Mandaris

Labarum: Official 1.1.0 release

Showing the cycle of coding, writing article, finding an issue and then repeating.

One feeds into the other.

I did an “official” point release for the Labarum theme last night. I had previously been keeping the version number in the site-head.html and did not change the plugin.json file that would alert the different workflows that a change had actually happened.

What is new

In addition to the the changes in my last post, I added some margin to all images, figures, and videos on the site to better handle some of the content that is added from other sources than MarsEdit and Drafts.

I also used the same styling on the navigation links as I do the articles. This will make them more legible. For all of the talk about accessibility, I was using the contrast between the article background as a test and not the background that you normally see.

All your base

In my last post, I mentioned that I wasn’t using any plugins.

Turns out, because I wasn’t using them, I didn’t know that some of them weren’t working. In one case, the Search Space plugin by @sod.

After looking into it a bit more, it turns out that I had set the <base> element in my head for the theme. This causes all relative links to go to the base¹ of the website. In this case, it made what should have been https://mandaris-test.micro.blog/search-space/minisearch.js into https://mandarismoore.com/minisearch.js. As an added problem, footnotes would go to the main page of the site as well. I didn’t see it because I only looked at my articles on the main page and hadn’t looked at my older post in a while.

I found this really nice article about what use cases the <base> really shines.

Strangely enough, I’m actually a lot more confident in the quality of my theme after finding this issue.

WebMention

This is a small little change that most will never see, but I’ve added some code to improve what is parsed when you use a webmention. Some of this is really dependent on what kind of client someone is using to parse the Webmention, but I feel that this follows the specs pretty well.

What’s the next step?

I’m going to continue to reevaluate the way that site looks to me. To paraphrase @pimoore, “theme design never ends, it goes on hiatus”.

I’ve identified the following things that could use some improvements.

Improving the way code and code blocks look. Code blocks look really, really and break out the article > div that they are in.
Change the responsiveness of the site in general. This is one of those “It works on my machine” situations. The margins of the site are all based off of an example that I found years ago that worked on my devices. I want to make sure that it’s “better” or at least not worry about it not being perfect².
Refactor CSS. It’s getting harder for me to read what I put in there. I’ve been given a suggestion on how to organize it. I’ll probably tie this into the effort to change the responsiveness of the site.
Update the README.md. I want to quickly see all the things that this theme has to offer without having to browse my site or apply it to their own.

With all that said, I want to spend the next 20 to 30 days focusing on the content of the site more. I’ve put a lot of energy into how the theme works and I want to do more writing and podcasting. I found that I started comparing my theme to others and it was taking some of the fun out of it. If I focus on creating stuff, I can have a better understanding of where I want the theme to highlight the things I make.

So, feel free add it as a plugin on micro.blog, browse the code on Github, or contact me via how ever you got this article.

In hindsight, I should have known and seen the problem earlier. ↩︎
Perfection does not exist. ↩︎

The Little Mermaid, 2023 - ★★★

People on the internet are mean. This is a decent adaptation of the children’s tale about the little mermaid.

I thought it was pretty decent fairly true to what I remember from watching it repeatedly with my oldest daughter.

Sure, they make some changes such as removing the “Les Poissons” segment, but I don’t think anyone really wants to see the live action version of fish getting cut up. A little too real for some.

The Little Mermaid, 2023 - ★★★

People on the internet are mean. This is a decent adaptation of the children’s tale about the little mermaid.

I thought it was pretty decent fairly true to what I remember from watching it repeatedly with my oldest daughter.

Sure, they make some changes such as removing the “Les Poissons” segment, but I don’t think anyone really wants to see the live action version of fish getting cut up. A little too real for some.

Three Thousand Years of Longing, 2022 - ★★★

I remember watching a short tv series based off of the Arabian nights tales. In it, a woman would tell a story to a sultan every night to keep him entertained or she would be killed.

This is not as morbid, but the structure of having someone tell their story and having it played out by different actors is great to see.

I especially liked the cinematography at the beginning of the film as they move from one angle to the next. It somewhat sets you off balance as you move into the main portion of the story. I just wished it tied into the main plot of the story more.

Another aspect I enjoyed about the film is the way that it treats nudity. It’s in there, trust me you’ll see it. But it’s there as a backdrop and sometimes even as a plot point.

Certain parts of the movie are in Ottoman Turkish without subtitles but I like to think of it as a nod how something’s are universal. The main characters do a great job of explaining whatever nuisance I missed.

All in all, I am happy I saw it and think of it as kind of a breather from the other media I consume.

Three Thousand Years of Longing, 2022 - ★★★

I remember watching a short tv series based off of the Arabian nights tales. In it, a woman would tell a story to a sultan every night to keep him entertained or she would be killed.

This is not as morbid, but the structure of having someone tell their story and having it played out by different actors is great to see.

I especially liked the cinematography at the beginning of the film as they move from one angle to the next. It somewhat sets you off balance as you move into the main portion of the story. I just wished it tied into the main plot of the story more.

Another aspect I enjoyed about the film is the way that it treats nudity. It’s in there, trust me you’ll see it. But it’s there as a backdrop and sometimes even as a plot point.

Certain parts of the movie are in Ottoman Turkish without subtitles but I like to think of it as a nod how something’s are universal. The main characters do a great job of explaining whatever nuisance I missed.

All in all, I am happy I saw it and think of it as kind of a breather from the other media I consume.

Dredd, 2012 - ★★★

I remember being pleasantly surprised by this movie. It did some interesting stuff with slow motion.

Dredd, 2012 - ★★★

I remember being pleasantly surprised by this movie. It did some interesting stuff with slow motion.

I’ve set a filter in my /etc/hosts file for reddit and deleted Apollo. I’m going through withdrawal from the dopamine hits that they would provide.

In unrelated news, I’ve REALLY gotten into all the games offered by Apple Arcade.

I have a very old tv.

It has one HDMI port.

Today, that port has died.

Breaking hearts left and right.