Planting Sempervivum tectorum (and More)

 2023-06-06

This morning I started an experiment… clipping leaves (“lobes” might be a better term for these things) from a healthy, indoor Sempervivum tectorum. What’s that, you ask? The common name is Hens and Chicks.

A couple of weeks ago I bought an on-sale strawberry pot full of Sempervivum tectorum and I have it growing on a little table on the front porch. It’s doing QUITE WELL there! A couple of days ago I uprooted a 3 foot square patch of Snow on the Mountain from a spot in my front flower beds (outside out southeast bedroom window), and that left a big bare patch of soil to be dealt with.

Fixing Wieting Guild Pages

 2023-06-03

Just the other day I got an updated copy of the Wieting Theatre’s volunteer roster and assignment schedule. As I’m trying to post them to the theatre’s management website   (it’s password protected) I keep having issues with npm and dependencies that won’t compile. The fix, thus far has included a local command stream like this:

cd wieting-guild-pages
git pull
code .
npm run build
npm run start 
  --> failed
npm update
npm audit fix
npm run build
npm run start
  --> failed
npm audit fix --force
npm run build
  --> failed
npm install axios
npm run build
  --> failed
npm update
npm run build

The last errors had this in common:

Roadtrip: Geowoodstock 2023

 2023-05-29

Geowoodstock 2023 ( GC89GMX   ) and Kentucky’s oldest surviving geocache ( GC39E   ) were the intended destinations of another epic roadtrip with gossamar on May 25-28, 2023.

The route and cache count looked something like this:

The green lines represent my “outbound” route while the red lines show my “return” route back from GC39E   . The ordered list of caches and events found is available for download below.

Wrap EVERYTHING in NPM!

 2023-05-19

So, node and npm seem to be all the rage these days, and perhaps for good reason. I recently fell in love with Eleventy/11ty   over Hugo   because it’s Javascript, not Go, and it’s elegantly simple with tons of flexibility. I recently tried to add Pagefind search to a Hugo static web site (see https://static.grinnell.edu/dlad-blog/posts/143-significant-rootstalk-retooling/   ). If Rootstalk, an Azure Static Web App was framed in node.js, as both Eleventy and Pagefind are, there would be no problem. The Azure scripts used to deploy those frameworks are far more customizable than Hugo, and there’s documentation to prove it.

A Pagefind Problem?

 2023-05-10

Not Just a Hugo Issue

Take note of the question mark at the end of the title, otherwise it could be somewhat misleading. This is not really a problem with Hugo, but one with cloud deployment of Hugo static apps, particularly as an Azure Static Web App.

The Nutshell

As you may know from post 143   , I have successfully installed and configured Pagefind   in Rootstalk   , but thus far it only works locally. When I try to deploy Pagefind to the cloud, specifically as an Azure Static Web App, I can’t make it work because there’s no apparent way to invoke the necessary npx pagefind... command AFTER Hugo compiles the site, but BEFORE the site gets deployed. Azure leverages GitHub Actions to build Hugo sites, but that process also involves some custom/proprietary Azure scripts. Therein lies the problem.

Searching for a Search Solution

 2023-04-20

A few months ago I sat in on a CFE.dev webinar   and I was really impressed with what I saw. I made a note to come back and look closer at Pagefind   , and my new blog – this blog that you’re presumably reading right now – really needed a search feature, so the “Search” box on this page (I hope it’s there) is the outcome.

Engaging s3cmd to Download and Resize Images from DO Spaces

 2023-04-16

Earlier in this blog there’s a micropost that lays out the problem at hand. In a nutshell, most of the photos I saved in DigitalOcean Spaces are too big to be effective in this blog. They suck up lots of time and bandwidth every time this blog gets rebuilt, and then they are rendered at a fraction of their original size. This is exceptionall wasteful and unnecessary.

So, my task this morning is to install, configure, and engage the s3cmd   tools to help get this done. There’s DigitalOcean-specific guidance provided in Setting Up s3cmd 2.x with DigitalOcean Spaces   so that’s where I will begin. Here goes…

Debugging This Blog with VSCode

 2023-04-04

I’m making some significant changes to the code behind this blog today. Specifically, I’m going to move my micropost “front matter” from the post.excerpt or post.custom_excerpt field to the “body” of the post where it might look like this example (taken from this very post):

-+-+-+
location: Toledo, IA
price: $50.00
note: This is just some sample "front matter". My parser removed the "split" characters from the delimiter you see here.

I Need VSCode Debugging!

To do this effectively I really need live dev debugging in VSCode, but how can I do that?

Finale Workflow Documentation

 2023-02-08

Mackenzie, my daughter, and I created this post documenting my wife’s Finale   workflow for scanning and editing music on her Mac.  We did this for my wife to celebrate her birthday preserve her sanity.  Well, it was worth a shot.  The birthday idea seemed more romantic, but mental health comes first.

The document was created using a process we recently built and documented in Creating Better Documentation   .  In this instance of the process we tried to annotate in yellow screen capture elements that need attention, and used red annotation to indicate things that require input or action of some kind.  In some of the later images we failed and things that should be red were left highlighted in yellow.  Sorry.

Fixing a Broken GitHub Repo

 2023-01-19

Don’t Push Enormous Files to GitHub!

Pay close attention to the statement above!  A couple of days ago I was working on content for Tama-Toledo Community Visioning   and I added a large socialmedia.zip file to the source repo, and then very stupidly pushed it to GitHub and the repo’s main branch. Naturally, the push didn’t finish so I removed the file and pushed a new commit to “remove it permanently”. Well, that ain’t how git works!