Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

The Bothy theme is here!

It’s taken me a lot longer than I thought, but I finally finished my own Micro.blog theme, Bothy.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to build my own Micro.blog theme, but I kept putting it off. After playing around with TailwindCSS to get something up and running, I started to see how I wanted my own theme to look. Nothing fancy, a single-column layout with a simple header and just a little bit of CSS to make it easy to read. After a few attempts at getting a workflow going for it, I finally managed to ship a working version of the theme.

It’s by no means finished, and there will likely be a flurry of updates as I address any issues that arise and add other partials and templates that I might have missed or haven’t styled.

Full docs are available on the theme’s Micro.blog site, and you’ll find the source code on SourceHut as well. There is a repo on GitHub, but this is just to allow Micro.blog to pick up changes to the blog so that it can be updated as a plug-in.

If you’re curious as to how it looks, you can take a look at my blog or the Bothy website.

Bothy can be installed from the plug-ins directory.

Enjoy!

Swamped with work and other commitments over the last two weeks. I need to create some downtime for myself and keep it as a regular thing.

Caught a cracking shot of the wee guy playing in the par 3 comp today. Learned a lot of what’s possible when taking action shots with my iPhone.

A golfer is preparing to hit a shot from a bunker on a lush green golf course near a flag.

Back to my Micro.blog theme ...

I tried to get back to working on my theme for Micro.blog last night. I managed to hold out for a few minutes before tiredness and frustration kicked in.

I have a theme working locally with Hugo. I have created a theme on Micro.blog and have started uploading the individual templates, but it seems like such a chore, and there are some differences between my theme locally and what is on Micro.blog, in that my Hugo themes don’t always work on Micro.blog.

Is there a more effective way to do this?

I watched Moneyball tonight for the first time. Can’t believe it took me all this time to watch it. I absolutely loved it.

The win yin is playing in his first county level event at Cochrane Castle Golf Club today. He’ll be doing well if he plays to his handicap today. Good experience for him as well.

A person is playing golf, swinging a club on a grassy course with trees in the background.

Watching the big yin playing in the Newton Shield final tonight at Greenock Golf Club. Still early days for scores but looking good in a couple of the early games for Elderslie.

A scenic landscape features a lush green golf course, trees, and a hilly backdrop under a bright, sunny sky.

Taken the first steps with my own Micro.blog theme, bothy. Still a while to go before it’s ready as a plug-in.

What to build vs how to build

There’s a difference between what to build and how to build. I hadn’t given it much thought until today, when I started to realise that I could improve the time it takes me to make an image template for a product of mine by automating the creation of the different classes and modules needed for each image template.

I spent an hour tonight working on a script that generates all the necessary code I needed. In addition to creating each code file, it also generated the absolute minimum amount of code required for each file to run successfully.

When building products, I’ve always prioritised what to build over how to make, but I need to start splitting my time more evenly between the two. Spending time on one can have some profound benefits for the other.