It’s been that kind of day.
I was just getting nicely lined up on this Makipai | Australian Magpie at the beach — hoping it would sing — when it flew away! 🐦
By 0650 the sun was rising.
It’s just before 6am and a chilly 7C as I take Sasha for her walk. Everything’s dark. There are stars in the clear sky, washed out by a very bright half moon. I can make out a little of the Milky Way below the Southern Cross.
There’s no wind. It’s silent — too early for the birds. As I round the corner though I can hear the sea nearby.
A beautiful way to start the day.
Today’s tea — White Moonlight:
This is a fun, fragrant, light-bodied white tea with an intricate cascade of notes…
I like this one. It is fragrant and light-bodied. Refreshing. I make it with 1 teaspoon of leaves.
Yesterday I made Deep dish apple pie. I bought the pastry. Everyone said it was delicious. Prepping 2 Kg apples took forever as they came off the tree full of bad spots to cut out.
Aargh. I’ve been making Traditional deep dish apple pie, with ready made pastry. It’s taken all afternoon! I didn’t realise it’d be so time consuming.
This odd looking thing is a Red Kiwifruit:
This fruit has a deliciously sweet berry-tinged flavour and vibrant red flesh … the distinctive red flesh stems from Anthocyanin - a unique and naturally occurring pigment within the fruit that is linked to cardiovascular and cognitive health.
Courtesy of Anne Shillolo’s newsletter I downloaded her Murder At Aspen Creek prequel novella for free. It was a quick and enjoyable read — I’m already a fan of her Port Alma Murder Mysteries. I’ll be reading the new series too. 📚
I’m going to stop reading A Space Girl from Earth (The Kyroibi Trilogy Book 1) by Christina McMullen. I’m not the target audience and I’m more annoyed by it than interested. 📚
not only is Ellie an alien, but … the forbidden knowledge of a lost civilization is hidden deep within her genetic code.
Another fascinating interview: Ann-Helén Laestadiu: Sami, the reindeer people:
Stolen is the story of a young Sámi girl’s coming of age. It is informed by painful real-life events: the killing … of reindeer, and the hatred Laestadius has seen as a journalist directed towards her people.
Fascinating interview: Angela Saini on the origins of patriarchy - A Podcast of One’s Own with Julia Gillard:
Her latest book, The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule … explores the roots of gendered oppression and how patriarchal systems became embedded in societies and spread across the globe.
At 6 am I shone the torch into the quail run to check on lonely Fliss the quail. I spotted this Leopard Slug - Limax Maximus leaving the food dish:
Limax maximus is the largest slug introduced to New Zealand from Europe.
The books in this series by Kris Bock are good reads: Someone Missing from Malapais Mountain (Book 4 in The Accidental Detective series). The mystery is interesting, the characters enjoyable. 📚
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to make this little Keyboard Maestro macro to convert a Markdown link to an HTML link… I’ve needed it a lot recently.
Copy a Markdown link to the clipboard, run the macro which does a Regular Expression Search & Replace, paste.
Change the date format in Alpine Theme
After installing the Alpine Theme on two hosted Micro.Blogs, I was extremely keen to change the date format. That took me ages as I blundered around through different theme files. Eventually though, I mainly got it done.
The original
The Alpine Theme tends to write dates like this: 12:30 PM, JUL 1
, as the theme's screenshot shows.
I really dislike that format and want my dates to look like this: 17:16 on 08 March 2023
. That's a 24 hour time format followed by two digit date, month written out in full, 4 digit year. Plus changes to punctuation and whatnot.
Settings?
Ideally I'd go to some Settings screen and enter my choices there. Alas, that choice isn't available.
Where and how to change the theme files
First, if you need to, refer to Custom themes for instructions on creating and setting a Custom Theme.
For the Alpine Theme you need to change the date in 3 files:
- layouts/list.archivehtml.html
- layouts/post/single.html
- layouts/partials/post-item.html
Find the place where it says something like this
<time class=“dt-published” datetime=“{{ .Date.Format ”2006–01–02 15:04:05 –0700“ }}”> <a class=“u-url dates” href=“{{ .Permalink }}”>{{ .Date.Format “Jan 2, 2006” }}</a> </time>
Replace the second date & time with your preferred format.
In my case I changed {{ .Date.Format "Jan 2, 2006" }} to read {{ .Date.Format "15:04 on 02 January 2006" }}. I also added the text "Published on " before the date on one blog where that's fairly relevant. (Since changed to "Published at".)
The place where I couldn't change the date format was where my blog displays replies from others to my posts.
Also refer to the June 2019 article on @custom: Change the date format.
The annoying thing about cooking Foolproof slow roast chicken is I’m starving and there’s more than an hour of cooking left to go…
Hah! Against Copyediting: Is It Time to Abolish the Other Department of Corrections?:
I was less the advocate of adventurous commas or paradigm-shifting syntax than a weary cleaner of the tiniest, most sparkling closet, working through the nooks and crannies of written English with my lead-pencil broom.
Life with Sasha 🐶 these days:
I start to do a thing…
Sasha: Ohhh I really need to go out right now.
… We walk aimlessly, or sit or just stand.
😵💫
