We finished off Father’s Day with a movie at home — my pick. I had wanted to watch 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible for a while. What an amazing accomplishment by Nims and his team.
Happy Fathers Day 2023!
We had a 4.6 miles hike at Lebanon Hills Regional Park today. We took a significant part of the Voyageur trail. The weather was nice, no bugs to worry about. Overall great day to lace up the hiking boots. 🥾
I decided to get the Leica Q2 out and do some family photos in the front yard. Father’s Day was a good enough excuse. Love how these came out.
Awesome night for MN Aurora FC v Bavarian United. Aurora with a commanding 3-1 lead in 58th minute. ⚽️
I’ve been collecting ekekonfts.eth “🔌 Ŝԝ𝞘ፐc₶” collection on Nifty Ink. I dig these and think the collection is a lot of fun. I want to create a backstory for each one of these characters.
Bike ride to Lake Harriet Bandshell Music in the Park and ice cream from Bread & Pickle. Summer!
We went to An American Tail: The Musical at the Children’s Theatre tonight. It was a great performance. Wonderful songs, and a great story to add to it. 🎭
Mazie's Surprise Carnival
To celebrate Mazie’s 18th birthday and graduating from high school Tammy had a brilliant idea — surprise Mazie with a Carnival! Set up several games to play and earn tickets to put toward prizes, along with three raffles! Ring Toss, Bean Bags, Musical Chairs, Duck Pick, and more. Add to that a giant bouncy house, photo booth, an Ice Cream truck with all the fixings, airbrush tattoos and balloon artist and you have an awesome time for all! The secret held too — Mazie had no idea what was up. We left for a long picnic at Lake Harriet at 4pm and when we returned to a giant SURPRISE at 7pm it was the greatest!
Mazie Turns 18
Today we celebrated Mazie’s 18th Birthday! Both of the kids are out of school, and I took the day off, so we were able to make the day extra special for Mazie.
Tammy had the awesome idea of reliving each of Mazie’s 17 preceding birthdays! She wrote out a brief remembrance of each birthday event, along with a few photos from that year. Some of the years also revisited a gift she got from that year. It was awesome.
Highlights of the day included a morning visit to Shady Oak Beach, lunch at Yum! for her kid favorite of Mac & Cheese, a revisit of the Mad Tea Party at Zero Hour Escape Rooms that she did a few years ago with friends on her birthday, a new version of the Instax instant camera, and much more.
It was an incredible day with incredible memories — old and new!
Bison are one of my favorite animals, and I learned something new about them today. When a storm is approaching Bison, unlike nearly all other animals, will gather as a herd and charge toward the storm. They protect each other in numbers and push through the storm directly. 🌩️🦬
London Welcoming Crypto?
You may not be a fan of a16z (Andreessen Horowitz). You may not be a fan of crypto. But pushing fintech innovation outside of the United States is not a good idea. The movements by regulators against crypto have much more to do with protecting power and marketing than they do about protecting consumers. See my post from Dec 2022 on Polarizing Technology.
Andreessen Horowitz, an American venture-capital firm, will open its first international office in London. The branch will focus on investments in crypto and blockchain startups. The firm believes that Britain’s government is more hospitable towards cryptocurrency. Regulators in America have clamped down on big crypto companies recently. — Economist Espresso, June 12, 2023
Also, inside the crypto community it is disheartening to see some in the Bitcoin community in effect supporting these moves. Bitcoin isn’t somehow immune on this, it is just the biggest and most widely-held of crypto. Regulators will try to undermine smaller ecosystems first.
Mazie’s High School Graduation today! It’s official!
We went to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 tonight. Enjoyed it a lot. 🍿
Pretty awesome spot to hang out!
Lucky thinks she is an 80 pound lap dog!? 😬
Beyond the Light by Layne Kennedy
My friend Layne Kennedy launched a Kickstarter for his new book Beyond the Light. I met Layne when Tammy signed me up for a Dog Sledding Photography workshop in 2009. Layne is an incredible photographer, creator, and teacher.
They speak to us about the power of connection, the place of beauty in our lives, and the strength that comes from deep within us all.
They go beyond the light,.
That is why, after 40 years of searching out these images, wherever they are found – from my own backyard to locations across the world – I am bringing a curated collection of these photographs and the stories behind them, together in a new, high-quality collector’s edition book; BEYOND THE LIGHT: The Stories Behind The Photographs.
I still routinely hear Layne’s words when I look through the viewfinder.
“Every photo tells a story. What is the story you are telling?”
True for many things beyond photography too…
The Kickstarter is just $1,000 away from the funding goal! 🎉
I had wished for a micro.blog plugin for NIP-05 Verification and then I realized there are many things that use Well-Known URI including NIP-05 Verification and Lightning. Maybe a micro.blog plugin to create Well-Known endpoints would be better? Could have templates for services.
Surveillance in URLs
The Uniform Resource Locator is the glue of the web. Mostly we don’t think about URLs unless you create content on the web. Some browsers have even started to “simplify” the URL display worried that people might get confused. Or are they hiding it on purpose? URLs are however, a place where you can be tracked and surveilled right in the open. There are a myriad of ways to make URLs completely unique so that you are the only person in the universe that has it and whoever created that link can specifically know that you, or someone you shared it with, clicked on it. They also know when, where, and on what device. Every time.
I don’t think that is acceptable.
I curate and collect URLs and am always on the lookout for tracking information in them. It is usually easy to spot and remove. I got really excited when I saw that iOS 17 automatically removes tracking parameters from links. Unfortunately the feature is far too limited. It is nice that it works in a variety of applications, including Mail. However it only removes the unique tracking, and doesn’t get rid of the rest of the surveillance. And it only activates in Safari Private Browsing mode.
This is what URL surveillance looks like from a link I recently received from a friend. The link itself was a slight 28 characters. The surveillance was 302 characters. Over 90% of the information in the URL was to surveil and track the users of the link. I’ve changed the specifics so this isn’t a valid link, but here is what it looks like split onto multiple lines for readability.
https://abcdefg.com/a/123456
?utm_source=Instagram_Stories
&utm_medium=ad_story_smartly
&utm_campaign=123456_msp
&ad_id=123456789012
&utm_term=987654321098765
&fbclid=PAAaZnG…5kyWFFJ
The person that sent me this got it from Instagram, apparently in an Instagram Story. They were advertised with a utm_campaign focusing on “msp”, our nearest airport code. The creepiest parameter is fbclid which specifically identifies the click event for this paid content and will track the specific link of humans that this goes through. Letting the originator know that my friend also shared it with other people, and all of their metadata too.
The good news is you can just delete everything after the ? and it works great. Which is the thing I do a lot. A truly privacy aligned feature for a browser would be to strip all URLs of all surveillance parameters. There is a corollary too. Browsers that hide URL parameters are assisting in the surveillance of users.
As a user, you can significantly improve your privacy and fight surveillance by being aware of the tracking parameters placed routinely in URLs and removing them. Remove it before you share it. Remove it before you create a bookmark. You often can just delete anything after the ?. Doing this helps your privacy, and helps protect the privacy of those you send links to.
Boat Day! Got the pontoon in the water. Annual voyage up Cannon River to Wells Lake and finally Cannon Lake. First time after Memorial Day.
