A day from now the first new Star Wars movie in nearly seven years is being released, and in my universe, there’s barely a ripple.

Compare to even the noise made around each of the last trilogy’s film releases, this is an odd silence. No doubt it’s happening out there, but the noise isn’t reaching me, arguably a key target market. Maybe that explains why, because they know I am already going to see it, regardless.

But my suspicion is that’s not the reason.

The silence I experience is because mass media is gone, having been replaced by a constellation of social media accounts shouting opinions to attract attention. Ironically, that amplified outrage is very reason why I don’t participate any more more (although you can find me as @saila on most of the original networks and they’re offshoots, and I’m using @crsaila to sit on a few others).

For the first time in my life, I am realizing, I am no longer present in the media landscape.

There’s more to this, but I can’t seem to get the words for it today, so I’ll end with this: A story I commenting on a “controversy” that in my ignorance of it, reminded me, too, of why I avoid this new media landscape and sit in silence.

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.