Released a stripped back version of the CMS built with Claude and used to generate this little site.¹ Called “chaseframe” (as in…), the CMS generates static HTML files from ejs templates, using Node.js to parse the Markdown files in my Obsidian vault. ²

As my GutHub skills are…unpolished…I accidentally released a non-sanitized version of the CMS initially and pushed out my custom design elements and other site-specific details. I think I corrected things by making that first repository private and renaming it, and then creating a new, public “chaseframe” repository. Moments like this remind me how long it’s been since I’ve worked primarily in code editors. (You literally carbon date them to my fluency with a version control system more advanced than .bak.)

Probably won’t update the repository often, but it all depends on what I end doing on this site.

We’ll see.

Footnotes

1. See also. ↩

2. Which at some point I should write more about, because Obsidian has become my core tool in almost every digital thing I do. ↩

Wary of making these LCKY posts:

• Too introverted.
• Too extroverted.

With that contradiction stated, an update on this site, about this site: Some posts will now be pushed to my Mastodon (and maybe one day, Bluesky) account. Those post that are shared will — if anyone reacts to them — show a little bit about how people are responding to them (this takes a spark of inspiration from Matthew Haughey’s own blog updates).

Again, this site is mainly for me to share out some of my own random thoughts, so I don’t want to build into it any subtle nudges encouraging me to chase social media fame.

However, because my home on the web here truly is so innocuous, I also know a reaction to something I posted is a signal from someone I’ll learn something new from. Ignoring that would mean ignoring the very thing that attracted me to the web to begin with.

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(Somewhat ironically, this post is not being posted to the socials.)

Coincidentally, just saw Unsplash (like Flickr, the OG photo sharing platform) now has a nice collection of Artemis II images available, too.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

The 45 images are all well chosen from the larger set I used to create my Artemis microapp. For example, within that larger public set you can see this photo from Unsplash there, as well the one taken a few shots later

Reading this Scientific American piece yesterday, I had four reactions:

1. Amaze. Amaze. Amaze.
2. None of them are even categorized yet, that’s going to be an incredible amount of work.
3. That is one archaic website
4. I’d love to have a site/app that showed me one of these 12,000 pictures every day.

Today, in a surprisingly short time, I worked with Claude to make “4” a reality. No sooner had I previewed the website (one that made the stark beauty of the photos taken by the Artemis II astronauts the dominate experience) I realized these would also make for perfectly minimalist desktop wallpapers.

So, a new tool: An app sharing an image taken from space just a few weeks ago of the Moon (or Earth or both!) every day for at least the next 32 years.

Truly awesome pictures.

Source: ART002-E-21115

Thirty years ago, I began making this site with no idea what it was supposed to be.

Ten years ago today, I rebooted, as part of a global event and a chance to get this site humming again.

That attempt didn’t last.

Not the design.

Not the regular posting.

So consider this another go at it.

Nothing grandiose, just me trying to get back to what I enjoyed about this all those years ago when making webstuff was fun.

If you’re reading this, feel free to say hi (my email is the same as it’s always been: my name at this domain) and let me know what kind of things are keeping you motivated to create and explore.

Former journalist, ex-host of the The NewMusic, partner to Naomi Klein, son and grandson of towering political figures talks to Paul Wells (who continues to provide exceptional Canadian journalism even as an independent).

Worth a watch if you are interested in politics, especially if you remember the 1990s, and maybe start with this part of the conversation where Avi Lewis begins talking about surveillance capitalism.

Yesterday I found myself watching a video from about the 25th anniversary of the Quebec City demonstration against globalization. The video was watchable in part because George Stroumboulopoulos has spent, himself, nearly 25 years in front of a camera telling a stories directly to an audience. But it’s also because it’s a snapshot of a time just before things changed.

When photos were on film.

When broadcast and cable TV still were the dominant media.

When the World Trade Center towers still stood.

In his video essay, George tells a story about that moment in time that today is hard to imagine. Not just the protests against capitalism, but also how the symbol the protestors rallied around distinct meanings for both sides. One saw it as protection, the other saw it as an insult.

The three-metre high concrete and wire fence also served as a provocation in a way that may have been harder to tell in the moment. Sure it was a barrier, but this generation also knew walls come down, and with it entire systems of oppression. Those on both sides of this fence had seen it happen a dozen years earlier. This barrier’s mere presence arguably helped empower them, even through aggressive and violent efforts to suppress people’s fundamental rights.

Months later, of course, the “temporary” suspension of many of these rights became an accepted norm.

Now an entire generation has grown up in an environment which has enforced a level conformity to such a degree, protests are labelled insurrections, and the protestors are charged as a terrorists. (Just take a look a very similar event and protest in Toronto nine years after the events in Quebec City.)

All this brings me back to today.

While reading an article about a podcast I found myself highlighting more phrases (“anarchist calisthenics“ and “micro-looting“) and sentences while scribbling increasingly longer marginalia. I was frustrated by the arrogance of the article, but didn’t disagree with his annoyance at the flippancy the “shoplifting as protest” theme was discussed and presented.

As the writer, Graeme Wood, winds down the piece, he offers:

Getting clubbed because you refused to use the bathroom designated for your race—that is something your grandchildren will brag that you did. I wonder what is wrong with people who feel like they are on an odyssey against a comparable injustice but who evade responsibility for shoplifting produce.

But then it struck me: It’s the same as it’s always been.

It’s not that the people are wrong, the fault instead lies in the very system they are operating in.

Mass protests feels abstract or token because they have been effectively outlawed, and any progress made by those increasingly rare contemporary efforts has been crushed and dismantled.

Maybe these “mirco-looters” have never encountered true oppression. Maybe they have never experienced the pain of crowd suppression weapons because the system has diffused their plans before they even knew they even wanted to protest.

Maybe they don’t know what it’s like to agree on values, while disagreeing on issues because opinions are weaponized and amplified to generate passive money for people who don’t even care enough to have a perspective.

Maybe now the only way to put your body upon the gears is to find those small ways to actively not participate in the system. To take down the sign in the window. To feel what it’s like to steal an avocado and give it away to the person marching down the street toward the new fence holding us in.

Or maybe people really don’t care and are just doing it kicks and clicks.

But I doubt it.