Doug Jones
Doug Jones

  • And this is the pressure gauge in my back yard.

  • The hurricane has made it through the Atlanta area. I hope everyone made it through ok.

    Here’s a view of the radar as the storm passed through.

  • A few photos from the Forward Warrior Mural Festival in Cabbagetown, Atlanta where every year artists gather to paint murals along Wylie street.

    A mural artist is working on a large, colorful portrait featuring a person in a hat with a star on it. The painting is being done on a wall, and the artist is standing on scaffolding with cans of paint and supplies.

    A colorful mural in progress on a wall, featuring various text and images including a restaurant sign, a grocery advertisement, and artistic designs. Two ladders and scaffolding are set up, and some painting supplies and materials are scattered on the ground.

    An artist, standing on a small step ladder and surrounded by scaffolding, is painting a colorful mural on a concrete wall. The mural features a detailed portrait of a person with long hair and distinctive facial markings.

    A large, colorful mural on a concrete wall depicting a range of fantastical creatures, including a large crow, an owl, various small animals, and a green alligator-like creature holding instruments. Two people stand in front of the mural, observing it.

    A colorful mural is depicted on a wall, featuring two large, semi-transparent hands crafted from cosmic elements, including stars and nebulous clouds. The hands seem to bend inwards towards a small human figure standing on a green surface, gazing up at it.

    This image is a vibrant mural painted on a concrete wall. The artwork features a colorful central figure in a dynamic pose with the words “WAKE UP” above. Surrounding this figure are abstract and symbolic patterns.

    A street market scene featuring a sign pointing to vinyl records. In the foreground, there’s an old suitcase decorated with various stickers, including one that says “COMMUNIST SALE BOX” with the hammer and sickle symbol. A beige hat rests on the box’s corner.

    A bustling street scene with people walking along a road lined with trees and street art. A pink food truck is parked on the left with several people ordering. The atmosphere is lively and the sun is casting long shadows on the ground.

  • The Space Shuttle Atlantis from my visit to Kennedy Space Center in 2021 came up in my “on this day” photos. It was so awesome to see this in person!

    The image shows the Space Shuttle Atlantis on display in a museum setting. The shuttle is suspended with its cargo bay doors open and robotic arm extended. Dim lighting and informational displays are visible in the background.

  • iOS and iPadOS 18: The MacStories Review - MacStories - Part 5

    While the company is busy finding an identity for its expensive headset without a strong app ecosystem, building swiveling HomePods with a screen, and following the rest of the industry in an LLM-measuring contest for who’s got the biggest model, iPad users like me are just here, shrugging off another year of almost no new features, still enamored with a platform that Apple seemingly develops by inertia as an expensive passion project.

    I’m enjoying Federico’s salty takes in his iOS 18 review.

  • Finished reading: War Against All Puerto Ricans by Nelson A Denis 📚

    This book tells the story of the US colonization of Puerto Rico in all its shocking and horrific detail. I think this is an important read to understand how the past treatment of Puerto Rico by the US, affects the island currently.

  • A serene lake with calm waters under an overcast sky. Dark silhouettes of hills and trees are visible in the background as the sun sets, casting subtle reflections on the water’s surface.

    Lake Rabun in north Georgia.

  • Scripting News: Dropbox almost reinvented the web

    I was trying to explain to Miguel de Icaza, a longtime developer friend, how Dropbox was within inches of making the web a million times more useful, ten years ago, and then backed away from it. I don’t think I’ve ever told the story here on my blog, so here goes.

    I didn’t realize Dropbox had worked on something like this. I think Dave is right, this could have helped establish a platform for a whole ecosystem of small, indie web apps.

  • SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn completed the first private spacewalk

    While I know this is a big achievement, I can’t help but feel this is still a step back from the Shuttle program, where astronauts could exit through an airlock rather than expose the whole capsule to the vacuum. The approach with the Dragon gives me Mercury/Apollo vibes.

    Via 512 Pixels

  • Here’s a fun memory on the Dreamcast’s 25th anniversary: I remember renting the Dreamcast the summer before its launch. I think this was a promotion by either Blockbuster or Hollywood video (RIP to both).

    I got to take home the console and Sonic Adventure, but no memory cards were available. So, that first night I kept the console running with the TV off all night long so I could keep my progress after school the next day.

    The rental period, whatever it was (probably not more than a few days or week) went by in a flash. I was left feeling super hyped for 9/9/99.

    Can you imagine a console releasing like this today?

  • Happy 25th anniversary to the Dreamcast 🌀which launched on an iconic 9/9/99!

    mastodon.world/@vingtroi…

  • Interviewing Epic Games Founder/CEO Tim Sweeney and Author/Entrepreneur Neal Stephenson — MatthewBall.co

    I hadn’t been keeping up with Stephenson and was surprised to see him interviewed with Sweeney, so I learned a lot about their current involvement with the Metaverse, AI, and blockchains. When you write it out like this, sounds like Stephenson is jumping on every modern tech bandwagon. But, they seem to have a shared interest in helping to create a more open Metaverse platform and tooling, so maybe there will eventually be something of substance there.

  • Checking out the new Reeder App which has support for Micro.blog alongside RSS, Mastodon, and other feeds. Very interesting!

    Via Jim Mitchell

  • Atlanta City Council bans data centers along Beltline - Rough Draft Atlanta

    The Atlanta City Council voted Tuesday to ban data centers along and near the Atlanta Beltline and within a half-mile of MARTA stations.

    Interesting and unexpected. I’m in favor of this. Data centers are an important part of our digital infrastructure, but there’s no good reason to locate them near the city center or areas of high population.

  • Is my blue your blue? I got hue 179 which is bluer than 84% of the population.

    Via Alex

  • A serene beach scene with a partly cloudy sky. Calm water reflects the clouds above, and a narrow sandbar extends into the ocean. Distant figures walk along the shore with trees lining the horizon.

    A narrow stream flows through dense, lush vegetation in a forested area. Large trees with hanging moss and various plants surround the stream. The image is viewed from a concrete structure at the edge of the stream.

    Hilton Head, South Carolina

  • Testing out Threads cross posting from Micro.blog!

  • Finished reading: Dune by Frank Herbert 📚

  • Switched my site’s footer over to the IndieWeb Webring 🕸️💍, check it out on doug.pub!

  • XOXO Roundup

    A quick roundup of a few posts from across my feeds about the last ever (🥺) XOXO Festival.

    ArtLung | Post-XOXO Ramble on Websites and Freedom: Everybody Comes To Ricks

    During XOXO, Andy Baio said “Every one of you should have a home on the web not controlled by a billionaire.” Cabel Sasser recommended that we all “put up the dang portfolio.” Molly White asked us to think back to “when was the first time you thought the web was magic?”

    Molly White | XOXO and that feeling

    I mentioned that I’ve been feeling this a lot over the last few years, even as I too am witnessing what many of us think about as “the web” rotting right in front of our eyes. Working outside of that rot pile, and perhaps motivated by it, there are so many people who are excited about the potential for a better web.

    Grep Jason | XOXO

    This conference festival experience was incredible. There were amazing talks and demonstrations from all over the Indieweb space. From the opening party and arcade to the tear-jerker of a closing speech, it was positive and pure emotional joy the whole way through.

    Kottke | Thanks, XOXO

    Thanks to Craig Mod for coming all the way from Japan to share the stage with me for a too-brief chat about membership programs. In the run-up to this, Craig and I had three extensive conversations about memberships, the open web, the value of writing your own software, Walt Disney’s corporate strategy chart, and many more things.

    Reading these posts, I got a dose of second hand excitement about the open web and the energy to continue to build it into the thing we all want.