the-good-stuff on Cliff538

The Good Stuff - July 2026

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 19:01:24 -0500

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

July 2026

General

Rubin Observatory - A 3.2 billion pixels camera that takes an image every 40 seconds. You can download high-resolution images that are 56,428 x 29,949 pixels. That’s 1.7 billion pixels. It’s a 9.4-gigabyte file. Info from Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy Newsletter, which I highly recommend.
How Not to Forget What Matters - I enjoyed this article on what the Stoics called hypomnemata. We call it meditations now, I guess. Essentially, it’s meditations on problems you encounter or habits you want to reinforce. The author gives a short history and good examples.
WhatCable - This is awesome! This is the best USB-C info software that I have tried. I purchased the pro edition, and I think it’s indispensable. If you have any doubts about your cables, this will tell you all about them: cable speed, charging limits, e-marker data, and connected devices.
ScreenCastsonline - SCO has been around a long time. I used them many years ago and just started using the service again. Check out what they offer and which software they cover, and see if it would help you out. It’s 30 - 40 minute instructional videos on Apple and 3rd party software. If you need to fully understand a piece of software, they cover every detail. I recently needed some assistance in understanding and setting up BusyCal and BusyContacts and having them work together, and they covered it all. I was a pro by the end of it, using all the advanced features.
Kronecker Wallis | Fine Editions of Newton, Euclid, Turing & More. - I have purchased several books from Kronecker Wallis. Outstanding quality. If you are a book lover, check out what they offer.

Photography

A good review of Ilford 400 Vintage Tone film. You can see my photos using the film here.
The Phoblographer - Recently just came across this photo blog and it’s really good. I’m enjoying it much more than Petapixel.
WANDRD Camera Straps - This new twist on camera straps looks intriguing. I backed the project to try one out.
Used Photo Pro - Another good used photography gear site that I stumbled upon.
Aphera Raw Photo Editor - Aphera is out of beta, and they are having a 50% off sale right now if you’re at all interested. I beta-tested it, and I think it’s a great product, especially if you don’t use Adobe products, but I won’t be purchasing. I’m pretty locked into LR, which I’ve been using forever now, and I know it’s frowned upon by many, but I like it. Adobe could one day run me away with price, but everything costs something now except maybe Darktable. Even Aphera will be 200/year after the sale is done. It costs money to maintain and improve software. Update: I purchased Aphera during the sale to experiment with it further.
Is This the Best Replacement for a Tripod? - This looks awfully interesting.
How JPEG works (Christopher G. Jennings) - Want to understand JPEG? This is really well done.
Polaroid: A Chemical, Mechanical and Optical Miracle - Outstanding video on the history and uses of Polaroid. I learned an incredible amount.

The Good Stuff - June 2026

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:19:12 -0600

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

June 2026

Photography

Software: Negative Lab Pro - a LightRoom plug-in that converts your scanned negatives. I downloaded the trial version and converted 24 negatives, experimenting with all the settings. I’m no expert in this, but I loved it. The software works great, and I was extremely happy with the results. I purchased the full version for $99. I’ll update you down the road after I get some more time with the software.

From their website: NEGATIVE LAB PRO brings impossibly good color negative conversions right into your Lightroom workflow. No more messing around with tedious exports and hand- edited curves. Lab-quality tones and colors are just a click away.
How to install ICC Color Profiles - Video and written instructions for installing ICC profiles on a Mac.
How to Install AM1X Custom Media Config Media Types for Canon Prograf Inkjet Printers - Mac and Windows instructions for installing AM1X files to your Canon printer.
Image to Binary Converter - Now, I don’t know why you would need to do this. But, hey, it’s cool to do it once.
A True (almost) Adobe RGB monitor - BenQ monitors for photography. 99% of the Adobe RGB color space.
SilverFast Scanner Software - I don’t have a film scanner yet, but I want one. My slow march back into shooting film continues. Seems like this is the best software for scanning negatives/photos. If you know of something better, please let me know.
Sakura Pigma Micron Archival Pigment-Based Pens - If you print much on true 100% cotton fine art paper, you know that flaking can be an issue. At least in the dark shadows, you can use these pens to “fix” any flaking. Good for signing those prints as well.
Wide-Gamut Test Page - I posted this last month, but it seems worthy of another post about it. Test your monitor to see how wide its color gamut is.
Suncalc.org - Sometimes, when trying to photograph an exact spot or building, you want to know if the sun will be behind or in front. Suncalc.org narrows this down. Pretty good resource.
Book: Color and Light in Nature - Please see below for the description of this book, but it’s aimed at photogs and needs to be under the photography section as well.
Moments - Looks interesting. Nothing stands out to me as odd; the FAQ’s seem legit. Appears to be free with premium options down the road. Custom domains, no algorithms, you own your stuff and can export at any time. If you need a place to have your own photo journal, check it out. From the website: A simple photo journal on your own domain. No algorithm, no ads, no pressure to grow. Post a photo, add a caption if you feel like it, and move on with your day. If you know anything about who is behind it and/or the pros and cons, let me know. The risky thing about all these types of sites is that they come and go and change their terms of use at will. Always better to have your own site.
Milky Way Tonight App - Here is the Android Version. The website explains it all. But looks like an app to help you plan Milky Way shots.
Good Used Photography Gear Sites:
I’ve been searching and buying used film gear lately, and other than eBay, these sites are very good.

General

Why Do We Value Items More If They Belong To Us? - What is the Endowment Effect? The endowment effect describes how people tend to value items that they own more highly than they would if they did not belong to them. This means that sellers often try to charge more for an item than it would cost elsewhere. This link was found in Robert Breen’s beautiful story about having double vision.
David Attenborough’s Life’s work, searchable - I’m a huge fan of David Attenborough, and this website allows you to search nearly 5000 episodes across 90 series by animal, habitat, location, and more. Pretty cool.
Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You – Ryan Moulton’s Articles - There are colors that I want to show you, but I can’t. They exist in the real world. You probably saw some of them today, but I can’t show them to you on a screen. A digital photograph can’t capture them, and your screen can’t display them. No game you’ve ever played has contained them. Unless you have specialized equipment, they are entirely absent from the digital world.

Most of them are cyans. On screens, we live a life starved of cyans. It is shocking when you see one in person. They seem unfamiliar and intense in an otherworldly way. I want you to experience that, but again, I can’t show them to you. Instead, I have to show you how to find them in the real world.
ObsoleteSony Archive - On July 1, 1979, Sony released the first Walkman in Japan. Over time, the portable cassette player became Sony’s language for personal audio, and the Walkman name moved from cassette to CD, MiniDisc, and eventually from physical media to digital files.

For this year’s Walkman anniversary, I wanted to do something more permanent than a post.

Today, I’m officially opening ObsoleteSony.com: a searchable, multilingual archive of Sony personal audio history, built around Walkman and the many forms that name eventually took.

You can visit it now, search for a model, browse by year, explore cassette Walkman, CD Walkman, MD Walkman, and Network Walkman, or spend some time moving through Sony’s portable audio history by format, feature, year, and memory.

Writing You Should Read

Two projects by Liz Neeley that you should take the time to look at:

Meeting The Moment - Each Friday evening, I write a summary of the week’s events in science and higher education. I pull together roughly three bulleted paragraphs about what has happened, hazard a guess about what to expect next, and offer at least one useful thing to do.
UNBREAKING - The United States is experiencing institutional collapse at a speed and scale that are difficult to understand, especially through feeds and updates that atomize our attention. We believe that mapping the damage done and its human costs – and the pushback and resilience work already underway – is necessary groundwork for building and retaining political agency.

The Ed’s Up - Yup, the famous science writer, Ed Young. Ed puts out a great newsletter filled with useful info and great bird photography.

Books

Early Bird Books - I’ve been getting their emails for a while now and have found some really good deals. You can sign up for their email list here. There is also a dedicated Canadian deals page, and a U.K. deals page.

Books Purchased and Added to the Queue

The Blue Hours - I’ll let Ed Young describe the book (he does a better job than I would): An incredible memoir about Krzywonos’s experience as a worker in Antarctica in the wake of her best friend’s death. “Antarctica feels reborn in these pages–unshackled from the tired myths of heroism that have long defined her, resounding with once-silenced voices, and ready for a new era of myth- and meaning-making. Kryzwonos accomplishes all of that with writing so haunting, formidable, and transportive that it’s almost impossible to believe that this masterpiece of a book is her debut. This is a _stunning _book.” Note: not available until Dec 1, 2026
The Creatures' Guide to Caring - A lively and revelatory journey through the evolution of caretaking on Earth, from animal parents to modern-day humans, making the case that caring for children and one another made us who we are.

Poison frog fathers carry tadpoles on their backs. Killer whale grandmothers hunt to feed their adult sons. Tropical birds incubate their friends' eggs. Spider moms let their hatchlings eat them alive. Around the world, animals from the exotic to the familiar go to astonishing lengths to keep their young alive. Their biology, brains and behaviors show us what we have in common with other creatures, as well as what’s unique about Homo sapiens.

With warmth, humor, and occasional run-ins with bodily fluids, science journalist Elizabeth Preston leads a highly accessible tour of cutting-edge research into how and why we and other animals care for young. She discovers that humans evolved to raise our kids in cooperative groups, and that the tools we’ve inherited for caretaking aren’t only for moms or parents in general–they’re the basis for our human society.
Color and Light in Nature - O.K., this book has an odd way of ordering it. You get just about zero confirmation that things went through, but it works. You basically pay via PayPal, then email your PayPal receipt to an email, and the book shows up. I got mine yesterday. It’s a beautiful, incredibly unique book aimed at photographers but also at folks who are curious, in a science sort of way, about why we see the things we see.

From the website: What is a rainbow? Why are there always two of them? Can mirages be photographed? Why do stars twinkle? How many ice crystal haloes are there? Is it really darkest just before dawn? Why is the sky blue? Why is the setting sun red and flattened? What color is water, and why does it appear in so many different colors? Why does the full moon look so big on the horizon? What’s the best way to see an aurora borealis? What is the green flash? Why are icebergs blue? Why can clouds produce such strong colors? What is a glory? Why is the dark side of the moon sometimes visible? What are those light beams that seem to radiate from the setting sun?
These and scores of other naturally occurring naked eye phenomena are presented and discussed, along with tips on how to see and photograph them.

I’m reading this book cover to cover, highlighting what pertains to me as a photographer. It will help you understand light and color in your photography. I’m thinking about getting a couple more copies to use as gifts. I can’t imagine any photographer who wouldn’t enjoy this.

Some major topics:
- Shadows
- Clear air
- Water and light
- Water drops
- Ice and halos
- Naked eye astronomy
- Observing (human vision and how it behaves and misbehaves)
- Exotic clouds
You can see a professional photographer talk about the book and how it helped him make a shot here.

Podcasts

Dirtbag Diaries - I highly recommend Dirtbag Diaries+ as well. This is a great podcast about the outdoors, the environment, and the people connected to it. I’ve been a Plus subscriber for years. I listen to almost every episode.
Clarkesworld Magazine Podcast - A few months ago, I talked about Clarkesworld Magazine, but people don’t know they have a great podcast as well. They take some of their top stories and read them.
Common Land - Season two was wonderful, Matt Podolsky and his 65-year-old mother thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Along the way, Matt shares stories of remarkable people, surprising history, and the modern challenges facing the Appalachian Trail – all as the iconic footpath marks its 100th anniversary. I really enjoyed this season and Matt’s storytelling. I hope he’s working on season three.

The Good Stuff - May 2026

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 09:23:04 -0600

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

May 2026

DxO PureRAW 6 - Version 6 is out. I started using DxO PureRAW 5 and was very impressed with the denoise performance. You can see my quick review here. Until Adobe improves denoise performance in Lightroom, I’ll be using DxO for my noisy shots. Especially with the Micro Four Thirds sensor in the OM-1.
BetterDisplay Pro - I use two monitors at home, and there is no way to brighten and dim both monitors together. It’s a minor inconvenience, but it’s frustrating having to adjust each one separately. In steps BetterDisplay, lots of control for your monitors. 99% of the features I don’t use. I just want to brighten/dim both monitors with one switch. It just works.
TinyStart - Nileane is out with a great little tiny launcher for MacOS. Launch apps, insert emoji, save and open links, save and open folders, and more. I’m very happy with Raycast, but if they ever switch to a subscription for basic usage, I’ll be happy with TinyStart. I do use TinyStart for my emoji picker, though. It’s only a €5 one-time purchase.
HazeOver - This has been a wonderful addition to my very busy, have way too many apps open at once, computer work. It simply dims inactive windows. You have full control of the dim amount. It works great.
BookShelves eBook Reader - Testing this…
Sourcefeed - pretty great idea. Going to experiment with this.
Ted Lasso New Season - I love this show. Looking forward to the new season on August 5th.
One Line A Day: A Five-Year Memory Book (5 Year Journal, Daily Journal, Yearly Journal, Memory Journal): 9780811870191: Chronicle Books: Books - Another way to journal that I haven’t tried but may work for you, especially if just starting out in the daily journaling world.

I started journaling late in life and really wish I could go back to when I was 16, 17, or 18 years old and see what I was thinking and how my day went. This could be a great gift for the young people in your life. They will thank you later.

The Choice by Dr. Edith Eva Eger - Added to the book queue.
Slim & Smart Laptop Carry Sleeve | MOFT – MOFT - I’ve been using this for some time now as a travel sleeve, and it’s just outstanding. I need to have my laptop propped up at an angle for easier typing, and this case gives good protection and two different angle heights. Highly recommend.
Nick Carver - a great YouTuber who shoots large format film. Also, some very good courses on light meters, printing, and large-format shooting. I’ve finished Nick’s light metering course and am just a few videos away from finishing his printing course. I’m in awe of the things I have learned. I thought I had a good grasp on the ins and outs of inkjet photo printing. I did not. Outstanding course. Nick is witty, full of information, and delivers it all very well. Highly recommended.
Hollow-Face Illusion - this is just crazy. I looked and looked, and your brain won’t let you see it. Which I guess is good. If you can see the concave part, it means you’re possibly schizophrenic, or you’re on psychedelics.
Mechanical Pencil - This is a very cool breakdown of various items, pilot pen, Zippo lighter, PEZ dispenser, and more to come. The amount of work involved in each one is just crazy. All done by hand in a CAD program, then animated.
Wide-gamut Test - Wide Gamut is the tool that lets you test your device color compatibility. Great little website that lets you know if your monitor supports ICC color profiles, HDR, or a wide color gamut, and more.
CS-PRO - This looks fun. Maybe a good starter camera for the young person in your life.

The Good Stuff - April 2026

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 16:59:18 -0600

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

April 2026

Adventure Journal - The best outdoor magazine I’ve ever subscribed to. Great blog as well.
Bad Astronomy - One of the best Astronomy newsletters I’ve found. I read every issue.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Advice for Making the Most of Your Day - InsideHook - A short story that will make you smile about Kurt Vonnegut and his technology stack.
Something is Going on with Colorectal Cancer - Hank Green out with more great informaiton.
Guide to the Best Beginner Brush Pens - Someday I’ll get to messing about with brush pens.
Pinery - Self-Publishing App - Hiro had this in his report, and it looks great. Even though I didn’t need it, it was fun to explore. I do have a book I started 30 years ago about being a young pilot in the Alaska Arctic… just say’n.
Longreads - If you don’t know about Longreads, you need to check it out. Wonderful stories, very well curated.
Notebook - iA - I had to get one or two of these, just beautifully made. I’m not sure I’ll bring myself to write in it though… still working on that.
The Making of iA Notebook - YouTube - Watch the craftsmanship involved with this notebook.

Books added to the queue

Thirst - by Heather Anderson, I also added her latest forthcoming Farther.
So Late In The Day - Claire Keegan. If you haven’t read anything by Keegan, do yourself a favor and start one of her books.
The Year Without Summer - William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman. I was sent down this rabbit hole by Maria Popova’s book Traversal. I loved Simon Winchester’s book Krakatoa so I’m excited to get to this one. We are very fragile creatures on a very active planet.
Go Computer Now ! - I’m about halfway through this and I love it. Very well written and brings a whole new company and characters to light in the early days of the personal computer. The story brings in the usual characters, Bill Gates, Woz, etc but only for context in this story about Sphere Corporation. If you want to know more about the battle to bring the personal computer to the masses, you’ll really enjoy this.

The Good Stuff - March 2026

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:33:40 -0600

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.”
- They are running a sale right now - $75 for one year of print.

The Good Stuff - February 2026

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:31:49 -0600

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

February 2026

Robert Breen Bookshelf - Robert is an avid reader, and his reviews are really well done. He’s been a good resource for new books.
HTML Is For People - I’m Blake Watson. I’ve been building websites since the early 2000s. Though I work professionally in the field, I feel strongly that anyone should be able to make a website with HTML if they want. This book will teach you how to do just that. It doesn’t require any previous experience making websites or coding. I will cover everything you need to know to get started in an approachable and friendly way.
PageBound - On Pagebound, every book has its own forum, so no more bouncing between Goodreads and Reddit. You’ll find book recommendations sourced from the community, not AI (we have no AI-driven features). We also let you rate and review the way you’ve always wanted with half-stars, emojis, and sub-ratings. I’ve just signed up for Pagebound and am still evaluating whether to keep it. I use StoryGraph and my own blog for book reviews; one more website might be too much.
Miniature Calendar - little miniature worlds made with common objects, I have this in my RSS feed, and it just makes me smile. Check it out.
BetterMouse - It’s a macOS utility app that gives you smooth mouse scrolling, cursor speed control, and powerful mouse/keyboard bindings. It aims to replace bulky, intrusive, and resource-hungry mouse drivers, such as Logitech Options. It’s feature-rich, lightweight, efficiency-optimized, and most importantly, privacy-safe. We’re trying to meet all your 3rd-party mouse and keyboard needs on macOS. After Logitech’s server issue where mice (mouses?) stopped working, I have switched to BetterMouse. Highly recommend.
Kagi’s Small Web - Very fun site, random pages from the small web.
Chess.com - Still the best Chess site for games, learning, and challenges. I’m on a pretty good streak of daily puzzles.
Pocket Bird - @binarydigit@social.lol told me about this. I just love it. Going to see if I can get it working on my blog. You can see it in action on BinaryDigit’s page.
Terraink - Build high-detail map posters from OpenStreetMap data with curated palettes, custom typography, and print-ready PNG output. This is a lot of fun to play with, go check it out and print some maps!

The Good Stuff - January 2026

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:43:00 -0600

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

January 2026

NYT gift article - 100 Best books of the 21st Century
CraftWork by FlohGro - If you use Drafts and Craft, this may come in very handy for you.
When you should use Safe Mode and what it does Howard always has great articles. Anything you want to know about your Mac, it’s probably on Howard’s site.
100 Days To Offload - The whole point of 100DaysToOffload is to challenge you to publish 100 posts on your personal blog in a year.
URL Manager Pro - A full-featured, powerful bookmark manager. No fancy front end on this one, just a clean, simple, yet powerful manager.
Language Transfer - free courses to learn new language skills with no memorization or writing things down. I’ve just started the Spanish course and am curious about their approach. I’ve been using Duolingo for a while now and am always looking for a new angle.
Enclose.Horse - I’m not a huge gamer, but this game has really stuck with me. It appears so simple, but it’s not. You can make it as quick as you’d like or take some time and really try for a good score. Updates daily.
Past Puzzle - another quick, fun daily history game. Free, and ad-free. I’ve just found it through Mastodon, and it’s really well-made and fun.
Moving your DayOne Journal entries to Obsidian. This Swift Script makes it happen. Sometime back, I used a similar script, and it worked really well.

I’m attempting to keep track of and post my monthly finds this year. We shall see how disciplined I can be! I really enjoy it when other people do this; I find such great stuff. I’m hoping to pass some of the love on.

As always, thank you for taking the time to be here, and I hope it’s a beautiful day. Cheers.

the-good-stuff on Cliff538

The Good Stuff - July 2026

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

General

Photography

The Good Stuff - June 2026

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

Photography

General

Writing You Should Read

Books

Books Purchased and Added to the Queue

Some major topics:

Podcasts

The Good Stuff - May 2026

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

The Good Stuff - April 2026

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

Books added to the queue

The Good Stuff - March 2026

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

The Good Stuff - February 2026

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

The Good Stuff - January 2026

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