HSBI, Mitate, and My New Website

I usually have some kind of topic for each of my posts, but today I thought I would offer a misc one with some random updates, thoughts, and info.

The other day I came across a really cool story about a mitate artist in Japan. You probably have no idea what mitate is. It's a kind of art that looks for visual puns and other hidden meaning, and more generally about seeing and depicting one thing as another. An example of mitate might be a Zen rock garden, where the smooth pebbles represent water and waves and the larger rocks represent mountains. There is a series of books at the preschool my kids went to that they loved which would design city scenes using household objects: for example, popsicle sticks lined up would represent a wall, a car might have golf balls for tires, and so on. This is also an example of mitate.

This artist composes his scene and then takes a photo. He does one everyday. Check out his website where he posts each one. You can see two of his shots here, but visit his site for many many more.

Speaking of websites, I am reviving mine! I'm not leaving Hive, so don't worry, but I plan on reporting some of my Hive articles there either directly or with some expansion, and (when I can figure out a format I like) posting short form content there too.

I've actually been on the web since making my first website in 1996. For about two years my website was only on the university server. I'd telnet in and update everything by hand. This was long before CMSes like Wordpress, so it was a bit more work than just writing an article and hitting "post". I then moved to dbooster.net for a few years until switching to japandave.com. I wish I had held onto those domains because the SEO rating for them would be through the roof from what I understand about using a domain so old, but I never really considered such things before now. I let both domains expire some time after I joined Hive six years ago. Flash forward to a year or two ago: I registered LaSpina.org. Yes, my name. Maybe going back to dbooster.net would have been smarter, but oh well.

Actually there is a reason I picked LaSpina.org. For many years, when my primary profession was photography, I was often confused with another photographer with my exact same name who lives in New York City. He was often confused for me too, so it went both ways. There is also another fellow with my exact same name (including my same middle name!) who lives in Australia. David is a really really really common name so that's not so surprising, but I never really considered my last name common. Anyway, my idea was I'd grab this domain and make a page on it to redirect to all the people with my name.

A silly reason maybe, but there we go. At any rate, if you are curious go check it out: https://laspina.org.

Some linked pages are missing and some of the formatting is wacky, so it's a work in progress, but enjoy what's there!

I had a new idea the other day inspired by Hive account@freecompliments. One of the really innovative ways he is growing his community is by giving away a crap ton of HSBI to pretty much everyone.

I have always done this to some extent. At Blockchain Poets I give out at least 10 HSBI weekly for the weekly review, but I often also give it out randomly for people who comment, so it's usually a bit more. Behind the scenes, I give it out to the group mods and I give it out on many of my weekly posts on this account.

Giving away so many HSBI for rewards and payments is something I took from Hive account@o07 back long ago when he also gave out a crap ton of it to everyone every week as a part of Contest Kings. If you weren't around back then, he would throw up at least two posts a week saying something like "I have too much STEEM (this was back before the fork to Hive); first 50 people to reply will get SBI!", as well as other contests.

I always liked that. So I've always given it away freely too. But man, my giveaways and payments using HSBI don't hold a candle to what Hive account@freecompliments is doing. To give you an idea of how much he gives away, look at the HSBI richlist. His community account is #2 and his personal account is #5. That's a lot of HSBI!

I'd urge you all to check out his community, Free Compliments. It's a nice positive place. We all need more positivity in our lives, especially with a US election year coming and the mudslinging that is going to be everywhere.

But anyway, what is the idea I mentioned at the top of this section? Just to give away more HSBI myself in Blockchain Poets. This past year I've been using a portion of my personal post rewards to power-up everyday, about 10-20 HIVE per day. I'm going to lower that to just 1 or 2 per day and put the rest towards HSBI rewards in Blockchain Poets. So if you like poetry, go join!

Anyway, that's about all I have for this morning. Hope you all enjoyed my ramblings in this post. Have a great day, y'all. Be well, do good work, and stay in touch.