Check the Gallery!

Your Humble Narrator, Knox Farm, East Aurora, NY

I’ve not exactly done the Bestest Job Evah in updating my Photo Gallery on this site, ’tis true…but this day, it is updated! Go look! I’m planning to update it quarterly, which is (I hope) a more manageable schedule than the monthly plan that I proceeded to just not do at all. Hmmmm….

(OK, one factor is that I tried a couple of photo-gallery plug-ins to make managing a gallery easier and better on the viewer end, but I didn’t care for their functionality, so out they went and I’m managing the current Gallery by hand like it’s 2003 again. Sheesh! The things we do for art!)

 

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Still tinkering….

I may have settled on a theme for this site that I like! I will be doing more tinkering with the appearance later on, but I am currently liking this one. I spent some time this morning trying themes on for size, and there were a couple that I liked on preview but weren’t working for me across the entire site. This one may actually get me where I want to go (though I also still miss the block editor and wonder if I can get it back….).

Stay tuned!

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Be Prepared…

…for some more experimentation with this site’s appearance over the next few days. The current look just isn’t doing it for me. It’s close to working, which is why I’ve left it in place, but ultimately I just don’t think it’s what I want.

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Okay….

One last meta-post for now, though I obviously still have some tinkering under the hood to do. I especially want to get rid of the way “Share this post” shows up on the main page as if it’s part of the text of the post. That bugs me. Also, though I like the appearance of this WordPress theme, I still haven’t figured out how the widgets work, so currently I’m not sure how to fix my sidebar the way I want it. (One of my blogging quirks is that eventually I always come to not like my sidebar set-up.)

I’m also missing the block editor! But apparently this theme isn’t compatible with it, so here we are. Nevertheless, Onward and upward! Zap! Pow!!

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Tapping the microphone….

Well, here we are…after a week of writing multiple “test” posts, only a few of which actually made it to the site, we seem to be back up and running. At least, I think we are. We’ll find out in a minute after I finish typing this.

And as I write this, I suddenly realize that I’m in the old WordPress editor. Where the hell are my Blocks? I like blocks! What’s going on here??? How do I get my blocks back? Anyone?

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More test!

Here’s another test.

Yes, the site looks weird. Apparently there was a conflict in my old site theme with some of the WordPress plug-ins that I rely on, which caused all manner of hardship. The advice I received was to try a new theme and see if things work again…and here we are. I will not be staying on this theme, but I will be taking this unplanned opportunity to freshen up the look of this site. Meanwhile, we appear to be up and running again. Yay!

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Sunday Stealing….

EDIT: And now, individual post links don’t load, so you can only read what’s here on the main page. I am getting so close to killing this blog.

Well, it looks like I can at least post again reliably, which is nice. I still have some back-end functionality stuff that is still not right, and I will be contacting my hosting service in the next couple of days to politely request that they give me a refund or discount since a malfunction on their end resulted in loss of functionality and a loss of actual data, which is not acceptable to me. I’m not going to lie, folks, all of this has really sucked out a lot of my enthusiasm for this notion of doing content creation…and it also has me questioning my whole strategy on that score, anyway.

In any event, I’d like to move beyond the mess and get some actual content going again, so, here are this week’s Sunday Stealing questions, and this time they’re actually kind of unique and interesting:

1. What celebrity would you never want to meet?

You know what’s funny about social media these days? Over the last few years the social media landscape has actually fractured into a bunch of different platforms and services, each one with its own flavor, and each one with its own lore and controversies and whatnot. What’s more, you can hang out on one platform and never see a hint of a major thing that’s all the rage at another platform. My main hangouts are Threads and Bluesky now, in terms of the kind of short-post stuff that used to be Twitter before Elon Musk made it his unique brand of shitty, and there have been a bunch of weird controversies that have erupted on Threads that nobody on Bluesky seems to recognize or even be aware of. This amazes me.

What does this have to do with the current question? There’s an actor named David Krumholtz who has been around for years. Look up his career and he’s been in a ton of stuff going back to the 1990s, which I would usually interpret as, “He’s a reliable and professional guy who gets cast a lot on that basis.” Well, after some recent activity on Threads, it turns out that Krumholtz is a really weird guy who has quite a misogynistic streak going on, and he behaves accordingly on social media and in fact has done so for years. Just this morning someone posted receipts about abusive, stalkery behavior of his going back to 2014, so that’s my current choice for “celebrity I wouldn’t want to meet.”

More generally, I don’t think I’d want to meet any celebrity who aligns on the MAGA side of things. I’m just not interested.

2. What do you label yourself as?

In my video content, I’ve landed on “Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer” as my self-description, and I think I’m going to keep that.

3. You can only have one sandwich for the rest of your life. You have every sandwich-making ingredient known to man at your disposal. What sandwich do you make? 

Like, all of my future sandwich activity is limited to a single kind of sandwich? Or, I can literally eat one more sandwich and then I am forever forbidden from sandwiches? And to what degree are we considering certain sandwich-adjacent foods to qualify as sandwiches? Am I allowed to continue consuming wraps? Are we considering hot dogs and sausages-in-a-bun as sandwiches, for the purposes of this hypothetical? Is a burger considered a sandwich? Nobody ever lists burgers as sandwiches; I’ll see menus at restaurants with a “burgers and sandwiches” section, but I don’t recall ever seen burgers listed as sandwiches. So: I will assume that burgers, hot dogs and other meats-in-buns, and wraps are exempt. It’s just easier. That leaves us with the first two policy clarifications, so if I’m allowed to keep eating a sandwich but it has to be the same one, I’m going with a cappicola-and-provolone sub, on a toasted sesame roll, with mayo, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and banana pepper rings. If it’s one-and-done and this is my last sandwich ever, then I’m making a Monte Cristo: ham, turkey, and swiss on sourdough, dipped in egg and fried, and served with a ramekin of maple syrup for dipping.

4. An angel provides you with a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. What’s it gonna be?

Gold rum. That one’s easy.

5. Have you ever built a snowman?

As a kid, almost certainly. We spend a lot of my childhood when snowman-making would have been a thing in places where there was never enough snow to actually do it, though.

6. If you could ask your future self a question, what would it be?

“Please tell me he doesn’t live much longer than this.”

And thing is…you might be wrong about who this is referring to.

7. Have you ever baked your own birthday cake?

I haven’t, no. I’ve made cakes on occasion, but not very often; we just order one from our favorite local bakery, especially in the last 12 years or so since we learned The Wife was celiac.

8. Which are cooler: dinosaurs or dragons?

Fictionally? Dragons. Real world? Dinosaurs. I think. You know, I tend to think of dragons as fire-breathing dinosaurs, so there’s that. But then there are all the wonderful dragons of Asian culture, the ones who aren’t breathing fire. Komodo dragons are fascinating, and recent science seems to be leaning into the whole “dinosaurs as big proto-birds” thing, to the point of suggesting that T-Rex made sounds more like chirping than the terrifying roars we heard in Jurassic Park, so…I guess I’ll stick with dragons.

9. What do you like about babies?

Ummm…huh. Not really sure. I haven’t been around any babies in a long time, and that’s not likely to change. I guess I like how when there’s a baby nearby and it’s not screaming its head off people tend to be in a happier mood. Like, the presence of a happy baby (or at least a sleeping one) tends to somehow enhance the moods of the non-baby people around it, so that’s nice.

10. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. What’s the first rule you put in place? 

I honestly don’t know if I should be trusted with making my own society. First, just the idea of a literal society being mine is a strange one, and I wouldn’t want to enforce my personal tastes by fiat upon anyone. So I think residence in my island society would be voluntary, and it would come with a few recommendations: a predilection for overalls and a willingness to participate in an occasional pie fight, perhaps.

And that’s the quiz…now to hit the “publish” button, which is turning out to be a crap shoot the last bunch of weeks….

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Test….

This is a test.

The site encountered some more tech issues earlier this week, and these issues have actually damaged the site…you may notice that about six weeks’ worth of posts have disappeared. I am still working on various issues that haven’t resolved yet. Please bear with me!

And this was supposed to be a good “content creation” week, too…dammit….

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An Important ANNOUNCEMENT regarding the Future of This Site.

OK, y’all, listen up! Thanks to both of you.

Yes, this is the end…of scattershot posting all over the place, including this site. 

As part of my upcoming focus on content creation, I’ve decided…well, let me back up. I’ve been “focusing” on content creation for a couple of years now, actually, but I haven’t actually managed to get any real traction, have I? So, I’ve decided to take a more structured approach. See, I want to write and I want to do photography and I also want to make video content about those things and other things too and if I keep taking my former “scattershot” approach to all this, it’s hard to see how I’ll get any of it done in a way that really satisfies me. And that means…

…[audience waits with nervous tension]…

…a posting schedule.

[audible gasps from the audience]…

I know, I know. I did some kicking around of ideas recently, and I think I’ve come up with at least an initial schedule that will have me posting somewhat consistently on most of my platforms. (The wild-card will be YouTube, because that’s a whole other kettle-o-fish that I need to figure out…recording times and such.)

Here’s what I’m going to start with:

ForgottenStars.net: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday

This site will remain my main location online. That won’t change. But I won’t be pushing myself to post each and every day (with one exception: the Christmas season, because the Daily Dose of Christmas has to be, you know, daily). Regular posting days here will be as listed above, though as always I will reserve the right to pop in on days when I’d normally not be posting.

As always, posting here will be a grab bag of whatever I’m thinking about at any given time. I might crank out a lengthy essay about some important political issue, or an even longer essay about some pop culture thing that I think is important but nobody else does, or I might still just put up a pretty photo of a flower or a dog or a cat or my snowy backyard. I might even still stick a quick piece of light classical music up for lack of anything better. You never 

Dispatches from the Forgotten Stars: First and third Thursday of every month, and maybe the fifth if there is one.

The newsletter really fell by the wayside last year, which I don’t want to have happen again.

Photography sites: Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

This refers to my main “photography showcase” sites and apps: Vero, Foto, and the Forgotten Stars Photography account on Instagram. I need to start using those sites and services regularly.

(By the way, my “regular” Instagram, @jaquandor, will continue to be what-I-want, when-I-want, and generally won’t be a major focus of my “quality” work. It’s more for daily snapshots and whatnot.)

Tiktok: Every day, though I don’t beat myself up if I miss one.

Tiktok is fun and all, and I’ll be posting there fairly regularly. (I already have been, really.) I will also try to echo content from there to my personal Instagram, though I won’t always do this. Quite a bit of Tiktok content is a word prompt superimposed atop a very short video clip that may even be soundless; sharing that short of thing to IG doesn’t always seem worthwhile.

YouTube: Ummmm….

Yeah, I gotta figure out YouTube. First is figuring out my recording setup. More to come there.

All right, moving on! Let’s go! There’s so much time and so little to do!

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Tinkering under the hood….

I’ve added a bit of extra functionality to encourage subscribing to this site, so if you subscribe you get every new post sent to your email. And yes, you should do this because I make good content and who wouldn’t want good content in their email? I mean, sure, somebody out there doesn’t want good content in their email, but that person probably likes turkey roasted until it’s bone dry and watching old Lawrence Welk shows with the sound turned off. I mean, come on, it’s a no brainer. Subscribe!

(By the way, I am also gearing up to relaunch my actual news letter, which runs independent of this site. More to come on that. I don’t recommend subscribing to it now because I’m almost certainly going to be migrating away from Substack, but I haven’t selected a new platform yet, and I want to have several “issues” ready to go before I actually pull the trigger, so to speak. I’ve spent a lot of 2025 experimenting with various forms of content creation, and I want to hit the ground running in 2026 in terms actually generating said content. Stay tuned!)

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