Hey Siri, prepare an edit of the Richmond FC players singing So Long, Farewell to Elon Musk.
New month, new locale. Hello, Martina Franca, Puglia.
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:
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/pano0001-pano0009-denoiseai-low-light-2.jpg)
Rate my desk (June 2023 edition)
For the past ten months, my and my family’s non-clothing and non-toiletries life has completely lived inside a Think Tank camera bag and it will do so for another 50 days. I took the opportunity this afternoon to do a quick audit, headcount, and make sure everything I was carrying was necessary, and inspired by the Hemispheric Views podcast segment ‘Rate my desk’ I thought I would submit my ‘desk away from home’ to the internets.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/apc-0266.jpg)
All of our life’s possessions that aren’t our actual home and the furniture in that home required for it to be on Airbnb, lives in our two July ‘Checked Plus’ bags, and two Dagne Dover bags, plus a Phil & Teds travel cot and a Baby Jogger travel pram, and this Think Tank Streetwalker camera bag pictured below.
The reason for the Think Tank Streetwalker bag is that it’s unique in being a carry bag, a backpack, and a roller bag. It’s the Optimus Prime of camera bags.
I’ll guess a few of the questions “What is that?!":
- Panic Playdate
- photocopies of passports and actual passports
- parfum
- new and identical backup sunglasses because the last place you want to be is in a strange new land without your favourite sunglasses
- octopus straps, you never know when you’ll need to strap something to something (same goes for the tape)
- USB-C dock with an ethernet port, because sometimes you just need to plug the damn thing in to get internet
- my eldest daughter’s camera (Nikon Coolpix childproof potato camera)
- my wife’s camera (Fuji X-S10 with a 27mm)
- my splurge camera purchase in Paris (Leica Z2X which means 2x zoom, film camera)
- my flying camera (DJI Mavic 3)
- my camera (Canon EOS R5)
- Native Union universal cable
- supporters gift from the Wedding Photo Hangover podcast
- DJI Mic kit
- MacBook Pro M2, a new addition to the kit after my former M1 MacBook Pro got drunk on a glass of whisky
- Philips OneBlade shaver, the best travel shaver I could find and the only one that has USB charging
- ThruNite torch that takes AA batteries because you can’t leave emergency eyesight to a lithium USB-charged battery
- 35mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.8, 70-200mm f/2.8
- Anker charger and Britt has one too
- my friend Scotty’s latest book on my Kobo Libra 2 (I’m a recent convert away from Kindle, and love this Kobo!)
Our whole charging strategy is based on IEC C7 (Figure 8) leads and getting local leads wherever we go and they plug into the Anker chargers and the 96W Apple charger. There’s a blog post on my reasoning for this. I’m now a cable dad.
So, rate my desk.
Is the future of TV, radio? Or the future of radio is TV? Either way, it’s almost 7pm and this is what Italians are watching on TV?
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/ee1071bf34.jpg)
The number one indicator that you’re an old dad is when your cables and leads company emails “Let’s Catch Up!” and “We miss you!” as if you’re high school buddies.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/cleanshot-2023-06-29-at-08.58.452x.png)
My (IMHO aweome) international travel charging situation
As a family we travel with a MacBook Pro, iPad mini, two iPhones, Apple Watch, and a series of things that require either USB-A, USB-C, or micro USB to charge. We’ve chosen gadgets and utilities that are all USB-C, with exceptions where necessary.
My DJI Magic 3 drone batteries need 65W but my current travel charger’s 65W apparently doesn’t quite meet the needs the DJI three-battery USB-C charger, so the 96W Apple original MBP charger does the MacBook and the drone batteries.
For a family of four travelling globally for a year it was hard to figure out the exact right kit, but we got there in the end.
So my worldwide travel solution has been
- two Anker 543 Chargers (65W II), these have two USB-A ports, a USB-C 45W port and a USB-C 20W port
- my original 96W MacBook charger.
Each of these, including the MacBook charger, takes as an input the figure 8 lead. Figure 8 leads, or IEC C7 leads as they’re technically known, are very easy to procure locally, most Airbnb’s even have multiple devices already using them, they’re inexpensive, and they’re small to carry.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/61ff7178fol.-ac-uf8941000-ql80-.jpeg)
So I buy three IEC C7 leads for each region we’re travelling to. If we weren’t on a year long trip I’d hold onto the leads but suitcase space is at a premium. So far I’ve needed four different leads, a set for Australia, Mexico/USA, then the European kind, and finally the best of all - the British variety. The Brits don’t get much right but they figured out electrical points and plugs really well.
I also have this assortment of cables
- 4x Thunderbolt 4/USB-C cables about 25cm long. These suit most charging, data, plugging-in situations.
- USB-C lightning leads for the iPhones
- the Apple MagSafe travel dock for Watch and iPhone
- and the get out of jail free card is my USB-A to Lightning + USB-C + Micro-USB three-headed plug.
That’s how we travel the globe keeping everything charged and no stress.
Tonight we sojourn at the Tavignano Estate in Cingoli, Italy.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/deda64e9c1.jpg)
Apple Vision has been 'in development' for 28 years
Tim Cook once said that “we are high on AR for the long run” and it’s true, for 28 years Apple - and the rest of the tech industry - has been noodling around on augmented reality and virtual reality.
Out of a purely personal interest, I started flipping through rumours about Apple and its “glasses” to see where the leakers got it right and wrong, and the next minute I’m back in 1995, so I thought a curated list of all the leaks, rumours, and related dates might be a nice record to make in the year of our headset, AVP 0.
Enjoy this trip down memory lane:
1981 - Steve Mann designs a backpack-mounted computer to control photographic equipment
While still in high-school Steve Mann wired a 6502 computer (as used in the Apple-II) into a steel-frame backpack to control flash-bulbs, cameras, and other photographic systems.
23 May, 1995 - Apple Technical Report #125: Volumetric Hyper Reality, A Computer Graphics Holy Grail for the 21st Century?
Such a display would convincingly create the illusion of objects with arbitrary optical properties. A metallic object depicted using the display would reflect the visual surroundings of the display. Dielectric materials would show correct refraction and reflection effects. Light shone on the display would illuminate the virtual objects within it. When programmed to depict empty space, the display would, for all practical purposes, disappear, rendering the contained volume invisible. Incremental steps towards such a device are discussed.
September 16, 1997 - Steve Jobs returns to Apple
March, 1998 - Tim Cook joins Apple as senior vice president for worldwide operations
March 21, 2002 - Apple: Stereoscopic Displays?
Apple is said to have other flat-panel technologies cooking in the labs, including stereoscopic displays
Arnold Kim writes:
Stereoscopic displays would presumably simulate 3d/VR environments. A bit unique for the consumer market… but an interesting area of research for Apple.
May 16, 2003 - Simon Greenwold publishes his Spatial Computing masters thesis
June 29, 2007 - Apple releases the iPhone
April 17, 2008 - Apple Researching Laser-Based Head Mounted Display
A user simply plugs their handheld video player such as the iPod manufactured by Apple Computer of Cupertino, Calif., into the compact laser engine attached to their belt, and places the headset on their head. The user then selects a video to be played at the handheld video player (viewing through transparent display elements).
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/183520-head-300.png)
Apple’s patent was originally filed in May 2008 and is based on a provisional patent application filed in May 2007
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/apple-patent-video-goggles-tether.jpg)
December 17, 2009 - Apple Working on 3D ‘Hyper-Reality’ Displays
August 24, 2011 - Tim Cook becomes CEO
October 5, 2011 - Steve Jobs passes away
January 12, 2012 - Apple is paving the Way for a new 3D GUI for iOS Devices
The invention covers a 3D display environment for a mobile device that uses orientation data from one or more onboard sensors to automatically determine and display a perspective projection of the 3D display environment based on the orientation data without the user physically interacting with (e.g., touching) the display.
August 2012 - Palmer Luckey launches the Oculus campaign on Kickstarter
22 February, 2013 - Google aims to sell Glass to consumers this year for less than $1,500
26 February, 2013 - John Gruber on Google Glass:
And the idea that people will wear things like this everywhere (as opposed to special specific scenarios, such as workers in an environment where their hands are otherwise occupied, like, say, surgeons) strikes me as creepy as hell.
December 10, 2013 - Apple’s Work on Video Goggles Highlighted in Newly Granted Patent
A goggle system for providing a personal media viewing experience to a user is provided. The goggle system may include an outer cover, a mid-frame, optical components for generating the media display, and a lens on which the generated media displayed is provided to the user. The goggle system, or head-mounted display may have any suitable appearance. For example, the goggle system may resemble ski or motorcycle goggles. To enhance the user’s comfort, the goggle system may include breathable components, including for example breathable foam that rests against the user’s face, and may allow the user to move the display generation components for alignment with the user’s eyes. In some embodiments, the goggle system may include data processing circuitry operative to adjust left and right images generated by the optical components to display 3-D media, or account for a user’s eyesight limitations.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/apple-patent-video-goggle.jpg)
November 24, 2014 - Job Listing Points Towards Apple’s Continued Interest in Virtual Reality
19 March 2015 - Gene Munster Claims Apple Has Augmented Reality R&D Team
May, 2015 - Apple hired Mike Rockwell from Dolby Laboratories
The team, called the Technology Development Group, developed an AR demo in 2016 but faced opposition from then-chief design officer Jony Ive and his team.
May 28, 2015 - Apple Acquires Augmented Reality Company Metaio
January 26, 2016 - Apple CEO Tim Cook: Virtual Reality is ‘Really Cool’, Has ‘Interesting Applications’
It’s really cool
January 29, 2016 - Apple Has Secret Team Working on Virtual Reality Headset
Juli Clover reports:
Hundreds of employees are part of a “secret research unit” exploring AR and VR
February 19, 2016 - Avi Bar-Zeev on his blog: On Holographic Telepresence
I may get around to telling the rest of the story some other time. But I just wanted to say how proud I am of the team and the vision to show the world a glimpse of our collective future.
March 30, 2016 - Microsoft HoloLens released
June 2016 - Avi Bar-Zeev joins Apple
July 26, 2016 - Apple CEO Tim Cook on Augmented Reality: ‘We Continue to Invest a Lot in This’
We are high on AR for the long run
August 23, 2016 - Apple Patent Details Visual-Based AR Navigation Device - reporting on a 2013 patent
The patent notes that visual-based inertial navigation systems can achieve positional awareness down to the centimetre scale without the need for GPS or cellular network signals. However, the technology is unsuitable for implementation in typical mobile devices because of the processing demands involved in variable real-time location tracking.
To overcome the limitation, Apple’s invention uses something called a sliding window inverse filter (SWF) that minimizes computational load by using predictive coding to map the orientation of objects relative to the device.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/17977-15998-160823-visual-l.jpg)
October 14, 2016 - BuzzFeed News Japan: Tim Cook Talks About Apple’s Augmented Reality Ambitions
November 14, 2016 - Mark Gurman: Apple Said to Explore Smart Glasses in Deeper Wearables Push
January 9, 2017 - Robert Scoble on Facebook: “Apple and Zeiss working together on augmented reality optics”
January 17, 2017 - John Gruber spitballing Apple AR’s usefulness
January 31, 2017 - Apple patents detail augmented reality device with advanced object recognition, POI labelling
February 28, 2017 - Apple Exploring AR in Israel as Robert Scoble Insists ‘Mixed Reality’ Glasses Coming This Year
June 26, 2017 - The Verge reports “Apple’s AR is closer to reality than Google’s”
Apple has often been accused of acting like it invented things that others have been doing for years. That complaint is not without merit, however, Apple can lay claim to transforming existing things into mainstream successes, which takes no small amount of invention in its own right.
June 29, 2017 - John Gruber on Genre Munster’s Apple Glasses predictions
I’m hard-pressed to think of anything we do today on our phones that would be better using AR glasses. Anything.
August 4, 2017 - Apple Experimenting With Several Augmented Reality Glasses Prototypes
November 2, 2017 - Tim Cook on Augmented Reality: ‘What It Will Be, What It Can Be, I Think It’s Profound’
December 4, 2017 - Apple Supplier Quanta Computer Teams Up With Lumus to Make Lenses for Augmented Reality Smart Glasses
January 12, 2018 - Apple Reportedly Met With Potential Suppliers of Augmented Reality Glasses at CES 2018
During CES, representatives from major players like Apple, Facebook, and Google met with suppliers that make the nuts and bolts required to power AR glasses, according to people familiar with the meetings.
March 1, 2019 - Tim Cook to Investors: Apple is Working on Future Products That Will ‘Blow You Away’
February 4, 2019 - Variety: The Inventor of the HoloLens Just Left Apple
Bar-Zeev has been working in the AR/VR space for close to three decades. Back in the ’90s, he was part of a team at Disney that worked on some early VR experiences for the company’s theme parks, including “Aladdin’s Magic Carpet” VR ride.
He then went on to co-found Keyhole, the company that later got acquired by Google to become the foundation of Google Maps. After a brief stint at Linden Lab, Bar-Zeev worked for four years at Microsoft.
“He helped found and invent Hololens at Microsoft, assembling the very first AR prototypes, demos and UX concepts, sufficient to convince his leadership,” according to his LinkedIn bio.
Avi says:
“I left my full-time position at Apple in January. I had the best exit one can imagine. I have only nice things to say about Apple and won’t comment on any specific product plans.”
March 8, 2019 - Kuo: Apple’s AR Glasses to Launch in 2020 as iPhone Accessory
June 27, 2019 - Jony Ive leaves Apple.
August 29, 2018 - Apple Purchased Akonia Holographics, a Company That Makes Lenses for AR Glasses
November 11, 2019 - Apple Said to Release AR Headset With 3D Scanning in 2022, Followed by Sleeker Glasses in 2023 & New AR Sensor Coming to 2020 iPad Pro and iPhone Models, AR/VR Headset as Soon as 2021
Plus, The Information reports on the infamous “1000 person meeting”: Apple Eyes 2022 Release for AR Headset, 2023 for Glasses
Apple executives discussed the timelines, which haven’t been previously reported, in an internal presentation to employees at the company’s Cupertino, California, campus in October, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple Vice President Mike Rockwell, who heads the team responsible for Apple’s AR and virtual reality initiatives, led the meeting, which included new details about the design and features of the AR headset, these people said. The product timetables run counter to recent analyst and media reports that said an Apple AR device could arrive as early as next year.
March 24, 2020 - Apple’s AR Glasses Could Launch by 2022 as Suppliers Reportedly Ramp Up Development
May 19, 2020 - ‘Apple Glass’ Rumored to Start at $499, Support Prescription Lenses, and More
Apple originally planned to unveil the glasses as a “One More Thing” surprise at its iPhone event in the fall, but restrictions on in-person gatherings could push back the announcement to a March 2021 event
May 21, 2020 - Jon Prosser Claims Apple is Working on ‘Steve Jobs Heritage Edition’ AR Glasses, Gurman Calls Rumor ‘Complete Fiction’
They’re also working on a prototype, a Steve Jobs Heritage Edition, similar to how we had an Apple Watch Edition, like that ridiculous $10,000 gold one when it first came out. Some like tribute to Steve Jobs, obviously just like a pure marketing ploy at this point.
Extra: Twitter thread between Prosser and Gurman on the subject.
May 21, 2020 - Apple’s Augmented Reality Glasses Again Rumored for 2021 Launch
October 22, 2020 - Apple Glasses Will Reportedly Use Sony’s ‘Cutting-Edge’ OLED Micro-Displays to Deliver ‘Real AR Experience’
January 6, 2021 - Apple Glasses Reportedly Progressing Towards Engineering Verification Stage With Focus on Battery Life and Weight
January 21, 2021 - Bloomberg: Apple’s First AR/VR Headset ‘Pricey, Niche Precursor’ to More Ambitious AR Glasses and Could Launch Next Year
March 7, 2021 - Kuo: Apple to Launch Mixed Reality Headset in Mid 2022 and Augmented Reality Glasses by 2025
April 26, 2021 - Apple Glasses Prototype Reportedly Falls Behind 2021 Testing Schedule
October 28, 2021 - Facebook rebrands to Meta, as in “the metaverse”
Mark Zuckerberg:
The metaverse is the next frontier
January 17, 2023 - Development on Augmented Reality ‘Apple Glasses’ Postponed Indefinitely
March 12, 2023 - Apple CEO Tim Cook Ordered Headset Launch Despite Designers Wanting to Wait for AR Glasses
June 5, 2023 - Apple Vision Pro announced at WWDC 2023
A must-listen on the Apple Vision Pro is Cortex’s most recent episode where Myke Hurley recounts his demonstration experience with the product.
Was just driving and stopped at a red traffic light in a small Italian village and a civilian car drives up being me, looks around, and just overtakes me and runs the red light. I love Italy.
South Carolina, you go grrl
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/f8035a5839.jpg)
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:
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/cleanshot-2023-06-25-at-22.55.192x.jpg)
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
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/malbun.jpg)
I just want to go on the record for being totally cool and not scared at all by the demonic kitten sound coming from the vineyard outside our Airbnb in Northern Italy. I am a big brave man and not scared by the feline calling out in the pitch black night.
Apple Reminders in iOS 17 is finally getting pretty useful
How Italians know whether to walk around shirtless or not
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/img-3946.jpeg)
Our Italian Airbnb’s TV made me feel all nostalgic
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/145d988d8a.jpg)
I’m back baby!
Listening to an investor on a podcast today reminded me of how and why I do what I do. He was talking about advice that he had been given regarding his investment portfolio, and the person giving the advice said how well does that pie chart of what you’ve invested in reflect or match your interests, talents, and skills? The advice being that you should invest in what you know, invest in what you are passionate about.
So, after a solid sabbatical that has taken us through Mexico, the United States of America, and so much of Europe, I am proud to say that we’re coming back to Australia in August and I’m coming back to work as a celebrant.
It’s been a wild couple of years where I didn’t know if I’d ever want to create weddings anymore, but it turns out I just needed a few months off and some quality time with my girls.
I say all of that, to say this. There’s a book, and a principle, called the proximity principle, and it’s a simple principle. The idea is that the people that are around you, the people that are your community, are the people most likely to be able to help you.
So there are two things I would love some help with. Number one, when we get home we have to buy some cars, and buying a car today is terrible. If you or someone you know is selling your car, let a brother know. Secondly, we’re coming back to work and my calendar is wide open. So if you know someone getting married, anywhere in the world, let them know that your mate Josh is a pretty good celebrant.
Normally I’d say I’m looking forward to catching up with you when I’m home for a beer, but it turns - and I’ve researched this extensively on myself during this sabbatical - that beers make me fat and bloated and sick.
So instead I’m looking forward to an old-fashioned or red wine when I’m home.
See you soon!
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/396d5a7024.jpg)
Is there an AI tool around yet to help manage customer journeys? New client comes in, and the AI can take that journey on the pre-set rails we decide on in the business. Automation, but with intelligence?
Made our way into Italy today and caught the sun at it’s grandest, just before it goes to sleep.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/dji-0018-2.jpg)
I accidentally installed the developer beta of iOS 17. It’s mostly fine with a handful of annoying bugs you’d expect to see three months away from launch, but I’m so grateful for offline Apple Maps. Get me some offline Apple Translate and I’ll be set!
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/2de23941aa.jpg)
Whenever someone sees a photo of mine and asks me what iPhone I used my 25kg full ThinkTank camera bag weeps.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/4a8a94a633.jpg)
The thing that’s extremely visible throughout Europe is that there was a time that buildings weren’t just built but they were created, and created beautifully.
How did that art get lost?
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/b350806ab9.jpg)
A 360 view of the sunset on our last night in Liechtenstein from the Fürstin-Gina-Weg, or in English, Princess Gina memorial trail on the Sareis mountain ridge overlooking the village of Malbun which has been our home for the last week.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/600.jpg)
Snuck over the border to Switzerland to watch the sun set today
Striking images at the Lichtenstein national museum of a medieval Liechtensteiner teenager using his early-model iPhone
Weirdest thing I’ve seen in Liechtenstein award goes to …
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/93c7f624b2.jpg)
How all men bathe
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/2071617d1e.jpg)
Hey, Europe. Why?
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/702873634b.png)
Despite being 450km from an ocean or sea, summer has hit Lichtenstein and the country’s beach is open!
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/e59d1904b0.jpg)
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.
Showed the kids what the early iPhones looked like at the Liechtenstein National Museum
Can you spot which country FIFA left off the list of countries that play football/soccer in the FIFA exhibit at the Lichtenstein national museum?
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
From the University of Berkshire Hathaway by Daniel Pecaut, Corey Wrenn:
Buffett also shared some of his classic bits of wisdom about growing wealth. Spend less than what you make. Know and stay within your circle of competence. The only businesses that matter are the ones you put your money in. Keep learning over time. Don’t lose. Insist on a margin of safety.
AI and I just published a children's book: The Mountain Princess
About three hours ago I was putting my daughter to bed and thought it would be cute to have ChatGPT write a fairytale about Luna and where we’re staying this week, Liechtenstein.
I thought it was a cute story and something others might enjoy.
Three hours later I’ve had Midjourney make illustrations, assembled the book - very roughly - in the ‘Kindle Kids Book Creator’, and it’s now submitted to the Amazon Kindle store.
You can see the ChatGPT prompts here and download the .mobi file here. When it’s live on the Kindle store I believe this link will get you there.
Three hours from a good idea to a low-fi book being published.
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!
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/cleanshot-2023-06-17-at-22.17.232x.jpg)
Some of the most interesting Lichtenstein facts I know:
- 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.
Be curious, not judgmental.
– Walt Whitman
From Apple IIe to AI: Embrace the Wave or Risk Irrelevance
I vividly remember all of my earliest computer experiences. I remember borrowing computer magazines from the school library that contained basic code, and then taking it to the Apple IIe in the back of my classroom. I would spend hours typing in code just to run another program. I also remember building a spreadsheet to help my dad run his business, and printing our own greeting cards with personalised messages on our black-and-white, dot matrix printer.
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Even back in the 90s, there was talk of this coming artificial intelligence wave. Funnily enough, my entire experience from the very first day was about artificial intelligence. The simple fact that I could press the letter ‘a’ on a plastic keyboard and then see that letter appear on the computer screen in front of me, or even get printed out by a printer, was, in my humble opinion, a form of artificial intelligence. This might be an oversimplified view, but whether it’s displaying the letter ‘a’ on a computer screen or using ChatGPT, it’s all about computers computing.
In 1999, Bill Gates published a book called ‘Business @ the Speed of Thought’. I read it maybe a year later, and the foundational principles of “using computers for a real purpose” have stuck with me ever since. One idea was that a sandwich shop could use just-in-time ordering for sandwich ingredients based on previous order histories for different days of the week, taking into account seasons, weather, and trends - a task that a computer in 1999 could perform with some effort, but a task a computer in 2023 could handle effortlessly. This resonates with Steve Jobs’s idea that computers are like bicycles for the mind, an idea based on the fact that the fastest and most productive animal on the planet is not a human, but a human on a bicycle.
I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.
This simple principle - that humans are more efficient on a bike, and that the human mind is more efficient when using a computer - has proven true in my life every day for the last 30 years.
Quickly replying to enquiry emails on my iPhone from a toilet cubicle at my last job before becoming self-employed was a key factor in my early success.
That’s my encouragement to anyone skeptical about the 2023 “AI wave”, including ChatGPT, large language models, transformer models, AI, generative art, etc. It’s just what computing is now. Embrace it and exploit it to your benefit. Whether it’s for play or for work, use these technologies to not only stay ahead of the pack, but to keep up with the pack.
A fellow wedding celebrant argued on a post of mine about AI that anyone using this technology should be de-registered. My counter-argument is that any celebrant (or entrepreneur) not using this technology will self de-register within a few years, sinking into irrelevance and inefficiency due to their refusal to adapt.
AI’s right of reply
As an AI developed by OpenAI, I’d like to add that I’m designed to assist and augment human capabilities rather than replace them. In the case of a wedding celebrant, for example, I could help with tasks such as drafting vows or organizing schedules. The idea isn’t to detract from the human element, but rather to enhance it, freeing up time for more personal interactions.
The notion of de-registering those who use AI perhaps stems from a fear of being replaced or a misunderstanding of AI’s role. AIs are tools, much like computers or smartphones, meant to assist humans in various tasks and should be seen as such. Adopting AI and other technological advancements can lead to increased efficiency and enable people to adapt to the fast-paced world we live in. It’s about integrating technology into our lives and work in a way that benefits us all.
View the chat thread with ChatGPT to see how ChatGPT helped me with this post.
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I’ll always remember the day I met the late Gold Coast Mayor, Ron Clarke, and he called me Red Dog for no apparent reason.
In 2012 I was newly married. Britt and I had decided to take our wedding business somewhere bigger than 1-2 weddings a year, so we started marketing and building out content.
Every day was so exciting, going from nothing to something.
It feels the same at the moment, after having essentially dropped off the wedding industry map for a year, coming back in I feel like a newcomer.
So getting these kinds of emails is weird and beautiful and terrible and amazing.
Never change, wedding industry.
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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.
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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.
We’re taking the girls to one of the smallest countries in the world tomorrow, somewhere I’ve known about since I was a very young boy. My aunt lived in Liechtenstein and would send me books, toys, and Lienchtenstein paraphernalia every year for my birthday, I loved it! So, I thought I’d prepare for the trip by asking ChatGPT questions about the country and the journey.
Steve Jobs once described computers as a bicycle for the mind, and ChatGPT is the most powerful example of that so far.
Retiring now
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I know that we have ye olde internet, but I think I’d still like to have a physical encyclopaedia at home for our kids. Check out this Ars Technica review, and the cost of a new set!
Watched the sun set into Germany across the German/Austrian border tonight.
There’s no kangaroos in Austria.
You know what’s funny about our time in Austria is that I knew nothing about the country a few weeks ago, my main exposure being when I would be in America or Mexico, introducing myself a an Australian and they’d think I said Austrian and make some stupid comments about how they have always wanted to visit Europe. But thanks to a tip from a friend who recommended renting a car in Vienna because it’s cheaper than Italy, we’re exploring Austria and loving it!
Two more sleeps til Liechtenstein!!
Travelling with children advice
I was asked recently about advice for travelling with young children.
My family including our now 4.5 and 2 year olds, left home almost a year ago and I have this advice: after about 37 accomodations and eight countries.
- Travel light. Lighter than you think. Bring as little stuff as possible.
- Lots of snacks. More than you think you need.
- Make iPad/TV shows a special treat. Fish out the special treat when necessary for sanity or social goodwill like in a line, stuck in a train or plane cabin, or a restaurant.
- Discipline your kids lovingly, positively, and well in private so they are awesome humans when in public.
- Teach your kids to be bored and look out the window.
- Figure out what kind of daily sleep/wake/activity routine or schedule works best for your kids and run with it so that all of you have a good day and you’re not dragging your kids through a hike they were never going to enjoy.
- Expect to see and do far less things than you imagined. If we do one travel or touristy thing a day that’s a win. Two is a big day. Three is a mistake.
- When in lines at immigration or other important things, and they’re really unhappy, just grin and bare it. It’s a few minutes of everyone’s life, we’ll all be fine, and all the other assholes around you have been expecting the tantrum anyway. If people look at us or comment on a tantrum, I just joke about it like “sorry, she just learned about taxes” or “sorry, this is my first abduction and it’s not really going well.”
- Teach your kids their names, ages, and your names so that when police come for you after you make a joke about abductions you can prove they’re yours. Make sure they know not to joke about who their parents are and what their names are.
- Bring extra dummies/soothers.
- We swear by the Phil & Ted’s Travel Cot version 5. Not sponsored. We’ve tried the rest, the Bugaboo is awesome, Phil & Ted’s is better.
- We also swear by the BabyZen YoYo and/or the Baby Jogger City Tour travel prams. The rest are not as good. Not sponsored. But come on guys, send us money.
- When boarding flights ask the staff where to “put the kids” as if you’re expecting them to not sit with you. Say it with a straight face, and kind of hold the child out toward the staff, gesturing that they can take them now.
- Book accomodation that is walkable to public transport and parks. Nothing else in your life matters more than a good playground. Also look for accomodation with cooking facilities, you’re going to want to cook at home.
- Whatever you order for them at a restaurant will not be good enough so share meals. Encourage them to try new foods. Our mantra is that you can’t say you don’t like something if you haven’t tried it yet.
- Almost all long queues can be skipped if you are a family, or if you accidentally go down the not-foreign-passport line, or if your kids has a tantrum. Turn that lemon into line-skipping lemonade.
- I’ve got VLC installed on my phone with a series of old school TV shows offline like Franklin the Turtle. Old school slow TV shows are better than the visual cocaine that modern kids shows are. Damn you, Paw Patrol.
- Take a million photos. Sync them with iCloud Photo Library so when you drop your phone in the Mediterranean Sea you’re not devastated. Buy disposable film cameras for the kids to make them feel involved.
- Each of our girls has a plush snuggle toy that has come with them the whole journey. When you’re changing accomodation every few days a common smell and feel is a godsend.
- I’m lucky to have travelled so much with Qantas that I have a Qantas Platinum status which gets us more luggage and airport lounges with OneWorld airlines worldwide, this is so good with kids. Everyone in the Oneworld First Class Lounge thinks they’re having a fancy aviation with champagne moment but then in runs my two year old ready to bring hell. It’s my favourite part of every flight.
- Snacks. Water. Lots of snacks.
- My kids like to play with tape so we have random coloured kid’s sticky tape for them to play with on flights. The water-painting kits for kids are awesome, they come with a water “brush” and it reacts with the board, so they think they’re painting but it’s zero mess apart from some water. So many books as well, we’ll buy, read, and donate books regularly.
- Sleep. So much sleep.
- There’s no greater experience than allowing your kids to sulk in different cultural settings.
- I use the Anker 4-port chargers and buy the figure 8 lead for the appropriate country, then make sure everything we own is USB chargeable.
These experiences and memories will be priceless. Be in the moment for them all.
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Cuddling Goldie after a late night diaper change and I was contemplating how she and Luna have slept under almost 37 roofs since we left home in September and we have seven left. Some kids won’t go to the bathroom outside of home, but these kids just take it all in their stride. I’m a proud dad.
Driving through Mondsee (Moon Lake)
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Blue skies and tailwinds makes for a good day in the office/Mavic 3 at Drachenwand (in English, Dragon Wall).
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I’m not sure I’ll ever feel an emotion stronger than what I felt when I saw this #iykyk
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There’s a campaign to update the Australian Marriage Act of 1961 and every letter to a Federal Member of Parliament helps move the needle on getting the legislation changed and updated.
Your help is welcomed/begged-for.
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Views of and from and above Lake Wolfgang, near Salzburg, Austria
David Cain in Everything Must Be Paid for Twice:
If you look around your home, you might notice many possessions for which you’ve paid the first price but not the second. Unused memberships, unread books, unplayed games, unknitted yarns.
I’m at a cafe in Pöggstall, middle of nowhere, Austria, and next to me are two elderly couples loudly discussing the issues of the world in German.
After an hour or so of me having no idea what they’re on about, one, mid-sentence says “Netflix, Paramount, Disney, Apple, Prime” then sighs.
Nice to know that monthly costs of streaming TV is a global, multigenerational, problem.
We flew into Vienna two days ago and didn’t even go into the city, but straight out into the hills, which despite their beauty, they are not filled with music. Unless I’m deaf?
But they are filled with the most wonderful little Austrian villages, like Pöggstall.
An important note from a local store
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Tonight’s AirBnb is 770 years in the making: Pöggstall Castle, in Lower Austria.
Our 35th accomodation since we left home last August. Honestly thinking that Britt and I could bring some value to AirBnb consulting, there’s only a little bit of effort between a great Airbnb and a poor one.
Who wins the MS Publisher 2023 wars? Canva? The new Adobe Express? Microsoft Designer?
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It must be lovely to be proud of where you're from
I imagine it would feel rather nice to be proud of the part of your story that you didn’t really have any choice in. The country you were born in, the state, the region. The people group you were raised in. Parents and the generations that preceded you, your family, your heritage, your culture.
I imagine that if you were so blessed to be of good stock, then you’d probably be delicate and defensive when that story comes under fire - whether it’s comedy or outright slander.
I imagine that’s why I’ve upset friends and lost social media klout this week after joking about the UK and how it didn’t meet the hype, in my ever so humble opinion.
Friends and strangers let me know how they felt about it, and it honestly left me stunned. But as I watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace yesterday it all fell into place for me. These people, Brits, people who like the Brits, people who love London and the UK, all this pomp and bullshit from the royals to the status quo is an essential part of their story. It’s who they are this external force of nature.
You dare make a joke about London, and you’re attacking their identity.
I see myself as blessed because I know exactly who I am. I’m the Gold Coast born, Central Queensland raised white boy born with colonial blood, entering the world not into the lands of my people but someone else’s land. Born of convict blood, sent from England to the stolen land down under generations ago. I’m the abandoned son, a homeless teen, who got by the only way available to him, working.
My birthplace, my country, my people, they don’t know me. There is a small group of friends and family who stand with me, but we could fill a minivan. If I was to die tomorrow my funeral would be a lovely occasion for the small group attending. They’re a good lot.
But my culture, my family, my tribe is a single generation old, my generation. With my wife I have drawn a line in the sand and said it ends with me. Britt and I, we’re starting new.
I also know how few people read my words or see my art. I’m no Shakespeare or Monet.
I have nothing to be precious of but my wife and children, my work, my words and my art, my relationships and my reputation.
Make a funny joke about them and I’d probably push back hard as well.
Our pilot wanted to give us the full Heathrow tour. Never go full Heathrow.
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Adios, Heathrow
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The Withers family has done London
David Whyte:
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
Does anyone want to start an Australian airline with me and ChatGPT?
Did you know that the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper was photographed in Sonoma? The same Sonoma this year’s macOS is named after.
People seeing the iMac, then iPod, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and then Apple Vision, on day one: it’s stupid, not for me, too expensive, I’ll never buy it.
People seeing the iMac, then iPod, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and then Apple Vision, five years later: yes, please, shut up and take my money.
London is a fascinating place where Big Tea™️ has convinced an entire population that garbage water is a valid hot drink.
Everyone speaks in a cute and fake-sounding British accent, whilst real people actually travel on the public transport which accepts the Apple Express Transit Card feature.
AirBnbs are priced like Paris but unlike Paris, London is in England, which is far less fancy than France. Here, they drive on the left side of the road but walk on the right side of the path, and there’s this forced politeness in the air like if you’re not polite you’ll get stabbed. Who knew Jack The Ripper could have left such a lasting impression on culture.
The people are quite proud of their flag, so much so that I could definitely imagine them sailing to other countries and giving them free British flags in exchange for the rights to the whole country.
Despite their global shirt-fronting and general we-think-we’re-cool dispositions, the people of London either commute longer than they actually work, or they live impoverished and close to the famed series of Tubes, spending their final quids on beer or denying that Europe is a cool place.
Brits have influenced more culture in my life than I’d care to admit, but I’m still not sure it’s better than their penal colony I call home.
Long live King Chuck, God knows the bunting and signage stockists and manufacturers couldn’t handle the demand for at least another few years.
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Mum to kid (about 4) trying to get him to do something: … or someone’s going to be very upset with you.
Kid, loudly, in the sweetest British accent: well someone is a fucking idiot aren’t they?
Every parent in the playground just bursts out in laughter.
I needed help planning the month ahead’s travel, having not been off the beaten track too much in Europe, so I engaged everyone’s favourite help, ChatGPT. Check out the chat transcript to see how I got to this itinerary.
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British things
Come together, right now
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Hey Britain, why did you all get so excited about leaving Europe but still walk on the right hand side of the footpath?
Everyone’s talking about augmented reality at WWDC but no-one’s talking about sharing bodily liquid movements.
Come on Apple. Let me share more bodily liquid stats with my friends.
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I’d like a 2023 version of Piano Man where Paul, the real estate novelist, upskills to writing prompts for ChatGPT, John the bartender starts a TikTok, and Billy Joel is sampling in Serato.
185 million views on Unsplash, 19 million views on Pexels, and I’ve just sold my first photo from my print store. Don’t rush and twist an ankle, there’s no queue at https://art.josh.withers.co.
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Don’t tell anyone but the opening of track six on the new Foo Fighters album had me thinking that there was a Taylor Swift collab inside. It’s ok, it was Nothing At All.
I made a Steve Jobs chatbot based on the book Make Something Wonderful and asked him how he would bring AR glasses to market.
“… and we’re calling it iVision!”
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Luna’s following in my footsteps!
By being a radio broadcaster to an unprofitably small audience.
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Remember that classic scene from Notting Hill where Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts' characters meet at a travel bookstore and then get a doughnut from that Brisbane doughnut chain?
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Overcast and 14 degrees Celsius and the Britts are so sure it’s good weather that there’s a kid at the park in their swimmers.
London things
WordPress just turned 20 years old, which means I’ve been using it for different projects for a smidge under 20 years.
My memory is that I was about to use b2/cafelog for a project and someone told me to try this new fork, WordPress.
Cheers for making the web better, WordPress!
Luna, who considers herself royalty, wanted to present at the king’s house
Someone call the fire brigade
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Maggi Hambling:
It is not difficult to make a work of art, the difficulty lies in being in the right state to do it.
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
What is, and isn’t, AI/artificial intelligence?
Is displaying the letter a on a computer screen, or printing it to paper with a printer, by pressing the a key on a keyboard artificial intelligence?
Every leg of this journey we drop a bag. We’re down three suitcases so far.
At this stage when we come home to Australia in August we’ll be backpackers.
Paris 🚄🚇 London
Bought Luna her first camera, the Hyundai Excel of first cameras: a Nikon point and shoot.
I believe that my kids should save for their first Canon but I’m happy to pay for their potato camera.
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She called us to the church house, gin house, school house, and outhouse. She called us to the Nutbush City limits from the wedding dance floors of Australia to a little old town in Tennessee.
She was, simply the best dance floor filler.
She is the Queen of Rock, the Empress of Soul.
Here’s to the diva, Tina Turner.
AI is genuinely exciting and terrifying but most of us nerds have been thinking about it and talking about it for 30 years.
This is Steve Jobs in 1983:
…when the next Aristotle comes around, maybe if he carries around one of these machines with him his whole life—his or her whole life—and types in all this stuff, then maybe someday, after this person’s dead and gone, we can ask this machine, “Hey, what would Aristotle have said? What about this?” And maybe we won’t get the right answer, but maybe we will. And that’s really exciting to me. And that’s one of the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing.
If you ever want to hate yourself you should try writing a book, then editing the book, and then reading it.
AI is super interesting to me
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A terrifying argument for paper voting in voting booths from Ready Player One:
Besides, now that everyone could vote from home, via the OASIS, the only people who could get elected were movie stars, reality TV personalities, or radical televangelists.
Do dogs understand elevators or are they just like ‘Ok it’s time to get into the world changer’?
(via @ronnui_ on Twitter via the Dense Discovery email)
Hawaii versus Paris
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I
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Imagine being as big as a failure as Yahoo
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Dan Shipper in The Unreasonable Effectiveness of 1-1 Learning:
One of the most famous studies in educational psychology found that students who learned through 1-1 tutoring performed two sigma—98%—better than students who learned through a traditional classroom environment.
Just found out that Metallica played a concert across town last night and there were tickets available. I had Australian tickets for their Covid-cancelled concert. This is the most disappointed I’ve been since we left Australia!
Film’s not dead.
On arrival to a film lab at 3pm on a Friday in Paris there’s like seven people ahead of me and three behind me pretty quickly.
If publishers paid as much attention to how their articles were experienced by readers as newspaper editors used to, maybe they wouldn’t be going broke?
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“Non-smoking Garden of Eden”
As Moses wrote in the book of Genesis, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food except for tobacco.
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A mum playing Frozen on her phone for her daughter at the playground is super confused as to why every other kid at the playground is up in her grill right now.
Watching 1980s Inspector Gadget with Luna this morning and I never realised how much Gadget influenced my life. All I ever wanted was Penny’s computer book, Gadget’s computer watch, and being accepted for being basically useless in society saved only by the woman by your side every time.
Am I a man or a muppet?
Sitting in a park in Paris watching my kids play I was struck by the idea that at age 41, married for almost 11 years, with two children, that I’m possibly an adult now.
Which probably sounds weird to anyone familiar with the concept of becoming an adult in our society somewhere between puberty and 21.
But I think we lack something in modern society - I know I lacked it in my childhood - that would not only help the 41 year old so know that they’re adults but also help all of us take ownership of our lives. Help us understand that you can either make your life or let someone or something else make it for you. Help us take responsibility for our lives, our families, and our futures.
It’s ceremony.
We shy away from it, not wanting to celebrate birthdays or anniversaries in public, or for some of us we even deny our age. We minimise weddings and engagements saying we don’t want to be the centre of attention - and this is even worse in Australia where tall poppy syndrome rears its ugly head stopping us from celebrating our achievements in life. I even hear it from people who, when they find out I’m a wedding celebrant, proudly tell me how they just went to the registry office and didn’t have a wedding.
For hundreds of generations we have celebrated milestones and achievements with ceremony and feasting.
It’s how we know where we have been, where we are, and where we’re going.
I believe ceremony is important. It’s why I’m a marriage celebrant.
Good ceremony is where we stop, collaborate, and listen. A moment for us to speak truths, smile, laugh, draw near, and share.
I hope you find the time to stop and celebrate something this week.
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Evidence that the world’s first mobile phone was probably French
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Excited to share another chapter of the book today:
I still distinctly remember the day after getting engaged and Britt’s aunty called with thoughts on which horse-drawn carriage company we should use for our wedding. This was odd to me because in 2012 I had been creating weddings for over two years yet I had not even conceived of the idea that once I asked Britt to marry me that we would then proceed to a wedding.
None of the current large language models/artificial intelligences understand the concept of months, or calendar months, or leap years.
So I’m sure everything is going to work out just fine.
Look, AI is great and everything, but I think we’re going to be ok
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What a wonderful time to be alive: malicious-content.zip
Photos I made yesterday in Paris
I stacked a Lime scooter an hour ago to make this photo of this local tower in Paris so you better like it or share it or comment or something so my aching shin is healed by the algorithms that control our emotional well-being.
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The not her damn of paris - still under construction
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The Brisbane Story Bridge of Paris is what they call it
Parisian things
Fourteen
The 14th of May is my celebrant anniversary and today in 2023 I begin my 15th year creating awesome marriage ceremonies for adventurous couples who really really like each other and believe that getting married matters.
They say time is the best teacher so with 14 years a wedding celebrant, 41 years 5 months a human, 10 years 8 months a husband, 4 years 6 months a father, 3 years 1 month a silver fox, 32 years 2 months a computer nerd, 6 years 1 month a Qantas Platinum Frequent Flyer, 7 days a Parisian, and 24 years 10 months as best kitchen cleaner home medalist in my home state, ask me anything.
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Paris’s final metre
You’ve heard of the final mile. This is the final metre.
Up until 1791 they’d been measuring things without any care for a standard, much like the USA today, but then the French astronomers Delambre and Méchain measured 10 millionths of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator through a Paris meridian, and then the government of the day installed 16 demonstrator metres around the city.
This is the last one in its original installation. There’s one other that’s been moved so who even knows if it’s legit ¯_(ツ)_/¯
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/79b86e3b71.jpg)
Milton Glaser:
You feel differently towards the world when you make things.
Apple Shortcut for recording photography metadata
I’m passionate about making photos, but I have a sub-passion in recording good metadata around those photos as they enter my iCloud Photo Library so the photos become more useful as they age. Whether they are used in Photo Memories, like “Paris 2023” and “Early Mornings with Luna”, or whether I want to search on the Photo’s “Places” function to find that photo I made ten years ago, the metadata is important to me.
When I shoot on my iPhone, the metadata is collected (normally), and if I have remembered to force quit and re-open the Canon Camera Connect app that day, when I shoot on my Canon EOS R5 the metadata is recorded, but if I shoot on Britt’s Fujifilm digital camera or my Leica film camera, no metadata is recorded by the camera.
In the before times people used notepads with pens, which is a lovely prospect, but I have an iPhone in my pocket and a Watch on my wrist. So I made an Apple Shortcut that will record the metadata in time and in place for later use, either with an EXIF editor or my personal go-to app, Metapho on the iPhone. (If you know of a Metapho competitor I’d be keen to hear it, I like Metapho but it feels forgotten by the developer and is sometimes buggy)
So these shortcuts will simply make a new Apple Note for the day if there isn’t one already and record time and place, or if you use the second shortcut that dictates a note, also that text note.
Record photography location Shortcut
Record photography location and notes Shortcut
I activate them either by tapping the home screen icon which is easy, or by asking Siri to “Record photography location”.
Feel free to use, edit, mix, re-make, and share as you find useful and beneficial for the art of making photography.
Much gratitude to Kyle Lines in the Automators Forum for helping me get the shortcuts over the line and useful for the greater population.
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I think this is the great pyramid of France
Introducing, an eye full tower.
Built for the 1889 World’s Fair only to be upstaged 99 years later at 1988 World Expo by the Brisbane Sky Needle.
When you order an americano with ‘some cold milk on the side’ in Paris
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Stumbled into a second-hand-camera/new-Leica store in Paris and accidentally left with a Leica film camera after swiping my credit card. Oops.
Play
Luna Withers, art critic
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/f3914714d1.jpg)
Paris’s NFT Factory
I stumbled across and subsequently visited an NFT art gallery in Paris today whilst walking the streets with Luna and trying to escape the rain. The art curated inside was wild and beautiful, and a joy to take in, but I also had the opportunity to talk to the curator who shared openly about their business model and passion for showcasing, sharing, and encouraging art.
They typically curate the pieces showcased but they have open weeks where creators can buy a spot on the wall, and other weeks creators can rent the whole gallery.
I’m still trying to figure out how my art works and matters in the world - besides giving it away for free on Unsplash and Pexels - but after visiting the gallery today I’m convinced that NFTs will have life and purpose long after the cryptobros move their hype engine somewhere else.
I even picked up a piece that Luna loved.
It would be amazing to see my photos on a wall like that.
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.
The playlist in the French cafe I’m sitting in just went from contemporary hits to one of the songs from Star Wars. Wild taste here.
The genesis story of Apple computers
I’ve been thinking about this story from Steve Jobs, recalled in 1996 and told in the new book Make Something Wonderful, about how and why he and Steve Wozniak started Apple:
The reason we (Woz and I) built a computer was that we wanted one, and we couldn’t afford to buy one. They were thousands of dollars at that time. We were just two teenagers. We started trying to build them and scrounging parts around Silicon Valley where we could. After a few attempts, we managed to put together something that was the Apple I. All of our friends wanted them, too. They wanted to build them. It turned out that it took maybe fifty hours to build one of these things by hand. It was taking up all of our spare time because our friends were not that skilled at building them, so Woz and I were building them for them.
We thought if we could just get what’s called a printed circuit board, where you could just plug in the parts instead of having to hand-wire the whole thing, we could cut the assembly time down from maybe fifty hours to more like an hour. Woz sold his HP calculator, and I sold my VW Microbus, and we got enough money together to pay someone to design one of these printed circuit boards for us. Our goal was to just sell them as raw printed circuit boards to our friends and make enough money to recoup our calculator and transportation.
What happened was that one of the early computer stores, in fact, the first computer store in the world, which was in Mountain View at the time, said, “Well, I’ll take fifty of these computers, but I want them fully assembled.” Which was a twist that we’d never thought of.
We went and bought the parts to build one hundred computers. We built fifty of them and delivered them. We got paid in cash and ran back and paid the people that sold us parts. Then we had the classic Marxian profit realization crisis, which was our profit wasn’t liquid—it was in fifty computers sitting on the floor.
We decided we had to start learning about sales and distribution so that we could sell the fifty computers and get back our money. That’s how we got in the business. We took our idea (for the computer) to a few companies, one where Woz worked (Hewlett-Packard) and one where I worked at the time (Atari). Neither one was interested in pursuing it, so we started our own company.
I’m interviewing newly appointed marriage celebrants for a podcast project at the moment and some don’t have a fire in their belly as to why they started. Their genesis story is missing some heart and soul. I think about them and whether they have staying power like the two Steves who just built computers because they wanted one. That early fire is valuable.
![Steve Jobs working on an Apple 1](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/12cba92c97.jpg)
12 Ancient Greek Terms that Should Totally Make a Comeback
Aidos was actually the Greek goddess of shame, modesty, respect, and humility. Aidos, as a quality, was that feeling of reverence or shame which restrains men and women from wrong. It also encompassed the emotion that a rich person might feel in the presence of the impoverished, that their disparity of wealth, whether a matter of luck or merit, was ultimately undeserved.
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.
![JDW_9132-Pano.jpg The TWA Hotel at JFK Airport, formerly the TWA Flight Centre designed by Eero Saarinen](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/bdc133618f.jpg)
![JDW_9098.jpg The TWA Hotel at JFK Airport, formerly the TWA Flight Centre designed by Eero Saarinen](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/06d3c7c8f5.jpg)
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![JDW_9097.jpg The TWA Hotel at JFK Airport, formerly the TWA Flight Centre designed by Eero Saarinen](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/a41c9c1228.jpg)
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![JDW_9024.jpg The TWA Hotel at JFK Airport, formerly the TWA Flight Centre designed by Eero Saarinen](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/2909f63014.jpg)
Inside
![JDW_8843.jpg Inside the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/b671865d74.jpg)
![JDW_8906-2.jpg Inside the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/b210629fc5.jpg)
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![JDW_9033.jpg Inside the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/b77bf37abc.jpg)
![JDW_9018-Enhanced-NR.jpg Inside the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/c55779009a.jpg)
![JDW_9013.jpg Inside the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/29dd1070b1.jpg)
![JDW_8953.jpg Inside the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/9545db6588.jpg)
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![JDW_9174.jpg JDW 9174](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/1f7ad61a2d.jpg)
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![JDW_9197.jpg Inside the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/ac7d72ac62.jpg)
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.
![JDW_9059.jpg TWA 1958 Lockheed Constellation at the TWA Hotel in JFK](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/0ab657e15d.jpg)
![JDW_9064.jpg TWA 1958 Lockheed Constellation at the TWA Hotel in JFK](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/80d9226876.jpg)
![JDW_9066.jpg TWA 1958 Lockheed Constellation at the TWA Hotel in JFK](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/5272e8eb59.jpg)
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![JDW_8845.jpg TWA 1958 Lockheed Constellation at the TWA Hotel in JFK](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/3519dc63e4.jpg)
![JDW_8936.jpg TWA 1958 Lockheed Constellation at the TWA Hotel in JFK](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/970235bb84.jpg)
Connie was even hosting a wedding the day I was there.
![JDW_8962.jpg Wedding at the TWA Hotel in JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/f9273e0e26.jpg)
![JDW_9084-Enhanced-NR.jpg TWA 1958 Lockheed Constellation at the TWA Hotel in JFK](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/05e1bb1993.jpg)
![JDW_9093.jpg TWA 1958 Lockheed Constellation at the TWA Hotel in JFK](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/f5948fffb9.jpg)
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.
![JDW_8877.jpg Rooftop pool at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/dc475e0b57.jpg)
![JDW_8894.jpg Rooftop pool at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/54cab657aa.jpg)
![JDW_8892.jpg Rooftop pool at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/b126d41439.jpg)
![JDW_8958.jpg Rooftop pool at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/b92013a192.jpg)
![JDW_8977.jpg Goldie at the rooftop pool at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/e66b043d2f.jpg)
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.
If you see my travel photos and think they’d look cool on your walls, I sell fine art prints, framed fine art prints, and canvas wraps in my online store.
Please buy a print so Luna and Goldie can afford the good croissants in Paris this week ahead, not the cheap ones dad thinks they should have.
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44 hours door to door, Kona to Paris. Godspeed, us, with a four and two year old.
Ever since Twitter started falling on its face I’ve tried so many contenders, Mastodon, T2, BlueSky, Nostr, and I’ve been on micro.blog for years already and love if there, but Wavelength is the only place I’ve seen community, engagement, joy, and fun.
I can still remember my ICQ number 25 years on (49739400) but I can’t remember the joke about remembering my ICQ number
Why Nick Cave is attending the King’s Coronation:
I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest.
The Withers family in the island of Hawaiʻi
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🗿
🔱
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Some feelings of the Big Island of Hawaii, or the Island of Hawaiʻi, or Hawaiʻi Island, or Big Island, or Kona, or Hawaii County, or just Hawaii. I don’t really know how to refer to this landmass tbh.
Unkept looking bloke who’s loudly mumbling to himself and is scaring the parents at the playground he’s circling because he looks like an addiction that hasn’t showered in a few days, says to me “weird day man, weird day” and gives me a cheeky grin.
Weird day.
If you’ve ever been the first guy to map parts of Australia and New Zealand, to witness the transit of Venus so ya bois in the lab could figure out how far earth is from the sun, or named an Aussie state, then this memorial marks the place some Hawaiians murdered you because they don’t take kindly to colonisers here.
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Lusting after the new Teenage Engineering microphone
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Sitting in a Starbucks in Kona just now and a family of four Brits fresh off the Quantum of the Seas cruise ship which just arrived in town. That’s the ship that lost a passenger overboard 1400km south of here. Apparently the person’s nickname/codename onboard the ship is “Old Mate”. I guess this is what it feels like to be a minority.
Harry Belafonte finally met Mister Tally Man and had his banana’s tallied.
James Tylor and Matt Chun in the ANZAC Myth:
The Australian government has fabricated a nationalist mythology around the invasion of Gelibolu Yarımadası (Gallipoli), telling a story of heroism and sacrifice.
The saddest part about Elon Musk screwing up Twitter and Twitter Blue is that the Internet needs to install a values system where we understand things have a cost and Twitter shouldn’t be free.
But now paying $8 for Twitter is a meme, not an exercise in human betterment.
I’ve been saying crap on the internet and into microphones connected to radio and TV towers for 20 years next year, it’s a miracle that the most scandalous thing I’ve done is MAFS series one.
I need help with panoramic images made with my DJI Mavic 3 drone. The camera itself stitches the images together but the stitch is never great. So it saves the 25 individual images, but Photoshop and Lightroom can never deal with them well. What software can help with this?
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For Polkadot Wedding’s Planning Issue this month I wrote an article on choosing a wedding reading and also how you don’t need one so if you have one, let it have purpose.
Well, count me surprised and dumbfounded /s that this weird crap is happening on Spotify.
Stumbled across this fascinating story of Little Richard being in Australia in 1957, seeing the Russian satellite Sputnik in the sky and thinking the world was going to end so he takes the stage to preach the gospel at his concert instead of performing so the promoter offered refunds.
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.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/3fb2bbbe80.jpg)
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.
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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.
![](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/359/2023/24c3546bb2.png)
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.
I’m working on a new business that is a web service - a mobile/desktop web app with video and audio upload components + email. I’ve never directly hired devs for this kind of project before. What kind of web dev language and tech should I be asking for in 2023?
I was moved to hear of Father Bob’s passing. I’ve never met or talked to a crankier, lovelier, old bloke who was thoroughly and passionately focused on loving and caring for humans without personal gain or agenda.
When I think about being Christ-like, I think of Bob.
Many publicly-known priests and ministers are loved by church leadership whilst being in the news for scandal and crime, while Bob was hated by church leadership whilst in the news for loving the outcasts of society.
I’d rather die a man lambasted by church leaders and known as a friend to outcasts, the downtrodden, the forgotten, the least of our society. That’s who Bob was.
Shared my nerd bio in my NerdyBio interview
Everything that was old and awesome becomes new and terrible, whist still whipping the llama’s ass.
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My “Batman only exists because of 9/11” theory
I have a theory: today in 2023, we have a Batman because terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Centre towers in New York City, a.k.a Gotham City.
My premise is that timing of My Chemical Romance’s Welcome To The Black Parade’s release influenced Robert Pattison’s Batman at an influential age and made him the Bruce Wayne portrayed in the 2022 film, The Batman.
The 2022 Batman was born in 1991 or 1992, making him “about 30” when the movie was released.
The Batman’s parents died in 2001 (possibly 2002), the year that terrorists flew into the World Trade Towers and changed the world forever. One such change being that Gerard Way formed the band My Chemical Romance in response to the attacks. The other obvious infliction point here is that the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne is the motivation for young Bruce to become Vengeance personified.
In 2006 when The Batman was about 15 or 16 ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’ was released. Bruce is still rattled by his parent’s murders, growing up a young boy trying to figure out who he is and what his purpose is.
Your teenage years and the music you listen to through those years are formative to who you are and the music you love.
Look at some of My Chemical Romance’s lyrics from the Black Parade:
When I was a young boy, My father took me into the city, To see a marching band. He said, “Son, when you grow up, Would you be the savior of the broken, The beaten and the damned?” He said, “Will you defeat them? Your demons, and all the non-believers, The plans that they have made?” “Because one day, I’ll leave you a phantom…
Cut to 2022 in film, The Batman
“They think I am hiding in the shadows, but I am the shadows.”
Bruce Wayne is the Batman we know in 2022 because of 9/11.
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Goldie, who just turned two, just buckled up her own airplane seat and is patiently awaiting takeoff whilst playing peek-a-boo with three different strangers and babbling to her neighbour.
So yeah, I think she’s doing ok developmentally.
Nashville, Tennessee ✈️ Phoenix, Arizona ✈️ Kona, Big Island of Hawaiʻi
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.
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Will, a mate of mine has written and released a guide on working in film and television production, something he’s an expert in.
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I thought readers of my blog might appreciate the book if they or people they knew aspired to work in film production (it’s a great and personal read, even for me, an old man without film and TV aspirations), but also, they’d enjoy this excerpt about what technology you should own and be proficient in before you start as a production assistant.
“Seriously, people will look at you like you have three heads as you drag that eighty-pound hunk of plastic with the extended numerical keyboard from your bag and plop it on the desk.”
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If you, or someone you know, wants a start in the film and TV production industry Will’s the book is a must-purchase and must-read - and it’s now on Kindle.
Because I’m a man-child I wanted to share my two of my favourite photos from photographing the horse sanctuary in Baja
Reckon we could get the ChatGPT guys to spend an an afternoon working on spam filtering?
Once all the adults admit that they don’t know what a conservatory is we’ll finally get world peace
Bad news for plastic kitchen good lovers, Tupperware is about to go broke. Turns out they were about seven decades too early on the influencer marketing trend.
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.
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Our last Baja sunset for a while
Our last day in Baja
Last day of school for the girls in Baja
Never forget the French dancing plague of the summer of 1518.
Charlie Munger on how the world actually works:
Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.
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
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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.
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Location, location, location #playacerritos
You’ve got to get up early to catch the Mexican Coke dealers
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Todos Santos, BCS, on Good Friday
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Still the best food and beverage proposition in Baja
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Martha!
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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?
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“Please lower your standards”
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Baja sunset
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Synecdoche
The worst sin committed by the news media, today is using synecdoches, helping simplify stories, fitting complex stories into headlines or a tweet whilst not representative of reality. People act, not synecdoches. Don’t dehumanise people, reducing their acts to those of the many.
Complex stories deserve gestation time, time for us to understand an comprehend them.