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Daniel Ioni
Daniel Ioni

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How a Workday Photo Becomes MyZubster History

#opensource #privacy #writing #buildinpublic

Most projects document releases, commits, and technical milestones. MyZubster also documents the ordinary moments that explain why the project exists.

During a workday in Rimini, I photographed a public fountain while I was on a legitimate break. The image is simple, but the workflow around it shows how real life can become a verifiable part of an open project archive.

The real-world artifact

Public fountain photographed in Rimini

This is the real photograph. It is not AI-generated and it is not a reconstruction.

Before adding it to the public repository, I checked the file for privacy-sensitive metadata:

  • no GPS EXIF properties were detected;
  • no camera model or capture-date EXIF properties were detected;
  • no employer identity or workplace information is included;
  • no exact address is asserted in the archive;
  • identifiable bystanders and private documents are not part of the image record.

The original JPEG is 1152 × 1536 pixels and has this SHA-256 fingerprint:

DF04D0C8284E845353FDF27E9D0F838CE7A9BF9C3430E1324183EED4ECE16915
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The photograph is tracked in MyZubster-Photos PR #9 under the geographically organized real-world archive. At the time of writing, that pull request is still a draft and has not been merged into the default branch.

From observation to story

MyZubster: The City Becomes Memory

The second image is a narrative comic inspired by the archival process. It is deliberately separated from the real photograph.

The comic shows the sequence:

ordinary workday
      ↓
legitimate break
      ↓
public-city photograph
      ↓
privacy review
      ↓
SHA-256 fingerprint
      ↓
repository artifact
      ↓
MyZubster story
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It does not claim to reproduce an exact person, employer, street, address, or moment. It is a symbolic interpretation of how the archive grows.

The comic is tracked separately in MyZubster-Photos PR #10. Its source PNG has this SHA-256 fingerprint:

326CD73D94F4C712F03AEAF8FED2C68CF76DA3A0EBF9158DFD3ADCA8ED35928D
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PR #10 is also still a draft at the time of writing.

Why keep the photo and the comic separate?

A trustworthy archive should distinguish evidence from interpretation.

The photograph answers: What real-world artifact was captured?

The comic answers: What does this moment mean inside the MyZubster narrative?

Keeping them separate prevents an illustration from being mistaken for proof. Linking them together preserves context without weakening provenance.

A small urban detail can become durable history

MyZubster is not only a software repository. It is also a long-term record of work, places, contributors, decisions, and everyday observations.

The goal is not to collect everything indiscriminately. The goal is to preserve selected artifacts responsibly:

  1. Capture only appropriate public details.
  2. Avoid exposing people, employers, private documents, or exact sensitive locations.
  3. Inspect metadata before public release.
  4. Generate a cryptographic fingerprint.
  5. Store the artifact through a reviewable pull request.
  6. Label generated narrative visuals as interpretations.
  7. Link public stories back to canonical evidence.

That is how a photograph taken during an ordinary workday becomes more than a file. It becomes a verifiable fragment of the MyZubster timeline.

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