Introducing: Katsudon Experimental Press I used to have a darkroom. It was pretty fancy, a sealed off room in my basement, an old coal storage room, with a couple of high-end enlargers I had gotten for free because digital was the future. I used to spend Saturdays in there making silver-halide prints, some of which still hang on my walls. After a year or so, I had a daughter, and my priorities shifted away from spending time in there. For the last few years I’ve been sending digital files out to Whitewall to be printed. And the results are good, really good. But something feels…off? Missing? I don’t have the same connection to my prints as when I made them myself. A couple of years ago while on vacation in Tokyo, I took a printmaking workshop at Mokuhankan, where I learned about the process of ukiyo-e woodblock printing from end to end, and had the chance to make a print of my own. I didn’t appreciate how involved the process is, but I really enjoyed the intricacies of inking up plates, mixing colors, and impressing not just the ink but the texture of the plate itself into paper. As you can see above, my first print was not great but the experience planted a seed. About the same time, I got a message out of the blue from an old friend I hadn’t talked to in ages. In that message he casually mentioned that he had taken a workshop on photogravure, and was setting up a studio. I’d never heard of that process before, but when I looked it up, I knew that I wanted to try this out for myself. Photogravure is a 19th century printmaking process in which you etch your image into a copper plate, ink it, and press it onto paper. The results have a tonal depth and a surface quality that can’t be replicated with darkroom enlargement techniques or modern inkjet printing. Or so I’m told. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a photogravure print. But if it’s anything like a fine ukiyo-e print (which I _have_ seen and held), I can well imagine. I’d like to do more than imagine. Now that my daughter is leaving for university, I’ve decided to return to making photographic prints. I’m putting together a studio for exploring photogravure printmaking. The process seems straightforward enough, but I’m not so stupid as to think I’m not facing a steep learning curve, especially as I’m going to be teaching myself from scratch through trial and error. The plan is to work toward producing editioned photogravure prints from my photography and my friends’ too. So, I’m launching Katsudon Experimental Press, my printmaking studio, where I can do silly experiments, and learn how to make prints. But I want to do more than just photogravure. My friend Jarred is into 3d printing, and we’re already starting to talk about how we can leverage that technology to make plates, to make art beyond just photography. I’m calling my first project “Futura, Deconstructed”, and you can read about it in more detail at that link. The short version is that we’re going to make interlocking relief printing tiles derived from the geometry of the Futura typeface that can be arranged into aperiodic tilings. It’s a different direction from photogravure, but it’s the same underlying impulse: Playing with ink and paper, making prints by hand, getting away from purely digital art, embracing how to use digital tools to create analog objects. I’m excited about what lies ahead!

For years I’ve been sending my work out to labs. The results are good, but something is missing. In trying to figure out what, I’ve ended up deep in the world of photogravure, polymer plates, and now I’m launching printmaking studio called Katsudon Experimental Press.

FNAC at Oriente had a massive selection of these at one point. €€€ tho

Theres always time for one more reel.

Dimsum, to go.

Unceasing rain in a dark Lisbon evening.

The metro tunnels are leaking under the weight of so much rain.

Pigeons not welcome here.

For the briefest of moments the sun graced us with its presence.

Sad banana. Perhaps the saddest banana.

Could this album be any better?

A style and subject that resonates with my inner life, and allows me not just to capture images, but to capture the emotions I wrestle with, to create a sense of vulnerability that motivates me to push my own boundaries.

It might not be good, but it is me.

But reviewing my portfolio from the past decades, I have finally started to see an aesthetic that appeared over and over, one that still excites me. This year I’m going to double down on this aesthetic, find joy in photography, the process of rediscovering the world around me again.

I took so few photos in 2025. I’d lost my inspiration, the process had become mechanical, without joy, a desperate seeking never satiated. My experiments had become stale, vanilla, unfocused, boring.

At least LLMs can’t fold space. Right? Please don’t tell me there’s a startup working on this because that is definitely a torment nexus.

I get this feeling you're not going to inform me when you've actually submitted. Maybe you already have, for all I know.

Why did we choose to call it “vibe coding” and not “engineering management simulation”?

Fight me: this is in the top 5 rock albums of the 90s.

Open Source Power We have to talk about open source licensing.

Anti-fascistic software is made possible by pro-labor licensing.

I've been trying to write this piece for years. Every time I get started I'm just overwhelmed with paralyzing visions of the FOSS commentariat accusing me of WrongThink.

But I'm tired and we urgently need to get our shit together.

Ah I see you did. I even liked it. 🤦🏼‍♂️ I appreciate the kind words about my writing!!

A Post-Open Source World Open source used to be about freedom. But capitalist forces has turned open source on its ear. How do we return to our roots as activists for a better world?

uncanny.bingo/state-of-the...

Open Source is Broken The Open Source movement, as championed by the OSI, prizes absolute openness above all other concerns. Openness, they claim, is an absolute good, from which all other virtues flow, not to be questione...

uncanny.bingo/open-source-...

Thanks for speaking out despite the peer pressure. I wrote a couple of pieces on this topic, even presented about the how the concept of the commons is broken to the OSI. Mostly fell on deaf ears but maybe you’ll find something helpful.

Amateur.

*fund

I’d rather lift people up than find snake oil peddlers.

The difference between a junior engineer and an LLM is the junior dev learns from their mistakes and becomes a better dev for it.