Greetings, Wanderer.

Welcome back to Ley Lines.

5.1 Small Tech Is A Return To The Original Promise Of Technology I worked with Barry almost two decades ago. We drifted apart. Then we caught up for a boozy night in Tokyo while he was living there and I was there for work. Then we drifted apart. Then we caught up back in Canada. Since then, I’ve really enjoyed following what he’s been up to with biking and building.

Last week, he launched an alternative to Google Docs call DCox. And with that launch came a beautiful essay about what he calls “Small Tech”:

“None of this is free. There are trade offs. Things can be slower. Some services cost more. You do not get infinite scale handed to you. But those trade offs are the point. They force you to be intentional.

Small Tech is a reminder that builders still have agency. That we can choose principles over momentum. That we can apply powerful tools in ways that actually help people, instead of quietly making things worse.

Small Tech is not a retreat from the future. It is a return to the original promise of technology. Small Tech is good tech.”

Check out CDox, the homegrown Canadian version of Google Docs that he has built.

And then also check out his essay about Small Tech.

4.2 The Hasselbad Ratio Longtime readers will know that I’ve desperately trying to learn more about photography so that I can improve my own craft. This research and curiosity (which is what this this blog series is all about) led me to discover the 65x24 App, developed by Heliographe Studio.

There’s an interesting history of the Hasselbad Xpan Camera that this app was based on, and the advantages to the photographer. A lot of it is lost on me, and I wish I’d seen the “vertical” examples on their site before all the photos I took.

Still - it was fun to experiment with a slightly different format. I’ll probably keep at it and see what I can come up with.

I think it’s interesting the way that the app has chosen to treat these images: Rather than “cropping” them within the app, it create’s images that are a standard iPhone landscape dimensions and includes white borders at the top and bottom. I’ve left these in.

Check out the 65x24 App by Heliographe

And if you liked these photos, you might like this collection of some of my favourite photos that I’ve taken.

4.3 The Long Clock Someone has created, designed, built, and offered for sale a wall clock where the singular hand only makes one revolution per year.

From the site:

The Experience

In 2024, researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied long-term owners of The Present.

Owners who’d lived with it for three years or more answered open-ended questions about their experience.

The three themes shown here emerged from that research.

"It gives time context."

Owners often described a wider view of life. Less fixation on the next day, and more awareness of life's bigger picture.

"Feeling closer to nature."

A common theme was the clock's ability to reconnect people to a larger, biological reality, often referred to as "natural time" which many felt they had lost touch with.

"A better understanding of what is important, and what is not."

Many owners described a calmer relationship with time: when you can see the year, you stop confusing urgency with importance.”

Check it out at Present.Is

4.4 The Sound Of The Carnyx

I’ve seen a few videos of this awesome looking horn online lately, and wanted to find out more about it.

it was a wind instrument held vertical, and used in Celtic cultures during the iron age.

Image a misty, foggy morning and hearing this sound in the distance. Or hearing it at a rave.

Then dive into the music of Heilung. I have no idea what they are about except so describe it as Enya meets Game of Thrones.

4.5 Ancient Graffiti Humans really haven’t changed much in thousands of years. We have different technology and there are more of us.

But our base instincts and behaviours are the same. And nowhere is this more evident than the graffiti that has been discovered at Pompeii. Just the fact that people were making graffiti back then is a reminder of how similar we are.

The graffiti itself feels like it could be found in a modern bar bathroom:

Aufidius was here. Goodbye

We two dear men, friends forever, were here. If you want to know our names, they are Gaius and Aulus.

Sollemnes, you screw well!

Vibius Restitutus slept here alone and missed his darling Urbana

I screwed a lot of girls here

There are a ton of other examples here.

That’s it for this edition of Ley Lines. Thanks for reading. Or you’re welcome for the content.

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