. All of the coffee, less milk.

    A big cup of black coffee, and I take the temperature and black-coffee-ness out of it with a dash of dairy.

    In Baja an Americano is basically a long black, but often filter coffee which would be fine if it was lukewarm. An espresso is an espresso shot. A long black doesn't exist. I got close today, but once I asked for "like an Americano but hot", they also brought out hot milk, and you don't want hot milk in this drink.

    My fortune for help on how to order a "long black with cream/milk" in Spanish, or in a way that local baristas will understand.

  • I’m reflecting on the recent Optus hack today as I wonder what to do with my phone number I’ve had for 20 odd years.

    So much of modern society needs a phone number to work and to identify us.

    New services register with a phone number and text message verification code, trusting that only you would have your phone number or SIM card.

    When I turn off my Australian SIM card in Mexico iMessage warns me the clock has started.

    It’s kind of ridiculous that something as fragile as a phone number is the backbone of identity.

    I think do Dave Winer’s ten year old blog post proposing DNS as a form of ID, but I feel like that would exclude so many normies.

    Funnily enough, in many parts of Mexico the police will take your number plate or drivers license back to the police station as that’s the closest the national identity systems don’t really exist here.

    How are we supposed to verify who we are? Maybe a blue tick will help?

  • Reason no. 72 to read James Hennessy’s email:

    “I decided to dig into this, because the prospect of an intersection of forgotten Australian pulp lit and Cold War tech development is, regrettably, extremely my shit”

    @jrhennessy

  • Just going on the record before November 2022 hits to say that I had a blue tick before it wasn’t cool.

    That’s right, mum. I was verified before @tealou.

  • Nieman Labs reckons that newspaper political endorsements might not matter anymore. I think that's for the better?

  • Gary Voth's piece, The Forgotten Lens, reminds me why I love the 50mm so much. I only have a vintage Minolta f/2 manual focus lens at the moment but now I want the Canon RF 50mm f/1.2!

  • Is this mural on the toilet entry wall about menstruation?

  • Dave Winer with the best Twitter analogy:

    “Why would I leave Twitter? It's like living in NY and not taking the subway. Sure it's dirty and smells bad, but it's how you get places.”

  • The latest in dynamic bus signage technology

  • Reporting for The Verge, Justine Calma says that

    “Traffic jams are tied to lower birth weights.”

    It’s almost like us humans are making ourselves extinct eventually.

  • Someone just got a fire truck for their birthday or the truck celebrated its birthday. Either way, congrats!

  • Tequila shot $1USD

  • James Cameron, artist: outside and other and alone

  • Thursday's sunset

  • Netflix, One Tel, and me, a nostalgic love triangle

  • Good business sense tells me it's time to sell all my beef, children, petrol, and non-essential oils, and buy more computers. Thanks for the revealing graphs, Nick Evershed at The Guardian

  • The moonrise over the Pacific Ocean was pretty cool tonight

  • It's funny how the human brain likes little milestones and we call it "feeling real" ... like just now how I put the finishing touches on a Wedding Officiant in Mexico page on my website, and enabled the Squarespace translation webpage feature.

  • On ya bus

  • Bob Dylan:

    “Boy, I hurried… I hurried for a long time. I’m sorry I did. All the time you’re hurrying, you’re not really as aware as you should be. You’re trying to make things happen instead of just letting it happen. You follow me?”

  • Tuesday’s sunset from Todos Santos

  • Punta Gasparino, Baja California Sur

  • Finally, it happened

  • I'm a sucker for 360 spherical images, but the places you can view them not-flattened are few. Lightroom online is one, so here's the link for this one of El Pescadero at sunrise this morning: adobe.ly/3f55Fp3

  • El Pescadero, the little fishing village we’re calling home this month

  • Deporte bus

  • El Pescadero // home

  • Felt cute, might delete later

  • Hey, if you ever can’t get a hold of Jesus, lemme know, I’ll send you some Mexican Salvo, a sin remover.

  • Did Bono actually encourage Tim Cook on services and subscriptions when they worked out the deal to give away Songs of Innocence through iTunes?

    Tim Cook in 2014:

    “But we’re not a subscription organisation.”

    Tim Cook in 2022 (paraphrased):

    “Services, services, services, services, services, services, services, services, services, services, services, services, services.

  • Bono in The Guardian on the birth of U2, that iTunes album and Live Aid:

    “I don’t think I voted for the name U2, but I didn’t stop it. I definitely stopped the second suggestion – the Flying Tigers”

  • I’ve eaten sushi in Japan, Iceland, New York & Vancouver. Australians have made me sushi, Italians, Croatians & Kiwis.

    But I never thought the best sushi I’d ever eat was down a dirt road outside of a small village of 3,000 people called Pescadero.

    Noah’s was 🤌🏼

  • I’ve never heard of Haiku photography but I like it.

  • Breaking news: Luna rode a horsey and she is pretty flippin pumped about the whole idea.

  • The directions to the Los Sagrados horse rescue we visited today said to go through the Cardone Forest. I was curious what a forest in the desert looks like.

    Welcome to the Cardone Forest outside of Pescadero.