Who is Nick?

Asking all my life.

Author: Nick Kempinski

  • Weeknotes 2025-05-26

    AKA: More like bi-monthly.. now with the option of daily

    I’ve been temporarily laid off. You could call it a furlough ( though no one ever used that term ).

    A string of bad luck in the world of startups. They’ll call me back if they can. We just don’t know when.

    Oh whoa is me… boo hoo boo hoo.

    Photo by Pawel Janiak on Unsplash

    My cheese was moved

    If anyone knows me, I’m the world of “who moved my cheese“, I’m not the one who’s sitting back. I lean forward and move.

    It’s time to ( in no particular order ):

    • clean the house ( seriously… I’m going into housekeeper dad mode )
    • wallow for a teensy moment while watching some Sci-fi
    • ponder the mysteries of universe and reconsider the place I want to be in it
    • Write ( aka this blog )
    • Give’er 🇨🇦

    Any plans?

    Not yet. After all it’s only day 1. I will trust my golden horseshoe and whim.

    • What does that look like right now 🤷
    • What does that look like next week 🤷
    • What does that look like next month 🤷
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  • Weeknotes 2025-03-22

    Correction: Monthnotes 2025-03-22.

    All that energy last month to mix it up, took me down. I was doing ok but then snap – damn you ADHD!

    I, of course haven’t done nothing, just different things:

    • Convert a newer/older laptop to Ubuntu
    • Remembered Drupal; saw they were trying to make a shift to simplify ( no doubt from all the “wordpress hi jinks” ) and started to remember how powerful it was when I replaced my college radio station’s site with it… that was a fun couple years.
    • Lot’s of work, and internal work weeknotes, with the hopes that someone, oh someone, will go on the ride with me. But, it’s just me sitting alone in the park.
    • Oh ya, and fighting f*!#’n mice! The scourge of Langley!

    It’s insanity! My house is a mix of towels under door jams, everything is in a box. At first you’re like, wow it’s organized, and then you’re like, which box was that in, and then your like, F!*#’n boxes!

    I’m not really much of an handy man, so the idea of figuring out what to do, is kind of super monumental at the moment.

    Then you think you’ve done enough, and then after the kids go to bed 4 of them come out of nowhere and run around like crazy teens, while your wife looses her mind, and the rest of the night, your trying to figure out not only how to get these guys out, but also do it in a way that your partner, who is now curled up in a ball mumbling “make them go away”, doesn’t fully break.

    Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash

    So, monthnotes it may have to be while all the energy I have left is trying to deal with that.

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  • Ong’s Oral Culture Recap

    Where was I? I’ve forgotten where I was in reflecting on Ong’s Psychodynamics of Orality with our current culture. So this recap is partly for me as it is you.

    I hope you can see where I’m going with this.

    It was coined “secondary orality” because I don’t think anyone realized how close could it get to a primary oral culture?

    In the thick of academia and logic, it’s hard to imagine. However, with recent events unfolding before our eyes, I think we’re realizing, perhaps it’s closer that we thought.

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  • Weeknotes 2025-02-22

    Now with Shit Goggles!

    I’m usually a happy-go-lucky look-on-the-bright-side-of-life kinda guy, but seems like not been so much.

    My wife had to have a hard talk with me.

    And now, boy oh boy do I hear it. The back handed comments, the “sure this is good, but….” amendments to every sentence.

    So, what do I do? These things feel a little glued on right now. So I’m going to focus on the small things. The things I can change. I’m going to break a pattern or two, ever so slightly.

    Breaking patterns, even the smallest pattern, by the fewest of moments, means you can change the big things.

    It’s a twist on the classic making your bed speech.

    Hold off on picking up your phone for 20seconds once in the morning, then tomorrow you can wait 22; then 30; then a minute; then 5; then 15; then 30; then an hour; then longer.

    Go to bed 1 minute earlier.

    Get up 10 minutes earlier

    Sit on the opposite side of the couch.

    Instead of doing X – try doing Y, just once a day.

    And when my patterns can change, hopefully the shit can crack a little, and a little more until it rolls away, and I can get to that happy-go-lucky look-on-the-bright-side-of-life kinda guy.

    Oh ya – and I was inspired by Derek Sivers’s now page so, I have one too now.

  • Weeknotes 2025-02-07

    Way things are going, it’s been more bi-weekly updates. But the thing with weeknotes, remind myself, that’s ok. Keep Calm and Post on.

    Laravel & Statamic

    I’ve really been reading more and digging into Laravel, specifically Statamic.

    I’ve been looking for a foundation to do my own ActivityPub “thing”. I have my own ideas on what it can do, should do, and with a plugin.. maybe… 🤔

    Other ActivityPub thoughts

    I don’t want to re-invent the wheel, there’s a lot of really good foundational apps already in the wild. WP’s ActivityPub plugin is fine. I also really like what’s going on with Ghost. But, Statamic and Known have caught my eye from an infrastructure perspective.

    • Statamic being having more jazz hands, flare, and a very vocal and fun loving community
    • Known having a really portable and rock solid underbelly and foundation.

    Reading through the ActivityPub specs, there’s a lot of really interesting possibilities, however right now, it feels like projects are mostly staying in their own lanes. Taking a smaller lane approaches, which makes total sense. However, I really want to “play” with the whole specification; more extreme possibilities, like IntransitiveActivity:

    • Replace Last.fm scrobble with something in ActivityPub
    • If we’re going old school, Fouresquare check-in’s.
    • The Quantified Self all via ActivityPub

    But more than that – I’m imagining a more monolithic app rather than micro-service approach to it all. One that doesn’t need fancy cloud hosts or only a hand full of hosts offer support for crazy languages ( not that I can’t set those thing up… ). I just want to sftp it on a classic host and go from there.

    But as always no time

    Yet as always, I am bound by a 3 years old and 6 year old that rule my world ( btw: I love that they do ). I’m still struggling to find a balance to get some “me” time. And when I do, being at a computer is not always what I want – I’m on it all day after all.

    So hey, if you you ever want to chat more with me, ask away on the socials. Want to take it on yourself and beat me to it? Who’s got two thumbs and can beta test. Have at it.

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