Mandaris

it seems like lots of folks get caught up in blogs being the easiest setup to get started creating a website, but this seems to only work if the bulk of the content is your words and thoughts.

I've been so focused on blogging that I haven't thought about the other things that I can do with my website.

Found this article via Robb Knight

There are those who believe that we just have to present them with facts and then they would understand that they are on the wrong track. But they have their own reality and they look down on us for being weak and naive. They truly believe that we are the ones on the wrong track.

I came across this article a couple times on Mastodon. I feel that it's a very good read.

In my last post about the labarum theme, I ranted about how I wasn’t going to re-invent the wheel. In this post, I’ll be talking about how I made some minor tweaks and decided to update the version to 1.3!

This post is mostly a “why did I do this” versus a “how did I do it”.

On the Edge of obscure

When I first started working with static site generators, I used a tool called Pelican. The site is still up at https://mandaris.github.io, but I had messed up the layout in the last couple of commits and haven’t gone back to fix.

I have a tendency to focus on details that don’t really matter to 90% of most readers and (I’m assuming) most writers of HTML.

If you were to look at a list of personal blogs, I doubt that you’d find more than a handful that use esoteric tags such as <dt> or <rt>.

I continued this trend with this release by adding some tweaks to <ins>, <del>, and <s>.

At this point, the changes are direct by me loading the page up and making adjustments in the browsers inspector.

Part of the reason that I keep looking into this is that goldmark/commonmark define strikethrough as a delete in the resultant HTML.

Obscure Examples

Here are some example paragraphs with the styling mentioned above.

This is a paragraph with deleted text.

This is a paragraph with inserted text.

This is a paragraph with strikethrough.

And just for giggles here is a ruby(ruby) example.

Toggling Debug

Early on in this project, I enabled some debugging from Hugo. It was really useful when making the theme, and hidden by default.

As the template has become more stable, I want to reduce the amount of text that is being sent over. Yes, I know that text is almost negligible but why generate it if I’m not using it.

As a user, you don’t need to do anything. Generating the debug output is optional and toggled off by default.

I’ve added the following to the plugin.json file to make it an option.

"field": "params.themeDebug",
"label": "Generate the debug information",
"type": "boolean"

And then I have if statement in front of the corresponding debug code

{{ if .Params.themeDebug }}

Can I has?

This is the most exciting part of this release for me!

During the discussion of implementing the table of contents, I had written that I about using has but couldn’t because it wasn’t supported in Firefox.

Well, the feature is now available to anyone using version 121 or newer of Firefox and other popular browsers¹!

This came at a great time as I wanted to better integrate the plugins that Micro.blog offers. I wrote about the plugins late last year. That solution seemed to work for a while, but the <div> would sometimes render when it was empty. I was counting on Hugo’s handling of whitespace to remove any spaces and thus making the browser skip over rendering it.

I created a class in my CSS that would default to hiding things.

.optional {
  display: hidden;
}

I then follow this directly with code that makes it a block element if it has certain elements in it.

.optional:has(a, p, img) {
  display: block;
  margin-top: 1rem;
  padding: 5px;
}

After that, I added the optional class to the <div>in _default/single.html that contains plugins.

<div class="[ style-box ] [ optional ] [ text-center ]">

Next steps?

I don’t know.

Seriously.

I could add some styling to the optional components. Some of the other themes make those components look really good and was tempted to use something similar.

But, I don’t have the energy anymore and I want to focus on my writing. In fact, this release was mostly done a while ago and I’ve just been waiting to write up the changes.

If you have anything that you’d like to comment on, please feel free to email me at info@MandarisMoore.com.

I got curious, and added some CEO salaries for comparison. The vast disparity is nothing new to me, but seeing it like this...

It’s fucking sobering.

I came across this the other day.

I met James in one of the IndieWeb digital meetups and he was very personable.

He’s been doing a series of posts on technical writing and this last one was pretty good for those who would like a structure for their own documentation.

How do I turn my notes into an article? For this post, I am going to focus on the "how-to".

This is sometimes how I think about my posts on the labarum theme.

I’ve been working on this theme for a while. Marking things off and adding things to a list in my head of different things that I want to do in order to scratch my own itch.

The truth of the matter is that I may never be done done with this. There are edge cases that I can envision, those that I never thought of, and those that are so minute that it’s not worth putting the effort into.

With that being said, I can’t do everything.

In fact, I should not do everything.

Case in point, I was looking into getting my mastodon account verified and I was attempting to pull the host and username from the metadata that Micro.blog provides.

Otávio created a plugin [GitHub Repo] that references $.Params.mastodon.hostname but this is only available on the post level. I’d like it in the head so that I can get associated accounts validated and for other tools like browser extensions.

I sent an email to @manton and he verified this behavior. I put some code into the theme and it will eventually work without users having to do anything more.

But, what can I do until then?

I thought about making my own plugin that a user can put in the values for hostname and username. I could make my own separate branch of the theme that would have this hard coded. Since I’m working on this, maybe I could also add a separate piece to add more control over avatars and images.

I could … I could … I could …

No.

I know that I’m not the only one who feels that they could implement things to make things better. But, this isn’t my specialty. This is a fun project.

I quick search of plugins and I found the Meta tags plugin [GitHub Repo] by Manton.

I put the snippet that I wanted in and boom!

Problem solved.

The lesson?

I, you, and everyone out there don’t need to make everything.

Don’t let your perfect vision of what things are supposed to be stop you. Use the time that you have now to make and do something else.

Happy Holidays.

A year-end celebration of fundamental web technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

I'm always on the look out for distractions cool new things! This is the third year, so you can also checkout the examples from before.

A small but pretty cool v1.2.18 of Labarum. This will allow the Reply by email for Micro.blog, Reply on Mastodon, and Conversation on Micro.blog plugins to look like they belong on the page.

The next step will be to add a little more padding to the <div> that contains the links and to get the embed for the Tinylytics-for-Micro.blog plug to work correctly as well.

How does labarum add optionals?

There are truly great web designers here on Micro.blog and one of them is Matt Langford. He’s got a wonderful theme called Tiny Theme.

In it, he has different logic to test whether a certain plugin is installed and then perform logic for it.

{{ if templates.Exists "partials/reply-by-email.html" }}
  <li>{{ partial "reply-by-email.html" . }}</li>
{{ end }}

With labarum, I place these all in one <div> and hope that the underlying plugin doesn’t decide to add multiple lines some day in the future.

I’m using the browsers nature of not rendering the empty block elements.

What about tinylytics for labarum?

I ran into an issue when I attempted to add the tinylytics plugin for Micro.blog to the theme like the other plugins. Most likely a user error on my end caused by a conflict between when I initially added tinylytics and this plugin.

I didn’t want to have this update halted while I attempted to fix this.

As always, feel free to contact me with any and all feedback.

Description from Movie Database

While working underground to fix a water main, Brooklyn plumbers–and brothers–Mario and Luigi are transported down a mysterious pipe and wander into a magical new world. But when the brothers are separated, Mario embarks on an epic quest to find Luigi.

I fell asleep briefly somewhere between the moment where Mario goes on a mission with Princess Peach and the negotiation between Cranky Kong and the Princess. I’m not going back.

I think that’s kind of the whole vibe of the movie.

Things happen in a scene and then we go on to the next scene. A lot like the game.

Sure, I will tell people that I liked it but I don’t think I’ll ever watch this again.

Template uses lantern by Robb Knight

I really enjoyed this movie. It doesn't have a lot at stake and seems to go from one crazy plot point to another. But that's the nature of a satire, and I needed to see something like this. 

Ken Jeong has really been showing us his range this year. If you've seen him in this and the second season of The After Party, then you'll really know what I'm saying.