About
I’m happily married with wonderful kids and a lot of books. My interests include reading (particularly history, social justice, science, tech, publishing, and sf&f), typesetting/bookmaking, design, writing, art, coding, languages (particularly dead ones), and genealogy. I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
By day I’m a software engineer at Planet. (This site is, however, unrelated to my work there and does not represent the company in any way.) My resume page has more detail about my work experience.
Contact info
Feel free to email me (ben.crowder@gmail.com) if you have questions or feedback or want to be friends. I also hold open office hours for those who want to talk via video or audio. And of course you’re welcome to sign the guestbook.
Social media
I post my art to Facebook and Instagram, but other than that I try to avoid social media.
AI
I use Real-ESRGAN to upscale my art, but other than that I don’t use generative AI in my work and don’t have any interest in using it. (If I ever do, though, I’ll make sure to explicitly indicate it.)
Colophon
Backend: This site runs on a custom PHP CMS I wrote eons ago and a blog engine running on Django. I’ve been meaning to migrate the CMS to something newer, but I’ve been focused on other things and hey, it’s still working fine.
Frontend: The design is all custom and the typeface is Literata. There’s no JavaScript. (The HTML is generated server-side.)
History: The first incarnation of this site was at blankslate.net back in July 2001. I had some proto-blog posts on the site in those early years but have since taken them (and hundreds of other early posts) down. There were also a number of separate blogs along the way that ended up getting folded in when I consolidated everything into bencrowder.net. I’ve redesigned the site periodically throughout the course of its life and (let’s be realistic) will no doubt continue to do so until I can’t use a computer anymore.