I took a couple of hours away from the blanket I’m working on and made a crochet Froggo

I made him using this pattern, which was fun and easy to follow: sarahmaker.com/crochet-f…

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!

• 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.

• 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. 

• 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.

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.

Tumblr seems focused on making the experience actively worse.

What they’re actually trying to do, of course, is make money. But in doing so they’re designing a site that is much harder to run an actual blog from. They disable custom themes by default, and by default the urls they give you now redirect you to a dashboard view, rather than your website.

They’ve made it so that you can no longer use a domain you actually own - and you can’t pay to use your own domain, either, you have to buy it through them.

They now force you to see “Tumblr Live”, a feature I have no interest in, within their app.

The ads they run are constant, which I understand and could forgive if the overall experience was better; but it isn’t.

In short, Tumblr isn’t what it used to be. So yesterday I started experimenting with running my own site off of Neocities, a web host that attempts to embrace the spirit of the old internet. To generate entries I’m using Publii, which is a very nice piece of software which allows you to write and create blog entries which are static html pages. It takes care of things like pagination, so that the entries are still easy to navigate. [Edit - in the end I moved back to Blot.im, because it’s cheaper. And I’m drafting using Bear, the best note taking experience on Mac.]

I’m still working on how to move my archives over - there’s a few ways I’m considering, one of which is just leaving them at my Tumblr url. Either way, I won’t be deleting the Tumblr - getting the archives over there was a lot of work, and I think it makes sense to keep it as a backup. I may cross-post there from time to time, we’ll see. 

Edit: I’ve moved again to micro.blog due to a few concerns I have about Dropbox pricing and some other features I was missing, which I’ll likely detail in another upcoming post.

Back to Routine

On the weekend we went to see our friend run the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. And I couldn’t believe it had been a year since I ran the half-marathon. Where had the year gone? How did I get so out of shape in such a short time? So the next day, my husband and I signed up for the full marathon for 2024. I have 380 days to train and get in shape, which should be doable; so long as I go slow, and build up to it, so I don’t get injured.

I ran for the first time in a while today, just 3.5km in half an hour. I ran in intervals of running and walking, and it felt good to be back on the treadmill!

Anyway, some housekeeping notes - as previously mentioned this site now runs on blot.im again. I did a quick and dirty import of my old tumblr posts, from an old Blot backup. However, if you would like to browse the archives, I highly recommend using the [edit: I changed this link from Tumblr to my new] Neocities Archive Page, which is much prettier. (Although I think you have to be signed in to Tumblr to scroll the whole thing?? Another reason Tumblr is terrible now.) [edit: you do, which is why I’m not including the Tumblr link.]

I had three.

Adventure Time is this absolutely beautiful work of art that explores the deep meaning of life and what it means to be a hero and a child, and it’s a wonderful perfect show.

But let’s just take a moment to appreciate the absolute zaniness of the first season and the throw away gags like this one.

This Dolphin Fell In Love With Me

One thing about going back through my archives to consolidate them was I was reminded of how many comics I used to read. Particularly newspaper comics page comics. Over the last few years the only thing I’ve read consistently is Nancy (which is hilarious).

That got me wondering if there was any way to replicate the comics page experience without actually having a comics page. Turns out, there is!

Inbox Comics allows you to choose your comics and delivers them to your email in a beautifully formatted comics page format. I got to start off my day today by reading my very own comics page. It was delightful.

I started playing Ooblets last night and it is really really fun.

The characters are little more than tropes, the wardrobe is lurid, and the themes are predictable. But what I will say is that this movie is cozy as hell. While watching Falling for Christmas, I opened several search tabs to facilitate my future acquisition of “tartan pajamas,” “white chenille sweater,” “fluffy throw,” and “big sparkly angel for tree.”

Netflix’s Christmas Movies Are Here. Here Are The Best Of The Worst via Buzzfeed

Betty’s Got a Gun

Took this photo on my run today and thought it was pretty.

I really laughed at this the Other End comic