Luxagraf is written and published by Scott Gilbertson.

Photo by @lagsolo

If you must have more details about me, or if you’d like to hire me, check out my resume

Adventures

|Ad*ven”ture| n. 1. That which happens without design; chance; hazard; hap; hence, chance of danger or loss. — Websters, 1913.

I strive to avoid adventure, knowing I will have adventures anyway.
— Webb Chiles

One day in 2005 I quit my job, took two years’ savings (about $8000) and set off to see the world for a while. In the end I spent about $10,000 in 13 months of travel. You don’t have to be rich, but you do need to make enough to be able to save some money.

Then I came back, started writing for Wired.com and got married. My wife and I celebrated by exploring Nicaragua for a while.

In 2010 we decided it was time for a road trip, so we spent four months on the road, sleeping in the back of a 1969 Ford pickup with a camper shell.

Then we circumnavigated the globe going east by air. From this we learned that this is an extravagantly wasteful thing to do. That’s not to say it wasn’t any fun, but it was fast and often felt numbing. We will not be moving that fast again.

In 2012 we added two new members to luxagraf. And then in 2014 we added a third. Once we’ve all become acquainted we’re off again. Stay tuned.

Acknowledgments

I get a lot of emails asking for the “theme” for this site. I would totally give you that if I had one, but I don’t use wordpress and there is no “theme”. Luxagraf is created by hand, with a lot of tools loosely joined. Most of these tools are free software that you too can use and modify as you see fit. Without these amazing tools I wouldn’t be able to do this — many thanks to the people who created and maintain them.

GeoDjango framework — Behind the scenes this handles a few things, like geographic queries and putting everything on a map. If you have any interest in working with geographic data, this is by far the best tool I’ve used.

Python — GeoDjango is written in Python, which I in turn run on a Linux server hosted by Digital Ocean (note, affiliate link, costs you nothing, helps me pay for hosting). Nginx serves the flat HTML files you’re looking at here.

OpenStreetMap — I use OpenStreetMap data for all the maps on this site. OpenStreetMap is like the Wikipedia of maps, except that it isn’t wrong half the time. Whenever I feel skeptical about the so-called collective power of people on the internet, I remember OpenStreetMap and feel a little better.

Vim — The text editor I used to type up most things, including these words right now.

Luxagraf should work in every web browser. If you have trouble, or see something that just doesn’t seem right, please let me know.

Photography

Minimal photo processing is done with free software, primarily Darktable and GIMP. I also use picopt to optimize image for the web.

The photo gallery layout was inspired by the lovely (and now defunct) Pictory photo showcase. Also note that while the writing is copyrighted to me, the photos are licensed under a Creative Commons attribution, share-alike license, which means you’re free to use them so long as you attribute them to me.