Strandlines

note

| 24th February 2020

For the past few months my blog has been hosted on Micro.blog. I really like the frictionless nature of using it. I mentioned this in a post in which I also said that I was done with WordPress. So why have I been fiddling around with a self-hosted WordPress site for my blog for the last week?

Firstly, when I said I was done with WordPress I was referring to WordPress.com. While there is a fair amount of customisation that can be done, access to plugins (and the subsequent tinkering that can be done) is limited unless you pay for a top-tier plan. If plug-ins are your thing, from a cost perspective alone it then makes sense to use a self-hosted site. And I like the idea of fiddling with plug-ins.

Secondly, I have become intrigued by the IndieWeb movement. I like the ethos of owning your own content and communicating with other web users without having to use social media. Micro.blog is IndieWeb compatible, and while it is accessible it does have one or two limitations. One drawback is that in order to comment on someone’s post you have to be a member, which means that you won’t have comments on your own posts from people outside of the Micro.blog community. Another drawback is when it comes to customising the website templates that are used – I am not that great at it. Admittedly, this is largely down to my own lack of coding knowledge, but I am more familiar with using WordPress. Additionally, there are several plugins available for WordPress that support the IndieWeb and I want to experiment with these and get my head around webmentions, endpoints and the like.

I suspect my logic here is somewhat skewed and someone with much better knowledge of both platforms could point out good reasons for me to stick with Micro.blog. I will continue to take part in the community there and I may yet go back to using Micro.blog to host my blog, but for now this is a particular itch I have to scratch.

Article

Stephen

| 14th February 2020

When I decided to write about my experience with mental illness I didn’t really have in mind how much or how often I would share my thoughts. It was a case of have a go and see where it led. What I definitely hadn’t given consideration to was what, and if, to write when I am not feeling so great.

Part of the exercise was about being honest about the experience, and it goes without saying that a big part of most mental illness is not feeling too good about yourself. So it figures that when things are a bit of a shitshow that I should still write about it, otherwise I am not really expressing the full gamut of what it’s like.

This leaves me with a dilemma – on the one hand I do want to be honest about the experience, on the other I don’t want to come across as complaining or self-pitying. Bad times are just the way it goes, and I have to find a way to talk about that.

The other aspect is that shame is one of the things you commonly find in the big party bag that is mental illness, and as anyone who has dealt with the aformentioned will know, when shame is rearing its head the last thing you want is the attention of other people.

I’m not there yet but I hope that over time I can find a way to write about the uncomfortable stuff in a way that I am as comfortable with as I can be. If that makes sense…

Article

Stephen

| 14th February 2020

🎵 listening to… Holocene – Bon Iver

Article

Stephen

| 14th February 2020

Just in case you wondered… How the Met Office chooses storm names in the UK and Ireland 

Article

Stephen

| 9th February 2020

One reason I enjoy this time of year is the way bird song gathers pace. It is a long lead in before it might be called the dawn chorus, although when exactly that starts is a moot point. In my mind it is when Blackbirds start singing in numbers. Great tits are one of the earliest to start – often within the first two weeks of the year I will hear the joyous monotony of their song.

Another bird that starts early in the year is the Song thrush, and for the last two years we have had one sing from a tree just beyond our garden during spring. He starts before I get up and I can hear it in the house. I see I made a note of it on the 1st January. I have heard him pretty much every morning since then. Dunnocks, House sparrows and Blue tits have all started singing now, and in a few weeks I’ll be listening out for migrant warblers such as the Blackcap and Common whitethroat.

At the end of last year But She’s A Girl wrote about the fear of losing our bird song. This resonated with me as I had recently watched a video sent by a family member who lives in New South Wales. They had been caught up in the bushfires and the footage showed the trees around where they live. It almost looked like a winter scene in deciduous woodland – no leaves and the white of ash on the ground like snow. What really struck me was the silence.

It’s a sobering fact that most British species are on the decline. I have taken my son on bird surveys in the spring partly so that he can hear the call of Curlews, knowing that it is possible they may not be there to hear when he is an adult. Bird song is the soundtrack to my mornings, and while I don’t think I take it for granted, considering the possibility that we could lose it makes me appreciate it all the more.

In a few weeks time, when the Blackbirds around us are in full song it is a treat to go outside early in the morning and listen to the sheer depth of the soundscape. I don’t pretend to have any real knowledge of poetry but the last verse from Edward Thomas’ ‘Adlestrop’ sums it up perfectly.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Article

Stephen

| 9th February 2020

Plan A was to go and do a bird survey this morning. Storm Ciara has rather put paid to that. Not that I am averse to being out in inclement weather but there are limits. Plus the practicalities of trying to see and count birds in rain and gales…

So to Plan B. Stay indoors, enjoy a roast with my family for lunch and recharge from a demanding week.

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Stephen

| 5th February 2020

I had a text from my bank telling me that from time to time, when I pay using contactless I will be asked to enter my PIN. Just to make sure it’s really me.

Next year, I imagine that when I enter my PIN, I will be occasionally asked to sign a small piece of paper – just to check that it really is me.