I didn’t realise that running a different blog under the same account on Micro.blog still posts to the timeline under your account. I was kind of hoping it didn’t. Thought it might have been a way to work on my blog theme using a different blog.
A first pass at my own Micro.blog theme. I have more CSS than I actually wanted, but making it readable with just enough CSS was the goal for today. I now need to determine what to add or edit to enable it to work with Micro.blog, so I can upload it.
First steps with my new Micro.blog theme
In my foolish quest to build my own Micro.blog theme, I spent some of the evening learning about Hugo and how its theming works. It is not dissimilar to Jekyll in many respects, and I think I have enough to start working on my own theme.
Initially, I’m going with a really basic theme—no colours, frameworks, or complex layouts—just a single column with basic text elements. This will allow me to see what the minimum I can get away with for my theme is. That’s the easy part.
The hard part—it’s definitely not one of my strengths—is putting together a design for a second theme. Web design is not my strong point.
I want to make something that isn’t wildly unique, but has enough to stand out from the rest of the Micro.blog themes. I might let this one simmer away for a few days and check out a few other blogs I like and see what can be done.
This weekend though, the plan is just to have a basic working theme.
The idea of building my own Micro.blog theme is still gnawing away at me. As if I don’t already have enough on my plate.
Learning through development tools
Today, during a major debugging session with a Rails application, I wanted to condense what was in the logs between two consecutive requests to understand what was happening. It was too much to read through everything. I just needed to scan through all these requests and flag whether they were successful or not.
So today, rather than scribbling down another Ruby script, which would have been easy, I started a log analyser using Rust. It’s early days for the script, but it already compiles a list of endpoints, which is a good start.
It’s a reminder to myself that there are plenty of development tools and aids I can build using a variety of languages and frameworks. And if I only use that tool a few times, that’s okay, too. At least I will have learned something.
Another one taking part in Small Web July
To try to get back into regular blogging again, I have decided to take up this invitation to Small Web July.
Here are my guidelines for the month:
- Write at least one blog post a day - This can be anything from quoting another post, sharing some thoughts or anything else really. The one thing I want to do, though, is to move beyond just sharing the bare minimum. Far too many of my posts are short enough not to need titles on Micro.blog, and I want to start moving away from short posts to longer posts.
- Engage a bit more on Micro.blog - I noticed that my volume of replies to people and from people is relatively low. I used to reply to posts a lot in the past, but for some reason, I find myself rarely engaging with other people on Micro.blog.
- Spend more time reading - My reading habit is returning, but not as quickly as I would like. Some fiction books I’ve recently bought are not grabbing my attention. On a whim, I picked up Andy Weir’s book, Hail Mary, for my Kobo. I loved reading The Martian, so I’m sure this will be something I will enjoy reading.
That’s it for the month. I could have added more things to do, but with schools off here in Scotland, I tend to find that between now and mid-August is a time for setting aside any primary goals and just enjoying the boys being about the house and sitting in the back garden when possible.
I noticed that Annie Mueller is participating as well.
Is anyone else taking part?
Star Wars Battlefront 2 still going strong
Though there have been some dips since then, interest in the game has, overall, grown. Star Wars Battlefront 2 reached a new all-time concurrent player peak — 35,892 players — on June 22, with a consistent 20,000 people online at any given time. And these numbers are just for Steam; the game is available on consoles and Windows PC on EA’s proprietary launcher, but concurrent player numbers are not easily available there.
— Star Wars Battlefront 2 Is More Popular Than Ever Thanks To A Dedicated Fan Community
I’m not really surprised that this game is still going strong. Despite the rocky start EA had with the loot box system, the game has remained a popular choice. I still play it weekly. Maybe it’s the fact that I am a huge Star Wars fan, but games like Fortnite and Overwatch haven’t remained on my radar, and it’s been a long time since I played either of those games.
I updated my Rails app’s start script to launch Docker containers for PostgreSQL and Redis. I also added a kill script to stop them when I’m done coding. I hope this helps my struggling laptop battery by properly shutting down services.
I finally set up Claude Code. Very impressed with it so far.
It’s a quiet morning with some code and coffee. I am working through an issue with a product of mine using forms, Rails, and Sidekiq. I’m happy to put the time into this over the weekend, as it’s a core part of the product and will be reused heavily in the future.
