Everyone has a favourite mug.

It is so bitter cold outside these days that the lens fogs right up when we come inside. This gnome/smurf figurine was part of some chocolate that was sent to us by a German colleague.

Rico Cat purred calmly as he sat through his entire photoshoot. He turns 17 in July.

John and I went for a very cold walk to the beach today hoping to find treasure. Instead we found this here rusty bucket.

Last fall the city put up these barriers and stationed security guards at the entraces of our normally quiet beach, after it was overrun by out-of-towners looking for a place to escape boredom induced by the COVID-19 restrictions.

At the end of my road, trees had begun eating signs.

Nikki taking an overhead picture of today's beach haul.

This is where I'll be, if you need me. Ontario declared its second provincial emergency to address the current COVID-19 crisis.

Everyone could use some good luck sometimes.

Another one from the backyard. I love the soft bokeh of this lens.

I love getting the camera out each day and discovering new things around the house. Today John also taught me the meaning of blur.

We have lots of birdfeeders hanging from the trees in our front yard. My favourite is this Squirrel Buster.

Standard issue Stowa presentation box.

My dad gave me this old construction light when we bought our first house. With an LED bulb it serves as the perfect webcam light.

We got Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Christmas for the Nintendo Switch. For those who haven't played it -- don't... it's addictive. We've been playing it pretty much non-stop since then. 😄

BUT - if you do have it, and play it, and are addicted to it, you've probably figured out that swimming around and looking for sea creatures (where the bubbles are in the water) and selling them to the Nook brothers is an easy way to make some good money in the game.

Tonight I did a decent haul. Though I could've probably done better -- maybe next time.

Here's a table of the value of each of the 41 things you can find.

PS: I was just kidding. Get the game. 😃

Creature	Name
	Abalone	2000
	Acorn Barnacle	600
	Chambered Nautilus	1800
	Dungeness Crab	1900
	Firefly Squid	1400
	Flatworm	700
	Gazami Crab	2200
	Giant Isopod	12000
	Gigas Giant Clam	15000
	Horseshoe Crab	2500
	Lobster	4500
	Mantis Shrimp	2500
	Moon Jellyfish	600
	Mussel	1500
	Octopus	1200
	Oyster	1100
	Pearl	10000
	Pearl Oyster	2800
	Red King Crab	8000
	Scallop	1200
	Sea Anemone	500
	Sea Cucumber	500
	Sea Grapes	900
	Sea Pig	10000
	Sea Pineapple	1500
	Sea Slug	600
	Sea Star	500
	Sea Urchin	1700
	Seaweed	600
	Slate Pencil Urchin	2000
	Snow Crab	6000
	Spider Crab	12000
	Spiny Lobster	5000
	Spotted Garden Eel	1100
	Sweet Shrimp	1400
	Tiger Prawn	3000
	Turban Shell	1000
	Umbrella Octopus	6000
	Vampire Squid	10000
	Venus' Flower Basket	5000
	Whelk	1000

Casey loves to hang out with me downstairs when I'm working from home.

Larches are needled conifers that look like evergreens in spring and summer, but in the fall the needles (which are super soft) turn colour and drop to the ground.

Feature alert: New font-awesome icons on the top nav to match the new "Recent Content" section of the homepage.

With the addition of photos and scribbles it made sense to update the "Recent Entries" on the homepage, which only included writing, to "Recent Content" -- a mashup of photos, scribbles and writing. Here's how I did it.

First, in the database, a stored procedure to join the two tables with UNION. You'll notice I also baked the font-awesome icon names into this dataset; this will make things simpler in the end.

CREATE PROCEDURE `up_GetRecentContent`()
BEGIN
SELECT 
	Title, 
        TimeAdded, 
        (CASE WHEN Category = 1 THEN "photos" ELSE "scribbles" END) AS Category, 
	(CASE WHEN Category = 1 THEN "fas fa-camera-retro" ELSE "fas fa-pencil-alt" END) as Icon,
	`Key` 
FROM tblPhotos_and_Scribbles
UNION
SELECT 
	Title, 
        TimeAdded, 
        "writing" AS Category, 
        "fas fa-pen-alt" as Icon, 
        PermaLink AS `Key` 
FROM vw_GetLog2Entries
ORDER BY TimeAdded DESC LIMIT 10;
END

Here's the current output of the above procedure:

Recent Content on the homepage, 1609851918, writing, fas fa-pen-alt, 2021/01/recent-content-on-the-homepage.html
Stowa, meet Alox, 1609804144, photos, fas fa-camera-retro, 8
Birthday sushi, 1609710404, photos, fas fa-camera-retro, 7
Stained glass window, 1609648239, photos, fas fa-camera-retro, 6
The old cherry tree, 1609539674, photos, fas fa-camera-retro, 5
Last day of the year, 1609468627, photos, fas fa-camera-retro, 4
New features: photos and scribbles, 1609390313, writing, fas fa-pen-alt, 2020/12/photos-and-scribbles.html
Neat & tidy comics, 1609387095, photos, fas fa-camera-retro, 3
Developing our wings, 1609380580, scribbles, fas fa-pencil-alt, 2
Christmas portrait 2020, 1608818400, photos, fas fa-camera-retro, 1

Then, in the Page class, a simple method to call the stored procedure:

public function get_recent_content()
{
	$rc = $this->sql->RunDBProcedure("up_GetRecentContent");
	return $rc;
}

Next, call the method from the index page and pass it to the templating engine:

// recent content
$rc = $page->get_recent_content();
$smarty->assign("recent_array",$rc);

And finally, a section loop in the Smarty template to output the links to the new content, including the inline icon handling:

<h4>Recent Content</h4>
{if $recent_array}
	<p>
	{section name=sec1 loop=$recent_array}
	<a href="/{$recent_array[sec1]['Category']}/{$recent_array[sec1]['Key']}{if {$recent_array[sec1]['Category']} != 'writing'}/{/if}"><i class="{$recent_array[sec1]['Icon']}"></i> {$recent_array[sec1]['Title']}</a>
	{/section}
	</p>
{else}
<p>No recent content.</p>
{/if}

Nice and simple, which is how I like it at my age. (Hey, I can say that now that I'm 40! 😄)

Another shot of the TO1 alongside the trusty Alox MiniChamp.

I tried to eat 40 pieces to match my age. Did not make it. 😃