Weeknotes No. 25-37

Web Dev

• About six weeks ago, I used the occasion of obtaining a new ham radio license to relaunch my ham radio blog using a new domain. Since I was already in the process of beginning to use Eleventy to build this blog so I decided to that one using Eleventy too.

• At about the same time, I made a decision to discontinue my dedicated photography blog and fold that content into this blog.

• This week, as two of my domains were coming up for renewal, I decided to rethink a few things.

  1. I didn’t like having the photography content here, so I pulled it back out into its own thing. I let the separate domain expire and am now using a subdomain—pics.mihobu.lol.

  2. I haven’t loved using Eleventy, especially for the lower volume stuff, so I pulled my ham radio blog back to weblog.lol, but still with its own domain—ai5.mx.

  3. The other expiring domain was for my recipes blog and I let it expire too, and moved that blog to another subdomain—recipes.mihobu.lol.

• This blog is still on Eleventy on what I consider to be a probationary basis. It still feels like it’s too “heavy duty” for my needs. I’m eager to see what happens with Neato so I’m going to sit tight a while longer. In the meantime, four of my five blogs are now back on omg.lol/weblog.lol. Adam has built a great set of tools and an amazing community there, and I’m proud to use and support it as much as I can.

• I also made some changes to my Omniroll this week. For starters, micro posts (toots) from my Mastodon accounts (@ai5mx and @thannophoto) are now feeding into my ham radio and photography blogs, respectively, rathern than into Omniroll. Toots from my @mihobu Mastodon account are still going to Omniroll, but I might fold them similarly into this blog. Stay tuned.

Ratings

• I reworked my content ratings system. I use a two dimensional system based on assessment of both the quality of a work as well as my enjoyment of it. In pratice, I found I was not really using the lowest rankings all that much so my overall ratings were skewing high. I eliminated the lowest rankings along both dimensions—“Terrible” on the quality dimension and “Hated” on the enjoyment dimension. I also added a penalty so that lower quality works score lower than higher quality works when enjoyment is the same. For example, a really bad movie that I happen to love will score lower than a great movie that I don’t care for. (In the old system, these would have been equivalent.)

Movies

• Medicine Man ... Allegory about destroying the planet at our own peril is as relevant today as it was 33 years ago (My review here)

• Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale ... Meh. (My review here)

TV

• Finished: Beyond the Bar season 1 ... They try to make me cry every damn episode. They’re usually successful. It’s billed as a limited series, but seems like could easily be extended for another series. Will they or won’t they? Hmmm? ... (My review)

• Started watching: Untamed. After two episodes, off to a strong start. I’ll stick around for this one.

• Ongoing: Acapulco (thru S4E09). Comfort television, good to end the day with the folks at Las Colinas.

• Ongoing: Severance (thru S2E06). I need to take anxiety meds after watching an episode of this show.

• Ongoing: Foundation (thru S02E07). I understand it’s not much like the books, but who cares? I’m into it.

Reading

• “The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done” by Oliver Burkeman — Tremendous wisdom contained in this short post

• “Is it wrong to be good friends with a bad person?” by Yiran Hua (Psyche) — This is dicey terrain and the right thing isn’t necessarily the easy thing.

• “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning” by Elizabeth Spiers (The Nation) — It’s okay to judge public people by their public words and actions. Those who didn’t know Mr Kirk privately don’t owe him or his memory any more than that.

That’s all I have. See you next time.