https://johnjohnston.info/blog
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Walk round Ardinning this afternoon. Cuckoos calling. Willow warblers & ravens heard. Corn bunting & stonechats seen & heard. Warm & breezy plenty of butterflies, mostly Orange Tips & Green-Veined whites, a Painted Lady. A few small red damselflies didn’t stay still although one landed on D’s hat.
Read: An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro ★★★★★ 📚 But as for the likes of us, Ono, our contribution was always marginal. No one cares now what the likes of you and me once did. They look at us and see only two old men with their sticks.’ He smiled at me, then went on feeding the fish. ‘We’re the only ones who care now. The likes of you and me, Ono, when we look back over our lives and see they were flawed, we’re the only ones who care now.’ Hazy recall, guilt, regret, memory,…
Read: Clown Town by Mick Heron ★★★★ 📚 Familiar world & characters with some interesting developments. A nice surprise at the end. I am surprised at how the series continues to be enjoyable & pleased the author has not needed to make things increasingly dramatic.
#SilentSunday
I had a walk around Ardmore yesterday afternoon. Lots of flower out. #BloomScrolling #BloomStrolling #Flora
Went for a walk round the park this afternoon. Hailstones in May!
Read: Same as it ever was by Claire Lombardo ★★★ 📚 but the strangest thing I remember about having young children is how interminably the time moves, just these days upon days upon days, and every single one of them feels a million years long, but then suddenly months have gone by, enough time for a new baby to be born or one of the kids to start kindergarten, or college for God’s sake Took me a long a time to get into this one. The central character irritated at first. She did grow on me as I…
Likes The Slow Death of the Power User — fireborn. This is the result of two decades of deliberate, calculated effort by the largest technology companies on earth to turn users into consumers, instruments into appliances, and technical literacy into a niche hobby for weirdos. They succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Congratulations to everyone involved. You’ve built a generation that can’t extract a zip file without a dedicated app and calls it innovation. … The YouTube tutorial is the…
In reply to #tdc5229 #ds106 #dailycreate Last minute food panic. I pride myself on tofu, veg with rice or noodles in 15 minutes.
The hawthorn is starting to come out in the park.
Likes I Know Where I’m Going! | Caught by the River | Caught by the River by Honey Davis-Wilkinson. I was planning a trip to the northwest of Scotland, close to the part of the Highlands where I’d grown up. I’d travel on public transport to locations from three favourite films. First stop: the lonely rail station at Corrour, as featured in Trainspotting – the highest mainline station in the United Kingdom, 410 metres above sea level. Then on to Morar, where Local Hero is partly filmed, on…
How To Build PHP-Only Gutenberg Blocks In WordPress 7 PHP-only blocks are an ideal migration path for existing shortcodes. The render logic is often identical — the only difference is where the parameters come from. As a very amateur and occasional dabbler in shortcodes & very simple plugins this looks interesting. It will need WordPress 7 and php 8.1. There are already quite a few how to articles out there already.
Victoria Park this afternoon sunny and very warm. In a sheltered spot near fossil grove we watched 2 Speckled Woods spiral, jousting up and around for quite a while. A Red Admiral and a coupe of orange tip butterflies around too.
At WordPress.com, we believe short thoughts deserve a real home. Today we’re introducing a new theme built for quick posts, replies, and reblogs: the kind of writing that lives somewhere between a tweet and a blog post, on a site that’s entirely yours. from: A New Theme for Short-Form Blogging on WordPress.com – WordPress.com News A new setup on wordpress.com with front end posting, 500 char limit in their editor, but you can go past that if you use an alternative editor, WordLand for example.…
Likes The Other Reasons Why Podcasting is Hot – Doc Searls Weblog by Doc Searls. I know, the ones without ads are mostly out on the long tail, but what matters is that anybody can podcast on the Net, just like anybody can publish there. RSS—really simple syndication—gives all of us scale. This is, as Kurt Vonnegut once said , a miracle on the order of loaves and fish. It’s foundational. The Other Reasons Why Podcasting is Hot 🐻 Bears Repeating
Walked the Jaw – Greenside loop this morning. Small tortoiseshell & a few orange tips. Lots of birds singing. Cuckoos calling. Cuckoo flowers out & hawthorn quite green now. On the hill: stonechat, larks, a wheatear moving along the path in front. Meadow pipet, a reed bunting. A couple of ravens over the Greenside path. I had left my camera’s SD card in the reader so missed a couple of opportunities.
Read: The Violet Hour by James Cahill ★★★ 📚 Shenanigans in the Art World. Dealers, painters and some bad behaviour.
I’ve not posted a set of links for a while, keep saving them, but retired life is busier than I thought it would be. I am prompted by this newletter post: Own Your Web – Issue 18: Curators So every time you share a link on your blog, every time you write a few sentences about why someone else’s work matters to you, every time you add a new entry to a blogroll or a links page – you are a curator. You are doing what no algorithm can do. You’re saying: I am a person. I read this. I think you…
Ardinning this afternoon. Very sunny & bright. A few butterflies, mostly peacocks & some orange tips. A couple of peacocks spiralled up high. Cuckoos calling. At the bench beside the loch we heard a big splash. Looking round through the bushes we saw an osprey come out of the water & fly off.
Short walk on the Kilpatrick Braes this afternoon. Warmest day of the year so far. Quite a few butterflies, peacocks and Orange Tips around. Lots of wee flowers. The usual suspects singing in the trees, a grouse & stonechat on the moor. Larks singing. #bloomscrolling #bloomstrolling
Read: The Names by Florence Knapp ★★★★ 📚 She wonders again if she is doing this right. Any of it, all of it. If it's even the right thing for Gordon himself to be carrying on this tradition. Maybe consenting to live in the shadow of his father and his father's father is only perpetuating the likeness, increasing the weight of it for him. Perhaps calling their child something different would be a liberation. Not at first, but later. Names change character & experience. Three versions of the same…
Took the short walk to Greenside reservoir this morning. Lots of spring happening, bird song, especially chiffchaff & willow warbler. Heard blackcaps (confirmed with merlin) and finally saw some. A cuckoo calling, the first this year. A few butterflies around including one small tortoiseshell.
Add any public account from Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, X, TikTok or YouTube to quickly get a feed that you can add to your favorite reader. from: ByeDoom — Give a Link → Get a Feed This works, I got it from Alan’s dogged following & sharing of RSS information, tips & tricks. Great […]
Walk in the rain round the short Kilpatrick loop this morning. Lots of birds singing mostly out of sight. Tree pipets in good voice, & displaying in the trees at the edge of the moor. Blackthorn fully out, trees starting to bud. Flowers hanging their heads in the drizzle.
A haze of blackthorn in the Drizzle.
Read: Sheila Armstrong by Falling Animals ★★★★ 📚 Celia turned five last month while he was on a container ship from Liverpool to Halifax. They were passing an island off the coast of Newfoundland and Manoy clung to the port railings, scrabbling for a few bars of reception to make a call from the satellite […]
Kilpatrick Braes a warm, breezy day with blooming primroses and mouse-ear cress. Bumble bees and butterflies. Birds including a green woodpecker and chiffchaffs calling & singing.
Read: Sanshirō by Natsume Sōseki ★★★★ 📚 Why? Well, look at it this way. Your head is alive, but if you seal it up inside dead classes, you're lost. Take it outside and get the wind into it. Riding the streetcar is not the only way to get satisfaction, of course, but it's the first […]
