Driven by Cheese
Froggy!
I took a couple of hours away from the blanket I’m working on and made a crochet Froggo
Froggo
I made him using this pattern, which was fun and easy to follow: https://sarahmaker.com/crochet-frog-patterns/
It’s my first real toy I’ve ever made so there’s lots of room for improvement. But I really enjoyed getting better at sewing, and working in the round!
Everyone’s Favourite - Housekeeping
I’ve been moving some stuff around again on the back end. Just a note that most of the archives are all here now. However, I didn’t bother to back up content that I didn’t make myself (ie, the more Tumblr-style posts I made while I was on Tumblr). You can still view those on Tumblr .
A Bunch of Small Nothings
I changed the O-ring in the brew group of our coffee maker. I was very impressed with myself and so I am telling the internet.
I made a great pot roast last night. Again I am very impressed with myself and am telling the internet.
I’ve been feeling a little head-cold-ish so I’ve fallen off my exercise schedule. Disappointing but hopefully I get right back on the horse.
My friend/cousin is coming to town tomorrow and we’re going to see a concert and I am excited.
I’m still working on crocheting a Queen size blanket. Who knew how long a Queen size blanket would take?? I hope I have it done by Christmas. Will upload progress pics soon.
I’ve gone back to using Goodreads for my reading list. I don’t love that Amazon owns it and I have tried several alternatives, but it’s really the easiest way to track my books.
Someone actually found a needle inside a candy bar, people are the worst, why would you do this.
Good time to remind that I post most of the links I read/come across on my Linkroll ’cause it’s quick and easy. They’re cross-posted to my Mastadon if you prefer.
A Venting Session because why Else do I Have a Website
- Is it just me or is asking for me to create some marketing materials, two hours away from the end of my work day, with a deadline of tomorrow, when I do not work in marketing and only work half-day Fridays, extremely rude? I have no idea what to do about this I’m just really annoyed by it.
- Relatedly, because I am not marketing, I do not have proper software and therefore have to create these materials using Microsoft Visio, which is just a huge pain in the ass.
- I try to avoid ranting about my job but this specific ask really grinds my gears.
- Do people still use the “grinds my gears” meme?
- Sometimes I have dreams that I’m working at the bank again, or in retail, and I think, why did I leave here? Was the bank really so bad? I think I have rose coloured glasses about it now, but I did enjoy the simplicity, the routine of making everything balance at the end of the day.
- I shouldn’t be so grumpy and ranting, I work from home and my job is actually usually pretty great, this was just a RUDE ASK at the end of my day and burned time I don’t have.
- Okay I’m done, here’s a here’s a cute Halloween illustration from Colby Bryant on BlueSky.
Some Thoughts in Bullets
- I’ve started training for a marathon again, hoping to run the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in October of 2024. Last year a flair-up of plantar fasciitis ruined my progress and bumped me down to the half-marathon, and I ended up taking this whole year basically off running because of it. Hopefully this year with stretching and orthopaedics I can get past it.
- I’ve been getting back into reading via RSS feeds. Google Reader may have died a horrible death, but I’m glad that most of my favourite blogs and websites still publish feeds. I’m using the absolutely fabulous Reeder for Mac and iPhone, and it’s a great experience. (I publish my favourite finds to my linkroll and push these to Mastodon as well!)
- I’ve also been getting more into Bluesky. The more I curate my home feed display, and find cool people to follow, the more it feels like Old Twitter. I didn’t realize how much I missed the internet of 2007 but I think I pretty clearly did based on how I’ve been browsing (and running this blog) in the past couple of weeks.
- My company just invited us all to a Holiday party on December 6th. I work from home, so I am under no obligation. But if I were, I think the last thing I would want to do is ring in the Holiday season by standing around my office building on a Wednesday afternoon. You couldn’t even rent out a banquet hall?
- I’ve been re-watching the Grand Tour and reading what some describe as “chick-lit” and I have nothing to say about either of these things, really, except that they are, I suppose, media targeted at different demographics but I’m very much enjoying both.
- This is an interesting acquisition by Automattic, the company who runs Tumblr and Wordpress. After being back as an active member on Tumblr, for just about exactly twelve months, my main problem was that the parent company seemed so profit-driven that every change they made almost felt designed to alienate core-and-long-term users. It was like they didn’t understand what made Tumblr both special, and fun, to use. Wordpress was something I explored as an alternative to Tumblr when I was considering moving this blog, but the dashboard is so bloated and overly complicated that it, too, felt completely different than when I first started using it years ago. I wonder if this acquisition is going to try to bring in chat or DM features, which users also don’t really want in my opinion, to Tumblr.
- I enjoyed this post format, I think I’ll use it again.
Linkroll
One of the only things I thought I would miss about Tumblr was how easy it was to just post links to other content. With or without commentary, Tumblr has always made it incredibly easy to share and repost links from around the web. That’s definitely harder to do when you’re self-hosting a blog.
So, after poking around, I decided to set up a linkroll using Raindrop.io. Raindrop.io is a bookmark manager which I already use for my personal bookmarks; rather than keep them in various browsers, using one tool has made it much easier to keep track of bookmarks across my various machines. However, they also have a “shared collections” feature, which I hadn’t tried before.
The linkroll will be links to articles which I find interesting; I can add notes to them if I want to, as well. If you’re so inclined, you can follow my linkroll using rss as well.
I’m toying with the idea of linking it to my Mastodon account somehow as well, since I haven’t really used that, and microblogging seems generally better on Bluesky.