Tag Archives: today I choose

Today I choose to design a new layout (TIC00045d)

The PolyBlog
September 5 2020

I was feeling a bit off earlier this morning, and took it easy on my food intake for the day. Even managed a nap in there for self-care. But after watching two episodes of Bear Grylls’ Eco-Challenge show tonight for relaxation, I was feeling a bit better for the day, and decided to double-down on a layout issue.

I mentioned previously that I’m getting organized for a large project related to music reviews, although it is more about getting myself better organized so that I can peck away at it a bit here and a bit there. I have a few projects like that under way, and each one requires a bit of planning to get it going.

For the musical review one, I never really liked a format I was using, a big “ugly” table, albeit with an option to make it sortable. I did a bunch of searching yesterday for the right tool, found an option, discarded it, and decided tonight to rethink the design.

What I really needed was my raw data file. I thought I knew where I had saved it but when I went to the folder, I could find only 1944. No 1943 data. Looked all through my folders, a couple of other places, backups even, nada. I started to think I had maybe moved some files at some point, and deleted a folder without making sure it was empty. Nope, I was more efficient than that. I had apparently merged my 1943 data into a larger Excel file so it was all in one place. Which meant when I opened the oddly-named file and found 1944, I thought that was the end of it. Not noticing that 1943 was just another tab. Doh!

I played with some setups, and then into the old web file I went. Only to have it crash on me again. WTH? I thought it had been a design flaw, but now I felt it was something else. A coding problem somewhere in the file. One of my multiple plugins had converted it over at some point in the past, and well, it glitched. I don’t know how or where, but it did.

So I created a fresh new file, copied the original text to a notepad file in order to delete any weird codes, pasted it into the new file, and voila! All fixed. Sigh. Which means I probably COULD have left it in the old format and just used a different / fresh file for that too.

Which now means I have to go back and decide if I want to revamp the design the new way or go back to the old.

I solved it, then I unsolved it, then I solved it again, and now I can do it either way. Has anyone else’s head exploded yet?

Today I choose to design a new layout. I just don’t know which one I’m going to use.

Which choices are you making today?

Today I choose to search for the right tool (TIC00044d)

The PolyBlog
September 4 2020

I have a dream, except my dream is a lot smaller than racial equality. My dream today is simply that I can create a nice table on my WordPress site that doesn’t go crazy.

So let’s start with the nature of the problem. I have a post, about the top hits of 1943. It’s part of a long-term project I am working on that will eventually have me review all the Billboard hits from 1943 up to the present. Fun, right? Okay, maybe not, but I find some of it pretty interesting. I did the first year as a test, 1943, and while Billboard’s list wasn’t exactly up and running yet, I ended up with a combination of several lists and 117 songs to review. I reviewed them, I sorted them, I put them in a table.

A table that is 5 columns wide and more than 100 rows long.

It’s simple, it organizes the data, it’s boring. I would LIKE to be able to intersperse some comments here and there. Actually, I’d rather it looked like a playlist that people could click on, but that seems doubtful at the moment (Apple is not my friend). Regardless, it is a LONG table. And I have four options to display the data:

  1. Use the default TABLE block that comes with WordPress. I can use that block, but it isn’t the best to work with, and styling is a problem at times.
  2. Use an Advanced Table block but it REALLY doesn’t seem to like the new editor much. It might be a conflict with something, but I can’t tell what or why.
  3. Use TablePress. This is a really powerful tool for making great-looking tables, but it comes at a cost — the table is not actually IN the page, it is generated by a database and all the data is stored in the database first. It’s easy to populate, I have the data in Excel already, but I’d prefer NOT to put it in a table that is generated. I would much rather a flat table that I can edit and add comments throughout. You can’t do those kinds of edits or tweaks if the data is just generated.
  4. Ditch the table and use a list format. I could do this easily enough, since I have it in an Excel Table, I can easily reformat the same data into a nice “line of text” such as “##. Singer name – Song (Company)” and just paste it into a set of bullets. Anywhere I want to edit the table/list, I just add a couple of hard returns to break the list and type away.

None of those options are what I want. So I posted a Q on a FB group that has some good designers in it, and one guy got “immediately” what I was looking to do. He even noticed there was a problem with the page which might have something to do with why it wasn’t loading completely correctly, and I’ve fixed that part at least. But the table? Neither of us have a working solution.

Yet. But he is also willing to help look for an answer.

I found a great tool tonight that has some really nice “blocks” in it for doing different things in WordPress. I’ve reviewed 10 block collections previously, found some I really liked, and some that I absolutely LOVE from Stackable. So when I saw there was a great little collection called CoBlocks that had a LOT of blocks in it, a decent number of installs, and some positive reviews, AND it has something that looks like a “pricing table” where you could list a variety of information items, it sounded great. So I went down the rabbit hole of testing the set of blocks (Reviewing CoBlocks for WordPress). Alas, no joy in Mudville.

I’m also going to try GetWid (a collection of blocks that also sounds promising) and Ninja Tables (it also looks like it generates the tables the way TablePress does, but perhaps not, hard to tell yet).

There’s a simple way to do this, I know there is. I just have to get there without having to fight with the block codes I have. As I said, I have a dream…

Today I choose to search for the right tool for the job.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to play a game (TIC00042d)

The PolyBlog
September 1 2020

That doesn’t sound like a very exciting topic, does it? So I played a game? So what? How is that a decision that warrants a blog post about making choices?

It seems weak, to be candid, even to me. But here’s the thing. Andrea and I worked all day, and Jacob was pretty much on his own for most of it. I was even tied up over lunch, so mostly ate snack stuff. To be honest, I ate like crap today. But I digress.

Anyway, after supper, we were looking down the barrel of about 2 hours before the cub would head to bed, and we are in the middle of watching Eco-Challenge Fiji with Bear Grylls (we had watched the first two episodes so far). And we watched American Ninja Warrior last night.

Which is something we tend to do. We watch a show together…when I was J’s age, I was watching TV shows probably every night with my brother or parents. I read a lot, but we didn’t break out games very often, more on weekends or holidays. Or I’d be out with friends. Remember that? Going out to play? Sigh.

But the only one who really watches anything on his own is me. I watch a lot of shows in the basement, including a lot of current TV. It’s my thing, to watch and review every September when the premieres start, which ain’t really happening much this year, btw.

Yet Andrea rarely watches anything on her own and Jacob never does, unless it is YouTube videos about gaming. I’ve been trying to hook him on some TV series, but nothing has really grabbed his interest yet. Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Fraggle Rock, The Flash, Star Trek: The Next Generation, etc. A bunch of different types of shows. I still have A-Team, Macgyver, Airwolf, Night Rider, The Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie’s Angels, etc. He likes mysteries so I’m trying to see if he would like some of the old stuff that was cleaner / more censored and had a weekly mystery, all wrapped up in 44 minutes. Murder She Wrote, The Murdoch Mysteries, a few others are possibilities too.

Of course, though, I feel a little silly pushing him towards the boob tube, but it’s better than isolating himself in YouTube videos.

So we could have just watched a couple episodes of the Eco-Challenge. He loves American Ninja Warrior, Titan Games, Amazing Race Canada, etc. But I also don’t want him binging that one out and being “done”.

And tonight I thought, “Okay, maybe one episode, but perhaps we can start with playing a game as the three of us first.”

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t that unusual. We have games sitting on our kitchen table at one end because we play regularly throughout the week. Moonshot Euchre has been in our rotation for quite a few months now, partly because it is a game all three of us can play almost equally. Jacob takes more risks, Andrea plays more conservatively at times, I take stupid risks. 🙂 But we all generally win at different times. Andrea hasn’t won many lately, just luck of the draw, but it averages out over time. Sometimes we have other games sitting there too.

But tonight I thought we should make an effort to play a game before heading to watch a show. Just more interactive, more talking, more “us” than vegging. Andrea and Jacob had already been interacting earlier, before supper, it isn’t his only social thing, but it was about the only socializing I did with him. We’re struggling, or at least I am, to balance my work schedule with taking breaks during the day to spend time with him. And his previous routine of having at least one class a day with OutSchool dropped off because he was supposed to be back at school and we didn’t schedule anything new. Now it looks like the 18th before he’ll be back at school, depending on what happens with some labour-related lawsuits by teachers.

Tonight I choose to play a game with my family before sitting down to watch TV together as a family.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to take a day off from work (TIC00041d)

The PolyBlog
August 31 2020

We were planning to go away for the weekend to the inlaws’ cottage, but Andrea and Jacob were not feeling that great, and we postponed the trip. But we had planned originally to take the Monday off as well and make it a long weekend. With the decision to stay home, I left the holiday in the pipeline and took it off anyway, as did Andrea.

I’d love to say we had a fun-filled staycation day that rejuvenated us from top to bottom. Instead, we did do some small fun things like lunch out and a few games this afternoon, plus watching American Ninja Warrior’s All-Star show tonight.

But mostly, I just kept slogging on my home reorg. I’m in a strange phase at the moment in that I have a functional basement, more or less, and most of the things that I am sorting are in their assigned piles. Except that not everything that needs to be sorted is in the main part of the basement. To put it simply, I’ve sorted what is already here, I haven’t tackled the full back part of the basement yet.

So yesterday with Andrea’s help, and today through some stubborness, I plowed through the rest of the bins and boxes so I could truly see what I am facing. Fortunately, some of it went extremely quickly, and I was pleasantly surprised that three bins that I thought had a bunch of loose electrical stuff in it is actually not that at all, more old VHS tapes that are easily disposed of at some point, and I’m golden. I’m also really happy because some shelves that I needed to get to in order to really see what is there are now uncovered, some key dominoes haven fallen, and what’s left is also not that bad. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a ton of weeding to do. But the unknown is much closer to the known now.

Tonight, I took a small break from the family and took a short drive down to one of the park areas a few blocks south. I have been trying out some new astro planning software and one of the pieces of software is designed to help you plan different photography shots by telling you where exactly on the horizon the sun or moon (or planets, or constellations, etc.) is going to “rise”. I’m not talking about the Sun rising in the East, I’m talking about will it be directly behind THAT tree or about 2 degrees over and blocked by that house or 5 degrees the other way and coming up in open horizon.

If you know an area well, and have been out recently for sunrise, you probably know exactly where it will be on the horizon; if not, you’re more in the “general” direction phase. Which is not really that helpful if, for example, you want to see the sun rising behind a tree and find out that the angle is wrong and you should be 45 feet to your right to frame it properly. You can change on the fly, of course, but there are apps and websites that will tell you EXACTLY where it will cross the horizon.

Tonight, the moon is almost full (98%), and I wanted to test the app. So at 7:30 p.m., well 7:29 to be precise, I was perched with a south-easterly view to see the moon come up above some trees. I had planned to use a specific location earlier, but when I happened to drive by around 3:00, I realized that the angle was going to have way more trees than I expected (the park has more growth than I remember!). So I went to location B in my planning, which I didn’t go back and replan, just did a parallel thing. I used a free version of another app, and when the moon came up, it was about 5 degrees off. Still good, I was close, but if I was looking to frame a specific view, that 5 degrees could have meant moving 100 feet or so to the right really quickly with the tripod and reframing a shot.

The more expensive apps will do a better alignment job, offer you a virtual overlay for your camera view to show you where the moon would rise (it was off as I said), or even simulate what the light will look like at a certain time of day for you to plan ahead. I took some quick shots, no tripod, but I didn’t feel like I was getting anything “good”. Might have to do it with my DSLR. But, it was just a test. I have a specific target in mind, and I’ll aim for it next full moon. But I at least gave it a partial test tonight.

The downside to all this is that I don’t really feel like I had a “vacation” which I would have had at the cottage. I just kept slogging away. Progress or no, it’s still tiring. I am hoping to crash early tonight. Or at least early for me.

Today I choose to take a day off work.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to go down a musical rabbit hole (TIC00040d)

The PolyBlog
August 31 2020

I was tempted to include the full post I wrote about the rabbit hole that is “genres” for my music collection as a “Today I choose” post, but the reality is that it is more of a series of posts on their own.

So the TL;DR version of The rabbit hole that is organizing a digital music collection is that while I am making great progress on storing, backing up, and playing my music collection, I still have work to do to make it more shareable and a TON of work to do in simply organizing it by genres.

I’ll still need to do some more research to decide what categories “sing” to me, so to speak.

Today I choose to go down the musical rabbit hole of “genres”, and that rabbit hole is more of a full-on warren down there with tunnels and sub-tunnels. And maybe other animals that aren’t even rabbits burrowing their way through.

What choices are you making today?