All Thumbs Comes to Life

This Sunday, July 12, 2026, I finally gave my distracted brain the time to rebuild my Joomla website. I had heard that people use AI to help with website development, so I worked with Google’s Gemini to guide me through what I once knew how to do manually: setting up a Joomla website and database.

After deleting old junk from my host server, I installed Joomla 6 and found a template suggested by Gemini. The template actually required Joomla 6, which was the ultimate reason I had to upgrade the install. That process took me a few hours of poking and prodding the sycophantic AI personality.

Because the template featured social network icons, I needed to figure out the actual links to my existing Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest accounts. Each one required password resets and a bit of juggling. I also created an “All Thumbs Studio” YouTube page to eventually start publishing videos. In my mind, AllThumbs.org is a central hub for all my websites. I may be old school, stupid, or just stubborn, but I’ve paid for this domain for so long that I figured I should use it. A central hub seemed like the most reliable use. Besides, I like writing small screeds like this to settle my jittery, racing, thought-filled brain. At last, I have recreated my blog.

Once the installation of the CMS and the template was complete, I started trying to integrate my Instagram feed into my site. It seemed like it was going to be a simple process of copying some scripted code and pasting it into my home page.

It wasn't. Things have changed.

Meta is a beast. I knew my Facebook studio page was linked to my Instagram and Threads accounts (both personal and studio pages,) but I had no idea how cryptic and opaque Meta makes the process. To put it simply: I was required to create a Meta Developers Account and set up an “app” just to get an Access Token to enter into the Joomla Module that facilitates the connection. The integration techniques seem to go out of date as fast as developers can code them; Gemini kept giving me yesterday’s news. I spent hours re-asking the same question, flipping through websites, admin panels, and Joomla functions.

In the end, I got it to work. It works—but it isn't working pretty.

Making it look good will be a task for another day.

[AND Gemini proofread this.]

 

We should all get Trading Card size business cards

 

In my opinion, we artists should all do trading cards instead of business cards. I’m a collector by temperament and I think there is a large group of us (and our customers) that are in the same category. I believe that having a trading card size business card allows people visiting our booths to start a collection of small artwork of the artists they like. And. It allows us artists to collect other artists cards as well.

Why did I started doing trading cards?

I found in comic book shops in the ‘80s and ‘90s small boxed trading cards that were on the shelves that were not sports related. A company called Kitchen Sink Press published some great titles like “Rotton to the Core” – a New York City themed collection of corrupt people infamous in the city. The Donald Trump card is very valuable today. Another notable person in this collection was Rudy Guiliani.  I started collecting these boxes especially as they started to end up in reduced bins. There were R. Crumb drawings on Country and Blues musicians; Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union; etc.