Zip Martini

Author: zipmartini

  • Construction Check-In

    Shaping up these cool digs daddy-o.

    Thank God I have a background in systems and network administration. Self-hosting a website is no small feat, but it still beats any alternative out there. I was musing about how my [“art” or “career” or whatever you want to call it] has yet to recover from the enshittification of Flickr and the disneyfication of Tumblr; I severely estimated how much reliance I’d placed on those platforms. When they changed to the point where exhibiting my work was no longer possible, there was nowhere else to go. Sure, there was a dalliance with deviantArt, a platform that still has no idea what its identity is (I do have to say that their print store was rather nice). And of course Instagram has a dalliance with the “Free the Nipple” crowd once every few years, promising to loosen the reigns on artistic nudity and then doing exactly the opposite — even if I were inclined to produce free content for billionaires slash fascist rumpswabs, and I am most certainly not inclined.

    So now I’m at the point where I have to remember that I don’t have to explicitly map out every single subdomain in my domain provider’s DNS records if they’re all going to the same IP, where my host takes care of that; the wildcard is enough (especially if you’re limited to 10 DNS entries, as my provider limits me). So now this gets to be blog.zipmartini.photography, which is very nice… and soon there will be a gallery subdomain, and eventually even a store subdomain for prints, cards, and other doodads (perhaps even stickers).

    The next job is finding an actual gallery… or building it myself, which I’d rather not do, but it wouldn’t be the first time. In fact, if I do end up writing a gallery app myself, I could put in some hooks to show the stereoscopic work better. I wonder: can a Quest headset scan QR codes in AR that then pulls up the browser? Now that could be an interesting way to distribute that content. A photo on your desktop or phone with a QR code underneath that says “scan this to view in 3D.” See, this is why writing blogs are great: thinking out loud, silently.

    But, yes, I need some gallery software. I gave PhotoView a spin, but it’s really more of a Google Photos replacement than a Flickr replacement, especially since it doesn’t seem to support captions (very important!). Perhaps Piwigo is more what I’m looking for.

  • Hello you!

    We’ll call that an alternative to the typical “Hello World.”

    I’m slowly but surely getting this website back together on a YunoHost self-server. I’ve got Mastodon, Pixelfed, and WordPress all up and running now. I’ll just need to get a website back up and running that supports a photography portfolio, specifically something that can handle “captions,” for lack of a better word. I’m not a traditional photographer in the sense that the image speaks for itself; rather, I consider myself a storyteller that uses my photography as a springboard or inspiration for text narrative. Often in my work, what goes on beneath the photo is as crucial as the photo itself, and they should be considered inseparable, tandem works. I do hope that as you peruse this website, you look beyond the thumbnails and regard the entire piece as one statement.

    The challenging piece of the puzzle is that no small portion of my work is stereoscopic, and a consistent method of presenting such work is very much a moving target. Google Daydream is dead, and the various Google Cardboard platforms have proved to be merely a fad over the long run. Browsing the web on a virtual reality device is an extreme niche use-case as I write this, and there still isn’t any kind of bridge that would allow one to view an image on a mobile device, tap on it, and choose “view on my Meta Quest” for a seamless transfer. If I were a younger man, I would write a browser plug-in with an associated VR app that would bookmark a stereoscopic image for later viewing.

    Clearly, the main difference between this blog and the Mastodon account will be that this blog exists for more longform discussion of process and technology, while my Mastodon account will be more for microblogging of opinions, attitudes, and whatever self-promotion my limited reach is worth.

    Speaking of tech: there have been major changes to the two primary weapons in my kit. Firstly, the Google Pixel 6 Pro has been replaced by an original Google Fold (technically in Gen 7). I haven’t quite put the fold through it’s paces, but I’ll probably be doing that soon on Pixelfed. I’m still keeping the 6 Pro in the kit for now for a couple of reasons: it has a Moment M-mount lens case, and it can run 32-bit applications whereas the Fold is 64-bit only. There are a number of apps which never got upgraded to 64-bit… the app for my LG 360 Cam, for example, or an 8-bit filter app that I’ve built a Gameboy Camera preset for.

    Second, I’m working on replacing a number of my F-mount lenses with Z-mount equivalents for my Nikon Z fc. I just picked up the Brightin Star 10㎜ f/5.6 Fisheye and I’m playing around with it a little. I do still want to keep a selection of F-mount lenses for my infrared-converted D7000, however, so they’ll always be there for my FTZ Mount Adaptor, but getting some portrait lenses in Z-mount will be a little sleeker for working with models, which I would love to get back to again.