Category: Tools

Prepare to Die

~ Ryan

I learned just the other day that Mandy Patinkin had lost his father shortly before beginning filming for The Princess Bride. As he said the lines, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die,” in his mind he was addressing the cancer that had taken his father.

This left the “prepare to die” phrase stuck in my head for a bit. It also reminded me of a project I’ve been working on for a while now. I’ve been building my own Death Book (I know, I need a better name for it). But it really is just that: a book to be used in the event of my death. My own “prepare to die” manual, or maybe a “prepare for once I’m already dead” manual, I guess.

It’s a bit morbid, yes. But also, kind of a necessity. I know I will someday die. I do not know when that day will be. Given that, I should have my affairs in enough order that whoever has to clean up after me has at the very least a bit of a road map.

So that’s what I’ll be going over this week. I’ll cover how the idea came up, how I plan to make use of it, and maybe try to inspire others to think about these things as well. Because you, too, are alive today, but will not be forever (spoilers! Sorry!).

Some Good, Some Less Good

~ Ryan

This will be a quick one, as I need to get back to packing for the trip. And writing, because of course a great idea for this screenwriting challenge hit me just as I was starting to pack my bags.

I got Ulysses set up to make blog posts yesterday. Today I shot out a test post. The Micro.blog site gave me no issues whatsoever. Posted like magic, just the way I wanted it, all from within Ulysses.

The WordPress site, however, was less successful. I spent a good part of the day tweaking settings and playing around with things, trying to get Ulysses to work with my self-hosted WordPress site. In the end, it just wasn’t going to work. I’m sure it can and will work, I just didn’t have enough time to keep playing with it today.

So I turned to the Jetpack app. WordPress (the company) pushes this app heavily, and I use it regularly to verify that posts have gone up. Well, turns out that it doesn’t like my self-hosted blog either. Everyone’s a critic! I spent more time than I wanted trying to get it to work, but it just wasn’t getting anywhere.

Where did that leave me? Well, I decided to go with my worst option. The web browser. I was able to get a post up, but man do I dislike the WordPress web editor. It’s just not great. I fought with it the entire way, and this was just to put up a silly little test post!

I started thinking about giving up on the WordPress mobile posting entirely. Then I remembered that I also have the older and less pushed WordPress app. Turns out, that was exactly what I needed. I was able to get my test post up with no issues.

So looks like I’ll be stuck with having to rely on two apps while traveling, at least for this trip. I’ll work on it more after I’m back home. But at least for now I have a way to get posts up without having to log onto a web editor. Because I really just don’t like them.

Tomorrow I’ll put these solutions to the true test. I’ll be traveling first thing in the morning, so the next post will be from the road. Hopefully.