Stop sign in the highlands of north-east Georgia, 2024.
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- I kickstarted work on my first proper photobook intended for publishing.
- Developed Arrowhead CLI – A fast Obsidian-aware search and discovery that makes AI agents your true knowledge assistant. Open-sourcing soon!
- Released Stamp CLI – a simple note naming and identification tool for the Plaintext Commons system.
- Exhibited four photographs at Ajika restaurant in Tokyo; on display entire November.
- Participated in meetings with a potential publisher and book designer for book production, design, paper selection, and binding approaches.
- Completed visa renewal documentation and submitted all required paperwork.
- Created and submitted a presentation for a potential Rome community studio space.
- Bartended multiple nights at Ajika as part of my mini-exhibition, serving alongside Leon.
- Completed a few more bookbinding projects.
- Supported Jinny Street Gallery activities, including a workshop and Kohei Shibusawa show at NININI.NI.
- Visited Tokyo Photographic Art Museum to see Pedro Costa’s photographic work, featuring beautiful portrait works with still videos.
- Had a chance to see Mike Brodie’s (a.k.a. The Polaroid Kid) prints up close (thanks Jeremy!)
- Migrated task management from Reminders.app back to Things.
October was full and rich with experiences. First and foremost, I completed my visa paperwork as soon as I could submit it—lifting a massive weight off my shoulders.
My research work has taken practical shape with the development of Stamp and Arrowhead—software tools that help with note-taking and bridge the gap between AI agents and personal knowledge bases. The direction is promising, and I’m excited to be open-sourcing these tools on GitHub in the coming days.
Perhaps most significantly for my photography practice, I’ve begun work on my first proper photobook intended for publication. I’m deeply grateful for the mentorship guiding this project forward. While it’s already presented challenges and will certainly bring more, I believe the resulting book will be something truly worth publishing and sharing.
- Received the lost-in-mail Out of Memory Vol. 10 photobook after six weeks — turned out chunkier than expected.
- Started Greg Girard’s Fotofilmic book program; presenting my photography projects.
- Repaired my Contax G2 camera body by cleaning contacts and fixing the autofocus hunting issue.
- Got Remarkable Paper Pro Move; designed InDesign templates for daily logging and habit tracking. Perhaps a good companion for my Unbound System.
- Developed an advanced file-based note-taking system integrating Claude Code, Obsidian, and my Synapse/Soma MCP CLI tool.
- Added an AI Transparency and Usage page documenting the AI tools used across ttvl.co.
- Implemented text-fragments support on ttvl.co.
- Practiced color darkroom techniques, focusing on color balance calibration.
- Completed another handbound book at Marumizu-gumi.
I’m back in Tokyo, returning to the routine of my studio: mixing chemicals for film and paper, making color prints, sequencing the project I’m working on now.
The Soma and Synapse application suite has morphed into a genuinely helpful software bridge between my notes, Obsidian, and Claude Code. I find this combination, set up in a particular way, extremely helpful for logging and retrieving information from my notes. It’s significantly more powerful than the memory features that most AI chatbots utilize.
I’m really enjoying the process of building this digital note-taking companion to Unbound, even though I haven’t settled on a formal system yet. There’s a lot of interesting work ahead. I’m thinking about documenting the evolution of this setup here on the site—sharing how it gradually takes shape, step by step. If that sounds interesting, let me know; I’d love to hear if you’d want to follow along.
- Published the Thermometer Panel for Jobo Systems guide.
- Successfully mixed and tested replenishable C-41 color chemicals from minilab concentrates.
- Attended a bookbinding exhibition featuring over 100 handmade books at Marumizu-gumi, one of which was mine.
- Designed and made a custom engagement ring box for Ludo – she said yes.
- Set up Kittyzilla’s exhibition — Where are the Cats? — at Jinny Street Gallery.
- Visited Elliott Erwitt’s retrospective at Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome, and discovered sculptor Carole A. Feuerman’s work.
- Made significant progress on pivoting Synapse/Soma towards an Obsidian companion app.
- Attended Nini & Ozy’s wedding in Tbilisi – extremely happy for them.
- Traveled between Tokyo, Rome, and Georgia, including visits to Batumi and multiple days in Tbilisi. Batumi is unrecognizable compared to a decade ago.
- Began planning a dual-residency arrangement between Tbilisi and Rome for the upcoming year.
I survived the absolute toughest few weeks in Tokyo in terms of weather. I have never experienced such intense heat for so many days in a row. Flying to Rome and then to Georgia felt like a breath of fresh air—or like landing back on Earth after being trapped in my flat (and studio) in Tokyo, which felt like a spaceship.
Tbilisi is as magical as ever: alive, full of changes, and people enjoying themselves even in the face of the political challenges the whole country is going through. This really pushed both Ludo and me to finally make a decision: starting in 2026, we’ll begin moving to Tbilisi and Europe—initially Rome. Challenging and interesting times ahead.
- Designed and built a custom 4-probe thermometer panel for JOBO CPE-3 to achieve precise temperature control during C-41 film development
- Published V2 of the VNS adapter with improved baseplate design bringing film closer to light source
- Completed editing and submitted Out of Memory Vol. 10(!!!) for printing
- Created and bound A Chair in the Sky for the bookbinding exhibition
- Implemented full-text search functionality to this website; simply press
? key
- Added OpenGraph social media cards to toto.photo pages
- Published dozens of new Loose Leaves entries
- Made significant progress on Synapse/Soma app, added Obsidian compatibility
- Bunch of darkroom hours printing RA-4 chromogenic prints
- Attended Rural Festival in Fukushima for three days of music and camping
- Visited Luigi Ghirri exhibition at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum and acquired his Kodachrome book
- Purchased artwork from Saki Otsuka’s Taking Back Myself exhibition at Gallery Ether
- Co-led workshop at Jinny Street Gallery
- Coordinated Yu-Asobi exhibition closing Jinny Street Gallery
- Searching apparel factory partnership for Jinny Street Gallery merchandise
- Luca successfully repaired Ricoh GR3 camera after I gave up on it few years ago. Autofocus isn’t working, but the camera turns on. Thank you, Luca!
- Backfilled 12 months of log entries
July was brutally hot and relentlessly busy. Despite the oppressive temperatures, I’m proud of hitting several milestones this month—particularly completing two book projects, which always bring me the deepest satisfaction. Juggling these creative pursuits alongside my day job felt like a genuine achievement. Though much of my exhaustion stemmed from the Canadian visa application process: mountains of paperwork, endless uncertainties, and glacial processing times that have essentially grounded me for weeks.
Although this ritual of summarizing the month’s work certainly feels motivating and energizing. Onward, forward.
- Initiated the application process for a Canadian visa (I need one, as all Georgians do.)
- Published the essay Where I Stand on AI—For Now to formalize my stance on AI tools.
- Open-sourced mastodon-hugo, a tool to fetch Mastodon feeds and convert them to Hugo/Markdown format.
- Made significant progress on Synapse MCP server—now capable of fetching and editing notes, comparing them with internet content, synthesizing new ideas, and storing them back in the vault.
- Wrote and published Ruins in Print, the 11th dispatch of The Flâneur newsletter.
- Visited and photographed the abandoned pansionats Medea and Imereti in Tskaltubo, Georgia.
- Started exploring new software tools, including the Dia browser by The Browser Company and Claude Code as a terminal replacement.
- Began discussions with the New York Academy of Arts about a potential exhibition at Jinny Street Gallery.
- Returned to Tokyo after six weeks of traveling to Madrid, Rome, and Tbilisi.
I traveled a lot this month. It felt good, as does being back in the studio.
I dove deep into AI programming skills, much more than I expected. I like these tools. I think it’s a new way of programming, essentially using the English language to guide the computer on what to do, which is what programming is all about. Some say these tools will replace programmers, but I think they’re just another abstraction layer in computing that enables more people to interact with them. Think of compilers and high-level languages. English is becoming one above that.
I made good progress with the Synapse application suite and have completed the MCP server part of it. I have already started using it with the Claude macOS app in conjunction with my Obsidian vault. I’m considering a soft launch of Synapse as an MCP and indexing application initially and will add text editing and thinking tools as I progress. Essentially, I’m thinking of developing it in the open.
- Completed printing workprints for Out of Memory Vol. 7 and Vol. 8, including custom storage boxes—now only two volumes behind digital archive
- Designed and published a 40-roll rugged film storage box design
- Listed all my 4x5 and 6x17 lenses on Mercari as part of ongoing gear decluttering
- Launched photographic website at toto.photo!
- Started an experimental photography sketchbook
- Started year-long bookbinding class in Tokyo
- Added photos of the Unbound Notebook System to the page
- Prepared and printed materials for Jinny Street Gallery’s Big City Bathing exhibition (opened May 16th)
- Activated the Jinny Street Gallery newsletter which now has around 130 subscribers
- Traveled to Berlin for byLudo’s Green Product Award ceremony; met George Nebieridze who I haven’t seen in a decade.
- Spent time in Rome working intensively on Soma and Synapse development
- Made prototype Mac app for converting digital negatives to positives – not sure I’ll continue
- Did portrait photography test shoot in Villa Pamphili Park
- Traveled to Ariccia; food was amazing
- Got confirmation for [redacted] retreat in late September in Canada – excited
- Arrived to Madrid
The highlight of the month, particularly on the very last day, is definitely the upcoming retreat to Canada in September. I’m really looking forward to it. As a bonus, I’ll be doing it with my dear friend and fellow photographer, Leon Gallo.
Soma.app has grown into an entire ecosystem of thinking tools, which I’m calling Synapse. It’s a bit of an ambitious project and will require at least a year of work, but hopefully, I’ll have a working prototype and perhaps even an alpha program together in a couple of months. If you want to follow along with the progress, make sure to subscribe to The Flâneur, where I might announce a dedicated newsletter or work blog.
As usual, this month also felt empty before writing the summary above. It is astonishing how helpful this practice has become to my end-of-month routine.
Soma.app is becoming much more than just a paper-to-digital note scanner app. I’ve named this new project it spawned Synapse. It seems like I’m building a note-taking app that can surface insights by simply searching the entire ‘vault’ of notes. I’m unsure whether to start with an Obsidian plug-in or a brand new macOS app. My disdain for multi-platform apps might push me towards the latter, but an Obsidian plug-in could be a good start since I’ve already implemented a command line version of Synapse.
During the month, I also caught up with my film backlog—everything in my red folder, marked “To Scan / Needs Attention,” is now developed and scanned as working files. Work on the 10th(!) volume of Out of Memory has begun.
- Completed setup and renovation of my darkroom at Kyojima Studio with proper organization, light-sealing, and equipment installation.
- Preparing for Project Roam launch—announcement of what it is and when, coming soon.
- Resumed development of Soma.app and Synapse.app—my note-taking software ecosystem that will integrate into Unbound Notebook System.
- Advanced Project Manus by installing a ceiling-mounted projector and camera system at the studio.
- Worked on the first Project Roam product during a trip to Ito.
- Developed dozens of films for upcoming Out of Memory Vol. 10.
- Michibiki Vol.2 exhibition at Jinny Street Gallery.
- Designed and released new Jinny ⨉ Erica Ward Hoodies on the Jinny Street Gallery Store.
- Got myself a maxed-out MacBook Pro M4 Max with all the memory to play with AI and Ollama.
- Started designing and brainstorming on Project Janus—a hybrid digital-film 6x9 camera.
- Revived the Jinny Street Gallery newsletter (subscribe here).
- Attended the Tokyo Art Fair 2025.
- Visited Katsumi Nishizawa’s show and a book launch.
- Celebrated the closing of NININI, a beloved local bar and friends of mine and Jinny Street Gallery.
- Added a few more books to the library—Todd Hido’s House Hunting and Outskirts and William Eggleston’s 2 1/4.
Looking at the list above, I’d call this month productive, though everything was blurred by the onset of my hay fever, which struck almost precisely at midnight on March 1.
Reviewing this list also reminded me how glad I am to have started keeping a daily journal back in early 2019. It’s become one of the best investments in my mental health. As someone with the memory of a goldfish, who constantly needs reminders, it’s reassuring that each month I can have an AI generate a summary of everything I’ve done. This monthly retrospective leaves me feeling calm and satisfied.
(The list above differs significantly from the summaries produced by AI, as I need to manually clean up project names, add relevant links, and remove personal items. However, I do rely extensively on AI for analyzing my journal entries and drafting initial monthly summaries like this one. I’ll be writing about how I combine these tools.)
- Prepared Michibiki Vol. 2 exhibition at Jinny Street Gallery.
- Shipped all Punctum exhibition catalogs—some copies are still available for sale.
- Made major modifications to the darkroom to enable C-printing.
- Created a “VNS adapter"—merging Valoi easy120 and Negative Supply light source for better color negative scanning.
- Published Pentax Digital Spotmeter Sticker.
- Published Foldable Film Reminders.
- Completed shooting the final roll for the Out of Memory Vol. 10 project.
- Committed to a year-long bookbinding course starting in April.
- Featured (with Lorenzo) on the cover of a local Jingumae magazine—andJ.
- Created substantial updates to the Unbound Notebook System’s Analog Photography Templates.
- Took a ski trip to Zao Onsen in Yamagata, experiencing the famous “snow monsters” (ice-covered trees).
- Spent time developing my film scanning workflow, improving negative-to-positive conversion techniques.
The shortest month of the year turned out to be quite productive—or maybe it’s just being back in Tokyo and getting into its rhythm again that moved me fast. For certain, I do feel quite a bit more comfortable in my studio—creating and working there comes easily.
I’m catching up on my infinite backlog of tasks and getting closer to launching a membership program. I haven’t set an exact launch date yet, but it feels more imminent than ever.
- Developed new sections for toto.photo—exhibitions, press coverage, and a works archive.
- Had three photographs from my Tskaltubo series published in the Atlas of Ruins book.
- Migrated The Flaneur newsletter platform to ttvl.co; no more Substack and walled gardens.
- Updated ttvl.co: the darkroom section now has several new items, and the Unbound System section has been expanded with new templates.
- Learned a new technique for negative-to-positive conversion in Photoshop using negative mask subtraction—still fine-tuning the results.
- Built and started experimenting with a pinhole camera.
- Started working on a membership website platform using Go + Gin.
- Took a long walk in the Pigneto district in Rome.
- Visited the Vatican Museums; Raphael’s School of Athens and the Sistine Chapel are impressive.
2025 started off very busy. I’ve made good progress towards my plan to launch a membership program alongside three(!) websites. I feel like I’m on track to achieve that. The 12-week year system is working well for me, although I do not adhere to its original methodology from the book. I didn’t find the book quite good, frankly—but the idea is well worth trying.
The visit to Tbilisi was pleasant as usual, but the moment I was there, the protests were much calmer than I expected. I didn’t manage to shoot much.
- Completed the Punctum Exhibition Catalog – now available for purchase.
- New film development workflow using the Jobo Tank System. I might consider using it as a rapid travel film development workflow too.
- Made a new Film Process Template page on Unbound, creating detailed guides for chemical preparation and development procedures.
- Published the Film Canisters Stickers project.
- Acquired and tested a second Contax G2 camera body – Araki – with a 21mm Biogon lens and GD-2 data back.
- Published EDC Modular Keychain for carrying photography accessories (film canisters, filters, and other tools) alongside with keys and EDC essentials (band-aid, AirTag, etc).
- Led few Artist Walks for Punctum at Jinny Street Gallery.
- Upgraded the studio workspace with new adjustable lighting system – now my shop desk is as lit as a stadium.
- Traveled to Tbilisi for protests and New Year’s Eve.
December was hectic, but it felt less overwhelming than November, mainly because I’m no longer preoccupied with the visa and paperwork I had to submit to the government. Everything is completed, and now I’m just waiting.
I’ve also found more time to spend in a studio, which has become my happy place for small projects and creative work.
November is always tough on my brain, but pleasant on my senses. Tokyo is blessed to have one of the nicest Novembers of all the places I have been. The sun shines at least two-thirds of the days, and the cold is not as bone-piercing as it could be. November is also the month I have to renew my Japanese visa—every, damn, year. I hope this time I’ll get a three-year break from it.
