I struck a lucky shaft of rising sunlight at the estuary this morning, with this Poaka | Pied Stilt. 🐦
I haven't read this yet but want to boost Sod's link about writing good alt text for images 🔗 :
Alt-texts: The Ultimate Guide is another hands-on article that I like, with tips and tricks for writing great alt-texts.
I haven’t been for a proper walk on the beach for the last month. Now I’m finally over the ghastly flu, it’s time to get back out there. I hope not all the birds have gone away… Sunrise in 30 minutes, better get myself sorted.
A very clear and very helpful post by Alan Jacobs about the true nature of Micro.Blog 🔗 :
I wrote about the Three Paths of micro.blog.
I stayed up way too late last night, not being able to get this AppleScript (or any other technique) to work. Today I found the ‘missing piece’. I had a BBEdit text file with blog posts, each on its own line. I wanted to split that file into separate documents, one per line.
Visited with my buddy Leo today. 🐈
Remember when blogs
were fussily called weblogs
?
While checking posts from my now defunct KnowIt blog I spotted this mention of MarsEdit 1.0 from 11 December 2004:
Ranchero Software's MarsEdit 1.0
… is a weblog editor for Mac OS X that makes weblog writing like writing email—with spell-checking, drafts, multiple windows, and even AppleScript support.
It works with various weblog systems: Blosxom, Conversant, Manila, Movable Type, Radio UserLand, TypePad, WordPress, and others.
Congratulations must go to Brent Simmons who has released Mars Edit today after a period of thorough development and beta testing. As one of those beta testers I'm thrilled to see this application released today. If you use a Mac and have a Blog then you owe it to yourself to at least test Mars Edit. … I use it every day.
Nearly 2 decades later and I still use MarsEdit every day!
Too big for your boots, AI! I made my Micro Camp 2023 presentation video and then had the wonderful free Mac app Aiko transcribe the audio (brilliantly). Except this line at the end:
Huh? I never said that! I edited my video, so transcribed again. Again it ended with that text which I never said!
For my Micro Camp 2023 presentation I used Apple Keynote. I wondered about accessibility for those who can’t see the screenshots.
Keynote Help let me know I can add image descriptions, so that’s underway now.
A MarsEdit tip for including MB usernames in Posts:
Micro.Blog automatically converts usernames to MarkDown links on posting. That can lead to confusion if posting from MarsEdit with HTML.
To avoid that, in MarsEdit’s per-blog settings uncheck the option to Apply Preview Filter.
Thanks to @Danielpunkass and @Manton for the kind words about me in Core Intuition 557:
…talk about Micro.camp …summarize some of the planned talks, and weight the pros and cons of … an all-online event.
I don’t feel any pressure at all…
@bitdepth @annahavron @mandaris
Apparently New Zealand Sign Language week finishes today. While I’m very interested in language and have learned various amounts of several I’ve never tackled Sign. I need to remedy that.
Meanwhile, here’s a start: My Name is Miraz.
I don't often buy reference books, but this seemed like a must-have: Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager's Field Guide by Liv Sisson. 📚
I realised I can read it in Kindle on my Mac to enjoy all the colour photos.
The truth is that women are perennially and perpetually angry about male violence, but every time there’s a public explosion of that anger the news media will report it as if no one had ever noticed the problem before (it’s called “news” for a reason: amnesia is in its DNA).
Heh, this came up today on my daily check of my blog’s Surprise me page: Kea gyms!. Next weekend find out why that’s a bit of random serendipity…
Two — almost 3 — a.m. I seem to have mislaid my sleep…
This was a gripping read: The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave. 📚
Hannah’s husband just doesn’t come home from work after his boss is arrested for fraud. She sets out with his teenage daughter Bailey to figure out what’s going on.
Recommended by alex ink.
This morning we had the first frost of the season, and there was snow on the high tops of the Tararua range too. Winter is nearby.
How rich folks could really help poor folks in NZ
We have some mega rich people in Aotearoa New Zealand, and a heap of folks who depend on food banks and the like to scrape out a hard existence.
The mean [average] estimated net worth of the families in the Project population for 2021 is $276 million and the median is $106 million.
So some of the wealthy want changes to tax laws, but the government doesn’t seem inclined to really make our society more equal.
the open letter from 96 high-income New Zealanders calling for higher tax rates on the wealthy.
I think it’s up to the government to make real social change, but here’s my utopian idea for one strategy rich folks could implement.
Sponsor a school
Make low-decile (ie poor) schools the hub of a community. Adopt a school. Pay for free healthy breakfasts, lunches and snacks for all kids at the school. Create a free ‘health clinic’ for the school where all kids get regular health checks, eye tests, hearing tests, dental treatment, with free glasses, hearing aids, treatment. Pay for books and uniforms and computers and field trips etc.
How much would that cost? No idea. But if you have a billion dollars or even multi millions of dollars I reckon you could afford to sponsor a school.
Would that be unfair to other kids not at that school? Sure, but when has helping one person ever meant you have to help every person on the planet?
Good news story out of NZ today — 8 year old Josh asked the local Council for a swing for his friend in a wheelchair.
the council … unfortunately couldn't put a swing onto Hudson Park.
But they said '… if Josh is okay with it, we could put an inclusive roundabout'.
