My sister turned even older today. She's like 95 already so we're going to stop counting now I think.
In all seriousness, happy birthday Pircsi! Love you. ❤ 🍰
During the last weekend of February, I had the privilege to join her on one of her many trips to Algonquin Park. It was a beautiful and therapeutic experience I will never forget.
It was also -19°C and I froze my fingers and toes off on a hike through the Mew Lake trail but it was well worth it.
We also saw a Pine Marten (almost impossible to photograph) as well as the resident ravens known as Beavis and Butthead.
Like I said, it was an experience I will remember for the rest of my days. I am looking forward to going again.
You can view the rest of the photos here.
I impulse bought a jar of Patak's Tikka Masala cooking sauce from Food Basics. Cooked it up for dinner today. Nikki and I had it on chickpeas with a side of rice and John had it on the leftover roasted chicken from last night also with a side of rice. It was a huge hit. We gobbled it all up.
Will definitely buy again.
Here is a list of technologies I will never own or use again.
- Social media*
- Smartwatches
- Chat GPT
* I am close to ditching Instagram, the last remaining social media account I have. (Update: It's done!)
Got me some cool new kicks yesterday. They're Timberland Redwood Falls Chelsea Boots. I quite like them.
Our go-to restaurant when I was in highschool and college will soon be torn down to make way for "Stacked Towns". This is another step towards the overcrowding of the Niagara Region. I recently read an estimate of 12 million people will be moving to Niagara in the next 10 years. Hopefully they will also focus on expanding roads. Traffic is becoming horrible everywhere we go.
Found a great source for leather notebook covers and folios by accident from an Instagram ad recently. I love this company now.
The first round of site updates are done. I didn't go with the infinite scroll, I got lazy and used the old tried-and-true Paginator I wrote well over a decade ago. It has been updated with baked-in bootstrap pagination classes. If you're interested, here's the code:
class Paginator
{
public $current_page = 1;
public $total_pages = 1;
public $total_records = 0;
public $display_total_only = 0;
public $query_string = 0;
public $singular_record_text = "";
public $plural_record_text = "";
private $inc = 1; // inc = increment by N page - used in prev/next
private $fp = 1; // fp = first page
public $threshold = 1; // th = threshold (keep pages visible +/- from current)
public $end_threshold = 1; // st = starter threshold - keep first page visible up to Nth page.
public function __construct($thispage=1,$totalpages=1,$totalrecords=0,$singular_text="record",$plural_text="records",$query_string=0)
{
$this->current_page = $thispage;
$this->total_pages = $totalpages;
$this->total_records = $totalrecords;
$this->singular_record_text = $singular_text;
$this->plural_record_text = $plural_text;
$this->query_string = $query_string;
}
public function getFirst()
{
return $this->fp;
}
public function getLast()
{
return $this->total_pages;
}
public function getPrev()
{
if (($this->current_page - $this->inc) >= $this->fp)
{
if ($this->current_page - $this->inc > $this->total_pages)
{
return $this->total_pages;
} else {
return $this->current_page - $this->inc;
}
} else {
return $this->fp;
}
}
public function getNext()
{
if (($this->current_page + $this->inc) > $this->total_pages)
{
return $this->total_pages;
} else {
return $this->current_page + $this->inc;
}
}
public function getMin()
{
if ($this->current_page <= $this->end_threshold)
{
return $this->fp;
} else {
return $this->current_page - $this->threshold;
}
}
public function getMax()
{
if ($this->total_pages <= $this->end_threshold) {
$max = $this->total_pages;
} else {
// if ($this->current_page < $this->end_threshold) { // commented out mb 090616
// $max = $this->end_threshold;
//} else {
if ($this->current_page > ($this->total_pages - $this->threshold)) {
$max = $this->total_pages;
} else {
if ($this->total_pages - $this->current_page == $this->threshold+1)
{
$max = $this->current_page + $this->threshold+1;
} else {
$max = $this->current_page + $this->threshold;
}
}
// }
}
return $max;
}
public function getNextBreak()
{
return ($this->getMax() < $this->total_pages)?1:0;
}
public function getPrevBreak()
{
return ($this->getMin() > 1)?1:0;
}
public function getPageLink($page)
{
return "/".$this->query_string . "/page/" . $page;
// return ($this->query_string?$this->query_string."&":"?")."page=" . $page;
}
public function getHTML()
{
$previouspage = $this->getPrev();
$currentpage = $this->current_page;
$nextpage = $this->getNext();
$firstpage = $this->getFirst();
$min = $this->getMin();
$max = $this->getMax();
$shownextbreak = $this->getNextBreak();
$showprevbreak = $this->getPrevBreak();
$html = '';
$html .= "<div class=\"text-center\">\n";
if ($this->display_total_only != 1)
{
$html .= "<ul class=\"pagination justify-content-center\">\n";
// first page link - mb 100723
if ($this->current_page != $this->getFirst() && $min > $this->getFirst() && $this->threshold != 0)
$html .= "<li class='page-item'><a class='page-link' href=\"" . $this->getPageLink($this->getFirst()) . "\">«</a></li>\n";
if ($this->current_page != $this->getFirst())
$html .= "<li class='page-item'><a class='page-link' href=\"" . $this->getPageLink($previouspage) . "\">‹</a></li>\n";
for ($i=$min;$i<=$max;$i++)
{
if ($this->current_page == $i)
{
$html .= "<li class='page-item active'><a class='page-link' href=\"" . $this->getPageLink($currentpage) . "\">" . //"<span".($this->threshold==0?"":" class=\"This-page\"").">".
($this->threshold==0?"Page ":"").$this->current_page.
($this->threshold==0?" of ".$this->total_pages:"").
"</a></li>\n";
} else {
if ($this->threshold!=0) $html .= "<li class='page-item'><a class='page-link' href=\"" . $this->getPageLink($i) . "\">$i</a></li>\n";
}
}
if ($this->current_page != $this->total_pages && $this->current_page < $this->total_pages)
$html .= "<li class='page-item'><a class='page-link' href=\"" . $this->getPageLink($nextpage) . "\">›</a></li>\n";
// last page link - mb 100723
if ($this->current_page != $this->getLast() && $max < $this->getLast() && $this->threshold != 0)
$html .= "<li class='page-item'><a class='page-link' href=\"" . $this->getPageLink($this->getLast()) . "\">»</a></li>\n";
$html .= "</ul>\n";
}
if ($this->total_records)
{
$html .= "<div class='Results'>" .
number_format($this->total_records) . " " .
($this->total_records <> 1?$this->plural_record_text:$this->singular_record_text) .
"</div>\n";
}
$html .= "</div>\n";
return $html;
}
} // end of class
Here's how it's used with a Smarty template:
if ( $total_pages > 1) {
$pagin = new Paginator($current_page,$total_pages);
$smarty->assign("paginator",$pagin->getHTML());
}
Last year was a whirlwind of a year. Lots of ups and downs and even a few lefts and rights. There were a lot of changes in my life and in the lives of people around me.
This year there will also be some exciting new changes made to this site. Here's what I'm thinking of doing:
Public changes
- Merging and archiving the photos, scribbles and writing sections of the site
- Changing the site to simply posts and about
- Posts will be a stream or feed (chronologically ordered, newest first)
- Posts will have infinite scroll instead of paging
Admin changes
- Making post titles optional (or just getting rid of them altogether, not sure yet)
- Better handling of image attachments
What will stay the same
- The home page and about page
- The design (for now)
- The site will continue to be ad-free
Starting immediately, the Contact area of the /about page will link to my Buy Me a Coffee profile.
Yesterday I ate a Big Mac No Meat. It was oddly satisfying. Would recommend if you want junk food but don't eat meat.
