Passing clouds of inconsequential observations
Another sunny afternoon tempted me out again. This time I found the Secret Lake which is neither a lake nor particularly secret.
But it is good to see a natural oasis amidst the suburban sprawl. Then upwards and, since Martine pointed it out, it is definitely upward, to the reservoir again which had noticeably more waterfowl this time.
A quick cummings on our bikes along the FLoop to Gorton Reservoirs and Debdale Park. Everyone else seemed to have had the same idea so there was more traffic on the FLoop than there was on the roads.
Blues skies, bright sunlight and a warm breeze…
Alas the video from an old post has gone missing.
The current SemPress theme places the Header image between the title and the start of the articles…
…which may be what was intended but I wanted it behind the title text so it was time to do some more CSS tweaking. Having moved the image I coloured the text from the cloud’s colours, used the darker blue corner of the sky both as a shadow under the title and as the background colour behind the articles. I rounded the corners of some images and the article’s panels.
Of course the moved image was screwed up on smaller screens so it is no longer shown on mobile devices – although some tablets will show it in landscape mode but not in portrait mode.
The amendments, which override the default CSS, now look like this:
As I’m sure there will be more to come I leave this here as an Aide-mémoire.
Yadit #100DaysToOffload
On TV quiz shows one frequently see old people explaining that now they are retired there is so much to do they wonder how they ever found time to go to work. Despite my best intentions to spend my retirement catching up with all the stuff I have never really got to grips with – half understood software, half learnt programming languages, books that were purchased but never read etc. – the torrent of new stuff continues to overwhelm. I should draw a line and say no more… but
The update to Logic looks exciting and Arturia’s extended free licence for Pigments and Analog Lab shouldn’t be wasted. And I am already way behind on the Tidal training sessions. Not to mention the endless opportunities to explore the musical backwaters available to stream.
And then I am about to throw out the sourdough starter I started a few days ago when the weather was warm but abandoned when the weather turned colder – my home is not warm enough ordinarily to sustain the beast, but, I think, ‘it does smell like a good starter’, so I gave it a feed and a drink and it has been bubbling away all day; so the weekend will be spent cultivating some bread.
Not to mention being on fox cub watch…
There is no time for this 100 day nonsense…
Yadit #100DaysToOffload
Finally (after 25? years) got around to seeing if the dusty old record player still works. It does!
Apparently you connect it to something called Analog In these days. Alas my record collection is somewhat reduced from thousands to just four – which would have been four too many if it had not worked. This is a Thorens TD 321. It replaced a Garrard 301. I cannot recall what happened to the 301 – perhaps it just died from exhaustion. But I do still have the manual and test sheet.
The 301 replaced a Garrard SP 25 which had served well during my teens.
While I can appreciate the charm of old (and new) gramophone records I don’t think I will be in a hurry to acquire anymore anytime soon. Today’s streaming services are perfectly fine. There is a lot of nonsense talked about the pleasure of listening to music pressed into a plastic disc but I am not buying it. If there never had been any vinyl records and someone came up with the idea today would anyone be saying “What a great idea!” or , after they stopped laughing, would they point out that the discs are easily damaged, bulky, heavy, difficult to store etc.?
For the record: The pictured disc is The Mothers Of Invention‘s Cruising With Ruben & The Jets on the Verve label which, in the UK, was distributed by Polydor in the mid 70’s as opposed to the original 60’s issue which had been distributed by EMI – there was a time when this stuff was interesting and important.
You can listen to it here:
Yadit #100DaysToOffload
These days some of the software produced for Macs seems to lack the very Mac-ness that makes a Mac a Mac – the attention to detail, the delight of discovery. Some would argue that Apple itself is as guilty as anyone here – although the cursor for the iPad suggest they still get it mostly right. The article today by Brent Simmons highlights some common problems. I have left reviews on the Mac’s App Store along the lines of – nice idea but it is a pity it is not a Mac app. To their credit some developers have taken steps to rectify the problems when they are pointed out – If I close a window it does not mean I want to quit the app. Etc. Etc.
Yadit #100DaysToOffload
Having retired there is probably not going to be any urgent emails to deal with so the setting can be changed to Manual – ideally there would be a Once A Day or even an Every Other Day option.
A quick catch up after the 2010 and 2012 editions.
Skitch Capture material for sharing.
Quick Draft Simple text editor for notes. Syncs with iOS devices.
Dropbox Online storage, file sharing etc.
Backblaze Online backup service.
MyAddress IP address monitor syncs across iCloud for when you are away.
BlockBlock Keeps an eye on what is being installed and notifies you about anything suspicious.
Presentify Highlighter for presentations etc.
Hazel Automates routine tasks.
Typinator Type in a short sequence and it gives you the long form version.
1Password Excellent password manager.
PopClip The single most useful thing to add to a Mac.
Amphetamine Keeps your Mac awake. Very configurable – set a time or wait for a job to finish etc. before going to sleep.
BwanaDik Monitors your connection notifying you when down. No longer supported but included here for continuity with older posts.
LittleIpsum Adds Lorem ipsum text in words, lines or paragraphs. No longer supported.
Cookie Removes specified cookies, trackers and the like either at set intervals or when you quit the browser etc.
Bartender Declutter the menu bar. Hides all the icons you do not need to click on regularly.
FuzzyTime Tells you the time in a normal (not to the precise second) way
in a variety of languages. I have had to add the day to the display otherwise I would not have much idea what day it was lately.
ClipMenu Having tried numerous clipboard managers I have found nothing as useful as this although it has not been updated in years and never made it to version 1.
Spotlight Search for anything on your Mac.
Notifications See/ignore information.
Yadit #100DaysToOffload
I was interested to read Kev Quirk’s plugins article as I had found his introduction to the IndieWeb thing very helpful.
I currently have 18 active plugins – which is probably far too many. So this is as much an exercise for me to consider which can be deactivated as it is information for anyone else; but in the tangled mess that this blog has become over the years it is hard to say which are still actually needed.
Akismet Anti-Spam which did a great job of filtering out spam comments. But as I now have a JetPack account I probably do not need this plug in. And as I have turned off the ability to comment I probably do not need this plugin.
Background Update Tester Checked the site to ensure it was set up correctly for automated updates. I can probably deactivate this one too as it has not been updated in five years and is probably no longer required.
Classic Editor Restores the classic WordPress editor replacing the new blocky Gutenberg editor when required for IndieWeb stuff.
Hotfix Provided quick fixes for individual WordPress bugs between updates. Can probably be deactivated as I do do the updates regularly as required.
IndieWeb Adds IndieWeb functionality – whatever that is :-/
Insert Headers and Footers Not sure what I was using this one for as I do not do the Google Analytics or Facebook linkage things. Possibly deactivate.
Jetpack adds a lot of goodness to the site – security, backups, image optimisation etc.
Microformats 2 More IndieWeb stuff. Not sure it is required as I have switched to an IndieWeb friendly theme anyway.
Page Links To Provides simple links out of the WordPress site. Could probably deactivate this as I am moving link outs to the sidebar widgets.
PHP code widget Allows you to add PHP code to the site – not sure what I was doing with this.
Post Kinds More IndieWeb stuff doing something or other.
Preserve Code Formatting Displays code as text so it does not get used as code by the site.
Simple Lightbox Presents pictures in a neat way. I need to configure this to do more.
Tumult Hype Animations Player for animations created in Tumult’s Hype editor. I should try and use this more.
VaultPress Backup system which is now part of JetPack so this one can probably go too.
WP Super Cache Helps to speed up the presentation of site.
Wiki Tooltip Makes the little window that pops up when you move over a link to Wikipedia (or whatever you have set it to respond to).
WP-DBManager Helps to keep the tangled sprawling mess that is this blog’s database in some kind of order.
So apparently most of my plugins can go and I should just stick with the half dozen or so that are actually required/doing something.
Tomorrow: What is all that crap in the menu bar? As we have not had one of those for a while.
Yadit #100DaysToOffload
I somehow had missed the joys of Vuo which continues where Apple’s, now defunct, Quartz Composer left off.  It provides much sound and video mangling possibilities.  For example you can grab a website and spin it into a kaleidoscopic frenzy.
[videopress VtDW2sHh]
So that’s something else I will have to try and learn. Â If only I had the time. Â Oh! wait… 
Yet another day in the #100DaysToOffload