I can think of few less important things to do in 2026 than reviving a 20 year old blog, but I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging lately and here we are. Keeping a public journal made me actively think about the shape of days. I liked that. I miss that.

For years after I stopped blogging, I would check in on my vintage Moveable Type 3 CMS software that powered the blog installing shims to keep going , but eventually it gave up and I gave up, and slowly the blog started falling apart like a rusty car left in the woods. 

Maybe because my kids are in college now, I felt the pull of having an easy way to throw thoughts into the ether on a platform that wasn’t controlled by companies I no longer trust. I wondered, “Could I vibe code a Mac native CMS into existance?" After a few false starts it took me about a week to build a shambolic, but totally workable CMS that does a bunch of things I’ve always wanted.

1. I have a a local version properly versioned site that lives in a folder on my computer.

2. I can edit in WYSIWYG / HTML / Markdown.

3. I can drag in or paste in pictures.

4. I can sync (or not) to the web whever I want. 

5. I can easily choose from various style templates of my own design. 

6. I can generate the whole thing as static files. 

7. I can automatically use a local model to analyze images, add alt text, and to handle grammar (Dsylexia is a curse). I’m so far resisting the urge to correct old posts, but I might. 

8. I’ve made a phone client that will allow me to post on the go.

9. I can manage a text blog and a photoblog in the same place.

10. etc.

What do I want to do next? I still have a lot of cleanup on the old blog content, and lots of unpublished stories that I want to get up. I also have multiple photoblogs to bring into this century. 

My hope is this will go quickly and I can just start to get into the rhythm of posting again. I’m enjoying it. Here’s to lost causes.

Over the last few years I’ve written a couple of children’s books. My younger son Gabriel is making some illustration tests. I love them. 

Covid made me think about time. I started making my own pinhole cameras and taking long timelapses and solargraphs. If you ever want to make these yourself, I recommend the Sun Seeker app to help you track the location of the sun. It’s quite good! Pro tip if you need precisely milled perfectly round pinholes, you can find them on eBay.

I'm printing a new body of work and have to free up some storage space, so I'm selling a number of editioned 20x24, 30x40, and 40x60 prints from my Travels Without Maps series at deep discounts. Most are c-prints. If you are interested, drop me an email at raul.gutierrez@gmail.com and I'll send a price list of what's available.

Update: Thanks for the great response! For the last few prints I have a special offer. In addition to the discounted price I'm offering the option to donate half the cost to The Brooklyn School of Inquiry. That portion of the purchase is 100% tax deductible! Some of the final prints are large ones, so it's a great way to get a large photograph for not so much money. The Brooklyn School of Inquiry is one of New York's 5 citywide G&T schools. It's the only one located in Brooklyn and kids from all over the borough attend.

Several of you have asked for an update on my journal project.

I ended up with around 150 names and addresses and three journals went out into the world at the end of May.

One was lost immediately. I got reports of the other 2 meandering through several continents before also being lost. I understand the second one changed hands about 12 times. Then it stalled in Seattle for almost a month before heading to China in someone's backpack. There it was lost in a youth hostel in Yangshou. The 3rd journal crisscrossed Europe and was eventually loaned to "a friend of a friend" of blog reader Frida in the Swedish city of Hudiksvall... you know how that goes.

I still have some small hope that two of the journals will unstall, but I've had no word of either of them in almost a month. If they are lost I'm sad I never got to see them. If you worked on any of journals, and especially if you have scans, I'd love to hear/see more.

But I am undeterred! Soon 3 new journals will go out into the world! I think one of the problems with the first incarnation of the project was methodology. I had printed all the addresses inside the journal and had covered them all with individual lightly glued brown strips of paper. The idea was that when you got the journal you would work on your pages, remove a strip at random and send the book on. But this didn't account for the vagaries of life, procrastination, etc. So this time the idea will be that each time the journal is to be sent on, the next name on the list will come from me. This will allow me to track the journals, to report on them as they travel around and so on. I'll also ask for a snapshot of the book in your location so at the very least we'll be able to see where it has been... I'm sure a few of the of the people on the original list won't be contact-able, and some of the people who worked on the original journals might not want to work on a second one, so if you're not on the list and would like to be email your address to journalproject@mexicanpictures.com.

The new rules.

1. You will receive an email asking if you are ready to accept a journal and verifying your address.

2. The journal will arrive in the mail. You will have about a week to work on it. After one week you will gently be reminded that your time is up and it is time to send the journal on to the next address which will be provided.

3. Once you get the address you should send it off as soon as you are able and email when it is actually on it's way.

backstory: description of the original project, the project grows, the journals go out