I can’t even handle the funk of this song. Headphones on for this one fam

Update on the Ulysses Error: I figured it out friends! Turns out that my host was blocking all XML-RPC requests.

Any of my fellow WordPress peeps seen this error before?

If you haven’t watched The Mandalorian… Don’t sleep on this show. It’s Star Wars the way it’s meant to be.

I updated my list of favorite Star Wars movies. I’d love to see your list!

New shirt that Kelly bought me! I love it 🥰

I remember when I used to write on my blog. I miss that.

Today I learned there’s something called a “penis fish”

If you haven’t watched The World According to Jeff Goldblum, do yourself a favor and watch it.

Jeff Goldblum is a god damn national treasure.

If you haven’t experienced your music with a good pair of open back headphones, put that shit on your holiday wishlist cuz it’ll blow your mind.

These “Replay” playlists on Apple Music are the shit. So many songs I’d forgotten were so great.

I miss making podcasts so much

Disney+ is 100 percent worth every penny. Holy shit.

Boy do I love purple. Feeling good

It’s disappointing to see brands that stop at 2XL as if us fat people don’t exist. Do better.

And for the record, bigger sizes in a different crappy material don’t count.

Sunset at the beach

This is very true!

What Barack Obama gets exactly right about our toxic ‘cancel’ culture

Damn. We clean up good

😍

So is it safe to download Catalina?

Hate speech isn’t free speech.

Breakfast!

Sunday brunch at the harbor

Cat cafe was so fun

Hot damn! I’m in love with my hair

Joker was nothing short of fantastic. I mean, I didn’t expect how good it would be.

I’m officially going purple tomorrow… so excited.

Is it me, or did all developers stop writing on Medium and move to dev.to? Y’all know that still ain’t your blog right? C’mon now.

I feel like I need to designate someone special to clear out my “recently deleted” photo folder when I die…

I’d like to take a moment to give a big 🖕🏽to restraunts that don’t make booths accessible for fat people. Seriously, you suck.

Looks like I won’t be watching SNL this season.

18 years ago today, I was in line for my fourth grade class when I overheard a classmate ask, “did you hear about the hijackers?”

I will forever remember that day.

I watched the first episode of Shrill… parts of it brought me to tears. I love everything they’re trying to do so far.

Ok, Bright Pixels is back from Summer vacation tomorrow.

My dream is to smoke a joint with Seth Rogen.

Beach day

Holy shit. I had an amazing idea for a screenplay today.

I see so many people use language that implies it’s wrong to take money for things you work on that you enjoy. That’s ridiculous, that idea is meant to exploit you.

When I was in the depths of my depression I wondered if I ever was going to feel some semblance of happy ever again. The answer for me is yes. I’m so glad I got help.

One of my favorite mugs

Some people mooch more than financially… they mooch emotionally. That shit sucks.

Somedays I wonder if I’d ruin everything if I opened an Instagram account again…

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you want to hear your music the way the artist intended, invest in a DAC and a great pair of headphones.

I need to call the IRS today and I really don’t want to. I’ve got so much anxiety about this call.

If you’re at Clarity this week, I’m insanely jealous! But I also hope you have a great time.

Planning on taking an acting class this Fall, because I’m done not believing in myself.

I’m in a creative rut. I keep listening to that voice that says I don’t have anything original to say, no fresh ideas, and no one notices anyway. Life’s too short to listen to that nonsense.

I just tried using the force to get the remote on the other side of the room… in case you’re wondering how my Monday is going.

One day I hope to be cool enough to go by just one name. Any suggestions? I’m pretty sure it won’t be “Tim” 🤮

Boy, it’s nice to read stuff like this

And to clarify, even my shittiest writing is valuable to me, because if anyone is going to profit off my bad work, I want it to be me.

It’s disappointing how many people continue to put their valuable writing on Medium.

My parents pulled me out of sex ed when I was in school, so watching this video was hilarious

Decided to make my own avocado toast this morning.

I love this

The irony of someone saying “I don’t normally hold gruges”, and then voicing their support for the death penalty by saying they don’t want the person to breathe is pretty horrifying.

You ever wonder if you have potential for something, but you’ve never been serious about it? For example, I have a half-way written, fan-fic episode of The Office on my computer. It’s pretty good if I do say so myself…

Started off the day by realizing our car had been towed. What a day.

🤮to anyone who says “crush it”

I get tired of how so many shows and movies use someone’s weight as a way to make jokes.

I’m so happy to not be buying anything for Prime Day this year. The fact that it coincides with me being broke is irrelevant.

It’s July. I’ve been pretty much unemployed since the middle of February. This isn’t how this year was supposed to go…

Anyone out there know how to get vital medication without health insurance? Asking for… well… me.

Friends don’t let friends not EQ their audio tracks!

Any day is a good day to say something kind to someone else and to add two-factor auth to your accounts.

I’ve been tracking my time with Toggl for the past few weeks and it’s been insanely helpful

I’m looking for freelance work! Here’s what I do:

• Podcast Editing
• Screencast/Video Editing
• Website Design

DM or email smith[at]ttimsmith[dot]com

Be very cautious of working full-time on a contractor basis with the promise of a W-2. Twice already that promise turned out to be a lie. And both times, I’ve been left without health insurance or unemployment to fall back on.

I think it’s a mistake for Kevin Durant to play. I hope he doesn’t risk his career for what might end up already being a lost series.

Who do I talk to at Apple to get universal skin tone selection for emoji?

The Black Mirror episode with Miley Cyrus was as bad as I heard it was.

Now that I think of it, I should’ve done a whole screencast series on this process…

Moving Bright Pixels WordPress has been a lot of fun. It’s been an exciting challenge to figure out how to get things working the way I want.

Today is an Elton John kind of a day.

Celebrating Bokeh’s success with a sushi date night

You know, I really miss Instagram. I’m that person that loves to keep in touch with people. Better get Bokeh done then…

Cool news peeps! Bright Pixels now has full commenting and webmention support!

last chance to back this!

Bokeh: Private, ad-free, and user-funded photo sharing

www.kickstarter.com/projects/…

We did it.

The Bokeh Kickstarter is a little over $500 shy of its goal with only 35 hours to go! Help me give this its final push!

Was it just me, or did it sound like you have to buy the stand separately from this new pro display?

So excited for this WWDC keynote.

I really wish I could be at WWDC. I hope y’all have fun.

Thinking of bringing back my video tutorials on various web-related things. I really enjoy sharing what I know with others

I had no idea David Sparks played the sax! Buy his latest Keyboard Maestro Field Guide to find out for yourself

I wish I had an Android phone to try out Dialog. Exciting to see it open sourced

We’re only 5 days away, and the Bokeh Kickstarter is so close to being funded. Now is a great time to back the project!

Those of you writing a linkblog on WordPress, how do you get a normal feed with links pointing to your blog?

I’ve been making websites for like 13 years now and I had to look up how to link to a favicon. Hope that makes you beginners out there feel better. No one can remember all this stuff.

The Kickstarter for Bokeh only has 7 days left! If you’ve been on the fence, now is a great time to help make this project a reality!

How can it possibly be Friday again? Time is flying.

We are so close with only 12 days to go! If you’re interested in Bokeh, now is a great time to back the project

I wish people would hide articles from their site instead of deleting them. I’ve got a bunch of 404s on my linkblog now.

Loving Bill Nye’s new podcast: Science Rules!

Instagram website leaked phone numbers and emails for months, researcher says - CNET

You got this.

Maybe you’ve even wasted time and energy on mental ju-jitsu like this: “I believe in semantic, accessible HTML. Therefore I don’t need to learn React.” If that’s you, and it was me, review your thinking. There is no therefore. You can have both things.

You can do this, because I can, and I’m more stubborn and more full of myself than you ever were.

What are people using to record screencasts these days?

I wish there was a way to mute [at]channel or [at]here in Slack. It’s constantly abused.

I’m so excited to be on this week’s episode of @monday with @macgenie! We had such a fun chat, and she helped me have a different perspective on promotion regarding Bokeh.

I figured out how to write, edit, and publish in Markdown on WordPress. It was not easy.

Should I make a screencast?

I came across this post by @manton again, and it still brings me so much peace.

People have been incredibly kind in helping me spread the word about Bokeh. No matter what happens, I will be eternally grateful for that.

The Bokeh Kickstarter just hit $7k! Holy moly!

No matter what time I come to Costco, this place is freaking packed.

Boy, WordPress still hasn’t gotten its act together on Markdown! I have to use Jetpack? Then I have to use a “Markdown block”? And if I don’t use said block, Wordpress coverts my text to HTML, so I’m no longer able to edit things in Markdown.

I’m really impressed with the adjustments the Warriors have made without KD. Their brand of basketball is so much fun to watch.

Migrating 700 posts over to WordPress. Why do I do this to myself?

What’s the best way of deploying WordPress via Git these days?

I needed to hear this.

Cynicism kills progress

All these static blog thingamajigs are cool and all until you try to publish from iOS. Everything is made to work with WordPress for the most part. So frustrating…

Kawhi Leonard. My goodness.

This reimagined take of the fight between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan is fantastic

App Store Pricing | Becky Hansmeyer

More than ever I realize that it’s futile to try to compete on price. So if you’re an indie dev, and your non-subscription-based app is priced under $5, I want you to go into App Store Connect and bump that baby up to the next price tier.

My heart goes out to Stephen. What an incredible (and I’m sure scary) journey.

Moments

What I love about video games is that it’s about the only place where I’m the best basketball player ever

We just hit 100 backers! Thank you so much to everyone who has supported and shared this project!

Until Bokeh pays the bills, I’m looking for freelance editing work! I do both audio and video editing. In fact, I already edit videos for @stolinski for Level Up Tuts!

Send an email to smith@ttimsmith.com and let’s chat!

This episode of Automators has me really excited to try out Drafts

Grab these headphones while you can. You won’t regret it.

This is some great advice from Sara Dietschy

I balled my eyes out listening to the first part of this episode of Reply All. It’s a touching story of what depression feels like.

Celebrating four fantastic years with Kelly. I’m incredibly grateful to have her in my life.

I was about to sit down to record a podcast, and suddenly they start power washing right outside my window…

I changed the $1000 reward to be a lifetime family account. I hope that’ll make that reward level more appealing.

Kelly: Hey can you get us tickets to see [redacted] die again?

Haha! She’s so savage.

I’m am so grateful for all the support for Bokeh. It means so much to me.

Ever since I noticed Castro version their apps Year.x, I’ve been using it for everything. Software versioning was always so needlessly confusing for me before

Today is the day. The Kickstarter for Bokeh is officially live. Watch the video, back the project, and help me share it with as many prople as possible.

I just got Cayenne pepper in my eye. It was about as great as you can imagine.

It’s the weekend before Bokeh’s Kickstarter. I’m so nervous, yet excited at the same time. This could be the beginning of something really awesome, or the end of an idea I’ll look back on fondly. Most of the things I’ve worked on didn’t work out, but I keep hoping this is the exception.

Bard Colbow nails it video after video and his thoughts on the recent Adobe news is spot on.

Just finished filming a-roll for the Bokeh Kickstarter video

I did all the writing for the Bokeh Kickstarter page yesterday and it has me so pumped! Today is filming day! Let’s hope I haven’t forgotten how to be in front of a camera.

KD had an amazing game. I wish I had half of his offensive chops.

I had this in my drafts folder but @andybelldesign beat me to it. Relative sizing with em units is pretty cool.

I am two weeks from launching a Kickstarter! Please help me share the mailing list for Bokeh!

bokeh.pics

I’m looking for an iOS Developer to help me with @bokehdotpics. If you or someone you know are interested, please send an email to tim@bokeh.pics

Sony full-frame shooters: What’s the lightweight versatile prime lens do you have in your kit? I want something light to use for street and general photos.

One of the best purchases I’ve ever made are these Sennheiser HD 600 headphones

Is there an app they won’t put stories in?!

I’m selling my Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8. It has a Canon mount, but if you shoot Sony I’ll throw in the MC-11 adapter for free.

$600

We had a great time in the pool today.

Us watching HGTV:

Me: Oh my goodness, I could see myself cooking in that kitchen!

Her: Could you see yourself cooking in this kitchen?

If you’re a reader of Bright Pixels: do you prefer the light theme or dark theme?

Any recruiter that’s done their homework wouldn’t reach out to me for a Senior React Dev position.

The Simpsons is so funny y’all.

Some more photos of my office in our new apartment. I love how much natural light there is!

Nothing like some afternoon decaf.

⭐️ VS Code Pro Tip ⭐️

If you’ve got a ton of folders open in the sidebar, you can click on the Collapse All button in the top right corner to start fresh

When The Sweet Setup published their pick for the best email app for Mac, I vehemently disagreed. I decided to give Spark another try last month, and well… they’re right.

It’s absolutely stupid that Credit Karma doesn’t let you unsubscribe from their annoying promotional emails without also having to unsubscribe from important alerts (what I actually signed up for) regarding your credit score.

I’m happy about this one. I added a blogroll to Bright Pixels

I migrated Bright Pixels over to Statamic and liking it! The control panel is very well designed, and the people working on it seem to really care

Being bitter, petty, and jaded is a choice; being positive and uplifting is too. I’m trying to be more of the latter.

You can’t get fired from a show with your name on it right?

Ladies and gents, this is The Tim Smith Show.

If your sales team ask customers to setup a time to “chat” and they don’t respond, the solution isn’t to just call them all of the sudden.

A family is outside in the hot tub and they brought their tiny dog which is the cutest thing ever. This dog wants to be in the jacuzzi so bad.

Wow. App Store Connect is a complete mess.

I don’t understand cash-only businesses. It’s such an inconvenience. Some even have an ATM machine which will then charge insane fees! It doesn’t make sense.

My office in the new place is all setup!

This report on how Jehovah’s Witnesses are being persecuted unjustly in Russia is striking

Opensignal Report Finds AT&T’s Made-Up ‘5G E’ Service Is Slower Than 4G Service From T-Mobile and Verizon

The State of Agile Software in 2018

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m considering migrating brightpixels.blog to WordPress.

My Micro.blog stickers arrived!! Thanks @manton!

My family bought us a welcome back cake! Man, it’s good to be home.

I believe:

• Your data shouldn’t be mined to sell you targeted ads.
• Your timeline should be chronological and not based on some algorithm.
• Tech CEOs shouldn’t allow racism, sexism, and hate speech to flourish on their platforms.

If you agree, checkout my new project: Bokeh

I really enjoyed this episode of Build Your SaaS. Their conversation at the end around hate speech is really important and something I’ve also been giving a lot of thought to as I build Bokeh.

Carrot always makes me laugh

Google announces Stadia gaming platform

I think this is the best way I’ve explained what Bokeh is about up until now.

Always enjoy updates from @manton on Timetable and I agree! Sunlit 2.4 is really good

Podnews is a podcasting newsletter that I’ve been loving recently. So much valuable information in there

Y Combinator bets on the booming podcast industry

I setup an Upcoming page for Bokeh on Product Hunt. I’ve had such an exciting few days working on this.

Starting work with a new client today! If you’d like to book me for a project I have availability in March. I do:

• UI/UX Design
• Frontend Development
• Audio/Video Editing

Find more details here: hire.ttimsmith.com

Picnic on the beach! It’s a gorgeous day

Exciting things happening with Bokeh today! We’ll be running a Kickstarter soon, so please help me share this with others. 📷

This episode of Today, Explained on the college admission scandal is definitely worth a listen.

The Bokeh figma prototype is coming along nicely!

If you’re going to create a social network, you need to be an approachable person. I’m determined to answer every email. @manton is an amazing example of this.

Really interesting questions brought up about Bokeh by @jeremytyarks

It’s exciting to see people care this much.

The Pull is a fantastic newsletter with great comic book recommendations every week. Really enjoying it.

📚

Day 3 of 14 on an air mattress and my back is still doing surprisingly well.

I’m at that point in a design where normal words start to look weird. Like… “People” doesn’t look right at all.

That thing where you think you’ve got some weird CSS bug, but it’s actually just a crumb on your screen… yea that.

Captain Marvel was fantastic. Go watch it.

One of the biggest things I have to get rid of as a new business founder is being scared to ask for things. The answer is always no to the questions you don’t ask.

Really enjoying this newsletter on web typography by Jason Pamental. Very educational.

The Bokeh mailing list keeps growing! It’s so exciting to see how many people are interested in this idea. If you’re not signed up yet, do it!

I have two Blue Bottle gift subscriptions that were never used. Here are the codes:

0CF0259BAF BD58E71EA2

Have a great cup of coffee, on me ❤️

I’m thinking of raising some money via Kickstarter for @bokehdotpics. Anyone have experience with this that I can chat with?

Bokeh was featured on BetaList! Please help me spread the word!

Today is the day. Today we move away from Minnesota. The beautiful state I’ve called home for seven years. I will miss this place, but more importantly, all the wonderful people I’ve crossed paths with.

I’mso excited!! Over 100 people have signed up for Bokeh’s mailing list in just a few days.

I did some design work on Bokeh last night. I feel like it’s coming along nicely.

Anyone have experience with customer support email software?

I’m happy to be getting such great feedback on Bokeh. This is such an exciting process!

I’m building a better way to share photos with friends and family, and wrote about why it’s so important to me

Making phone calls from the Mac is an amazing and underrated feature.

Sharing photos with friends and family shouldn’t mean having your privacy invaded, your data mined, or seeing ads so specific that it feels like your phone is listening to you.

<bokeh.pics>

I need more women in my RSS reader. Send me your suggestions for women writing a personal blog about tech, dev and/or design, or other geeky things.

I think the thing I missed the most about doing design and development work is getting lost in my music library as I work.

“…a moving buddy. If you don’t have one, get one!”

I’m trying not to drink any soda or alcohol for 90 days. The alcohol one is so easy. Coke on the other hand, has been very tough.

As of today, I’m no longer part of the Changelog team, and will no longer be producing episodes of Away from Keyboard. I wish the team the absolute best, and I’m looking forward to new opportunities.

Added a night mode to Bright Pixels over the weekend. I love it! I think I may read my own site in night mode all the time.

Remember when you’d log into IRC or Skype and that meant you were “at work?” I don’t miss those days.

Comics from last week. A little late to photograph them.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an introduction to my blog for new readers. I’d love any and all feedback.

Bad insomnia last night. Last time I looked at the clock it was 3:30am. Tired doesn’t really begin to explain how I feel today.

Brought down my Jekyll build times from 13s to 4s. Pretty happy with that.

Manton just absolutely nailing it:

please don’t call it a podcast until you have the feed ready, whether it’s a private feed or public.

This is so important. Companies will continue to try to privatize what are open foundations of the web.

Interesting thoughts from Leo on the Anchor and Gimlet acquisition.

Where do people find remote jobs these days? I know two fantastic people who are looking

Here’s my pull list, what are y’all picking up this week?

Sweet! You can now subscribe to Away from Keyboard via email!

I’ve been contemplating leaving Jekyll for Bright Pixels, but I’m nervous because it has such a great and mature ecosystem. With over 600 entries, regeneration is sluggish.

Today’s a great day to support the indie web and subscribe to a new blog! Have you heard of mine? It’s called Bright Pixels. It’s a web-column about comic books, Star Wars, movies, technology, and other geekery

And to all my fellow midwesterners going through this polar vortex… May the force be with you!

I can’t tell you how happy I am to be anywhere but Minnesota right now…

We had a mimosa flight yesterday. It was superb!

Bright Pixels now supports Webmentions! I’ll write a post about it soon!

If you write a personal blog, open a pull request and add your info to this repo.

Feels like so many are using Tiempos Text these days. Who can blame them though? That typeface is downright gorgeous.

I never would’ve imagined the cost of free, but turns out the price we’ve paid for a centralized web is pretty high.

Kelly just offered me a cough drop with the excitement that is usually attached to offering someone a piece of a candy. Send help.

Really enjoying this album: Line by Line — Prep

Away from Keyboard is back with the awesome @avclark. We talk about his new business, how he was raised in a cult, marriage, and how his kids give him a purpose in life

I like Slack’s new logo.

2009 v. 2019

This is how I record when the room I’m in has a lot of echo.

Kelly and I recently cancelled our Gym membership and got the membership at our local movie theater. We’ve used that way more.

More comics pictures from last week.