Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Fine, I'll do it myself

A few weeks back I wrote about how the archive page on this website - an index of all my writing - have been acting inconsistent and (sometimes) nonexistent. An inquiry to Squarespace support got me nowhere. Basically it’s a known quirk, and practically speaking it will not be fixed. Support said I have too much content for that indexing function. Mind you I pay over two hundred dollars a year to Squarespace to host this website! A paid product should not be broken on any of its functions.

Nevertheless, it was up to me to act. I can either switch to another website host, or switch to the newer 7.1 templates. Both options require an immense amount of work: I practically have to piece-meal transfer over the entire lot of my content. Doable, given a long enough timeframe, but not ideal given my other time commitments. I would need about two weeks of nothing else to concentrate on that sort of project.

It seems tedium is not to be avoided, however. The solution I arrived at is rather simple on paper: do my own indexing. No more relying on Squarespace’s module to fetch the content. Instead I shall manually construct the archive. By going to every piece I’ve ever written on here, copy the title and hyperlink, then paste them onto the page. With some 500 individual posts to copy and link, the process was going to be slow.

And it took the better part of last weekend to accomplish the transition. The archive page is finally looking how I want it to be. Like the carpenter who sands and paints the back of the cabinet, every little detail matters! Of course, for any new post I write henceforth, I have to manually add it to the index. Minor labor that’s worth trading for an archive page that will load properly each and every time.

Not acceptable, Squarespace

The “archive” page of this website, nested under the “Words” category is where I show a list of everything I’ve ever written thus far. A easily readable index for my entire back catalog of writing. Mainly for my own personal satisfaction, because let’s face it: who would be interested in reading something I wrote five years ago? Not even my mother, because she doesn’t understand English.

Anyways, I’ve noticed from time to time that the index block for this blog would disappear completely. For no reason at all. In the CMS it still shows the correct link to the page, but outwardly on the site it’s a whole blank of nothing. To get the content back, I would have to unlink the blog page to that index block and relink it again. A slight pain in the butt to do every few days.

So I finally got off my butt and wrote to Squarespace support. The response:

This issue shows up specifically on archive blocks using the "index" layout - essentially, if there's too much content for the block to render, it'll "crash" and not show up on the live site. To fix this, you could either change the layout by editing the archive block to be something other than "index", or you could break the content up into multiple archive blocks.

Basically, it’s a known bug, and there’s really no fix for it currently. Only workarounds. It’s rather disappointing that the index block can be defeated by a page with “too much content”. Keep in mind that Squarespace site hosting is something I pay for every year to the tune of over $200 dollars. This is an incredibly bad look for what is suppose to be a professional product. Many out there make their living from their Squarespace websites. I don’t, but I pay just like everybody else, and I expect a working product.

I wonder if there is a different host that has a working indexing function, and would allow me to transfer this site over easily…

Another Monday

Today is one of those days where I genuinely don’t know what to write about, so I’m just going to put things down as they come to mind for the next half hour or so. I spent quite a bit of time this past weekend finishing up part five of the Japan Escape photo stories, so please check that out if you haven’t yet the chance. I am somewhat ashamed to say it’s taken nearly three months since I’ve returned from the trip to finish writing about it; it’s a lot of work, but honestly I could’ve done it faster and moved on to other things.

The common person have little idea how time consuming it is to put together pictures and words into one coherent story. As a person who cares about photography, the process of editing the pictures alone can take a huge amount of time. Then there’s the writing portion, the part where I describe what’s going on in those photos, and attempt to weave up something coherent and interesting (you can tell me if it isn’t.) It takes about eight to ten hours combined to produce one photo stories article; in contrast the finished piece can be read in around 10 minutes.

It’s like spending two hours cooking an elaborate dinner, only for it to be wolfed down in 15 minutes.

Let’s be clear: I am not lamenting this situation at all. The contents of this website is something I enjoy putting together, and even if there weren’t a single person out there reading my stuff, I’d be perfectly fine with it, and would still continue to put in the many hours required to produce more. I’m merely pointing out the utter disparity between time spent consuming content and the time it takes to make the content; it’s easy to forget or not realize how much goes into making what seemingly is not a lot. Next time maybe think about this before you badger your favorite Youtube channel why they haven’t upload any new videos recently.

I have tremendous respect for freelancers and creatives putting in the work, especially those who’ve chosen to follow their passion full-time. forgoing the comfort and security of a steady 9-5 paycheck. Of course, passion alone doesn’t pay the bills, and it’s tough out there to monetize to sustainable level. The people making tremendous bank from Youtube are the outliers, not the mean. I make sure to support a few of my own favorites on Patreon, or I actually buy the stuff they make.

Because some day - and that day may never come - I may need those favors returned towards me.

Happy 2nd anni to me and Squarespace

Yesterday I checked my Mint account to see how much money I don't have, and found out Squarespace have charged the annual fee for this hosting this very site. Because I am a super pro and awesome, I pay for the business tier which costs $216 dollars per year. I don’t exactly sell anything on here, but back when I signed up for Squarespace, the personal tier did not include unlimited pages and galleries, so I was forced to go with business. Maybe I should call and downgrade now that the base tier offers unlimited content hosting as well.

I’m quite happy and proud it’s already been two years since I’ve migrated over to Squarespace, from the combination of tumblr plus Flickr. I think Flickr is still going relatively strongly due to its legion of legacy users stemming from way back when, but tumblr, last I’ve heard, is not doing so well: parent company Verizon have sold it to the owners of Wordpress for essentially peanuts. I’m rather glad I jumped off that sinking ship, though I do still miss the community interactions that tumblr provided; Squarespace is a fairly standard website hosting service, and there isn’t any of the intensive linkage between “sites” like tumblr offers.

Good times, I would say. Instagram killed the tumblr star.

It was slightly out of character for me to switch from a free service to a paying one (and Squarespace wasn’t exactly the cheapest service, either), but I think two years ago I had a strong desire to bring the two separate threads under one slick and modern package. Tumblr wasn’t the best at showing photos at their maximum quality, so hosting full-size photos on Flickr was necessary. The linking back and forth was a bit tiring for the person who had to set it up: me, so to concentrate more on the actual content, the incentive to bring the wordy website and photo repository together at the same spot was strong.

Of course, Squarespace made it super easy to pick a template and get going, though the initial setup process (idiosyncratic to me) was a huge chore because I had to manually add everything from my tumblr and Flickr account. Words, photos, tags, metadata: all had to be entered for each individual content, dating way back to 2011. Tedious, to say the least.

Money is well spent if there’s utility to the thing you bought, so on that vein I shall continue to constantly push out new stuff on here to justify the $18 per month hosting cost. Here’s to many more ramblings, photographs, and stories.

A productive weekend

I'm proud to say this past weekend was much more productive than the one before. I somewhat successfully avoided the Youtube blackhole and got some proper work done. There were two specific moments where I was at the crossroad of action or inaction and happily I chose the former.

First of those tasks was putting together a new photowalk article on the Presidio Main Parade Grounds. I'd already edit the photographs a few weeks back but have been procrastinating on posting up the content. Saturday afternoon rolled around and I was desperately close to forsaking it to yet another week. Just as I was ready to watch more Youtube video, I opened the folder containing the pictures for a bit slight peek and then momentum surprisingly took over. Next thing I knew I was hours deep into composition and editing the article.

The forward progress and dopamine hit of accomplishment must have spilled over to the next day because on the agenda was changing the oil on my father's car. Once again I was dangerously close to letting it slide to the following week until I thought about how awesome it felt to finish the photowalk post on Saturday and it'd be lovely to experience it again when I'm done with the oil service. The sun was beating down (one of the rare sunny Summer days in San Francisco) but out came the tools and half an hour later dad's Toyota Corolla is filled with fresh golden-colored motor oil.

It's interesting indeed how completing a task begets positive momentum for the next. Just as laziness tends to breed further lethargy, I want to constantly feel good and productive so I keep on executing tasks one after the other. It's a continuous game of "what's next?" One thing I'm super proud of this summer is the consistency in writing my daily blog posts Monday through Friday every week.

I've had a incredibly busy day at work today yet here I am at home spending the half hour or so typing out these words. I could easily not do that and watch videos on Youtube, but I mustn't break the streak; because I'm done writing this post now and it feels wonderful.

Good riddance, Flickr

How was your weekend? Hope it was splendid. I spend the two days entirely in from of the iMac.

Because I finally got off my ass and finished porting over the rest of the data from my old tumblr website and flickr page over to this Squarespace site. Transferring photos is the easy part - I did it a month ago; the rest of the metadata such as titles and captions I had to do manually. It's as dreadfully boring and tedious as it sounds.

A hearty good riddance to flickr. It used to be wonderful back in the day before Yahoo bought its parent company. These days it's one of the company's many neglected children: no substantial updates of any sort in the past years. Photographs still get compressed to hell, the layout is in desperate need of redesign, and its geolocation maps are utterly useless (Apple Maps at its troubled infancy was better). Surely the only reason me and others have continued to use flickr despite its glaring shortcomings is friction: it takes considerable effort to move hosts.

And now that Yahoo has sold to Verizon, flickr users shouldn't hold their breath for updates. It's a platform way beyond its prime. Instead of a flickr landing page, photo hobbyist and professionals should have their own website: hosts like Squarespace or Smugmug make it too easy, and quite affordable.

With my flickr page is shuttered, I only have this website, instagram account, and twitter page to manage in regards to online presence. It should be much streamlined and focused going forward. I haven't been on Facebook in years, though I still have a LinkedIN account that for all intents and purposes is there because every other working professional has one. Not sure why exactly, but here we are.

So long, tumblr. Hello, Squarespace.

I should have made the move a long time ago. For a photographer, the website templates tumblr offers are highly limiting due to one factor: resolution. Tumblr downsamples picture uploads to early 2000's Internet levels; it's wonderful for speed when browsing the feed, but on websites it's all a blurry mess. Not sure how I managed to put up with it for so long.

Oh, right; tumblr is free.

Now that I've had steady income for a bit, I figure it's time indeed to switch over to a profession platform that will do justice to my photographs. I've heard of Squarespace for the longest time, with various Youtube personalities offering up their code to get 10% off the first year. After viewing some tutorials, the interface and ease of use really impressed me, and the templates look fantastic as well. At around $216 per year for the business plan - the $144 personal plan has a 20 page limit - it's quite the price pill to swallow for someone graduating from paying nothing. However, with unlimited pages, unlimited hosting, and unlimited bandwidth, it's actually excellent value.

For sure it's going to take some time to transfer all the legacy data from tumblr to this new host. Blog posts have already been done, but photographs will be an entire project. Instead of photo 'feed' or 'stream' I'm going to set up galleries. Due to the low resolution assets in tumblr, I can't simply port them over using Squarespace's built-in application; I have to export out of Lightroom and re-upload everything.

It's should be lots of fun.