Noah's Blog - Musings and stories

Making mistakes

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What if the thing we avoid the most—making mistakes—is actually what we need most to grow?

We're judged by our worst

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve observed that in pretty much every area, we’re judged by our worst, not our best. It seems that there is something about the “weakest link in the chain” that says something about who we are or where we’re at.

For instance, in a portfolio, you’re often judged based on your weakest work (which is why you have to be careful to include the peak of your work).

In daily life, it is not the good days that define your character, but the ones where everything is falling apart.

Most anyone can act the part on a good day, but what about when things are out of control? If you are spirialing out of control along with the situation, then it does say something (perhaps negative) about you. If you’re giving your burdens to the Messiah and press on with hope despite your world crumbling, that also says something about you.

Seeing through the moment

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I think we’re all familiar with the true statement that “relationships are built on trust.”

One way that you trust in a relationship is seeing through the moment to the person inside during a disagreement or bad day. You trust that despite how grumpy the other person is right now and despite whatever hurtful words they say in this moment, you trust who they are and that they still love you.

Short story: George and the Mineshaft

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a short story I wrote in 2024. A young man named George goes looking for his father with his friend Harold in an abandoned mine shaft and discovers what he least expected. Suitable as a children’s story or as something to read in a quiet corner and ponder. Realistic fiction. Teaches forgiveness, mercy, and righteous judgment. Moved here from the old /books page. Enjoy. :)

A young man stood staring at an abandoned goldmine waiting anxiously for his friend. He had a look of terror braced by firm resolve. Once or twice he felt the urge to go inside himself, but he knew he must wait.

“Alright George. Let’s go.”, Harold, his friend, and a former miner at the mine, shouted from a distance as he ran towards the entrance of the mine.

George only gave a short look back at Harold before beginning to climb the boulders that guarded the entrance. Clumsily climbing the boulders, his breathing quickened. He really enjoyed climbing and often climbed for sport, but this was different and he knew it.

As they neared the entrance it was clear that only one of them could slide in at a time. The mine had been in working order until the day before when the ceiling collapsed.

“What am I doing?” George thought between his heavy breathing. “Maybe I am crazy!”

Thinking about it only made his resolve stronger. He had reservations about going into the mine before the search and rescue group came, but he decided that he didn’t care. “Every moment counts and it will be at least a few hours before a rescue team can gather.” His anger flared up at the thought of losing his father if he sat back and waited. No. He would take his chances and go despite his fears.

George was the first to slide into the narrow passage making up the only visible entrance left into the mine. The rush of adrenaline in his veins caused him to drop into the dark hole without hesitation. Harold wasn’t long behind and nearly came on top of his leg. The place where they found themselves had a strong smell of sulfur and wasn’t much larger than the area of a small bed.

They both looked around them with their flashlights to see if there was any way through the fallen debris from the collapsed ceiling. “Hey look here! Let’s dig this out.” Harold cried.

Harold had spotted a small opening in the rocks and was busy tearing at the debris with the back of his flashlight as a shovel. George joined him and before long they had it large enough to slide through one at a time. “Harold, it just occurred to me that we don’t know where he is.”, George stated with a concerned look. “Oh, right.” was Harold’s only reply as he clambered through to the other side of the rock wall.

George was taken aback by his friend’s lack of concern, but decided to overlook it. He followed through and found Harold observing some crystals poking out of the rock.

Upon his eyes adjusting to the darkness of the inner cavern, George could see that they were in a large space evidently making up part of the passage to the inside of the mine. He noticed a slow trickle of water coming from the left side of the ceiling splattering and running down what appeared to be a slope further on.

Harold had left off from looking at the crystals and was looking at a piece of paper he had pulled from his pocket. When he noticed that George had turned to him, he tucked the paper back into his pocket without turning or looking up.

“Quite a dreary place it is.” he managed to say, as if trying to change the subject in a conversation. George at once thought to ask him about the paper, but he felt it more important to get to his father as soon as possible. “I hope my father is able to bear it.” They began to proceed further in, both cautiously aware of their footing. “He wasn’t it good health before and the cold and wet won’t do him any better.” George continued thoughtfully.

They could now see where the stream fell off to a not-so-gradual drop in the level of rock. Peering over the edge they both shuttered. The light from their flashlights, as strong as it was, did not pierce the darkness enough to see the bottom. With a moments glance at each other, they retreated in the opposite direction where the mine shaft continued with a slight bend.

The air was cool and wet, but there was no breeze in that part of the mine so it was rather heavy air. “I’m glad I thought to bring a jacket.” George said to himself, before breaking into a coughing fit. Harold heard his coughing and gave a look around and a pause as if the sound came from the cave rather than from his friend. George had the feeling that Harold seen him as an annoyance on this mission, though he couldn’t tell why.

No matter. George’s mind was fixed on finding his father and couldn’t give room to think about something else. He could picture his father sitting somewhere in the mine shaft wet, hungry, and alone. Maybe he was suffocating? Maybe he became injured when the mine shaft ceiling collapsed and couldn’t move?

The thoughts gave him a pain he hadn’t felt before. If distance makes the heart grow fond, then distance plus danger makes the heart heave in pain.

All these thoughts were passing through his mind when Harold suddenly cried out.

Coming from his deep thought, George snapped into a full run following Harold’s present action. They both ran and threw themselves face to the ground in order to avoid a huge deluge of bats flying towards the way they had come. The fluttering and movement of wind was enough to make every nightmare either of them ever had pale in comparison. It was a full ten minutes before they could lift their heads from the ground. Neither did either of them do so for nearly a half hour for shock of the experience.

Trembling, George lifted his body up from the dirty ground. He saw that Harold was also very shaken and wore a most serious look that made him uneasy. Harold tried a smile, but his eyes betrayed his true state of terror. He asked if George was alright and mentioned that they should be more vigilant for bats in the future. This raised George’s countenance, but he could still feel himself shaking.

“Would you like to go back?” Harold suggested. George nodded. He had a resolve to find his father and he wouldn’t turn back now.

Further on they struggled to follow the mine shaft deeper into darkness. The collapse of the ceiling left only narrow spaces to continue.

They had been following the main shaft in a fairly consistent line until one point at which, after a bit of hesitation, Harold led off into a passage branching from the main shaft.

At length George spoke of his uneasiness and wonderment with the new direction. “Harold, do you really think he would go this way?”

Harold seemed not to heard, but did slow his step slightly. George continued, “I don’t think he would venture this way since the entrance is the other way.”

They were coming to where it was more than a foot narrower than in the main shaft. Harold seemed to grow more expectant, George thought, as the shaft narrowed.

Harold’s silence was broken at a quiver of the ground. A weak earthquake followed at which Harold asked him to grab his hand so they would not get separated. Bracing together bent over, they stood in one place while dirt and not a few boulders fell around them.

As the quake settled, George thought he heard a faint cry for help echoing through the mine shaft.

“Did you hear that, Harold?” he said. “It sounded like it came from the way we came. It was cry—I’m sure of it.”

Harold gave a straight face then turned away. “I didn’t hear anything.” he replied.

As concerned as George was for his father’s safety, he was getting concerned about Harold’s indifference.

Harold continued to walk further into the shaft, and George reluctantly followed a pace behind.

Looking around the walls of the shaft, George came to realize that this was a newly blasted part of the mine. Unlike the main shaft, no scaffolding, lights, or railing were in sight. Oddly, the ceiling was not caved in here at all. It appeared to have been mostly intact despite the main shaft caving in.

Shining his flashlight at the increasingly narrow passage walls, he could hardly believe his eyes. Veins of gold spread through the rock greeted his eyes. “Hey, look…gold!” he blurted out at his excitement.

Harold turned sharply towards him. “Have you never thought of seeing gold in a goldmine before.” he retorted, showing some annoyance. It was this that finally made him have enough of Harold’s indifference towards his father’s plight. He stopped shortly and waited to have Harold’s attention. But Harold was much too far in his own thoughts to notice and continued on.

With about a pace between them, Harold finally noticed, turned, and yelled back. “Look, George, if you want to go back, you can go.” George was puzzled. “How can I go back without finding my father? That is what we’re here for, right?” Harold shined the flashlight back and then further into the shaft. “Actually, I’m here for the gold.” he stated with much seriousness.

At this George ran towards him in a rage. “What do you mean? My father is in danger and you only care about yourself!”

He was in such a flurry of mind that he dropped his flashlight and could only stutter, “How could you be so…so…selfish?”

Harold’s face changed to a look of compassion and whispered, “Your father is dead.”

George paused as the meaning of the words sank into his ears and into his heart. Could it really be? His father, dead? Outwardly he could only shake his head and give a deep stare at the dark ground. Harold didn’t venture to break the silence but put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

Then it came upon George like a gust of wind. He threw off Harold’s hand from his shoulder. “Why?!” he yelled with tears in his eyes. “Why did you trick me to serve yourself?!” George couldn’t decide which was worse: hearing of the death of his father, or discovering the betrayal of his friend.

It was only a short time before it was Harold’s turn to burst into tears. “You don’t understand.” he managed to say as he leaned himself against the wall with his head down-turned.

George’s heart smote him. What could this mean?

Harold finally looked back up at him, holding back further tears.

“I’m sorry for tricking you. The collapse of the mine shaft was not an accident. It was planned sabotage. Some men conspired to get the gold in this mine for themselves. However, your father discovered their plan and in revenge they blew up the mine ceiling with him left deep in the mine shaft.”

“I was so appalled that I had it in my mind to blast the rest of the mine so that it would collapse and those murderers could no longer get the gold. But you see, I couldn’t do it until I knew no one was in the mine. Knowing that you would go to search for your father in the mine, I decided to offer to go with you. I was hoping that you would decide to end the search for your father after you seen the shaft. I know it was a stupid idea, but I felt so angry.”

Here he resumed weeping, choking on his tears.

George was speechless. Shame slowly came over him. His rage had caused him to falsely accuse his friend and justify his own anger.

“Harold,” he began with a trembling voice. “I am sorry for being angry at what I did not understand and for accusing you. It was very foolish.” His friend laughed through his tears. “George, we both got angry and did foolishly. I forgive you.”

With a brotherly hug, they both started back the way they came towards the main mine shaft.

At every step towards the entrance George’s heart grew heavier, as if to drag him back into the darkness behind them. He couldn’t tell why, except for, perhaps, longing after his father? Once or twice he fancied he heard a voice drifting through the air.

His emotions were so mixed with shock, pain, and indeed an undertone of anger. Angered at the men who dared to do such an evil deed to his father, he contemplated just how he would ensure they would be locked up in prison for their crime. “Justice must be done.” he reassured himself. How could he feel any different?

Harold, with just a brief glance towards his contemplating friend, at once read his thoughts. For his face had disfigured into the very picture of rage.

It did not surprise Harold in the least. He had felt the same way and nearly did something he’d later regret. Harold began to think about what he could say to console him, but at length he could think of nothing. After all, what could he tell himself to alleviate the cry for justice within his being? Sometimes silence is the best answer.

It was quite some time before the silence between them was broken. George was the one to do so.

“Does anyone else know about this?” he said, the words barely coming out of his mouth.

Harold knew what he referred to and only had to give a nod in negative for George to stop in his tracks. “We must give my father justice. If I have it my way, those men will serve their whole lives in prison!” Seeming to be relieved at voicing the words, he paused. “You will help me, Harold?”

Harold had stopped and was looking at George intently, shocked at the intensity of his words. Harold barely opened his mouth to speak, when they heard a cry for help reverberate through the cave.

The cry was so dreadful and seemed so near to them that it sent a chill up George’s spine and neither of them moved.

Again, they heard a cry further away—or perhaps muffled. They couldn’t discern which.

Both went looking frantically around with their flashlights. They had neared the place where the small stream of water fell down to ledge to the unknown. Hearing a repeat of the first cry for help come from that direction, they both ran towards it—but cautiously, as they feared falling over the edge.

To both of their surprise they could see the form of a figure slowly scaling up the side of the ledge. At short intervals the figure would pause and let out an agonizing low shriek of pain. At each shriek, George felt the pain deep inside him.

Then came a glimmer of hope. Maybe this was his father! Maybe he was alive and not dead. But oh—he is injured!

Gaining the same resolve with which he had entered the mine, he directed Harold to let him down in hopes of getting close enough to reach the figure in the darkness below.

Harold had anticipated what George would want to do and not a moment was lost in lowering him as far as he could without falling off the edge.

“Be careful.” Harold pleaded, as he finally let go of George’s hand, leaving him to go down the rest of way himself.

It was not without much difficulty that George came close enough to the slow moving figure. The ledge was steep and there were few clefts in the rock to get firm footing.

As a former miner, Harold was accustomed to the darkness and heavy air that filled the shaft they now found themselves inside. It was not so for George. All of George’s strength, knowledge, and stamina gained from climbing in times past came to full use now. He had been weary from the wanderings through the mine already and his body shook from terror and exhaustion. Only the hope that his father would yet be saved kept him on.

Finally, he reached near enough to hold out his hand in order to grab the dark figure’s hand.

He so wished that he could see his father’s face—perhaps his smile—but he had not brought a flashlight with him, needing both hands for the dangerous task.

Harold anxiously waited at the top with his flashlight pointed over the edge, the light barely illuminating the two dark figures below. He could hardly wait until the ordeal would end and everyone would be safe at home.

Slowly, but surely, George helped to pull the injured figure up towards the top of the ledge. Weary as he was, he couldn’t give up now. He loved his father and just thinking of his smile gave him new strength. He would pause at each cry of pain from below as he slowly dragged on. He was nearly ready to give out and just let go when they finally came within the strong beam of light from Harold’s flashlight. George remembered yearning after it and thinking “The light!” They had been in the darkness of the mine for nearly six hours.

Harold watched as they came closer. As the face of the injured figure came into the light, Harold’s words came out faster than he knew what he was saying. “So it served you right after all for your evil deed, Mr. Grevil!”

The words barely pierced the cool air when the meaning struck George’s poor, weary heart.

It was not his father! It was no less than one of the evil murderers. And he was saving him with the last of his strength!

The thought flashed through his mind to take his revenge now. The man was injured and just a slip of his hand would send him into the darkness below—no doubt to his death. Justice would be accomplished and no one would know the difference! George loosened his grip on the man’s hand. The man only gave a moan. He was it too much pain and in terror of dangling over the darkness much longer to care.

“See, he doesn’t even care himself.” George comforted himself through his tears. “Ha! He knows he is guilty. It would be more kind to let him die now than make him serve life in prison.”

Then the words he had heard many times before came over his mind like a wave in the ocean. “Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says Yahweh.”

He thought about David and Saul. How David didn’t take revenge for himself, but showed Saul, the very man who tried to kill him, the love of Yahweh.

George realized how he was so undeserving of Yahweh’s forgiveness for the wrong things he had done.

“And yet, you saved ME!” he cried under his breath.

“Oh Yahweh,” he prayed for the first time in a long time, “Forgive me!” Harold felt shame as he seen the struggle in his friend. He asked Yahweh for forgiveness and pleaded that George would make the right decision “to forgive and show mercy…” he prayed.

George tightened his grip on the man’s hand and pulled him up. He had given it over to Yahweh and would leave it to Him to decide justice. When they finally reached the top and crawled over the edge, they could both only lie on the ground for exhaustion.

Examining the man, Harold found that he was in worse condition than he had first imagined. He was badly bruised—nearly skinned—and had multiple broken bones.

Harold came to the conclusion that he had fallen off of the edge. “One wonders how he had managed to survive the fall.” he thought. Before going unconscious, George thought he seen a smile of gratefulness appear on the man’s face.

It looked just like he remembered his father’s smile to be.

THE END

The best place to be

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The best place to be is in Yahweh our Heavenly Father’s hands—to be in His will.

It’s the best place to be because then, no matter what happens around you or to you, you can know He is there with you.

Definitely a comforting thought, isn’t it? :)

I broke my writing streak, but that's okay

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

So, yes, there’s now a gap in the posts this year. Yes, I did break my long streak of writing a post on this blog everyday without missing—but that’s okay.

November 15th, 2025 to April 8th, 2026 is 144 days, so I wrote 144 continuous posts. That’s certainly the longest I’ve ever consistently blogged everyday thus far.

One thing I did gain from this was to see how an unbroken streak is a good motivation to continue. It becomes like a habit after a while, and even now, despite breaking the streak, it feels odd to have skipped days.

Using LLMs to write texts and emails?

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t think it’s good to use LLMs (also known as “AI”) to write your texts and emails. There’s something very twisted about the idea.

Personal digital writing is already a step removed from the meaning and benefits provided by writing personal, handwritten notes or letters. I don’t think we need to make it more so.

No one really benefits from a text or email you wrote with “AI.” It’s safe to say that if you’re in conversation with someone, they probably want to talk to you and hear from you in your words. Sure, it might not be as flowery, but it’s your voice and that’s what matters.

Yes, there’s a time for a canned business email response or template, for sure. Even then, however, I’m of the opinion it should be customized for the recipient.

But personal emails and texts? We should use the keyboard.

'Can't' isn't a good excuse

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It is easy to look at a difficult situation you’re in and blame it for why you “can’t” do this or that thing that you know you should. But really, even in a different situation there would likely be the same problems, just with different scenery (because that’s just life).

Generally, the “can’t” holdup isn’t due to our situation or problems but with ourselves. Whether it’s our selfish outlook on life, fear, lack of faith in Yahweh, or wrong attitudes and responses.

Rarely can we look at our situation and justify waiting for things around us to change before we do the things Yahweh has given us to do.

Yes, there are obstacles and problems, but we’re to overcome with His strength. If He gave us something to do, He will give us all we need to do it. :)

And if you ponder a little, you might realize that the “can’t” isn’t because of impossibility, but because of fear and lack of faith.

He changes hearts

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One of the clearest evidences for the validity of the gospel is how it changes hearts and lives. The Messiah, of whom the gospel speaks of in the Scriptures, changes hearts.

All the knowledge and counseling in the world can’t change and heal a broken, wounded heart. But He can and does.

Medication and drugs don’t truly change a person. Maybe outwardly and temporarily, but not internal and lasting.

The Messiah cleanses the inward being of a person and makes their life new. He changes hearts—a miracle in itself.

What commitment means

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Committing to something long term means you’re signing up for the bad days, the struggles, the days when you don’t feel like it. It’s not conditional, it’s always. It’s not an if, it’s a how. It’s not based on circumstances or feelings, it’s based on responsibility and discipline.

Parallels of Passover and the Messiah

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Messiah is referred to as the Passover lamb many times in Scripture:

Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed the Messiah, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.

1 Corinthians 5:7

The next day John saw Yahushua coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of Yahweh who takes away the sin of the world!

John 1:29 (NKJV)

Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, [like] silver or gold, from your aimless conduct [received] by tradition from your fathers, 19 – but with the precious blood of the Messiah, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

1 Peter 1:18 (NKJV)

Then He said to them, “With [fervent] desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16 – for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of Yahweh.” 17 – Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, “Take this and divide [it] among yourselves; 18 – for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of Yahweh comes.” 19 – And He took bread, gave thanks and broke [it], and gave [it] to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”

Luke 22:15 (NKJV)

He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 – He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 – And they made His grave with the wicked–But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor [was] [any] deceit in His mouth.

Isaiah 53:7-9

Yahushua the Messiah is “our Passover”.

The physical Passover lamb has always been/still is a symbol of the Messiah who shed His blood for us. Just like baptism doesn’t actually “clean” us—the Messiah does—but is an outward symbol to others of what He has done to cleanse us inside.

Only those who are physically circumcised could eat the physical Passover lamb. Likewise, only those who are circumcised spiritually can eat of the bread and fruit of the vine representing the Messiah’s body and blood.

The feasts are given as a memorial. Passover is remembering how Yahweh delivered us from bondage to sin (Egypt). The Messiah was sacrificed for us (the Lamb) at Passover.

It’s really amazing all the parallels. :)

Childish vs. childlike

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a difference between being childish and being childlike.

From what I see in Scripture it would be good if we cast off childishness and keep (or regain) our childlikeness.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

1 Corinthians 13:11 (KJV)

In contrast:

At the same time came the disciples unto Yahushua, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 2 And Yahushua called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, 3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.

Matthew 18:4

Short story: A llama coincidence

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Another short story I wrote based on the prompt: Write a short story that includes the sentence, “The llama couldn’t resist trying the lemonade.” Enjoy :)

Josh, a little boy with blonde hair and rather dirty hands, was sitting at his lemonade stand at the end of his parents driveway. His stand consisted of a small white table with a huge paper sign taped to the front reading, “Josh’s Joyful Lemonade. 1¢ per cup.” He sat on an upturned little wooden bucket behind the table offering a small cup of his lemonade to anyone who happened to pass by.

He’d been happily counting the day’s profits held in a little tin can—all ten pennies—when he knocked it over and accidentally spilled it on the ground.

He scrambled to his knees to pick up the copper-colored coins. Unfortunately, they were rather dirty pennies so they were difficult to find in the tall grass.

Slowly Josh ran his hand across the grass trying to feel for his lost money. He knew he’d been foolish to have the can set so close to the edge of the table. His eyes blurred as he crawled and frantically felt the grass for any coins. It was useless. The grass was too tall and he hadn’t paid attention to where the pennies had scattered.

He sat up, swiping at his eyes. What could he do now?

He suddenly had an idea. He stood up and took a quick look at his stand. His lemonade would be okay for a few moments while he ran into the house. With a burst of speed fueled by the hope in his idea he rushed to his parents house to look for a magnet.

Just as Josh closed the door to the house behind him, a tall shadow cast over the unattended pitcher of lemonade sitting on the table.

The shadow belonged to none other than the neighbor’s escape artist llama. This llama had been eyeing the lemonade for days from the field across the road. Now that he’d finally escaped the fence and Josh was nowhere in sight, the llama could hardly ignore the coincidence. The llama wasn’t much of a thinker but he felt this coincidence was a sign—a provision even. The llama couldn’t resist trying the lemonade. It was too perfect of a situation to pass up. In fact, he reasoned it was his duty to take advantage of the perfect situation.

Quietly, the llama crouched low, slowly trailing his tongue closer to the pitcher on the table. At first it was just a lick, but soon the llama evidently lost all self-control and downed every bit of the lemonade. The only thing that remained inside the pitcher was llama drool.

The llama decided his stomach needed something more so he munched on grass nearby.

With a grin and breath tainted by lemonade, he happily slumped to the ground in front of the table.

About this time Josh burst through the front door with the object of his idea—a large magnet. To his surprise, the tall grass had been trimmed off—how, he had no idea. Nevertheless, now he knew he would have a much easier time finding his pennies. He lost no time dropping to his knees and holding the magnet just above the grass. With a grin he soon had all ten pennies back in his little tin can.

Turning back to the lemonade stand, he nearly dropped the can. There was no lemonade left in the pitcher.

Even more shocking was finding a dazed llama slumped in front of the table.

Josh suddenly let out a giggle as everything fell into place in his mind. The llama had eaten the grass and drank the lemonade.

The llama, however, learned his lesson. Just because something is a coincidence doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

THE END

Every work of art is saying something

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As an artist, it’s impossible to not “say” anything with the art you produce. In fact, if you’re staring blankly, unsure what to draw, paint, sculpt, or write, you’re probably dealing with an uncertainty of what you want to say. Thus, asking “what am I trying to say with this?” is one way to try to get unstuck. That’s how fundamental the question of what you’re trying to say in your art is.

Creativity comes from many ideas mashed together in different, interesting ways. That’s why art is inseparable from an individual—their creative output is a result of personality, experiences, and what the artist is trying to say.

What an artist is trying to say may not always be evident in the finished work at first glance—perhaps not even recognized by the artist themselves—but it is there. Sometimes it is abstract like feelings and emotions, and other times it is more straightforward like appreciation.

A portrait, for example, is generally speaking appreciation of the subject, the person. There can be other, deeper things the artist is trying to say. (Can you think of a portrait you’ve seen and think of any?)

Landscape paintings, as another example, can be the artist saying that the place is special or beautiful to them, saying that the particular moment in time was worth saving, or speaking of the artist’s appreciation to Yahweh for His awesome creation.

A more obvious example is what is termed “commercial art,” including comics, signage, and illustrations. With these forms of art, the focus is heavily centered on the message being delivered, so it is much easier to see what the artist is trying to say.

Every work of art is saying something. Every work of your art is saying something. If you can be intentional about what you’re saying through your art, then you can say good and beautiful things that edify and build people up and glorify Yahweh.

How much of our anxiety is self-imposed?

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

No doubt life is stressful, but it’s hardly an uncommon occurrence to find yourself or someone you know anxious in one way of another. Should it really be like this? No.

I wonder, though, how much of anxiety is simply self-imposed?—from unrealistic expectations, from comparing ourselves to others, from stressing about things we cannot control, from discontentment, from trying to appear more “put together” than we really are.

Maybe a lot? Maybe…all of it? Matthew 6:25 comes to mind:

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”

Matthew 6:25 (NKJV)

Everything is a choice

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everything is a choice. Even not making a decision is a choice.

Halfway commitment?

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Commitment isn’t something you can do halfway.

Saying “I’m more committed” is technically not really saying anything at all. Either you’re committed or not (which, at that point you’re essentially just “interested”).

Be happy and joyful now

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you can’t be happy and joyful right now—with the situation you’re in now, with who you are right now, with what you have now—you will never be happy and joyful.

Things and events never produce lasting joy and happiness.

It is easy to get thinking that “if ____ happens or when ____ happens, then I will be happy and joyful.”

The “ifs” and “whens” may happen but we will likely find a way to complain and come up with more “ifs” and “whens”.

Joy is not based on circumstances, things, or events, but is being happy and content right now knowing Yahweh is in control.

Short story: Olives ‘n Blessings

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s another story I wrote based on the prompt: Write a short story that includes the sentence “He had just started eating his salad when he realized there were no olives in it.” Enjoy. :)

There once lived a little family in a cottage situated near a swift flowing river in the midst of a woods. The family worked hard to garden and raise cows for food, but it wasn’t easy in the forest. The soil was hard and rocky and the shade of the trees didn’t help either.

Everyday through the summer the family toiled in their garden, hoping something would grow enough to eat.

This year, they happened to be able to grow salad—and lots of it. It was a nice, plentiful crop and this meant that the family could do something they rarely could—eat from their garden everyday.

One of the children, a little boy named Sam who was about the age of 6, actually liked salads. But although he liked the fresh greens of the salad, he admittedly mostly liked the toppings.

The toppings were wonderful. He loved the homemade cheese, the fresh tomatoes, the crunchy, fire-baked croutons—but most of all, he loved the olives.

Oh, the olives! The juicy, large, black olives sliced to perfection were his favorite. The olives were the one topping on his salad he couldn’t miss.

One fine sunny day, Sam sat at the dinner table. He had just started eating his salad when he realized there were no olives in it. He looked down at his plate. Yes, it was true. Not a single olive. Not even one slice.

He spit out his mouthful of salad in horror. “There’s no olives in my salad,” he moaned loud enough that the youngest of the children, Ann, a four month old baby, woke up from her nap and began to cry. Their mother came running to comfort the baby in her arms.

“There’s no olives in my salad,” Sam complained, repeating the phrase like it was the worst thing ever.

“No more olives today, Sam,” his mother said gently, rocking Ann in her arms.

“But I WANT olives,” Sam grumbled loudly.

His mother shook her head, “We have been blessed with cheese, tomatoes, and croutons to put on our salads. With food and clothing we are to be content.”

Sam made a face, staring at the plate. “I have to have olives on my salad or I won’t eat it,” he demanded.

With a huff he leaned against his arm, the movement accidentally shoving his plate of salad right off the table. The plate fell with a crash and splintered across the floor in a dozen pieces.

He stood staring for a moment before leaning down to clean up the mess.

His lips parted in surprise when he saw that there on the floor beneath the salad, were olives.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said genuinely as he swept up the salad and shards of the plate.

From then on, Sam was careful to look for the olives in his salad.

Sometimes we don’t look hard enough to see the blessings we have been given.

THE END

Short story: Canyon Rescue

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s another short story I wrote based on the prompt: “Your character is young, easily embarrassed and self-conscious. The story begins on a cliff. The theme is: a race against time.” Enjoy! :)

The wind whipped through the canyon like a tornado, gathering the chalky red dust from crumbling arches and cliffs and spreading it relentlessly across the red soiled plains below. Isaiah hadn’t noticed the storm brewing in the distance. Thick, foreboding masses of clouds welled up in the sky like a wall. Oh, but he did notice another storm approaching.

“Hey!” a voice called to him as he sat next to the cliff. Isaiah looked around nervously but he saw no one. It made him shiver.

Why would there be anyone out here? Wasn’t this far from civilization? Wasn’t this known as Doom Canyon? Isaiah only wanted peace and quiet as he sat cross-legged in the dirt, his knees only inches from the cliff drop.

The voice came again much louder, “I need your help”

This instantly got Isaiah’s attention and he jumped up to his feet and searched the area. Dirt. Dry shrubs. More dirt. Nothing.

He paused waiting for the voice to call again. Silence.

He considered where the voice had come from, but it was difficult to tell with the wind as strong as it was. He rubbed his eyes and sputtered as dirt from the wind caught in his lips and nostrils. “Ack!” he coughed.

Then he heard it again. A whimper of pain. The wind was now becoming turbulent as the storm approached. Isaiah bent forward and spread his feet wide to keep himself upright against the wind that threatened to take him over the cliff. He slowly moved towards the edge, despite every nerve in his body telling him the opposite. He choked in surprise. There, just over the cliff was a middle aged man hanging by the root of a tree down the cliff face. The man evidently saw Isaiah as he cried with whimpers of desperation, “Please, help!”

“Hi, Sir, I want to help you,” he tried to yell back over the wind that sucked the breath from his lungs. He got down on his belly to lay flat and reached down towards the man, but he was so far off it was impossible to reach him that way.

A rumble of thunder made Isaiah’s palms sweaty. Only a few more minutes before the storm hits. The sky was already darkening and he could see lightning flicker through the dark mass of clouds on the horizon. What should he do?

His car was parked too far away to run there to get anything. This cliff was a part of a trail, far away from roads or civilization. He had no cell reception. All hope for the man seemed to vanish as Isaiah turned idea after idea over in his head.

He looked over the cliff again. Sure enough the man was still there, but he was growing anxious and worried as the storms thunder claps came closer together and the sky darkened to where one might have thought it was dusk.

Isaiah fretted. What could he do? The man was just out of reach and he had nothing to drop down to the man to pull him up. Or did he?

Isaiah’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment at the idea but he couldn’t let this man die. He shakily removed his pants and twisted them into a rope-like shape. He then dropped the pants down to the man for him to grab. The man looked surprised at the sudden salvation but he quickly grabbed on and Isaiah struggled with all his being to pull him up.

It began to rain. The red soil that made up the cliff crumbled at the edge falling on the man below. Isaiah winced at the man’s cries of pain, “Don’t let go!” The man grabbed at the pants and air desperately as the wind blew him in all directions like a hanging ornament. Lightning flashed close by and the dirt began to soak up the water and form mud. Isaiah’s bare knees were scraped raw and bloody as he pulled the man up. As the man’s trembling hand finally touched the top of the cliff, Isaiah stumbled backwards. The man slipped and Isaiah only barely caught his hand. He couldn’t make out the man’s face in the dark and rainy wet mud clung to the man’s features besides.

Finally pulling the man up with a gasp and slight embarrassment he took the now sopping wet pants and clothed himself once more before falling to his hands and knees in exhaustion.

The rain came in torrents and the wind carried it with force against the canyon, soaking their bodies as they both rested.

He crawled to the man, and to his horror he was unconscious. With genuine anguish that he may have done all for not, he carefully dragged the man’s body away from the cliff, aiming for the shelter of some brush a distance back. Once there he propped the man against a fallen log and waited for the storm to pass. Isaiah was soaked to the core and began to shiver from the cold the storm had brought. Every now and then he checked the man’s pulse. Yes, he was still alive. Isaiah’s heart skipped a beat. Perhaps he just went into shock.

It felt like hours before the rain subsided and the darkness broke into warmth from the afternoon sun. Isaiah laid back on the rocky soil in relief though he still shivered and he was very wet.

Gathering strength, he carried the man to his car. By the time he arrived, his knees wobbled from the weight of carrying the man and from the ordeal. He wasn’t sure he should even drive in his condition but he knew that the man’s life could be at stake. He drove to the nearest hospital, an hour away. At the hospital he called them, unable to do much else for exhaustion, both physically and mentally.

A week later he visited the hospital to see his new friend, the man, a doctor from Washington. “Isaiah,” the man said with warmth as he entered the hospital room, “So good to see you.”

Isaiah smiled as he drew near the bedside, “How are you mending, sir?”

The man smiled gratefully, grasping Isaiah’s hand firmly, “You saved my life. I’ll never forget it.” He paused, his expression becoming curious. “But I was wondering: where did you get the pants you rescued me with?”

Isaiah blushed then smiled gently. He knew, but the embarrassment had been more than worth saving the man.

What would YOU be willing to do to save someone?

THE END

Discipline requires looking far

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I read an interesting perspective where the author stated that our self-discipline is directly related to where our eyes are looking. Thus, the further we look ahead, the easier it will be to wade through all the daily “dread.”

It is difficult to be disciplined over a long period of time with a short-sighted view looking only at the here and now. Discipline requires realization of a purpose beyond what we can see right this second. It requires looking far to the goal, to the end.

Rushing isn't ideal

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Reminder:

Rushing to do something isn’t ideal.

(Ask me how I know :))

Live now

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Instead of planning to live later, do it now. It is easy to get the thought that tomorrow will be a better day to start truly living, when really yesterday was the best day.

Don’t fret, though. Today is still the second best day to begin.

What is this site?

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Short answer: sharing my musings and some stories.

Long answer:

Maybe it seems pretentious to be writing hundreds (literally) of posts on my convictions, opinions, and thoughts on things. I want to make it clear that this micro-blog is just that: me sharing my thoughts and experiences.

I don’t claim to know everything or be 100% correct on everything. But, I’m sure you’d agree that shouldn’t stop me from writing at all.

Many of these posts are reminders for me as much as they could be for anyone else.

This blog is also a good way to get my thoughts in an orderly fashion and improve my writing (hopefully).

If you learn something from my writing or stories, great. :)

Going into debt is a really bad idea

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Obviously I’m not a financial advisor, but I don’t think I need credentials to offer a lot of good reasons why going into debt is a really bad idea.

This is as much for myself as for anyone else. Lest I or anyone should get the idea that taking on debt is an option, consider the following points:

Debt enslaves you

The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower is servant to the lender.

Proverbs 22:7

You are a slave, willfully, when you take on debt. (That’s a scary thought.)

We are to be servants of the Messiah, not to anything or anyone else.

“Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.”

Romans 13:8

You’re taking on stress too

Being free from debt allows a person the freedom to do as Yahweh would have them do and to be without the stress that comes with debt. Because yes, there is a lot of stress associated with being in debt.

It’s not a wise use of the money or time Yahweh has given you

If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

Luke 16:11

Ultimately the money and we have (and will have in the future) is all Yahweh’s. What could be done with the money that is paid in interest? Probably a lot of good.

As for time, I recently heard it put, “Debt is owing hours of your life to someone else.”

Those are future hours too—hours you could use for many other productive things.

Is taking on debt really trusting Yahweh to provide?

And my Elohim will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Messiah Yahushua.

Philippians 4:19

Can we truly say that we’re trusting Yahweh for provision when we borrow ourselves into debt?

Going into debt is assuming you will live another day

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If Yahweh wills, we will live and do this or that.”

James 4:13-15

Every moment of our lives is a gift from Yahweh. To take on debt is to assume that we have a long future in this life to pay it off.

Maybe we do. Maybe we don’t. Either way it’s an unwise position to place yourself in.

So, in summary, going into debt is a really, really, really bad idea.

Ebbs and flows

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Life seems to have ebbs and flows. I’m learning to live and work during the ebbs and flows.

If you take a step back, you can sometimes see them quite vividly.

Creativity and inspiration especially have rather wild ebbs and flows. Sometimes the well is overflowing, and sometimes it’s dry and crusty at the bottom.

There will be ebbs and flows, so it’s best to embrace the fact with a good attitude and perseverance.

Life lived in-between

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We tend to think of our life in terms of the highlights, achievements, and big events, but our life is more made up of everything we’ve lived in-between.

The struggles, the little moments, the daily grind, the mundane habits, routines, and actions that we don’t think much of—these are what make up most of our lives.

Thoughts on grief

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Grief is the price we pay for love when someone passes away.
Grief means we really cared about someone.

A clear, closed door

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If something that you’re considering doing violates Scripture, it’s a clear, closed door.

Unnecessary complexity has a cost

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Unnecessary complexity has a cost.

Take this blog for example. I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible, both design-wise and in how it is built.

It uses a simple, custom HTML and CSS Hugo theme.

Really, nothing else is necessary for such a simple website. Anything else would be unnecessary complexity.

By keeping the technology for this website light, avoiding unnecessary complexity, it frees me to worry about what matters: the writing.

Perhaps what I’m looking for in terms of phrasing is: “ask whether the complexity is necessary and useful.” If it is, then go ahead. If there’s a doubt, keep it simple, because unnecessary complexity has a cost.

Revising posts

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I guess this my notice that I fully reserve the right to revise old posts.

And why not? The majority of my posts could be considered “evergreen” anyway. So, if I find a way to explain something that I talked about in a prior post better, I’ll probably do it.

I’ve been uncertain about editing past posts, but I see that it can only be a benefit that this site is “living” and work in progress—just as long as revising isn’t a distraction.

An interesting shift

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Even though I rarely pay attention to the news or happenings (and maybe that’s why it’s clearer for me to see), it’s hard not to see that there is an interesting shift taking place (in the USA at least).

It is interesting to me how all of a sudden so many celebrities are getting married now, rappers, and musicians are going towards more family friendly lyrics and themes, etc.

In part, it’s probably to appeal to gen Z, which is not only of marriage age now, but generally dislike that which is fake and want things that are real—hence marriage and family are popular again.

I would like to think that perhaps these celebrities and musicians are seeing the error of their ways and the wisdom of Yahweh’s order, but I don’t know—is it too naive to be so hopeful?

I fear that in many cases it is only to appeal to the shift in public opinion. Obviously, in order to be commercially successful, these celebrities would need to shift their image towards more family and marriage friendly themes, otherwise the public would reject them.

Again I’m hopeful, but it is ultimately something only Yahweh can judge since I can’t see hearts like He can.

I will say that it’s rather sad that these celebrities (again, I’m generalizing because I don’t know their hearts) act like chameleons, swaying according to popular opinion. I might be bold enough to offer the idea that doing so might backfire if they are not genuine.

A believer, however, doesn’t shift with popular opinion. We have Yahweh’s unchanging order and will given to us in the Scriptures and through His Spirit. Therefore, even when marriage and family inevitably become “unpopular” again, it won’t matter to those who are believers. Marriage and family have always been Yahweh’s way, and that doesn’t change based on public opinion.

This apparent shift in celebrities image is another example of following the swaying opinions of man, which is like building your house on sand. Meanwhile, following Yahweh’s ways are like building on a rock, an unshakable foundation.

What will we choose?

Short story: Bike Horn Greg

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a short story I wrote based on the prompt: Write a short story inspired by the sentence “He lived in constant fear of being abruptly fired.” Enjoy. :)

Greg had a job. At his job, the company made and sold bike horns. He liked his job for the most part. However, he lived in constant fear of being abruptly fired. He was always afraid of hearing those terrible words from his boss. Those words that would mean he had been suddenly fired.

So, Greg was always anxious, trying to go the extra mile to get things done.

You see Greg had been put in charge of running the whole bike horn business. He was taking part in marketing, bookkeeping, sales, and all the other departments. Plus, he was somehow still expected to do work on improving the bike horn product itself.

Arguably he already had a terrible schedule for work, working from early in the morning to late at night, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

He’d work late nights and weekends (yes, he’d work 7 days a week with no break) on seemingly unimportant tasks, basically as insurance against the thought of being fired.

Oddly enough, although Greg worked very hard continuously all week, his boss was rarely happy or satisfied. Instead of praise or congratulations, his boss would push him to do more, sell more, work more.

So Greg spent basically every waking second selling or working on bike horns for the business.

Sadly, it seemed the more Greg worked, the more the boss expected. To Greg, it became like running on a treadmill where he could never reach the point at which he felt he would be secure in his job. And how could he when his boss wasn’t happy? He could be fired any moment.

Finally one day, Greg had a mental breakdown. He couldn’t handle the pressure anymore. He didn’t come to work anymore. He just lay in his bed with fits of anxiety for days.

A good friend of his, Jeremy, who had heard about his friend’s sickness, decided to help him get well. He stayed by Greg’s bedside and slowly nursed Greg back to strength.

When he was well enough, Greg began to be anxious again. “My boss, he’ll be unhappy with me. I’ll be fired,” he moaned painfully.

Jeremy’s eyebrows furrowed, his lips slightly raised in a half serious, half amused smile, “Fired? Greg, I thought you were self-employed?”

Indeed, he was, and the truth is that Greg himself was his “unhappy boss.”

You see, we’re often hardest on ourselves. We’re sometimes our own worst bosses, our own worst self-imposed stress nightmares.

So from then on Greg remembered Philippians 4:6-7, which says:

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to Yahweh; and the peace of Yahweh, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Messiah Yahushua.”

And that’s the story of bike horn Greg.

THE END

Every story is about relationships

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Put simply, all stories are really telling about relationships.

Whether it’s relationships between people, people and things, people and animals, or any other combination—it really boils down to telling the growth of a relationship.

Stories are about conflict and change.

What changes a person?

Usually other people.

So, we see the conflict and change of the relationship through a story.

Summarizing Pete Docter’s explanation of the essence of a story in my own words.

Why are you moving?

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Typically there are two main reasons someone moves.

1. Moving towards situations, people, opportunities, and/or environments.

1. Moving away from situations, people, opportunities, and/or environments.

It helps to determine which one is your reason (maybe both) for moving when considering taking that step.

Write plans in pencil

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Not surprising to say, but life hardly works out how you think.

I once heard, Write your plans in pencil, Yahweh will write your life in pen.

I had written some “plans” in pen in a small notebook at the beginning of the year. Today I reviewed them and, no surprise, how things have unfolded in life barely match what I wrote on paper. In hindsight, it would have been better to literally “write my plans in pencil.”

Short story: Mew dogfood

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a short story I wrote based on the prompt: Write a short story inspired by the sentence “He wondered why his dog didn’t like the new dog food.” Enjoy. :)

Alex had a dog. But it wasn’t just any dog. It was a very particular dog. Alex’s dog was a terrier named Hudson. From the time he was a puppy Hudson appeared to have an extremely specific schedule and taste.

He’d bark at the squirrels at exactly 12am, chase cars from 1:05 to 1:30, expect a 43 minute walk starting at 1:59pm, and many other specific activities at certain, odd times.

Alex, being goodhearted, never conflicted with Hudson’s particulars but slowly learned them and fit his care and daily routine around them. He always wondered why and how a dog could be so particular, but he accepted it nonetheless.

One day Alex’s friend Troy came over to drop off his cat, Mew, for a week. Troy was going away on a trip with his family and Alex had agreed to care of his cat Mew while he was away.

Mew was also quite strange for a cat. Everything he did was apparently completely on a whim. One moment the furry cat would be purring around Alex’s legs, the next he’d be outside batting at a blade of tall grass.

At breakfast, Alex set out food for both of the pets.

Alex, being used to his dog Hudson having a rigid schedule for eating, found it both funny and frustrating that Mew was nowhere in sight. He figured the cat would show up eventually, but an hour later the cat food was still untouched.

Stranger yet was that both bowls of food remained untouched. Hudson just sat by his bowl of kibble uncharacteristically waiting.

Alex checked his watch. Yep, it was 8:05am, his usual time to eat. It was definitely abnormal for Hudson to not be eating.

At first he thought it might be that Hudson didn’t like the new dog food he’d switched to a few weeks before. However, the dog always ate his kibble before, even the new kind.

It was puzzling.

Alex left the kitchen, where Hudson still sat staring at the food, to look for Mew.

He looked outside first.

Under the car? No. Under the deck? No. In the garden? Nope, not there either.

Finally he came back into the house and began a quiet search. Where was that cat? Alex hoped he hadn’t run away.

With a sigh, he looked through the house. He finally came back to the kitchen, to find his dog just as he’d left him, except both bowls were empty now.

Alex studied the empty bowls for a moment. Was it possible that Mew came and ate the cat food while he wasn’t there, or did Hudson eat it?

The days following the cat was nowhere to be found at normal mealtimes. Only during seemingly random times did Mew reappear.

Alex was somewhat concerned that Mew wasn’t eating, but it occurred to him that the cat didn’t appear to be hungry. So, he didn’t worry about it.

Finally, towards the weekend he was able to figure out what was going on.

That afternoon he’d put out the dog and cat food as usual. Hudson stared at his dog food just like he had since Mew first came to stay.

Alex turned the corner and peeked around to watch what happened. After not too long Mew darted to the kitchen and immediately began to eat the dog food. Alex’s eyes widened. Mew appeared to really like the dog kibble. Meanwhile he noticed that Hudson had consumed the cat food.

He laughed. Evidently Hudson didn’t like his new dog food after all. And Mew? Evidently he preferred meat kibble to tuna kibble.

THE END

Too short

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Life is too short to not: give it your all, serve Yahweh our Heavenly Father, and maintain good relationships.

Convincing truth

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If someone is truly seeking the truth, we don’t need to fret over convincing them of the truth ourselves.

Yahweh will lead the seeking heart to truth in His time, not ours.

This is the beauty of a heart open to the truth and a faith in Yahweh that isn’t focused on seeing “results” all the time.

Of course we share with others, but we don’t need to be concerned with convincing. We do our part by presenting the truth to them, then letting Yahweh work in their heart.

Sometimes Yahweh lets us see the results of our obedience, sometimes He doesn’t. Either way, it’s really Him working through us anyway.

No undo, redo

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is your friendly reminder that there’s no undo or redo in life.

Once

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This moment only happens once.

This present is a gift from Yahweh.

Each moment passes and fades into your history.

Each moment, just once.

The anxious octopus

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“The Anxious Octopus” is a gag comic I drew, mainly to remind myself to trust Yahweh and not get anxious about “accomplishing things.”

It features an octopus who is clearly sweating and anxious about not being able to get everything he wants to get done accomplished.

The deeper meaning of the comic has to do with how the octopus has eight limbs while we have just two. The point being that it wouldn’t matter how much more we could accomplish, we’d still be anxious and concerned with doing more.

The solution, of course, is to do our part and trust Yahweh our Heavenly Father for the rest.

Simplifying concepts

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Having been working since the beginning of the year on writing and illustrating my first independent book for children, the idea of simplifying concepts is really relevant.

It is interesting how in trying to simplify abstract concepts into words and pictures that a child can understand, it has forced me to learn a lot about the topic and dig deeper than I wouldn’t have otherwise.

In my last post, I challenged myself to explain computer programming as simply as I could. Whether or not I succeeded in that I’ll let you be the judge.

I did, however, come away from it knowing “what computer programming is” a whole lot deeper myself. The process of having to think it through, break it down into simple terms, and form (hopefully) clear sentences was almost like teaching myself.

The same with the book, where reducing the concepts to plain language has helped me to see things I hadn’t before. :)

Computer programming, simplified?

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

To many, computer programming and software seem a bit like “magic”. I know it was for me before I learned (now over five years ago!).

Somehow, someone writes all this funny text that seems incomprehensible and builds complex software applications that can do anything from capturing a photo to online shopping.

How does this work?

Well, I’m going to challenge myself and do my best to explain as simply as I can in my own words.

Broken down really simply, programming is writing instructions telling a computer how to manipulate data. These instructions are called software.

What is data, though? Data can come in many forms, but generally it can be reduced to the word information.

This information (data) is usually sourced by input from the user, other external sources, or built into the software by the developer. Often, software receives and manipulates information (data) from all three of these sources.

Any software will have input and output. Inputs are the data (information) the software receives. Inputs can come from the user of the software, the computer system itself, or external software.

Outputs are what the software produces with the inputs, based on how the software was written to manipulate the data. Sometimes the output is more data used within the software, other times it is a visible information (data) provided to the user, like the tap of a button in an interface.

It may be helpful to think of this in terms of a vehicle.

An input is like turning the steering wheel on a vehicle. The information (data) of how far you’ve turned the wheel is given to the steering system which (manipulates that data) causes the wheels to turn (the output).

So, in summary, programming is writing instructions for manipulating information called data. This data is passed around, transformed, and manipulated according to the instructions and an output is produced.

Making history

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

History is being made every moment in your life.

You don’t have to be a leader or famous person to make history.

Impacting others, touching others’ lives with the life that Yahweh has given you—that changes and makes history.

Are you making your history count?

Are you willing to be a fool?

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I recently heard the testimony of Keith Green, and what really stood out to me was his self-imposed question.

Am I willing to be “a fool for Messiah”?

(Paraphrasing his question in my own words)

Once he could answer “yes” to this question, then he became a believer. Prior to his turning point, he couldn’t and wouldn’t say “yes.”

Perhaps the reason this question is important, is because once you can say “yes” then you’ve surrendered to the Messiah—and that is the point at which you can be reborn and He can work in and through you.

Solomon's ask

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Today 1 Kings 3 came up on my phone for the daily notification I receive via Bible Notify. It was good timing to reread this story again.

3 And Solomon loved Yahweh, walking in the statutes of David his father: only he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places. 4 And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place: a thousand burnt offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar. 5 In Gibeon Yahweh appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and Elohim said, Ask what I shall give thee. 6 And Solomon said, Thou hast shewed unto thy servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with thee; and thou hast kept for him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. 7 And now, O Yahweh my Elohim, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. 8 And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. 9 Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?

Wisdom and understanding were Solomon’s “ask”. He could have asked anything, but he knew what was really important.

Wisdom is important. We need Yahweh’s wisdom every day.

10 And the speech pleased Yahweh, that Solomon had asked this thing. 11 And Elohim said unto him, Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enemies; but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment; 12 Behold, I have done according to thy words: lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee. 13 And I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches, and honour: so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all thy days. 14. And if thou wilt walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as thy father David did walk, then I will lengthen thy days. 1 And Solomon awoke; and, behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, and offered up burnt offerings, and offered peace offerings, and made a feast to all his servants.

Intellectual humility

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Intellectual pursuit apart from intellectual humility is fruitless.

Unless we have humility, we’re not going to get very far in our intellectual pursuits.

Part of intellectual humility is being able to respectfully disagree with someone.

It’s not about giving leeway or conceding your position in the disagreement. It is about having the humility to recognize that you could be wrong about something and that you yourself should be on the same plane of seeking truth as the other person. Then the focus is on seeking truth (where it should be) rather than on trying to win an argument or sound intelligent.

Intellectual humility is also having humility to submit ourselves to the wisdom of the One who created the mind—Yahweh our Heavenly Father.

Science, faith, and belief

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There is a prevalent thought nowadays that science holds all the answers and there is no need for faith/belief. However, practicing true science requires one to have beliefs and there are many things that mere observable science cannot give answers for.

In similar thread to my musings on logic, I think it’s wise to be humble about ourselves and our human limitations.

The idea of “science” replacing faith isn’t new, but it is deceptive.

True science by definition is observed, tested, and repeatable. Science is simply trying to understand the world around us.

Therefore, practicing science requires us to believe at least two things:

That we can actually understand the world around us.
That there is an order to the universe that we can seek out.

Perhaps many of us take these beliefs (and others) for granted, but, for example, some believe that we’re simply “living in a simulation.” I don’t believe that, but some do, and that makes a difference in how you look at the world.

So we can come to the conclusion that science itself cannot replace faith/belief because it requires belief itself to function.

Secondly, true science is observed, tested, and repeatable.

The fact is that science is only as good as our observations and is subject to the limitations of our brains/bodies.

There are also many things, such as where the universe came from, which cannot be explained by true science, because it cannot be observed, tested, and repeatable.

When someone says “trust the science”, they are having faith in the practice of science—flaws and all.

Faith and science are inseparable.

So, we should to humbly accept the fact that to some extent everyone has beliefs that they hold onto to fill in the gaps—because science doesn’t have all the answers and never will.

Instead, we should look to the wisdom and knowledge of Yahweh our Heavenly Father who is creator of everything we’re trying to understand in life and in the world around us.

Relationships are your wealth

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most people’s number one regret on their deathbed is that they wish they would have spent more time with their family, that they would have invested more in their relationships.

Lately Yahweh has been showing me that the quality of our relationships is the true measure of wealth.

Prioritize family and relationships.
Say sorry often and be quick to forgive.
Mend relationships right away, as much as possible with you.

Milestone: the 100th (continuous) post

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s official. This is the 100th post I’ve written on this blog, without even one day missed.

Yes, the 100th post since Nov. 15th, 2025 when I first began posting every day.

It’s a little hard to believe there were that many topics that I somehow found the words to write one each day, but I did.

Sure, not every post is equal in quality, but each post is like a log in a logbook —a glimpse into what I was thinking about that day.

I guess this means that this blog can be included in #100daystooffload. Yay!

Functional and beautiful

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I was thinking about how in times past even ordinary things used to be decorated a lot more, and now things are much more utility, plain, and boring.

Maybe that’s the reason why we keep old things as art and history, while we throw away items nowadays after they’ve completed their functional, utility use.

For example, whereas a light pole used to be decorated, thus serving both a functional and aesthetic purpose, we now have rather boring-looking light poles. (Oddly enough, someone is always trying to “decorate” these boring light poles with stickers or markings, such as scratching in their name. Curious, isn’t it?)

The decorated light pole is likely going to be kept as a work of art and history long after it retires. The light pole designed nowadays…well, there’s not much it’s good for aesthetics-wise after it’s served its function, so it will probably end up in a landfill.

Have we forgotten that things should be functional and beautiful?

Yahweh our Heavenly Father created the world both beautiful and functional (and I’m glad he did :)). All throughout creation we see that the things that He made have beauty (in their own ways) and are functional. He also created us with a sense of need for beauty.

So, when designing something maybe we should ask how we can make it beautiful and functional.

Will what we create be looked at in the future as art and history, or as trash to throw away? Because we do have a choice whether to design something as utility only or as functional and beautiful.

Asking the wrong question?

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Maybe sometimes we’re asking Yahweh our Heavenly Father the wrong the question.

And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with Yahweh three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Messiah may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Mesiah’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 7-10

Short story: The Sleepwalker

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote this short story based on the prompt:

Write a short story inspired by the sentence: “He had unknowingly taken up sleepwalking as a nighttime hobby.” Include the words “rainy” and “happy” at least once in the story.

Enjoy. :)

It wasn’t that Mr. Green liked sleepwalking. He had unknowingly taken up sleepwalking as a nighttime hobby.

His neighbors thought him strange. He’d wake up at just before midnight and walk outside and down the street with his eyes closed.

It didn’t matter if it was rainy or windy or even snowy, somehow he always made it out and then went back to bed within an hour.

Sometimes he’d walk past the street corner and the security guard would wave only to realize it was Mr. Green sleepwalking again and roll his eyes.

One particular day, it was rather rainy and windy. As usual, Mr. Green got up and went sleepwalking down the street.

A little boy, Timmy, who couldn’t sleep because of the pitter-patter of rain, saw him through his bedroom window.

Now Timmy was five years old and had never heard of sleepwalking. He wondered why the man walked the streets on such a rainy night with his eyes closed. He watched as Mr. Green walked down the street, apparently unbothered by the rain or wind.

He came to the happy conclusion that the man was closing his eyes enjoying the rain and cool night air.

This thought comforted Timmy and he soon curled into his blankets and fell fast asleep.

He awoke a little while later, however. His brain had worked the problem over and came to the fact that his first conclusion was wrong.

The man kept his eyes closed the whole time. He knew that if he did that, he’d be sure to trip and fall.

Timmy leaned against the window, pressing his nose against the glass to get a better look. Mr. Green walked kind of funny, something between a sudden limp and falling over. It was as if he fell asleep every half step then woke himself up again. He did this repeatedly for every step. Timmy giggled, wondering if the man knew how funny he looked walking like that.

Mr. Green, of course, had zero idea he was even out of his bed let alone that he was outside in the rain walking funny. In fact, he didn’t even feel how the rain was soaking his nightclothes.

It was just then that Timmy realized that Mr. Green wasn’t even wearing a jacket. His eyes widened with innocent shock. His mom always told him he’d catch a cold if he went out into the rain without his jacket. Here he was watching the man oddly walking down the street in his nightclothes, which by now clung wetly to his body.

Timmy backed away from the window. He must do something.

The poor man must not have a mom to tell him he needs to wear a jacket in the rain, he thought to himself before running to the door. Without a second thought, he slipped into his jacket, put on his shoes, and slipped out the front door carrying his dad’s raincoat.

Timmy slowly approached Mr. Green, who by now was sleepwalking back to his house for the night. He followed him for a while, observing the man’s sleepy face now that he was close enough to see it clearly. Sure enough, he saw that the man’s eyes stayed closed completely as he walked. Timmy half expected the man to open his eyes or trip at any time, but he didn’t.

With much effort, he flung his dad’s raincoat over the limp-walking form of the sleepwalking man as best he could. Timmy was pleased to see the edges of the man’s mouth turn up slightly. As strange as it was to see him smile with his eyes closed, and though he still didn’t understand that Mr. Green was sleepwalking, he felt satisfied.

With one more look at the moving form of Mr. Green, Timmy went back to his house, slipped into bed, and fell fast asleep with a smile on his face.

THE END

Thoughts and temptation

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Not every thought that comes into your mind is from you.

It is good to separate yourself from the thoughts that enter into your mind because otherwise satan can guilt you into thinking you’ve already done wrong.

What matters isn’t that the thought comes (that’s called temptation, which is a test of character), it’s what you do with that thought, whether you keep it or reject it, that matters (that is your choice).

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through Yahweh to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of Yahweh, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Messiah; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.

2 Corinthians 10:3-6

Take a break

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s not always about the next thing.

Sometimes we need to take a break, rest, and wait for Yahweh’s leading on “the next thing.”

Short story: The Mailboy

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A short story I wrote based on the prompt:

Include the sentence “He wondered if it could be called a beach if there was no sand” and use the words “natural” and “plausible” at least once.

Enjoy. :)

There once was a lad who was the mailboy of a sprawling village in the mountains. The lad, Willy, prided himself in always having delivered every piece of mail on time without a single letter or package missing.

One day he was sorting mail into his carrying bag at the counter of his little house, a small wooden shack that doubled as the village’s post office. It was small and the roof leaked when it rained, but it was his home and that’s all that mattered.

Willy enjoyed his job. You could say he was a natural. He always looked forward to greeting the townspeople when he would deliver their mail from house to house. Sometimes they’d even be kind and offer him tea or a delicious snack. He smiled fondly at the thoughts, feeling he had the best job in the whole world.

Just then an elderly man with a gray mustache and a twinkle in his eye stepped in. His voice had a rough twang to it, but his demeanor was kind. “At it again, eh, Willy?” he said, stepping to the counter with a letter in his hand.

Willy stopped his sorting with a bright voice, “Mr. Mayor, good morning.” Seeing the letter he held was unmarked he asked, “Where to today?”

The elderly man, the mayor of the village, shook his head and handed the letter to Willy, “Nowhere except yourself. This letter’s for you.” He smiled at Willy’s startled expression. Willy hardly ever received mail himself.

The elderly man stood amused for a moment before prodding, “Well open it up. It’s your nomination for the person of the year award.”

Willy scanned the letter, looking at the official seal and reading it. His eyes widened, “I’ve…been nominated?”

The mayor nodded, “Overwhelmingly so.” He smiled proudly, “As you know, only the most dependable and trustworthy people are nominated. You’re coming on three years of service to our little village–you should be proud of yourself. We’ve never had a better mailboy. We know we can count on you and that’s certainly something all the folks of this village appreciate.”

Willy slowly folded the letter back up with care before looking up at the mayor, “Thank you.”

The mayor tipped his hat with a genuine smile, “Good day, Willy.”

After he left, Willy reopened the letter, tracing the gold seal with his finger. This really meant something. If he won, he’d be the person of the year. Not to mention that the award money would buy him a new house that didn’t leak.

Tucking the letter into his pocket he went around the counter to the drop bin. As usual, there were various letters and small packages that had been dropped off by the townspeople through the drawer in the side of the building. Something caught his eye, though. A strangely larger cardboard box with holes in it sat in the corner.

Marked on top of the box were the words, “Time sensitive: deliver by 8pm today.”

The delivery address was simply “Elen’s Beach.”

Willy placed the packages into his carry bag and slung in over his shoulder to begin his route. As he delivered mail along his route, he was curious as to the package with holes in it.

Finally, he arrived at the only address called a “beach” that he knew of. He wondered if it could be called a beach if there was no sand, but maybe the name was just symbolic. He scanned the grass of the place looking for clues as to where the package was to be dropped off, before realizing that this wasn’t “Ellen’s Beach.” In fact, he didn’t think there was an address called “Ellen’s Beach” at all.

“Perhaps it’s a new address,” he mused, his smile brightening at the thought of it being a plausible reason. He walked over to the nearest neighbor. Unfortunately, the neighbor hadn’t heard of the address either. “There’s no ‘Ellen’s Beach’ around here,” the elderly woman assured.

Willy walked through the streets asking each person that he met if they knew the address. No one did.

He walked through the streets rather aimlessly as the afternoon sun cast long shadows across the grass that covered the ground beside the street.

Near dusk it began to rain and Willy’s tears began to fall. He sat at the edge of the road as the rain drenched him. But he didn’t really care. It was nearly 8pm and he hadn’t delivered the package.

“It’s just how it would be, to fail to deliver a package on the same day I received the nomination,” he muttered.

As he sat there, however, he failed to notice that the rain had caused the cardboard box to soften and out came a little white mouse.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement behind the box and reached to grab the box, only to send the white mouse scurrying off down the street, having secured its liberty from the cardboard box.

He chased the mouse through the streets, here, there and seemingly everywhere. Finally, he cornered the mouse and caught it, going home sad and completely soaked.

He had failed to deliver the package in time, and, well, at all. Worse, the rest of the mail was a soggy mess.

That night he went to bed troubled, the sound of the mouse safety contained in a plastic box beside his desk not comforting him in the least.

The next morning he didn’t want to get out of bed. He’d failed. How would he face the day and the townspeople? They had counted on him–even nominated him for the person of the year–and now he had failed.

After some moments in anguish he dressed and went to the mayor’s office holding his nomination letter.

With tears in his eyes he flopped the nomination letter on the mayor’s desk and said, “I don’t deserve this, I failed to deliver a package and most of the mail from yesterday is a soggy mess.”

The mayor smiled kindly, “You’re right, Willy, you don’t deserve that nomination.” He turned to grab the person of the year award plaque from the wall behind him and placed it into Willy’s hands. “You deserve this.”

Willy could hardly believe his eyes or ears and he trembled confused.

The mayor simply nodded before speaking proudly, “The package was a test of honesty. A test whether you would lie about failing to deliver the package or say you did when you couldn’t have. There is no ‘Elen’s Beach’ address. You never could have delivered it.”

Willy’s eyes widened. It all made sense now.

The mayor continued, “Being dependable isn’t just about doing what you say you’re going to do, but being honest about when you fail.”

He gently led Willy outside where, to Willy’s surprise, all the townspeople were gathered around.

The mayor held up the plaque, declaring Willy the person of the year. Everyone clapped and thanked Willy for his service as the village mailboy.

For years afterward, Willy continued as the village mailboy.

Oh, and he did get a new house.

THE END

You won't be good right away

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One hurdle in any learning pursuit, particularly a creative one, is the desire and expectation to “be good” right away, resulting in frustration and giving up.

I once heard a comic artist say there’s about “50-100 bad comic panels in you.” So, their advice was to not beat around the bush. Just do the 50-100 panels and learn from your mistakes. You have to get throughout those failures before you can get to the good ones.

Another artist said your first 100 portrait drawings are going to be terrible, before you find your footing.

I heard an individual who had been creating videos for YouTube for a long time say it takes about 100 videos to find your voice.

Now, is 100 the specific, “magic” number? Probably not. What these people mean is that it takes a large amount of deliberate practice to get good at something. 100 happens to be a large amount that takes a concerted, consistent effort to achieve. And when you do achieve 100, I can’t see how someone couldn’t have learned something and improved.

Giving up too easy is easy (no pun intended), but the rewards come when you stick with it and use your failures as learning rather than discouragement.

Many people don’t want to go through the failures, the ugly part, they just want to be good right away. It’s hard to go through that “valley” when things aren’t going so well and nothing you’ve learned seems to be sticking. Just know, what you’re looking for is on the other side of the frustration and difficulty.

Write down what inspires you

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Keep a document and write down the things that are currently inspiring you or making you genuinely (not superficially, but genuinely) feel meaning.

I came across this idea from another blog and so I started doing it. It’s really been helpful for me.

It is helpful to have the things that inspire you laid out in writing so that you can go back through it and look for patterns. Because if you’ve done it right, the things written can help to reveal a broader picture of where Yahweh may be leading you in life.

For instance, for me, I see a pattern of getting a lot of meaning from seeing and creating artwork and impactful, creative stories, particularly stories and art that resonate with children. Therefore, I try to lean more into those areas to see what doors Yahweh has for me.

So, this has helped me. Maybe writing down what inspires you will help in your life too.

Blessings we don't often think about

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Blessings we often don’t think about:

The blessing of rest
The blessing to enjoy things
The blessing of movement
The blessing of quiet moments
The blessing of freedom
The blessing of knowledge
The blessing of clear thought
The blessing of knowing Yahweh and His Son, Yahushua the Messiah

When all is going well

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A bit of wisdom I’ve heard recently is that whenever you think you’ve got it made and/or all figured out, watch out—that’s usually when you’re toppled. Stay humble.

It makes me think of the parable of the rich man in Luke 12:16-20.

16 Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. 17 And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ 18 So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” ’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’

Luke 12:16-20

This is quite sobering. When everything appears to be going well and when we have success, that’s when there is the sneaky temptation to trust in ourselves or our things, rather than being humble and glorifying Yahweh.

A better business ethos?

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What if we shifted the mindset from getting and attaining to giving and serving in our businesses? Would it be a better business ethos, and result in a better business overall? I think it would.

What do I mean by “shifting the mindset from getting and attaining to giving and serving?”

I mean a shift from metrics to genuinely caring about every customer/user.

Instead of focusing on “user acquisition”, focus on “what can we do to serve users better?”

Instead of asking, “How can we get more signups or get more users to click this button?”, ask, “How can we give so much value to users that they can’t help but want to give us their money, sign up, or click that button?”

Perhaps this sounds naive, but explore this with me for a moment.

Yes, at least in part, many businesses already do serve. The purpose of a business is to serve the customer by providing value in exchange for money. Without serving the customer/user, you don’t have a business. What I’m suggesting, though, is taking this idea of serving further.

It’s not a novel concept, but shifting the mindset from getting and attaining to giving and serving in business doesn’t seem to be the norm. Why?

Well, I have a possibility.

It is easiest to adopt and maintain this ethos as either an indie developer or a very small company.

It is far more difficult to maintain when the company is too large to have direct-to-user communication. It also requires being so careful about the business decisions that are made to ensure that money or efficiency aren’t the only driving factors. A larger company is naturally going to have more management levels (and thus, is further removed from the user) and has more temptation to focus on KPIs and acquiring that one million and first user.

So, what do you think? Does this mindset work better in practice?

Please note that this isn’t me claiming to know anything or everything about business.These are just my musings and theories based on my limited experiences and reading. Take it with a grain of salt, and if you feel I’m unreasonable, feel free to contact me.

Opening your mouth

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew Loomis’ Drawing the Head and Hands is already a great book for art instruction, but it also contains a gem of wisdom.

To open the mouth wide is a conscious effort. To keep the mouth closed really requires little effort—a piece of knowledge that can be used to great advantage at times.

(Andrew Loomis, Drawing the Head and Hands, 1956, p. 45)

Perhaps it is simply how I’m seeing the words, but this made me laugh.

Keeping our mouth closed sometimes is wise. Opening our mouth takes more effort than keeping it closed. Loomis appears to remind us that we might be well to pay attention to the wisdom built into the anatomy of the jaw.

The big picture of writing and art

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve had perhaps what could be called an “eureka” moment relating to the big picture of writing and art.

A good fictional story has a clear beginning, middle, and end, a clear conflict and resolution, and a character the audience can really relate to and care about.

A good painting or drawing has a clear foreground, middle ground, and background, a full range of value and form, and a bit of mystery.

These seem like such simple concepts, right? Well, these are the big picture and when you break the individual elements down, you suddenly have a whole scope of skills to master and bring together to produce a good fictional story or a work of art.

This is just what I’ve discovered so far (?), but today these really clicked together for me and I wanted to share.

Working more isn't always the right thing to do

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Working more isn’t necessarily the right thing to do, nor is it always the responsible thing to do.

We should calculate the real cost of working more—our health, our relationships, and our focus.

Maybe ask yourself if working more is actually accomplishing anything, or if it’s really just keeping you busy and distracted from what really matters in life.

Passion without discipline is not much

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Based on my experiences and reading, passion without discipline is not much at all.

You can have a passion for writing, for instance, but unless you’re disciplined about sitting down and writing—both to improve and work on real projects—then you will likely hardly ever write. If you do, it will be only writing the things you find easiest to write, often meaning you won’t really stretch to improve your skills. You’ll also likely have a really hard time finishing any projects because passion by itself tends to “leave” when things get really difficult. (Usually about halfway through. Ask me how I know…)

Passion is a terrible decision filter… It is based on emotions and feelings, which are undeniably fickle. If you’re letting your feelings drive your car, you’re in trouble, because feelings are the worst driver in the world.

Passion tells you to do only the things that you find fun and interesting. But every project has parts that are difficult and not fun or interesting.

One cannot rely on passion to get you through these tough spots. It is too easy to use passion as an excuse to avoid discomfort.

Passion itself is vague and it doesn’t do anything on its own. Only if you pair it with discipline to act on that passion does it result in something tangible.

The word 'fiercely'

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If I mention the word “fiercely,” it probably doesn’t bring up positive connotations.

However, it’s interesting how pairing it with another word changes it to something not just positive but honorable.

Protect fiercely
Love fiercely
Care fiercely

Where the abundant life is found

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Biblical abundant life isn’t found in self-expression or self-fulfillment but in self-denial and self-sacrifice.

When we look at the life of Yahushua the Messiah we get a picture of what that looks like.

The wind and clouds of uncertainty

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

He who observes the wind will not sow, And he who regards the clouds will not reap. As you do not know what is the way of the wind, Or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child, So you do not know the works of Elohim who makes everything. Ecclesiastes 11:4-5

This bit of wisdom from Scripture is very profound. If you look at every wind and cloud of uncertainty in world, state, city, or local events, you probably won’t start to do anything. To wait “until a better time” is essentially procrastinating indefinitely because a better time won’t likely ever come.

(Probably) an over analysis of social media

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Some things about social media are puzzling to me.

If someone “likes” someone else’s posts, but then doesn’t “like” (react to) another, is that the same as not liking it?

Or, if someone “follows” one “friend” but not another, what does that mean?

If someone doesn’t accept someone’s “friend request” does that mean they don’t want to be friends? (I’ve always thought of it as “a request to be friends on FB.” I wonder, though, if everyone considers it that way).

True, this is a probably an over analysis of something that matters little. My curiosity, though, would like to know the answers. :)

The final judgment

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

One thing that troubles people about the Bible is seeing the judgment of Yahweh our Heavenly Father within its pages, particularly the end judgment. Though the idea of a final judgment seems uncomfortable, we actually unknowingly yearn precisely for His final judgment every day.

Let me explain (please?)

If I asked you…

Do you hope to live in a world where everything has been set right?

…you’d reply “yes” without hesitation (I hope). We all want to live in a world where oppression is gone, tears are no more, justice is completed, and evil is no more.

We strive to rid evil from the world every day, don’t we?

Well, there is a connection between judgment and justice.

In order for everything to be made right on earth, one would first need to judge evil and then correct everything that is wrong on earth, right?

If we consider how we would do it if we were in the position to completely eliminate evil ourselves, we’d find ourselves doing just that: judging and casting out evil.

Yahweh judges because He is just and good. Evil must be judged, must be cast out. To do otherwise is unjust and chaos.

“The reason hell’s destructive power is kicked outside the city is that it opposes the good and redemptive things God wants to do inside the city. To ask for God’s kingdom to come and hell to stick around is like asking the doctor to heal your body but leave the cancer, like asking for restoration to come and destruction to remain. It’s to ask for a contradiction.”

Karen Swallow Pri

Do you see how we’re yearning for this judgment event where evil is finally cast out, even if we don’t realize it or think we do (because it seems violent to our modern ears)?

“Hell” is simply all that is unrepentantly evil pushed out of heaven and earth after Yahweh has judged. That is what we’re yearning for and there’s no injustice in it —quite the opposite.

Please don't posture like this

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

So, a while ago I received a 1-star review from a user of one of my apps simply because I happen to have a Russian translation in the app.

I think this is really silly and sad. Regardless of the political side of things, posturing like this is a very low blow in my eyes.

The reviewer assumed I (as an American) and all Russians automatically agree with everything going on in Russia. Far worse, they assumed that getting upset because there happens to be a Russian translation in an app totally unrelated is helping the cause. They also failed to take into account that perhaps the Russian translation existed before things went south, for example.

This might be the worst form of posturing, because it’s not based on facts and gets the person thinking they “did” something when really they’ve turned themselves into the kind of hurtful, messed-up person they believe they’re fighting against.

It’s sad to me, not because of the 1-star review or anything personal, but because this shows how we can justify our own unkind posturing by pointing the finger with blanket statements and somehow feel good about ourselves.

So, I guess that’s something I’m thinking about: where in my life am I thinking that what I’m doing is helping when really it’s just posturing for the sake of feeling good?

Pruning to bear better fruit

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In orchard husbandry, branches of fruit trees are pruned so that more energy and nutrients can go into the fruit on the main branches. This does result in less quantity of fruit, but it makes the fruit that is produced larger, juicer, healthier, and overall better.

Likewise, in life, it seems that if you spread yourself too thinly across activities and tasks, it is not only draining and unproductive but can also result in an unsatisfying outcome.

This is something I’m learning as one who has a habit for working on many things at once. In many cases, choosing depth over breadth is better.

I’m learning to consider and prune so that I can focus and bear that “better fruit.”

Are we fulfilling our calling?

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We’re not judged by what we did, but how we were faithful to Yahweh’s calling on our life.

What cuts deep for me in the above video is how well it illustrates that it is about what Yahweh called you to do, not someone else. It might be easy to make a blanket statement that everyone is called to overseas missions or evangelism, but only we, as shortsighted humans, would take this easy answer as the right one for every person.

After all, who would support and pray for foreign missionaries back home if everyone was called into the same place at the same time?

So, the question is, are we fulfilling our calling?

Random thoughts on individualism

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For all its benefits, practiced individualism has faults.

I’ve been reading some commentary and it is interesting how individualism is essentially synonymous with the West. I believe I can safely say it’s culturally the norm here in America. While the ideas have certainly shaped our country (and I’m thankful for the benefits), I wonder if we’re losing genuine connection with other people in part because of those same ideas.

Yahweh created us to live in community, in fellowship with Him and others. The ideas individualism upholds doesn’t always help with those.

Community is built not found, and people relationships are hard. Maybe that’s why our default has become drawn-in and individual.

What do you think?

Humility vs. pride

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Humility is a difficult thing to obtain and keep, while pride is a difficult thing to keep in check.

It sounds ridiculous, but you can even be prideful about being humble…

How easily pride creeps up everywhere, whether it’s after doing a genuinely unselfish act or even when trying to share the gospel with someone.

We certainly don’t have a lot to gloat about as individuals who are only anything by the mercy of Yahweh. Our only boasting should be in Yahweh, not ourselves.

Humility is perhaps the thing we need most.

The amazing creativity of faces

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been studying and drawing the human face for portraiture, and of course in order to draw accurately, one must observe closely.

One thing that awes me is how much variety there is in human faces. Yahweh our Heavenly Father was very creative when He created us. He could have just made one face for everyone having the same skin color, length of nose, eyes, ears, mouth, eyebrows, hair, and so on —but He didn’t.

Yahweh created each face with variations of skin tone, eye color, noses, chin, head shape, etc.

It’s true that some groups of variations in a face are commonly considered to be more pleasant to look at, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t see the beauty and creativity in every face. Every face is a story. Even wrinkles and blemishes have character that reflects the individual.

No variation is any less creative —each variation is an amazing act of Yahweh’s creativity.

Every face has character, a uniqueness that is one-of-a-kind. Sure, some faces appear similar, but with observation you can see that each face has differences that make it stand alone.

And I love it —it gets me excited because its so creative!

Worry

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Worry is deceptive. It makes us believe that we can do something to control our life. It promises that we’ll be able to change our situation in some way.

However, worrying doesn’t change anything or help us control our life at all. It simply steals our joy and takes the focus away from how Yahweh our Heavenly Father is working in our life and places the focus on us and our inabilities instead —a very sorry thing to focus on.

I always chuckle when I think of the story of a lady who was talking to her pastor about worry. She basically said she found it helpful to worry because everything she worried about never came to be. She thought if she worried she could be confident it wouldn’t come to pass!

It’s silly, but isn’t that about right? The majority of the things we worry about don’t come to pass. Rarely do we happen to worry about the real thing we ought to worry about (if we’re going to worry at all, that is).

And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and Elohim feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls? And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest? (Luke 12:22-26)

True unity

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking about how forced unity isn’t really unity.

It’s easy to get into thinking wrongly about unity because the truth of it is hard to hear. We all desire unity, but sadly that means it’s very easy to force it.

True unity can only exist when people freely and personally choose what is right according to Yahweh our Heavenly Father.

Trying to force unity by rallying around compromised ideas that sound good but have no basis for truth according to Yahweh, the Creator of all, is not going to result in true unity.

True unity is unity with Yahweh and His ways. Until everyone is in unity with His ways and has their own personal relationship with the Messiah, true unity won’t be realized. Sure, we get beautiful glimpses of it sometimes, but unity like that is exactly what we’re waiting for when Yahushua the Messiah returns. He will set up His kingdom, set us all straight, and we will be united in Him.

A look into someone's brain

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Reading a personal blog is a lot like looking into someone’s brain. You can see what the author believes, how they view things, how they think, how they approach different subjects, and a whole lot of other things, both beautiful and scary.

I’ve always enjoyed reading personal blogs. (It’s no coincidence that I also enjoy reading biographies.)

As the author of a personal blog, it requires a certain amount of vulnerability and humility to write. Humility, because if you’re honest and not polishing your writing so much that it’s no longer your writing, then you certainly see ways you need to improve in thinking and writing.

You could be writing pretty badly from a literary perspective or be uncertain if you’re wrong about your thoughts on something of the topic. It’s not a graded, checked assignment in school—it’s free writing. That’s uncertain, and thus scary.

However, some thinking can only be done by writing, and so laying out your brain is necessary for that end. As scary as it can be, it can then hopefully benefit others just as much as it benefits you.

A real man

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It takes a real man to have the humility to accept correction when he is wrong.
It takes a real man to be disciplined in all areas of life.
It takes a real man to do what is right even when everyone else is against him.
It takes a real man to be responsible for the outcomes of his decisions.
It takes a real man to say “no” when temptation comes.
It takes a real man to focus on what really matters in life.

A real man is a man of Yahweh.

What makes art valuable

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Art is valuable because of who made it, just as much because of the mastery of the art itself or the fame of the artist.

Why is an art piece by Leonardo Da Vinci or Rembrandt so valuable? Well, firstly because of who the artists were as individuals. Art is personal. Looking at a painting by Da Vinci or Rembrandt, we see a small portion of the artist themselves.

Of course, the mastery in their work is evident and plays a role in the value of their artwork too. However, even the works of these artists that are in many ways not necessarily masterful art are still valuable.

Also, fame of the artist can’t be the only reason for the value of art. Scarcity and the human element play a major role. Leonardo Da Vinci can no longer produce work and therefore it would be very special to own his artwork or really anything he created (his fame aside).

To prove this point, it would not matter if another artist of Da Vinci’s time created artwork in his style or with the same mastery. Sure, the artist could stand with his work as a separate artist, but nothing would make it a work of Da Vinci. It is personal, you see. It’s because Da Vinci created it that matters.

And no, someone doesn’t have to have be Da Vinci or Rembrandt for their art to be valuable. Sure, the art of certain artists is more valuable, more masterful, but no art is without intrinsic value.

We attach value to human, personal stories. Art is inseparably a personal thing and it tells a story —often a semi-biographical story of the artist’s life and emotions. That is what makes art valuable.

What matters and lasts is hard

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“What matters is what lasts and what lasts is hard.”

No secret, but it seems like everything that matters, that is important, that lasts, in life requires a lot of effort and intention. In a word, hard.

As an example, I’ll admit that some days I’ve really just been out of it, and haven’t very intentional about writing the daily post for this blog.

Some days I’m brain-tired or distracted and it’s easy to treat it like a task to “get done” and get over with. Admittedly, the writing in those “get it done” posts is shallow. It takes so much more effort to be intentional and say something clearly and organized.

I’m reminded, though, that the hardest things are often the important things. Most anything of real value that lasts long-term and is worth obtaining is hard work.

Maybe it’s that way so that we appreciate the things that matter and last.

Show up everyday and do your part

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are so many things that are out of our control in life when we set out to do anything. Most things don’t happen the way we expect.

And yet, I see a reoccurring theme lately that putting in the effort to “prepare your field” for the rain by consistently showing up every day and doing your part is so important.

Not making excuses, not basing it on whether you feel like doing it, not letting past or current failures hold you back, and certainly not getting frustrated by all the things you cannot possibly control.

Essentially, you show up every day and do your part—the part you can control. Do what is there for you to do to the best of your abilities with the time and resources you have, and leave the rest to Yahweh our Heavenly Father.

'Feeding the monster?'

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

So, yesterday (that’s the 18th for those of you who have read my previous posts and are paying attention :)) I created an Instagram account for my artwork. I’d like to share the processes of creating artwork and connect with other artists.

I do have the Velocity Lapse Instagram account which I try to keep alive with my rather sporadic posts, but that’s the extent of my “Instagram presence” thus far.

It always feels a bit like “feeding the monster” posting on social media (particularly Instagram and Facebook) because I’d much rather that people go out and do stuff and talk to people than scroll through their feed. :)

And yet, I can see there is a time and a place for it, as long as it is genuinely informative/helpful and not sensational nonsense.

So, my goal with my art Instagram account is to hopefully “feed the monster” less and genuinely connect with people more.

Cup analogy

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Perhaps a helpful analogy to use for explaining why we do what we do as believers is this:

We’re like a cup with life-giving liquid being poured into it by a teapot.

Yahweh fills us with love…

We’re like the cup overflowing that liquid on the garden so that the plants can grow.

…and from that we love others.

Please have convictions and opinions

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Please have convictions and opinions. Don’t idolize tolerance. Form your convictions and opinions about things. If you don’t know enough about something, that’s a different story (just say you don’t know enough to have an opinion).

Yes, one should always be willing to listen to others and change when we see the truth, but don’t mistake tolerance for being open to correction.

People can (and should) respect a conviction. People can respect an opinion even. But to go along with everything anyone else says like a chameleon is simply dishonest to yourself and them.

Agree?

Our imperfection is the point

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s easy to forget, but the fact that we’re sinful and unable to be completely perfect on our own strength is the point. It’s why we need Yahweh our Heavenly Father’s mercy and grace every day. It’s why Yahushua the Messiah came to die to take our place and pay the price for our sins.

So, we ought to not get frustrated. It’s a journey.

We strive to be perfect just as He is perfect, but we should never forget that it is the Messiah who makes us clean and acceptable to Yahweh, not ourselves. Let our imperfection be a constant reminder of the fact that we need Him.

Documenting the process of creating your project

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Writing about your journey and the process behind your project as you make it really is a great thing.

Yesterday (that would be the 14th for those of you who have read my previous posts), I was reading the series of posts I had written on creating and launching Velocity Lapse. It was so nice to look back and get a good idea of the struggles and breakthroughs of the slow but sure progress towards what the app is today.

Essentially I had #builtitinpublic, and I’m glad I did. It’s probably one of the best decisions I could have made being new to launching an app.

During the process, it made me reflect on what was working and what was not. Now, it serves as a nice history and a reminder of what I’ve learned through the process.

So, I can wholeheartedly recommend documenting the process of creating your project. It’s not only beneficial for you, but for others too. It can also serve as free publicity, because people will naturally get interested in your project as a result of seeing you make it.

Document the process. I think you’ll be really glad you did. :)

Your sphere of influence is larger than you think

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I once was going to create a graph of everyone who: 1) I’ve met, and 2) can recall their name from memory. I thought it was an interesting project and would be insightful. (Spoiler: it was.)

Well, I began to create the graph and it got overwhelmingly large very quickly.

Whether it’s because I have a great memory or that I’m actually bad at remembering how many people I’ve talked to, I’m not sure. Either way, I kept thinking of people, and it was clear my graph would be massive.

So, I limited it down to who I knew personally. That is, those whom I’ve talked to personally.

After a while I gave up (I know: those dangerous words!).

Even though I’m arguably not that great at making the effort to meet or talk to new people, my “sphere” was still large.

Sometimes we think that our sphere of influence is very small. What I realized, though, is that when you touch one person in your sphere—even a close person like a brother or sister—you are second hand touching into their sphere of influence too.

It’s amazing to think about, and if you do, I doubt you’ll come away with anything less than awe (like I did). Not sure I recommend trying the creating a graph part though. ;)

Never say never

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve learned that there is wisdom in the idea of “never say never.”

It seems that Yahweh our Heavenly Father often takes the things we dislike or bother us and puts us right there so we can:

Learn to trust Him. Because when we’re in that uncomfortable position, we cannot rely on our own efforts anymore.
Grow and overcome.

Politically correct?

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’d rather be correct than “politically correct.” Wouldn’t you?

If what is correct (true and right) happens to align with what is currently considered “politically correct”, then great. If not, shouldn’t we stick to what is correct?

It is dangerous to let the swaying opinions of others determine what is correct. What is considered “politically correct” varies with time, between place and people, and a hundred other things. It cannot be trusted as a test for truth.

What is correct is what is true and right. And Yahweh, our Heavenly Father’s unchanging ways found in the Scriptures are true and right. They don’t change and they can be trusted.

Why would we build our house (basis of what is correct) on the sinking, shifting sand of the opinions of men (that which is “politically correct”)?

Why not build our lives on the rock; the unshakable, firm foundation of the Messiah?

Two extreme misrepresentations of the best days

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Saying either “our best days are behind us” or “we must reach to the future for the best days” are both extreme misrepresentations of reality. (Unless in the latter case you’re talking about heaven and when the Messiah returns to set up His righteous kingdom—then it would be right to say).

I certainly don’t believe the former times were necessarily better than now.

Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this

Ecclesiastes 7:10

Human nature has always been the same, and people are still people who have the capability to sin no matter which century you look at in history. Every generation has had its own flaws, atrocities, sins, and problems to deal with.

So human nature and sin haven’t changed a bit from the beginning.

Does that mean we ought to throw aside everything from the past and pave our own ways altogether?

I think not. There is great wisdom in learning from other people’s mistakes just as much as from your own. It is arrogant to think prior generations didn’t have anything right that we can carry forward.

It is even more foolish to consider the principles, teachings, and instructions found in the Scriptures as outdated or irrelevant.

While the opinions of men change and wobble back and forth from “this is right” to “this is wrong” and vice versa, the ways of Yahweh our Heavenly Father stand firm through time. They are always relevant because they deal with our hearts and sin nature.

We ought to hold on to the good of prior generations and the unchanging wisdom of Yahweh’s ways (marriage, family, and respect for life to name a few), and push forward to live more righteous than former generations. That way we leave behind the two damaging, extreme misrepresentations.

Loose analogy of the OT/NT using math

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For the purposes of this post OT means “Old Testament” and NT means “New Testament”.

Rejecting the OT is like saying there is no longer need to use addition or subtraction since we have multiplication, division, and algebra which are far superior for solving big problems. (And indeed they are superior for certain problems, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need the foundation too.)

Rejecting the NT is like rejecting multiplication and division because the same problem can (somewhat-but-not-really), supposedly be worked out on your own with enough effort using addition and subtraction.

Of course, this is just a loose analogy, but the point is: we need both.

The OT is the foundation, the way to walk and live our lives, which the NT expands on and explains and reveals in greater detail. The NT tells how we cannot solve our sin problem on our own. We need Yahushua who truly is superior to our filthy rags of righteousness.

If we throw out either, we are throwing out it all.

Yahushua said unto him, Thou shalt love Yahweh thy Elohim with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Matthew 22:37-40

So, I suggest that we choose to believe in the unified Word of truth which tells a consistent message from one end to the other. :)

Considering death makes us live

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s amazing how clear thinking about death makes things.

It tends to strip away a lot of pretense. I think about how many people on their deathbed speak about life, some as if it’s the first time they truly considered what is really important in life.

Solomon, in his wisdom, saw the benefits of thinking about death:

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.

(Ecclesiastes 7:2)

Considering death seems to help us live.

The reality of entreprenuership

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The reality of entrepreneurship, is that it cannot be thought of in the same way as a job working for someone else.

I don’t think I could describe the constant question looming when running your own software-based business better than the following comment someone made:

“One of the biggest mental blocks to overcome is the risk that I’m working really hard on something (even if it’s just the current feature) that will end up having no real value. That I’m working on the wrong thing. As an engineer employed by someone else, technically everything I work on is the “right thing” because was told to build it, and I got paid for it. If it fails for business reasons, it’s not really my responsibility. An an entrepreneur, it’s definitely my responsibility, and as a bootstrapped business, I lost all that time and income potential if it’s the wrong thing to build. That’s a tough risk to take.”

Short story: Two ways

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a short story written from the prompt “Start or end your story with two characters going in opposite directions (literally or figuratively).” Additionally, I challenged myself to write it in 30 minutes (Quite a challenge!). Enjoy. :)

“This isn’t the way,” Henry said suddenly as they passed on unfamiliar building and went down a street leading the opposite direction from where he knew.

Jeremy threw Henry a glance, “Look, if you want to go your way you are free to do so, but this time I want to take the long way around. Besides, it’s not like it is night or anything.”

Henry was growing cautious about this “long way” around. Litter scattered the sidewalks and it looked like there were homeless encampments between the buildings. Once or twice he fancied he saw broken windows.

“I-I’m not comfortable with this,” Henry stammered, “Did you see that guy?,” he leaned close to Jeremy, “It looked like he was doing something nefarious.”

Jeremy sighed, “You want to go back?”

Henry glanced around nervously and nodded, “Of course, I mean these streets look dangerous.”

They had come to a particularly narrow part of the street, and though it was day, it felt foreboding. Jeremy shook his head, “It’s all in your mind.”

Henry suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked as if he might turn around. He gestured his desire to go back and take the other way.

Jeremy slumped his shoulders at his friend’s insistence at going the other way. “Alright, go then,” he huffed irritated, “I’ll meet you there.”

Jeremy only paused a second to see Henry walking back before continuing on in this longer way. He walked for a long time before realizing that he was foolish to not go back and walk with Henry. Two friends shouldn’t separate over something as silly as which route to walk.

He continued to walk, though, feeling that is was too late to turn back. He’d walked quite far, and when he looked behind him he didn’t see Henry. “Guess he went back quite quickly,” he murmured.

It was about thirty minutes later that he arrived at his destination, a small yellow townhouse on the corner of town. It was his parent’s house and his childhood home. He waited, lingering by the porch and gazing down the street Henry was to come down. Where was he? Henry should have arrived sooner. Finally, he began to walk down the road. He walked quite far until he reached the point at which they’d turned down the street he called the longer way around.

For a moment Jeremy panicked. Henry was nowhere he could see. Gazing down the street he’d walked, he could didn’t see anyone walking on the street whatsoever.

He decided to walk further down the street. He arrived near the place where they had parted ways, and to his surprise, he found Henry having a conversation with one of the homeless men. He drew nearer to them and seen that it was the same man whom Henry had thought to be up to mischief.

When Henry seen Jeremy approach he apologized, “Oh, I’m so sorry Jeremy. We just got talking and I lost track of time. This is Mr. Graves.” The man offered his hand and Jeremy shook it heartily.

“Mr. Graves was telling me about how he is a part of an outreach to the homeless in this community. I misjudged him entirely and I have a new perspective about this street. Thanks so much for bringing me this way,” Henry explained excitedly.

For a moment Jeremy was stunned. Indeed, he hadn’t intended to go down this street except for curiosities sake, but now he was glad he had insisted they go this way.

THE END

Intentional improving

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you want something to improve, you have to intentionally take steps to improve it.

It sounds simple, but it’s not, especially when you consider that to be intentional about improving something takes a lot of energy. Just to be intentional about even the most important things in life requires a ton of energy.

To be intentional is really to keep moving forward. It’s having an eye set ahead on whatever goal you’re trying to achieve. Based on my experience, this is the most difficult part because it requires research and making decisions. However, once you’ve set your goal and determined to follow through, it’s primarily having the discipline to get there.

Presented your way

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It’s amazing that we live in a day and age that you can not only find information about just about anything, but also find it presented as you want it (and even as you don’t).

Furthermore, now with “AI” you can really have information presented to you in an endless amount of ways.

And yet, there is space for other ways of presenting information.

It reminds me of what Solomon said in the book of Ecclesiastes:

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Ecclesiastes 12:12

Naming things

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Naming something and having the authority over and the responsibility to care for something seem interconnected.

Naming is a symbol of authority. When you name something it means you have authority over it (otherwise you wouldn’t have the right to name it in the first place). It also seems to mean that you automatically have the responsibility of care for it too.

Looking at the Garden of Eden in Genesis, it is interesting how Yahweh our Heavenly Father gave Adam the job of naming every creature. It was the most direct way of stating that man has dominion (authority) over animals. The responsibility to care for and be a steward of creation came with that.

Parents name their children because the children have been given to them to care for and raise. Again, the responsibility of care and love is there too.

We’re constantly naming things. Just today I had to name this post, name some files I created, and am considering how to name a few other things. We know names are important, but I wonder if we ever consider the responsibility that goes with it.

What are your thoughts? Feel free to email me. (There’s a contact link at the very bottom of the page.)

Short story: Surrender to win

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A short, silly story I quickly wrote playing around with the idea of “surrender to win.” Enjoy :)

There once was a broad valley in the middle of a land called “The Land of Gamens.” The valley was filled with plentiful vegetation, rivers, and wildlife of all sorts. Save for the valley in the middle, the rest of the land was relatively flat and decent farmland.

On each side of the valley were two peoples. One the north side were the So people, and on the south were the Yo people. The peoples generally didn’t associate or trade with each other. In fact, each were wary of the other as a result of the lack of communication between them.

Naturally, the south side of the valley saw milder winters and hotter summers than the north. In times of drought this meant that, except for the land near the valley, the south land would dry up.

One particularly bad season of drought which had continued for over a year, the Yo people of the south decided they had enough.

They decided to go up in arms against the So people of the north and take some of their land for themselves. Why should they sit in famine and drought while their northern neighbors had good land to take? The thought of trading or buying the land evidently never occurred to them.

So, soon after the Yo people gathered together at the edge of the valley and prepared for a fight. They did not know much about the people of the north, but they knew that they would need to have a strong enough army to hold any land they captured.

Now, the So people of the north were in no way a fighting people. In fact,they were quite peaceful. So, when they were attacked by the Yo people, they were completely surprised. The Yo people of the south easily captured land, much to their delight.

In response, the So people of the north gathered together and formed a small army of men to retake the land. However, they were defeated each time they tried to attack the Yo people of the south.

Finally an elderly woodcarver of the north people heard of the plight.

“In order to win this battle, we need to surrender,” the man said confidently to the general.

The general’s jaw dropped in surprise. “Surrender?!” he asked wonderingly and a bit amused.

“Yes, surrender to Yahweh our Heavenly Father,” the man replied, “You see, we’ve been trying to do this our own way. Now it is time we surrender to His ways.”

The man held a white flag out and asked to speak to the leader of the Yo people.

A leader of the Yo people was named and he stepped forward.

“Why have you come and forcefully taken part of our land?” the man asked.

The leader of the Yo people replied, “Our land is dried up, save for the valley, and we wanted some of yours to grow gardens lest we perish from the land.”

The man smiled, “Please do not take it; there is no need. You may plant gardens freely. And if that is not enough, we can trade.”

The leader of the Yo people liked this idea and they made a peace treaty, the first in their land.

And from that time the two peoples were in peace and traded, exchanges ideas, and became friends.

THE END

Forms of lying

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It is scary how many forms lying and deceit come in.

Exaggerating is lying.
Presenting yourself as something you’re not is lying.
Hiding the full truth is lying.
Gossip is lying.

At the base of lying in these ways is trying to gain an advantage for yourself or avoid pain in some way. It is selfish. If you go deeper still, you find the root of pride.

How I'd like to improve in writing these posts

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I suppose it could be said that the majority of the posts I’ve published are essays, even though I haven’t considered them that way. Therefore, there’s things I can improve in writing these posts. I’d like to be more intentional about this going on.

Ideally, I’d like to get to a point where when I write it comes out sequentially and organized. Or, at least, get to a point where I begin with a thesis statement and follow through.

As of now, I know that the posts I write are more like “thinking by writing.” It’s not bad to do that on a blog, but I want to do better.

If these posts are going to be helpful to others and become more than my own daily writing “brain dump” ramblings, then I’ll need to be more diligent to make them concise and on-topic. In other words, nice to read.

Making plans

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In making our plans, it is good to remember that ultimately, anything we plan will only happen if Yahweh wills.

13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain 14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15 For that ye ought to say, If Yahweh will, we shall live, and do this, or that.

James 4:13-15

I once heard that we write our plans in pencil, Yahweh writes them in pen.

Indeed, we can plan but should always be looking for His plan and not get too set in our own thoughts.

A man’s heart deviseth his way: but Yahweh directeth his steps.

Proverbs 16:9

Leaving 2025

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s funny because I’m actually writing this on the 30th, but because this post is for the 31st it will be the eve of the new year on the Roman calendar when I post it. I guess that’s why I tend to write “evergreen” topics, because otherwise it’s odd like this.

So, when 2025 leaves and 2026 comes, we only need to remember that no matter what challenges and blessings are ahead in the upcoming Roman calendar year, Yahweh our Heavenly Father is always in control. That is a peaceful thought to hold onto and hopefully keep in mind throughout.

Writing practice: Story forest description

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sunlight filtered through the teardrop-shaped, green leaves casting dappled shadows on the dirty soil beneath. Only here and there did a fern of any size dot the ground. The ground felt squishy and damp, particularly since it had rained recently. Leaves and decaying wood lay were scattered across the ground. The air was crisp with the freshness of morning. Droplets clung to every leaf and blade of sparse grass. It was a sight to behold.

Finishing things

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the things writing every day is helping me with is beating perfection and getting in a habit of finishing things.

You see, when I have to publish the post by the end of the day, that means I can’t mess around with writing and editing it for weeks making it perfect.

The danger of overpromising

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Something I’ve had to learn the hard way is to never overpromise. It is far better to not promise at all than promise something and not deliver.

Another way of saying it is: people can understand if you choose not to promise, but if you do promise and fail to meet the expectations you’ve set, they won’t be so understanding.

So, it’s best to never promise anything to an individual or a customer at all. And if you do, always check first and know you can follow through.

Don’t be like me with what I did with a past, unmentionable open-source project I worked on five years ago. I set an incredibly unrealistic expectation for myself and, of course, it failed miserably and I still have the regret of overpromising on that project even now.

Thankfully, this is one area where I have learned and improved since then.

For instance, with my time lapse app, Velocity Lapse, I’ve been very careful about promising customers regarding features and bug fixes. If I do promise a certain feature or fix, it’s usually either already completed or I have a very good idea of when it will be done. I take the stance of “better to under promise and over deliver.”

That is a much better way to do things. (Believe me on that.)

Using our gifts

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If we’re not using our gifts for the kingdom then we are burying them.

Not to share is to be selfish. And that is a dangerous position to be in.

What if we don’t know our gifts? That shouldn’t stop us from going out and helping anywhere we see a need. Whatever you see as a need in the body of the Messiah could be an indication of your spiritual gift.

Sometimes we have a glamorized version of what we think Yahweh would have us do, when really it’s just being the hands and feet of our master Yahushua.

Sometimes just a smile and word of encouragement—or even better, a Scripture verse—is all that is needed.

The main thing is that we use whatever He has given us and don’t wait for a perfect opportunity or until after we figure out what our gifts are.

Slow down

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I once heard someone say:

Don’t go through life so fast that someone has to “throw a brick at you” to get your attention.

It’s a simple reminder but a good one.

Somehow, it’s easy to get through the daily tasks with a “go, go, go” mentality. As if somehow, you can’t live in the present or make time for people in the present. That is quite obviously both draining and not a good way to live life.

It seems that by “throwing a brick”, what is meant is that we shouldn’t have to have something really serious happen to us in order to get our attention. For instance, why does someone need to pass on before we finally realize that they mattered and that we should have acknowledged them more. It’s sad and yet it happens all the time.

Going through life so fast but not really living and paying attention to what really matters, people, and your relationship with Yahweh our Heavenly Father, is not going to be fulfilling. So let’s not go through life so fast that someone (or Yahweh) has to get our attention with a brick. Let’s slow down and appreciate all the people and things Yahweh has placed into our lives. :)

A Sass reminder

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve used Sass (the CSS extension language, silly) once in the past. Recently I needed to use it again, but had forgotten one important thing when in comes to using partials.

If you have a Sass partial like:

_variables.scss

// Color palette
$primary-orange: #ca9613ff;
$secondary-blue: #3a58a2ff;

…and you try to use it like so:

button.scss

@use 'variables';

.button {
    background-color: $primary-orange; // What's wrong?
}

You will end up with a SassError: Undefined variable. error.

The solution? Something that could be called namespaces.

We add the namespace to access the variable like this:

<namespace>.$myvariable

So for this example, we change:

$primary-orange

variables.$primary-orange

Then it works.

button.scss

@use 'variables';

.button {
    background-color: variables.$primary-orange;
}

Weekly (experimental) comic

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

June 2026 update: the site is no longer available. It was a good learning experience.

At the beginning of this week I launched comics.noahrahm.com where I’m sharing a weekly, experimental gag comic. I’m planning to post a new comic every Sunday.

I’ve been meaning to get serious and experiment in the comic realm for quite a few years now. (I drew my own cartoons and silly drawings a lot as a kid.)

I have ideas for a comic strip with a set cast of characters, but I figured I’d better experiment with creating an open, one-panel comic first. That way I can see if I can keep a decently consistent schedule and if I’m even able to come up with anything decent to begin with.

The goal is to create a family-friendly, kid-friendly comic that focuses on truths and good, clean humor. :)

Some comics have a related Scripture reference, others are just humorous, but the end goal is edification.

A merry heart does good, like medicine

Proverbs 17:22

Doing this comic is also a way for me to experiment with different drawing subject matter and expand my horizons. This is just far enough out of my comfort zone that I nearly put this off again for another year. But… thankfully I didn’t.

So if you’d like to take a look, go to comics.noahrahm.com. That’s where they’ll be posted (for the foreseeable future at least). Currently there’s only one comic posted, but more are coming (at least two more…unless the internet dies or something in the next two weeks.)

Oh, and if you have an idea for the name of this weekly comic, let me know.

Fiction story plot ideation reference

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is meant to be a handy reference of everything I try to remember for coming up with fiction stories. These notes come from various sources.

The Essence of a Story

Story is all about conflict.

A character has a goal or a problem and they want to solve it, but it’s very difficult.

Story Structure

A basic story structure goes like:

Once upon a time there was ____. Every day, ____. One day ____. Because of that ____. Until finally ____.

Protagonist wants X → They search for X, realize what they really need is Y→ Protagonist searches for Y → They achieve Y.

It must be very difficult for the character to achieve their goal or the story will be boring.

Theme

Theme is all about what you are trying to say through the story. You want to cut out everything that muddles or distracts from the theme. Choose something you really believe in or have interest in exploring. Particularly something that is meaningful to you because then you can stand behind it.

Story Pyramid

In order of importance:

Conflict and Resolution
Characters and Setting
Plot
Design

Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Compelling conflict.

Seven Main Story Beats

Normal world. Show what the normal world looks like for your character. Show how they are and how they would likely always be if it were not for the following events in the story.
Inciting incident. Something happens to your character that causes them to react somehow and in the process they are given some sort of goal to achieve that they want to accomplish.
Break into Act 2. The character’s reaction to the event sends them into a series of events that can’t be stopped. It’s like a snowball effect.
Midpoint. In the middle of Act 2, something happens to your character that raises the stakes of their goal. Things are now set into motion that make accomplishing that goal really difficult for the character.
Break into Act 3. The character has to fully commit to accomplishing their goal, even if it means sacrificing their own life or everything they hold dear. It is put on the line. It’s do or die at this point.
Climax. The character accomplishes the goal they set out to accomplish.
Resolution. Show your character adjusting to the new reality, having learned something through the events of the story.

Stories Should Make Us Feel Something

The best stories make us feel something. They elicit an emotional response. The best way to get a person to feel something is to show them change. So show something changing in front of them, or reveal something to them that they didn’t expect.

To start thinking about a story like this, think of a story that could do at least one of these four things:

Show a change in your character. They could move from good to bad or bad to good. Or something like they could be apathetic and finally become empathetic.
Show your character inspiring change in another character or group of people.
Reveal something significant about your character’s nature. Show something we didn’t know about them or something about their past. Or maybe something about their future that the character doesn’t know is going to happen.
Reveal something significant about the world your character inhabits. We learn about how the setting might affect the character in the future or it might be the reason why they are the way they are.

How to see spiritual growth

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The times when I’ve had the most spiritual growth is when I first did that things that I already knew Scripture says and put what I already knew Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, was calling me to do, into action.

Only then did it seem that I could seek out the truths and direction that I did not yet know.

So, from my experience: do what you already know He’s given you to do. He won’t give you more until you’ve shown yourself faithful with what He’s already given.

(Quick explanation) Why I keep the Sabbath

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is just a quick post that doesn’t go too deep, but I may do a longer, in-depth post sometime.

I’m not a Seventh-day Adventist or Jewish (as in Judaism) but I keep the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Why?

Who Is the Sabbath For?

One of the most common misunderstandings is that the Sabbath day is a Jewish thing. While it is true that those in Judaism observe the Sabbath, that isn’t proof that the day is only for the Jews.

In the beginning Yahweh our Heavenly Father created everything in six days.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

On the seventh day He rested and set apart the seventh day as the Sabbath.

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. (Genesis 2:2-3)

This was at creation, long before Abraham or the tribe of Judah ever existed. Yahweh made the Sabbath for man, not just for a certain people (Mark 2:17).

It is interesting to note that Yahweh rested Himself. He certainly doesn’t need rest, but He did as an example for us to follow.

Later, Yahweh our Heavenly Father included the Sabbath in the ten commandments for Israel (Exodus 20). Don’t get confused, though. As noted above, the Sabbath already existed and was observed by people since creation.

Sabbath Observance by the Messiah and the Disciples

Yahushua the Messiah also observed the Sabbath day (Luke 4:16) and spoke about proper Sabbath observance (Luke 6:9, Luke 13:16, Luke 14:5).

So, observing the Sabbath is to walk in His footsteps and do as He did.

The disciples and Paul kept the Sabbath (Acts 13:44, Acts 16:13).

Paul wrote that you shouldn’t let anyone judge you for keeping the Sabbath days:

Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:

Colossians 2:16

And so, from the examples of Scripture I think it is clear that the Sabbath is always for everyone to keep, including me.

Casting lots to make decisions

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not convinced that casting lots is a Biblical way of making decisions. Discerning the will of Yahweh from His word, the Scriptures, and through prayer is.

Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of Yahweh is.

(Ephesians 5:17)

We are to discern His will, not leave it to chance with a coin flip or “drawing straws.”

If Yahweh thought it important to give us a decision to make, He has given us (or will give us if we ask Him to), the wisdom to make it.

Importance of a good attitude

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the importance of a good attitude. So much of life is how you respond when things don’t go as you expect/like. If you have a good attitude then things go a lot easier.

In essence, having a good attitude is surrender to Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, and His plan for our lives. Rather than trying to control things, we realize that no matter the situation He is with us and there is (almost certainly) something He is trying to teach us through it.

Say hello

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’d like to hear from you.

As long as it’s without pretense and you’re not trying to scam me or sell me “1000s of upvotes”, please do say hello. :)

If there’s something that helped you on this blog let me know, or if you have constructive (and respectful) criticism to offer, then I’m open to hearing it. Or, even if you just want to say “hello.”

Some of the best conversations happen from random, “chance” meetings, so consider this my offer to make that happen more.

So, email me: hi [at] noahrahm [dot] com

Short story: Turn lemons into lemonade

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This fall I went on a long road trip. One thing I noticed (and thought was funny) was the great lengths some people take to prevent people from accidentally going down their private drive. This short story was inspired by these attempts. Enjoy. :)

Bob wasn’t happy. His house was set back from the road and nestled in a covering of trees that grew thickly. The private road leading to his house was a dirt road, but it just so happened to be at a curve of a paved main road. If the driver didn’t pay attention, they would miss the curve and go down his driveway.

As a result, tourists of all sorts would find themselves and their RV or trailer on Bob’s narrow drive unable to turn around without much difficulty.

Bob wasn’t a grumpy old man, but he did like his privacy. He certainly didn’t like the idea of his place becoming a full-time travel reroute stop.

As the tourist season dragged on, Bob began to grow weary. Sure, he was able to talk to new people every day, but redirecting people was tough. Sometimes there would be ten or more vehicles in a line down his driveway even late at night. Neither Bob nor his calico cat liked the “night shift.” Sometimes people honked angrily, not realizing the mistake was their own.

One thing was sure. He’d have to find a way to prevent people from coming down his drive. His driveway wasn’t a highway after all.

So, late one night after helping five honking vehicles to reroute, he sat at his dinner table to brainstorm.

The next morning, he set up two red signs on either side of the end of his driveway. Painted on them was written, “Private drive.” Later he peeked out the window of his house and was startled by the long stream of vehicles slowly making their way down his driveway. Evidently, he learned, his signs had attracted tourists who thought it was a scenic drive!

Next, he put up a large metal sign that said “Danger: keep out.” Suddenly the traffic switched to construction and heavy equipment, which was even more difficult to turn around in his narrow drive. It had happened that there was a construction project nearby and the turn was easier to miss than the curve, resulting in the crew mistaking his drive for the worksite.

The traffic down his private driveway continued, much to Bob’s dismay. At night his signs weren’t visible enough, and they kept falling over into the ditch anyway.

The next day, Bob woke up early. No messing up this time. He’d make sure every person knew just what to do when they came to that curve in the road.

He purchased the largest neon pink sign he could afford and hung it from the largest oak tree at the end of his driveway. The neon arrow pointed towards the left around the curve and could hardly be missed even at night. His problem would certainly be solved now.

With a satisfied hum, he walked back to his house. He went to sleep. He could finally get a good night of rest.

Or could he?

He looked out the window and gasped. The neon sign hung from the tree by ropes had twisted and was now pointing into his drive. He threw on his coat to take the “night shift” once again. It was sunrise before he’d redirected the pileup of vehicles that had entered his driveway.

He slumped into bed face-first, exhausted and defeated. Was this going to become his retirement duty for the rest of his life?

Then it occurred to him. So many businesses and people would pay a lot to have this much traffic come their way. So, at that moment, he decided to embrace the traffic rather than fight it.

Bob hired a crew to bulldoze some trees over and put in a dirt road that curved from his driveway back to the main road. This way, his driveway was simply a detour with no turn-around necessary, and Bob’s house was simply a landmark on the way.

When the county heard about Bob’s detour, he put forward an idea that was received with applause. The county paved the road and what was once an irritation turned into an opportunity for Bob to touch people’s lives.

For the rest of his life, Bob could be seen in the little tourist information building that was constructed beside his house talking and having lemonade with tourists passing by his drive.

The road still remains today even though Bob is now only a fond memory of all those whose lives he touched.

And guess what, the road is called “Bob’s Driveway.”

THE END

Short story: Nothing for granted

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Today I decided to write a short story. Enjoy. :)

Josh had hardly gotten his boots on before he tumbled out the door. The ground was blanketed with white from the first snow of the season and he couldn’t wait to do everything he’d thought about all summer and fall. Scrunch! The snow under his boots felt wonderful. He let himself fall back into a large pile with a giggle.

Yep, just as he’d remembered. The cool snow seeped through his coat and made the skin of his back tingle. Laying in the snow just like this was his favorite part of winter. Was it silly for a twenty-seven year old to enjoy laying in a snowbank? Perhaps, but Josh was enjoying himself too much to be embarrassed in the least. He closed his eyes with a puff of contentment.

He could hear the distance hum of traffic mingled with the subtle breeze whispering through the trees. Snow clung to the trees that surrounded the house, muting the sounds in a way that could only happen on an overcast winter day. The fain smell of pine from some neighboring trees between the houses shifted through the cool air.

It was this surreal feeling that Josh wished he could capture somehow. “Maybe I could bottle this up for summer,” he thought. He giggled until his sides hurt. That was a silly idea. He resolved to take every opportunity this winter to appreciate it. That would be enough.

He lay for a few moments longer sprawled on the pile of snow before lifting himself up and breaking into a sprint across the white landscape that lay behind the house. The snow lay uneven over the hilly ground and Josh hadn’t realized he’d stepped into a particularly deep spot. He fell forward with a laugh, now unable to run through the snow that went above his knees.

He pulled his legs free and trudged the rest of the way to ascend the highest hill before him. Reaching the top he scanned the view. Trees dotted the landscape behind the house and a now frozen-over creek lay to the south a little further on.

From his high point he could see the neighbors yards which were typically hidden from view behind wooden fences or the houses themselves. Off in the distance he could see the streets of downtown and the steeples of churches. It was an incredible view.

If only he had someone to share it with.

His face fell slightly. This was his parents home before they were killed in a wreck. He’d always walked up the hill beside his dad and mom when he was younger. Now they were gone.

Just like the snow melted quickly under the spring thaw, their time on earth had passed, and now he could only hold on to their memory.

He walked back to the house and looked around one last time. He sat down on the stairs he’d wobbled up with his mom as a toddler. He seated himself in the same corner chair where he sat at the table sharing dinner and conversation with his parents. He paced the kitchen like he’d always done as he recited his vocabulary to his mom as she washed dishes.

Walking towards the door again, he turned and gazed back into the living room. The house was still now. Quiet. So unlike the memories of the past. The laughter and memories he’d shared with his parents in that house would stay with him forever.

He was grateful that he had never taken them for granted just because they were his parents. No, just like he knew that one must enjoy the snow while it lasts in its season, so he knew to never take the people in his life for granted either.

Early in his childhood he’d realized to take nothing for granted. And for that he was very grateful.

Truth matters

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Would you lie to someone to make them feel good about themselves and avoid conflict?

Hopefully you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.

And yet, many advocate that we should do so.

It’s not being honest or loving to deny reality just to make someone feel good about themselves. Quite the opposite.

Sure, the truth hurts sometimes, but we certainly shouldn’t be so concerned about “rocking the boat” that we no longer care what is true anymore.

And guess what, once they find out that you lied just to keep them happy (if not in this life, the next), anyone feeling person would wonder why you lied to them—why you didn’t hold fast to the truth.

Lying to someone is cowardly and uncaring (if not selfish as well), so let’s be people of truth and people who care. :)

Think about the ending first

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A common piece of advice given for coming up with a fictional story is to figure out the ending first. That way you know where the story will end up. Endings are notoriously difficult, but if you have the ending prefigured (or at least have a rough target) then it’s far easier to write your story. It makes it simple because then all the prior plot points simply lead up to that ending.

In the same way, if you think about the end of your life first then you will likely make it count.

We won't agree on everything (and that's okay)

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We won’t agree on everything and that’s okay. It’s okay to respectfully disagree.

Each person has different experiences, a different upbringing, different fears, weaknesses, and strengths, and even just a different way of thinking.

Now, that doesn’t mean I’d ever advocate for complete tolerance of anything (especially blatant sin and ideas that are contrary to clear Biblical teaching). Nor would I ever say that one should never have convictions. After all it’s quite true that:

He who accepts everything believes in nothing.

GK Chesterton

However, when it comes to understandings about things, someone may be at a different point on their walk with the Messiah than you. It is appropriate to have humility and understanding regarding other understandings without compromising on your own convictions.

We need more emphasis on discernment

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I often wonder if there is too much emphasis and time placed on dispelling individual lies from the devil. One could hardly wade through the enormous amount of “_____ exposed” videos on YT in their lifetime. To me, that is sad.

Wouldn’t it be better to teach people discernment from Scripture rather than to purposely bring attention to each evil person or thing individually?

The reason? Sure, someone might find out that a particular person or thing is wrong after watching the video, but when the next person or thing comes along it won’t really help them.

Of course, examples are helpful and there is definitely a time for calling out evil. I have to really wonder, though, why the people creating these videos think they need to feed themselves the constant stream of evil to supposedly tell others about each particular evil?

Looking under every rock and stone for the devil’s hand can’t be good. I’m sure he’s more than willing to get the credit and keep them busy putting out fires all the while they fill their minds with evil.

If the general body of believers were able to discern themselves, then those people creating these videos could be less focused on chasing evil like a cat chasing mice.

So my suggestion would be that we should spend more time teaching people how to discern good from evil for themselves. That way there is more focus on the good, the pure, the lovely.

Don’t misunderstand: when the time is appropriate, we should answer hard questions and address evils.

My point isn’t to bash calling out evil at all. I just think the focus is misplaced if we’re creating loads of videos covering every single “evil” person or thing verbosely.

It’s the difference between telling and teaching.

Just telling someone about an evil is like a teacher giving a paper to a student with the statement: 4 + 4 = 8

There’s nothing wrong with the teacher doing that. At times, it is necessary and appropriate.

However, when the student comes to 5 + 5 = ? they probably won’t know what to do. The teacher never taught them how to figure it out themselves.

So, let’s be the teacher that teaches how to discern from Scripture. And maybe, just maybe, all those videos calling out individual evil people and things won’t be necessary…

Don't focus on pleasing critics or your peers

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Paraphrasing what I once read: Don’t focus on pleasing the critics; focus on the average person who is likely to be filled with wonder and inspired to do their own work by seeing yours.

I’d add to that “your peers” as well, because there’s often the urge to compete with others in your field. But when it comes to design and especially art, is there really a need to compare?

Speaking in terms of web design, one of the things that I have fundamentally changed about how I used to design a website and how I design now is the shift to practicality. I design for the average person rather than critics or peers (other designers).

Sure, if the website design was going to be submitted to Awwwards, or I’m experimenting with something (or I just have a client with a big budget who wants it), then I have no problem going all out with flair. But for most websites it’s not really necessary.

Simple and functional website designs are better for probably 99% of the world.

Designing for the average person (who is, in many cases, a customer) and for accessibility is going to benefit the business/org much more than a fancy page.

In art terms, it should be a reflection of you as an individual, and so it doesn’t make much sense to even feel the need to “show off”. Let your work speak for itself and don’t feel the need to please critics or your peers.

The average person will be baffled by your work and they are your true audience; the people you really want to touch and inspire with your art.

So, focus on creating for the glory of Yahweh and for the joy of the average person, not your professional peers or critics.

No insignificant calling

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What if we don’t need to seek to be used on our own in some “significant” way by Yahweh our Heavenly Father, but rather to just touch the life of someone else who will be?

What if the way we fulfill our calling is to help someone else with theirs?

What if our calling is to inspire or encourage someone who will make (what we typically think of as) a big, “significant” difference?

Sometimes it is the small actions that do the most good, and so, whatever our calling is, maybe it is not as insignificant as it may appear.

An artist's sketchbook is their greatest asset

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

From what I’ve noticed online, there is hesitation when it comes to art, specifically certain styles as a byproduct of the flood of “AI generated” imagery now. People wonder if some artist’s pictures are made with “AI”.

As an artist myself, it’s rather sad that there is a need to be filtered through that lens, but “AI” is here and one can’t avoid the scrutiny or the potential accusation of “using AI.”

It had me thinking that perhaps a real, physical sketchbook is one of the artist’s greatest assets these days.

And maybe, this makes it a good thing to have an imperfect, messy sketchbook full of experiments, personal notes, studies, and incomplete and imperfect drawings (like mine!).

The reason? Someone with “AI” can try all day, but ultimately your sketchbook is a product of you as a unique person, and that uniqueness is something that cannot be fully replicated. Mimicked maybe, but not replicated in the same spirit and soul as the artist.

Just a thought.

(As an aside, this isn’t the only reason why a sketchbook is a great asset. In fact, the above reason might be the least important reason to keep a sketchbook. However, it’s yet another good reason to motivate yourself to keep exploring and experimenting on your artistic journey.)

Two things to understand

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

If there is one thing that I could help people to understand, it would be Yahweh’s love for us as a loving father. (I’ll get to the second thing later.)

When we see Yahweh as the loving, caring father that He is, and see all that He has done and continues to do for us even though we don’t deserve it, then we have the right lenses for looking at life.

When we look at what He tells us in Scripture, it makes sense when we see His love. He tells us don’t do this and do this because He has our best interest in mind. He sees the beginning to the end, and so what we think is horrible He can use for good to accomplish His will in our lives in the end.

Yahweh, as the creator of everything and knows what is best for us. So out of love He says, No, don’t do that or do that.

It’s that simple really.

When He says don’t eat pork, shellfish, etc. and it’s an abomination, why do we refuse to listen?

Yahweh is not like an imperfect earthly father that makes mistakes or has the potential to make decisions based on selfish motives. No, Yahweh orchestrates everything so that we will have the best opportunities to have a relationship with Him.

Don’t mistake it, you will have hardships and consequences for your wrong choices, but He will be there with you through them.

You see, the question people like to ask is: does Yahweh really love us or care about us?

What we really ought to ask is: do I love Him?

The second thing is that we cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond. (I wrote a post on this here too.)

No one “makes us” get angry or forces us to make a wrong decision. While we certainly can be pressured into making a decision to do or say something wrong, ultimately we make the choice ourselves.

Where is this in Scripture?

Practically the whole Bible is a story of Yahweh, despite what man does and has done, chooses to give grace and mercy. There are also examples of individuals such as Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Yahushua choosing to do the right thing. They took the highroad despite how undeserving the other party was and despite the pressure they faced.

One of my favorite stories in the book of Genesis is when Isaac dug a well in the valley of Gerar and the herdsmen of the land quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen over it. He didn’t demand that it was his, he just moved on and dug another well. They fought over that one too, so he moved on and dug a third well. Finally, they didn’t try to fight with him about that one, so Isaac finally had a place in the land. (Genesis 26:18-22)

Like his father Abraham, who gave Lot first choice of land in an act of unselfishness, Isaac practiced something we know as “turning the other cheek.” Yahweh had promised Abraham and Isaac the whole land so it would have been easy for them to justify demanding it for themselves. Instead, they chose to do the right thing.

We need Yahweh’s spirit in order to have this kind of love and unselfishness.

Too many people justify themselves and their actions based on what someone else did or something bad that happened to them.

But what if we changed our perspective and realized that we hurt others and are selfish all the time? We may not know how much we hurt others, but we do, and to point the finger at others without acknowledging our own actions is prideful and selfish at the very least.

So, if there were just two things I could help people to understand, they would be:

Yahweh loves us, even when we don’t deserve it.
We can only control our own actions regardless of others'.

Play

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A while back I stumbled upon what I thought was a great perspective on play from Johnathan Collins’ blog here. I case you don’t know who Johnathan Collins is, he’s the co-founder of Bible Project.

In the essay he makes the point that as children we play like it’s our job (and it is). However, when we grow up we lose that.

When we get older, a lot of our work stops being “play.” Adult tasks require us to hunker down and focus. No goofing around. No using your imagination. No trying new things. No expelling unnecessary energy. Just get the job done. But more and more that kind of work is taken away from humans and given to machines because machines are better at it than us.

So he gives some advice:

Don’t try to outperform machines.

You are Human. Do what humans do best. Play. Take risks. Use your imagination. Spin in circles just to see how it feels. Play like it is your job.

“Play like it is your job” almost sounds irresponsible as an adult because we’ve forgotten what it means to play.

I won’t repeat his bullet points of what it means to “play” here, so please go read them on his blog.

The only approval that matters

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The only one whose approval you should truly care about is Yahweh our Heavenly Father’s approval.

Even if somehow you rise to fame and become popular and liked in the world, their opinion of you can and oftentimes does change. If the opinion of the masses about you doesn’t change in your lifetime, people will talk and gossip after you’re dead. Those who don’t know you won’t have any clue whether what they say about you is true or not, and you will not be there to defend yourself. The fleeting fame and validation of the world is too small a thing to live for.

It would be better to be great in the eyes of Yahweh and the lowliest unknown in the world than to be the most famous immoral person who is cast out of the Kingdom and whose bad influence causes others to stumble.

Where our worth comes from

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yahweh gave us each unique abilities for what He called us to do, but it is the fact that He made us that makes us special and have worth.

When I draw or paint a picture, it has worth to me because I created it. It doesn’t have to do anything to be special, it just is. Now, it’s nice that the picture sits there and looks pretty, but it doesn’t need to do anything else by itself but to just be in order to have value.

The same is true of Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, with us. We were created by Him, therefore we have value and are special. He has given us gifts and abilities to use for His glory, but we don’t need to do anything (i.e “prove ourselves”) in order to have worth in His eyes.

Lessons illustrating a children's book for the first time

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year I worked on a big, intensive illustration project: creating the illustrations for a 32-page children’s book. It was the first major digital painting project and the first children’s book I’ve worked on so far.

I work in traditional drawing/painting mediums a lot, so working in digital was a bit of a learning experience.

Somehow, until you do something, some things that should be obvious aren’t obvious, even if you read about them.

Needless to say, I learned a lot just by going through the process of illustrating the children’s book. I had done research prior to starting, but of course, I couldn’t possibly do everything right the first time around. Doubly so when I had little to no prior experience with a pen and tablet, digital painting, or children’s book illustration.

So here’s a short list of some of the things I learned:

Create a Character Sheet

A character sheet is a page of drawings of the character in different poses. This is helpful for reference so that you can be consistent throughout the book and have knowledge of how your character looks.

Unfortunately, I did not do this until about halfway through, meaning that I had to fix earlier drawings to be more consistent.

Save Character Color Palettes

This should have been obvious, but with the uncertainty and newness of illustrating so many illustrations digitally, again, I didn’t finalize colors until after the first spread of drawings.

So, next time I’ll save a color palette alongside the character sheet.

Choose Style Carefully

One lesson I learned the hard way is to carefully consider the amount of work illustrating in style will be. For this particular children’s book I chose a painted, flat, semi-realistic style with no line art.

That was a mistake. The style was far too intensive to complete in the amount of time allotted and to the high bar I had wanted to achieve. In the end, the quality suffered because I just didn’t have the time (which was really, really disappointing as an artist).

The style could have been simpler (it was a children’s book after all), but I also learned that keeping backgrounds simple is a great idea. (That is, unless it is a necessary part of the style, and you have the time to do it properly). Simplifying the backgrounds would have given me more time to focus on the characters and actions.

Exaggerate

Yeah, I’ll admit that most of the character poses in the illustrations turned out looking stiffer than I intended. The sketches looked good, and I was happy with them—but the final art looked stiff.

So what happened?

The problem was that when I made the initial sketches I didn’t exaggerate enough.

If you don’t exaggerate the pose when you make your sketch, by the time you complete the drawing it could look static. Through the art process, the blockiness and shapes often tend to get rounded out. When that happens, the pose loses a lot of its “life”.

The other thing I didn’t exaggerate was the silliness of the drawings. A children’s book should be silly, colorful, and fun, but admittedly, it was only during the latter half of the illustrations that I began to push in that direction.

Use Digital to Your Advantage

Perhaps it’s just because I come from using traditional art mediums, but I certainly didn’t use the flexibility digital offers to its full advantage.

Things like using separate layers rather than painting the whole illustration on a single layer, batching the character drawing, and using perspective grids should have been obvious, but I had to “discover” their advantages in the process instead.

So, in summary, I learned a lot. I’m glad I went through the process and finished illustrating the book (finishing and not giving up is an achievement in itself).

True, I shouldn’t expect to know everything the first time illustrating a children’s book, but these were admittedly simple things I missed which made the process harder and the results not as great. Next time, though, I can apply these lessons and do better. :)

(Maybe) how to post consistently

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve tried to write and publish posts consistently before, but always ended up stopping after a few days. This time I’ve been posting for 17 days straight now (counting today).

So here’s what I’m doing differently this time, which has helped considerably in getting me to post consistently so far.

Set Aside a “Spot”

First, I have a specific “spot” where I write and post. This helps to get my mind in the pattern of “okay, it’s time to write.”

Removed Friction in the Process

I’ve also removed a lot of friction that there used to be in times past in actually publishing the posts.

I have a simple Hugo static site with posts written in Markdown files in a GitHub repository.

Using my phone for the entire process makes it much easier to write and publish in just ~15–30 minutes most days.

I write in my notes app and then I use the GitHub app to add a new file, paste the text in, and commit. The build process is automated via a GitHub actions script, so there’s no friction in having to rebuild the site manually.

The process is extremely simple and undistracted. It goes like this:

Open my notes app and start writing.
Copy the text to the clipboard.
Open the GitHub app, create a new Markdown file.
Paste the text into the file.
Commit.

After that, it’s published in a few minutes.

Writing for the Next Day

Another thing I’ve been doing differently is writing the post for the next day. For example, this post will be published on December 3rd, but I’m writing it on December 2nd.

There’s something about writing “for tomorrow” that makes it less stress for my brain and for that reason I can usually write pretty well.

There is a second reason I write a day in advance. I keep the Biblical 7th-day Sabbath (Friday sundown to Saturday sundown), so there is one day a week that I won’t publish a post. So, instead, that extra post forward covers the Sabbath and I publish two posts on the 1st day of the week (Sunday).

Changed My Mindset

Maybe one of the biggest things I’ve changed is my mindset. My mindset used to be that the post should be a complete, error-free, finished work of its own (the posts from 2023 are a good example of this).

This time I don’t limit myself to only worthwhile, in-depth topics, and don’t (currently) have a minimum post length. Some posts are only two paragraphs and others, like this one, are longer and more in depth.

So, in short, removing as much of the friction I possibly have from the writing and publishing process has greatly helped me to post consistently.

What we can control

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most difficult things in life is to not try to control your own life. It’s easy to want to control your circumstances and control other people, but trying to do so is delusional. The blunt truth is that we don’t generally have control over what happens to us or how people treat us. We can only control ourselves (i.e. self-control) and our actions.

Circumstances may not change, but you can choose how you handle the situation.

People may not change, but you can choose how you treat them.

Oftentimes, Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, uses our situation and the people that bother us to mold and shape us — if we’re surrendered and listening to what He is trying to teach us.

Love is an action word. It often requires sacrifice and long-suffering on our part. To respond with love and patience instead of trying to control is difficult indeed, but it is what we need to strive towards.

Because the only thing we can really control is how we respond.

Influences shape us

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Our influences, what inspires us, and who our heroes are all play a big role in shaping who we become.

What influences do I have?

What inspires me?

Who are my heroes?

Who do I aspire to be like?

It’s an interesting exercise to think about these questions and consider:

Are my influences bringing me closer to Yahweh?

Do the things that inspire me glorify Yahweh?

Are my heroes people of Yahweh?

Do I truly aspire to be like Yahushua the Messiah?

What I've learned about ideas

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ideas are not the same as inspiration. Ideas can come from inspiration, but they are not the same thing.
Ideas come from personal experience.
If you can’t find anything up there in your head for ideas, there probably isn’t anything to find.
If an idea is really important, you won’t forget it.
If you’re looking for inspiration to get ideas, don’t be surprised if it takes some effort.
You have to go out and find things that might lead you to new ideas. For example, looking for inspiration.
Take a walk, go do something, but don’t try to look for an idea.
Ideas aren’t found, they are made from experiences, feelings, and wandering thoughts that mutate and combine.
In short, ideas come from doing things.

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working”

Picasso

More valid, not less

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The fact that I don’t fully understand everything in the Bible right now makes it more valid, not less.

If one could understand it all easily, it would be suspect that it was written by mere men instead of by the inspiration of Yahweh.

We know from Scripture that spiritual things must be discerned spiritually, and the Bible is a spiritual book.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of Yahweh: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

1 Corinthians 2:14

We cannot approach the Bible in the same way that we would a normal book. In many ways, the Bible has layer upon layer of wisdom, and we must prayerfully search it out and let Yahweh show us the meaning.

More than two

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When deciding between options, consider whether there is a third option.

Sometimes it’s not always clear, but there are often more than two options to choose from when making a decision.

Don’t let anyone rush you into making a decision on something that can wait. Scammers often hurry their victims in order to keep them from thinking twice about making a (bad) decision, so don’t hurry through other decisions in life! Stop, take time to pray and seek wise counsel before making a decision.

Like fish (Carp, to be exact)

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was visiting a place where there were multiple ponds with various sizes of carp swimming around. I sat watching them swim around in circles in the water. They looked so happy, so content. It seemed like such a simple life to spend most of their day just swimming around in a ~6x6 foot pond, but I couldn’t deny that they hardly looked bored.

Some fish picked at some grass at the bottom, another looked almost like he/she was twirling in a tight circle. Many of them seemed to follow the large group of carp swimming in a (seemingly repetitive) circle around the parameter of the pond. But they were happy. (Or maybe that’s just me!)

I sat thinking about how content they looked just being fish, just swimming through the water like that. It makes me think about how, when we’re doing what Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, created us to do, that is when we’re most content. Even doing something that might be “boring” to another person has meaning when it’s what we’re created to do. In that sense, we should be like those fish.

He cares

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Something I’ve thought about is the fact that the main thing that separates the Elohim (God) of Christianity from the mighty ones (gods) of other religions is that Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, cares.

For instance, the ancient Greeks could believe in a god that was good, but never in a god that cared.

Yahweh didn’t just create us and leave us to fend for ourselves. He cares about us, and even further, He has redeemed us from our mess, our sins, through His Son, Yahushua the Messiah.

Many people don’t like the idea of Yahweh giving commandments as to how we should live, but isn’t that exactly what an Elohim (God) that cared about us would do? When you care about someone, you want what is best for them. That is why He tells us how to live; so we can live our lives as He created us to live, with love, joy, peace, and all the other fruits of the spirit.

He cares about us so much that He even wants us to cast our cares upon Him.

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

(1 Peter 5:7)

Indeed, He cares.

Consistency over time

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been quite amazed at how much can be accomplished and learned over time when done consistently.

A terrible example of consistently doing something is me writing posts for this microblog. Up until recently, I only published a post occasionally, and then almost never with any sort of schedule.

Well, look, it was nearly a 1/6th through the year before the first post of 2025! As a result, I don’t have as much to show in terms of posts or writing improvement as I would have if I had done so consistently, even once a week. (That’s not to say I hadn’t written anything until then—in fact I’ve been working on long writing projects all year.)

A better example would be my time-lapse app, Velocity Lapse. I pretty consistently release app updates about once or twice a month. Many of the updates are small in terms of fixes and new features, but it is amazing how quickly the small, consistent updates build up to improve the app over time.

Love

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Many people have different ideas of what “love” is, but what does Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, say?

The video below has the best explanation I have every heard from Scripture, using helpful analogies and stories. It is well worth watching all the way through many times.

The working definition of love, put into words in the video is:

Doing what is spiritually best for others, regardless of what it costs you, whether they deserve it or not.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

That is certainly something the world needs to hear.

It’s an unselfish, giving, long-suffering kind of love. We need that kind of love. As believers, we know it certainly doesn’t come from us, though, but from Yahweh. Only through Yahushua the Messiah can we love unconditionally like that.

When you're winning, be quiet

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

When you’re winning, be quiet.

I heard this phrase, and at the time, it was something I needed to hear.

We all know the saying, “Pride goeth before destruction,” (Proverbs 16:8a KJV), but we don’t often hear the next part of the verse, “and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

It is really easy to get thinking of yourself as something when you’re at a high point, when you’ve accomplished something, overcome an obstacle, or are “winning” in some way.

Pride can sneak in and make you feel the need to gloat and pat yourself on the back.

The idea behind “When you’re winning, be quiet,” is that you should remain humble and shouldn’t feel the need to rub your victory in or inflate yourself. Let others praise you. Don’t praise yourself.

Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips.

Proverbs 27:2 KJV

An eternal perspective

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in fears and anxieties about the future. Things we cannot control.

However, it’s practically impossible to fear when we look at things from an eternal perspective instead of an earthly perspective. Why? Because then we realize that it is Yahweh who is in control and that, in Yahushua, our time here is not the end of the story. That is, it’s not the end of our story, and it’s not the end of the story for humanity. We realize that the only things that truly matter are spiritual things.

This is what we have as believers that the world does not have. We have hope. Actually, we have expectation. A promise. One made by the creator of the universe, who is always faithful and never fails.

That is why we can have peace, regardless of what happens.

Small victories

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve written posts every day for a week now. This is the longest stretch of continuous posting I’ve done to this point. It sounds like a small accomplishment, and it is, but I think you have to celebrate the small victories too. Small victories add up to make a big difference, and often lead to “big” victories.

The hardest parts of doing anything continuously are showing up, staying motivated, and keeping focused. Taking a bit of time to see how far you’ve come helps. As does stopping to smell the roses.

If you’ve read my posts up until this point, you’ve probably noticed that I don’t hold myself to a particular minimum word count. To some, that would be a requirement, and maybe some day I will do that, but for now I’m going to keep the posts coming and establish the habit while celebrating the small victories along the way.

Joseph

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of my favorite characters in the Bible is Joseph.

He could have been upset about a lot of things. He could have complained…a lot. His life certainly didn’t go as he thought it would or should go. He could have been bitter towards Yahweh and people (and maybe he was for a time, I don’t know). And yet he realized he was in Yahweh’s hands.

Unlike other characters in the Bible, like Samson, he proved his faithfulness even in the midst of great trials. And Yahweh blessed him for it, so much that even the Egyptians saw something different about him.

Being used

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was once talking to a young man who was just a little older than I was at the time. He was not a believer, but he was interested in talking to me about the Bible, so we had a number of conversations.

During one particular conversation I mentioned how it was a blessing to “be used by Yahweh” to do His work sharing the gospel with people.

He looked at me and asked me how I could like “being used?” It dawned on me that his perspective was so different from mine. He thought that it was the forced “using” of someone in a negative, self-serving way for personal gain.

I attempted to explain what it meant to be willingly used by Yahweh. He appeared to finally get it, but I’m not sure if he actually understood what I was saying.

This made me think about two things.

One, he had a very bleak view of life and of Yahweh. Was that really how he saw life? I was seeing Yahweh as the loving Father He is, and wanting to be used by Him as a willing vessel. The young man couldn’t seem to think of letting anyone use you or tell you to do something willingly because, in his eyes, to do so was to let someone take advantage of you and/or hurt you.

Two, it is interesting how our experiences shape even how we view phrases or words. So, perhaps I could think of another way to explain what I mean in a way that doesn’t use the word “use” (which evidently is not easy to understand).

Storytelling and MMC

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Make Me Care (MMC).

These are just my own observations, but MMC seems to be the “secret” to great art, books, films, etc.

It has been said that your job as an artist is to simply evoke emotions and feelings already present in the viewer.

Why? Because then the viewer is emotionally invested in your piece.

Put simply: they care.

The same goes for storytelling.

You don’t need to explain everything well, you just need to explain the right things well.

Present the right things and let the audience figure out the rest themselves. Give clues and let them figure it out.

Our imagination is way more powerful than anything we could put in front of our viewers in detail. So, if you want to have something impactful, suggest just enough and leave the rest to the audience’s own imagination.

Again, because then they are drawn into the story and care.

One of the most common mistakes of beginner artists is to draw everything. More detail does not mean a more realistic or pleasing artwork.

Continuous talking during a speech doesn’t make nearly the amount of impact as when a speaker takes pauses to let what was said sink in.

We ought to be critical about what not to include as we are thinking about what to include.

If music is the silence between the notes;

Art and writing are the suggestion of the strokes.

The best of each are the thoughts they provoke.

All creativity is communication: use it wisely.

Imperfections

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

About a month ago, I had a passing thought about imperfections: We should embrace our imperfections as a reminder of why we need to rely on Yahweh our Heavenly Father, not ourselves.

When I say “Imperfections” I don’t mean sinful things. I mean the quirks, fears, or preferences that make us unique and wonderfully odd at the same time —like tripping over your own feet (which I sometimes do!).

It’s our imperfections that make us perfectly us. The amazing thing is that Yahweh often uses our imperfections as a part of His plan for His glory.

Don't wait until you're ready

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A simple truth I always have to remind myself of is this: If we wait until we’re perfect or until we think we’re “ready” before we do something, we will probably never do it.

We won’t be perfect like Yahweh right now. We strive to be, but right now we need to step out in faith and do what we are called to do with our best efforts and knowledge.

Abraham's test

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Some unbelievers take offense to the idea that Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. They claim that Abraham should have told Yahweh, “No,” when asked (as if Yahweh was unrighteous and Abraham could have been more righteous by refusing.)

However, this perspective is quite obviously uninformed.

Those who have read and understood Scripture know that this story foreshadows the sacrifice of Yahushua the Messiah.

The salvation story is that a completely innocent man (Yahushua the Messiah) was sacrificed willingly by His father (Yahweh).

So the question is: is it unjust for someone to sacrifice themselves for someone else?

Of course not. In fact, there’s probably no greater show of love than the ultimate sacrifice of a life for someone.

The Scriptures also reveal that Abraham believed and knew that Yahweh could raise his son from the dead. So even if Abraham had gone through with it, Yahweh could raise Isaac.

Isn’t it interesting how it mirrors the salvation story?

Yahweh can and did raise His own son, Yahushua the Messiah from the dead, just like he would have raised Isaac for Abraham.

As an aside, Yahweh provided a ram in the thicket to be the sacrifice in the place of Isaac. Again, a symbol pointing to the Messiah’s sacrifice.

So no, Yahweh was not unjust for testing Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son. After all, Yahweh would later sacrifice His son for the sins of the world —and I’m grateful that He did.

Manage energy not time

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I once listened to an interview with an artist, and they had what I thought was a good take on “time management” or, more correctly, “energy management”.

Their main point was to focus on managing energy, not time. You can’t manage time; it passes no matter what you do.

Like a bucket, you are filled with a set amount of energy per day. You have to choose how you use the limited energy you have. Some tasks may not take very much time, but they do take a lot of energy.

If we’re not careful, we can use our energy on small but demanding tasks and have no energy for the things we really need/want to do to move forward in life.

A good way to live is to have ONE priority per day. Your priority should help you get closer to reaching your life goals.

Find your focus time and work on your priority. Everyone has a time during which they work best in the day. Find out when it is (for me, it’s the morning) and reserve it for your one priority task only.

If there is something taking energy away from your priority and thus your goals, cut it. If you are unable to cut it out of your life, try moving it to a time outside your focus time.

Health and mental wellness aren’t a priority. (Don’t take the last sentence out of context!) They aren’t in your priorities because they should be continuous given rather than an optional task that you can “prioritize” or not.

It’s also good to ask yourself if every other decision (even the small ones) is getting you closer to your goals. If it’s not, it could be draining your energy, even if it’s not a time-sink.

Limits of logic

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Logic is a tool. Yahweh our Heavenly Father gave us logic and reason to use in our daily lives. I believe that what He has created and the way He has set up the universe is, in many ways, logical.

However, our ability to see and use logic in and of itself has its limits. Our logic is limited in its accuracy by how much we, the person using it, knows. Since we are finite in our knowledge (and always will be), we cannot assume upon logic alone for everything. Not because the facts themselves are illogical but because our limited knowledge or understanding of the facts can be wrong or illogical. After all, wrong assumptions lead to wrong conclusions.

Instead, it makes logical sense (pun intended) to approach logic with humility and ensure that we look to the Creator of the universe for the truth. He is infinite, all understanding, and all knowing. That way, we can clearly see where we might be messing up our facts in our quest to reach the right conclusions.

Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; Proverbs 3:5

Not even close

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever considered how Satan is not even close to being equal to Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, in power?

We sometimes say it’s “good vs. evil”, as if a superhero has met his match in the form of a villain. This isn’t an entirely accurate picture though.

It might feel like evil is very powerful sometimes, but the reality is that this is not a level playing field. Satan’s limited power is no match for the power of Yahweh. In fact, Satan was a creation of Yahweh and must ask Yahweh to grant him anything. In Job 1 (starting at verse 6) we see Satan coming before Yahweh to ask whether he can do this or that to Job. This should be a reminder of Romans 28:31b: “If Yahweh be for us, who can be against us?”

28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love Yahweh, to them who are the called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified. 31 What shall we then say to these things? If Yahweh be for us, who can be against us? 32 He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? 33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Yahweh’s elect? It is Yahweh that justifieth.

Romans 28:28-33

The Journey Behind Velocity Lapse (Part 6)

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the 6th post in a series of “dev-log” style posts sharing my journey creating Velocity Lapse, a time-lapse app for Android.

You can read the previous posts to get context up to this point: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below.

The v0.9.x series

I’m not going to give all the details on every release in the v0.9.x series this time. That would be too much (and perhaps quite boring).

Instead, I’ll just mention that this stage of development fixed many things and added many features that made Velocity Lapse feature complete and much more stable in preparation for the v1.0 launch later in the year.

Just a few of the highlights included localization, improvements to the manual camera controls, video effects, capture scheduling, 8K image capture and video export, and support for three different video codecs.

Localization

Although I had not originally planned to prioritize translations and localizations, things fell into place. I was able to get the app backend set up without too much issue. Then it was a matter of putting it out on social media and the forum requesting volunteers to add translations to Velocity Lapse.

Special thanks to @thomas_tesar for the Czech translation and @dzartsiomi for the Russian translation.

On the technical side, I used standard ARB files that Flutter uses natively for storing strings for localization. I decided to use Loco for managing the translations. That way the volunteer translators would have a nice interface to update the strings.

Both of these worked out well together.

Video Effects

As mentioned in a previous post, effects like motion blur and star trails were some of my personal feature requests.

With the video export now working smoothly, I decided to tackle these effects.

Using OpenCV and a bit of C++ through the Android NDK I was able to get satisfactory motion blur and light trails effects.

Preparing for the v1.0 release.

Finally, based on feedback from users and my own look at the state of Velocity Lapse, I knew that it was time to exit beta and launch. That isn’t to say that everything was absolutely perfect and ready to go (it won’t likely ever get to that point!).

At the start of November, I announced the launch date on 11/4/2024 via Instagram and the email list.

Speaking of which, one thing I think I could have done better was growing the email list. :)

User guide

With v1.0 on the horizon, I worked to create the user guide. It would give users an overview of the functionality and settings of Velocity Lapse. At first the guide was just a page on the main website, but was later moved to its own subdomain at guide.velocitylapse.com.

An updated logo

After two and a half years of development in early access beta, I knew that the current logo had served it’s purpose as a stand-in logo.

For whatever reason, I always had it in the back of my mind to “find the time” before the v1.0 launch to refine the concept to better reflect the state of Velocity Lapse. Here and there I would play with different designs, but I hadn’t come up with anything much.

Finally, I did find the time.

I simplified the logo both in terms of colors and shapes while still keeping with the same theme and concept.

The resulting logo was something I was much happier with than the prior design.

Saying goodbye to the video gallery

A few weeks before the v1.0 launch, I removed video gallery tab. I also changed the functionality so that videos played in the device video player app.

You might remember that in a previous post I had mentioned how the video gallery was a popular feature request. Well, based on looking at the analytics, it appeared that not very many people actually used the built-in video gallery.

That fact, combined with my realization that removing it would save me a lot of code burden, made it a clear decision. In my analysis, it turned out that by eliminating just the video gallery, I was able to cleanup a lot of code and dependencies.

No doubt, it felt wasteful to add and maintain a feature for almost two years only to remove it just before the v1.0 release. However, it was better to drop the burden sooner than later so I could focus on other parts of the app.

The week before the v1.0 launch

The week leading up to the launch day, I was busy doing my part to make the launch a success.

I redesigned the website, created promotional images, and scheduled the launch on Product Hunt.

With a couple last-minute bug fixes and tests, I uploaded the app bundle to the Google Play console a few days before the launch to give ample time for Google Play to review it.

Launch day: Nov. 17th, 2024

At 12:01a.m the v1.0 release of Velocity Lapse went live on Google Play. The Product Hunt launch was scheduled to go live at 12:01a.m PST (2:01a.m my time). I then went to sleep because I wasn’t going to stay up all night. :)

A few hours later I woke up to some comments on Product Hunt about the launch.

Since I had written up a plan and did a lot of preparation for the v1.0 launch, it was a matter of just following through. A post on Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and the forum was the majority of the promotion that I did on launch day outside of Product Hunt and the newsletter.

I spent most of the morning conversing with people on Product Hunt, Instagram, and via email.

On Product Hunt it ranked #10 which meant that it was featured on the homepage for the day (a really good thing).

By the end of the day, the v1.0 launch on Product Hunt received 103 upvotes and 13 comments. The day rank was #10 and the week rank #80.

Reflecting on the launch

Overall, the launch of Velocity Lapse into production went well. One might reasonably suggest that the v1.0 launch was more of an “official” thing rather than a real launch to the public, especially since Velocity Lapse had been available in early access for over 2 years.

All things considered, the v1.0 launch was a success with no major problems. For that I am very thankful. 🎉

After the launch

v1.1.0 was pushed into production not too long after the v1.0 launch. v1.1 added a remote shutter feature and other improvements that didn’t make it into the v1.0 release.

For the weeks following the launch, I pushed updates with bug fixes and new features in preparation for the new year.

Another milestone

Another milestone happened about the time of the v1.0 launch: Velocity Lapse crossed 200,000 downloads on Google Play.

The journey continues

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post.

If you have a suggestion, a comment, or advice, relating either to the app or this post, I’d love to hear what you have to share either in the comments below or via email.

A big thanks to numerous individuals for their support and advice, making this journey possible. Special thanks to @sundrycode for which I am grateful for his help developing the Android native side of the app and taking part in testing. And Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, from whom all knowledge and every good thing comes.

My gleanings from "Up From Slavery: An Autobiography"

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Up From Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington was a good read that I gained much from.

Looking at the date of my notes, I last read the book in Roman February this year.

I wouldn’t mind reading it again except that my “books to read” queue is full right now. So, since the book isn’t fresh in my mind, I’m primarily basing this post off of my personal notes that I wrote while reading it.

Forgive me if this post becomes little more than quotes from his book, but there are really some good bits of wisdom that Booker T. Washington shares that I want to highlight.

Attitude

In order to be successful in any kind of undertaking, I think the main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as one loses himself in the way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

If I were to point out one of the most admirable things about Booker T. Washington as a person (at least as he portrays himself in the book), it would be his good attitude.

Asking for Funding from the Wealthy

Time and time again I have been asked, by people who are trying to secure money for philanthropic purposes, what rule or rules I followed to secure the interest and help of people who were able to contribute money to worthy objects. As far as the science of what is called begging can be reduced to rules, I would say that I have had but two rules. First, always to do my whole duty regarding making our work known to individuals and organizations; and, second, not to worry about the results. This second rule has been the hardest for me to live up to. When bills are on the eve of falling due, with not a dollar in hand with which to meet them, it is pretty difficult to learn not to worry, although I think I am learning more and more each year that all worry simply consumes, and to no purpose, just so much physical and mental strength that might otherwise be given to effective work. After considerable experience in coming into contact with wealthy and noted men, I have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest results are those who “keep under the body”; are those who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite. I think that President William McKinley is the best example of a man of this class that I have ever seen.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

My experience in getting money for Tuskegee has taught me to have no patience with those people who are always condemning the rich because they are rich, and because they do not give more to objects of charity. In the first place, those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much suffering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises. Then very few persons have any idea of the large number of applications for help that rich people are constantly being flooded with. I know wealthy people who receive as much as twenty calls a day for help. More than once when I have gone into the offices of rich men, I have found half a dozen persons waiting to see them, and all come for the same purpose, that of securing money. And all these calls in person, to say nothing of the applications received through the mails. Very few people have any idea of the amount of money given away by persons who never permit their names to be known. I have often heard persons condemned for not giving away money, who, to my own knowledge, were giving away thousands of dollars every year so quietly that the world knew nothing about it.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Notice here how he uses righteous judgment without partiality and how that affects how he views those who are rich in material wealth.

Sometimes it can be difficult not to have partiality towards those who are poor and rather condemn those who are wealthy, but doing so is not righteous.

It isn’t right judgment to favor the poor over the rich (or vice versa). I once heard it described as: “A poor man and a rich man go to court. With social justice, the poor man wins. With justice, the one who’s right wins.”

Although it has been my privilege to be the medium through which a good many hundred thousand dollars have been received for the work at Tuskegee, I have always avoided what the world calls “begging.” I often tell people that I have never “begged” any money, and that I am not a “beggar.” My experience and observation have convinced me that persistent asking outright for money from the rich does not, as a rule, secure help. I have usually proceeded on the principle that persons who possess sense enough to earn money have sense enough to know how to give it away, and that the mere making known of the facts regarding Tuskegee, and especially the facts regarding the work of the graduates, has been more effective than outright begging. I think that the presentation of facts, on a high, dignified plane, is all the begging that most rich people care for.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

I repeat that the main rule by which I have been guided in collecting money is to do my full duty in regard to giving people who have money an opportunity for help.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Answering Accusations

My experience with them, as well as other events in my life, convince me that the thing to do, when one feels sure that he has said or done the right thing, and is condemned, is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Public Speaking

I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking. I do not believe that one should speak unless, deep down in his heart, he feels convinced that he has a message to deliver. When one feels, from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head, that he has something to say that is going to help some individual or some cause, then let him say it; and in delivering his message I do not believe that many of the artificial rules of elocution can, under such circumstances, help him very much. Although there are certain things, such as pauses, breathing, and pitch of voice, that are very important, none of these can take the place of soul in an address. When I have an address to deliver, I like to forget all about the rules for the proper use of the English language, and all about rhetoric and that sort of thing, and I like to make the audience forget all about these things, too.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Nothing tends to throw me off my balance so quickly, when I am speaking, as to have some one leave the room. To prevent this, I make up my mind, as a rule, that I will try to make my address so interesting, will try to state so many interesting facts one after another, that no one can leave. The average audience, I have come to believe, wants facts rather than generalities or sermonizing. Most people, I think, are able to draw proper conclusions if they are given the facts in an interesting form on which to base them.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Time Management

I am often asked how it is possible for me to superintend the work at Tuskegee and at the same time be so much away from the school. In partial answer to this I would say that I think I have learned, in some degree at least, to disregard the old maxim which says, “Do not get others to do that which you can do yourself.” My motto, on the other hand, is, “Do not do that which others can do as well.”

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

As far as I can, I make it a rule to plan for each day’s work—not merely to go through with the same routine of daily duties, but to get rid of the routine work as early in the day as possible, and then to enter upon some new or advance work. I make it a rule to clear my desk every day, before leaving my office, of all correspondence and memoranda, so that on the morrow I can begin a new day of work. I make it a rule never to let my work drive me, but to so master it, and keep it in such complete control, and to keep so far ahead of it, that I will be the master instead of the servant. There is a physical and mental and spiritual enjoyment that comes from a consciousness of being the absolute master of one’s work, in all its details, that is very satisfactory and inspiring. My experience teaches me that, if one learns to follow this plan, he gets a freshness of body and vigour of mind out of work that goes a long way toward keeping him strong and healthy. I believe that when one can grow to the point where he loves his work, this gives him a kind of strength that is most valuable.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Health

I have said that I believe it is the duty of every one to keep his body in good condition. I try to look after the little ills, with the idea that if I take care of the little ills the big ones will not come.

—Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Conclusion

So, those were the main quotes that stood out to me from the book. It is likely that I would glean more the next time I read it as well.

If you’d like to read Booker T. Washington’s autobiography too, you can download the EPUB file from the Gutenberg project books website.

React-ing

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

About four years ago, I developed a client project using the WordPress Gutenberg plugin APIs, which uses React. However, since then, I haven’t considered picking the React framework up to add to my toolbox. That is, until now.

Most projects I’ve opted to use Vue, Svelte, or minimal vanilla JavaScript for projects instead. There isn’t any particular reason why I never took the time to get proficient in React; it just didn’t happen. In hindsight, it would have been better for me to explore React much sooner.

Occasionally, it was mentioned to me that there were potential project opportunities, but they were in React.

In one instance, I responded by shaking my head and saying something along the lines of “I’m just not a React person.”

How silly! I should know better than to react like that (pun intended).

React is a tool, just like any framework. It has its pros and cons, and it also happens to be what a lot of companies and open-source projects use.

Closing opportunities by closing your willingness to learn something new isn’t good. I personally strive to always be open to new learning opportunities and challenges. After all, programming isn’t about which language or framework you use but the problems you’re solving.

In a larger sense, if I want to be the most useful to Yahweh, our heavenly Father, I certainly can’t close myself off to opportunities that He sends.

By learning React, at least to the point of proficiency, I realize that many more opportunities would be open that are currently not since they unavoidably require knowledge packaged in a box labeled “React and the React ecosystem.”

So, I’m learning React.

5/1/2025 Update: To learn more about React (and to make an idea I’ve had for a while a reality) I created Reference8, a Web-based photo reference tool for artists and creatives.

No, I don't want to buy your upvotes

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I (finally) launched Velocity Lapse, my time-lapse app for Android, into production on Google Play. As a part of the launch day, I launched on Product Hunt.

Perhaps as a byproduct of getting so many eyeballs on my product and email, I received tons of spammy emails. They ranged from probably genuine requests to malicious to the core. Many of them were soliciting money for “thousands of upvotes” on Product Hunt —something that is against Product Hunt’s policies (for good reason).

I do get spammy emails like that periodically anyway, because that is just part of having an email publicly available. However, it is sad to me just how many people try to capitalize on someone’s product launch by offering paid fake reviews or upvotes.

Upvotes (a vanity metric already for the most part) and reviews are only worth something when they are genuine.

So no, I don’t want to buy your upvotes.

How to donate items for disaster relief

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was blessed with the opportunity to serve one of the communities in North Carolina affected by the destructive flooding of hurricane Helene.

Having volunteered at one of the distributions centers, I saw firsthand the donation and distribution of items for hurricane Helene relief. I thought I would share my notes on some things I learned, both for others and for my own future reference.

When Donating Things

In the weeks following after people’s homes were destroyed by the flooding, there was a serious need for food and clothing. Thus, when donating, try to prioritize food and clothing over other items.

Clothing:

Try to think practically. Better to donate boots and shirts than high heels and princess dresses. :)
It is better to donate new items, but if you donate gently used items, mark the sizes and put them in plastic bags.
Remove the barcode from any new items.

Other Items:

Trash bags are used for so many things during distribution, cleanup, etc. Is there a such thing as having too many, especially in a disaster relief zone?
While plastic bags or bins with portioned snacks and toys is a wonderful idea, it is best to make sure that you do it in such a way that is useful for distribution. It might be best to send them along with someone you know will be able to get them directly to people.

Based on what I seen in terms of what people needed, if you think practically when donating you’ll be a really great blessing.

On behalf of those who were affected by the hurricane, thank you to all who donated. You have made a difference in the lives of these people, and I’m sure they won’t soon forget it.

Reasons to be thankful

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always remembered the story I heard of a girl who was a surfer, but had a tragic encounter with a shark. She was left with only one usable arm and felt like giving up.

Then someone showed her a picture of someone with no arms at all. Seeing that gave her a new perspective and the determination to continue.

We ought to be thankful for what we do have because:

We ought to be thankful for all Yahweh has provided for us
There is nearly always someone who has it worse

It is only when we focus on ourselves and what we do not have that we get depressed.

Too often we can feel self-pity for ourselves and make ourselves out to be a victim instead of seeing the blessings all around us.

When we are thankful even in the midst of trials, we often see even more blessings.

Thankfulness is the way to live!

On correction

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Harsh discipline is for him who forsakes the way, And he who hates correction will die.

Proverbs 15:10 NKJV

At first glance, this proverb seems a little harsh. But make no mistake, receiving correction really is a life or death thing.

Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, But he who hates correction is stupid.

Proverbs 12:1 NKJV

Why is correction so important? Because without it, we are left to our own devices, our own thoughts, our own sinful nature.

Not always, but a lot of the time, the people that correct you, that tell you things that you may not want to hear, are the people who truly care about you. Red flags should come up if someone never tells you anything you don’t want to hear.

I personally feel like, out of all the attributes that a person could have, being teachable and willing to be corrected is at the top for admirable character traits.

There are few that have the humility and patience to be corrected and calmly consider the correction rather than instantly get angry or offended.

I admire those who humbly accept and calmly listen to correction and criticism. It is a hard thing for me to do.

Indeed, we see in our world that people continue to grow hostile towards any correction on a logical basis, let alone on a moral or Scriptural basis.

Rather than listen to the truth or reason, many try to stomp it out, calling it “hate” and unloving.

Despite how love is commonly defined, love is not giving you everything you want and never telling you something you don’t want to hear. Love tells you the truth and says “no” because it is for your benefit.

I was once sharing with a gentleman who had asked me some questions about the Bible and a young teenage girl overheard us talking. As we were talking, she suddenly stated that she didn’t believe in the Bible because her uncle told her the Bible says that the sin she was doing was morally wrong.

We resumed our conversation so sadly, I didn’t have the chance to talk to her. But then maybe it wasn’t Yahweh’s time to share the truth with her then. In any case, what she said stuck with me, and it grieves me to think about it.

She rejected the Bible simply because it gave correction to those doing a particular sin that she happened to be (happily) involved in.

Going back home that night, it grieved me.

All I could think about was, “Why didn’t she ever think to ask or try to understand WHY Yahweh says it is a sin?”

If she did (which I pray she has or does), she would see that it was out of love that Yahweh in the Bible says, “No, don’t do that.”

When we see Yahweh as the loving, caring father that He is, we see all that He has done and continues to do for us even though we don’t deserve it. Then, when we look at what He tells us in Scripture, it all makes sense.

He tells us “don’t do this” and “do this” because He has our best interest in mind.

He sees the beginning to the end, and knows what is best for us, just like a good father.

Even horrible things that happen to us because of our wrong decisions, He can use for good to accomplish His will in our lives in the end.

Unfortunately, many grow up in broken families and gain a mistrust of authority figures, particularly fathers.

I sympathize with those who have because it is harder to see Yahweh as a good heavenly father when it has not been modeled to them by their earthly father.

The solution is to let Yahushua take our burdens and be wiped clean from every stain, receive our heavenly father’s love and walk in the good way that He shows us in His word.

And yes, receive correction. :)

If you’ve noticed this is not the first time I’ve written about correction, you would be correct. It is a topic I study and think about a lot.

True peace

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When we proclaim the need to repent from sin and turn to the Messiah Yahushua for forgiveness, many take it that we are preaching “hate”.

However, what we are preaching is true peace.

Everyone is looking for peace, but for one reason or another dismiss where true peace can be found.

The world does not have true peace because it is at enmity with (against) Yahweh.

You cannot have true peace, nor understand it when you reject where true peace comes from.

“There is no peace,” says Yahweh, “for the wicked.” (Isaiah 48:22)

Indeed, there is no peace when you are not at peace with the Creator of all things.

That is why we proclaim repentance and faith in the Messiah. We are pointing to the only One in whom peace can be found: the Prince of Peace.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of Yahweh. (Matthew 5:9)

Holding a fence

Sat, 13 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Now and then, I come back to this video that illustrates just how much holding offense by not forgiving others is just like “holding a fence.” Literally.

The fence hinders our relationships and keeps us from connecting with others. Most importantly, it keeps us from Yahweh.

Until we truly forgive, that fence remains.

Let’s not hold a fence anymore.

Videography location permit tips

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The past week I’ve been going through the process of applying for a location permit to film a project at a public location. I thought I’d share 4 things I learned from this (rather trying) process.

1. Make Your Plans Early and Detailed

Many commissioners will want to know specifics of the exact dates, time-ranges, and filming activities for each location. The more locations, the more difficult and lengthy it will likely be, particularly if any fall under different municipalities.

Plan, plan, plan, and then plan some more.

Have a good idea of what locations are essential and which ones are not, in case you are forced to eliminate.

Be clear and detailed when you submit your application.

2. Submit Your Application Early

Film commissions advise submitting at least a week or two in advance, because it can take 3 business days for approval after they submit the request.

Do not get confused into thinking that a week = 7 days when it comes to counting business days.

On my end, learning about the opportunity to film this project on location was a little last-minute. However, had I submitted the permit application very soon after booking our plane tickets instead of waiting a few days, it likely would have saved having to move the schedule forward.

I submitted the application 6 business days in advance, but working out the details with the commissioner took all of those days.

So, submit well in advance: a month before your first planned shoot day. You will be glad you had the extra time to work out any issues.

3. Prepare to Be Flexible

We could not get the filming schedule days we had originally planned when I first submitted the application. We were also unable to get some of the times and locations that we had planned.

Thankfully, in our case, we did have a day of wiggle-room to be flexible. Unfortunately, even that was not enough.

Leave room in your plans for change and the possibility of not being able to get the permit at all.

4. Work with the Commissioner

Not all locations will have a film commission, but if they do, take advantage of their advice, resources, and assistance to “jump through the hoops”.

With all this in mind, I’ll certainly (try) to be better prepared myself next time I need to apply for a location permit.

I hope this helps you to be prepared when applying for your filming permits as well!

Holding back

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Cain’s first sin was holding back. Do we hold anything back from Yahweh? Do we hold on to a part of us for ourselves instead of surrendering all to the will of Yahweh?

We should not aspire to be great, we should aspire to be greatly used by Yahweh.

No doubt, Yahweh can and will use even people who are not submitted to His will for his good purposes. We see examples of this in Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar. However, how much better it is to be used as a willing vessel!

I don’t want to hold anything back.

Imitating the original assembly

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I was reading an old book on the history of the church. I noticed that the assemblies (churches) throughout history all tried to model the apostolic assembly found in the book of Acts.

So why do we today have churches attempting to model past assemblies in history instead of the apostolic assembly? Or worse, attempting to “modernize” (secularize) or “improve” upon it in order to make it more palatable for unbelievers?

It reminds me of a point that George MacDonald brought out in one of his books.

Paraphrasing his point in my own words:

The light from the moon is secondhand, and is never as bright as the sun. So is the person who only ever listens to what others tell him of Scripture, rather than going to the Father of lights, Yahweh, to reveal it. If we go to Him to receive the light, how bright our light will be!

A copy of a copy cannot be as good as copying the original directly. We ought to copy the original source.

It is true that Paul said, “Imitate me…” in 1 Corinthians 11:1, but it is what he said afterward that makes the difference. “…just as I imitate Messiah”.

Imitate Yahushua, and yes, what you see of Yahushua in others.

That would include imitating what Yahushua established through the disciples for the assembly.

How does that actually look in a practical sense? I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I’m certain we can agree that welcoming the world to change the church isn’t the answer. The assembly of believers should be impacting the world with the good news, not catering to carnality of the world.

I’d also submit that looking at the apostolic assembly and how Yahushua and his disciples lived is a better starting point than looking to church fathers for the answers.

Contrary to popular belief, declining church attendance may not be a bad sign after all.

To quote what I once read in a forum and thought was a great perspective:

Before God can raise up a true revival He must let “religion” die.

It was religion that dragged Jesus to the Cross.

Satan seeps in and over time and finds ways to transform established churches, churches that began well, into dead none breathing entities. Organizations that hold a claim to their past glory according to their founding years.

I have said many times that science was the study of how God did things.The problem with mankind is people get a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of understanding and they get puffed up with the yeast of knowledge never acknowledging the truth.

Romans 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Remember the parable that Lord Jesus told of the wheat and the tares? This what we see happening in the Church, but you need the discernment of the Holy Spirit to understand that some in the Church are wheat, and some are tares. That is why it looks like some are leaving the faith.

I regret that I didn’t also save the name of the person who wrote this. Sorry and thank you to the author.

Perhaps (and I pray it is so), this is just the beginning of a revival of truth: a return to the original assembly and the good news of Yahushua the Messiah.

Importance of correction

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A few years ago, I watched a series of good quality interviews with people who were successful in their art careers. Most of them were 2D or 3D artists, but a few were filmmakers and animators as well.

I am not really sure why I watched them except for the fact that I was to gain more about this lesson I am about to share (and how to film professional interviews, possibly…).

I wasn’t too much into most of those areas of art at the time, even though I did work in 3D with Blender for a few years.

Still, I found it fascinating to hear what they had to say, especially concerning receiving correction.

These individuals (at least the majority of them) were not believers, as far as I could tell, sadly, yet they all seemed to echo this one truth:

Love correction as hard as it is to receive sometimes.

Every single one of them said the same thing: that correction, constructive feedback from others, is THE thing that you must have in order to improve whatever you’re doing (art in their case). Some of them even went in depth about the fact that though it can be really hard to receive, correction only makes you better. It shows you where you’re lacking in your skill and what you need to improve.

As I listened to those interviews, and they repeated the same thing, I thought, “Wow, now if only they would take that principle (which some of them have obviously a good hold on) and apply it to their life spiritually.” And oh, I pray that Yahweh opens their eyes and each one of them does that!

If those people who really don’t know anything about Yahweh or His Word can grasp this truth (at least partially), then, as believers in Messiah with the power of His Holy Spirit, we should just run with it, understand this, and apply it to our daily lives.

How good are we at receiving constructive correction from someone? It is very important that we do receive correction from others as it can make us better, turn us in the right direction and (overall) make us wise.

Now, yes, I didn’t have to hear this echoed by a bunch of people in the world to realize it. I also don’t recommend listening to those interviews just to gain that (hence the reason I didn’t link to them here…). However, I believe there is an excellent lesson here.

You see, they realized how important correction was, and they knew that if they wanted to improve their skills, they needed someone to come along and show them their mistakes (put bluntly…).

Why don’t we apply that to our lives in general? When someone corrects us from Yahweh’s Word and shows us our mistakes, why do we not receive the correction gladly? (I am speaking from experience here…and I am not just talking about other people but myself also…)

The problem is that we’re prideful creatures by human nature. We don’t want to be “told what to do” and what we’re doing wrong in our lives.

Sadly, man decides to go his own way (opposite of Yahweh), following after our natural, fleshly, carnal nature that just doesn’t want to die, period! Death, both spiritually and physically, results with eternal separation from Yahweh as the end of it.

It doesn’t have to be that way for you and I, though…

Yahweh gave us His Word, the Bible, to show us the right way to walk; how to walk in the true way of love, but by default we reject it. It is only when Yahweh opens our eyes to see the truth and we make the decision to give up our ways (which are evil, sinful and wicked) and walk in His ways (which are righteous, pure and Holy) that we are really open to correction from others and Yahweh Himself.

It is then that we realize that correction is THE thing we need to grow in faith and we earnestly desire it from others (especially those who are wiser than us).

For whom Yahweh loveth He correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

Proverbs 3:12

Yahweh loves those He corrects —so we should desire it from Him knowing that!

Also, Yahweh has given us the perfect example of how to walk out our lives through the example of Yahushua the Messiah. It is by looking at how He lived His life on the earth that we can correct ourselves whether we are truly walking in love and righteousness as He did.

A new format

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For a long time I’ve felt constrained by the fact that often I don’t write enough of something to become a proper post on my main website.

Now, that changes with this format of a “microblog”.

However, that doesn’t mean I don’t expect this to have longer writings or that I’m going to spend any less effort on them. I’m just not going to feel constrained to write a certain minimum length.

Instead, I can focus on the value of what I’m writing. Sometimes not a lot needs to be said.

I can already see this will be a good thing. :)

Note: I’ve moved a few of the posts from the main website to here as I think they better fit here than there.

Too busy?

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Are we too busy sometimes?

I find myself having to remind myself of the big picture.

What you’re becoming is more important than what you’re doing right now.

Life is a journey, not a destination. Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, puts us through the day-to-day doings to mold and sculpt us into the people He wants us to become. It can be easy to rush through the days just trying to get stuff done. But that’s just going through the motions.

As a man especially, there is the temptation to make work and/or things an idol. We should work and gather resources for our families and for building Yahweh’s kingdom, not to glorify ourselves and build our own kingdom.

Yahweh wants us to be. He wants us to slow down and see what is really important in life.

I need to not be too busy for the things that matter. My relationship with Yahweh and others is what matters. Most everything else is either a tool that can be used for that purpose, or a distraction.

On writing

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Something everyone writing and posting online knows:

Writing and sharing publicly online is intimidating and a little awkward, especially at first.

I’ve been posting for almost a couple of years now, but I still hesitate every time I start to write.

However, even the handful of posts I’ve written thus far have been helpful in my personal development and in improving my writing (one of my goals for writing posts in the first place).

I thought I would write on why I write posts and my struggles with it.

Let’s see how this goes.

My Experiences

Hesitations

For a long time I had hesitations that kept me from beginning to write and share it publicly. I felt like I didn’t know anything (and I still don’t) worth sharing.

Well, the reality is that everyone has something that Yahweh has given to them to share. If writing posts online is the means of sharing that, then we just need to be a willing vessel that Yahweh can use.

We ought to also realize that writing about something doesn’t mean you know everything about the topic, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you know every-thing (despite what some may think).

I also don’t believe you have to come across as anything but sharing your thoughts and experiences. It’s okay to say you’re still learning and an open to correction. It’s okay to say you don’t know.

First Steps

I published my first post on a different website almost 4 years ago. It is no longer available online now, but it was an important step for me. Between then and the time when I started writing and posting on this website was 2 years.

Since then I have posted quite infrequently, but now I look back on what I wrote and see the progress.

I sometimes cringe, but I realize that its part of learning.

Struggles

I’m still working on how to articulate things in such a way that doesn’t use “I” every sentence.

Something I really like about my website is I don’t have to feel the pressure to say or do anything particular. Thankfully, (at least right now) I have the liberty to speak my mind. Also, since it’s my own website, there isn’t an algorithm deciding which posts you see.

Sometimes, though, I forget that and crawl back into “a shell”.

Why I Write

It helps to know the why whenever you’re doing something.

Here’s mine:

1. I write posts because I want to share things that have helped me or just to relate something I find interesting which might interest others.

2. I’d like to improve my writing.

On the second point, it’s true that there is more to getting better at writing than just the act of writing, but sitting down and writing is still the first step.

For each post, I try to be intentional and focus on improving something about my writing.

This time I’m trying to be more loose and add more variety. Feel free to let me know if I succeeded.

Deciding What to Write

Many people wonder, “Well, what should I write?”.

I had the same question until I realized that it goes back to your why.

Me telling you what to write would be pointless because it assumes that either A) you have the same motives and experiences as I do, or B) I’m your teacher giving you an assignment. :)

What I’ve found is that for me, the things that I can most easily write about are the ideas that have moved or deeply affected me in some way. Those that made me feel something. Sometimes it is what someone said, or what Yahweh showed me, or questions and thoughts I’ve thought about which spark the idea for a post.

I personally dislike the idea of creating “content” just-for-the-sake-of-it. The internet and life in general already have enough distractions that we don’t need more fluff.

The saying, “the pen is mightier than the sword” is good, but one that is even better is “The wise man knows when to pick the pen up”.

Originally published at noahrahm.com/posts/on-writing/

The "Law" of no-s and yes-es

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve observed what could be called the “Law of No-s and Yes-es”.

If you say Yes to something now, it usually means saying No to something later. It doesn’t matter whether it is making a purchase or adding a new task to your schedule.

Ultimately, what you say “Yes” or “No” to will determine the course of your life. It’s called making a decision.

Although some people may try to avoid it via debt or overworking, it is consistent: Unlike Yahweh our Heavenly Father, we are finite in our time and resources. Thus, we must make decisions. We must eventually say “No” to something and close the door in our lives, as hard as that can be sometimes.

In reality, we are constantly making decisions all the time. Unless we did, we would not be able to accomplish much.

What we decide usually comes down to what is most important to us; that is, what we value most.

It is said that your life is made up of a series of decisions. Another way of saying it might be that your life is made up of what you said Yes or No to.

It seems to me that Yahweh caused it to be like this to test us.

Will we put Him first in our lives? Will we spend our time building His Kingdom, or just our own?

We are all given many decisions to make? How will we choose? What will we say Yes to? What will we say No to?

Originally published at noahrahm.com/posts/law-of-nos-and-yeses/

The Journey Behind Velocity Lapse (Part 5)

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the 5th post in a series of “dev-log” style posts sharing my journey creating Velocity Lapse, a time-lapse app for Android.

You can read the previous posts to get context up to this point: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below.

Capture view redesign

In preparation for upcoming additions and fixes, I redesigned the capture view interface to better fit the necessary controls and make it easier to set and reset values.

Towards a stable app

My top priority at this point was working toward stability.

As mentioned in the last post, the Google Play console showed that the user perceived crash rate was around 6-7% (~8% at the peak).

Of the 7-8%, the export to video crash impacted the most users. Thus, I specifically prioritized getting it resolved.

Previously, I had tried a number of “guesses” to fix the issue without success. This time, I decided to tackle it straight on rather than make a guess and wait for feedback from users.

I found an online real device testing cloud service with enough free minutes that I could test and debug Velocity Lapse on a Galaxy A03 core device. The Galaxy A03 core was one of the devices that crashed consistently, so I knew that would be my best chance of discovering the issue.

It was painfully slow working with a device through the internet, but I was able to finally fix the crashing issue.

The issue turned out to be that certain devices don’t support hardware encoding and needed to be configured to use software encoding instead.

Why it wouldn’t automatically switch when necessary, I don’t know. I also wonder why any of the MediaCodec examples I’d seen online didn’t include this (clearly) vital code gymnastics?

It was actually a simple problem, but hard to know without seeing the logs produced by the app crashing in debug mode.

As a result of fixing that issue, the user perceived crash rate dropped from around 6-8% to 1.7% —a major improvement.

Targeting Android 13

August 31st, 2023 was the deadline to update apps to target SDK 33 (Android 13) on Google Play.

A few weeks ahead of the deadline I released an update that targeted SDK 33 and made some other changes.

Soon after, I received a number of reports that there was an error message popping up when creating a new time lapse which made the app useless for new users.

Frustratingly, like many issues on Android, the error only occurred on certain devices, none of which I had access to. It also didn’t show in any Android emulators. Thankfully, I searched the Flurry analytics dashboard for the error code and was able to locate the full stack trace in the console.

It ended up being an issue with a race condition due to the new storage permission not being called in time and some depreciated camera methods. I quickly resolved the issues and submitted an update, but unfortunately not soon enough before there was a drop off in installs.

I also updated to the latest Flutter SDK and migrated to Material 3 widgets since the Flutter team would depreciate Material 2 in an upcoming release.

This confirmed in my mind how important app analytics and crash reporting can be for resolving issues.

Multiple camera lens support

For the first half of the year, switching between the available camera lenses had been in the “top most requested features” list.

I was happy to roll out support for switching between the available camera lenses, as a Pro feature.

Due to Android software/hardware limitations, not every secondary lens supports manual camera controls. However, just having the option to use an ultra-wide lens for a particular time-lapse shot, for example, opens up a lot of creative possibilities.

Targeting Android 14

Though Android 14 was still in beta at this point, I decided to update the codebase for Android 14 in anticipation of the full roll out.

Android 14 introduced a few breaking features that affected Velocity Lapse, but thankfully not that many.

I needed to wait until Flutter 3.16 to support the predictive back gesture, but I wasn’t too thrilled at the changes I’d need to make anyway.

Since everything appeared to be working well on the Android 14 emulators, I decided to just go ahead and target SDK 34.

Unfortunately, none of my physical Android devices had the Android 14 beta. So technically It wasn’t tested properly.

I’ll say that this isn’t something I would do if Velocity Lapse didn’t carry the “early access beta” tag. But, since it did I was okay with it.

Frustrations with Foreground services

Due to the new Android 14 requirements for foreground service camera permissions, I updated to include the new foreground service declarations. If you’re not aware, the foreground service allows Velocity Lapse to continue capturing even with the screen shut off. This is a pretty important feature.

At first Google Play accepted, but then a month or two later rejected it with a policy violation. The email basically said to remove the foreground service and migrate to the WorkManager APIs.

However, after looking at the WorkManager API documentation, I determined that it would likely still require a foreground service via the WorkManager long running task.

So I appealed (twice) to hopefully get someone to take a closer look or advise. Soon after, I noticed that the policy violation disappeared from Google Play Console. However, as of this writing, I have yet to hear the result via email.

A few milestones

Since the last post, there were a few milestones I thought I’d share:

The YouTube channel crossed 100 subscribers and Velocity Lapse crossed 50,000 downloads on Google Play.

Switching from Flurry to Embrace.io.

I appreciated Flurry analytics and the fact that it was a free service. However, Flurry was more of an analytics service than a crash reporting and logging service.

At least at this point, for Velocity Lapse, I prioritized logs and information about crash reports over analytics. So, the fact that Flurry was limited in what it could do for crash reporting and logging caused me to look for an alternative.

I came across Embrace.io which fit precisely what I needed: accurate logging, sessions, and crash reports.

Thankfully, they had a free tier as I certainly could not afford to pay for it at this point. Integration was fairly straightforward and it greatly improved my debugging experience.

With Embrace, sessions are shown in a timeline with context and breadcrumbs to help you see when the issue happened.

This alone was much better than Flurry, which gives only the exception, and behind a tab at that. Quite frankly, I was able to actually get enough context to solve a bunch of bugs right away.

Switching services meant I needed to update the privacy policy since Embrace collects a bit more data.

However, I think the switch was worth it since it has since greatly helped in continuing to work towards a stable app.

As it would turn out, soon after I had completed the migration to Embrace.io, Flurry sent an email stating that they would be sunsetting the service in 2024.

So, I would have had to migrate to another service anyway.

The value of Velocity Lapse

In November, I raised price of Velocity Lapse Pro to $11.99 USD.

I’ll admit that I have a certain amount of cautiousness when it comes to pricing products. The in-app purchase for Velocity Lapse Pro hasn’t been different.

Although I’ve had people suggest that I should be charging more, I’ve committed to slowly raised the price as I personally see the value increase with the approaching of Velocity Lapse being a more feature-complete.

Perhaps I’m making a mistake there, especially since the purchase is a one-time, lifetime upgrade. However, I’d personally rather choose to err on the side of charging what I believe to be fair for the value it provides.

I’m really happy that people see value in purchasing Velocity Lapse Pro. It hasn’t been easy and the validation of actual buyers paying for your product is probably the best you can get.

If you’re reading this and you’ve purchased Velocity Lapse Pro, please accept my thanks for your support.

Improvements in v0.7.0

In the v0.7.0 release, I added better switching between internal and SD card storage for projects.

As a nice touch and feature I’d had on the roadmap for a while, I implemented a storage indicator that showed how much space was left on the selected storage type. It doubles as the button to switch storage types. This has become one of my favorite features because it just looks and works so nicely.

To make room for the new storage switcher and indicator, I also moved the video gallery to its own tab. Having the gallery in its own tab was not only more fitting, but actually accessible to the thumb.

The export video encoder was now more resilient to unexpected images. It would skip any invalid images and cancel the export if certain parameters aren’t correct. Much better than crashing.

Researching and revisiting

During this time I did some research to attain the best setup for a flexible way to set the time-lapse settings and a simple to understand scheduling flow.

My concept was inspired by a few of the time-lapse interval timer interfaces I’d seen.

It centers around the ability to set the mode for interval and duration. The interval could be set by adjusting the length of time to capture, final video duration, or by setting the interval directly.

Although I had originally started with a similar concept way back in the very first prototypes of Velocity Lapse a year ago, I decided to revisit the concept with more experience and user feedback to guide me this time.

For the scheduling, it seemed that I would likely need a way to keep the app awake for hours until the alarm went off. Haven’t worked out the details on that yet.

New community forum

On Nov. 19th, 2023 I setup the community forum using Flarum, an open-source forum platform. The next day, I officially launched the forum and promoted it on the Velocity Lapse Instagram and YouTube accounts.

The Instagram post to announce the forum

It is a small experiment whether there is any use for a forum dedicated to mobile time-lapse photography. Whether it becomes anything in that regard, we’ll have to see. Otherwise, it can serve as a place for Velocity Lapse users.

Fixing the export ANR

During this time, I received a number of reports of Velocity Lapse freezing and causing ANR errors at the 18 frame during export. From the various reports, I was able to pinpoint the issue as affecting Pixel devices running Android 14.

To fix the issue, I decided to do a full re-write of the video export encoder. This time I made sure to use Kotlin’s coroutines properly and not do any heavy processing in the UI thread.

Much like before, taking the time to re-write and re-structure the encoder had additional benefits. The new structure enabled me to setup for supporting video effects and H.265 video for inclusion in some future update.

The re-write fixed the ANR issue and eliminated other issues with the export. Needless to say, releasing v0.7.1 with the new export engine was quite a relief.

Moving to Stacked Architecture

Until this point I had been using my own state management system based on Flutter’s setState. As the Flutter websites says, “You’d be surprised how far you can get with just a StatefulWidget”.

Although I think the codebase was arguably decent for using my own setup, it failed to fully separate UI and logic. The lack of “separation of concerns” introduced some tricky bugs and was becoming a maintenance burden, especially in the code-heavy areas of the app.

Moving forward I knew I needed a state management solution that was consistent, tested, and proven.

I looked into Provider, Riverpod, and Bloc —three of the most popular state management libraries. After reviewing documentation and examples for each, I liked the simplicity of Provider.

Then I came across Stacked, a modern, MVVM Flutter state management system with separation of concerns and dependency injection.

After not a little agonizing (choosing state management is no small thing) and going back and forth between Stacked, Riverpod, and Provider, I decided to go with Stacked.

At first using Stacked left me a bit nervous since it uses code generation.

Velocity Lapse fits in the category of a complex app, with many bottom sheets, dialogs, and views with varying levels of light to heavy logic. So, naturally certain portions of the codebase were tricky to re-implement while learning the Stacked MVVM pattern.

Thanks to the documentation, over time I grasped Stacked MVVM and what the code-generating CLI actually did.

Once I grasped the concepts, It was basically just putting in the work to re-write the Velocity Lapse codebase with Stacked architecture. It involved many hours of a (rather boring) loop of comparing then typing, as well as copy-pasting wherever possible.

In the end, the codebase was more consistent, maintainable, and SOLID. I was also able to catch a number of bugs along the way, which resulted in more stable codebase overall.

v0.8.0: Photolapse mode and more

In addition to a whole new project architecture, v0.8.0 included a lot of other sweeping improvements, making it one of the most “changed” updates to this point. I overhauled and renamed Manual Capture mode to Photolapse mode. The new Photolapse mode had a more streamlined interface with new grid styles, a movable marker, and camera exposure and lenses control.

Due to all these changes, a couple bugs that I didn’t catch in testing slipped into the update.

The severity of one bug with storage made the app useless for the majority of users that would update. Therefore, I worked till early in the morning to come up with fix and get another update out, hoping I could minimize the number of users affected.

The v0.8.x series

Over the v0.8.x series of releases, major improvements were made in every aspect of Velocity Lapse.

Some long-standing issues, like capture lag, and a regression where turning off the screen while capturing didn’t work, were fixed.

More timestamp options, torch control, and camera white balance control were just a few of the new features added to make this series of releases standout in terms of progress.

Automating releases

For 50+ versions, for each new release I went through the steps to build, upload, and update by hand. Needless to say, this was tedious and took time away from actual development.

Fastlane was an obvious choice for automating building and deployment. Implementing the script was very straightforward and saved me at least 10 minutes each release.

Hacker Noon startup of the year results

Late January, I received an email from Hackernoon saying that Velocity Lapse won the Startup of the Year 2023 in Ava, MO.

Velocity Lapse received 42 votes total, but it was also the only nominated startup in Ava, MO. Does that count?

Well, it seems that it did. I was pleasantly surprised to read that they were giving me the prizes for winning Startup of the Year 2023 in Ava, MO.

The prizes for winning were an NFT award, a Tech Company NewsPage on Hackernoon, and .Tech Domain for life. The tech domain excited me the most.

For those that want to see it, here’s the Tech Company NewsPage for Velocity Lapse.

So, thank you Hackernoon, .Tech domains, and all those that voted for Velocity Lapse.

Reflecting on releasing

At this point (the time of this writing), I’m glad that I’ve waited to fully launch Velocity Lapse into stable. It has given me time to iron out some major issues and fill in some of the missing feature gaps.

However, in early 2024, something that had been in the back of my mind for a while came to my attention. Although Velocity Lapse is on the Open Testing (beta) channel, many users treat it as stable.

I also realized that having thousands of active users updating the app from the “bleeding edge” of development isn’t the best idea. While Velocity Lapse is much more stable now than ever, its not without issues.

My habit was to roll out at 100% when deploying updates to make sure bug fixes get to everyone. However, because it hadn’t been widely tested yet, an update could break things for existing users.

Ideally, there should be stable releases for those that want the most stability and betas for those that want to opt-in to testing.

It probably isn’t fair to users, especially that have purchased Pro, for every update to potentially break. Although it has been my commitment to provide support and try to resolve every instance of breaking, I hope that I have not failed in my attempts to do so.

Which leads me to a good question…

Are we there yet?

During the past year, I had come across the idea of building a MLP rather than an MVP.

MVP stands for a Minimum Viable Project
MLP stands for a Minimum Lovable Project

I think there is a good point in that. We should seek to build projects to a minimal point at which they are not just useful but truly provide a great user experience.

Although Velocity Lapse is certainly past an MVP, has it reached MLP state yet?

To reiterate, I don’t regret holding off releasing fully until now. However, all things considered, its looking favorable for releasing sometime in the near future.

Releasing something is a huge step. It always is. It’s not going to be perfect, but it’s a necessary step to continue the next part of the journey.

If you’ve made it this far in reading (5 posts!), you may have been wondering a few things:

“Why a journey?”

The journey has to do with going from idea to launching a fully functional time-lapse app for Android. It has been quite a journey of learning and growth for me, at the very least.

Part of the reason I’m writing this dev-log is to be an inspiration to others to show the ups and the downs, the failures and successes, the struggle and the reality of building a complex app yourself (also known as indie app development). It certainly hasn’t been easy.

I think of what someone once said:

“Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.”

While it is true that one needs to work in order to see results, there are many things that you cannot control. And so I credit any success of Velocity Lapse to our Heavenly Father’s grace and the support of family, friends, and users. To have the idea, the time, and abilities to be able to learn, experiment, and work on Velocity Lapse for the past year and a half so far has been a blessing.

The journey continues

Thank you for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and have gained something from this journey so far. I know I sure have!

If you have a suggestion, a comment, or advice, relating either to the app or this post, I’d love to hear what you have to share either in the comments below or via email.

Read the next part of the journey in part 6 of this series.

Food for thought on slang

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“What Does It Mean?”

One word in particular I’ve always wondered about is “sucks,” specifically when used in the phrase, “that sucks.” I’ve never understood what it actually meant when people would say, “That sucks.”

Whenever I heard it, I made a mental note to look it up, but I hadn’t actually remembered to do so until recently.

Looking It Up

According to the US Dictionary:

The phrase “that sucks” has its roots in American English slang from the 20th century. It’s an offshoot of older slang where “suck” was used as a term of derision or insult. Later on, it evolved into a more general expression of dissatisfaction or empathy for an unfortunate situation.

Some dictionaries say it’s “rude slang,” while others (like this one) take a slightly different stance. Indeed, it’s at least derived from a slang term.

It appears that there’s not a clear consensus on whether or not the phrase is considered rude, but it’s definitely not considered appropriate in professional or non-casual settings.

Based on the origin, the phrase does seem ruder and insulting than empathetic.

A Broader Question

After looking into that, I had a broader question.

“Would it be correct to put slang into the same category as swearing and profanity?”

To answer that, I first needed to understand what slang is.

With some research, I found that because slang varies from culture to culture and changes from generation to generation, it can be hard to pin down exactly how to define it. Some people generally define slang as any informal speech, while others have a tighter definition (sounds familiar, right?).

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition, defines slang as:

noun A kind of language occurring chiefly in casual and playful speech, made up typically of coinages and figures of speech that are deliberately used in place of standard terms for added raciness, humor, irreverence, or other effect.

Slang as Euphemisms for Cursing

Most believers (if they knew) would probably agree that if the slang term is simply a euphemism for cursing or using our Heavenly Father’s name in an inappropriate way, then it would be wrong to use it.

A euphemism is using a word that doesn’t sound as bad as the original word, but the meaning is the same. I won’t give examples here, but suffice it to say that there is no real difference between using a curse word and a euphemism for it since the intent is basically the same.

Keeping that in mind, what about other slang?

Other Slang

It’s wise to think about our wording because our words are important. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue. (Proverbs 18:21a).

Do we build people up and tear people down through the words we use?

The Biblical standard is that we let no corrupt word proceed out of our mouth, “but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Ephesians 4:29)

In essence, we should say what is going to build someone up and show love to them.

The answer to my question largely depends on the definition you use to define “slang,” as well as what you consider “edifying”.

I’m not sure whether slang (that is not a euphemism for cursing) can 100% be put into the same category as swearing and profanity.

However, personally, I think it becomes a little clearer if we consider that the purpose for any speech should be edification.

If the goal of our speech is edification, then any type of speech that isn’t edifying probably isn’t something appropriate for a believer to include in their speech. I’m not convinced that the above definition of slang indicates that it would be.

I have come across various articles bringing up some good points about benefits of knowing slang. While I agree that it can be useful for culture and understanding those that do use it, that might be the extent of it.

I’ve noticed that using slang communicates a less serious composure and one that might not always be fitting for a believer.

I think about the fact that, as believers, we are to be representatives of Yahushua, our Savior, to the world.

If we are deliberately adding “racy, irreverent, or rude” words to our speech, are we necessarily being a good witness?

Originally published at noahrahm.com/posts/food-for-thought-on-slang/

Timeline of a typical creative project

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I once saw a timeline hanging on the wall in an artist’s studio. The timeline was written in chalkboard fashion yet neatly framed as if to betray the importance of its message to the artist.

The title read, “The Timeline of a Typical Project”.

I stopped to read it and thought it was the best illustration of the creative process I’ve ever seen.

Thus, it could just as appropriately have been entitled “Timeline of a Typical Creative Project”.

I created my own version of the timeline to remind myself of an important fact about working on any project (especially a creative one).

In almost any creative process, there is a point early on where what you’ve done just looks plain ugly. It’s the ugly stage when the voice in your head says to throw it out and restart.

However, if you can push through the early, ugly stage and continue the process, you’ll often find ways to refine your work later in the process to be better. Often, you’ll find that it’s not as bad as you first thought.

Timeline of a typical creative project

The typical creative project goes something like this:

At the beginning, we’re excited to get our ideas out of our head. We start to put ideas to pixels (or paper, or whatever) and discover that this is going to be harder to accomplish than what we originally thought.

It quickly moves from “Hmmm, this is going to be a lot of work”, to doubting what we’ve already done and possibly getting bored with the process thus far.

Finally, frustration can creep in, and we feel like giving up. Either restarting again or totally throwing out the idea altogether.

Then we think to ourselves, “On second thought, it would be good to finish this because I’ll learn something for next time.” So, we continue and make the best of our work, finding ways to improve it or hide any blemishes from earlier in the process.

In the end, we look at our completed work and realize it’s not that bad after all.

One time I was working on a live design session in-person with a client.

Seeing the ideas I was coming up with early in the process, the client seemed a bit concerned that they weren’t going to match the brief. I reassured them that making “ideations” to explore design concepts was a necessary part of the process.

As the process progressed and the designs became refined, they understood that an “ugly” stage was necessary to get to the final design. In the end, they loved the design and were appreciative of my work because they saw the process to get to the final result.

You need to realize that it is just part of the creative process to have lows, especially in the early stages, where everything inside screams to restart because your work isn’t matching your expectations.

This is what people mean when they say to “trust the process”.

At the really low part of a project, you can feel as though if you just “restart clean, anew”, everything will be better. However, I haven’t found that to be the case the majority of the time.

Until you develop the experience to know when it’s actually best to restart, its good to “trust the process”, get your work past those early stages, and see where that leads you.

Even if the creative idea doesn’t end up being great, at least you’ve allowed it to go through the process, and you’ve completed something.

Mindlessly going in a loop of restarting during the ugly stage is not fun and is one of the fastest ways to get frustrated and get nowhere at the same time.

The picture of an artist or writer repeatedly restarting their work only to crinkle the paper and toss it into the overflowing trash bin is not something to aspire to for your work.

While it does illustrate the reality of sorting through many ideas to find the good one, don’t expect that mindlessly restarting every time your work doesn’t meet your expectations is going to yield something useful.

There is a balance. You could fill pages in a sketchbook with sketches of logo ideas and do so quickly to not get too attached to an idea. However, it wouldn’t be a good idea to quit on a potentially good design concept before you’ve explored the possibilities.

At least for me, once I try to transfer what looks so good in my head down to pixels on the screen or lines on paper, I have to resist the urge to nitpick it too early in the process.

The key is ultimately to be patient and not stress out, especially early in the process.

Remembering the timeline of a typical project might help…

Originally published at noahrahm.com/posts/timeline-of-creative-project/

20+ Free Resources for Digital Design

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Having a good set of resources within arm’s reach is helpful.

While there are a ton of really great paid design services and resources that can make life a lot easier, the focus of this list is on the best free resources that I’ve personally collected over time. Many of these I’ve been using for years for my own design work.

Whether you’re a web, app, UI, UX designer, or none of the above, there’s likely at least a few things here you could consider adding to your toolkit.

Special thanks to all the individuals and companies that made these resources available for designers like us to use free of charge!

Typography

FontJoy in action. Yes, sometimes it comes up with wild combinations…

FontJoy is a really nice font pairing web application tool that generates font combinations with deep learning. If you know what style you’re after (and have some patience), it can come up with some nice font pairs for you to consider.

Typespiration If you’re needing some inspiration for type, you can take a look at Typespiration for some designs and guides for font combinations.

FontBase A cross-platform font manager. A very useful tool for using Google/Adobe fonts in any application.

Type Scale is a visual calculator you can use to size your typography.

Typescale

Fontsinthewild.com Sometimes you just have to see a font used in order to get inspiration to use it in your design. That is the basic premise of fontsinthewild.com, where you browse screenshots of different fonts used on sites “in the wild”.

v-fonts Experiment with variable fonts.

FontSpark is a simple tool to find different fonts.

Pair and Compare is a great way to mix and match different Google fonts to find the best combination for your design.

Looking for some good reading resources to improve your typography skills? Read Butterick’s Practical Typography and Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works. You’ll be glad you did.

Color resources

Automatic UI color palette generator is a very helpful tool for generating a full-spectrum color palette from a single color. I mainly use it when I need to quickly generate a range of grays for a UI design.

Accessible color matrix Accessibility is an important part of choosing colors for a website or app design. This accessible color matrix tool allows you to check if your color combinations conform to accessibility standards.

ihayk.github.io/scale A creative way to experiment with different color ranges.

Icon sets

Simple Icons Very useful and vast collection of 2750 SVG icons for popular brands. I haven’t found any brands I’ve ever needed to not be in the Simple Icons collection.

Phosphoricons Open-source icon family offering 6 weights: thin, light, regular, bold, fill, and duotone. Needless to say, it is a very useful and large (1,248+) collection worth bookmarking.

Phosphor icon family. Go bookmark it. It’s worth the bookmark.

Software

Lunacy is a great design tool. Being a native Windows application makes it fast and smooth to work with. Lunacy works completely offline which makes it a good alternative to Figma.

Lunacy—my (current) go-to design tool open to my logo design for Hilltop Motion.

PenPot is an open-source, web-based design and prototyping tool based on open standards.

Templates

If you need something for a specific design software, there are sites that provide free UI kits, icons, templates, mockups, style guides, illustrations, and more. My experience is that you do have to look through a lot of “okay” stuff to find the gold, though.

Sketch

SketchElements is a place to find free Sketch resources. The files can be used with either Lunacy or Sketch.

Figma

Similar to SketchElements.com above, FigmaElements offers free Figma resources.

Mockups

ls.graphics Free, high-quality mockups from ls.graphics.

MockUPhone is by far the best free resource I have discovered for generating device mockups. The site allows you to wrap your design in a variety of mobile device frames, including iPhones, iPads, Android phones, laptops, and wearables. The mockups are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, making them usable for practically any project.

Another resource for generating Android mockups is the official Android Device Art Generator.

Assets

You can generate all sorts of backgrounds with Haikei.

Both superdesigner.co and haikei.app let you generate SVG assets like backgrounds, blobs, patterns, gradients, and shapes for your designs.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this list of design resources and tools.

The Journey Behind Velocity Lapse (Part 4)

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fourth post in a series of “dev-log” posts about my personal journey and learning process of creating Velocity Lapse, a time-lapse app for Android.

You can read the previous posts, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 to get context of my journey creating Velocity Lapse up to this point.

If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below.

Continued progress

Starting in 2023, I decided to be more intentional when I work on Velocity Lapse to avoid burnout.

Slower pace

Obviously, I couldn’t continue at the same pace that I had during the first 6 months of initial development. I also couldn’t justify spending more time on it than a set reasonable amount per week. It also happened that I had other big projects for work come my way.

And so, I slowed down the pace of development.

Flurry Analytics

Ultimately, I decided that it doesn’t benefit the users for me to not have the information I need to improve the app and fix crashes. When it comes down to privacy vs. being able to fix issues quicker, I think most users would choose the latter. So I added Flurry analytics to the app.

Reviewing launch dates

You may be wondering, “Have I forgotten about the full release? When will that happen?”

Not yet stable enough

Well, at this point, I didn’t believe it was ready for an out-of-beta release.

For one thing, I had noticed that the user perceived crash rate was around 6-7%, which was over the Google Play maximum threshold.

Most of the issues were crashes during export. Not a great thing to see.

In short: Velocity Lapse just wasn’t up to production quality yet. I didn’t feel right launching to production with that much instability.

Unrealistic projections

Although I had projected an unrealistic launch date for somewhere around the end of Roman “January”, things were not favorable for that deadline.

I felt more confident setting the release date to the 7th of Roman “March”, but that did not end up happening. Even my thought that the app would be ready for full release by Spring fell through.

Part of this is that the “MVP” feature list fell prey to “scope creep”, and I underestimated the amount of time involved to implement some of the features and work through the bugs. This was a good thing, though, since it gave me more time to “flesh out” the app.

Working on the features and fixes

Early Roman February, I zeroed in on the features and fixes that were most necessary for a good user experience, working on them one by one.

Camera re-write

I began to work on creating my own custom camera package to fix some of the issues with the camera and add features like the ability to capture with the screen off, multi-lense support, and manual white balance control.

I dove into Kotlin and the Camera2 API to understand it better. Starting small, I first created a basic camera as a native Kotlin project to work out the kinks of the Camera2 API. (As of the time of this writing, this is still in the works.)

Upgrading to Flutter 3.7

Upgrading to Flutter 3.7 only required a few lines of deprecated code to be changed, which was nice as I didn’t need anything extra to work on.

A silly issue resolved

One of the export issues ended up being the result of a single-character typo. Once I corrected that, 4k export worked smoothly. To put it lightly, I was overjoyed and a little upset that such a small mistake caused so much problems.

However, that didn’t solve every issue, as I discovered that export crashed with 720p and 1080p with certain bitrates, somewhat randomly. I later mostly resolved this.

Updating the price of PRO

On Roman Feb. 5th, I raised the in-app purchase of Velocity Lapse PRO to $5.99. This turned out to be a very good decision. The app was indeed worth more than the previous $3.99, based on user feedback. Plus, it allowed me to invest in a test device to further improve Velocity Lapse.

A new test device

Until this point, I had to rely on using friends’ devices to test features that were limited to certain devices, such as 4K. However, relying on bits of time with someone else’s device was not reliable or optimal.

So I decided to look for a phone to buy which supports 4K video so I could test the full functionality of Velocity Lapse myself. Thankfully, I had made enough money from the in-app purchases at this point to reinvest.

My experience ordering from Back Market

A friend had mentioned Back Market as a place to buy refurbished electronics, so I took a look to see what they had.

Phone requirements

My requirements for the test device were:

4K video support so I could test 4K video.
A relatively new model as I didn’t want it to be too outdated for testing.
3.3mm headphone jack so that I could hook up an external mic for recording videos.

My purchase from Back Market

After looking around to see what phone model would suit my needs, I settled for a Samsung Galaxy A53 phone, which has 4K video support, and listed the other requirements in the Back Market description.

The one I chose from Back Market was a “Good” condition 128GB 5G Samsung Galaxy A53 tracfone phone.

My initial perception of Back Market wasn’t the best. I was wary of buying from Back Market as some people online said it was a scam and I hadn’t bought refurbished before. I also didn’t like how difficult it seemed to contact them. However, in the end, I decided to go for it.

Not as listed

Once I received the phone, I set it up and began using it to test. However, I didn’t realize until a day or two later that there was no 3.3mm headphone jack that was listed on Back Market (and still is at the time of this writing).

I opened a support request (which was a very confusing process), and they eventually said, “It appears that it was a listing error as in fact, this model does not contain 3.5mm jack for headphones.”

I decided to keep the phone since I didn’t have the time to deal with the hassle of returning it and re-purchasing another model.

However, at the time of this writing, I looked at their listing for the A53 (the same as the one I purchased) and it still lists the 3.3mm headphone jack. I thought they would have removed the false information by now. So, I contacted them again about it. Hopefully, they fix the listing.

Conclusion on the phone

I haven’t had any issues with the phone itself so far. Overall, ordering from Back Market was an OK experience. I’m not sure that I would buy from them again, though.

Thoughts on negative software reviews

Having received a few rather unfair reviews over the past year, I thought I would share my thoughts on negative reviews.

Please, no hit-and-run reviews

If you use software long enough, you will likely be inclined to write a bad review. I’ve done it myself more than I would have liked to. Problems will occur. Issues will arise. It’s inevitable and unavoidable in software. But please don’t be the user who does a “hit and run”.

Probably the most frustrating reviews, in my opinion, are those that say a few negative words (sometimes using profanity) without explaining the issues, and then leave no way for the developer to follow up with them. These individuals either give a fake email or delete the review so you can’t respond to their comments.

Unfortunately for the developer, it does no good because no actionable feedback is given, and they cannot ask for any either. They are left wondering, “okay, so what exactly is the problem?” It could be thousands of things.

Ultimately, these kinds of “reviews” don’t do much good, other than to vent feelings and/or frustration because they leave no way to potentially solve the issue.

Thankfully, I have only received a few of these myself thus far, but it isn’t a nice feeling.

So, please be the user who gives a review with specific, actionable criticism on what should be improved. Constructive criticism, even if it’s harsh, can be good. Hit and run negativity is not.

Updating the website (for real)

I updated the website yet again. This time I went through the hassle and took the time to write proper copy for the homepage, explaining the benefits of the app. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard since, at this point, the app had many nice features and there was user feedback to back it up.

Multiple people had commented that Velocity Lapse was “no doubt” the best time-lapse app for Android. I didn’t think it was appropriate to put that on the website…just yet, at least. :)

v0.3 and on to v0.4

To close off the 0.3.x series, I added crash reporting and implemented multi-select and delete for the editor.

For the 0.4.x series of releases, I aimed to focus on making quality-of-life improvements and fixing bugs.

Prioritizing of feature requests and fixes

Sometimes, I would get flooded with feature requests, and it started to get overwhelming. So, I adopted a methodology of prioritizing them based on:

1) Fixes that would otherwise cause a bad experience for most users.

2) Features that would improve the experience of the most users.

Basically, “high-impact” requests. Oftentimes, that means working on something else in order to fix or add something, but at least it is a little less overwhelming.

Not really MVP anymore

As of the time of this writing, I don’t think the app is really an MVP anymore. I made a second pass through most of the app’s views and functionality, rewriting and redesigning them with the feedback I’ve gathered over the last year. But that’s OK.

Ultimately, “Ideas are cheap: execution is everything”. So, having something implemented in the app is better than the idea in my head. At least then I know if it’s working out or not.

Updating the price of PRO

On May 17th, 2023, I decided to raise the price of Velocity Lapse PRO to $7.99. At this point, the app was beginning to be more fleshed out and included saving to an SD card as a PRO feature.

Flutter 3.10

Upgrading to Flutter 3.10 was very straightforward. Flutter and Dart have been amazing to work with. Although I’ve run into a few areas that are rough around the edges, overall, I couldn’t be happier with the developer experience building an app with Flutter.

Hacker Noon startup of the year nomination

At the end of Roman May, I was greeted with an email from Hacker Noon that Velocity Lapse had been nominated for Startup of the Year 2023 Ava, MO. This was a nice surprise and awfully nice of someone to do. Although it was just a nomination, the fact that Hacker Noon thought Velocity Lapse was good enough to accept it, was a pretty neat feeling. So, thanks to whoever nominated Velocity Lapse.

I posted Velocity Lapse’s Hacker Noon startup of the year 2023 nomination on Instagram

By the way, if it’s still 2023 when you’re reading this and you’d like to vote for Velocity Lapse, you can do so here. Thanks!

Big releases

Leading up to the 1-year anniversary of Velocity Lapse, I worked towards the goal of finishing off the leftover “MVP” features, adding the most requested features, and re-designing the app to be more presentable and easier to use.

v0.4.5+38

Released the first week of Roman June, v0.4.5+38 was a huge release with tons of interface improvements and additions, as well as the new editor playback feature.

v0.5.0+40 1st year anniversary release

Throughout the past year, the single most-requested feature was the ability to capture time-lapses with the screen shut off. Initially, I had a difficult time working out how to do it with Android’s security and battery limitations, but I was pleased when I was able to find a solution that worked well, just in time for the v0.5.0 1st year anniversary release.

It seemed like a fitting way to say “thank you” to all the users who shared feedback to make the app what it is.

1st year anniversary of Velocity Lapse

On 6/7/2023 I did a livestream event on YouTube, sharing a presentation of some of the background behind Velocity Lapse, the v0.5.0 features, and future plans.

Due to announcing it only the night before, practically noone knew about it. This was probably a good thing since it was my first live stream. Even though I knew there probably wouldn’t be anyone actually watching it live, I still wanted to do it to gain experience.

Overall, it went fairly well with only a few technical glitches. Certainly not a perfect presentation (or high quality audio).

I can see that I need to work on not saying “so” so much (no pun intended). I also probably didn’t need to share some of the more technical details, which would bore most people. Well, now I know for next time.

Looking back on the past year

Over the past year of development, I’ve learned a lot about entrepreneurship, app development, and marketing. I truly feel blessed that I’ve achieved a certain level of “success” already. (Success to me is impacting other people’s lives in a positive way, and showing them the love of Yahushua, our Savior, if the opportunity arises).

I’ve also been privileged to see glimpses of the impact of Velocity Lapse in the lives of others. From someone capturing time-lapses of their art to creating a time-lapse to document their house remodel to a time-lapse filmmaker capturing the beauty of creation. It is a bit mind-boggling that people, literally “on the other side of the world”, use the app.

Statistics

For the data/stats people around, I imagine you’ve been holding your breath to hear the stats. Well, here they are.

Google Play

Total downloads since first public on Google Play (since Aug. 2022): 21,200+
Total current installs: 4,700+

Development

Amount of individually logged code changes (commits): 780
Number of closed issues: 85
Development time: A lot. ;)

Revenue

Gross revenue since I added Velocity Lapse PRO (since Oct. 2022): ~$700

Note: I’m not giving exact numbers and rounding them to an even amount.

Conclusion on the past year

Making even a decent time-lapse app takes a lot of time, effort, and dedication.

Focusing on creating a “great app” seems to make marketing a bit easier. Thus far, I haven’t done much actual promotion, but organic Google Play searches and word-of-mouth are the best marketing I could ask for.

Although it has yet to generate enough revenue to make it worth my time and headaches from a business perspective, I am blessed to be able to continue to work on it with other motivations.

1) To help others
2) I want the app for my own use
3) I get some enjoyment out of the process of creating the app

I wouldn’t mind working on Velocity Lapse more if it became an actual, sustainable business. Probably not a realistic expectation, but it is a possibility, Yahweh-willing.

I guess we’ll see how the next year unfolds.

A look forward

My goals for the coming months are:

Get Velocity Lapse stable and ready for the full release.
Re-design and improve the Timelapse and Manual capture views.
(Hopefully) complete a full re-write of the camera code.
Talk to some people in the time-lapse and mobile time-lapse niche and see what they think of Velocity Lapse.
Launch into production.
Once launched, promote it on Product Hunt.
And go from there.

Obviously, you can see how well my plans have come to pass thus far, so I’m going to say “Yahweh-willing” to all of this.

The journey continues

Thank you for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and have gained something from this journey so far. I know I have.

If you have a suggestion, a comment, or advice, relating either to the app or this post, I’d love to hear what you have to share either in the comments below or via email.

Read the next part of the journey in part 5 of this series.

Looking ahead

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I was talking with a friend one day and he noticed that we were selling a used, luxury recliner. He asked, How much are you asking for it?

“Two-hundred and fifty”, I replied.

He paused and nodded, giving me the opportunity to comment further.

I told him a brand new recliner of the same type costs upwards of $800, but I couldn’t imagine how someone could pay that much for a recliner. I thought, “800 dollars seems like a lot of money to pay for a single piece of furniture.”

He replied with a neat perspective I had evidently forgotten the moment before.

He explained how, when you think about it, if the recliner lasts you 10 years and you use it even 1 hour a day and it makes your life better then in reality you are only paying cents per day for the recliner. And even if you didn’t use it that much, it provided comfortable seating that contributed to your happiness and, in many cases, your health.

He was right. It’s all a matter of perspective to see the value of investing in the long term rather than just thinking about the upfront cost.

According to this site, a recliner should last 7-15 years. Taking the average of that, which is 11 years, and saying that someone uses the recliner just twice everyday (a pretty a modest estimate for most people) I thought I would do the math:

365 days x 11 years x 2 uses per day = 8,030 uses

$800.00/8,030 = $0.09962...

So, if the recliner originally cost $800.00 and it was used just twice per day for the estimated 11 year lifetime of the recliner, that would be less than 10 cents per use. For someone that used it more or had it longer, it would be even less.

Indeed, in order to justify the upfront cost, you would need to have the long term benefits in mind. Namely, how the recliner would make your life better. If someone only looked at the $800.00 they would have to give up in the short-term, then they would likely miss seeing the real value of investing in it for their long-term comfort. (I hope I’m not starting to sound like a recliner advertisement…)

His point stuck with me for the rest of the day. It really reminded me of this life and our walk to Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, looking ahead into eternity.

Yes, we endure trials and persecution for His name’s sake. Yes, we give up our flesh, deny ourselves, and take up our stauros daily to follow Yahushua. However, when you look at this life as the passing vapor it is and into eternity, then you see that the passing afflictions, trials and things we give up now now are nothing in comparison to what awaits us in eternity. Nothing is worth holding on to in this world.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

2 Cor. 4:16-18

It’s all about perspective.

The earthly, here-and-now isn’t so valuable when compared to the spiritual, heavenly things of Yahweh. As the hymn says, “and the things of earth grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace”.

Too often we focus on what’s going on in our lives or look at the world and question whether it is worth it. However, if we cannot find joy and strength in our present circumstances, then we can look to our bright future, just as our Savior Yahushua did in His moments of agony and anguish.

He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”

Matt. 26:39

Probably some of the most heart-stirring words ever. He gave up His will in surrender to the Father.

Looking unto Yahushua, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the stauros, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of Yahweh.

Hebrews 12:2

We should remember that if all Yahweh did was deliver us from our sins then we ought to be more than thankful. But He also gave us His great and precious promises, including eternal life through His Son Yahushua.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of Yahweh and of Yahushua our Master, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

2 Peter 1:2-3

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of Yahweh! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of Yahweh; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

1 John 3:1-3

When we realize that we deserve condemnation and death but He gives us life instead, we see how amazing His love, grace, and mercy is.

We love Him because He first loved us.

1 John 4:19

For when we were still without strength, in due time Messiah died for the unrighteous. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But Yahweh demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Messiah died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to Yahweh through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in Yahweh through our Master Yahushua Messiah, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Romans 5:6-11

The sad thing is, many people do see the value in giving up $800 (or more) for a recliner’s earthly comfort, but they do not want to give up themselves and humbly walk with Yahushua for far, far greater eternal benefits.

May we have the right perspective and see that serving Yahweh is not only worth whatever we give up and go through in this life, but is the only way to have true joy and peace in this life and the next.

Originally published at noahrahm.com/posts/looking-ahead/

Is it right to download YouTube videos?

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Why the Question?

With how popular YouTube is, chances are you either had this question cross your mind or didn’t even think about it and went to download videos using one of the free “YouTube video downloaders” available online.

My motivation behind writing this article is to provoke some thought on this topic as well as just in general about the ethics of breaking TOS (Terms of Service) agreements, software licenses, or EULAs (End User License Agreements).

Unfortunately, people feel safe doing things that so many others do. However, just because everyone else does it does not necessarily make it right.

Answering the Question

Should we use “YouTube video downloaders” or other software to download YouTube videos?

As far as I am concerned, I believe the answer is a clear no.

1. It’s against the YouTube Terms of Service (TOS) to download content outside of the player or download links they provide (more on that later). You agreed to these terms when you created the account, so I mean, that’s basically lying if you had no intent to abide by the terms.

The YouTube TOS states:

You are not allowed to […] access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as expressly authorized by the Service; or (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders.

2. The ads on these third-party YouTube video downloader sites are often malicious.

I’ve watched as someone used one of these sites (against my advice), where halfway through the download, a popup appeared with a download button to download malicious software. You could easily think that the popup was the download for your video, when it wasn’t.

Many of the ads are just downright deceptive and immoral, which shows the sort of character the people running these sites have.

What Is Our Standard?

I used to download videos from YouTube using external software for offline viewing, before I knew that it was a violation of the YouTube TOS. However, ignorance isn’t much of an excuse and I no longer do so.

I think about how, if I am willing to break the TOS to download a video from YouTube, then what keeps me from doing anything else against the terms?

In another sense, being a software developer that creates software and website licenses and terms myself, I have to ask myself another question.

If I am willing to disregard the terms of other websites, then how can I expect others to abide by the terms or license I create for a website or software?

That would be hypocritical.

Video Copyright

There is also copyright to think about. The video creators give YouTube a license to show the content through the platform, but that does not automatically give you the right to use or watch the video outside of the platform.

As someone that posts videos on YouTube myself, I think about how I feel about people downloading my videos without my permission and against YouTube’s TOC.

While I don’t necessarily mind, it’s still not a good feeling.

It’s Not “Illegal”. or Is It?

Now, I’ve seen other articles and videos where people will say that downloading a video against the terms isn’t “illegal” in some cases, so it’s fine. However, YouTube could suspend your account and sue you for breaching their TOS.

YouTube has tried to take down these external download sites, but it seems they don’t because its too much hassle. Too many people download videos using these external sites, and YouTube has never actually sued anyone for downloading content.

That said, this article is not about what is legal or illegal in the sense of what you can get away with. This is about whether it’s really right to download videos from YouTube using these external sites.

So, Is It Right?

I think sometimes we get lazy and careless, especially if we don’t think something will be enforced. However, what’s wrong is still wrong, even if you don’t see the consequences right away or at all.

Ultimately, if you’re a believer, what others do is of no consequence. Just because so many people do it and get away with it doesn’t make it okay. Is it right according to Scripture? That is the question.

From what I can see, just the fact that you have to break your word to disregard the YouTube terms of service in order to download videos from YouTube using external sites gives a really clear clue.

You shall not follow a crowd to do evil.

Exodus 23:2a

Lying lips are an abomination to Yahweh, But those who deal truthfully are His delight.

Proverbs 12:22

Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds.

Colossians 3:9

An Example to Illustrate

Imagine you have a rental room at your house.

Now, you set certain rules that they must abide by during their stay, one of which is that anything in the room (towels, the mirror, the lamp, etc.) must stay in the room. Imagine them, right after agreeing to the rules, taking your stuff outside for one reason or another and saying, “Well, everyone else does it”.

I think we would all feel disrespected by the guest.

Well, if you download videos from YouTube using these external sites, especially if you don’t have permission from the creator, then you are not just disrespecting the platform but the creator too.

Is It Ever Right, Then?

So, is there ever a time when it would be okay to download a video from YouTube using external sites?

Some people will point to CC (Creative Commons) licensed content or content where the creator says that users are free to download the video if they want.

The problem is that it could still be a violation of the YouTube TOS. (I don’t have full clarity for CC licensed content).

I once had a client that had two YouTube channels and wanted to combine them into one. One of the channels only had one video. However, they had forgotten their login information for the account. So they couldn’t just download the video through YouTube Studio and re-upload it to the other channel.

There was the temptation to just use an external YouTube downloader to retrieve the video. After all, it was his video, right? It even had his name in the video title.

However, we both agreed that it wasn’t even an option to violate the TOS by doing so. Instead, I linked to the single video, and that worked just fine.

Ethical, Legal Alternatives

Now, you’re probably wondering, “So what should I do if I’m on a limited data plan or want to watch videos offline for another reason?”

I see two ways someone could legally and ethically download a YouTube video:

YouTube Premium

It appears YouTube allows downloading videos for offline viewing with YouTube Premium. This is what the “links that they provide” exception in the TOS refers to. Now, I’ve never had Premium myself but it is an option to consider if you are wanting offline videos.

Ask the Creator Directly

Yes, it’s a hassle, but just ask the creator to give you a link to the video on Google Drive, Dropbox, or another file sharing service.

This may actually be an even better option than YouTube Premium since you totally bypass any involvement of YouTube, acknowledge the creator, and get their direct permission to download their content. Now, obviously, the creator is not always going to accept your request. They may say “no” for one reason or another, and that is understandable.

Other creators may already have a way for you to download their videos offline, though sometimes it is only via a paywall.

Conclusion

I think it is pretty clear that we should not be downloading videos from YouTube in ways that violate the YouTube TOS. Instead, we should be respectful of the platform and the creators and either subscribe to YouTube Premium or ask the creator for their video directly.

In a broader sense, I believe we should be careful to abide by whatever agreements we make, whether it’s with the software on your PC, a streaming platform like YouTube, or your next-door neighbor.

Originally published at noahrahm.com/posts/is-it-right-to-download-youtube-videos/

The Journey Behind Velocity Lapse (Part 3)

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the third post in a series of “dev-log” posts about my personal journey and learning process of creating Velocity Lapse, a time-lapse app for Android.

You can read the previous posts, Part 1 and Part 2 to get context up to this point.

Full rollout to open testing

Towards the end of Roman October 2022, I rolled out the app in open testing to all countries where Google Play is available. Previously, it had only been available in 27 select countries because I wanted to make sure to iron out some issues and “test the waters”, so-to-speak, before opening up to the whole world.

First sales of Velocity Lapse PRO

Roughly a week later, the very first Velocity Lapse PRO upgrade was purchased. Oct. 24th, 2022, to be exact. There were 321 total downloads and 131 active installs at that time.

Granted, it was only a few dollars after taxes and Google Play’s cut, but it felt really good to have the first sale of the PRO upgrade after months of work with no ROI (besides some nice compliments).

In the following weeks, sales happened sporadically, mostly in bunches. There were a total of 8 upgrades in the first 3 weeks of being rolled out to all countries.

Creating the first tutorial

For a while, I had been considering making a tutorial on how to capture a starry night time-lapse using Velocity Lapse on an Android phone.

Finally, I took advantage of a night at a campground where I could capture a time-lapse of the stars without a lot of light pollution.

The time-lapse itself turned out, but I made the mistake of not explaining what I was doing for the tutorial as I was setting up and capturing. Having to voice over the screencapture and time things correctly in the editing stage was a whole lot more work.

Although I have created videos before, this was actually my first video tutorial for YouTube that I voiced-over. Even though I felt that it wasn’t the best, I was motivated to finish the tutorial because, by just finishing it, I knew I would learn something.

As expected, the video didn’t get a lot of reception. However, I did learn some important lessons by making the video, which I can apply to future videos.

Amazon app store

I considered submitting to the Amazon Appstore to gain more visibility and to see if I can’t submit an app there, even just for the experience.

I created an Amazon Developers account and began to go through the form to submit Velocity Lapse so that I could integrate Amazon billing into the app. (App stores require you to upload the app bundle before you can create an IAP to integrate it into your app.)

However, after uploading the bundle, I found out that due to Velocity Lapse needing the camera autofocus feature, only 3 (old) Amazon devices would be supported. And, at that I would have to lower the minimum SDK version to even get that support.

Amazon device support for Velocity Lapse

So, it just didn’t seem worth it. At least for now.

I finally posted on Instagram. I thought maybe the starscape time-lapse video from the tutorial would be a good first post. It did get some response.

The Youtube channel continued to grow, with 40K views on the starry night sky video and a couple hundred views on other videos. I continued to post new time-lapse videos roughly every 2 weeks and the channel continually gained more subscribers and views.

Product hunt

For quite a while now, I’ve eyed Product Hunt. I set up the information for Velocity Lapse. However, I could do much more because, at this point, I didn’t have a good idea of when I planned to launch.

First negative reviews

Up until this point, there was 99% positive feedback. However, there was a period where a few users submitted two bad 1-star reviews through the Google Play testing feedback. Naturally, I expected it; just didn’t know when it would come.

It appeared that it was due to a bug where the app would crash if the export button was tapped multiple times. So, I had to de-bounce the export button to fix the issue.

Or so I thought.

Obviously, that was an issue, but it was not the issue as I continued to receive feedback that the export didn’t work on certain devices.

Crash analytics?

Unfortunately, without crash analytics, the only thing I had to reference was the Google Play crash reports. By default Google Play just shows that a crash happened, the device, and the exception name.

It made me consider that I may have to give in on my idea of “staying away from adding any tracking whatsoever to Velocity Lapse”. This was tough because I really wanted to have no analytics, but without it, is is harder to debug problems users are having with the app.

In the end, I decided to hold off on adding analytics and see if I couldn’t just figure out the issue myself.

Submitting to AlternativeTo.net

I submitted Velocity Lapse to AlternativeTo.net, a popular place to look for alternatives to software. In the past, when I’ve posted other open source software projects I’ve worked on there, a large portion of traffic came from there. So I thought I would try posting Velocity Lapse there for more exposure.

Updating Google Play and website

Yet again, I updated the website and the Google Play listing to better match the style I came up with while creating promo images for Product Hunt.

Camera settings

I have respect for every app developer that deals with Camera2 and indeed time-lapse app developers. sigh

One issue I had when previously implementing manual camera controls was with white balance. For some reason, manual white balance wouldn’t switch back to auto unless ISO and shutter speed were also set to auto.

Thus, rather than releasing a feature that only partly worked, I just didn’t include manual white balance control.

When to release into production?

I needed to make the decision about when to fully release Velocity Lapse. It is tricky because you don’t want to release it before it’s ready, but you also don’t want to overthink it.

My thought was to release it early Spring, as the majority of people will likely want to create time-lapse videos in the Spring/Summer. So, my strategy was: get the app up to speed during the winter and release it sometime early Spring.

App marketing strategies

The balance between building a great product and marketing is difficult. On one side, you want to make the product worthwhile and the best it can be. On the other hand, it’s pointless unless someone knows about it. Perfecting the little details while neglecting marketing is an easy thing to do.

I mentioned this in the first post of this series, that early on, when I first started designing the app, I came across something profound.

In this video about app marketing strategies, he explains a few points which I think are worth sharing here.

The first one is, of course: Make the app ‘great’. Because a “just okay” app is hard to market.

In order for an app to be successful (on a grand scale), it should be something you are proud of and something you (would) use every day. It should be a legacy, your “life’s work”, something “you tell your grandchildren about” (Perhaps that’s a little extreme, but it makes the point).

Another words, the app really is great.

His second point was: Reach out to the leading experts (influencers) in your niche and get them to try your app.

It made me think of the fact that if you don’t even have the confidence to reach out to leading experts in the niche, your app may not be ‘great’. Though, you only have one chance to make a good first impression, so you want to make sure you actually do have a ‘great’ app.

The third point was to: Build around your core audience.

Getting in close contact with the people that use your app every day and getting them involved in the building of the app.

I can really say that where I have put these points into practice so far, it has paid off.

Continued development

As I winded down the v0.2.x and moved to the v0.3.x series of open testing releases, I planned the roadmap for the next series of releases, v0.3.x and v0.4.x.

v0.3.x series

v0.3.0 was an update I had been planning for a while. I planned to begin implementing the edit view features, like importing external images into an existing project, and (of course) crush some bugs that had been reported.

I rewrote and improved the whole import system and added the ability to import images into an existing project. Thankfully, I was able to fix some bugs, including a long-standing bug where images with uppercase file extensions would be ignored when importing.

Beginning work on edit preview

I then began working on the preview for the edit view. This required the preview to update quickly when an adjustment was made, so I quickly ruled out using a temporary physical file.

Due to my lack of experience with this side of Flutter, I went ahead and asked in the Flutter help channel about what the most optimized way of creating a real-time image preview was.

It was suggested that I look into the Flutter Texture widget, as that would give me low-level access to get the update speed I was looking for.

I ended up just leaving off working on this to work on higher-priority issues and features.

User support

One thing about selling software is the support aspect of it. From the very start, I made a real effort to respond to every person that submitted feedback on Velocity Lapse, whether good or bad. Many people responded that they appreciated the response, which was encouraging.

However, it’s not easy to stay on top of it. I’ve taken the approach of “better late than never” if I didn’t get to responding for 2-3 weeks.

Ending 2022

All in all, the first 5 months since I first had the idea for Velocity Lapse have gone well.

App Statistics

From a statistical point of view, the app had been growing at a constant rate, gaining anywhere from 10–80 users daily on average.

As of Dec. 31st, 2022, there were 914 current installs, and just shy of 4K total downloads.

In the first 3 months of having the PRO upgrade, the app averaged $35 per month gross. Which, isn’t too terrible, in my opinion, for an app that is still in early access and hasn’t been heavily promoted yet. Especially considering that most apps don’t make that in a whole year.

That said, if my main goal was to make any sort of meaningful revenue from the app, thus far I would be disappointed.

User feedback

I received a good amount of positive feedback. It seemed that the negative feedback came as a result of app crashes, bugs, etc., which is totally understandable. I was thankful for everyone that submitted feedback, whether positive or negative, as it helped to gauge the app progress, etc.

Personal goals

Thus far, Velocity Lapse is very much usable for creating time-lapses. However, I still have a few personal feature needs that I believe need to be implemented. The camera and editor features, motion blur, and star trails are some big ones that I feel are missing. I hope that I can find the time to bring these features into the app in the coming months and years.

Overall, going from not knowing Flutter and not much about Android development to having an app in beta bringing some ROI and good feedback, I feel that I have learned a lot. It certainly has been a journey of overcoming challenges, both technical and physical.

The journey continues

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and have gained something from this journey so far. I know I have.

If you have a suggestion, a comment or some advice, relating either to the app or this post, I’d love to hear what you have to share either in the comments below or via email.

You can read the next part of the journey in part 4 of this series.

Life lessons from 2022

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In the past year I’ve made a greater effort to look for what Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, is try to show me in every situation. There is always something to learn, even in the darkest of situations. :)

Life is a journey. A believer’s life is continuing to grow in Yahushua (commonly called “Jesus”). It is following the footsteps of the Savior. Learning little, by little.

I’ll say that it is much easier to learn the lessons He is trying to teach you the first time. Though, if you don’t stop to think about what He is showing you, then you probably won’t learn it.

Lessons

So, here is my reflection of life lessons that stand out the most from what I’ve learned this past year. I’ve intentionally left these rather general so that you can see how these can apply in difference circumstances.

Precedence

Things need to be Yahweh’s way from the very start, to begin with. The first meeting of something is probably how the rest will be. First impression is important. Subsequent meetings will probably follow the same pattern and it is hard to steer it right again.

Confrontation

As hard as it is, if you can’t overlook something in another believer, you must confront the person and make it right. Follow Matthew 18.

15 “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ 17 And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.”

Matt. 18:15-17

Don’t wait to resolve an issue with someone if it cannot be forgotten. The longer it goes on, the harder it will be to resolve. Glossing over problems and avoiding talking about them doesn’t solve the problem.

Expectations

Misunderstandings and conflicts can happen when both parties are not clear on their expectations. Be clear what you expect from others and clarify their expectations of you.

Loyalty

Remember who you are working for and who your loyalty belongs to. People will fail. People will have conflicts.

Remember that you are not working for men but for Yahweh. Don’t be discouraged. Be loyal to Yahweh and the calling He has called you to.

“Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for Yahweh rather than for men”

Colossians 3:23

Communication

Remember that life is about relationships and without communication, there is no relationship.

Never be too busy to listen to others or talk to them, especially if you have a conflict. Remember that it is a two-way street. Both parties need to talk and listen to the other.

Remember that the most important communication is with Yahweh through prayer.

Patience

Wait for Yahweh’s timing and plan. Don’t rush ahead without His leading.

Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

Proverbs 3:5-6

However, don’t confuse patience with procrastination(!) or lack of faith.

Judgment

Make sure you hear both sides and have the facts before you judge a matter. Don’t be too quick to blame or release from blame.

As hard as it is, wait until you have all the information about the situation before making a judgment. Don’t feel pressured to make a judgment hastily.

Facts

Don’t assume you have all the facts or think you know something about someone or something. It is easy to be “in the moment” and end up making up things, assuming things that aren’t true.

Self-Imposed Rules

Don’t seek to establish your own form of righteousness. Study the Scriptures and walk out Yahweh’s righteousness. Don’t look down on those that do not follow your self-imposed rules, even if they are good, but not necessarily from Scripture.

Appearance

Remember that sometimes people will assume things about you based on appearance or by what you don’t say as much as what you do say. Don’t take it personally if someone thinks bad of you because of it. Yahweh justifies.

Compromise

Compromising on what Scripture says, even a little bit, opens the door to a continuous erosion of it from your life. Once the door is open, it is hard to close. Be sure that any compromise you make does not compromise your belief in Yahweh’s Word.

Jealousy

Don’t get jealous of other people’s situations, etc. Jealousy stems from discontentment. The grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence. Everyone has their own set of problems and they may be worse than yours. Be content where Yahweh has placed you in life.

Be Humble; Be Real

Be humble, knowing that you deserve death, but Yahweh showed you mercy and grace. Show the same mercy and grace that He shows to You.

Do not look down on others for what you think they do not know or practice. You also have things that Yahweh is trying to get your attention about and you must be humble to even see what He is trying to teach you.

Everyone has problems and struggles they deal with. Don’t act like you have everything together when it is not the case. Even people, in general, will appreciate your honesty in admitting that you have struggles over acting like you have it all together.

Conclusion

I hope this post has blessed and encouraged you. If you would like to share life lessons you have learned this past year, I would love to hear what they are. (Email me at hi@noahrahm.com)

Originally published at noahrahm.com/posts/life-lessons-2022/

The Journey Behind Velocity Lapse (Part 2)

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In Part 1, I shared the “journey” of creating Velocity Lapse (a time-lapse app for Android), up to the first internal testing release.

Technical setbacks

If I’ve made it seem like development was easy with only a few snags in the previous post, then let me reassure you that it wasn’t.

It would take a while to relate to you all of the technical challenges I encountered. I also don’t want to make this into a series of posts explaining every problem I’ve had during development!

However, I think it’s worth briefly mentioning some of them so that someone can learn and benefit from my mistakes and research.

Resolving a limitation of the official camera package

Since I was using a fork of the official Flutter camera package, the maximum capture resolution was determined by the video capture resolution supported by the device hardware.

It seems that someone else had come across this limitation as well and had created a fork with some patch code. I was able to adapt the code to allow capturing 4K (if supported) and the full camera sensor resolution.

Another encoder issue

As it would be, though, resolving that limitation led to uncovering something else.

When exporting a video with a resolution higher than the supported video capture resolution, the encoder would crash with a null pointer exception.

So, more issues with the encoder, but this time relating to the video encoding resolution.

Thankfully, @sundrycode graciously helped out with his Android development experience.

After we both did a ridiculous amount of online searching, going down multiple rabbit trails and to old and obscure websites on the MediaCodec API, we came to a conclusion that seems logical.

It appears that the device encoding resolution implementation for the MediaCodec API is determined by the supported video capture resolution. Therefore, encoding a 4K video isn’t going to be supported on a device that only supports HD video. For most new but cheap Android phones, the video capture resolution is 1080p HD (1920x1080).

Indeed, it is a hunch, but it seems to be confirmable and logical. If you know for certain, please let me know in the comments below.

First open testing release

Getting to the point where I figured the app was stable enough for open testing (also known as “early access”) took 4 months of work.

In order to submit Velocity Lapse to Google Play for review, I went through the process of writing a description, creating a feature image, and capturing and editing screenshots for the app store page.

I wrote the description, highlighting the main features and the fact that Velocity Lapse captures images rather than capturing straight to video. It wasn’t a great description, but it did the job.

After submitting, I didn’t waste time waiting around for the review to go through. The release was another milestone in my journey, but the app still needed a lot of work before it could really be a great app and something someone would pay for.

Why I won’t use stock images to promote Velocity Lapse

One thing to note is that I’ve committed to only displaying images and screenshots on the listing and website that were actually captured using Velocity Lapse on a mobile device.

What do I mean? Well, I won’t be showcasing Velocity Lapse using stock photography or other images not captured with the Velocity Lapse (unless it is clear that the images are externally captured).

You may be surprised, but sadly, it is not uncommon for even well-known apps—even some mobile camera apps, to use stock photography for the app store listing.

Now, for some apps, I think that it is fine to use stock photography, such as photo editors. There’s nothing to say what camera took the image.

However, for an app where the camera functionality is a big feature (or, —gasp—the main feature!), the best way to showcase the app is by displaying images that it captured. Anything else would seem to be deceptive and/or misleading in my mind.

Although using images that were actually captured with the app can mean that there isn’t as much variety and/or it doesn’t look as good, it does give the viewer an accurate idea of what to expect. Thus, it keeps their expectations in line with reality.

One idea that @sundrycode and a few others suggested was to post time-lapse videos created with Velocity Lapse.

The thought was that perhaps if the videos got popular enough, they would promote the app and inspire others to create their own. They would also serve as real-life examples of what can be created with Velocity Lapse.

So, I created a Youtube channel and began posting time-lapse videos there. I also created an Instagram account, but it sat there unused for a few months, until I got around to making content to post there.

In addition, I did quite a bit of posting on Reddit. Mostly just replying to existing posts, looking for a time-lapse app. Since the OP was asking for time-lapse apps and those viewing the post were likely looking as well, it was a good way to get some first users and help them find something they could use to create time-lapses.

All in all, this was a pretty good strategy, looking back at the successes in both avenues.

User testing and the interface refactoring loop

After yet more user testing and feedback, I began a refactoring of the UI. At first, it primarily centered around the home view.

The most useful method of conducting user testing that I have found is physically watching the test users use the app. I mean practically looking over their shoulder and writing down notes about their interaction.

Getting face-to-face feedback, both positive and negative, and seeing how people use the app in real life crushes some dreamy, false notions you can have as a developer and designer about how the app should work.

Getting this feedback at this point brought up some good ideas for improvements as well as confirmed some ideas that I was personally hesitant to implement (I’ll admit).

It was without doubt a popular request to add a gallery to view exported videos, so I added it to the near future roadmap. I also moved the main call to action buttons to a more thumb-friendly position and polished up various parts of the UI.

Introduction of the bottom nagivation bar

In order to better organize the new features, such as importing a sequence of images as a project, I introduced a bottom navigation bar. It divided Velocity Lapse’s main functions into three understandable categories.

Introducing the bottom tab navigation

The second open testing release

With the new “import images as a project” feature and the UI refactor, I was eager to publish and roll out another release.

Thankfully, by the time I had the release ready a week later, the Google Play app review had gone through, and Velocity Lapse was finally published for public early access.

Third open testing release

The third open testing release included the new tab navigation and the “import images as project” feature.

I now felt like promoting, so I updated the website and replied to a few questions asking for time-lapse app suggestions on Reddit. It turned out to be a good thing as over the next few months, a couple of people found Velocity Lapse through my comment and gave feedback.

Focusing on the things users care about

Listening and acting upon user feedback can be hard. For Velocity Lapse, the feedback was mainly concerning missing features.

I was reminded that tweaking the UI is great, but ultimately most users will accept it the way it is. They will care whether a certain feature is available and works. So, I need to focus on functional features that meet the needs of the user.

It could be very easy to prioritize the things I care about (a clean, sleek interface and well-written code) rather than the things end users actually care about (like feature X or Y). Working on “fun” parts that I enjoy most is great, but if in the end users don’t ever need it, then it is a waste of time.

Adding Manual Capture mode

The capture view with the interval setting and other features was great; however, it didn’t fulfill one required use-case that I had in mind from the beginning: time-lapse captures over extended periods of time. It would also cater to those who would rather not leave their device somewhere while it is capturing.

The manual capture view in v0.0.4+6

I named this mode the Manual Capture mode. It includes a camera view with an overlay of the previous image and an indicator telling when the last image was captured.

This was simple enough to implement, but it still took time to differentiate the project UI from the normal Timelapse Capture mode and develop the special interface for it.

First user-submitted feedback

After nine versions into early access, I felt more confident about Velocity Lapse. It had come a long ways since the first version, going from a barely useable app to an app I actually wanted and enjoyed using almost every day.

At this point, I updated the website landing page to better showcase the app and direct visitors to Google Play.

Not long after, I received the first externally submitted feedback on Velocity Lapse. It included a crash report and a few suggestions on how to make the import images as projects feature more user-friendly.

Monitizing the app

If I was creating a free app, the main work would be complete. However, because this is an app with IAPs (in-app purchases), it required the steps to integrate with Google Play billing. This turned out to be one of the more challenging parts of creating Velocity Lapse thus far.

The question of app monitization

There was one thing I was not confident about, and that was what features to have as in-app purchases for the PRO version.

I settled upon having the free version limited in the following ways:

FREE VERSION

Limit of up to 5 projects at one time
Export up to 1080p video
Import images as project limited to import of 400 images

PRO VERSION

Unlock unlimited projects
Export up to 4K video (if the device supports it)
Import images as project with unlimited number of images

This way, the free version of the app is limited in a way that all the features are usable, but there is (hopefully) enough of an incentive to upgrade to the PRO version to allow unlimited access.

Keeping the Sabbath Day

Something that I wanted to make sure to do, was block purchasing Velocity Lapse PRO on Saturday in observance of the Sabbath.

I believe in keeping the seventh day Sabbath (Roman Saturday) as described in the Bible. The Sabbath is a set-apart day of rest and so no buying, selling, or trading is to be done on it (as I understand it).

I’ll state here that I am not a part of any denomination (SDA or otherwise).

My motivation for keeping the Sabbath holy is to do as Yahweh, our Heavenly Father Himself, and our Savior did: rest on the seventh day.

“And on the seventh day Yahweh ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And Yahweh blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which Yahweh created and made.” -Genesis 2:2-3

“If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of Yahweh, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in Yahweh; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of Yahweh hath spoken it.” -Isaiah 58:13-14

There are many more verses in the Bible regarding the importance of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath.

For some Django-based websites I worked on in the past, I had created and used a Django app called Keep Sabbath which would redirect visitors or show a banner stating that the e-commerce site was closed for the Sabbath.

I did something similar for Velocity Lapse, so that a screen would come up letting them know that they wouldn’t be able to purchase until the next day.

The saying, “A day of rest, a Sabbath request: please refrain from purchasing between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday.” was inspired by someone else’s banner I had seen.

Technical implementation of IAP

Creating the PRO upgrade screen UI itself was one of the screens I most enjoyed implementing (for whatever reason).

However, implementing the IAP integration itself proved to be a lengthy process.

I decided to use RevenueCat to manage purchase validation, etc. rather than writing and maintaining my own web API to do so.

Setting up a Google cloud service account and connecting it to RevenueCat to access the Play Store API on my behalf was a lengthy, but necessary process.

Unfortunately, not everything in the documentation for a Flutter RevenueCat integration was as clear as I thought it should be.

The main culprit of the problems was Dart null safety. Many articles online didn’t handle null safety, and the snippets in the RevenueCat documentation only went so far. For that reason, I may write a post in the future on how to implement RevenueCat with Flutter and Dart null safety.

Thankfully, I was familiar enough with Dart to figure it out. In the end, I had a single in-app purchase for users to upgrade to Velocity Lapse PRO for $3.99 USD.

Updating the Google Play listing (again)

Now that we had a pretty solid version of Velocity Lapse, I went and captured updated screenshots of major screens of the app and created phone screenshots for the Google Play listing.

This time, I used a different style with a faded image behind the phone and screenshot mockup as well as a horizontal screenshot to better showcase the two capture modes.

For the months prior, I had been posting some of the time-lapse videos I had captured to the official Velocity Lapse YouTube channel. I added one of the videos as the “feature video” for Google Play. In my opinion, just adding the video made the listing look a lot better than before.

Posting on Reddit

I submitted a Reddit post to gather feedback regarding Velocity Lapse. The post received 700+ views in the first week. It caused a surge of downloads, and I did receive some helpful feedback (albeit not on Reddit itself).

Big features, big holdups

The next tasks on the roadmap were to get 4K export and manual camera controls implemented.

4K video export

4K export to video wasn’t a huge feature to implement. However, since I didn’t have an Android device that supported 4K, testing was tricky. I ended up getting an hour to test on a friend’s phone which I hoped was enough to have caught any issues.

If not… I was sure users would let me know.

EDIT: they did.

Manual camera controls

I spent two weeks working through the Android Camera2 API to implement manual camera controls, ISO, shutter speed, and focus distance (manual focus).

The woes of the Android Camera2 API

Needless to say, working with the Android Camera2 API was not easy.

Something that worked on one device didn’t on another, which lends to the reason it is notorious for fragmented support and overall a bad experience for developers. So much so that some app developers give up on it. Which, makes me feel uneasy and sort of mad.

The first time I tried to capture a night time-lapse of the stars, it didn’t turn out as I expected. I had been working on implementing shutter speed and ISO controls that would allow for nighttime captures.

I set the device out to capture, and it seemed perfect in the camera preview. However, when I came back and looked at the captured images afterwards, I realized that images were being captured as if auto exposure was still on.

Finally, after two weeks of researching and testing to get manual camera controls implemented correctly, I finally got the code to a point where it worked.

I tried capturing a starry night time-lapse once again. I pointed the device upwards, set the shutter speed to 1 sec and the ISO to 6400, then left it to time-lapse for ~2 hours. The result was satisfying for a first successful attempt.

I was happy to post the video on YouTube since it was the first night time-lapse that had turned out fairly nicely.

Some encouragement via positive feedback

Thankfully, it was now working, and more users and positive feedback came as a result of my posts on Reddit, which was encouraging. Nicely timed it was, as one person suggested that I add manual camera controls!

Turning the landing page into a website

I finally took some time aside to create a decent design for the website that would showcase the app features and the time-lapses that I had captured with it. My main thought with it was to inspire people to get out and create their own time-lapses.

At this point, there were around 97 total app downloads and 40 active installs.

An opportunity to learn about photography

Essentially, in the process of creating Velocity Lapse’s camera features, I’m working towards a camera app with extra-nice time-lapse functionality. I find that kind of interesting.

What’s nice about working on this kind of project that deals with the camera is that it has enabled me (maybe ‘given me a good excuse’ is a better wording) to spend time learning about manual camera controls in depth, professional photography and, of course, time-lapse photography.

Had I chosen to work on a project like a file manager, I wouldn’t have probably ever taken the time to dive into photography as I have now. Needless to say, I don’t regret my decision (quite the opposite).

An opportunity to enjoy creation

During the process of creating and testing Velocity Lapse, I have had the opportunity to spend more time enjoying creation. Especially, the sky.

Whether it’s wispy clouds or a pink and blue sunset, creating a time-lapse app has given me a good excuse to pay attention to it.

I’ve really enjoyed it and maybe through creating this app, maybe I can compel and give more people an “excuse” to get out and enjoy it too.

So, I encourage you to download the app and go outside to capture a time-lapse yourself. :)

My video gets popular on YouTube

Speaking of enjoying creation, it seemed that people enjoyed the starscape time-lapse on the Velocity Lapse YouTube channel. The video received 1K views and 11 likes in the first week, 4.7K views and 46 likes in the first 3 weeks, and has 6K views and 56 likes as of this writing.

Later update: The video now has over 83K views, which is kind of crazy (to me) for a 30-second video.

A glance at the stats for the starry night sky time-lapse video on Youtube as of 10/26/22

Needless to say, this was way, far better than any other video I posted.

Granted, it was a short video, but it was interesting and new to me, especially since other videos on the Velocity Lapse channel had fewer than 100 views (as of this writing).

The downloads on Google Play tripled, and some feedback and support queries came my way during this time. I assume this was due to the video receiving so much attention.

Oddly enough, this happened while I was away on vacation. Go figure.

The journey continues

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and have gained something from this journey so far. I know I have.

If you have a suggestion, a comment, or advice, relating either to the app or this post, I’d love to hear what you have to share either in the comments below or via email.

Read the next part of the journey in part 3 of this series.

The Journey Behind Velocity Lapse (Part 1)

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A new project

I’ve been working on a new side project for the last few months. It’s a new time-lapse app for Android called Velocity Lapse.

This post is the start of a series of dev-log posts I’m planning to write about my personal journey and learning process of creating Velocity Lapse. I plan to share the steps of planning, UI design, development, launch, and marketing.

Although I am not at all new to design or development, mobile app development is a relatively new area for me. My only experience with mobile app development up to this point is my contributions to Bible Notify and some design-related work for another app.

Above that, this the first time I have directly monitized one of my own software projects, since I usually go open-source for most non-client projects.

That is to say, if you’re more experienced in app development or the business of apps (or even if you’re not), I’d love to hear what you have to share. Feel free to reach out via email or write in the comments section below.

The app idea

Every good project starts with a good, worthwhile idea.

Initial ideas

Initially, some ideas I thought about were:

reliable writers app where you don’t lose your work. (Probably sounds silly, but the existing apps, I’m told, don’t quite cut it).
file manager that could reach the level of the discontinued “ES file explorer”.

However, while I do write and I probably could use a file manager, I wasn’t interested in those ideas enough or see enough of a need for them personally.

While I think it is important to work on projects in areas you are not really interested in to broaden your skills, I’ve found that it is easier to stick with something you are passionate about.

My personal interests are in the areas of: the Bible, graphics, photography, and design, as evidenced by some of my open source work. So, I couldn’t see myself developing the aforementioned ideas into apps.

The final idea

With a bit more brainstorming, I came up with the idea of creating an app to create time-lapses.

I have fond memories of when I was younger and would experiment with time-lapses using an old Android tablet. My brother and I would time-lapse plants growing and mushrooms appearing in our greenhouse.

Time-lapse, if you’re not aware, is the process of capturing images at intervals slower than a normal video and piecing them together to produce a video that appears sped up. Naturally slow movements appear much faster than in a normal video. The time-lapse effect can be very beautiful for things like sunsets, clouds, plants, or people walking the streets.

Again, I did some quick validation of the idea from a personal standpoint and realized it was something I could personally use. I could glorify Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, with it by showing the beauty of His creation.

After coming up with the idea, it was time to do some market research.

Edit 2 years after the original publishing date of this post: Somehow I had forgotten about it, but a year prior to this brainstorming I had worked on a small prototype for a time-lapse app. It is interesting how the idea kind of died and I totally forgot about it, but then it resurfaced.

“Make the app great”

Early on, I stumbled upon some advice from someone talking about marketing an app, which really struck me. The bit of advice was, “make the app great”.

Maybe that sounds obvious, but it is way too easy to get the cart ahead of the horse and spend most of the effort marketing the product instead of making a great product.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean no time should be spent marketing, as that is another trap to fall into. However, as a web developer and designer myself, I know how much easier it is to promote something that is “great” to start with. I also know how excited I could get about creating a website to promote it while neglecting the app itself.

So from then on, I decided to have the mindset of building a user-friendly, user-centric app focused on improving time-lapse on Android and solving the paint-points found in other apps. Like, literally making this a “great” time-lapse app.

From a marketing standpoint, people buy solutions to their problems, not software. So, solving user pain points is the best approach that I am aware of.

Market research

I conducted research on the Google Play Store as well as some of the top apps on the Apple App Store to get an idea of the current state of time-lapse/camera apps for Android and see where the pain points were.

As someone that has always had an interest in photography and videography, I had already used a few of the more well-known Android time-lapse apps before I ever had the idea to create one. However, after reading through hundreds of reviews and creating a ton of notes, I could see some areas where the current apps were failing, where they were doing well, and what people were looking for in a time-lapse app.

I was also able to get some metrics on apps on the market via Apptopia’s free report, which was helpful.

Initial planning

It’s one thing to discover things that could be improved in other apps; it’s totally another thing to fix them and pull off a great user experience in your own.

So, why doesn’t everyone just go out and make a time-lapse app?

It was pretty clear from the number of notes I had taken that even a simple time-lapse app has a lot of things that need to be done just right.

Two things really stood out from my notes:

Reliability
Flexibility

Reliability because who wants to go through the trouble of setting up a time-lapse and waiting for the capture to complete—and for the video to render in some cases—only for the app to crash or something non-intuitive happens? No one, of course.

Flexibility because when you go to download an app, it should be capable of doing things in a non-limiting way and respond well under a variety of circumstances.

Wait. Did I unknowingly just describe a good app in general? ..I guess I have.

Indeed, having reliability and flexibility is an important part of making good software in general.

Initial UI sketches and ideas

I then drew some initial sketches and wrote notes of what I imagined the UI and workflow to be without diving into other apps, so I could come up with some original ideas.

Let me be honest: looking back, those sketches were a bit naive and didn’t include some settings a time-lapse app should have. Clearly I didn’t know about time-lapse as deeply as I may have thought. However, it gave me a springboard to where I could get started with my own take on a time-lapse app, even if it was a little out of reality and missing features.

I then opened up to installing and testing almost every app related to time-lapse on Google Play over the course of the next month and a half, taking notes and reading reviews to gather what I could. I also did some looking online for independent reviews as well as some apps on the Apple App Store.

Moving to my laptop, I then created a digital mock-up of the different screens (views) that the app would have. At this point, I overcomplicated it in certain areas like the home screen where I was thinking everything could be crammed. Therefore, I did end up going back and recreating the layout a number of times to get it condensed down to a better design.

My choice of a tech stack

For the tech-savy readers (read: developers), the tech stack I chose is pretty simple:

Flutter for the UI
Dart (because of Flutter) for the main business logic
Java or Kotlin for any native platform code needed (on Android)

Prior to this, I had never done Flutter/Dart development and only had a small bit of Java experience so this was an entirely unfamiliar tech stack to me.

Why Flutter and Dart?

Why not?

Real answer: Flutter looked really neat and was something I had been wanting to try for a while. It’s cross-platform and isn’t limited by the performance of a webview or browser engine. In addition, Flutter has hot-reload and really great tooling for Android Studio and VScode.

Why not React Native or another js framework?

I was concerned about the performance of using a Javascript framework. Also didn’t feel that using a Javascript framework for an app that accesses so much lower-level hardware (like the camera) was a good idea.

Alright, why not native Java or Kotlin then?

Besides the comments above, I just hadn’t liked Java Android development all that much from my bits of working with it. More just a personal preference at that point.

Ironically I ended up diving into both Java and Kotlin a lot. (What did I expect for an app that accesses so much hardware?) Thankfully, I had help from @sundrycode who had a lot more experience than I did with Android development. Since then I’ve learned to like Kotlin.

Learning Dart and Flutter

I was eager to get started with developing the app, as I figured there would be a learning phase with Flutter and Dart. I was pleasantly surprised at how simple the installation and project setup were. The default Flutter project code didn’t seem “too far out there” either.

The first hurdle: Android emulators

For whatever reason, however, the Android emulators kept giving me issues. The emulators wouldn’t restart until after I rebooted my laptop. It ended up being a configuration problem on my end (of course…).

Later on, when I needed a more realistic idea of what I was doing, I enabled USB debugging on my Android phone, which helped greatly improve my productivity and testing.

Tip: Make sure your phone’s font size is set to Default when testing, otherwise the text scaling could be off, and when you install the app on a phone with a larger screen, the UI text could be tiny.

The second hurdle: Flutter constraints

Once past the emulator hurdle, I quickly learned that Flutter constraints are not like web layouts.

I kept running into the (in)famous overflow errors and unbounded layout constraints fatal errors. Needless to say, I didn’t get very far until I understood how constraints and layout worked.

It is wise advice to read and understand the Flutter documentation on layout constraints before starting.

Learning takes time

For the first few weeks, I familiarized myself with the various Flutter and Dart concepts. I started to narrow in on the app design, and made a tiny bit of progress on the app (which I later rewrote in a fraction of the time).

It’s worthy of note that this project uses almost every main feature in Flutter. From native platform channels to the somewhat obscure RepaintBoundry widget, it has it all. This app was packed with a lot of Flutter and Dart things to figure out. Thus, for my first actual Flutter application, this wasn’t exactly on the level of a simple to-do app.

Needless to say, at that point progress was really slow and it was more of me learning than working on the app.

My opinion of Flutter and Dart

Fast-forward to today, and I’ve used Flutter and Dart for ~4 months as of the writing of this post. So far my impression of Flutter and Dart is good.

Flutter

Overall, I’ve enjoyed Flutter. Although I’ve had multiple headaches with understanding some things (read: layout constraints) initially, I welcomed the well-structured, everything-is-a-widget design and, of course, the hot reload.

If you’re looking for a short read to help you decide whether you should use Flutter and Dart for your project, I can confirm much of what this article states (although it is a bit outdated).

Dart

I felt quite at home with Dart almost straightaway. It has sort of a Javascript/Java/C++ feel to it, but is much more suited for UI code in my opinion.

It was actually the quickest I’ve ever picked up a programming language to the point where I could work with it. Perhaps because I’ve worked with and learned so many programming languages previously, or maybe because of the similarities to other languages.

Deeply nested code…oh no

One thing that is very apparent when you look at almost any Flutter Dart code is the amount of nesting. This can obviously be very overwhelming to look at and scroll through. Ideally, you keep the code under control by breaking it out into another widget, etc., but oftentimes it can still be a little hairy.

Thankfully, most modern code editors like VS Code have a code folding feature that allows you to collapse function/method bodies, etc., and class initializations (in our case, widgets). Until this point, I hadn’t used this code editor feature, but for Dart it is really a time (and eye) saver.

The first milestone

After a long and hard month of work, I finally had a “barely working” version of the capture and some other main features in a rough, unpolished state.

The early state of Velocity Lapse. Notice how much the UI has changed since then.

It was a nice milestone because at this point, you could capture and render the time-lapse to a video. Albeit, given the proper knowledge, due to the app’s rough and unpolished state.

Simplify, simplify, simplify

Throughout the project, one thing has been constant: the gradual change of the UI towards simplification.

Originally, the UI options were a bit more complicated than they needed to be. I and some select testers tested using the app in real-life situations (we went out and captured time-lapses), and it was clear more refinement could be done.

A few things in the capture screen UI weren’t 100% clear, and even though I made the app, I mixed up which settings I was changing more than once. Glare from the sun and sweat on your brow can really change the way you use an app.

So, I redesigned the tabs to make it clearer which setting was selected.

The capture screen interface

Velocity Lapse is meant for everyday people as much as it is for serious time-lapse photographers, so I decided to also cut out confusion by using plain English where possible vs. the technical terms.

Logo design

Over the course of the three months of developing the app, I had sketched about a hundred different logo concepts, both on paper and digitally. Some others tried to sketch some ideas and spent quite a bit of time brainstorming and iterating over potential ideas as well. However, the ideas were either too generic or unrelated, too similar to another logo, or just a bad design to begin with.

Coming up with a logo for Velocity Lapse

The name “Velocity Lapse” did give us some concepts to work with (which we wrote down as tangible objects), but in the end, almost none of the ideas were anything we thought would accurately represent the app. The concepts we were coming up with were either too complex or too technical due to velocity being a bit of a technical, science term.

After praying for an idea or concept to come, it really, literally did. (We cannot underestimate prayer.)

The Velocity Lapse logo

The concept was a camera lens with a spinning-circle shape to show a sense of motion. I did a few variations of it and may end up changing it later, but for now it works as a logo.

Setting up a landing page

Setting up the landing page for Velocity Lapse was a nice break from developing the app. I purchased the domain name velocitylapse.com and setup a landing page where visitors could join a waitlist to get early access to the app.

I didn’t actually expect anyone to do so or even find the website since I hadn’t promoted it yet, though. It was meant more as a placeholder until the app was ready for a real homepage.

With that out of the way, I went back to work on the app.

Development challenges

There were quite a few technical challenges and set backs in development.

H.264 encoding artifacts

One big set back in particular had to do with the renderer, which would take the captured images and convert them to an H.264-encoded MP4 video file.

I had been finishing up the “last” bug fixes and edits before getting the minimal app off the ground and into the internal and open testing stages.

However, I discovered that the exported videos had H.264 codec artifacts (banding). The artifacts, ugly bands of pink across the video, seemed to appear after the first second or two of the video. Up until this point, I had only rendered out 2 second long videos, so I didn’t realize this earlier.

This seemed to be an issue with the Jcodec Java library that I was using as the encoder for the video export renderer. I wasn’t able to produce even one video with jcodec without artifacts. Unfortunately, I hadn’t noticed this sooner, so the time spent implementing the renderer with Jcodec had to be thrown away.

Some options were to use either:

The native media APIs for encoding videos
The NDK with a C++ library to encode the videos

However, after looking at what those would require, I wasn’t motivated to go in either of those directions, writing something from scratch myself.

Obviously, the app couldn’t be released without a way to export the time-lapse to video, so I needed to think of another way.

After a lot of searching, I came across a small package called bitmap2video which looked like it might do the trick. However, since it was written in Kotlin, it would mean switching the existing code from Java to Kotlin.

I decided to go for it and embrace it as an unexpected opportunity to learn Kotlin.

First, I did a bunch of extensive testing to verify that it didn’t produce artifacts like Jcodec. Thankfully, it didn’t.

I did end up having to fix some deprecated code and other minor things to make it work, but came to the conclusion that with some more customization, it would indeed work.

Although I’ve never written in Kotlin before, the transition was pretty smooth with Android Studio’s Java to Kotlin converter, the Kotlin manual, and a bunch of online searches. The most difficult part was wrapping my head around the packages use of Kotlin’s coroutines.

The end result was a much faster, more lightweight renderer than the one written in Java with jcodec. Plus, since the Kotlin version was a smaller package that I pulled directly into the source code, I could benefit from being able to make edits/fixes for Velocity Lapse’s specific use case.

So, in the end, it turned out better because of the setback. :)

The first pre-release (internal testing)

Finally, after 3 months of development, the app was in a state that I felt deserved a pre-release tag. I worked through the process of generating a keystore and generating the app bundle to upload to Google Play for internal testing.

In the play console, I ended up getting some warnings about sensitive permissions, which I quickly resolved by removing the unnecessary permissions from the Android manifest. Evidently, I had added permissions to the app during development while testing some packages and forgot to remove them.

After that fix, I was able to successfully release the app bundle to internal testing.

The journey continues

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and have gained something from this journey so far as I have.

If you have a suggestion, a comment, or advice, relating either to the app or this post, I’d love to hear what you have to share either in the comments below or via email.

You can read the next part of the journey in part 2 of this series.