Phil Houtz

A deserted street in an old western town

Pioneertown: One of the Last of the Great Movie Ranches

About two hours outside of Los Angeles is a strange landscape that feels worlds away from anywhere you’ve ever been. The hills are populated with scraggly ocotillo and creosote bush…and massive piles of boulders. If you were going to film a movie like Of Dust and Bones, this would be your place. But when you

Two kayakers paddling in a placid bay, a sandstone cliff rising sharply at one side of the bay with a modern house at the top of the cliff.

Kayaking in Back Bay, Newport Beach

This past week I took my blow-up kayak down to Newport Beach and went for a paddle in the Back Bay. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for over 40 years. It’s a large inland bay with a marshy wetlands and little rivulets snaking through it. The nice thing about this paddle is that right

A young man is working in a fruit stand shaped like a banana. Outside is another man on a Segway scooter.

Ford F-150 Lightning First Run – to the Banana Stand!

Let’s say that you suddenly had a high-tech, all-electric pickup truck at your command and no nearby 10 year olds to help you figure out how the gizmos work? Where would you go on your maiden voyage? For me, that’s a no-brainer. I’m going to the Banana Stand. Why? Because that’s where the money is.

Sections of broken concrete roadway, heavily graffitied, with an ocean view and radiating clouds

Sunken City, Point Fermin, California

Sunken City is a section of parkway just east of Point Fermin Park in San Pedro that nature has reclaimed for its own. In the early 1920s Sunken City was a collection of high-end beach bungalows, a section of Paseo Del Mar Street and a charming walking trail very similar to the Cliff Drive section

A large camphor tree in a small park, with Santa Claus and other Christmas decorations below.

The Hay Tree, Paramount, California

The Hay Tree is a 120 year old camphor tree where local dairymen from Hynes and Clearwater would bid on hay back in the first part of the 20th century. I don’t think there’s any more significance to the tree beyond a couple guys saying, “hey, let’s meet under that big tree over there.” I

A small child making an adventure of walking across a patio, shadow trailing behind

2024: the Year of Microadventure

Alistair Humphreys, author and adventurer, tells a story about the moment he realized that his galavanting around the world was taking a toll on his family life. If he wanted to be present in the life of his two sons and his wife, he would have to give up his epic adventure to the South

The word "Awakening" with a cartoon image of an angel wakening up in a cozy bed.

Awakening

Our church has a tradition on Epiphany Sunday, or this year on the Sunday after Christmas, where they provide a bowl full of cards, each one printed with a single word. At the end of the service each of us are encouraged to pick a card. We can choose a word that resonates with us.

Neanderthals at the mouth of a cave, an old man is poised to make a fire

ActivityPub Brings Back the Early Days of the Internet

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Ok, so I installed ActivityPub on my hosted WordPress blog. I can view my Wild Rye blog account (phoutz@wildrye.com) through my Mastodon account. But I can’t view any posts. Also, while Mastodon indicates that I’m following Wild Rye, my blog isn’t showing up in my followers list. I have no idea what’s wrong and wouldn’t

Classic Shure microphone from the 1950s

Tap, tap, tap. Is this thing on?

I just installed the ActivityPub plugin and activated it. Theoretically that means this blog is now a Fediverse server. But nothing seems different. And I have no idea if it will publish to Mastodon. So let’s see. UPDATE ONE I can find my blog username via my Mastodon account. And I can follow it. But

Illustration of a distributed nework showing how posting, combined with reshaping, reaches nodes distant from the original poster.

Should I Federate My Blog?

There has been a fair amount of buzz around Automattic’s acquisition of the ActivityPub for WordPress Plugin. There are also a good number of tutorials on how to install, activate, and set up the plugin. But I haven’t seen a lot about why you would want your blog to be part of the “fediverse”, or

A close-up of hands belonging to a half dozen people, resting on a log, in a gesture that suggests teamwork.

The People in Your PKM

Links, backlinks, tags, atomicity…what’s the most important part of your note-taking system? People. Denham Grey believes that any knowledge system that isn’t driving toward sharing and collaboration is pointed in the wrong direction. In fact, Grey is fairly skeptical about the PKM movement in general, with its focus on information organization at the expense of

The Alt text attribute in an HTML img tag, following the attributes for width, height, and src (source).

Using Alt Text to Improve Site Experience

Alternative (Alt) text provides a textual description of your image. It is an HTML attribute that was initially intended to provide information about an element if the page did not render correctly. In the days when websites were accessed over slow dial-up modems, images were often very slow to load. Today Alt text is an

Stylized layout for a garden with many interconnected centers, demonstrating how connections form a coherent whole

Links create topology or sense of space in posts

Mike Caulfield makes a distinction between online posts that are “gardens” and posts that are “streams.” Streams are posts that you read, and then they move on, disappearing into history. They are utterances, meaning that they can only be correctly understood by what was said before. You can follow the chain of utterance back, thanks

A page from the notebook of 18th century artist George Caitlin, with the headline "Amusements" describing his paintings of various activities

Your Blog as a Commonplace Book

In a post titled The Memex Method Cory Doctorow notes that he thinks of his blog as a kind of commonplace book. It is a sort of digital journal where he collects whatever captures his attention and saves it for future use. The benefit that his blog gives him over a notebook or a PKM