Lost In Haste
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  • Snowfall and a Show

    Over the weekend, my Partner and I were offered tickets to see Mrs. Doubtfire at the local theater. 🎭 It was an unexpected treat (our friends had just come back from London and were rather jet-lagged), both the show and the holiday decoration in the theater.🎄 📷

    It was also the first serious snowfall of the season. 🌨️ It was mostly melted by the time we woke up in the morning but it was a pretty drive home (took back roads, to avoid all the people who are bad at driving in snow 🤣). ❄️

    All in all, it was a lovely night. 👏🏻

  • Year In Books - 2023

    I didn’t get nearly as much reading done in 2023 as I’d planned but that’s just the way the cookies crumble. I plan to do more reading in 2024 and spend some of my reading time focusing on books outside the fantasy / sci-fi genre.

    Moonlight Relic Aster Fall Battlefield Reclaimer Second Hand The Unlikely Heir Imperial Wizard: Ambitions Imperial Wizard Weeping Of Willows The House of Fire Loremaster Rune Seeker The House Witch 3 The House Witch 2 The House Witch Dead Tired

    Note: I only started using Micro.blog’s bookshelf feature midway through the year.

  • Goals for '24

    I don’t really put much stock in the whole “New Years Resolutions” thing everyone else in the States seems to do…but I do like to set some overarching “goals” for the year. Last year, I only had two goals, one of which I succeeded at and the other was a miserable failure. So, this year, I’ve decided to be a little more ambitious.

    Yes, I realize calling them “goals” instead of “resolutions” is a silly semantical quibble but it’s how I prefer things. 🤣

    Goals

    • Be Healthier
      • No junk food in January 1
      • Start building better eating habits
      • Restart my fitness journey 2
    • Continue Tracking Finances 3
      • Commit to a single financial aggregator 4
    • Be More “there” For Family and Friends
      • Be a better Partner
      • Spend more time with my family
      • Reconnect with old friends, rekindle old relationships 5
    • Work On My Career
      • Stop treading water
      • Regain my “senior” title (long story) 6
    • Be More Organized
      • Clean things up as I’m working on them…or better yet, just don’t make a mess in the first place
      • Don’t go to bed with a dirty kitchen
      • Finally clean up and organize the basement…and keep it organized

    I suspect I’m going to struggle with more than one of these goals but a new year is a good time to start improving one’s self. 🤞🏻

    1. My Partner and I have a ski trip coming up at the start of March, it would be nice to be in better shape for it. ↩︎

    2. I was working out on a semi-regular basis throughout the year but given the stress and trama of October, I completely fell off the wagon. ↩︎

    3. This was the successful goal from last year. ↩︎

    4. I started out with PocketSmith earlier this year but as they raised their prices without providing anything new, I’ve switched to Banktivity…but now I’m trying out Copilot. 😅 ↩︎

    5. The year started off very rough, causing both me and my Partner to “withdraw” from the world with our grief. ↩︎

    6. Short Version: When I left my old job, I lost my “senior / architect” title to become a “consultant”. During the hiring process, when I pointed out my experience, I was informed as I’d never done consulting before, I’d have to work on my “senior” title. I wasn’t all that bothered about it as I was attempting to leave a bad working situation (people don’t leave good companies, they leave bad managers) and even with the title loss, I was still getting a raise in salary. 🤣 ↩︎

  • Holiday Lights @ the Gardens 🎄📷

    Last weekend, my partner and I went to see some holiday lights at our local botanical garden. It was a wonderful time, they always so such a great job of decorating things and of course, me being me, I took well over two hundred photos (yes, I’m that guy). I wanted to post them all but that would be a little overkill, instead, here are 30-ish of the best ones.

    Note: I wanted to post these photos the day after we went to the garden but I wasn’t really in-love with any of the gallery plugins available…so I ended up making my own.

    When all was said and done, everyone had a great time. 🥰🎄📷

  • Default Apps and Services of 2023

    It seems like a lot of folks have been writing about the default apps / services they use and while I’m late to the game, here is my list…at least for 2023. 🤣 I did a little tweak to the format everyone seems to be using: I split up my home and work life, as I do my best to keep things separate.

    Assuming his site / page are working, you can go see a list on Rob Knight’s website or add your site to the list at Github.

    📨 Mail Client

    📮 Mail Server

    • Home: Fastmail & iCloud
    • Work: Exchange

    📝 Notes

    ✅ To-Do

    📷 Camera

    • Home: iPhone 15 Pro
    • Work: N/A

    🟦 Photo Management

    📆 Calendar

    📁 Cloud File Storage

    • Home: iCloud, Backblaze, & OneDrive
    • Work: Enterprise-hosted SharePoint / OneDrive

    📖 RSS

    🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts

    • Home: Contacts / Cardhop
    • Work: Outlook / Exchange

    🌐 Browser

    • Home: Safari
    • Work: Edge

    💬 Chat

    • Home: iMessage, What’s App, & Signal
    • Work: Teams & Slack

    🔖 Bookmarks

    📑 Read It Later

    📄 Word Processing

    • Home: Pages & Word
    • Work: Word

    📈 Spreadsheets

    • Home: Numbers & Excel
    • Work: Excel

    📊 Presentations

    • Home: N/A
    • Work: PowerPoint

    🛒 Shopping Lists

    🍴 Meal Planning

    💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance

    📰 News

    • Home: Combination of RSS and Podcasts.
    • Work: N/A

    🎵 Music

    • Home: Music & Plex
    • Work: N/A

    🎤 Podcasts

    🔐 Password Management

    • Home: 1Password 4
    • Work: N/A

    🤖 Code Editing

    📚 Books

    • Home: Kindle
    • Work: N/A

    🌎 Blogging

    🖼️ Screenshots

    🌤️ Weather

    📑 Clipboard Manager

    1. Trying to convince my sister-in-law to use it instead of a series of external hard drives; she has an extreme aversion to playing for cloud storage. ↩︎

    2. I’ve been pushing my Team to use a common Wiki page for shared bookmarks. ↩︎

    3. I was using PocketSmith but as they recently raised their prices without offering anything new, I’ve moved on. ↩︎

    4. It took years but I was finally able to convince my Parents to start using a password manager, especially when functions on both their iOS and Windows devices. ↩︎

    5. I use Day One for my personal thoughts and journal. ↩︎

  • Micro.blog September Challenge - Summary

    I very much enjoyed the September 2023 Photo-blogging Challenge at Micro.blog, it gave me a lovely opportunity to look back at all the photos I’ve taken over the years; as I’ve been taking photos since December of 2004, it’s a lot of media to look through (at the time of this post, I have 422 videos and 76,313 photos). While you can go look at the individual posts if you like, I thought it would be fun to post them here and add a bit more details about each photo.

    Note: Each day matches the corresponding day of the month of September.

    Day 1: Abstract

    Decided it would be fun to use DiffusionBee, used the following for the prompt: “random collection of splashes of colors, focusing on shades of blue and silver, Jackson Pollock, HD” #mbsept

    Abstract image with shades of blue and silver.

    I really didn’t have anything in my photo library that I could call abstract and thus, I tried out the whole “using AI to generate images” approach.

    Day 2: Build-Up

    The inverse of “buildup” is “tear down” and in my case, devouring breakfast while catching up with an old friend. 🍽️ #mbsept

    Vegan slinger (sourdough toast, vegetarian sausage, and scrambled eggs, covered in gravy) on a white plate with a fork.

    I almost always take photos of my food when I eat out, for a couple of reasons…the chief of them being my leaky memory. Usually these sorts of things end up in Day One but I ended up posting it, which greatly amused my breakfast companion.

    Day 3: Precious

    Sadly, our little puppy-rabbit crossed the rainbow bridge back in February but this little fur-ball is still with us, eating us out of house and home, puking all his food up, and wailing plaintively to go outside. 😸 #mbsept

    Grey long-haired cat (with a tuff of lighter fur on his chest), looking straight into the camera, with light yellow-green eyes.

    Just one of the more recent photos of Alex the fat/annoying/adorable/crazy cat. Since Russell’s passing, he’s become much more social with us, and thus, the crazy is more on display. 🤣

    Day 4: Orange

    Every time my partner and I visit Quebec City, we have a dinner at a local crepêrie and inevitably get cider with the meal. This time, there was cinnamon on the glass and an orange slice. 🍎🍊 #mbsept

    Cider in a glass, the rim dusted with cinnamon powder, with a vertical orange slice on the lip of the glass, on a white-cloth covered table with a spoon in the foreground.

    My Partner is a French teacher and as a result, we end up in Canada a lot, with a particular focus on the Province of Quebec. We alway end up going to the same crepêrie when we visit Quebec City and more often than not, end up getting cider with dinner. 😋

    Day 5: Forest

    The view from some random trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park a couple years back. 🌳 #mbsept

    Landscape photo with clouds in the sky and a distant view of forest-covered 'hills' (they're called mountains on the east coast but they would be called hills when compared to the Rocky Mountains), with a forest in the foreground of the photo.

    The view from one of the hikes me, my Partner, and a few friends went on when we rented a cabin in Tennessee a few years ago. It was the first vacation with friends we ever went on…and was a smashing success.

    Day 6: Well

    Closest thing I could find in my photo library, this is a “well” of alcohol at a Holiday party back at University. 🎄🍾🥳 #mbsept

    Big bucket of red liquid in the foreground, with a person directly behind it (their face has been replaced with a smile emoticon) in a white shirt, with another person in the background; a white Christmas tree, with lights, is in the background behind the second person.

    I don’t really remember much about this night… 🍺😁

    Day 7: Panorama

    A panorama view of Montmorency Falls, just outside of Ville de Québec (Quebec City) in Canada, as it tumbles down into the basin and flows into the Fleuve Saint-Laurent (St. Lawrence River), on a sunny day in August. #mbsept

    Panoramic view of a water fall on the right, with a bridge going over the falls, wooden steps in the lower-right of the photo, leading down to a covered octagon pavilion on a hill-side, and a large body of water in the center of the photo, flowing out to a river in the distance, in the upper-left of the photo, where several bridges can be seen.

    I absolutely love visiting this waterfall right outside of Quebec City, every time we head north, we visit.

    Day 8: Yonder

    Another one from photo library, this view into the yonder was taken near the Four Corners monument in the South West of the States in 2019. 🌵⛰️ #mbsept

    View of a desert, with distant hills in the background, rocks and short brush in the foreground, and a sliver of a small creek in the middle.

    Another photo from the not so distant past, we were heading home from Arizona.

    Day 9: Language

    Given this photo was taken around ten years ago, I’m not sure why I took it but this was the view of an arrival/departure board at a train station in Paris. 🚄🇫🇷 Now if only I’d learned French… 😢 #mbsept

    View of a split-flap display board (looking up from below) with times, places, and destinations in French, along with a clock on the left side of the board.

    I always marvel at people who can speak more than one language…and my Partner speaks French; he was the perfect tour guide around France when we visited some time ago. I would never have made it around the countryside without him. 🤣🇫🇷

    Day 10: Cycle

    Winter in Québec has a tendency to cover everything and clearly, some people should have brought their bikes inside. 😆❄️🇨🇦🚲 #mbsept

    Two bibles in the snow, one showing the handle-bars and the seat, while the other, only one of the handle-bars is poking out of the snow. The sidewalk is visible in the lower-right of the photo and cars are in the upper-left, along with a sign in French.

    This photo was taken right outside our hotel. 🥶

    Day 11: Retrospect

    It’s been a little more than ten years since I was in Paris and I have to wonder what became of the couples who symbolized their relationships with these locks. 🤔🇫🇷🔐 #mbsept

    Series of locks on a rail, on a bridge, with a slight view of the river below, in Paris.

    All over Paris, on bridges, you find these locks. Couples will place them on bridges, as a sign of their love. 💕

    Day 12: Panic

    Per the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” one should never panic, hence the security system. 🚨 #mbsept

    Plastic dongle on a table, with three buttons on it; 'off' in grey, 'away' in blue, and 'panic' in red.

    A photo of the dongle to arm / disarm the house, from our old security system.

    Day 13: Glowing

    Nothing like a glowing sunset on one of the Great Lakes. 🌤️🛥️ Took this on my summer vacation. #mbsept

    Sunset on one of the Great Lakes (the sun covered by clouds, casting a yellow-orange glow across the sky), with a sailboat in the distance and a fishing boat in the forground.

    Photo from vacation over the summer, my Partner and I went up to Wisconsin with some friends.

    Day 14: Statue

    While wandering around Montréal back in 2014, my partner and I stumbled upon the Tai Chi Single Whip statue in Victoria Square. 🗿🇨🇦🇫🇷 #mbsept

    Stone statue in a tai chi pose, with public bikes in the background on the left and cars parked along a street going up a hill in the background on the right.

    Took this photo so long ago that I can’t remember taking it. 😂

    Day 15: Red

    Taken back in 2020, we got in / out of Québec right before the Pandemic lock-downs in March of that year. Whilst visiting the Great White North, we stopped for a drink in the Ice Hotel and had some Caribou. 😋🥶🇨🇦🇫🇷 #mbsept

    Rectangular shot-glass made out of ice, with red liquid inside, in front of a teddybear-like ice sculpture on a bar made of ice, sitting next to another ice sculpture (a random carving) and the '2' and '0' also made out of ice.

    Drinking in an ice hotel was a lot of fun but I couldn’t feel my fingers by the end of it. 😆🥶 Still, it was a pretty good time and how many people can say they’ve had drinks in a bar made out of ice?

    Day 16: Oof!

    All I can say is that falling into a glowing fire-pit would result in far more than saying “oof!". 🔥 #mbsept

    Fire contained within a metal fire-pit, with glowing embers and a few logs with flames licking upwards.

    Another photo from our summer vacation, took this as the fire was dying down on the 4th of July. 🎇

    Day 17: Intense!

    It was rather intense watching my friend pose for this photo, I was panicking the entire time but he really wanted that photo while we were hiking in the Smoky Mountains. ⛰😱 #mbsept

    Person holding onto wire attached to to the rock behind him, on a trail in the mountains, leaning over the steep hillside off the trail. Trees in the back of the photo, long with the clouds and a view of distant mountains / hills.

    I was in a panic the entire time my friend was posing for the photo but he wanted to send it to the guy he’d just started seeing. 🤪

    Day 18: Fabric!

    Taken during the first summer of the Pandemic, when we were all having backyard gatherings, the friend who was bringing over their projection screen couldn’t make it so we used a sheet instead. 📺😷 #mbsept

    Projection of the TV show 'Seinfeld' onto a sheet, outside, during the end of twilight / the start of evening. The sky is a deep purple, fading to black, with some fairy lights strung up in the right of the image, while the sheet with the TV projection is in the middle, attached to the roof of a house with white siding.

    The “Pandemic” was just…awful… One of the ways we were able to be someone normal was to have friends over in the backkyard, to watch tv / movies with a projector. 🎥

    Day 19: Edge!

    Any time I fly, I always feel like I’m at the edge of the world, especially when going over large bodies of water. This is the sunrise from my first trip to Europe, ten-ish years ago, flying into Amsterdam. 🌥️✈️🌊 #mbsept

    iew of the sky and ocean, from an airplane; the ocean is a deep blue/purple below, with a hint of sunlight appearing on the water from behind the clouds, while the white wing of the plan is across the middle of the image.

    Sunrise over the Atlantic, on my first trip to Europe. You never forget your first time, even if it’s with the family that drives you insane. 😱😆 It was a crazy but fun trip.

    Day 20: Disruption!

    It’s always good to stop when see a sign, unless you want to cause a dangerous disruption. 🛑 Bonus points when the intersection contains your last name… 🤣 #mbsept

    Red stop sign in the foreground, with road names mounted on top: 'Rozier St' and 'Linn Dr'; a True Value hardware store is in the background, the parking lot right behind the sign.

    I could go into the backstory of why there is a street with my last name but that would just ruin the mystry of my Family line. 😝

    Day 21: Fall!

    There is nothing like the crunch of leaves underfoot as you’re strolling around a local park during the Autumn / Fall season. 🌳🍂 The only thing missing is a pumpkin-spice flavored drink. 😆☕️ #mbsept

    Wooden bench in a park, with yellow leaves covering the ground and some on the bench. There is a paved trail in the background, with yellowing trees throughout the photo.

    Winter used to be my favorite time of the year but as I age, I’m starting to favor Autumn a little bit more.

    Day 22: Road

    Just a piece of rubbish lying next to the road. 🧱🛴 #mbsept

    Broken electric scooter, lying on a brick road, with its headlight still on.

    My partner and I were actually in Nashville for this photo, we were passing through on our way to Georgia, and stopped at a Britsh pub we’ve eatten at a few years prior. On our way back to the carpark, we stumbled on this piece of trash (yes, I say trash because these things are still cluttering up city streets).

    Day 23: “A Day In the Life”

    Breakfast this morning; we’re visiting my Partner’s cousin’s family and as they took us to dinner last night, we showed up with tons of sugary carbs. 🍩 #mbsept

    Collection of mixed donuts (some covered with sugar, some with sprinkes, some with a sugar-glaze, some with chocolate), four by three, for a total of twelve.

    Who doesn’t love a ton of complex carbs early in the morning?! 🍩🤮

    Day 24: Belt

    Wanted to make sure my new iPhone made it home safely, so of course I used a belt in the car. 🚗📱 #mbsept

    An iPhone 15 Pro box in on the seat of a car, behind a seatbelt.

    As we were out of town, I had my new iPhone delivered to the ‘rents house (parent’s house).

    Day 25: Flare

    Nothing like a little flare to brighten the night sky on the 4th of July. 🎆 #mbsept

    Two giant firework explosions, one pure white, the other colored (red / white / blue), in the night sky, with a trail of smoke leading away from them and the city skyline of St. Louis, with the Arch, is on the right side of the photo. The glow of the city can be seen reflecting a little in the river below.

    This is one of the first photos I ever took with my first mirrorless camera. Looking back at all those photos, taken over ten years ago, they still look amazing. 📸

    Day 26: Beverage

    I was never sure if Russell was after the cheese or the mulled wine but I know he was hoping we’d walk away at some point; he made a habit of stealing unguarded food. 🍷🧀🐶🤣 #mbsept

    Two stemmed glasses of mulled wine sitting on a tray, next to plates and a cutting board with cheese, crackers, and knives. The tray is on top of a black ottoman, with the head of a white dog staring at the tray in the background.

    During the Pandemic, we’d frequently have wine / cheese time on Friday afternoon, after work was done for the week…and watch travel vidoes, dreaming of going anywhere. 🍷🧀

    Day 27: Embrace

    He didn’t want to wake up,
    so he was hiding his face,
    in a sweet little self-embrace.
    😸💤 #mbsept

    Grey cat, curled up and hiding his face with his paws, on a blue bedspread, with blue pillows behind him.

    He’s such a lazy cat… 🐱💤

    Day 28: Workout

    One of my overarching goals for this year was to work on my health, with a large emphasis on fitness. My bestie has work pushing me into lifting weights, for my regular workout. 🏋🏼 #mbsept

    Weight machine, with various brackets to hold bar-bells, in front of a wall of mirrors, reflecting other parts of the gym; the machine is set up for squats.

    There really isn’t much to this photo, I was at the gym and remember I’d forgotten to post.

    Day 29: Contrast

    A view from the Terrasse Dufferin during February; I always love Quebec in winter…the contrast of light and dark, ice and life…it’s lovely. ❄️💡 #mbsept

    View of the St. Lawrence River, with ice chunks occupying most of the surface, at night, with houses covered in snow and streets with lights at the bottom of the picture. On the upper part of the picture, across the river, lights can be seen up and down a bluff, with a few well-light buildings prominent in the cloudy night sky.

    Quebec in winter is glorious, I can’t wait to go back. This is a photo from February of 2020, we got in / out of Canada right before the Pandemic hit the States.

    Day 30: Treasure

    Playing for pennies during a friendly family (in-law) poker game. I wouldn’t call them treasure but I did win a few rounds…and as I’d never played before…that was good enough for me. ♠️🃏🪙 #mbsept

    Cards (9 of hearts, 7 and 5 of clubs on one side, with the Jack of diamonds and the Ace of spades on the other side) on a white tablecloth, with pennies on top of them.

    Sadly, I didn’t have any photos of gold bars or cash bonds in my library (oh, how I wish I was wealthy), so I ended up settling for some coins. This photos is from a poker night with the in-laws, they usually play for snacks / candy but as this was taken during the Pandemic, we opted for something less likely to pass along unwanted germs (foolish to believe but we were grasping at straws back then).

    All in all, it was a lot of fun hunting through my photos over the last month (I started writing this post in October but then my life sort of fell apart, so…here we are). 😊

  • New Plugin: Simple Image Generation

    So I did a thing: I wrote my first Micro.Blog plugin. 🥳 It’s nothing fancy, just another image generator but, as I was in the process of migrating the content from my old blog to here, I realized I had already created one in my Hugo instance…all I needed to do was port it over to GitHub and get it in the right format (also, documentation, mustn’t forget the documentation 🤢). Yes, I could have just changed out the Shortcode for proper HTML as part of the migration but I wanted to keep the same format I was already using…and when does a developer ever take the easy road…? 🤣

    Once the repo was in place, it was a pretty easy process to move my photos to Micro.Blog (thank you MarsEdit) and the markdown code…and there you have it, easy-peasy.

    Screen grab of my work on the Plugin page of Micro.blog's Plug-in page.

    I have to say, it's pretty darn cool to see my work (limited as it is) on the Plug-in page. 😄

    If you’re interested in the Plugin (and really, you shouldn’t be), it can be found on GitHub. If you want to use the plugin, documentation exists on GitHub or you can continue reading. 😂

    Note: In the code examples below, curry brackets have been replaced with straight ones so that Micro.Blog’s Hugo instance doesn’t crash / fail / give-up.

    Image Only

    The only required parameter for the shortcode / plugin is src.

    [[< simple-image src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg" >]]

    Result:

    <figure>
    <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg">
</figure>

    Clickable Image

    Including the link parameter will allow the image to be clickable.

    [[< simple-image src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg" link="https://lostinhaste.com/2023/09/29/september-microblog-photo.html" >]]

    Results:

    <figure>
    <a href="https://lostinhaste.com/2023/09/29/september-microblog-photo.html">
        <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg">
    </a>
</figure>

    Image with Caption / Alt

    Adding text in the alt parameter will result in the generation of an image with alternative text. If the caption parameter is used, additional text will be rendered near the image, within the figure html tag.

    [[< simple-image src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg" alt="View of the St. Lawrence River, with ice chunks occupying most of the surface, at night, with houses covered in snow and streets with lights at the bottom of the picture. On the upper part of the picture, across the river, lights can be seen up and down a bluff, with a few well-light buildings prominent in the cloudy night sky." caption="An icy view of lower Old Town Quebec during winter." >]]

    Result:

    <figure>
    <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg" alt="View of the St. Lawrence River, with ice chunks occupying most of the surface, at night, with houses covered in snow and streets with lights at the bottom of the picture. On the upper part of the picture, across the river, lights can be seen up and down a bluff, with a few well-light buildings prominent in the cloudy night sky.">
    <figcaption>
        <p>
            An icy view of lower Old Town Quebec during winter.
        </p> 
    </figcaption>
</figure>
    View of the St. Lawrence River, with ice chunks occupying most of the surface, at night, with houses covered in snow and streets with lights at the bottom of the picture. On the upper part of the picture, across the river, lights can be seen up and down a bluff, with a few well-light buildings prominent in the cloudy night sky.

    An icy view of lower Old Town Quebec during winter.

    Image with Title / Caption

    Adding the title parameter will generate an h4 html tag within the greater figure html tag.

    [[< simple-image src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg" title="Winter in Quebec" caption="An icy view of lower Old Town Quebec during winter." >]]

    Result:

    <figure>
    <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg" alt="An icy view of lower Old Town Quebec during winter.">
    <figcaption>
        <h4>Winter in Quebec</h4>
        <p>
            An icy view of lower Old Town Quebec during winter.
        </p> 
    </figcaption>
</figure>
    An icy view of lower Old Town Quebec during winter.

    Winter in Quebec

    An icy view of lower Old Town Quebec during winter.

    Including the attr and attrlink parameters will allow for the creation of a hyperlink within the figure html tag element.

    [[< simple-image src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg" attr="Original Post" attrlink="https://lostinhaste.com/2023/09/29/september-microblog-photo.html" >]]

    Results:

    <figure>
    <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/8317/2023/winter-ice-and-light.jpg">
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        <p>
            <a href="https://lostinhaste.com/2023/09/29/september-microblog-photo.html"> 
                Original Post
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    Original Post of the photo...

  • Migrating from Hugo to Micro.Blog

    I’ve been splitting my time between my own site (pictured below) and my Micro.Blog instance for…a while now. At first, I tried to keep long-form posts on my site (created using Hugo, hosted at Cloud Flare) and micro / random thoughts to Micro.Blog but the other day, I thought it would be cool /fun to run both with the same theme and matching links at the top.

    …obviously, that didn’t work out…

    However, working on that put an idea in my head: maintain two places online?

    My site, I created that randomly, with no clear goal. It was really just random luck I ran into Hugo as my email provider allows static site hosting. Now that I’m using Micro.Blog, I don’t really need the old site…I mean, it’s pretty awesome the way it works (Hugo site committed to GitHub and then CloudFlare takes those commits and builds the site and hosts it)…but with Micro.Blog, I can easily post with my phone and there isn’t much to maintain (minus some plugins I have a feeling I’m going to be creating / using).

    So…I’m moving / migrating.

    Things I have to worry about:

    • The main site is at the base domain where as Micro.Blog is pointed to a subdomain
    • I want to keep my old posts and pictures from my main site, so I’ll have to port them over into Micro.Blog
    • I would like to maintain links, both to the original main site and to the current version of Micro.Blog

  • It's too early for this, right?

    Went to a hardware store last night (my Partner is ripping up the carpet and putting in new flooring) and as we walked in, we were assaulted with Christmas cheer. Given the past few weeks, I was digging it but a couple walked in after us and one of them was complaining it was too early for Christmas stuff. 🎄 I was inclined to disagree but I didn’t say anything…just smiled beneath my mask. 📷

    Christmas display at a hardware store: two Santa's standing in front of a series of pre-lit Christmas trees (some green, some sprayed with fake snow), and a giant arch made of holly, ribbons and bows.

  • Goodbye Grandma

    We said goodbye to my oldest friend this weekend, my lovely Grandma. She’s been…or was…a constant presence in my life, for as far back as I can remember. In fact, my oldest memories involve her, helping her bake cookies, hiding under the table with the bag of brown sugar…or waffles on Sunday morning. She was always just “Grandma” to me but as I moved from childhood to adolescence, into adulthood, she somehow became one of my dearest friends. Even when she turned 101 this summer, we all thought she’d just keep going and going but a few weeks ago, she suffered a stroke and has been slowly drifting away from us…and while I wish I could have just turned back the clock a couple years, for everything to be back to normal, I’m so very happy the family was able to visit her one last time on Friday to say a proper goodbye to her…and that the final words she said to me was that she was proud of me and grateful I’d been such a big part of her life.

    I’m going to miss you so much Grandma, thank you for being a Friend. ❤️💔

    Little old Lady (don't worry, she'd have laughed at that joke) with glasses in a striped shirt (blue, yellow, and green), sitting in a chair at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in her hand and a giant bow on her head, with a gigantic smile on her face.

    📷 This photo is from the tail-end of her 97th birthday dinner. As the years went on, it was harder and harder for her to get out of her retirement home, so we’d just bring a birthday dinner to her. She absolutely loved Olive Garden, so we brought her favorite: eggplant Parmesan, along with a giant piece of chocolate cake…and a random gift; Grandma would always say she didn’t need any presents, as it would just be more things to go through once she passed away but I would always joke after you hit 90, you deserved something to mark the occasion. After we sang happy birthday to her and she blew out the candles, we were being silly and she ended up with a bow on her head, laughing. She had the absolute best laugh…and I would give anything to hear it one last time.

  • Markdown Linebreak in Hugo

    My primary website uses Hugo for a variety of reasons and for the most part, I love it…except when you run into odd edge-cases and the latest one: line-breaks using Markdown aka the <br /> tag.

    After a little bit of research, I ended up creating a custom shortcode to handle the need / issue, naming it “line-break.html”:

    List of html files under the layouts / shortcodes directory structure.

    To use the shortcode, I add [[< line-break >]] (I used regular brackets here, instead of curly ones, so this shortcode wouldn’t trip up Hugo) into my various markdown files and voila: line-breaks in the generated HTML!

    Screen grab of text, showing the newly created line-break tag at the end of each line.

  • Micro.blog September Challenge

    I’ve been toying with Micro.blog for years, playing with it (and paying for it) but never really committing to using it. …but then came the buyout / take-over of Twitter (I absolutely refuse to call it “X”) and it seemed like a ton of folks online were looking for alternatives. I’ve always been a fan of supporting software (hence never complaining much about paying for Micro.blog) developers and as I was already paying for it, I decided to give it another go.

    As I predicted, it ended up being more a direct Twitter replacement than anything else, becoming a place for rants, observations, etc, but then I saw a post about the September 2023 Photo-blogging Challenge and decided it might be fun to participate.

    I was right, it’s been a lot of fun. 😀

    The premise behind it is to post a different photo, every day, following the same theme / idea as everyone else. I thought it would be cool to see if I could post a photo each day from my own photo library and with a few exceptions, I’ve succeeded. It’s been a great time, going back in time in my library, looking through old memories, to find something that matches the daily topic.

    If you’d like to see my entries for the Challenge, they can be found under a specific tag, in my Micro.blog instance (the tag: “Photo Challenge: Sept 2023”).

    I’m looking forward to the rest of the month.

    In the end, I think Micro.blog is going to continue to be my Twitter replacement. I thought Mastodon was going to be it but I really enjoy the fact that I control my own subdomain and could migrate away if I wanted down the road. With Mastodon, at least currently, that isn’t really an option for me. So…I’ll continue to use Micro.blog for Twitter-like functionality and keep my existing blog for longer-form posts (like this one).

    Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.

  • Goodbye Russell

    We said goodbye to our boy today. He drifted across the rainbow bridge full of all his favorite foods (ham, meatballs, & pâté), nestled between us on the couch (it was his favorite place to be). I’m going to miss you, my little puppy-rabbit, I’m going to miss you. 💔🐶🐕

    Fluffy white dog, with his head resting on a pillow, looking into the camera.

    Russell, resting on a pillow

    I’m reminded of my favorite song from my favorite musical:

    I’ve heard it said,
    That people come into our lives,
    For a reason.
    Bringing something we must learn.
    And we are lead to those,
    Who help us most to grow if we let them.
    And we help them in return.
    Well I don’t know if I believe that’s true.
    But I know I’m who I am today,
    Because I knew you.
    …..
    Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better.
    I do believe I have been changed for the better.
    …..
    Because I knew you,
    I have been changed
    For good.

    …Of course, in my head, I’m changing out “people” with “dogs” but you get the idea…

    Goodbye my little friend, I’m going to miss you…until we (hopefully) meet again. Thank you for letting me be your Human. 💔🐶

    Fluffy white dog, staring off in the distance, in a garden with light and shade across his body.

    Russell outside in the garden

    Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.

  • Holiday Lights at the Zoo

    Every year part of the local Zoo is decorated with lights and Holiday cheer…and the past few years, my fella and I have made a point to stroll around.

    Bridge next to a lake, under some trees, with Christmas (fairy) lights along the railing and other holiday lights reflected in the water

    Pretty night for a walk by the lake

    It’s just one of our Holiday traditions, to wander around the lights, see the penguins, and share a hot chocolate.

    Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.

  • Lego 64

    Well, I finally finished it! 🎉 It only took a year (I bought this back in October of 2021) but I finally finished building the Super Mario 64™ Question Mark Block, aka, the "?" block from various Mario games.

    Mario 64 Question Mark in Lego form

    Mario 64 Question Mark in Lego form

    I have a notoriously bad memory for my own personal history but two big things I remember playing with as a child: Legos and Nintendo. Not only was it fun to build, but as I was slowly combining piece after piece, attaching set to set, I was remembering all the fun I had playing Super Mario 64 back in the ’90s. 😁 It was quite the nostalgia train for me.

    This was one of the most complicated Lego sets I’ve ever built and I had an absolute blast building this but now comes the hard part: finding somewhere to store / place / show-off. 😅

    Lazy Supervisor

    Of course, Russell supervised most of the construction…in his slipshod and lazy manner. 😁

    I think he’s going to be getting a demotion. 🤣

    Note: This post is from my old site and was ported over into Micro.Blog when I consolidated from two sites into one. All of the migrated posts can be found here.