• This will be day number 236 in a row that I’ve published a blog post. One hell of a streak. There aren’t many other things that I’ve done every single day, without fail, during that time.

    It’s a habit I’m happy to have formed. It keeps me in touch with the product I support everyday. Writing has become easier, which helps with my other hobby of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s also helped me stay connected with my family, who I don’t get to see as often as I’d like. Anything big seems to make its way to the blog soon enough.

    But the streak is something I don’t think I can maintain much longer. I don’t do enough interesting things to warrant a post everyday, and I’ve started putting less effort into any one post. That time would be better spent making cooler things less often. That said, I don’t want to fall out of the habit. So whenever the streak finally breaks, I’m going to treat it more as shift than a stop.

    I’ll miss that notification everyday though.

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  • Ber made the Alton Brown waffle batter and a kick-ass cranberry sauce. I manned the iron. Added some walnuts on top and sprinkled with powdered sugar. The results were wonderful.

  • Your life will be better with this game in it.

    Mini Metro from Dinosaur Polo Club

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  • This one goes out to my coworker, Chad. Chad is a bit of a Christmas-aholic. He decorates for Christmas on Halloween. We tease about it a bit on Slack, but he always retorts with ever more Christmas cheer.

    Well, Chad, I found my Christmas spirit for 2015. It comes in the form of my favorite winter warmer, the West Sixth Brewing Company Christmas Ale. I love the cardamom and nutmeg that gives this malty brew an earthy taste without relying on more mass-appeal flavors like chocolate. Though West Sixth’s Cocoa Porter is pretty well done too.

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    It’s not an entirely rare find, but the supplies here in Louisville do seem to run out quickly. I always grab a six pack the second I see one – and apparently this year that means beginning of November. If we’re drinking Christmas Ale, it must be Christmastime. Ho ho ho.

    I rated the West Sixth Christmas Ale 4.5 out of 5 on Untappd.

  • During my personal training sessions, my trainer likes to tease my lack of pop music knowledge.

    “Who is singing this song?” she asked.

    “Janet Jackson?” I guessed.

    It was Whitney Houston. And that was probably the closest guess I’d had in weeks. Who actually cares enough about One Direction to be able to identify them anyway? I did recognize Pentatonix.

    But the funny thing is she couldn’t understand how much I phase out the music while we workout. Apparently most people are really picky and only one want a specific genre, or songs above a certain tempo. I pretty much ignore it the whole time unless she asks me.

    This is one of the things I think also excluded me from continuing in music after my first (terrible) couple years of college. Music didn’t inspire me at a subconcious level like it did the best performers. I had to zone out – to concentrate on my breathing and my fingers and my tongue – to make my saxophone do what I expected it to do. I wasn’t good enough to feel or experience while actually doing the thing.

    When I’m working I prefer to put a few songs on loop instead of listening to full playlist. Makes things easier to ignore. I also find myself returning to familiar things I’ve enjoyed more times than I can count. If I pick something new I risk breaking my trance when something too interesting comes up.

    Maybe I need to start balancing this out though. It’s not that I don’t like music – it’s just that appreciating it is a whole separate thing. I have to set out to listen and analyze – it’s not anything I can multitask. But 20 minutes of music and nothing else couldn’t be  a bad thing.

  • Platinum Guardian Badge

  • The trouble with a flexible schedule is sometimes you don’t flex them the right way. In the last six months I’ve tried to become more active in the Louisville WordPress meetup group. However, I’ve only made it out there a handful of times. Partially it’s because it’s on the east end, but mostly its because I don’t prioritize it like I should.

    With each time I find I get to learn something and help share something too. It’s a good experience for people of varying experiences to meet and discuss like this because we all have a unique perspective on things. For instance, even in my short time attending I’ve seen an increased interest in not only WordPress site security, but general technology security. I mentioned a password manager once a while back and got chuckles as a response, but tonight they got mentioned along with some other security tools and the crowd seemed engaged.

    This month we had a presentation on top of our normal rounds of discussion. Martin Hofmann presented an introduction to CSS that moved quick and grabbed a lot of interest. Thanks to his efforts I’m sure the attendees will feel more confident tinkering with their sites’ CSS – or they at least have some good ideas to Google for next time. We all do it! You can check out Martin’s site at http://www.martinhofmann.com/ .

    During a question-and-answer I got to learn a new function from the codex. I’d never used the get_post_meta function before, but that in combination with a custom field ended up being a great solution for someone who wanted customize some page’s entry header text while still keeping the original page title in place.

    Joining the Louisville WordPress Meetup is free and open to the public. It’s currently hosted on the second Tuesday of every month at Mirazon Group, and organized by Scott Hack.

     

  • Amber had her baby shower yesterday. I wasn’t invited, but it made things easier if I dropped her off. The event was in the Highlands where there are tons of cool stuff, so I took the opportunity to walk around. Had lunch, played some Ingress, and did a few sketches.