2025
- Accessibility
- Beginner HTML
- JavaScript
- Blogging Platforms
- Static site generators
- Code generators
- Code snippets
- Analytics
- Guestbooks
- Forms
- layouts
- Web Hosts
- Webrings
- Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth (motion study?)
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (thanks, Mom!)
- Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi (in 5th grade!)
- Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (the first of many SciFi books)
- A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (changed my life)
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (best…novel…ever)
- From Here to Eternity by James Jones (pre WW2 Hawaii)
- The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter (about turn of the 20th century baseball players)
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (planted a seed in my character)
- Fields of Fire by James Webb (Vietnam novel by the Virginia senator)
- Woodie Guthrie, A Life by Joe Klein (recommended by Bruce Springsteen)
- The Rider by Tim Krabbé (a novel about cycling)
- Alcoholics Anonymous by Bill W. and others (life saving)
- The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hahn
- The New Centurions by Joseph Wambaugh (the best police procedural writer ever)
- Restaurants
- Coffee Shops
- Accommodations
- Parks
- Residences (friends and family)
- Bookstores
- Restaurants
- Coffee Shops
- Accommodations
- Parks
- Residences (friends and family)
- Bookstores
The Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad in North Carolina.
32-Bit Cafe, A Comprehensive Resource for Bloggers and Personal Websites
A web site for baby bloggers or even experienced ones needing some fresh ideas, 32-Bit Cafe has plenty to explore. It has guides and tutorials, page ideas, website topics, art and graphic design, technical info and a massive resource list.
You've just made a website, but now you're unsure where to go from here. Here are some ideas for things to add and techniques to learn. If you need more inspiration, browse other folks' websites and surf the 'net! You'll surely find something that you want to add to your own personal website.
Learn about:
What Books Had the Greatest Influence on You?
It's the last night of this trip and my last repost. This list of the most influential books in my life inspired several other bloggers to create their own lists. My original offer still stands, if you make one, let me know and I'll link to it.
I think you can figure out a lot about a person if you know what books have had the most impact on them. At one point or another, each of these books was my current favorite. They all had a lasting impact on me. I'd love to see your list. It doesn't have to be 15 books and you don't need to be impressive (although if you really loved War and Peace, by all means list it). If you make a list, let me know and I will add a link to it.
Quick Reviews - For Sharing and Reference
If you're looking for a quick and easy way to share you general opinion and ratings of movies, TV shows, games, books or whatever, Quick Reviews, a new app by Indy developer, blogger, YouTuber and podcaster, Matt Birchler can generate a graphic for you in just a few clicks.
The free version lets you create unlimited reviews and allows you the leeway to control all the design elements: accent color, font, theme, rating icons, light/dark mode, default review type.
Quick Reviews also has clipboard detection and will use the graphic you've copied to automatically illustrate your review. You can also set it to automatically copy your review text out to your clipboard when saving the finished graphic.
The paid version, a $9.99 subscription, offers to populate your review metadata, including art from The Movie DB, allowing you to even import a suggested rating if you like. You can also import movie reviews from your Letterboxd account.
Both versions of the app feature filtering by media type, year and rating.
The current 1.0 release of Quick Reviews is not yet Mac compatible, but it's on the developer's roadmap. As for now, creating a quick graphic to share on social media or on a personal blog is supremely easy and quick. Matt is also the kind of thoughtful developer needed in the Mac community.
Get Quick View in the iOS App Store.
Quick Reviews - For Sharing and Reference
If you're looking for a quick and easy way to share you general opinion and ratings of movies, TV shows, games, books or whatever, Quick Reviews, a new app by Indy developer, blogger, YouTuber and podcaster, Matt Birchler can generate a graphic for you in just a few clicks.
The free version lets you create unlimited reviews and allows you the leeway to control all the design elements: accent color, font, theme, rating icons, light/dark mode, default review type.
Quick Reviews also has clipboard detection and will use the graphic you've copied to automatically illustrate your review. You can also set it to automatically copy your review text out to your clipboard when saving the finished graphic.
The paid version, a $9.99 subscription, offers to populate your review metadata, including art from The Movie DB, allowing you to even import a suggested rating if you like. You can also import movie reviews from your Letterboxd account.
Both versions of the app feature filtering by media type, year and rating.
The current 1.0 release of Quick Reviews is not yet Mac compatible, but it's on the developer's roadmap. As for now, creating a quick graphic to share on social media or on a personal blog is supremely easy and quick. Matt is also the kind of thoughtful developer needed in the Mac community.
Get Quick View in the iOS App Store.
This Weeks Bookmarks - Wikenigma, Winter Camping, Militia Danger, $30K Tip, Protecting Democracy, Billionaire BS, Legal Weed
Wikenigma - an Encyclopedia of Unknowns - Wikenigma is a unique wiki-based resource specifically dedicated to documenting fundamental gaps in human knowledge.
Outdoorsy Minnesotans: I winter camped and so can you. Probably. - Two winter camping novices spend a night out with an Arctic explorer to learn how to stay warm -- and even enjoy -- camping in freezing weather.
Who Will Stop the Militias Now? - By granting blanket clemency to the January 6 insurrectionists, the president has unleashed violent, and loyal, paramilitaries.
Pizza driver gets 30K More - A pizza delivery driver in the throes of a brutal snowstorm found himself at the center of a heartwarming viral story after a meager $2 tip sparked an outcry that turned into an avalanche of generosity.
10 Things We Can All Do to Protect Democracy - Democracy Docket - The most common question I receive is how everyday citizens can help in the fight for democracy. My advice, take the first step, start with something small and see what works for you. Here are ten things all of us can do.
Billionaires Should Not Exist — Here’s Why | Teen Vogue - In a fair society, there would be no billionaires. Bernie Sanders says they shouldn't exist and Elizabeth Warren sells mugs of their tears. I'm talking about billionaires and making the case that an economic system that allows them is immoral.
Legal Weed Didn't Deliver on Its Promises - Not to be a buzzkill, but advocates touted a host of benefits and no real costs. That's proved to be a fantasy.
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Texas Lake, located on Ft. Liberty in North Carolina, after a thunderstorm.
Rego - An App for Bookmarking Places
I've been using Rego to bookmark locations for the last eleven
years, using seven different iPhones. I have over 600 places saved in
various categories, including:
Whenever we travel, it's easy to find places where we've enjoyed eating in the past. The same with coffee shops and hotels and rental properties. Adding a new location can be done onsite, from an address or pulled from the metadata from a photograph. Bookmarks contain GPS coordinates, street address where applicable, notes, date added and a stock photo or one or more of your own. You can also use custom pin colors and designate any location as a favorite.
You can also use Rego when hiking or fishing offshore.
Rego provides plenty of navigation options, with internal maps or working with external apps like Google Maps or TomTom. Your bookmark collection stays on your device. If you opt in, you can back up to Dropbox. There is not an option to use any other cloud provider, including iCloud.
You can get a free trial of Rego that allows you to add up to 10 locations. To add more, you can subscribe monthly for $2.99, yearly for $9.99 or opt for a lifetime purchase for $24.99.
Rego - An App for Bookmarking Places
I've been using Rego to bookmark locations for the last eleven
years, using seven different iPhones. I have over 600 places saved in
various categories, including:
Whenever we travel, it's easy to find places where we've enjoyed eating in the past. The same with coffee shops and hotels and rental properties. Adding a new location can be done onsite, from an address or pulled from the metadata from a photograph. Bookmarks contain GPS coordinates, street address where applicable, notes, date added and a stock photo or one or more of your own. You can also use custom pin colors and designate any location as a favorite.
You can also use Rego when hiking or fishing offshore.
Rego provides plenty of navigation options, with internal maps or working with external apps like Google Maps or TomTom. Your bookmark collection stays on your device. If you opt in, you can back up to Dropbox. There is not an option to use any other cloud provider, including iCloud.
You can get a free trial of Rego that allows you to add up to 10 locations. To add more, you can subscribe monthly for $2.99, yearly for $9.99 or opt for a lifetime purchase for $24.99.
How to Degoogle Your Life
I'm traveling this weekend, visiting family and supporting my wife, who is running the Miami Marathon. This is a repost from the spring of 2024.
There is a lot of talk out on the Internet about people trying to increase their online privacy. Folks are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the amount of information harvested by big tech companies, and increasing uncertain about what those companies are doing with all that they know. Who are they selling it to, and what are they doing with it in turn? Google is at the heart of many people's lives, especially if they use an Android phone or a Chromebook. Many of the rest of us are still using Google as our default search engine. We are using Gmail and Google Drive and Google Docs and any of a dozen other tools and services owned by the company. If you've had enough and would like to try to reduce or eliminate Google from your life, you are going to need help. This article by crackerjack tech journalist, Justin Pot, is a good starting place.
How to Quit Google, According to a Privacy Expert
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The Phones of Normal People
Note: I'm still traveling and short on time, so I'm sharing a post from back in May that touched a nerve with many people in the geekspace.
Now, I realize that there are some folks in the geek space who still make use of default apps. Robb Knight's project from the winter of 2023 taught us that. By and large, though, the things that people in tech related fields do with our phones, laptops, and tablets fall far, far outside what normies do with theirs. Even further from the norm is what the professional nerds do. Those folks who make their living from monetized blogs, podcast ads, subscriptions and other forms of content are so far removed from what your Mom does with her phone that they could be living on another planet. I saw many bloggers today venting a little over the vapors the content production machine types are having about the new iPads and the fact that those darn folks at Apple just won't listen to them.
I live at the intersection of normies and tech because I do IT support for a living. I have to talk to your Mom at work in the language she speaks about her computer and her phone. I know, trust me, I really know how much she hates changing her password and how much she really doesn't want to have to download and configure a two-factor authentication app. I know how frustrating it is to search for Microsoft Authenticator in Apple's App Store only to have the number one hit to be a $40 paid app and not the free product from the folks in Redmond. You know what's important to your Mom? That her icons don't move, that's what. Last year, Microsoft had an errant patch Tuesday that ended up removing the Office icons off the desktop of corporate computers.I spent a couple of days explaining to people that, no, we didn't "delete Word off your computer," and talking them through recreating the shortcut. That's a crisis. Not being able to use the Finder on an iPad is not a crisis.
Pete Brown said it well, "the vast majority of iPad owners are using the device to read Kindle books, play Candy Crush, and take bad photos." There are millions of us nerds out there using the best calendar and note-taking apps, but there are tens of millions of people perfectly happy with what Apple or Google gave them. Maybe they have downloaded a few apps (and probably never deleted them) to try out. They might even be pretty good at Instagram, but they are not us. They do not know what version of the operating system they are running on anything. They do not care. They hate updates because they interrupt stuff they'd rather be doing. They don't care about the new features being announced at WWDC because they do not want to learn how to do new things with their already too complicated tech. They are the baseline. We are the outliers.
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Christmas Tree Rd., Sampson County, NC I took this picture because it represents the kinds of things you can still see in the rural south. I’m recording - not proselytizing nor mocking.
<img src=“https://amerpie.lol/uploads/2025/day-one2025-02-01-at-07.34.56.jpeg" width=“600” height=“392” alt=“A horse stands beside a rustic, red barn with corrugated metal roof. Large white text reads: “JESUS SEEK AND FIND HIM FOR ETERNAL LIFE.” Surrounding are leafless trees and open fields.">
This is a female eclectus parrot. They look so different from the males that scientists who discovered them thought they were two different species. #birds
School memories, new lab day was always fun but a lot of work
The List
I appreciate the people who read this blog. I'm grateful for your attention, your comments and for the great blogs so many of you maintain. I'm currently traveling and spending time with family I haven't seen in 10 years. Tonight's post is from April when I was just getting started. Straight from the heart.
Part of my daily routine is to record three things in my daily journal entry for which I'm grateful. I've been doing it for a long time. I try not to be too repetitive, so I'm always on the lookout for things to identify and add to my list. It helps to ask myself that question multiple times a day. I found a good parking spot? Boom! Grateful. My clothes fit particularly comfortably today? Boom! Grateful. A text from one of my grown kids, a tasty lunch at a familiar restaurant, a good report at the dentist - I'm always on the lookout.
I'm lucky in that I have everything I need even if I don't have everything I want. I learned how to tell the difference between those two things a while back and that skill serves me well. Life is by no means perfect, I weigh too much, some of the people I love the most live too far away to see them as much as I would like. I sometimes regret not getting further along the career path I chose than I did before I retired. All of those things are mitigated by other factors. I've lost weight before. With technology, I can stay in touch with my kids and grandkids fairly easily. I may not have retired as the CIO of a tech company, but I had a solid 8-5, Mon-Fri job that left me plenty of time to do the stuff that really brings me joy.
I battled alcohol for years, sometimes going long stretches without it, years even, only to fall back into bad habits and addiction. I'm forever going to be grateful that things finally clicked one day. I had a moment of clarity that allowed me to see what kind of future I was headed towards and to also see that I could avoid going there. I took my last drink on December 28th, 2008 and have been continuously sober ever since. Being sober isn't my identity. I'm prouder of things I've done than of the simple act of abstaining, but I'm definitely happy not to have that struggle any more.
I've been married since I was 18 - to four different people. Luckily my wife and I have been together a dozen years now and it keeps getting better. I don't suffer from the curse of loneliness or the stress of constant fighting. I didn't go to college. I was a two-time teenage parent, and the workforce was always the place for me. I found the IT field around the age of 30 after having been in the military, working construction and in manufacturing and a stint as a prison guard. Once I got into computers I moved through a couple of different industries before landing in educational technology, the area I made a career. Even post-retirement, I missed it enough to take a low stress job at a local university solving problems for end users.
My wife and I have enough dough that we don't have to worry about the things that used to be terrifying when I was younger: an unexpected car repair bill, medical expenses, the death of a major appliance. We don't have helicopter money but don't have to pinch pennies either. We can afford to help out the kids when they need it. It feels good. I'm not going to lie. At the end of most days, I go to bed pretty happy. I have enough in my life to keep me busy. I still love technology as much as I did when I bought my first computer (on a Sears card in 1993). I have repaired the damage my bad habits caused in my life. I'm fortunate and I'm grateful and I'm glad to make that list every single day.
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AppAddict Free App List #3
This is the third collection of free apps reviewed on AppAddict. Links to the first two collections are posted below. I've downloaded and installed each of these on my own laptop. In many cases, I've added them to various workflows for my day job and blogging pursuits. I'm sorry for the recent double post to your RSS feeds. This post may also go out twice, but after that I hope the problem is solved.
A Curated Collection of Free Apps
Another Curated Collection of Free Software
Shareful - A Free App I Use Every Day
Two Free Apps for Mac OS Installation Ease
Free Apps \#3
Recents App for Mac - A Free Intelligent File Launcher
MarkEdit - A Pure Markdown Editor for Free
Royal TSX for Remote Management
Simplenote - Free, Rock Solid and Dependable for Over a Decade
SingleFile - For Safari and Other Mac Browsers
Ente Auth - The Free Authy Replacement for Your Mac and iPhone
Sloth - Activity Monitor on Steroids
Cronica - A Free, Privacy Focused
Media Tracker for Mac and iOS
MacTracker - Can You Call Yourself a Fanboy If You Don't Have This Installed?
Orange Card - Get Info Easily for Free
Glympse Location Sharing - Free and Secure
Zero Duplicates Free Duplicate File Finder
OpenVibe - Free Social Thread Aggregator
Resilio Sync - Secure, Private Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Lossless Cut - Save Time When Editing Videos
Background Music - Per App Volume Control and More
Unsplash Wallpaper App - Free Unlimited Wallpapers at Your Fingertips
FSNotes - A Free and Open-Source Successor to NValt
Using Google Photos on iOS Makes Leaving Meta Easier
Picocrypt - Free and Open-Source File Encryption with Simple but Powerful Features
Session - Free and Open-Source E2E Decentralized Cross Platform Messaging
DEVONagent Lite - Free Tool to Increase Search Productivity
Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard
AppAddict Free App List #3
This is the third collection of free apps reviewed on AppAddict. Links to the first two collections are posted below. I've downloaded and installed each of these on my own laptop. In many cases, I've added them to various workflows for my day job and blogging pursuits. I'm sorry for the recent double post to your RSS feeds. This post may also go out twice, but after that I hope the problem is solved.
A Curated Collection of Free Apps
Another Curated Collection of Free Software
Shareful - A Free App I Use Every Day
Two Free Apps for Mac OS Installation Ease
Free Apps \#3
Recents App for Mac - A Free Intelligent File Launcher
MarkEdit - A Pure Markdown Editor for Free
Royal TSX for Remote Management
Simplenote - Free, Rock Solid and Dependable for Over a Decade
SingleFile - For Safari and Other Mac Browsers
Ente Auth - The Free Authy Replacement for Your Mac and iPhone
Sloth - Activity Monitor on Steroids
Cronica - A Free, Privacy Focused
Media Tracker for Mac and iOS
MacTracker - Can You Call Yourself a Fanboy If You Don't Have This Installed?
Orange Card - Get Info Easily for Free
Glympse Location Sharing - Free and Secure
Zero Duplicates Free Duplicate File Finder
OpenVibe - Free Social Thread Aggregator
Resilio Sync - Secure, Private Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Lossless Cut - Save Time When Editing Videos
Background Music - Per App Volume Control and More
Unsplash Wallpaper App - Free Unlimited Wallpapers at Your Fingertips
FSNotes - A Free and Open-Source Successor to NValt
Using Google Photos on iOS Makes Leaving Meta Easier
Picocrypt - Free and Open-Source File Encryption with Simple but Powerful Features
Session - Free and Open-Source E2E Decentralized Cross Platform Messaging
DEVONagent Lite - Free Tool to Increase Search Productivity
Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard
Watching the sun set into the Atlantic Ocean - in North Carolina. Eat your heart out California.
From the Côte d’Azur, it’s #WindowFriday
Looking for Inspiration? Look to the People!
The Stonewall Uprising
Almost all the rights and privileges we enjoy in our daily lives happened because common people fought for them. I'm a veteran, and I am not being disrespectful when I say that the real fight for freedom happened at home between the people and the reluctant ruling class. The fight for freedom isn't something that only happens on the battlefield. Take some time and read about a few struggles. Get inspired. The time is coming when more of us will be called on to stand up against the fascists and corporations seeking to remake America into some throwback model of ugliness.
Child Labor
What Ended Child Labor in the US - Labor Rights History
Child labor in the United States - Wikipedia
Womens' Right to Vote
40-Hour Work Week, Workers' Compensation, Right to Organize
The history & evolution of the 40-hour work week | Culture Amp
A Brief History of Workers' Compensation - PMC
Labor Movement ‑ America, Reform & Timeline | HISTORY
Anti-Worker Violence
Bogalusa Labor Massacre, Attack on Interracial Solidarity
Civil Rights
Leaders in the Struggle for Civil Rights | JFK Library
The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change
Stonewall and Beyond
How the Stonewall uprising ignited the pride movement
The First Pride Was a Riot: The Origins of Pride Month
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