Since I was talking about it in the last post, I thought I would post a screen grab of my current laptop’s setup.
Believe it or not, the computer still does about everything I need it to do. I was always meant to be a writing machine, which it’s handled that pretty well. Along with some scripting and web dev.
It’s colder in the house than I’d like, but not so cold that I’m actually going to do anything about it. My news feeds were also bothering me so I did do something about them.
Now my propensity for doing things is shot.
Today was a lot of dealing with my tooling. I managed to get some back programs to actually work and I went through the arduous process of getting all the applications on my laptop ran though my package manager. This way I can get my secondary computers as well as future computers all on the same page.
Yes, Macs are hearty things. My MacBook Air is almost six years old, and while it is running fine for now, I did kill it stone dead last year and had to nurse it back to health.
Making backups for my backups is making me happy right now so I’m going to keep chasing it.
Just got groceries and watched some TV with the wife. There’s not a lot of chatter outside the house. Social Media is a different story. People are posting memes but don’t appear to be saying much of anything.
So I’ve stopped looking at Reddit and Facebook.
I’m looking forward to another lazy Sunday. Hope everything is quite for you.
Finally managed to beat my new Jekyll layout into shape. There’s a lot more I have to do to it before I can start using it for the site, but at least it actually works as a layout now.
Started reading Punk Rock Jesus last night and could not put it down until I was finished. Some of the most fun I’ve had with comics in a while. The writing was every tight and would let you look away, and the art was like the best sketches done while you should have been paying attention in class.
But I do have one nitpick: in a comic called Punk Rock Jesus – where you are reference actual punk bands and have a main character who is actively trying to take down religion – why don’t you mention Bad Religion or show the cross buster logo even once?
Again, this is a nitpick, but it’s one that a punk would totally make.
Building a Jekyll theme from scratch is kicking my ass, so I’m going to try to brake the back of that today. It will fight me, I shall win.
Pulled a comic off my to read shelf to dig into this evening: Punk Rock Jesus. Because of course I’m going to read that. It’s more of a shock I haven’t already.
Today has been a low energy kind of day. I’ve been picking at a new layout project for Jekyll blogs. Trying to teach myself how they are put together. Will most likely return to it later today.
Got up wicked early, and have been reading the blog feeds. Yes, people other then I – the Great Hermit – still blog. But it’s much fewer than I’d like.
The waters of that kind of self-publishing have receded years ago, so I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know. But I do think we are getting ready for another shift in content creation.
It’s easier than ever to create your own digital space online for almost no money and have it customized exactly how you want, while the anger and frustration at social media keeps raising at a near daily rate. A tipping point is going to happen and it keeps getting closer.
I think there is hope in the space of creating and owning your own content online, so I won’t belabor the point.
What I did want to talk about was how blogging has been connected to my life. I’ve actually been doing it since around 2003, it’s okay as that comes as a shock. My publishing has been erratic at best, but it’s something that I think about a lot and I’ve alway had somewhere to deposit my writing online.
Those blogs fell apart because of two factors: I couldn’t make the sites look and behave exactly the way I wanted, and I put way too much pressure on myself.
So what’s different with this one?
Those other blogs were always on some structured platform. Most of the time it was WordPress or Blogger, but I’ve also used weird stuff like the Deviant Art journal app and MySpace. I’ve always banged against the sides of functionality and actual layout of those platforms. Even WordPress, which is famous for its customizability. I was always either not self-hosting it – therefore, I didn’t have access to plugins – or the customizations that I could get didn’t go far enough to make the thing I had in my head.
With this site, I have access to the entire code base and can change anything I want whenever I want using normal coding tools. And while I don’t know how to make it do everything I want yet, it looks like it’s doable with almost my skill level. (Plus what I want is very simple, which is why you can almost never find a layout that does exactly that. Most people like to show off their design skills. I can’t be bothered.)
As for my second point: I was always trying to write well-formed, crafted articles, and I made online writing seem so much more difficult than it was. With this site it’s much more quick updates and whatever is on my mind at the moment. This takes off so much of the pressure and I can just publish. This means that I can just create a volume of content, and anyone who writes will tell you that’s the trick: write a lot and your thoughts will start to form and reform as you work out concepts. But you have to produce something.
Not everything on here is going to be great. In fact most of it is just going to be updates of interest only to me. But at the end of the day, I will have made a thing and done it consistently. Perfect is the enemy of the good. And before you can get to whatever idea you think perfect is, you have to be just good first. This means the only way to get there is to give up on being perfect and just act.
My Chrome tabs are a horrendous mess, so I must have been coding again. As I hope you can see, the sites layout has changed.
It looks a lot cleaner this way, at least it does to me.
Don’t worry If you don’t like it. I will probably change it again in a few days.
Been catching up on some reading lately. Well that’s not entirely true, I’ve been reorganizing my “to be read” shelf, which has grown into it’s own book case and I’ve recharged the Kindle. Probably going to spend the rest of the day with my head in a few books.
Will most likely have a round up post on here when I resurface.
Daylight Savings Time happened yesterday, although I’ve never counted that Sunday as the first day. Monday is always the first day of Daylight Savings Time to me. The thing isn’t real until you have to get up at the wrong time with shit to do. What’s this time shift look like when you have an agenda?
I have absolutely no idea why we as a global society willingly give ourselves jet lag two times a year. Yeah, yeah, I know. “Something, something. Farmers.” But I’ve reached a point in my life where the only people I let say that to me are people who actually know farmers.
Do you know farmers? Have you farmed? Can you grow anything?
See. Jet lag. Makes people grumpy.