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Snowy sunrise views, and the backyard in late morning.

Melting snow on the window refracting the golden light of sunrise. Blurry view of roofs and trees behind.

View of snow capped roofs and trees in the foreground. A rising golden sun on the horizon and cloudy sky above.

A backyard with snow everywhere. Partly cloudy sky.

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Silent Disco at the Portland Winter Light Festival

I took a couple of photos of these guys and visualized them morphing into one another so I asked Jenni and she made this animation 😍

People dancing at a silent disco in a dimly lit space with bright pops of colorful lights.

An out of focus image of blurry blobs of color and bokeh on a black background.

DJs at a silent disco in a dimly lit space with bright pops of colorful lights and a background wall of graffiti.

An out of focus image of blurry blobs of color and bokeh on a black background.

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A couple of sunrises over the last week.

Sky with clouds having orange, red, and yellow hues with a hint of blue. Lower half of images has silhouettes of trees without leaves.

Sky with clouds having orange, red, and yellow hues with a hint of blue. Lower half of images has silhouettes of trees without leaves.

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The Origin Story of Walmart Labs in Portland

Today I came across this Silicon Florist article about the closing of the Walmart office in Portland. It’s definitely the end of an era.

After reading it, I couldn’t help but clarify a few things about the origin story 😬

Quoting from the article,

For a town that has been less than welcoming to Walmart, it may be a bit of head-scratcher how they wound up with a regional technology office here. The answer, like so many other regional offices in town, is through acquisition.

Acquisition, yes, but not the one of Small Society as the article alludes.

In April 2011, Walmart Labs acquired Set Direction which had been building the Walmart iOS app, and more. At the time Set Direction had one employee WFH in Portland. Next month I joined the team.

A short while later we hired a third person and rented a conference room at Collective Agency’s first location in NW Portland. When our team expanded to five people over a couple more months, we moved into the first proper Walmart Labs office at One Main Place in November 2011. During that time we built and released the first few versions of the native iOS SDK based Walmart app.

Quoting again from the article,

After being acquired in 2012, Small Society took on the moniker of Walmart Labs, serving as a regional technology office for the retail giant and continued to be a presence — albeit a much quieter presence — within the local startup community, even taking up residence in coworking spaces around town.

Walmart Labs existed in Portland for the better part of a year before the Small Society acquisition in January 2012. And while Walmart Labs worked out of a coworking space for a few months, Small Society (as part of Walmart Labs) never did. After the acquisition they continued to operate from their existing office.

For eight months Walmart Labs was split across two offices until we all moved into the space above the erstwhile Rock Bottom Brewery (2nd and Morrison) in September 2012.

Edited to clarify: During recent years Walmart Labs did move into a coworking space but that was long after all the original people had moved on.

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macOS app that can never remember what I was doing last time I used it even though I really wish it did: Music.

macOS app that always remembers what I was doing last time I used it even though I don’t give a damn: Contacts.

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Mechan 42: Space Explorer.

Black and white photo of a public art installation of a 17’ tall robot on a 4’ platform holding a star in its raised hands. Foggy morning scene with a bridge behind and the Sun above.

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An out of focus image of blurry blobs of color and bokeh on a black background. A couple of the blobs resemble heart shapes.

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Hey folks, another beta cycle for Mimi Uploader is now commencing. I expect this to be mostly bug fixes. First fix is for that annoying issue in the alt text editor where the text you’re editing goes under the keyboard 😬

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Just how much Mastodon has taken off and continues to grow is quite evident by the fact that I felt compelled to import my mute list from Twitter today.

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Went out for some jazz last night 😊

Jenni skimping and looking at me with a cocktail in front of her on the table. In the background are people and musical instruments and mellow lighting of a jazz club.

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An afternoon walk at Oaks Bottom on a freezing cold (but sunny!) day last weekend.

A woman stands on a rock on the edge of a pond. She’s dressed for a freezing cold day. There’s green grass in parts of the pond and trees behind which are reflected in the pond. Everything is lit with sunlight and shadows.

A fallen tree on the bank of a river, with its top submerged in the water and it’s base in the foreground showing roots. Lit by the low afternoon winter sunlight.

A sailboat in the middle of a river lit by the warm glow of winter sunlight. There’s a US flag on the boat. Fore ground and background river banks have trees without leaves.

A bush without leaves with white berries of some kind on it scattered sparsely. Trees in the blurred background.

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Did this cycle a couple of times today: Sauna (170 ºF) -> Cold Plunge (40ºF) -> Hot Tub.

Outside! And the sun came out too! My first time at this. It was wonderful. Will definitely do again 👍

An outdoor space with a hot tub, lawn, tree house, trees and a cloudy sky with some blue patches.

An outdoor space with a sauna and two claw foot bathtubs filled with cold water. One of the tubs has a layer of ice too.

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Second, it’s probably possible to use financial engineering to bypass the debt limit. The most famous proposal calls for minting a platinum coin with a face value of, say, $1 trillion, depositing that coin with the Federal Reserve and spending out of the bank account thus created. Believe it or not, this would almost certainly be legal.

I noticed the paragraph above in this article about the debt limit.

A few things came to mind:

  1. WTF?!
  2. It’s amazing the systems and institutions we rely on have such weird foundational stuff as could be dreamed up as a story.
  3. How come Hollywood hasn’t made a heist move about this already?!
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My recent Flickr account stats show huge spikes that go way back in time, so basically 1 or 2 retrievals on a lot of old photos. I feel like someone is scraping, and I wonder if it’s for AI learning.

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Yesterday at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge.

A black and white photo of wetlands with lots of ground vegetation and trees without leaves. There are hills in the distance and a dramatic cloudy sky above.

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Yard at sunrise on a summer morning.

Black and white photo of a small plant in front of a white lattice fence. The ground is covered with wood mulch and pine cones.

Black and white photo of grapevine leaves hanging down in front of a white lattice fence and a garden bed.

An up close black and white photo of a small plant in front of a white lattice fence.

Film: Ilford HP5 Plus 400
Camera: Voigtländer Bessa R2a

Upload images using Mimi.

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Looking up from under a tree with a giant trunk, and many big branches going skywards all lit by the warm light of sunset

#ThickTrunkTuesday

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It gets mossy around here.

A muddy lane blocked off by a barrier that says Firelane 8 with a number of mossy tree trunks visible on the side of its path.

A moss covered tree trunk in the foreground and many other mossy trees behind in damp woods.

#mosstodon

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Really enjoying having a functional window in my home office for the first time in almost six years! And it’s nice to have it be a double hung so that I can open the top sash a bit to let in fresh air, and my feet don’t get cold in two minutes like they do with the bottom sash.

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A tree with white bark and no leaves, standing in a house yard, is lit by the golden light of the setting Sun.