Using my minimal Micro.blog theme as a base, I’ve now created another theme. This time it’s a bit louder, probably a tad more niche, but definitely has character.
It’s called Fortis, which is Latin for “strong”. As this is definitely a strong theme, that may not suit most people’s tastes.
In many ways it’s similar to the Pure theme, with the layout being practically the same. But as was the purpose of that theme, it served as a good base for more custom designs.
Just finished some meta work on my Pure Micro.blog theme, to introduce a rough code style through an automated formatter and linter. I don’t want to be too strict on this, but thought since people are opening (some very helpful) pull requests that it could be useful.
This is what I class as pure YouTube.
Descriptive title, no long intro/outro, no sponsors, no ads, jus a horse kicking a tree, farting on dogs, and then running away.
www.youtube.com/watch
With some luck, I managed to win a ThinkPad on eBay on my first attempt! Specifically, it’s a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 5th Gen. 14” matte display, 8 GB memory, 256 GB SSD. All for £265!
There’s nothing more satisfying than managing to manually install an Arch-based distro, configure a desktop manager, window manager, and have it actually work.
I find it funny when I see YouTube videos with people showing off their “minimalist” EDCs. It’s usually a mix of wireless headphones, some complex wallet, key accessories, multi-tool, weirdly a knife is normally included, pen, notebook, water bottle, usb stick, handheld games console, etc. Most of them time, everything being in matte black.
It’s something that I think really shows off how much of a bubble most tech people live in.
When I leave my house, whether I’m going to the shops, out to London, to a restaurant, etc. I carry three things: phone, wallet, and keys. My wallet has three things in it, a bank card, drivers license, and potentially a few notes. And I only have 2 keys, so that’s also pretty minimal.
I’m not trying to argue with what people need with them, I just find that type of video as a general source of humour for me.
It’s my first day at work tomorrow, after being off since 23rd December. My recent sleep schedule of going to sleep at 3 am and waking at 11 am won’t make it easy.
I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts online today, and one thing that struck me on quite a few of them was the readability of the page.
I found myself enjoying blogs that had rather minimal amounts of “stuff” on the page above the article contents. Instead of a big logo and a long list of navigation links, most of them had a small (but identifiable) blog title, a few links, but then straight to the post.
While I’ve been a fan of minimal layouts for a while, I always had the idea that I needed to have as many links as possible in my navigation menu. And my name had to be huge to make sure that everyone knew who the person behind the blog was.
But since doing a lof reading of others blogs, I realised that I was designing it for myself, rather than for any potential readers.
So based on this, I’ve made a few small adjustments:
I’ve swapped the big animating title into a small title in the top left.
The (single) advert has moved to the bottom of the post.
The navigation menu has shrunk and is inline with the title.
The meta information on a post is more clear, and I will look to add reading time to this soon.
Post titles are larger when viewing specific posts.
The dark blue colours used for dark mode have been replaced with a more neutral tone.
You can view the new design on my blog at chrishannah.me. But here are a few screenshots:
No doubt I’ll be making a few more tweaks in the next few days, but I do hope that the new design is more usable for readers.
Just purchased a hardback copy of Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone for £27 on eBay. It’s not perfect condition, but still very good. And it’s one of the original Bloomsbury editions from 1997.
Since looking my email situation last January, I’ve been using SaneBox to sort my emails and to flter out junk. But it’s nearing renewal time, and it’s $99 for a year. So I think it’s time to turn it off and see if I can live without it.
I’m watching Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts, and I’m already 99% sure that I want to reread the books again.
I really wish I had my original books. I bet they’re stupidly expensive now.
I went to see the Cursed Child play in London just over a week ago, and I planned on writing a big review. But that never actually happened, so I thought I’d at least write a short overview of what I felt about it.
Some context:
I’m not a massive theatre lover.
I’m a massive Harry Potter Fan (books, films, games, etc.).
I was always going to see this at some point.
I saw both parts in immediate succession.
Thoughts (Potential Spoilers):
There were definitely ups and downs throughout the two parts, with it taking a while to get going.
In some parts it was a bit too theatrical for me (I know, it’s the theatre).
Some scenes from the film were acted out, but with a different tone and feel, even with some different characters in scenes.
The actors that played the main characters didn’t look the same as the film characters, which through me off a bit. For example, Dumbledore was quite short and tubby, Snape had a long face, Hermione had changed race, and Ron was tall and lanky, along with having a bit of a cockney accent.
Right at the end of the first part, I could sense that the story could be going somewhere good.
The second part was much better, although I felt that it ended rather abruptly.
Some parts of the story seemed rushed. As in one school year could have been missed with a toilet break.
Overall, I think that it was good. Maybe if I enjoyed the theatre more, then I would have liked the theatrical quirks, but they were lost on me.
I wouldn’t go so far as to make this a new years resolution, but this year I think I’m going to try and write shorter, but more regular, blog posts.
Too often last year, I held back posts because I wanted to make everything into a really detailed piece. But that can hold me back sometimes.
When I get that small piece of insipiration for a post, instead of letting it attrack dust in the drafts folder, I need to get it written and published. It might mean that some potentially big pieces get broken up, but at the same time, I think it will mean a higher output.
