06 January 2016
We have a dog. Ruby is lovely. Smelly, eats poo, she’s as mad as a box of…
We have a cat. Mollie is lovely. Very ladylike, and even when she’s shouting at me for being too slow getting her meals ready, delightful.
We have another cat. Loki is a right royal pain in the arse! He’s coming up to 15 years old and, though showing signs of slowing down, is getting better at one thing…
Shouting, caterwauling, making frankly disturbing noises when he finds his soft toy and engages in very focused, er… ‘behaviour’ with it.
Ok, lots of annoying things. He’s the last thing I hear at night and the first in the morning. It’s got to the stage I want to launch him somewhere very, very far-away…
But no.
He’s family.
05 January 2016
App.net’s @lukasros asked a couple of days ago:
“Hello people of App.net! What do you think about having another #ADNHackDay / #CommunityHackDay?
Pinging @matigo @33mhz @duerig @ryantharp @flashblu @adnfuture @pamdavis @jvimedia @cgiffard @blumenkraft and everyone else.”
The weekend of January 30/31 has been proposed. And I’m vaguely excited!
“Vaguely” because, as you’re probably already aware, I’m not a developer not even a hobbyist coder. It didn’t stop me creating a thing that came to its ultimate* fruition only after the weekend I participated. But it was good to watch the evolution of stuff and, though I’d imagine there’s no substitute for being in the same room as people working feverishly to complete a hack, it was good enough for me.
No, I don’t know what I’m going to do, or what I’m capable of. And that’s what the inspiration of a community of like-minded, though far better than me at their fields, people will imbue in me. Confidence. Or fear, too early to say.
Or… I’ll just read the recap. Dunno yet!
*It’s really not that good. And it has the niche-cubed appeal factor.
04 January 2016
In a new departure, I’m experimenting with a blog post to call ADN to choose our #ThemeMonday theme for January 2016.
For more information, see the ThemeMonday page.
So here we go, please think what you’d like to see this month and tell us all. Seasonal themes, silly , sexy or serious themes; it’s your ADN to shape as you will. Make the most of this opportunity!
Please reply to ADN post thread when you see it.
Thanks!
04 January 2016
I have a Github Pages test blog, adapted from a repo I found on Github.com. It’s there simply to allow me to figure out how Git & Github work, to refamiliarise myself with basic HTML (and with Jekyll/yaml code), and to extend my very rudimentary knowledge of CSS.
The theme I chose for the site purports to be responsive to screen orientation and size: landscape with a sidebar, portrait a top bar.
But no.
When viewed on my 4.6 inch phone in portrait orientation it looks quite nice. When viewed in my 7 inch tablet in landscape orientation it also looks quite nice.
App.net’s @hazardwarning was kind enough to alert me to a worrying thing:
When viewed on her tablet in portrait orientation, the sidebar obscures half of the content; an effect I can replicate it on my tablet. When I view the site on my phone in landscape, the same behaviour is very much in evidence.
Ahhh… a challenge!*
I’m pretty sure I can fix it if I restore the original ‘hyde.css’ file in \public\css; a file I edited (inexpertly, it has to be said!) in a successful attempt to reduce both sidebar impact and vertical white space.
*Damnit, I very nearly inserted a smiley face then!
03 January 2016
Blogging is simultaneously simple and complex. The simple bit is writing something interesting. Or simply writing. The complex bit is, er… a bit complicated, obviously.
I write for myself, my most critical audience. I attempt to let the stream of consciousness flow from my brain to my fingers without much impediment. Choosing the topic helps immensely here; I made the decision years ago not to stray too far into religion, politics, world affairs, security, race, sports, and things I obviously know nothing about.
I have failed, and will fail, at my attempts at self-censorship. ‘Contentious’ is not my middle name.
Given those apparently insurmountable obstacles to popularity it’s a wonder anyone reads my blog. Really.
In the place of writing for wider appeal I write about myself, family, experiences likely to be shared with a not-me reader, and stuff.
I write and post at a time that suits me; catering to my closest readership. I pick titles that serve to remind me of the content behind. Or is it below?
In late November 2015 I started to blog daily, responding to the installation and early use of a daily journal app on my phone. My daily streak lasted a whole and previously unprecedented month; which was nice. After that miss I’ve done well; another streak is ongoing.
It’s not about streaks; it’s about enjoyment, a process, a journey. Getting there, wherever there is, is almost incidental.
Focus on the minutiae of blogging for a moment - the technical aspects of the sport - is something I’ve mastered in the past, a couple of times with WordPress and, more recently, with Jason Irwin’s 10Centuries (10C) blogging platform. Ok, so there’s not much to fiddle with using Jason’s service; so I fiddled with CSS anyway.
Right now, prior to the 4th generation of 10C going live, I’m messing about with Github Pages - it’s a surprisingly rewarding process getting things to work.
Blogging and administering via Git (even with help from the Github.com web interface) isn’t for everyone, though with suitable Git apps it’s really quite easy after a while, especially using a good Markdown editor.
I’ve refrained from asking Jason to add a Git repo posting method into his already complex mix. The ability to post via an ADN private message, or via the 10C Web interface or using Evernote or, in v4, Microsoft’s OneNote, probably gives existing and potential users enough options to gain wider appeal.
(Other services exist, YMMV.)
I am Baz. I am still not a blogger.