Closing off 2020 with two new features added to this site: Photos and Scribbles. The idea is that I will move Mr. Monday to the scribbles section and build on it from there and as for the photos, well I want to post regularly like in the old photoblog days. For 2021 the goal is to post at least one photo a day, taken with a real camera. At the same time, I slowly I want to migrate away from social media and consolidate my online presence to this site.
My old site has photos from 2006 to 2013. I have 2013 to 2020 photos (99% cell phone capture) saved to my Amazon account, so I will probably make a couple of albums and hard link them somewhere for reference. Beyond that, it'll all be found on here.
If you would like regular updates on my content, I recommend subscribing to my RSS feed found over on About page. RSS is not dead! 😄 You can use any RSS aggregator of your choice. I like Feedly.
Ontario will be implementing more restrictions starting on Monday to combat the spike in the spread of COVID-19. Just in time for Christmas. I wish they'd just shut the whole province down for a few months and fine people who still willy-nilly jump from house to house or have parties and get-togethers. Lock us down like New Zealand did. They have their act together. They're back to living their normal lives which seems so out of reach for us.
Anyway, Christmas is in a few days and Nikki and I were talking yesterday that it's crazy that we're already done shopping. Usually we go right till the 24th. It's definitely a different kind of year in many ways.
Today we got a dusting of snow, resulting in some beautiful landscapes around the Niagara Peninsula. Also today John and I got a COVID-19 test because we both have a cold and these days everything is six degrees from Kevin Bacon COVID-19.
Anyway these trees are my favourite and it was a great feeling after all these years to be standing in front of them again.
I'm going to bring dagh.net's on this day quotes to life through Mr. Monday.
This will allow me to improve on my drawing skills and at the same time bring to light some of the funny things we've said over the years.
My next goal is to run these comics through Illustrator to make them look clean and so that they're scalable.
(Note: I realize the photo in this entry is not a dagh.net quote but it's a great quote anyway.)
Oh man, this screenshot of my blog from 2004 brings back memories. Everything from the Van Gogh header image -- which was randomized, no less -- to the Coldfusion chart displaying the number of comments. Pure gold!
I created a copy of this site for my friend Bob, who was looking for a simple/basic journal which allows him to include photos. 🙌
Go check it out: lostinthedaze.com 👈
Here's another good example of how out of tune I've been with programming for a world filled with social media.
I've recently noticed that when I was pasting a link to one of my articles on Instagram or Twitter, the social media sites have been grabbing whatever they can to generate a preview. In my case, it usually ended up being my logo, the title of the post, and the permalink to the post. Twitter didn't even create a preview at all. Here's what it looked like when I pasted it into a direct message on Instagram:
So, like all old people, I turned to Google and found out about the Open Graph Protocol. This internet protocol was created by Facebook, introduced in 2010, and it is basically meant for promoting integration between Facebook and other social media sites (like Instagram, Twitter, etc) by making them into "graph" objects with the same functionality as Facebook objects.
I've integrated this now into my site--I'll explain below--and as you can see, the preview to the same article is now displaying exactly what I want it to. The first image found in the article, followed by the title and the first 100 characters of the article body:
Here's how I did it. First, I found a piece of script to extract the first image from a body of HTML, in my case, from the body of my article. If an image is not found in the article, it will revert to displaying the logo.
$html_entry = $converter->ConvertToHtml($entries[0]['Body']);
preg_match('/<img.+src=[\'"](?P<src>.+?)[\'"].*>/i', $html_entry, $image);
$first_img = $image['src'];
if ($first_img)
$og_img = $first_img;
else
$og_img = $page->logo_url();
I then create the Open Graph object and pass it to the templating system (Smarty):
if ($first_img)
{
$og = array(
"type" => "entry",
"image" => $og_img,
"title" => $entries[0]['Title'],
"description" => substr(strip_tags($html_entry),0,100) . "...",
"url" => $page->base_url() . $log->log_base() . "/" . $entries[0]['PermaLink']
);
$smarty->assign("og",$og);
}
The page header template waits for an Open Graph object to come in, and when it does, it populates the meta tags. These meta tags are what social media sites look for to create the previews. If they exist, they'll be used. If they don't exist, the media sites will auto-generate them.
{if $og}
<meta property="og:type" content="{$og['type']}" />
<meta property="og:image" content="{$og['image']}" />
<meta property="og:title" content="{$og['title']}" />
<meta property="og:description" content="{$og['description']}" />
<meta property="og:url" content="{$og['url']}" />
{/if}
There you have it. Another thing you've most likely never thought twice about. Now when you look at a preview created after you paste a link, you will know that it is because the social media platform you're pasting it to is going out to grab these Open Graph objects in the site you're linking from. 😄
Digging around in the archives this morning. Here's a visual to show you how big the province of Ontario, Canada really is compared to Europe. From Toronto to Thunder Bay is roughly the same distance as Budapest to Hannover!
A wise man once told me "no matter how good of a job you do at a company, two weeks after you're gone, you'll be forgotten. Business will go on, the company will survive."
I've kept that in the back of my mind ever since. I give my company 100% during work hours.
I admire people that can draw a few simple lines and make it look awesome. I, cannot. I have this photo on the wall in my home office which I decided to draw today as I find myself wanting to draw more and more these days.
Revisiting my old photoblog tonight while writing this post I realized that
- Photos taken with a Rolleiflex are my favourite.
- I had a thing for these trees.
- I never did get a photo of them in each season like I wanted to.
- this photo and this photo are my all time favs on that site.
I've looked for those trees recently but couldn't spot them as we drove by. That area might be well overgrown now. If I do see them, I'll be sure to take a photo and update this post.
Update: Found them!
My friend Bob sent me a bunch of Field Notes notebooks along with a wide variety of pens because that's just the kind of cool guy he is.
The package arrived today and I tried out one of the Sarasa Dry 0.4mm gel pen he's been touting for the past while. He was right in that it dries quickly so there's no smudging. It's also super light so it's pretty effortless to write with. I'll have to use it more before I can see whether my wrist tires after prolonged use like it does sometimes with my Parker Jotter.
Also today the AI ad overlords suggested an article about learning to draw (which I obviously I fell for because here we are). There was a chart doodle by Saskia Keultjes that made me chuckle which also ended up as the subject of my testing of the new Sarasa Dry.
I found this doodle a great example to illustrate that when you're building charts or even dashboards they should be simple and concise. You don't need sensory overload to get your point across.
A new logo appeared on the site today featuring a character I've been doodling in my notebook from time to time called Mr. Monday. 😄 He'll be making appearances on here and probably on his own Tumblr account.
I've been using Alteryx for about a year and a half now and it's been an invaluable resource to prepare data from any inputs, be it SQL, Excel, Access or even flat files.
If you need to crunch lots of data and are spending hours writing queries or massaging excel spreadsheets and have the means to obtain an Alteryx license, I strongly suggest you give it a go. 👍
While I love Michel Fortin's Markdown script it does have a few limitations the more and more I learn about Markdown. So I have switched to Commonmark.
I have never used Composer so I asked the developer of Commonmark how to install his parser and he responded very promptly giving me some great pointers. At the same time I also found this resource which explained installing Composer on my host. I am now up and running and my previously converted posts work just as well with Commonmark.
I've been so out of the loop with open-source development but I am once again starting to have a profound appreciation for the community. These developers I've contacted recently have been great. Very friendly and knowledgeable.