\n\nMay 2026
\n
💬 Where to spend your time. Time is precious. There is only so much. Sometimes The greatest gift you can give someone or something is your time.
💬 17 years ago, we shopped for a big table that could seat at least 10 people. If you could find one, the prices were eye-popping. So, I built one. Redwood planks, pocket screwed and glued together, epoxy to fill the gaps, then about 30 coats of marine grade top of the line varnish. 17 years later, here we still are, using this table. It’s aged now, a little tired, the base is wobbly, we have cracks in the wood, but it’s still beautiful in my eyes. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll fix the cracks and refinish it. Or, let it age gracefully and enjoy the process of life…
\n💬 Pagebound and StoryGraph: I’ve been testing both for a while. Pagebound is not for me. StoryGraph has potential, but I’m just not sure certain things need to be tracked. The reviews are helpful, and I do like seeing how many days it took me to read a book and a few stats, but I’m just not sure I need it. I like tracking things; data is good. I’ve increased my sleep by over an hour by tracking and monitoring. I’m not sure I need deep tracking of my reading. Posting what I read with a review, I think, is enough. Update: Kobo just announced a deal with StoryGraph, so now your reading in Kobo will automatically update StoryGraph. I’ll stick around and see how it works.
\n💬 I still don’t know if I like my sidebar on my Cliff538 blog. I have thoughts/dreams about hiring a professional web designer to make a custom blog for me. If you know of a good one, drop me an email (just in case 😄).
\n💬 My friend Richard passed away. I wrote a small post about him, with pictures I took the day he died. Life is precious; the friends you meet along the way are precious.
\nDeath around you makes you contemplate your own. If you found out you had a terminal disease tomorrow, would you be happy with what you’ve done up until that point? Could you just watch the world go in peace until you die? Would you fight it? Could you be peaceful? You can answer right now, but I don’t think we know the true answer unless you are faced with it. I’ve had such an amazing life, filled with so much love, adventure, and good friends. I like to think I’d be peaceful about it.
\nHonestly, there isn’t too much left on my bucket list. Maybe it’s because I’m boring now. I’ve traveled the world, been to many, many different countries. I’ve been a scuba diver, skydiver, rescue diver, firefighter, medic, Boy Scout, security guard, airplane pilot, helicopter pilot, aircraft mechanic, sim instructor, fisherman, dishwasher, cook, student, and so much more. I’ve been completely broke, I’ve been rich, I’ve been homeless and slept at my job, and I’ve had amazing friends and experiences. I hope to have many more, but if it were to end soon, I’d be at peace.
\nI don’t really know anything; it just makes you think.
\n💬 One of the many things reading a book should do is make you think. Make you write down your thoughts. Explore.
\n💬 For you Nikon shooters, the Z series line can accept all the old batteries, which is very nice that Nikon does this. You just won’t have USB charging with the two oldest ones. Right now, the EN-EL15c’s are hard to find and can be crazy pricey. Use your old ones.
\n💬 Shooting in RAW, you don’t have to worry about certain settings in-camera: These are important if you are shooting JPEG or HEIF.
\nSide note: you can go here and check your monitor’s gamut.
\n", "date_published": "2026-06-03T09:34:19-06:00", "url": "https://cliff538.com/2026/06/03/stray-thoughts-may.html", "tags": ["stray-thoughts"] }, { "id": "http://cliff538.micro.blog/2026/04/29/stray-thoughts-april.html", "title": "Stray Thoughts - April 2026", "content_html": "\n\nApril 2026
\n
This is brand new for April and will be the inaugural post for Stray Thoughts.
\nOn my 365Pixels daily photo blog, I have a Stray Pixels section for extra photos, and I thought I’d carry the name over to this. I’m not very good at keeping my Now page active on my website, so maybe trying a monthly Stray Thoughts blog post can morph into becoming a monthly Now Page update. Let’s see how it goes…
\nWhy do this? Good question. I’m not sure yet. All I know is that it’s sort of therapeutic and kind of like journaling, and it might be fun to look back years later at what my monkey-brain was doing. Plus, maybe it will make you laugh, or give you an idea, or let you know you’re not alone with what you’ve been thinking about.
\n💬 I have a large Field Notes collection that was just kind of dumb to acquire over the years, and I’ve been selling them on eBay. It’s been a pleasant surprise how frictionless it has been. I’ve had horrible experiences on FB Marketplace and other selling sites. eBay has been very easy. I’ve only had one issue where the purchaser claimed to have lost the box to porch pirates, and eBay returned the money within a few hours, eating the loss, which I was very impressed with.\nBy the way, Field Notes is still a thing; they sell very well.
\n💬 I still haven’t completed 100 Jumps yet, and it’s starting to frustrate me. But it shows how much of a lousy gamer I am. I don’t think I’ve ever completed a game, you know, X-box, PlayStation, Nintendo-type games. I’m just not that good at them. I want to like them, but I get stuck or don’t know what to do, so I end up looking it up online, which kind of takes the fun out of it.
\nThe most recent game I really enjoyed playing was The Last of Us on PlayStation, but I’m continually stuck, not knowing where to go or how to finish a hard section.
\nI’d rather go read a good book, to be honest.
\n💬 It took me a while to figure out Templates in Drafts, but it’s really handy for structured monthly blog posts. I think it’s worth your time if you have structured blog posts where you want the same format each time. Definitely a time saver.
\n💬 Why does it feel so good to go out and get a Starbucks coffee and a sandwich? I’ve been home, sick, and the draw, the desire for the treat of going out and getting a coffee and some egg bites or an avocado egg toast from Robeks, it just makes you feel better, it’s a little treat, it’s odd, I don’t understand why this is.
\n💬 I should speak a second language. My mom’s mom was full-blooded Portuguese and decided not to teach her children because at that time and place, it was frowned upon to speak anything but English, and that makes me sad on a daily basis.
\n💬 I’ve given Craft a good go of it. I used it full-time for several months, set it all up, and made it look super pretty and clean. And, it’s nice. It’s a beautiful app with amazing tools. It just may be too much for me. I’m back full-time to Drafts. It’s simple, less pretty, and does one job really well.
\nI’ve made a few templates and some scripts to send things to Obsidian, and I’m very happy to be back. It just lets you write, without fiddling with settings and aesthetics. The deal-breaker was Craft’s “block” approach. I just want to write in Markdown, and Craft allows you to do that, but it puts everything into blocks. It drove me nuts trying to edit those blocks.
\nSomething I use all the time is the Drafts shortcut, “Dictate Draft” feature. When I have ideas, they are very fragile and short-lived in my brain. Wherever I am, I can just activate and talk, knowing it will be saved in Drafts for editing later on.
\nDrafts, I love you.
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-29T16:41:50-06:00", "url": "https://cliff538.com/2026/04/29/stray-thoughts-april.html", "tags": ["stray-thoughts"] }, { "id": "http://cliff538.micro.blog/2026/04/24/morning-meditation.html", "title": "Morning Meditation ", "content_html": "“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can injure me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him.”
\n~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2
\n", "date_published": "2026-04-24T08:54:32-06:00", "url": "https://cliff538.com/2026/04/24/morning-meditation.html", "tags": ["meditation","cliff-notes","stray-thoughts"] } ] }