I’m Cliff, and this is my blogging hub, my cornerstone blog, if you will. As you’ll see, there are three more satellite blogs. It’s a hobby, what can I say! There’s more about me here.

Cliff538.com has lots of photography and related posts, mixed with book reviews and Cliff Notes, which include life updates, stray thoughts, rants, you know, a little bit of everything. The photography (which is the most important) has two blogs of its own: 365Pixels is my daily photo blog, where I post a picture each day, good or bad, which sometimes can be more of an online journal, and Cliff538Pixels where I post my favorite film and digital photos.

Last updated: October 18, 2026

What you’ll find here

• Archive Page — a great place to see all the posts by year and topic.
• Books — “Finished reading” reviews, plus what I’m reading now. Every review is in the Library of Book Reviews, by year.
• Photography — shooting, home film developing and digitally scanning film, cameras, and software. Photo sets and my film resources guide are on the Photography page.
• Photo — the Photos page shows my photos as a grid, and each photo is linked to its original post.
• Cliff Notes — life, stray thoughts, short notes, rants, and the yearly review.
• The Good Stuff — once a month, a smattering of useful things I’ve come across.
• Computers — Macs, home servers, projects built with Claude Code, and old hardware that makes a comeback.
• Aviation — flying for a living, crew life, layovers, aviation photography, and memories from Alaska.
• Media — movies, documentaries, TV and music.

Follow along

In a feed reader, just add cliff538.com and it finds the feed by itself. Or use the address directly: cliff538.com/feed.xml (RSS), also as JSON Feed.

Just one topic: aviation · books · cliff-notes · computers · media · photo · photography · the-good-stuff

By email: subscribe to a weekly email with all of the week’s posts.

New to feeds? aboutfeeds.com explains what an RSS feed is and how to use it.

Elsewhere

• Cliff538Pixels — just my favorite film & digital photography, at no set frequency.
• 365Pixels — one photo every day, good or bad, along with some daily happenings.
• Cliff538 Notes — short notes, links, and daily observations. A running log of what I post to Mastodon.
• Blog Roll — blogs I frequent for a multitude of reasons. Check them out.
• Guestbook — sign the guestbook and leave me a message.
• Also — Mastodon, Bluesky, Micro.blog, Flickr, Pixelfed and GitHub.

Why I blog

Andy, over on his excellent blog, explained this better than I could: Why Blog If Nobody Reads It? (His blog is offline now, so the link goes to the Internet Archive’s copy.)

There is a hidden value in blogging. There’s an old Zen saying: “Chop wood, carry water.” You do it not for the applause but because it needs doing.

Blogging forces clarity. It makes you structure your thoughts, sharpen your perspective. You stop writing fluff because — let’s be honest — you’re writing for yourself. And if you can’t keep yourself interested, nobody else stands a chance.

When you write, you think better. When you think better, you create better.

So, who’s the real audience?

You’re not just writing for today’s invisible audience. You’re writing for:

• Future you. Your posts become a time capsule of your evolving mind.
• One right person. Maybe one day, someone stumbles across your words at exactly the right moment. And that changes something for them.
• The work itself. Consistency beats virality. A hundred posts with depth will outlast a single viral hit.

Andy nails it.

A couple more items: I’m always talking with friends about what I’m reading and what I’ve read. Now I just point them here, and they can see everything I’m reading and my book reviews.

It’s also a great place to share my passion for photography. I have a daily photo blog, and I highlight other photographs I find inspiring in my Exposed To Light posts, Ballet Dancers and Hippo Love.

Where does cliff538 come from?

My first “real” flying job was with Cape Smythe Air Service in Kotzebue, Alaska (the third job where I made money flying). The office people didn’t necessarily know your name; they knew everybody by their employee number. Mine was 538.

Excuse me while I go out into the garage and dig up some ancient boxes to find some ancient flight logs… (“Four hours later,” said with your best French accent)

The earliest log page is from 1991. I would just mark it with Cliff 538, or sometimes just 538; that was enough to ensure you got paid, which, you know, was the most important thing. 😁 Because at that age you still couldn’t believe people would pay you actual money to fly airplanes, it was the coolest damn thing ever.

I think it was Cindy in accounting who would walk by you and say, “Hi, 538.” Right around that time, the internet was just spooling up for us up North (remember AOL and dial-up modems), and I needed a username, so Cliff538 made sense. That’s what it’s been since I’ve been online.

Colophon

Cliff538.com runs on Micro.blog, which builds it with Hugo. The theme is Matt Langford’s Tiny Theme, with my own “Mono” CSS on top: black on white, or white on black with the Light/Dark switch at the top. Headings are in Georgia, the text is your device’s own sans-serif, and the Cliff538 wordmark is set in Fraunces. Tinylytics counts the page views below, and the Stats page comes from the Post Stats plug-in.

Site stats

More stats: posts per year, words, streaks, and categories.