Oshi is snug by the fire on this dreary day. 🐶
Riveting 10 minute video: Could You Be a Chimera?
We like to think of our DNA as a unique marker of our identity … but we’re all Mosaics, and the longer we live, the more versions of ourselves we become.
Also: the mother whose kids genes didn’t match hers.
Bionic HTML
The other day I wrote a post about my relationship with Markdown and HTML. Half a dozen people responded with thoughts about their own relationship with both. As I read those responses I realised that I never actually type HTML.
Sure, what I write emerges marked up with HTML tags, usually as I write, but it's more bionic HTML
. Take this post as an example. I happen to be using BBEdit to write this one, but it works anywhere that accepts text. I started with ,p
. That triggered TextExpander to create opening and closing paragraph tags for me to type between.
To add the link to another post I switched briefly to MarsEdit, selected that older post in the Main Window then clicked a Keyboard Maestro palette to trigger a macro that uses Applescript to copy the title and URL, wrap them in appropriate HTML tags and put them on the clipboard ready for pasting. At the end of the paragraph another TextExpander trigger is zp
that creates a closing then an opening paragraph tag so I move on to the next paragraph.
At various points I've used more TextExpander triggers to insert tags for quotes and emphasis. And so it goes.
Between TextExpander, Applescript, Keyboard Maestro, and on rare occasions selecting text and then wrapping it in tags from BBEdit's Clippings or Applescript menu or the MarsEdit Format menu, the chances that I'll actually type out an HTML tag are extremely slim.
So reading the discussion has made me realise that my thoughts are with HTML. I may realise I want to create a list, for example. I know exactly which tags to type and where, but I don't actually type them. Instead I trigger them somehow and use my Mac's power to automate them.
The wonderful thing though is that this discussion hasn't been about HTML versus Markdown. I don't aim to persuade anyone else to prefer one over the other. It was about how we all use these systems and respond to them differently.
I'd quickly become enraged if I had to type HTML tags to write anything, but beyond teaching others how to use HTML I haven't actually typed out HTML tags myself for years. Why keep a computer and do its work yourself?
Thanks @artkavanagh @smokey @macgenie @adders @decarbonization @Bruce for the discussion.
We drove 45 minutes to Linton where there’s a military camp and (who knew?) the Manawatū Prison. And one entrance to the new He Ara Kotahi walkway. We didn’t get far — the dogs can only do short walks, but enjoyed it. Sasha didn’t like the bouncy Kahuterawa Bridge.
And in today’s episode of ‘a bad worker always blames their tools’ I will say that Markdown has never been my thing. I vastly prefer HTML which is straightforward, easy, unambiguous. The only thing I think that’s easy in MD is a link.
Potentially remarkable; just poor writing:
The range of one male [cat] was found to cover 3,000 hectares, from elevations of 300 to 2,500 metres … It may have been living on Corsica for 6,500 years, since the time of the second human colonisation of the island.
Handy Applescript for MarsEdit — Get title and link in Markdown:
tell application “MarsEdit”
set newLink to ""
set newLink to (permalink of selected post) as text
set newTitle to (title of selected post) as text
set the clipboard to “[" & newTitle & “]" & "(" & newLink & ")"
end tell
I’m starting to wish we had a view of the sea from here. Dashed down to the beach with 3 minutes to spare to watch the sunset. Ngā maunga, the mountains, Taranaki and Ngauruhoe were easy to see in the late light, but aren’t in these iPhone photos.
Such a stunning day. Disappointed I have to go out and do errands.
It’s winter so Mike the farmer feeds out hay to the steers in the paddock next door. They always come running when they see the tractor.
Couldn’t for the life of me figure out where “Page 2 of 12” was coming from in my blog pagination. I was looking behind the scenes at theme files for the wrong blog. Sigh.
Here are Oshi and Sasha in February 2007 when they were 3 months old. That black and tan scoundrel turned into the white and tan Oshi scoundrel. Such colour change is normal apparently. Jet black Sasha is now greying. Her black has faded. 🐶
Sasha has always been much longer than Oshi. When they were 3 months old she was like a puppy, whereas he resembled in almost all ways a guinea pig. When they eat, Oshi stands and inhales food. Sasha, with her longer body, sits and crunches the biscuits. 🐶
Thanks so much @macgenie for interviewing me again on Micro Monday and talking about customising Micro.Blog. Episode 64: Customise Your Microblog. And thanks for editing out my total memory lapse on a name I should have known. 😀 I have big trouble with names.
There were also the giant tortoises, hundreds of years old, a Komodo Dragon missing a foot, and pink flamingos. I’m so glad my photography skills have improved in the last 10 years. I’d love to take these photos again now.
A fond memory: way back in December 2008 I visited Honolulu Zoo — an amazing place. I saw this Secretary Bird and Crowned Cranes. What astonishing birds. I’m usually ambivalent about zoos, but that one was very special.
WOW!!! Re Apollo moon landing: On the seamstresses who wove the computer memory by hand
Apollo computers had a total 73 KB memory. … hired seamstresses. … Every wire had to be right. …They hired women…8 weeks manufacturing … sitting at … looms weaving wires, 1 wire at a time.
Excellent: The Postcards Guide to Braille!. Go take a look.
Bonus fun fact: Braille is originally based on Night writing (or sonography), a tactile reading/writing system created for soldiers to communicate silently at night.
Waiting for my Skype meeting participant… Drums fingers… Meanwhile they messaged me: Where are you? We switched to Zoom. Today Skype just utterly failed. Last used 6 months ago. Delighted to trash the junk today. And, thanks to Hazel, all the files that belong to it.
For heaven’s sake! I can’t board a flight with an almost microscopic pocket knife, but A person, who potentially exposed hundreds of domestic passengers last week to measles, had ignored warnings to stay isolated. There should be a legal penalty. Bioterrorism.