A smattering of useful things I’ve come across this month

March 2026

  • DOFSimulator - A great website for learning about Depth Of Field. You can select your camera and lens, move the model, and change the focal length and f-stop. Very useful web app.

  • cliff538.com from 2009 - Finding my blog from 2009 was fun! The original cliff538 was built from scratch as an exam for an HTML/CSS class that I was taking. Really brought back some good memories. Sadly, there is no record of my very first blog, where I documented, step by step, how to build a stitch-and-glue kayak. Everything has been lost to time. Some more old blog links: here and here

  • Book Alex - A great spot for book reviews and more from Alexandra.

  • Small Web - An IOS app from Kagi that focuses on the small web.

  • GPSJAM - great website showing where GPS jamming is occurring.

  • ReKindle - has all kinds of apps for your Kindle. I did not try any of them since most of my digital reading is on an iPad, but it sure looks promising if you are a Kindle user. If you try it, let me know what you think.

  • TRAVELER’S COMPANY USA - Pretty cool place for all things journaling. Lots of unique items and journaling kits.

  • Japanese Stationery Awards 2026 – bungu - Best of the best for 2026.

  • BRICKA | Premium magazine for Lego Fans - BRICKA is an online and physical print magazine dedicated to exploring, amplifying, and featuring voices within the brick building community of Adult Fans of LEGO.

  • Orion Magazine - Just found this and need to explore it more.

  • Netlify - Netlify is a cloud platform for hosting and deploying web apps, websites, etc. I made a free account with them and explored their Agent help with making a static web page. They seem to have a fairly generous free level, so you can experiment with deploying websites and apps. I’m currently using the free tier at Vercel to host my web app for posting to my blogs. I have zero complaints; it’s been a great service, but it’s nice knowing there are options.

  • The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - Gift Article - As voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers – with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

  • Nine Books to Reset Your View of the World - Gift Article - Each of these titles will widen your perspective, offering you original insight and vision.

  • 100 Jumps - This is a surprisingly fun and frustrating game. I still haven’t made all 100 yet. I’m not giving up! You really want to work on getting perfect jumps. Every time you get three in a row, you get an extra life. Here is the iOS [link](apps.apple.com/us/app/10… 100 Jumps)

  • The Onion Newspaper - “With 65,000 paying print subscribers, in 50 states and 50 countries, The Onion is, by some estimates, the country’s 12th-largest print newspaper, above The Boston Globe. Overall annual revenue grew 300% in 2025.”