Tuesday, 16th January, 2024
Skipped the computer this evening to clear the drive and cars of snow and to fit winter tyres to my bike. Took me until about 9pm and my arms were tired from all the snow. I always put off buying a snow shovel and use a metal one, but it’s heavy. Maybe I’ll get one now…usually we only have a couple of instances of snow through the winter, so doesn’t seem that worthwhile. Although it’s every year so it would get used.
My 2023 DayOne book arrived today. It was noticeably thinner than the last one I had made, but still enjoyable to flick through. It keeps me motivated to keep going with it. Doing quite well this month, having only missed two days so far.
Last night was a write off with looking at blogging site stuff. I was thinking about it whilst clearing the snow. I leaning towards only having this site as my blog. I did think I should try and use images a bit more, and would like the search to be better. If I’m asking for things, then it would be the ability to have paragraph anchors, so I can link back to specific paragraphs.
I’ve started to look into it with all these JSON CMS tools. Where you define a schema and then you can make new entries using it, either as markdown or JSON. This can then be used by static generators to build a site. Some of them are static pages you host with a bunch of JavaScript that interacts with github, so there isn’t even a service to host, which is nice. It would mean having to use that site to write everything. They’re effectively web based Tinderbox’s but you have to program everything yourself.
It’ll take me a while to figure it out if I ever do go down that path. It’s obvious once you think about it, but if I want smart functionality, I need some app to do it. I can’t just edit text files on 1Writer, or VS Code and expect the same. So using a CMS, or Tinderbox or emacs etc. to do it, but then I always have to use that software. The exception is if I could get the static generators to do what I want. That’s probably possible, with some extra code, although how I find the link to previous paragraphs I don’t know.
I have post a couple of things to micro.blog but I look at them and ask myself why did I add them? They’re stuff people would put on twitter and I have to admit that they were utterly pointless. I suppose this whole blog is utterly pointless, so who am I to be critical. Anyway, I don’t feel the need to post that stuff and am quite content idling chattering (over a cup of tea).
Ugh, I’m still torn though. I’ve been working on a Wall-E 3D printed robot that uses a micro.bit and drives around. I took the parts from online but the assembly and setup wasn’t explained, so I feel like I’d want to share what I did as it could be useful to someone. Maybe I should have a projects section, to put things like that. Quite like the idea of that. More practical how-to style posts. Or perhaps I should use the wiki for that. 🤔 Then I wouldn’t need to worry about the cutesy but inaccessible style of this site, plus Tiddlywiki is great. Or I keep projects on my main site. However they end up I like that idea.
