Category Archives: Pondside Planner

Purpose, priorities, and progress.
Goals, grit, and growth.
Fundamentals, focus, and frameworks.

Today I choose to cleanse the palate (TIC00035d)

The PolyBlog
August 26 2020

I’ve been working on my basement redesign for a good part of the summer in varying forms and degrees of engagement. In particular, I’ve gone hard on the setup and redesign in the last five days, with a complete revamp, new wiring for internet connections, design hacking of Ikea designs, and even taking a jigsaw to literally hack three desks for cord management notches (thanks to Andrea for the inspiration!).

And while I’ve enjoyed the success of the new layout so far, there is still lots to do. I had hoped to finish this weekend, but that is looking unlikely at this point. Maybe by the end of next week. I was very happy to see three large pieces of furniture vacate the premises today — two large coffee tables that Jacob used to use for train setups and the old TV stand that I replaced recently. Again, thanks to Andrea.

But I’m getting close to “reorg-ed” out. I really just wanted to play with something simple tonight. I needed a palate cleanser. Something mildly interesting yet still productive.

Cleansing the palate

I checked my never-ending to do list, and Apple Music jumped out at me.

I blogged not too long ago about the fact that I uploaded all of my music to Apple Music, and I have to say, it was a complete sh** show by Apple Music. Oh, sure, the files UPLOADED. All of them, which is more than other hosting agents did (I’m glaring at you, YouTube Music!).

But the resulting library was TERRIBLE for organization. Tons of files got moved around, album information was lost, it was “mucho meh”. And totally unusable. The resulting library in Apple Music looked like file storage created by monkeys on typewriters trying for the works of Shakespeare. Heck, they might have been writing 50 Shades of Gray and got a little too excited, I don’t know, but it was messy.

So, tonight, just for fun amongst the file nerds, I reverted the uploads i.e. I deleted all of it from the iTunes upload. Sure, I kept a bunch of playlists and anything I’ve purchased directly, but the rest? Gone. I’m starting over with my separate music library, and rather than upload all of the songs at once, I’ll do a bit at a time over the next year. If your memory of earlier posts is good, you’ll recall that I do not let Apple manage my whole music library, no matter how much they promise they won’t mess it up. Instead, I keep a folder of my Music Masters that is totally separate from whatever Apple and iTunes insist on doing.

Just to get me started, I pulled up a simple Christmas Collection by Bing Crosby. All of the songs are by Bing, there is ONE song on it that includes Danny Kaye. When I uploaded the collection the first time, it separated it into four different folders. One folder under Bing’s name with about 7 songs in it, one folder under Various with about 3 songs in it, one folder under Danny Kaye (it overrode Bing) for just their one shared song, and another folder for about 5 songs where it decided the artist was White Christmas, there was no album name, and the years etc. for all of them were different.

Now, in fairness to Apple Music, I know WHY it did it. Because it isn’t a real album. It’s a collection I got from someone at some point, or maybe Andrea did, I don’t know, and it has 16 songs by Bing. About 10 of them overlap with the White Christmas soundtrack, so Apple liked matching to that album. Even for songs that WEREN’T on the soundtrack. The one with Danny Kaye was partially right. And it was perhaps random guessing on the rest.

Can I stop it from guessing? Sure. I just have to fix all the metadata fields BEFORE I upload it into the library.

Which I did. And then Apple Music decided that “Christmas Collection” was REALLY “The Christmas Collection”, an album by the same name, relabelled everything to Various Artists at the album level, kept everything at the song level to be Bing as the individual artist, and basically filed it in weird ways so that I will never find it. Grrr…again, maybe not all Apple Music’s fault. I didn’t fix ALL of the metadata first.

Okay, so I need to work the bugs out of the workflow. I deleted it from iTunes, went back to my Music Masters, opened up ALL the meta data in one box, assigned and tweaked it for the full collection of 16 songs, recopied it over to Apple’s intake folder, let Apple’s algorithm have wild monkey sex with the files, and voila, one collection safely ensconced in Apple Music. Just in time for Christmas.

Now that I know the “secret” process to do, many of the others will be able to be done in bulk. Still, a bit annoying. On the other hand, all my metadata will get cleaned up, as well it should be, right? Or at least so says the archivist in me as it rattles its cage and whispers for freedom, food and unlimited tags.

In the meantime, I wanted to also see how well things worked for downloads. I’ll have to be a bit vague or opaque here as I am not entirely sure that what I did was completely legit. There are a few extra steps involved, a few clicks here and there, and a couple of new pieces of software to help me manage the collections better, but it all worked reasonably well enough.

For some reason, I thought I would start with the album called Best of Sass Jordan. I’ve been listening to Alannah Myles’ self-titled album, and Apple Music thought I might enjoy BoSJ. I thought, “Probably not”, as my musical tastes are, umm, eclectic at best (or as my wife says, non-existent), but I actually quite like it. I wouldn’t have thought she’d have a full album of material that I would like, I’m often more about individual songs than an artist, but I can listen to it quite easily while working on other things. If anything, it is too short! I’ll have to expand my Sass Jordan repertoire.

Resetting my brain

While the above likely seems really nerdy, or anal-retentive and time consuming, it actually wasn’t. I was doing other stuff while some of the files were processing, like playing some turn-based word games with Jacob and Andrea, finishing laundry, etc. But I wanted a small puzzle to solve to just clear the cognitive pipeline and fixing my Apple Music setup was just the thing.

I even risked going down a rabbit hole to try adding some customized artwork for personal collections as I have some templates in Powerpoint that I am using for another purpose that would work great here, and Apple let me use my OWN artwork quite easily. Two clicks, done. Sweet.

Today I choose to cleanse the palate with a small puzzle to be solved to take my mind off the basement re-org that I’ve been working on for awhile.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to take a sick day (TIC00034d)

The PolyBlog
August 25 2020

I have been fighting a bug for a few days, a bit of congestion, a bit of a headache, a sore throat and the gastro issues I self-inflicted on Sunday messed up my sleep last night. I have been super active in the last few days, so I should have slept like a log according to the logic of my mother. I can even hear her voice saying it.

Instead, I woke up at 4:00 a.m. Tossed and turned, tried to go to the washroom without success, back to bed, another 90 minutes of staring at the ceiling metaphorically, back to the washroom with success, and finally crashed back to sleep around 6:00 I guess.

Woke up at 9:00 feeling like a zombie. Things have improved generally over the weekend, and my sore throat was mostly gone but my digestive issues were going batty, my congestion was back, and my CPAP machine gave me an air pressure headache to start the day. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t COVID-serious, just an annoying bug of some kind. But I decided to crash and take the day.

Andrea might have the same bug as of late tonight. Hopefully, she’ll do her normal great job of kicking it quickly. I have a bunch of stuff tomorrow for work, so I’ll definitely be “back”, but I might push a few meetings to later in the week and focus on the core duties.

Today I choose to take a sick day.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to brave the wilds of Ikea (TIC00033d)

The PolyBlog
August 23 2020

No African safari, no trip to Antarctica. No climbing a mountain. I was going for the extreme adventure today. I went to Ikea.

For those who have heard from those who have braved Ikea during the pandemic, you might have heard that the overall store is indeed open, but if you are going for Click and Collect, you were apparently taking your life into your hands. Reports over the last few months have been that it ranged from an outright sh**-show to chaos made real.

But I’m working on my dream office setup, the desktops came from Ikea originally, I finally found the leg / bases I wanted in another part of the website (spoiler alert: they were NOT listed with “legs”). I already had two desks set up, one with the proper base I like (an inverted I so that the leg is basically in the middle of the side of the desk rather than a leg out at the front to whack my knee on) and one with four annoying legs. I have another use for those, but I had a top with no legs at all, so I splurged and bought two sets of the legs I want.

I ordered them online late last night, and I was thinking I might have them delivered. No, apparently that wasn’t an option for me in “white” legs. They weren’t available locally. Now, this is where I’m confused. If they are IN STOCK at my local store, I don’t really need to have them delivered, I can go pick them up. If they are NOT in stock locally, that seems like an ideal scenario for where delivery might be needed. Or, just taking a flyer here, maybe they could DELIVER them to the local store and I could pick them up there?

Ah, no. Apparently it’s a binary world. If they are at the store, I can have them delivered. If they are at other stores, I can’t. Huh?

Moving on. I notice that they have the same legs in black in stock. Okay, fine, I’ll take those. I do some weird mental math that makes me think I need three sets for awhile before I force my brain to function and note that I already have ONE set. Soooo, for those playing along at home, that’s THREE sets needed minus ONE set I already have. What does that leave us Trigger? One stomp, two stomps. Ah, yes, Two more sets. Very good.

So I ordered them and it asks for my credit card, no problem. Then it says, “Hey we’d like to verify you can use that MC that is IN YOUR NAME, so we want to send a text from PC Financial to your phone”. Umm, okay. Except PC Financial doesn’t HAVE my mobile number. I think they sent it to my home VOIP-line-disguised-as-a-landline. Sigh.

Fine, I’ll pay with PayPal. Same card, no problem. Dolts.

Okay, it’s IN the system. And I’m going for CLICK and COLLECT. I know, I know, I heard the horror stories! But I don’t want to wander around the store collecting boxes!

And they send me an immediate confirmation for 2:00-4:00 Sunday. Hmm…that’s interesting. No place did it ask me when I would like to come. What if I was busy Sunday? What if I was busy 2-4? No matter, who are we kidding, I have no life. But they warn me, “don’t come until we confirm your order is ready!”. Great.

So I got up late this morning, ran some errands with Jacob and Andrea (Jacob to Michael’s for school-like supplies for a course / online camp this week, Andrea to return some stuff in Kanata from an online order). Pita Pit for lunch, and I decided apparently that I needed a Pita Pit enema. I ordered the Western, fully knowing that eggs frequently insist on using the fastlane through my digestive system. Two hours, door to door, so to speak. And just for fun, I risk the Raging Cajun and chipotle sauces. I *expected* to tell them to go light on the sauce, but then I waited in the car with Jacob while Andrea grabbed the food since I had no customization to do, and so I wasn’t there for the admonishment to not kill me. Good news — a Western pita with sauces keeps the fun of a fastlane and adds the wonderful experience of a forest fire all along the tract! Good lord, what was I thinking?

Anyway, back home, playing games, waiting for my email to say “Come now!”. 2:00. 2:30. 3:00. 3:30. Ummm, that window is closing pretty fast. At 3:40, I phone the Ikea number and there are NO options even close to “Where the f*** is my order?” so I end up on a generic hold. At 3:45, I hop in the car and head to Ikea anyway. By 4:00, I’m talking to the woman running the collect area, note that I never received confirmation, and that I’m on hold for status. Since she can check status, I hang up and just deal with her.

Now, admittedly, I’m going in expecting the sh** show that has been heralded for months, and yet it seems strangely calm. They have a single driveway to pull in, and then a very large section of the parking lot set up for parking while you wait, with numbers on the stalls, and spaced every other stall for distancing. I wasn’t in line for the cars yet, and said that I had just parked until I knew if I should get in line. Nope, no worries, just pull around here, park over there, we’ll go get your stuff. Okay. I’m sure it won’t be that easy.

I get set up, I’m playing on my phone. Woman calls from the back of the car to let me know it’s all there. And it is. Very little waiting. In fact, they’re done so fast, I have time to run two other errands on the way home. Apparently ordering after midnight on a Saturday to get stuff end of day Sunday is a good time. I never got confirmation the order was ever ready, but they seemed super well-staffed and surprisingly chipper with still 2 hours to go.

Okay, home, unloaded, dinner, and then the fun began. I had an empty desk top and a set of legs. Should be easy enough, right? Hahaha yeah, that’s funny now to me too. Not.

I get the metal parts together no problem, that’s relatively easy, mildly annoying for one alignment. Then I go to put the metal part on to the underside of the desk and I see that they have completely changed the design from the previous version I have. THAT version was basically universal…you could line it up on ANY tabletop really, or board, and as long as it was thick enough, you could screw in your screws. Great.

This one? Noooo, that style apparently wasn’t good enough. Now they have anchors and plugs, and plastic bolts that go in. Which means the tabletop / desktop has to have HOLES in very specific places to hold the plugs. Which of course my old desk does NOT have.

Sigh.

I suppose I could go over and buy two new desktops to match the legs, but that wasn’t happening. I’d return the legs before I’d do that when I have two perfectly good desktops already. What to do, what to do.

Okay, well, if it was an anchor in a wall, you would drill a pilot hole first and then insert it. Could I drill holes for the plugs? Sure. Relatively easily I guess. I’m not handy, but I have a drill and a good set of drill bits that I inherited from my dad about 25 years ago when he was cleaning out his shed. I marked all the holes, slid the metal over, drilled six anchor holes and put it together. Great. All the anchors work. Of course, there are these other plastic plugs that are supposed to go in too, but they seem deeper than I have space for. Okay, I can get by without those.

There is also a netting thing you’re supposed to install on the bottom so you can tuck cords up out of the way, but it’s in a relatively stupid place and a terrible design, so that ain’t happening. I install four clamps that come with it to hold the wood more strongly to the metal, and with Andrea’s help, carefully invert it to regular orientation. I tested the stability and strength, seems good. We picked it up and I shook it side to side and up and down, no wiggling. It’s solid. Andrea helped me with the height of the desk, putting it at 28.75 inches for my working height (I type directly on it, so it’s a good height for me ergonomically).

One desk complete. So I installed all my computer stuff from work on it, and with a multiple-monitor stand from Amazon that arrived last week, it looks awesome for layout and setup. Way more functional than I had. I even installed my work tablet on a shelf in the middle of it and you would swear they measured it to the mm. It is a VERY encouraging start. And it all started with a decision to risk Ikea today. I’m going to do a “before and after” post later this week, and I’ll have all the photos then. For now, it’s bedtime.

Today I choose to brave the wilds of Ikea, despite all the negative press and commentary I’ve seen about their curbside services. And it was relatively painless compared to the horror stories.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to rearrange our office space (TIC00032d)

The PolyBlog
August 22 2020

Well, the second great migration of the year is underway. Migration #1 was me moving my desks from the office on the second floor to the basement. Yes, I said desks. I’ll post pictures when everything is done (sorry Matt, you’ll have to wait), but basically I have a desk for my personal computer, monitor, scanner, label printer, etc. It’s a pretty full space, unfortunately. More on that later.

In addition, I have a second desk that has all my work stuff on it — tablet from work, two monitors from work, keyboard, mouse, etc. Plus a bunch of dead space with miscellaneous crap on it.

But it’s in a good L, and it’s not like the desk surface is small — both are old Ikea desks that are 30″x60″-ish. I say “old Ikea” because I knocked them apart long ago and replaced the heavy wooden and non-adjustable height sides and cross beams with simple adjustable height legs.

So it’s a decent amount of space. The L shape isn’t really working well for me, it’s just what I had available in the space I designed. But a casual conversation with Andrea a week or two ago led to some interesting thoughts bouncing around my head in the “What if … ” category. Like, for instance, “What if I put my desk right in that far corner where all that other stuff is? Where would it go? How could I go back to maximizing floor space while finding room for my desks?”.

The solution in part is to take a bunch of Jacob’s toys (mostly Lego), and move them into storage space along the wall in the old office and bring another desk down. Yeah, you heard me. Another old Ikea desk with the same size top. Two sides down, everything cannibalized, and in theory, I might actually have the space for my dream setup. A giant U with desk all the way around the end of my basement. Space for printers and scanners, space for my computers, space for storage underneath, and most important of all? Simple space to spread out a project, work on it, and not have to pick it all back up when I’m done for the day. A workspace to do things like a Lego build. Or taking apart a set of binoculars. Or even just sorting a whack of magazines (if it wasn’t already done) or books.

I could, in theory, end up with desk space the equivalent of 30″ deep by 15′ long. I think my nipples just got hard. Could just be the cold in the basement. Andrea’s flexibility with the office is making a bunch of it happen, as the toys needed to go somewhere at least until Jacob might decide he no longer wants to keep them.

Three pieces of other furniture left the basement today too — two white tables that Jacob used for a while for his train sets (very large coffee tables, that I did think about cannibalizing for the tops hehehe). And if they don’t sell, I may still cannibalize them for something in the garage I want to do at some point.

And the old TV stand we had in the basement, recently replaced with something taller.

In short, we moved a lot of stuff around today. I have a small snag that I’m working on, which is the legs I mentioned earlier. One desk has four legs on it, simple adjustable ones from Ikea. Easy to find, easy to install, easy-ish to adjust. But, for the U, I would prefer not to have legs in the middle of a long desk. I just end up whacking my knees on them. Instead, I would love a set of legs like I have on the other desk.

It has a wide base, and then only one leg coming up each end of the desk. More like an inverted T, it appeared. There was NOTHING like it on the Ikea website. But when I looked at the desk again tonight, I realized it is way more elaborate than I remember. It actually has cross beams running underneath for added support. That is a MUCH different design than I remember, and now I can’t even remember if this one ever HAD full sides. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe this is the support it always had. Well, pooh. Cuz I would LOVE two more. 🙂

I’m also trying to figure out what the space actually looks like when I put the desks in. I might, and this is just crazy talk, have a bit of room for corner squares to make a really complete U, leaving the desks almost as connectors. Or almost like getting another 5′ of space for things like scanners and printers to sit out of the way. Kind of like the angled corners you see for TV stands, ideally, or simply just blocking off the corner with a square 30″x30″. Which of course would require separate legs. If I can FIND the right ones that will work. I really don’t want the simple legs from Ikea.

Well, off to search. And to cross my fingers that my longer Ethernet cable arrives tomorrow. The new location is about 15′ farther than my current setup, and I’m going to need a bigger cable. But I’m optimistic everything will fit where it is supposed to in the end.

Today I choose to rearrange our office space to give me a potentially dream office layout. Yes, it is in the basement. Yes, it might be somewhat cold down here. But a shot at my dream functional space? That just might be worth it.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose a new approach to blogging (TIC00031d)

The PolyBlog
August 22 2020

I have only written the title of this post, eight measly words, and already I’m wondering if I want to word it differently. I suppose it is more that I am choosing a new workflow, perhaps?

Here’s the deal. Frequently, I have a large number of pending posts that I want to write. And if they include photos of some kind, I frequently balk at the order. For example, suppose I went to a park today (I didn’t, but work with me). And I took pictures. So I might want to write about it tonight, but the photos are going to be a surprising sticking point. Obviously I will want to include them.

But my workflow is pretty sophisticated. Detailed. Oh, alright, it’s anal-retentive, batshit crazy time.

I have 1000s of photos, and I am slowly migrating them from a general folder (albeit well-organized) into a formal app called Mylio. Once in Mylio, photos get sorted generally by date first and foremost, but they also have tags, filenames, facial recognition and more tagging, and sorting between “things to post” and “things to archive”. I rarely delete photos, at least not usually, unless there is nothing of value anywhere in it. If it is a photo of four people, for example, and one of them isn’t very flattering, I usually won’t include it. But the photo of the second person might be decent. Since I often have 5-6 usable ones, I don’t really need to include the one with a bad portion, but on the other hand, I don’t want to toss it either. So I always have two sub folders — one for “active” posting, one for “extra” archiving. If I edit a photo, the original goes to Extras, the one for posting goes to Active. Clear enough?

Step two though is to upload the photos that I’m using, after saving their meta data of course, and loading them on to my website. I managed to get 2005-2008 up on the side before deciding to redo my entire website some time ago, and while all the photos are good, I realized the other day I need to edit about 50 pages for format and consistency of layout. Normally I don’t have to do that, so I just create a new gallery, upload the photos for a given month, and then bam, they’re available for inserting into posts.

Yet therein lies the rub. I normally do a month at a time, once the month is complete. And, to be honest, I am often using photos that I took, plus those that Andrea had on her phone, and now, Jacob is in the mix too. He took some really good ones of sunsets at the cottage recently, plus some other ones earlier in the year. If I’m going to post photos from an event, like an outing to a park, shouldn’t I use the best photos from ALL THREE OF US, rather than just from me?

Perfection is the enemy of progress though, and it has been for certain posts. One of my posts some time back was about my haircut, but since I hadn’t completed the month, and hadn’t backed everything up from Andrea’s computer to mine, with the photos she took of me, I didn’t have my workflow nailed for how to get recent photos in the queue and on the site without risking needing to re-upload them later, or swap out new ones, or generally just having to update it later once I have processed the other files. Or simply confusing myself to the point where I accidentally delete something or miss it altogether.

And even without Andrea and Jacob in the mix, I don’t normally back up my phone every night to my desktop.

Enter the change

I had to “let it go”, essentially. Some of those processes are great at ensuring nothing gets missed but not so good at ensuring I can stay current with something interesting in photos. Today I wrote a post about smartphones and astronomy, and to do it properly, I needed to do about ten screen captures on two different devices PLUS four more photos of my phone and tablet with the other device. And then sort the photos, upload them to the site, embed them in the post, all while ensuring that neither the place they are stored in the website nor the way they are stored in the program application Mylio causes me to duplicate anything. A place for every photo and every photo in its place.

Whereas I used to do a month at a time, the major change in my workflow is adding a “status” tag to the folder name in Mylio. So, even if it is mid-month, I can create a folder called “22 Walk in the park” and then add a little acronym after the folder name to track the steps that are finished so far:

  • P = Files transferred from my phone
  • A = Files transferred from Andrea
  • J = Files transferred from Jacob
  • I = Photos imported into Mylio
  • S = Photos sorted
  • T = Faces tagged
  • M = Metadata saved
  • U = Photos uploaded to my WordPress site
  • G = Galleries grouped together in WordPress
  • B = Blogged

I don’t blog about everything of course, but most of the stages in PAJISTMUGB are common. Once all 10 are done, I can just rename the folder with a simple “_y” that yes, that folder is all done. It doesn’t solve my problem with not having Jacob or Andrea’s photos ready to go (A,J), but it solves MY photo processing (P).

I’ve been testing out various iterations of the work process and this one worked well today. I took the 10-15 photos, processed them, saved and stored them in Mylio, uploaded them to the site, and sent a draft of the post to someone in the local astronomy club to see if they want a copy of the article for their monthly newsletter. All of it turned out pretty well.

Anal-retentive? Sure. And that’s one of my good points! 🙂 But flexible anal-retentiveness apparently.

Today I choose a new approach or work process to blogging.

What choices are you making today?