I know we're not supposed to be wearing skinny jeans anymore. The wide leg is what's cool. But every time I pull on a pair of jeans that are not skinny this is entirely the vibe: Play Video: Mom Jeans - SNL Thanks for reading this post via RSS! Let me know your thoughts by leavin … | Continue reading
See part 1. I don't have by-the-minute updates today. But I can tell you that I spent another 40 minutes on this and I have something that writes to the database, reads from the database and works on production. I'd never done anything dynamic with Astro before so I looked up the … | Continue reading
I've been meaning to try out Astro DB and I have a little project I need to make for our school, but I don't have a lot of time. Here's a real-time live blog of my progress. Start: I've made Astro sited before (this website is one), but never with SSR, Astro DB and not on Vercel[ … | Continue reading
I don't know if there's a proper name for this pattern of thinking, so I'll just call it Post Brain. Post Brain is when you go about your day constantly scanning for anything you can turn in to content, or what would make a great "post". I had a bad, bad case of Post Brain for a … | Continue reading
On this Mother's Day, I would like to say that I am so very grateful to be a mother. I of course cherish my children and all the joy they bring: the funny things they say, the hugs and kisses and declarations of adoration, the fascinating experience of watching them grow and chan … | Continue reading
I wanted to make something bees and bombsesque for code sketch #4. Like their old school, minimal stuff. I started with some squares moving around a square path. I created the path just by making even increments along each side, and then moving the squares along each frame. That … | Continue reading
I’m reading Areté by Brian Johnson at the moment (no, not that Bryan Johnson). I would describe it as a summation of every self help book ever written[^1]. As such, it’s long. I’m slowly getting through it. It appears that the message that Brian most wants get across is to follow … | Continue reading
This is my favourite snack to eat at the moment. You need: frozen blueberries cottage cheese peanut butter The amount of each doesn't matter. I probably go overboard on the blueberries because I love them. Put cottage cheese in a bowl Put a spoon of peanut butter on the cottage c … | Continue reading
Something I think about often: how does Anh Do write so many books in such a short span of time? Some context for overseas readers: Anh Do is an Australian artist who started out his media career as a comedian, but has also had another career as a children’s books writer. He also … | Continue reading
I was worried I would very quickly run out of things to write about when I first started on #WeblogPoMo2024, but it turns out if I make myself produce something every day, I find the words. I'm finding there's something to having a default thing to do with any spare bit of time e … | Continue reading
I didn't post anything on this site for half of March and all of April. I also wasn't on socials much. It was such a long quiet period that a couple of people reached out to me via email to check that I was okay. It was incredibly touching and sweet, what with the absolute barria … | Continue reading
I remember when Spotify DJ showed up in my kids' Spotify account on my phone. My oldest asked: "what's that?". I explained it looked like a DJ would choose songs for you, but the DJ was software aka "AI", not a real person. "Can we try it?!" he responded excitedly. I wanted to sa … | Continue reading
We've been running a paperless house for years now. Any paper that crosses the threshold is either scanned and filed (if important) or put in the bin. It's due to a trauma response on my part[^1], but it actually makes general life admin a lot easier, and keeps the house free of … | Continue reading
In yesterday's note I added a bunch of YouTube embeds. I remembered that I've been meaning to use a better alternative for a while now. I didn't have time for that yesterday so I swapped them out today. In terms of performance, YouTube embeds are pretty woefull, downloading way t … | Continue reading
Today my son saw a Marshmello clip on Spotify and asked why he was wearing the marshmallow helmet. I explained that some artists like to wear a mask to keep their actual identity private, but then later I thought about the how I didn't actually know if this is the case for Marshm … | Continue reading
A small update as I spent around half of the month sick (since when do adults get ear infections?). Notable Seattle and West LA. For leg 2 and 3 of our big USA trip we stayed with friends in Seattle, and then headed back to West LA to catch up with more friends. Many of our frien … | Continue reading
I haven't posted many notes here of late. It's not like I've had writer's block or have been struggling with perfectionism. It's just amongst the juggle of all the different priorities, responsibilities and interests I have, I've dropped the "writing for this website" ball. I nee … | Continue reading
The end of March came around while we were on our big US trip. Then I was really sick and things were hectic coming back and blah blah blah somehow we're at the end of April. So this update is a month late. Notable We went to Disneyland!! Most of the month was spent preparing for … | Continue reading
I go through short-lived periods where I become fixated on one idea, and spend all my free time reading and/or watching videos about it. Recently I was convinced that I need to get serious about cleaning the house properly. I got this book while obsessing over the finding the per … | Continue reading
I bought this last year, thinking it would be some inspo for my personal challenge to keep a daily journal all year. I'm an Alan Rickman stan. I've never, ever been so upset about a celebrity dying as I was the day Alan Rickman died. When I first heard about this book I w … | Continue reading
My sister lent me this one. It's not the sort of thing I would normally choose to read because I like plotty fiction. This was sort of like 12 shorter stories, each from a different person's perspective. At first I was distracted by the lack of punctuation and typical sen … | Continue reading
I am now two months in to my attempt to journal every day, and I am pleased to report I have something on each daily page in my Hobonichi so far. Notable I've been really focusing on home and family related stuff this month. One of my kids had a birthday, and we have a massi … | Continue reading
This is a new series which is very much inspired by Dave Rupert's Vibe Checks. I've long wanted to do something like that myself, but I had the problem of not being able to remember the month that just happened. So I set the goal of daily journaling, and I am pleased to r … | Continue reading
I turned off the Plausible analytics for this site. I used to use analytics mostly to look for links back to my site from other creators. When I had so little traffic, I could traipse through the data and find the people who had found me. Something's changed with my traffic o … | Continue reading
I wouldn't really call it a goal for the year, because it is too vague, but I had set an intention for 2024 that I would spend more of my free time in creative practice - whether that be writing, lettering, drawing, creative coding or piano. I figured I should probably keep t … | Continue reading
I took piano lessons from when I was 9 years old until I was 17. My husband was the same, so we've been thinking about getting our family a piano for a while. We asked a piano teacher what is the deal with digital pianos. Were they as good as acoustic? Or do they have quality … | Continue reading
On a recent evening I was feeling very tired. It had been a big day and I was just... busted. What I should have done was get in to bed, read my book, and turn out the lights early. I instead went to my go-to salve for feeling worn out, a screen. Not just one screen, two screens. … | Continue reading
I wanted to add some work startup/shutdown checklists to my daily note in Obsidian, but I didn't want them going in on the days I don't work. It turns out this is possible with the Templater Plugin. Templater essentially gives you the ability to run some JavaScript when a … | Continue reading
Whenever I tell people (IRL) about my job, the first comments/questions I get are about how hard it is to get anything done when you don't have a boss and/or colleagues in the same building keeping you accountable. I've been working remotely for so long now I'm mostly … | Continue reading
Hey, it's a meme post. Everyone's doing it. ul { list-style: none; padding: 0; } li em { font-weight: bold; } li { margin-bottom: 1.4em; } Mail Client Spark Mail Mail Server Google Workspace and Gmail Notes Personal - Obsidian an … | Continue reading
I've been rocking a bullet journal in Rhodia and Leuchtturm notebooks for many years. After seeing the Hobonichi Techo Cousin on YouTube and Instagram I decided to give a dated planner a try in 2024. I'm pretty excited, I haven't used a dated planner since I was in hi … | Continue reading
This is the third year in a row that I'm replacing my NeuYear Sunday Monochrome Calendar. I think I first heard about these on the Focused podcast, being advertised as a productivity tool. Still, I bought it to help with my oldest kid. My oldest was very aware of time from a … | Continue reading
We are closing in on the end of December, the time of year when people put some great "year in review" type posts on their blogs. I am always impressed by people's ability to recount the various achievements and happenings of the year, especially those who can go into detail. … | Continue reading
I got back into bullet journaling this year. In the last few months, my productivity system has moved more and more from the digital back to the "analog"[^1]. I discovered this way of tracking tasks for the week recently, and it has worked well for me, so I thought I would share. … | Continue reading
Okay, maybe there aren't sixteen steps, but it does feel slightly convoluted. First, some background: my original solution for adding comments to this site was to use talkyard.io. I was grateful to have a 3rd party option that was low-weight, respected users' privacy, and … | Continue reading
On a recent Saturday evening it was my turn to do the post-dinner cleanup. I'd run out of comedy/pop culture podcasts to listen to, but I had just polished off a spicy marg and listening to Dr. Andrew Huberman spout health facts was absolutely not the vibe. So I chucked on so … | Continue reading
A while ago (maybe six months?) I had an idea for a redesign of this website. Since then, I've been pottering away on it and finally sent it live last week. I didn't think it was "ready" yet, but in my mind, it would probably never be ready, and I was starting to get sick … | Continue reading
My toddler's favourite song is I can be anything from the Teletubbies Ready, Steady, Go! album[^1]. We were listening to the song when I asked the boys what they would be, if they could be anything. "A superhero!" "A professional soccer player! What would you be mum?" I thoug … | Continue reading
I received an email in response to my note No Inputs Day. "I hope I'm not being too forward in asking this, but have you considered you have ADHD? I recently received a diagnosis and some of the things you have written about seem symptomatic..." Over the last couple of years, … | Continue reading
My experiment with running my own Mastodon instance is over. I've decided to move on for a few different reasons, but the tldr is that it was costing me too much money. Running costs, Digital Ocean My instance ran on a DO droplet, with assets stored on S3. The US Dollar is a … | Continue reading
As I've shared here previously, my phone use regularly cycles between manageable and problematic. I had a doozy of a week last week. It was one of those weeks where I was reaching for my phone and/or AirPods to fill every spare moment of my day with scrolling or listening to … | Continue reading
Content warning: illness, death. I listened to a clip of Will McMahon on The Imperfects podcast, describing how to speak to a friend who is going through something really difficult. But when I look back on it because I think there's two things that you shouldn't do when s … | Continue reading
make up a short children’s story about a 2 year old called Ted[^1] who is in a real life game of Mario kart. tell a short children’s story about Bill, 5 and Ted, 2 going on an adventure with Mario and Luigi. tell a short children’s story about Bill 5, and Ted, 2 who become profes … | Continue reading
I am just so impressed with the design of the website for Creative South '23 . What a gorgeous site! One neat detail is the mouse-aware "3D" effect on the title text. I decided to see if I could recreate it. HTML and CSS A quick inspection of the title revealed that they' … | Continue reading
Every time I’ve thought “this is a niche subject or random thought, no one will be interested but I’ll publish anyway” someone will let me know that it was the EXACT train of thought they were thinking or thing they were looking for. adactio.com/links/19787 | Continue reading
The first year I started coding professionally, most of the work I did was in Adobe Flash. Then Steve Jobs decided to kill Flash and it forced me to learn how to animate with JavaScript, CSS3 and HTML Canvas if I wanted to keep landing contract jobs. | Continue reading