Weird

One the things I don’t quite understand, is how Covid didn’t result in me writing shit loads of blog posts. It should have really, but instead, it absolutely killed the remains of my blogging.

Which is odd.

Yes, it’s back.

Turns out I still want to blog. So it’s back. I’ve managed to import all the old content, but,

  • Links are probably broken
  • I haven’t got (and won’t be using) all the plugins so you may see weird [text] in square brackets that would have previously triggered plugins, which no longer will (like pull-quotes, article lists, etc.)
  • The import only partially worked, so tag counts and other things are off, I dunno if I’ll be able to fix them.
  • I’ll be working on the look soon (re-doing icons, headers, etc.) but am not going to customise anything in the theme directly, or use a custom theme, because it just requires too much energy to maintain.
  • Oh, and I’m never, ever turning comments back on.

I did think about fully exploiting https://www.eightbittony.co.uk but I just like the Perception Is Truth name, and I don’t want to give it up. So for now, they’ll both exist.

Diabetes

I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2005.  In the 12 years since we found the right level of medication, the metformin dose I’m on has never changed.  Until today.  Up from 1500mg a day to 2000mg a day, with a promise from me to the GP to also lose some weight with my intent being to reduce that dose again.

Ever since the accident last year, and to be fair, for a short while before it, my sugar has been creeping up and my HbA1c’s getting worse.  I’ve had a couple of ‘soft’ attempts at getting it back under control, but not enough to offset the changes, and so it’s time for a bit of focus.  I don’t want the change to be permanent, I want to be able to reverse it, and I’m going to try hard and delay the ‘inevitable’ slide towards insulin for as long as possible.

It remains to be seen whether my will power will be strong enough to actually lose weight, but I’m going to give it a shot.

I’m pleased the GP was once again willing to work with me, rather than simply sticking me on a new medication or insisting the change was larger and permanent.

Interesting, the only reason I know it was 2005 when I was diagnosed, is because I read back and found the blog posts where I started talking about it, which is a sign I guess that I should blog more often, not because anyone reads them, but just because writing this stuff down is useful for my own memory.

Given up blogging?

Maybe not. Last few weeks I’ve had an itch forming to start writing blog posts again. Maybe I’m starting to finally recover from the crushing despair I felt in the job I left in June this year? Who knows.

Whatever the reasons, I’m definitely starting to feel more creative again and that inevitably leads to blog posts.

I didn’t think …

When I started writing the Fear of 4 Wheels blog posts, I really didn’t anticipate there being this many.  I would have come up with a better numbering system than just ‘part 14’.

That is all.

Articles and Sorting

Hmm, the 8bit Mid-life Crisis posts are increasing in number pretty quickly, and I think they’re going to break the ‘articles’ page.  They already break the sorting which is alphabetical, so 10 comes before 2, and if I keep writing them at 1 a day, which is where I am at the moment, it’s going to outgrow that list of articles very quickly indeed.

That whole articles page was really a way of tying together a small number of posts on a particular topic, but I guess if I end up writing 10’s of posts for the Spectrum stuff, it’s not going to fit.  Also, frankly, it’s a ball ache adding the custom fields which make the posts show up on that page.

So, I need to have a think and approach this in a different way.  Maybe a simple 8bit Mid-life Crisis category would suffice.  I tend to under-use the categories, and they do list the posts in reverse time order so that might work out okay.

Edit: Right, stuck with ‘Retro Computing’ category, which I’ll post all the Spectrum posts under.  If you want to read them all, they’re there.  You can also read a summary of all the kit, on the Retro Computing page.

Windows Live Writer?

I tried playing with Windows Live Writer last year, but the download stalled and never fully installed, and I never got around to re-trying it later.  I don’t really have any issue writing blog posts directly into WordPress, the GUI is pretty nice, but there are times when I want to write something complicated or long, make a lot of edits, bring in text from elsewhere etc. and it’s easier to do that outside the browser I find.

So this isn’t a very constructive post, just me playing with the tool.  I’m am interested in the auto-linking feature, which hopefully has turned the first link in this post into a link to somewhere on the Microsoft site.  That seems like a neat thing, and if I was blogging a bunch of related posts that might prove useful.

So far, I’m quite liking the simple interface – when Microsoft gets applications right, they can be quite good (is that a tautology?)

Orange is a state of mind

Finally settled on a new theme (the excellent Suffusion) which comes with a bunch of colour schemes, and I’ve picked Orange on Black (for now).  I know it makes little difference since the 6 people who actually read the blog do so via RSS so never see the colours anyway, and the other hits are all chinese ‘bots trawling data to try and gimp Google out of some cash.  Some folk are tired of dark themes, but I still like them.

The Orange on White version is pretty good as well and if I get bored with dark I might go for that.

I’ve had to work on some new headers, since the old ones were too tall and too narrow.  Managed to salvage the Matrix and floaty text ones, and added a couple of others.  Was very excited to find an Atari Space Invaders icon font!

Haven’t been doing much stuff out of work other than playing Dragon Age: Origins for the second time.  Tried playing it through a second time after originally completing it but it was too soon.  A lengthy break has done the trick and it’s almost as engaging the second time around.  Grete’s also playing it, so we’re taking turns like well behaved kids.  First time through I played as a warrior and was hugely frustrated by all the chests you can’t open until you find your first rogue companion.  So this time, started as a rogue!  Very different feel to the game, can’t go rushing into fights, need to somehow get the others engaged first, and if the warriors die, I’m not likely to survive (where-as when you’re the warrior you can hold on for quite a while with just Wynne).

Playing through again reminds me how good BioWare are at dialog and storyline.

Grete’s doing well at pretending I’m not annoying, when she plays and I shout ‘no, no, do Sten’s quest first’, or whatever.  So I thank her for that.

We bought a couple of the little add-ons, well bought one, got one free.  I’ve also bought Dragon Age: Awakening which was good but no where near worth the price.

I’ve also signed up to the PlayStation Plus service thing.  Got a few free games so far (Zen Pinball being the best).  Hopefully there’ll be enough free content in the next 10 months to justify the cost.