Photo Sharing Websites
I enjoy looking at my photos. I take some time every day to look back at this day in history on one of the websites where I am still storing my archive. I also have an Aura Frame and an Amazon Echo Show that display photos all day long. I never got into Instagram as a means of sharing photos socially, but I've experimented with a few other sites, some that put the emphasis on the social aspect and others that are more for "serious photographers" Whatever that means. These days, I am primarily posting a couple of photos a day on Micro.blog and Mastodon, I even have a gallery for my 100 Strangers Project.
Here are a few other places where I and others I know post photos.
- Refrakt - A more meaningful home for photography
- Glass — Photography Community - Glass is a paid, global community platform for photographers. With no ads or manipulative algorithms,Glass is your home for photography.
- Flashes for Bluesky on the App Store - A Bluesky client just for photography. The devs suggest opening a second, photos only account. I'm trying it out
- pxlmo - The Pixelfed server I use
- Flickr | The best place to be a photographer online.
- Best Photo Sharing Platform for Photographers | 500px
- SmugMug: Protect, Share, Store, and Sell Your Photos
- The World's Largest Free Photo Contest | Pixoto
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My App Wishlist
I spend a fair amount of time looking for apps to test and review. While, I seem to concentrate heavily on apps for macOS, I am also fascinated by the solutions developers come up with to get tasks done on the iPhone and iPad. I keep running lists of candidates for AppAddict and for my personal use. I'm sharing this today and hoping to hear back from folks who have opinions on the apps on this list or suggestions for alternatives. Let me know, pro or con, what you think about these.
- Usage Device Monitor - Usage is a tool to monitor your device's activity, data usage, connection speed, and more.
- Annotable Annotation & Markup - Annotable is the most full-featured all-in-one image annotation tool.
- Infuse • Video Player - gnite your video content with Infuse -- the beautiful way to watch almost any video format on your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac, and Vision.
- Keep It Mobile - Keep It for iPad and iPhone is a powerful notebook and document organizer that can be used on its own or in conjunction with Keep It for Mac, available separately.
- Avast Security & Privacy - Protect your device from online threats and intruders, keep your email accounts safe from scams, browse safely on public Wi-Fi, and stay in control of your online accounts.
- Elgato Stream Deck Mobile - Stream Deck Mobile is a full-fledged recreation of our iconic Stream Deck keypad. Now with an all-new design, more freedom to customize, and powerful features exclusive to iPhone and iPad.
- Timery for Toggl - Enhance your Toggl time-tracking experience with Timery! Start your most-used timers with one click. Edit your recent time entries easily.
- Broadcasts - Broadcasts 3 introduces a beautiful new Mini Player, revamped Search experience, and a new Artwork Chooser to help style your library.
- GizmoPack - Bring your shortcuts to the next level with GizmoPack!
- one sec screen time + focus - Fight the social media algorithms and win back control over your social media usage & your subconsciousness!
- Redirect Web for Safari - Control your browsing with Redirect Web. Set custom redirect rules to navigate your favorite sites automatically.
- AirScrobble Last.fm Scrobbler - Welcome to AirScrobble--the ultimate way to scrobble everything from real life and your device directly to your Last.fm profile! Whether you're grooving to vinyl, discovering tunes on the radio, or catching jams on social media, AirScrobble makes tracking and scrobbling a breeze.
- Up Ahead Countdown Widgets - Up Ahead is a playful, beautiful way to keep track of everything you're looking forward to. Create events in seconds, and build yourself an eclectic timeline full of birthdays, weddings, holidays, vacations, game releases, sporting events, or anything coming up that brings you joy.
- OASIS AI - Create perfect writing in any format just by talking. AI transcribes your natural speech, then rewrites it as a professional email, blog post, college essay, LinkedIn post, text message, outline, TikTok video script, pop song & more.
- AI Journal & Diary - Reflectr - Transform your journaling experience with Reflectr, your AI powered private journal, designed to help you understand and navigate your thoughts more effectively
- Automadon - Automadon provides a suite of Shortcuts actions for Mastodon with support for multiple accounts. Actions available within Shortcuts include:
- HashPhotos - HashPhotos is the ultimate alternative to the Photos app.HashPhotos is the essential photo app for your iPhone/iPad, designed to revolutionize the way you manage, edit, and bring your memories to life.
- BookBuddy My Library Manager - BookBuddy is a powerful book management app that gives you access to your entire book catalog, anywhere. Using BookBuddy is fun and easy, allowing you to quickly find any book in your library, share your favorite books, and keep track of borrowed and lent books.
- Roadtrippers - Trip Planner - Discover the open road and the great outdoors with ease. Roadtrippers, the \#1 road trip planning app in the USA and Canada
- Photomator – Photo Editor - Photomator is a photo editing powerhouse, offering incredible tools for enhancing, retouching, and managing your photos. It includes an extensive collection of cutting-edge color adjustments, automatic selections powered by AI, powerful batch editing features,
- This Easy Photo Labels - Tell the whole story by adding pointers, labels, descriptions, and commentary to your photos.
- Noir - Dark Mode for Safari - Noir is a Safari extension that automatically adds a dark mode to every website you visit.
- Nintype - Transform your iPhone or iPad into a highly productive device where you can actually type relatively quickly with it - so writing emails, reports and articles are much nicer, because you can type faster on the iPad/iPhone than most people can on a desktop keyboard!
- Stickier Mobile - Old-school sticky notes with a few new tricks.
- Camera M - Pro Manual Camera - Camera M is a professional and modern camera designed to do one thing exceptionally well -- to help you capture beautiful photos in the highest possible quality with powerful and precise manual camera controls akin to a DSLR.
- Calendar 366 Events & Tasks - Appointments and to-dos, meetings and deadlines, birthdays and dates - make the most of your time with Calendar 366! Anything a calendar can do... Calendar 366 can do better - and all of its functions can be adjusted easily and intuitively
- Kino - Pro Video Camera - Make great video easy! Kino lets you just press record and create cinematic video with color presets created by expert filmmakers--no edit required. Plus, with "AutoMotion," the app automatically creates that smooth "film look" you see at the movies. Shoot great video with no film school required.
- Mela - Recipe Manager - Mela is a simple, elegant and modern recipe manager that syncs with iCloud.
- Just a Simple Image Converter - Experience the ultimate image transformation tool with our versatile Image Converter app. Seamlessly convert a wide range of image formats, including JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF, PDF, WebP, BMP and HEIC all in one convenient application.
- Habit Tracker - Checker - Checker is an app that can help you make new habits stick and be more consistent with any goal you're working towards. It provides an easy way to check in on the actions you're tracking and then displays your progress in a calendar grid, making it easy to see patterns and potential areas for improvement.
- SnipNotes Notebook & Clipboard - SnipNotes transforms your Mac into a hub of creativity and efficiency, seamlessly syncing with your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Jot down inspirations directly from the menu bar and enrich your notes with images and diverse formatting options. Effortlessly pull in data from the web and other apps with a simple drag or let SnipNotes safeguard your clipboard content for later recall.
- Cheetah Note - Cheetah Note is a simple yet powerful note app.
- Bookmark Management - Trace - Trace: Capture Screenshots, Bookmark & Organize. Trace revolutionizes the way you capture screenshots, bookmark content, and organize your digital discoveries. Seamlessly integrated with your favorite apps like Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and more, Trace empowers you.
Rainbow Pond in Gray's Creek, NC
This is on private land but the owner lets anyone go fishinghere as long as they don’t litter or bother anyone else. There is always someone here with a line in the water.
I Always Wanted to Write a Manifesto
This month's theme for the IndieWeb Carnival is self-expression. Here is my contribution.
I believe that to keep the most valuable parts of yourself, you have to give them away. I am not encouraging anyone, necessarily, to give away all their worldly goods and follow Jesus, although I would support that, as rare as it is. No, I believe the most valuable part of each of us is our learned experience. Each of us has spent a lifetime learning the lessons we had to to arrive where we are today. Many of us have learned to survive heartbreak. We have learned how to learn, how to be taught. Few of us sought pain as a teacher, but it taught us anyway. So did joy.
Somehow, we've reached a place where it's considered an imposition to ask anyone anything. I suppose no one wants to give an air of entitlement, so they hold themselves back. We all walk around surrounded by experts, and we still think that the adult, responsible thing to do is reinvent the wheel over and over again. We fear being trapped in a conversation with an enthusiastic person because it might be "cringe." Enthusiasm is considered to be uncool. It's not low-key. Everything is supposed to low-key these days.
Buck this trend. Put yourself out there in some way. Let people know what you love. Become approachable about the things that matter to you the most, It doesn't matter what they are. If you love something, the chances are good that someone else does too.
Now, I believe that a powerful and accessible way to give away this expertise you've spent a lifetime gathering is through writing about it and sharing that writing on a website that you own and maintain. It is not hard. People who have a passion for helping others express themselves have created all the tools you need to start writing and sharing the treasure that is uniquely yours. They've made it easy for you to tell us what we can only get from you.
The list of things I love is not secret. I write about the things on my list all the time. I love my wife, Wonder Woman. It took me 45 years and three practice marriages to find her. I love being given a second chance at life after nearly drinking myself to death and if that sounds painfully familiar, ask me for help and I will gladly give it to you. Discovering a community of dedicated world-changers gave me a purpose in life, and that purpose is to promote equality and the inherent worth of all people regardless of the prejudices society has about them. The list goes on and on because I am a passionate, opinionated outspoken curious person who isn't low-key about much. If I like it, I'm going to tell you about it, even risking coming off like the over-enthusiastic and excitable computer guy that I am at my core.
Do the world a favor. Share what you know. Do it publicly. What's the hardest thing you ever did? Start with that. Someone who is trying to do the same thing right now might just succeed because you took the time to give them the key they needed. Don't be afraid to admit failure, either. There are plenty of valuable lessons in failure. Be honest. Be yourself. Do it openly. We are waiting.
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Having Fun with Wikipedia
Not long ago, an Internet friend and I discovered a way to find out what the apps were that we installed on our first iPhones. For both of us, it was an app to access Wikipedia. One of the world's most popular websites, it's come a long way since it's inception. While there was a time when teachers discouraged students from using it, today Wikipedia is seen as a valuable resource full of links to its sources. It's such an excellent source of unvarnished truth in a world increasinglu controlled by maniacal oligarchs, that it's under attack by them. They seek to destroy what they cannot control.
There are several tools and websites that make Wikipedia rabbit holes fun to go down.
Weeklypedia- join a list to receive a weekly email with the top twenty Wikipedia articles and top five Wikipedia discussions from this weekk, available in English and more languages.
WikiTok - This website combines Wikipedia and TikTok to fight doomscrolling. WikiTok users can swipe through an endless stream of Wikipedia article stubs, discovering random facts and interesting information along the way.
I Made a Graph of Wikipedia... This Is What I Found - YouTube - A deep dive into the network of Wikipedia and some of the the most interesting, bizarre, and unique articles on the website.
Obsidian Web Clipper Templates - For any obsidian fans, this collection of templates for the web clipper includes on that allows you to import complete articles with media straight into your vault.
Use KIWIX to Access Wikipedia and Other Resources Offline AppAddict - You can download Wikipedia, along with all of the pictures and videos!
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Using Kagi Search Engine on a Mac - Software and Tips
For those not familiar with it, Kagi is a subscription based,
no-ads, privacy-focused search engine that provides an extreme level of
customization. Unlike DuckDuckGo, which relies on Bing for most of its
results, Kagi has its own scraper and while it does make API calls to
other search engines, it is not totally reliant on them. Understandably,
not everyone needs or wants to pay for privacy, but for people in
vulnerable communities or who are politically active in ways that aren't
supporting their nation's current government, it is a valuable resource.
Privacy Pass
Kagi recently released Privacy Pass, " a privacy feature that allows you to use Kagi Search without revealing your identity. When enabled, it lets you perform searches anonymously while still verifying that you're a valid Kagi subscriber. Think of it as a digital token system - similar to getting tokens at an arcade, where once you have them, you can use the services without showing your ID each time." To use Privacy Pass, you need to install a browser extension that enables it.
Kagi Search Extension
Kagi also has a search extension that automates setting it as your default browser and also provides for continuing a search session is a private browsing window.
Using Kagi with Safari
Since Apple limits the selection of custom search engines in Safari, due no doubt to the $18 billion that Google pays them for the right to be Safari's default search engine. There is a good work around though, Xsearch for Safari lets you instantly switch between multiple custom search engines from the Safari address bat. It works in macOS, iOS and iPadOS.
Kagi Features
Kagi has zero ads and zero trackers. It's so secure that what you search for can be totally separated from your identity. You can customize your results easily. If, like any sane and rational person, you don't want to see any stories from the popular news channel that was fines $700 million for lying on the air last year in your search results, you can block the site from ever appearing. If you realize just how many answers to life's questions can be found on Reddit, you can tell Kagi to prioritize the site. In fact, you can customize up to 1,000 sites, either by blocking them or by promoting results from them.
I created a list of sites that are over-represented in search results because of search engine optimization,. It's not that their content is good. It's that the sites are engineered through content farming and keyword usage to appear high in search results. You can copy and paste the list right into Kagi's settings and never have the sites pollute your searches again. Because of problems with the mainstream media in the US, I also created a list of alternative news sources that I told Kagi to prioritize.
You can make your own custom search environment. Kagi calls that a Lens. Kagi Lenses allow you to customize your searches by specifying which websites (and other parameters) you see in your results. They provide a few Lenses to get you started, such as one to search only online discussions and forums.
Have more questions about Kagi? Get all the answers here.
What a Great Trail
Francis Marion National Forest, SC - The Swamp Fox Trail - A wonderful hike/run through the low country, past old rice plantations and ancient oak trees. Bucket list beautiful.
The Process of Leaving Gmail
As I have been writing about lately, we are in the process of detangling ourselves from big tech. Both of us have used Gmail for many years, and now we want to stop. It's going to be a long process. I studied this a bit and knew what I was getting myself into. There are some things I can share that will make this process easier for anyone who undertakes it.
I have my own domain. Anyone can buy one. They are just a few dollars a year. Most email services that you have to pay for, even iCloud from Apple, allow you to use your own domain when you set them up. The benefit to doing this is that if you ever want to move to another email service, you can take your domain with you, and you'll never have to change your address again.
The service I chose was Fastmail. Because I am a member of OMG.LOL, I got a 10% discount off the price of a two-person account. Still, it's going to run us about $90 a year for full-service accounts that include email, contacts, calendars and document storage. Fastmail was able to import all the mail from my Gmail account, all 156,000 messages as well as my hundreds of contacts in less than two hours. It will also continue to import messages as long as the account is open, so I am not under the gun to get the transition done rushing. I will probably never close my Gmail account. I will just stop using it over time as I transition.
Most of us use our email addresses for two primary purposes. One is to get email, of course. The other use is as our username at the many, many websites that require one. I have 276 accounts where my Gmail address is also my account name, ranging from the American Automobile Association to Zoom. Many of these are critical, like my bank, my insurance company, my pension plan and others. Some are inconsequential — like Airbnb, where it doesn't really matter if I just start a new account. There isn't a shortcut to changing these accounts, according to the Internet. I know because I asked. I'm just going to have to slog through a few each day until I get it finished.
I got a free app from the Apple Store for iOS called Unroll.me that allowed me to unsubscribe from a lot of the newsletters I receive without having to find an email from every one of them, find the link, click on it and go through the process manually. Instead of resubscribing to them using my new email address, I am going to use a feature of my RSS service, Inoreader that generates special email addresses that result in the newsletter being sent to them on my behalf. I can then read the newsletters using their app instead of receiving them in my email inbox. I can cut down on the email I get, while still keeping up with the newsletters I like.
I will also have to notify all of my contacts of my new email address. I'm already suffering a bit because I recently stopped using Facebook. I used Messenger quite a bit and there was no way to migrate or export those conversations. Now I am putting another potential stumbling block into staying in touch with some people. That's one of the unfortunate side effects of the process of getting away from the big tech companies. It is by design.
I am sure as this process moves along, I will learn more about how to better handle it. When I do, I will pass those tips along.
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Lots of Updates from Sindre Sorhus
Whether you know who Sindre Sorhus is or not you still may be
using one of his many popular
and mostly free apps. Sindre is a full-time open-source developer
currently based in Thailand who is responsible for more than 1,000
packages at npm, the world's largest software directory. In his spare
time (LOL) he creates wonderful macOS and iOS apps.
He's recently been on a tear with updates, adding new features and dealing with bugs. A couple of apps that used to be free are now paid because of the support demands, according to Sorhus. Most of his recent updates require macOS, but older versions are still available for users who have not upgraded.
- New actions added:
- Get System Color
- Get All System Colors
- Format Text List
- Is Location Services Enabled
- Is Screen Saver Active
- Send Distributed Notification
- Wait for Distributed Notification
Shareful makes the system share menu even more useful by providing some commonly needed share services. The latest release requires macOS 15.
- Copy - Copy the shared item to the clipboard and so you can quickly paste it into another app.
- Save As - Choose a directory to save the shared item to.
- Open In - Open the shared item in any app.
Pandan is a time awareness tool, not a traditional time tracker or break reminder. It shows you how long you have been actively using your computer, to make you aware and let you decide when it's time to take a break.
Folder Peek is the GOAT of menu bar access apps. I liked XMenu from Devon Technologies, but Folder Peek has more features and is just as rock solid in performance. Folder Peek lets you put folders full of whatever you want on your menu bar. You can make a folder with app aliases for your most used apps or add your entire applications folder. Give your documents folder its own menu bar icon or add an alias of it to another folder. My personal setup is a single folder with aliases for:
- Home folder
- Documents
- Downloads
- Screenshots
- Approximately 20 apps
Generate images from text using Stable Diffusion 1.5. Simply describe the image you desire, and the app will generate it for you
- Quickly copy, paste, and convert colors in Hex, HSL, and RGB format
- Show as a normal app or in the menu bar
- Toggle it from anywhere with a global keyboard shortcut
- Make the window stay on top of all other windows
Tallest Mountain in the East
Wonder Woman ran from the base of Mt. Mitchell to the top and back - 23 miles. It wasn’t even a race. She did it for “fun”.
Big Woody Harrelson Fan
I've enjoyed watching Woody Harrelson since I first saw him in Cheers in the 80s. His ability to play a wide variety of roles is evident from the nominations he's received for the Oscars, the Emmy's and the Golden Globes. I went to see his latest release, Last Breath today just because he was in it. I didn't know a thing about it. It's the true story about a crew of saturation divers working on the floor of the North Sea off the coast of Scotland and the fight to rescue one of them when he gets trapped in an accident during a repair operation.
Some of my other favorites from his career include:
- White Men Can't Jump | Rotten Tomatoes
- The Thin Red Line Official Trailer - YouTube
- No Country for Old Men (2007) - IMDb
- Zombieland - Wikipedia
- True Detective - Wikipedia (All time favorite)
- The Highwaymen (film) - Wikipedia
My favorite, but unfortunate fact about Woody Harrelson is that he is the son of a hit man. His father was convicted in the contract killing of a judge. Really.
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View of New York City
Manhattan, taken from Brooklyn (Brooklyn Bridge on left, Manhattan Bridge on right)
Getting Untangled
The five big tech companies have gotten so deep into our lives that at times it seems almost impossible to cut them out. If you overlook the bad stuff, they make life much easier. Facebook is is easy enough for the oldest seniors to figure out. Amazon will not only sell you the stuff you want, it will provide you with all kinds of entertainment — TV, music and books, both to read and listen to. Microsoft products are installed on most of the world's computer, even on Macs, many of which have a copy of office. Two companies, Apple and Google, managed to corner the cell phone market. They also handle your email, your files, your music, your viewing needs and more of your health information than you are probably aware of.
Meta
We started detangling after the election when I saw the billionaire owners of the tech companies beginning to bow and scrape to the new fascist regime. I closed all my Meta accounts (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads). I went so far as to block all connections to facebook.com on my computer. Wonder Woman still uses Facebook for her mother's sake, but that is about it.
Amazon
I also canceled our subscription to the Washington Post. Wonder Woman found new vendors for some of her recurring needs, running shoes and sports nutrition products. I rescued by Kindle and Audible purchases from Amazon and started researching alternative marketplaces. We are not going to renew our Amazon Prime subscription.
Microsoft
We do not own a computer that uses Windows. Most of my ties to the company were through the job I recently left. I installed a copy of Libre Office on my computer to deal with any documents that come from Microsoft Office. I have a personal free Microsoft account that I do not use and that I am going to close.
At the risk of stressing out my wife, who is in the middle of a huge software implementation at work, I told her today that I wanted us to leave Gmail and Google Drive behind. I opened a Fastmail account using the discount from OMG.LOL, and I am starting the process of migrating twenty years worth of Gmail. I have to convert my Google Docs to another format and download all the photos and music I have stored on Google Drive too. I opened an account with Kagi and have already changed my search settings on all my devices. The process of de-Googling will take a while.
Apple
This is the company with which I will end up being most intertwined. They make the phone and the computer I use. I get too much joy from those devices to become a full-time Linux user or to adopt some off brand phone. I don't use them for email or bulk data storage and what I do use is under advanced data protection. I am working on moving to as many self-hosted services as I can manage for home use, including photographs and music.
I've adopted other privacy protecting tech practices as well, like using a VPN much of the time and using encrypted DNS 100% 0f the time to keep my Internet history private. We are already using several non-US companies for some of our needs and looking for end-to-end encryption on as many services as we can. I hope you see that the trend is moving towards people leaving thesse companies and their terrible practices. You can leave them too.
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Survival Skills
Dr. Maya Angelou, the poet, professor, and activist said, "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time." I don't think she was advocating for harsh, unforgiving judgment as much as she was advocating for the opposite of blind faith. The opposite of blind faith is the observant form. Making judgments is a vital survival skill. It is not a character flaw to evaluate the character of others. We are unable to surround ourselves with good and kind people unless we first determine whether they meet that criteria.
In the world of 2025, adults have had almost a decade to show what their beliefs are in the most treacherous political atmosphere in the US since the Civil War. The people who continue to support a man whose actions and words repeatedly demonstrate his contempt for important values, have shown us that they too have contempt for those values. The time for dialog and trying to understand them has long been over.
While it is indeed a gray world because not everything is black and white, there are some key performance indicators to demonstrate where people stand on racism, sexism and class differences. The biggest of those is the obvious one. I was pleased beyond measure to spend time with two of the most significant people from my formative years yesterday, Both of them are Republicans but neither of them voted for Trump. That kind of country over party regard for right and wrong is what we need and what we have so little of.
When People Show You Who They Are Maya Angelou - Poetry & Poets
When Someone Shows You Who They Are Believe Them
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Pieoneer- Multi-Use Pie Menu
Pieoneer, by
developer Martin Lexow, is a pie menu app with three primary use cases.
App Switcher
Using any hotkeys you like, you can summon a round (pie) menu with the icons of all your running icon s. If there are any you don't want appearing in your app switcher, you can exclude them. I use an alternative finder (Qspace), so the regular Finder is excluded from my pie menu. The menu appears immediately after being summoned and can be navigated via arrow keys or clicked with the mouse. If you have a multi-button programmable mouse or if you use a utility like Better Touch Tool, you can set up mouse buttons or trackpad gestures to summon the Pieoneer app switcher.
Launcher
The launcher is activated similar to the app switcher — with a unique hot key combination, mouse button or trackpad gesture. The best use case for the launcher is to use it for your second tier of apps, ones that you use regularly, but don't necessarily leave running all the time. I added eight apps, but ten or twelve would also work.
Controller
The most intriguing use case for Pieoneer to me is the controller function. With it, you can add menu commands to the pie menu, for example, in your browser, you could add the command to open your internet history, to see your bookmarks, to open a location — which puts the cursor in the address bar so it can also be a search shortcut with your default search engine. If you take the time to set it up with your most used apps, you won't have to try to remember so many commands to take advantage of keyboard shortcuts.
You get Pieoneer in the Mac App Store for $9.99. Other apps by the same developer include Polycapture, Keystroke Pro and Cursor Pro.
Wilmington Crosswalk
One of the reasons I love street photography so much is the way it captures these vanishing moments and the looks on people’s faces that leave you wondering what they were thinking about.
Morning in the Sandhills
Good march morning, y’all. The area I live in is known as the Carolina Sandhills. The undeveloped parts look like this, white sand and pine trees for miles.
