Author: Ryan

Week 10: 04-10MAR2024

~ Ryan

Finished my first big website project this week, setting up cornerstone pages. It was a fun project, and one I’m happy I finally got around to. I’m sure there’ll be more homepage-based projects like this in the future.

Weekly Goals:

I had a bunch of household stuff I wanted to get done this week, but most of it got pushed to the back burner for various life reasons. The rest got pushed because I didn’t want to do them. So these will all be waiting for me to get done this week. Yay.

Doing:

One big challenge I had to work on this week was to get a new photo printer. We’ve got a great old Canon printer/scanner/copier that we’ve had for years. It does a good job of printing photos as well. But in our recent move, the heads seem to have misaligned, and I have been trying unsuccessfully to realign them. I’m also out of Cyan. Because it’s always freaking Cyan.

I needed to print some photos this week, and discovered that the printer is now old enough that the ink cartridges are no longer readily available at just any shop. So I ordered some online, but they weren’t going to be here in time. So I shopped around and ended up picking up one of those little Canon Selphy photo printers. And I’ve got to say, I’m really liking this little thing. The prints are of decent enough quality, and the footprint is minuscule.

Posts Made This Week:

Listening to This Week:

Currently Watching:

  • I’m still enjoying Constellation and Resident Alien.
  • Also started playing The Last Ship in the background, because sometimes it’s nice to have something going on around you that doesn’t require much thinking or attention. This has been fitting the bill nicely.

Currently Reading:

And that’s another week done. I’ve been working on a couple ideas for the next few weeks of projects, so I’ll write more about that tomorrow. Until then, rest easy!

Cornerstones Linkdump

~ Ryan

Once again I’ve found myself amazed at all the awesome things people have built on the web. The amount of inspiration I found while looking through personal webpages out there was astounding.

Here I’ve tried to gather just a small sampling of some of the great sites that gave me ideas. Not only did they help me get something started for myself, but they’ve given me excellent ideas for what I can hopefully grow my personal webpage into someday down the road.

https://ken.fyi/cornerstones
: Great first stop for inspiration and guidance

https://underlap.org/cornerstones
: Thanks is owed to @underlap@fosstodon.org for giving me some great initial feedback and suggestions, and for introducing me to the concept of cornerstone pages in the first place.

https://henko.net/blog/a-personal-website/: @henrikjernevad@mastodon.social was another early motivator for me, subscribing to my RSS feed before I even knew what I’d be doing here. Thanks for the faith! His writeup here on the idea of a personal website keeps me motivated. And his site is lovely.

https://manuelmoreale.com/unsolicited-blogging-advice
: The advice here is perfect for anyone needing motivation to get their own site started.

https://matthiasott.com/notes/just-put-stuff-out-there: An other great bit of “just do it” advice from the creator of the Own Your Web newsletter.

https://sive.rs/nowff: Wondering where the idea of /now pages started? Here’s your answer. This was where it all began.

https://nownownow.com/about: And this is where it is now. Such an awesome idea, and I love how much it’s spread.

https://uses.tech: A great source of /uses pages. I haven’t gotten there yet, but I’ll be checking this page out when I decide it’s time to set one up.

https://rknight.me/about/colophon/: This is a great example of a colophon page like I’d like to set up at some point. The whole site is great.

https://marisabel.nl/web.php: An awesome links page that I’ll refer back to when I get there. And again, the whole site is filled with good stuff.

https://www.fromjason.xyz/me/: Okay, I’m a fan here. The whole thing. The font. The graphics. The humor. I find myself just staring at this site and wishing I was at this level. If you’re looking to just kick back and nerd out on some awesome weird web stuff, look no further than here.

To all the people whose work I link to here, and to everyone else out there doing fun cool things on the web, I thank you. You’re all doing the hard work of blazing a trail for the rest of us to follow.

Cornerstones Part II

~ Ryan

I cannot count how many times I have set myself up for failure. Many times it’s rooted in my firm devotion to procrastination. So often I’ve found myself in a situation that could have been made infinitely easier if only I’d done something different earlier. In these moments of clarity, a single thought echoes through the distance of time.

“Past Me is a dick.”

I’m guessing I’m not alone here. We likely all have these moments. But today, I was treated to a nice little surprise. Past Me had actually done something useful! I know, nobody is more surprised than I am.

I started the day fully prepared to draft up and post some cornerstone pages on my WordPress site, Due By Friday.

For some backstory: this is a site I’ve self-hosted for a few years, and have done very little with. I had big plans for it to be a place where I could document projects I’d work on every week. It ended up being a place where I’d log in once a year or so and post an apology for not keeping up with it, and promising to do better that year. I know you know how this goes.

Anyways, I looked at the site and discovered, to my surprise more than anyone’s, that I’d actually set up some cornerstones already. And not only were they there, but they’d been there since New Year’s Eve, 2015! Thinking back to 2015, I am certain I had no idea what a “cornerstone page” was. Yet here they were, already waiting for me to recognize their awesomeness.

I’d planned on setting up three pages. An About page, a Contact page, and a /now page. What I found was an About page, a Contact page, and a Projects page.

So two out of three done already! Good job, Past Me!

I reviewed the About and Contact pages, and decided they’re good to go as they are for now. The Projects page was written mostly to serve as an archive of past completed projects. Sadly, this page was devoid of any such completions. But that’s okay. It’s not like I haven’t done things. I just never took the time to write about them and keep the site up to date.

I decided to keep the Projects page to serve as an archive, and I set up a /now page to show what projects are currently being worked on. I updated the Projects page to provide a pointer for where one could find current projects, and that was that.

For me, the best part was that I was able to do all this, post new pages and update older pages, all within MarsEdit. Which is great, because the WordPress admin interface makes me bleed from my eyeballs a bit.

This is actually one of the big reasons why I never did much with this old WordPress site. The admin panel is such a friction point that it would negate any forward momentum I may have had any time I actually wanted to write something. Between lost text from a bad browser refresh to being lost in settings hell because I wanted to tweak a thing, I rarely found any kind of flow when working within the WordPress admin page.

Once again, this is where I’m finding MarsEdit to be a lifesaver for me. There’s just enough and not a bit more. I can write, I can tag and categorize, and I can post with one click. For me, that’s the sweet spot. I know everyone has their favorite tool, and good on you to everyone who has found their own, whatever it may be. But if you’re still looking for one, give MarsEdit a try.

So yeah, that’s this week’s goal essentially done! Tomorrow I’ll post a bunch of links I found useful throughout the week while working on this. And Sunday will be another weekly roundup.

No clue what next week will bring. I’ll think about it over the weekend. But I’m open to suggestions, and now you all have a way to send them. Just check out my Contact page 🙂