Founder, Musing Studio / Write.as.

2024, lately

It’s funny to end up in June and realize how quickly the year has slipped by. But I’ve been keeping pretty busy, especially over the last few months.

photo things

Today I finished wrapping up things from the NYC Photo Stroll Portraiture Workshop we held at the beginning of the month. It was a blast, with some great instructors and a beautiful studio to shoot in. I learned a ton about lighting and direction, and got some great inspiration from our “experimental” class on the third day.

Wide view of the photo studio, a warehouse in Bushwick, with a group of 20 or so people sitting and listening.

(Photo by me)

An Instax Wide triple exposure of me walking from the left to the right of the frame against a black background, slowly turning

(Photo by @picturemanbob.)

life things

I moved to another neighborhood in Brooklyn in May, and I may or may not still be unpacking.

It’s a smaller place, but in better proximity to where I spend most of my time. It’s nice having more stores and parks within walking distance, bumping into friends on the street, and just being in the middle of a lively neighborhood.

If I had to complain, it’d only be about these pesky cars passing down the street. Somehow, they must all have glue stuck to their steering wheel; or maybe just broken horns, making them blare all morning. I’m still getting to the bottom of that one…

write.as things

These days, most of my daily Write.as work involves supporting our customers — and I’ve fallen behind lately. I’m catching up on a backlog of issues now (and if you’re waiting on me, I appreciate your patience!).

When I get through everything, I’ll turn my focus back to what I was working on in May: comments. I’m excited to make some progress, and see all it enables for everyone on the platform.

Beyond that, I want to update some aspects of the site that I haven’t given much attention to recently. For one, I want to launch a cheaper subscription plan again, so that more people can join.

In short, the current moment on the web demands more open social platforms, and I want ours to be as accessible as possible (while remaining sustainable for us).

writefreely things

Along those lines, I’ll release the next WriteFreely version (v0.15.1) soon. It’ll mostly include some important fixes that have been waiting around (once again, falling a bit behind). But after that, I should be able to get back to more significant new features and have another release ready this summer.

talking about things

Speaking of WriteFreely, I went to the Netherlands last month to talk about it and the fediverse at the NLUUG conference. I haven’t done a talk like that in a while, but it sparked some great discussions. As always, seeing that kind of excitement around the fediverse in-person gave me a new boost of energy to keep building what we’re building.

After the conference, I managed to see some of Utrecht, and even meet up with Laurens for a tour around town (and some tasty beer) before I headed home.

A view between buildings on the streets of Utrecht

Detail of a clock with plants in the foreground on a building in Utrecht

(Photos by me)

Selfie of Laurens and I by a canal, each holding a beer

(Photo by @laurenshof@indieweb.social)

random thoughts

Should I launch a search engine? I’ve been thinking of it lately, with Google seemingly trying to kill the web by launching their uh, misinformed AI assistant.

If I did, it would be small, in the style of engines like searchmysite.net or Marginalia, and only index the human-powered web. Just something I’m thinking about.


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#personal #life #journal #travels #writeas