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What Are You Doing That’s Creative?

My Nikon d750 with my new (to me) lenses.

I visited a dear friend this summer as I was driving through Texas, and as we caught up in the all-too-brief lunch of ramen, he asked me, “So, what are you doing that’s creative?”

I blinked. I didn’t have an answer. My days were consumed by work, and then decompression-via-videogame. I thought about the hobbies I used to have: photography, 3D design, writing, dabbling in terrible music-production, video and special-effects, brewing beer, baking, coffee-roasting… I had to admit I didn’t really have any kind of creative outlet any more.

At the time I smiled, proudly shrugged it off, and replied, “Meh. I’m so busy, I don’t really have time for creative endeavors.”

“Mmh…” he replied. Not outwardly a sign of disapproval, but if you knew him like I did, you’d know he was disappointed.

As I drove on through Texas, his question kept rolling around in my mind. Why didn’t I make the time to be more creative? Heather and I talked about it some time later, and she suggested I get back into photography. I’ve had many creative muses over the years in the space, so I’m going to try and get back into it.

My first task was to update my equipment. I’ve got a Nikon D750 with a full-frame sensor, but the kit lenses were built for the APS-C sensor, so my lenses couldn’t project light into the entire image. I went to mpb.com and ordered a couple of used lenses specifically designed for the full-frame sensor.

First is a 50mm f1.4 prime lens. I plan on using this lens a lot! Fast and diminutive, he’ll make hauling my big heavy camera around a lot easier.

Second is a 24-120mm f3.5 zoom – replacing the kit lens from my old APS-C camera. Much better glass, and versatile for when I’ve got time to really compose my shots.

The next thing I have to do, though, is force myself out of the house. I’ve become quite the homebody since the pandemic, and it’s long past time I find a new pattern.

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  • December 25, 2025
Random

Birthday Vacation 2025

Last week, Heather and I celebrated our birthdays together (though they’re actually a few days apart) by taking the week off and decompressing from the daily drudgery of work and commitments. We planned on heading out to the beach and spend a few days there but the weather was not cooperating, so our vacation became a de facto staycation.

Still, decompression was the plan, so we did. Our first order of business was to head to the Lotte Market, an asian food market that’s about an hour away from where we live. We don’t get down there often, so we used our trip as an excuse to really explore, try a lot of things we wouldn’t normally try, and gorge ourselves in an obscene amount of Korean food; Korean fried chicken, fresh napa kimchi, pickled radish, stewed radish greens, bean sprouts, bulgogi, and some rice.

Dinner plate full of food from the Korean grocery store

Normally I love a nice funky fermented cabbage kimchi, but this fresh napa kimchi was so good. I wish I could have it every day.

However, at some point while I was out, I believe I caught some kind of cold. This wouldn’t become a problem until Thursday night when I first started to notice symptoms. Understand that I still mask for COVID, but this time I was feeling lazy and didn’t wear my mask out. Naturally this was when I likely got infected. So the last three days have been pretty miserable.

Today (Monday) is my first day back on the job and I feel about 80%, but this was honestly not my favorite vacation I’ve ever taken. At least this week, Thanksgiving week, is a short one.

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  • November 24, 2025
Technology

Dreamhost -> Hostinger

I’ve moved my hosting from Dreamhost, where I’ve been for about 12 years, to Hostinger. Dreamhost isn’t a bad hosting company, per se — they are great if what you want is pretty basic, and will grow with you as your needs grow — but all that comes at a price.

My hosting needs are pretty simple. I basically need some WordPress, and occasionally I may want to install my own Node.js, PHP, or Python-based site… Maybe I want to set up a reverse-proxy to another service. Could I do that on Dreamhost, yes, but I’d pay fees based on how much I use it. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?

Except even idle (sending zero bits, receiving zero bits, using only enough CPU and memory to run absolutely nothing would cost me $25 a month. The moment I use it, I start paying for every electron that passes through my server. I used to pay $25 per year to run my WordPress site. With Dreamhost’s additional flexibility, my hosting charges would go up 1,200%, and that’s before I even move this blog over.

Hostinger, by contrast, charges me by $27 per month — yes, that’s more, but I get 4 x the memory, 4 x the CPU cores, and I can use all of the available memory and CPU I want. I’ll be slowly migrating over some additional services as I have time.

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  • November 21, 2025
Photos

Frozen Kitty-Prints

As Heather and I set out to dig ourselves out of the latest snowstorm, I noticed that some poor neighborhood-kitty bounded across our driveway-skirt. Poor thing probably has frozen toe-beans! I catch at least two cats on my security cameras – they like to hunt across my back-yard.

I’m afraid to leave food out for them in fear that I may attract other, more-aggressive, critters.

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  • January 10, 2025
Social Media

ActivityPub will Rule Social

I’m increasingly convinced that the ActivityPub protocol will rule the future of social media and user-generated content. Many friends of mine have suggested, myself included, that we should all just go back to RSS feeds and blog posts. We control the content ourselves, we can even control who consumes it, and only people we allow can engage with it through comments.

ActivityPub, the protocol that makes Mastodon work, is basically the same thing. It allows the federation of content from one platform to another, it can pull it down automatically without any user interaction, but it can also push content out for other servers to share, if it is so configured.

I’m seeing a lot of buzz around PixelFed which is an ActivityPub-based media feed similar in intent to Instagram. There are even social music-sharing sites, leaning heavily on Spotify’s model of social playlists, which uses ActivityPub. I’m even seeing a nascent YouTube like platform all using ActivityPub as the glue.

As individual servers become more capable, we’ll see us moving away from these monolithic servers that entirely hold our fates in their unaccountable and inaccessible hands. Me? I fight for the users.

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  • November 29, 2022
Social Media / Technology

The Future of Microblogging

With Elon’s acquisition of Twitter more or less complete, the vast punditry is asking what kind of shithole will it become? Will they let Trump and his fascist goons back in to spew more hate, lies, and demagoguery? Will it become a pay-only service? Many have predicted that they’ll be forced off the platform in one way or another, and they’re looking for safe harbors.

It’s no accident I’m posting here again after 4 years of inactivity.

I was tweeting at my friend Mark earlier:



and I’m still serious. What if we just kept on microblogging on whatever platform we want, and syndicated our content via RSS again? We could still keep up with each other, control who engages with our content via access control and our own comment moderation, and more thoughtful long-form discussion rather than 280 letter bumper-sticker manifestos.

What if?

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  • October 27, 2022
Social Media

My breakup with Google and Facebook

Christopher Wylie Banned from Facebook

The more that comes out about Facebook’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica, the more it makes me want to break up with Zuck’s business. The latest news is Facebook has banned Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower.

No reason has been given, yet, for the ban, so I’m holding out on complete deletion until I hear from both sides. Still, the optics of this are pretty awful.

I expect to find out that the account deletion was brigaded, and an automated system did this. This happening on Friday night, I’ll bet this will get cleared up by Monday.

It Doesn’t End with Wylie or Trump

But Wylie’s not the only one to feel Facebook’s banhammer. There are reports of people posting instructions on how to delete their Facebook accounts only to have the posts removed, and the accounts banned, themselves. Again, this feels like overreach on the part of some automated systems, and I’ll wait until next week before passing any kind of final judgement.

And Trump wasn’t the only beneficiary of Cambridge Analytica’s data-mining efforts. Reports from Channel 4 today indicate that Vote Leave, the organization behind 2016’s Brexit referendum, violated campaign spending rules by dumping £625,000 in a single payment into a Canadian data mining company with ties to Cambridge Analytica. That company would ultimately receive £2.7 Million from Vote Leave before the dust settled

What’s up with Google?

I'm taking a long hard look at the data I'm voluntarily sharing. Besides Facebook, I give a ton of data to Google. While they haven't been a bad player like Facebook appears to be, I should probably limit my exposure on their platform where possible. I give them a ton of signal through my use of GMail hosting of my fraize.com/ email address, my Google Photos account, and my nearly exclusive use of Android.

Apple is the only company that has made data privacy the cornerstone of their relationship with customers. Of course, I'm not naïve enough to believe them completely, but given the playing field, they're definitely more trustworthy than Google or Facebook right now.

What now?

What always keeps me locked in to social media is FOMO – the Fear of Missing Out. The fear of knowing that something is happening in the world, and not being in the loop is real. I’m working on that. I’ll miss the personal connections with friends and family. That’ll just force me to forge real and tangible connections with those folks.

I’m disabling my Facebook account as of right now. Not deleting – Facebook is still useful, and I may yet return, who knows? I’m moving over to iPhone from Android. I’m going back to self-hosting my email domain.

If anybody out there has concerns like me, reply to this post and tell me what you think. Also, if you need help transitioning away from cloud-services, or switching to iPhone, email me and I’d be happy to help.

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  • March 25, 2018