You've made a place to speak your mind, use it to document your processes, ideas, designs and code. Help others benefit from your journey, including your future self!

Recording things on pages; or, Blaugust lessons learned

I think it's safe to say that Blaugust 2024 hasn't inspired a huge outpouring of blog posts from me, but it has cemented this website as a place where I publish things, even if only for myself. Some examples:

• I've started reading for a book club, so I was tempted to brush off my old GoodReads account. But I decided I didn't need to; I could record everything here. So now I have a page for recording my reading, and I published a post on the first book I read for the club.

• My wife and I have started pub quizzing, and man, I love recording statistics. So now there's a page for that.

• I'm playing a lot of World of Warcraft, and I want to keep track of what I've done and what I'm still working on, but I don't always feel there's an entire blog post in it. So, a day-log style page.

• I've been keeping up with recording when I visit interesting places with my /checkins post type. For example: winning the pub quiz, again, a terrible comedy night. These aren't full-on blog posts, usually just a sentence or two.

Postroll implemented

The last time I wrote about this site's development, I mentioned being inspired by JCProbably's writing on having a postroll. Since then, I've gone ahead and implemented a variation for myself.

My postroll is located at, unsurprisingly, /postroll, with an archive of all my bookmarks at /bookmarks. My public bookmarks are probably the least interesting thing I publish here, so I won't dwell on this particular bit of development!

A new post type: image galleries

I've wanted a way to publish photos (and screenshots) online for a while, and didn't have a good plan for it. I've created a simple gallery page that covers the basics. There's this work-in-progress Warcraft gallery as a test ground/first example as I continue to tweak it. I think it's basically good enough for my simple needs -- the mobile view could still do with a few adjustments.

Behind the scenes

Slightly improved some of the static content generating code, and set up a daily cron job to backup this entire site to my Dropbox account. My good friend SC wrote me a simple web UI for adding new posts, which is particularly handy for bookmarks and notes.

Future plans

More actual blog posts (I have few drafts...), and keeping up with the various pages and post types outlined above. A better way of showing what's actually new on the front page, which currently requires a visitor to click around the Navigation sub-section, which isn't entirely intuitive or inviting. Galleries need improving on small displays, and then I want to go back through my photographs and publish a few more from the last few years. I also have my old Twitter archive and an old Wordpress blog database dump, and I'm planning on republishing the "best of".

I'm pretty pleased with how things are going.

Warcraft isn’t fun, it’s rewarding.

Pretty much sums up how I feel about it. Sorry, I wasn’t paying enough attention to get the episode number, but the thought stuck with me.

remote work has made so many people happier in their daily lives without decreasing productivity at all

definitely. We track time and have a scoring system for how complicated a job is, and looking at my numbers, I actually became more productive, and much happier.

Ringworld is a 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. Ringworld tells the story of Louis Wu and his companions on a mission to the Ringworld, an enormous rotating ring, an alien construct in space 186 million miles (299 million kilometres) in diameter.

Wikipedia

This was a re-read for me; I first read Ringworld sometime in my twenties, and perhaps tellingly, have never been back to it or any of the sequels in the time since.

But, I recently joined an online book club, and it was the book of the month, so I purchased a copy for my Kindle and gave it a re-read. I didn't much enjoy it. It felt very dated, badly paced, and I hate magic woo-woo in my sci-fi (and you very much can't selectively breed for luckiness).

"A blunderbuss of ideas from the pub bore"

I was very much expecting to have a minority opinion here, but it turns out the rest of the group agreed; most didn't enjoy it, although with a begrudging admission that the premise was solid and agreement that the idea of a ring world (and its big brother, the Dyson sphere) have since become beloved sci-fi tropes.

I won't be returning to the Ringworld, or the Known Space universe.

Sorry, Larry.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever i find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet... I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

I love a fishing mini game. Or even a not-so-mini game. I fish in World of Warcraft, in Final Fantasy XIV, in Black Desert, in Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, in Minecraft. I played Dredge non-stop until I'd devoured every little bit of content available. I love fishing.

Given how most fishing games are semi-idle at best -- idle/incremental games being another genre I love, but that will have to be a post for another time -- I find it endlessly frustrating how difficult they are to enjoy on mobile. If ever there was a genre suited to playing in front of the TV, in a zen-like state of semi-attention, you'd think fishing would be it.

Final Fantasy XIV has what I consider the best side-content fishing in any MMO, given that fishing is its own entire class, with quests, a storyline, and very solid mechanics, going way beyond the usual cast-wait-reel of most mini games. You can play FFXIV on the Steam Deck, so it mostly works for some sofa-based angling. But while I like FFXIV, it's a big MMO, and I only have the brain space for one MMO at a time, and currently it's World of Warcraft. I'll go back, one day.

My main gripe is how terrible mobile fishing games are. Every single one of them is either so simplistic you might as well not be playing anything at all, fishing-themed but not really about fishing, or absolutely stuffed to the gills (see, see) with predatory cash-shop purchases trying to hook a spending whale (eyyy).

After trying what feels like several hundred of them over the years, I've recently settled on Fishing Clash as the best of a bad bunch. There are pop-ups and rewards and limited time events and special offers and every other possible anti-pattern in existence, but the actual fishing is fun, as is unlocking and levelling up all of the different fish to catch in a variety of locations. The secret, as with most mobile games, is to approach it with an iron will and steadfast resolve to never get the credit card out. Disable notifications, ignore the limited time event, realise that you don't need to spend £4.99 on a new turbo-mega-DLC-only reel, and just fish.

My progress is probably horribly stunted, but I'm not competing with anyone, so does it really matter? I'll probably never catch the rarest of leviathans with my free-to-play equipment, but... isn't having a white whale part of the appeal of fishing? It's probably best if you don't catch it. Never did Ahab any good.

I suppose the main thing I'm feeling right now is tired. Physically, a bit, but more sort of mentally and emotionally.

I finished a big project today at work. I don't want to go into the details, because I try to keep my work fairly anonymous online -- I work for a small e-commerce company doing devops; that's enough detail -- but I didn't feel happy or accomplished or even relieved to be ticking off complete a big job; the planning poker points "scored" feel (are) completely meaningless, and I only felt, well, nothing. I've been working on it back-and-forth with my manager for weeks now, and I just wanted it to be done. Didn't care if it was done well, or on time, or used nice clean code, or implemented some nifty trick. Just bored and frustrated and it was a slog from start to finish. And now it's done. Tomorrow there'll be something else.

My beloved ginger cat, Archie, who has been my "ginger best bud" since 2013, has gone missing. Despite the best search parties, Facebook group posts, and alerting all the neighbours, if I'm being realistic, he's been missing long enough now that he's not coming back. I know there's discourse about not letting domestic cats outdoors (though I gather it's less of a contentious issue here in the UK than in the US). He was old, and never spent much time outdoors; content in his later years (he was getting on a bit) to just sun himself in our back garden and then come back inside. Then one day he went out and hasn't come back. It's been... ten days. We can't find him. He's chipped, but, no alerts.

I realise I just wrote most of that paragraph discussing him in the past-tense. With no definitive answer one way or the other... There's no closure. Maybe he'll come trotting through the cat-flap any minute, demanding his dinner. Probably he won't. He had a good, luxurious life, and was well-loved. That's what I'm concentrating on.

Warcraft has definitely hit a lull; I've basically no need to play the pre-patch event anymore, and no desire to continue the regular Dragonflight weekly stuff either, so I've been reading. I finished Ringworld (Larry Niven; a re-read for a book club) the other day, and started The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin). Ringworld I didn't much rate (I know, I know, it's a classic, just one that I personally don't think has held up that well), but The Left Hand of Darkness I'm enjoying. The bookclub meets to discuss Ringworld on Sunday morning, so I'll see how out-of-whack my opinion is then. Maybe I'll post some book reviews of book club books?

Okay. I've mentioned my big-two thoughts of the moment (work, Archie). I think that's enough for now.

On Sunday I achieved the last thing I had on my Pandaria Remix list: I handed in my last rare fish and so Tuixiu became Best Friends with Nat Pagle.

And with that, I'm done with Remix. I have about 70,000 bronze across a few alts to spend up, which I'll do at the last possible minute, just in case they decide to nerf prices in the last week -- doubtful, at this point -- but other than that, I have no reason to log onto my timerunners anymore.

That's probably a good thing, because the Radiant Echoes prepatch event is in full swing, and now that it's been adjusted and hotfixed up, it's not so bad. Zones cycle endlessly between world quest objectives and their raid boss, so you can just hop a portal from Dalaran, stick on a podcast, and farm away. I've already used it to level up a few alts to the level cap, purchased the mounts and three pets, plus all of the plate and mail transmogs. That leaves the cloth and leather sets, plus a bunch of weapons to unlock, but truth be told, I think they're all pretty ugly, so I'm not going to worry myself with grinding non-stop until I unlock everything. If I run out of steam at some point, so be it.

I enjoyed Remix. It got me to complete a whole bunch of zones and storylines I never would have got around to doing, and generously let me hit Exalted with the associated factions at a massively accelerated pace while I did it. Pandaria itself is still gorgeous looking, holding up pretty well compared to other modern expansion zones, and it was nice to revist some old NPC friends and spend some time in nostalgic vistas. Mists was the current expansion when I first joined Waypoint, and so it's bundled up with a whole bunch of fond memories for me, in-game and out.

The War Within is just weeks away now, and so it's really time to decide who gets top spot in my Warband. After much prevaricating, my main is almost certainly going to be the dwarf paladin I took through Dragonflight, Hoppipolla. Either her, or my gnome warrior. Mechagnome hunter. Dark iron dwarf shaman? Or the pandarian monk. Certainly one of those. The paladin is the best geared and most "ready", but thanks to this prepatch event, well, they're all pretty viable. Maybe for the first time, I'll embrace the new Warband systems and not really have a main...

You've made a place to speak your mind, use it to document your processes, ideas, designs and code. Help others benefit from your journey, including your future self!

I haven't been doing a very good job of that, so in this post I'm going to lay out a little of how this site works, how I'd like it to work, and what I'm planning on next.

Behind the scenes

This site is pretty simple. I opted for a no-database, text file based system, so I can easily create and publish content without a CMS. Each piece of content is a Markdown document with a YAML metadata header. I have a script that I run manually that loops through published content looking at publication dates, tags, and post types, which then generates a collection of HTML snippets representing tag and archive pages, recently posted lists, the RSS feed, and other content that would otherwise be considered "dynamic".

When a vistor arrives, the article they request and these previously-generated snippets are then parsed by a PHP script and injected into a HTML template for viewing. It's kind of a half-way point between a dynamic template site and a static site; and I think it's fine like that. It means I can fix minor things without regenerating a bunch of assets, but all PHP is really doing it glueing pre-generated static HTML together, so it's got pretty low overheads.

Post types

The site currently support posts, which are traditional blog-style entries like this one, and notes, which are smaller microblog sized tweet-equivalents. I'm working on POSSE'ing notes to Bluesky and mastodon; at the moment that's a cut-n-paste manual process. I'd feel more pressure to get that working quicker if a) I could decide which of the two platforms to invest in (I think I prefer Bluesky), and b) I used them more than I do. Since Twitter went down the Musk sink, I've really stopped tweeting (or tooting, or skeeting, or whatever the cool kids call it nowadays).

I also have checkins, to record significant (or just fun) places I've visited. I use Openstreetmap to show a map.

All post types support comments and tags, and some tag pages have what I'm calling a "subject page", essentially a tag archive with extra commentary, like the one for Blaugust 2024.

Lastly, I have a /now page and it's archives, wittily called /then. These are like a combination of monthly catchup posts and the old "finger" .plan files, and the nownownow.com about page explains the reasoning behind them. I really like my now-and-then pages, which I update basically whenever I remember throughout the month.

Future plans

Blaugust 2024 is already paying off for me. Yesterday JCProbably left a comment on my first post, which lead me to check out their site, which is fantastic and very much in the same IndieWeb mold that I'm aiming for.

One feature JC has that I'm absoultely going to steal is a "postroll", an interesting combination of blogroll and bookmarks -- here's theirs as an example. They also published a great blog post on their thinking behind using a postroll, which aligns 100% with my own thoughts. Thanks, JC!

For a good few years, I maintained my own bookmarks in a big JSON file, so I have an archive of content available already (I recently switched to raindrop.io). I just need to dust it off and code up a front-end to it...

Lastly, I don't handle photos very well -- online or in real life. I don't take many, I don't back them up properly, I never committed to Instagram or before that Flickr or before that photobucket, or... anything. What photos I do have are scattered between an external hard drive, google photos, dropbox, iCloud. I never cared. I do now. I need a photo storage plan and a photo publishing plan. I have no clue.

In summary

I've written way more than I expected here. Basically, I love maintaining my own little corner of the web that's entirely mine; I know that it'll never be finished or perfect, and that's part of the charm. I still have a lot of work to do.

I whole-heartly encourage you all to check out the Indieweb folks yourself, and to do whatever you can to claw back a bit of space and inject a bit of personality into the increasingly corporate walled garden of the web.

The internet was more fun when everyone had a homepage.

We have created this community of bloggers and it gives us an interesting group of folks that we can rely on. In order to support this effort this year I am creating the “First Post of Blaugust” initiative. The idea is that for your very first Blaugust post you take a bit of time and introduce yourself and your blog.

Belghast, Blaugust is coming

Hello, world

Welcome to Blaugust 2024, and welcome to my little website. I suppose I better introduce myself.

Back when Twitter was still Twitter, @ImogenWK produced this viral tweet, which describes me shockingly well. I highly recommend checking out the replies, too, as I'm often depicted there as well.

what is the name for this type of man??

English, Terry Pratchett fan, sardonic humour, left wing-ish, leather jackets, maybe long hair, maybe folk music, Bill Bailey, real ale, usually middle age+. Warhammer adjacent. Likes swords but doesn't necessarily own one?

That's what kind of man I am. My name is Phil. I'm a middle-aged man who lives in the north-east of England with my wife and three cats. For my day job, I'm a programmer and all-round "devops" web developer for a small e-commerce company. In my spare time, I like playing roleplaying games (electronic and pen-and-paper), MMOs, any game best enjoyed with a supplementary spreadsheet, collecting Magic: the Gathering, reading sci-fi and literary fiction, and sitting outside in the sun with a cider.

Just as the tweet suggests, I have long hair, a long beard, a leather jacket, and a selection of shirts that wouldn't look out-of-place on a Time Team expert.

Blogging and Blaugust history

Despite being a web professional (excuse me while I stifle the laughs of my colleagues), I have a shockingly bad history with my own personal websites. I've had blogs off-and-on since I was a teenager, but nothing surviving. A dozen Wordpress installs, many tumblrs, several home-made sites of various complexities, but no real legacy.

This will be my fourth Blaugust. One I completed with a post every day, one with fifteen or twenty or so posts, one that never really got off the ground. None of them still accessible. That's a great shame.

I recently stumbled upon the Indieweb movement, and it really aligned with how I was feeling about the web and my own position within it:

The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”.

It is a community of independent and personal websites connected by open standards and based on the principles of: owning your domain and using it as your primary online identity, publishing on your own site first (optionally elsewhere), and owning your content.

So I started over. I've owned this domain for a long time, and run my own little instance on Linode, so I was all set. I cobbled together what you see here now, and I'm hoping this Blaugust helps me click with writing again. We'll see.

I finally hit Exalted with the Kirin Tor Offensive and Pearlfin Jinyu, so my Remix goals for my pandarian warrior are complete. I've now, perhaps foolishly, started on the Anglers and Nat Pagle reputations. I did some quick back-of-an-envelope maths and I think I can max out friendship with Nat before the end of the Remix event, so long as I do all three of his secret fishing quests
(Flying Tiger Gourami, Mimic Octopus, and Spinefish Alpha) for about 20 of the remaining 38 days. That seems eminently doable; they don't take very long to catch.

Pre-patch starts the week after next, and then the Radiant Echoes event the week after, so it's about time I decided on who I'm going to have a last push at gearing and preparing to take into The War Within.

I was considering taking Tuixiu, but I also have a hunter and a monk that I'm playing around with; the monk in particular has been a lot of fun, and I hear Windwalker's new Conduit of the Celestials hero spec is really good. I'll probably cycle through a bunch of alts doing the Radient Echoes event and end up picking one at the very last minute.

Need to get comments implemented in time for @belghast.com’s #blaugust next month (which I assume is happening!)

This will be the second time I’ve participated in #blaugust by completely re-writing my own blogging/CMS software, it seems I never learn to stop tinkering.

Had a hellish week at work so of course I piss myself off first thing this morning with getting frustrated at trying to purchase Dawntrail. I should just go back to bed

FFXIV has the most convoluted, awkward account management processes of any MMO I’ve ever played (which is a lot of them), I always have to hype myself up in advance to engage with it. Bleugh.

script that takes two hours or more to run, when I leave it unattended overnight: 😠🔥🪦

https://secretlair.wizards.com/uk/en/product/1001745/prints-of-darkness-foil-edition

Since last I wrote about my Warcraft progress on Tuixiu, I've reached Exalted with the August Celestials and hit revered with the Kirin Tor Offensive, which means my reputation to-do list currently looks like this:

So close. I managed to speed up August Celestial progress by camping a few spots where Zandalari Warbringers appear, and using the Stolen Celestial Insignia tokens they drop. No equivalent way to speed up the Kirin Tor Offensive grind (to my knowledge), so I'll just have to keep plugging away at the daily quests.

I have to admit I'm getting a bit burnt out on Pandaria dailies, so I'll be glad when these last few reps are done. I don't like the increasing feeling of playing because I should -- who know when it'll be as easy or convenient to max out everything Pandaria related -- but some nights I'd rather not. Maybe I'll take the evening off. There's still plenty of time before Remix ends.