Recently, I need to transfer some humongous video files, with a estimated time of 16 hours 😳 Every time I turned my back for a moment, my MacBook immediately went to sleep and cancelled the transfer. No amount of swearing or fiddling with the settings solved the problem. Has anyone actually counted the number of power and sleep settings in MacOS? Anyway, finally, I found two neat solutions to this problem, both of which involve stimulants. ...
After months of faffing around and configuring external links manually in Hugo, I decided there must be a better way. There is! Here’s the solution that worked for me for my bookstore links. Some themes include native support, so it’s a case of checking the documentation and adding a line to your hugo.yaml or hugo.toml config file. If, like me, you’re using a theme that doesn’t support this feature, here’s a method that might work for you. ...
I’ve been an enthusiastic user of AudioPen for a few years. This brilliant app records and accurately transcribes your voice notes in moments. You can either opt for a light tidy to add punctuation and remove your ums and ahs, or ask it to make you sound like Cicero. Although you can organise your notes in AudioPen using folders and tags, most of us nerdy types already have a preferred note-taking app. In my case, that’s Obsidian. If you don’t know Obsidian, it’s a powerful yet simple app that stores your notes and plain markdown files and gives you various ways to make connections between them. ...
Hugo is usually the simple solution for website generation. Recently, though, I ran into a frustrating situation: the theme I wanted to use for one site required an older version of Hugo, whereas another site demanded the latest version. Although it’s possible to run multiple Hugo versions on the same machine, life is already complicated enough. In this tutorial, I’ll explain how you can build and preview a Hugo site with a Docker container. ...
Anthony Trollope’s souvenir from an 1865 trip to Nuremberg was an idea for a different kind of novel. Already famous for his Barsetshire Novels, he was keen to create “a second literary identity”1 and inhabit a different culture. As an experiment, he published Nina Balatka (1867) and Linda Tressel (1868) anonymously in Blackwood’s Magazine. Neither proved successful, even when reissued as novels under his usually bankable name. While his sensitive exploration of interracial marriage in Nina Balatka remains compelling, Trollope’s lugubrious tale of forced marriage in Linda Tressel is much harder to love. ...
Although I enjoy blogging, it’s almost always an activity I put off. “I’d love to write that post,” I tell myself, “but I need a whole day for that.” One of the many epiphanies from my recent series of Tiny Experiments is that I can write much faster, especially when I’ve made a public commitment to do so. I don’t suppose anyone would’ve chased me if I’d missed a day, but the very threat of shaming was enough. Admittedly, the posts from that week are sketchy, but some will be reincarnated into future book chapters. ...
Since I was a tiny pope, I’ve always been good with budgeting. I’d carefully plan my larger purchases (usually books or LPs) then steadily add the money to an ashtray in my knicker drawer. I’ve no idea why I didn’t use a piggy bank like a normal person. But, hey, it worked. The money I saved as a child actually got me out of a few pickles in my twenties. All those Saturday jobs, paper rounds, and holiday gigs added up – especially when interest rates were high. As the years progressed, though, and my responsibilities changed, I found it harder rather than easier to budget. ...
While everyone’s going mad for White Lotus at the moment, my favourite telly programme is Sort Your Life Out. Each week, Stacey Solomon and her friends descend on a chaotic family home and impose order. Although this format isn’t new, what I find refreshing is the completely non-judgemental tone. Our lives get messy and this is reflected in our immediate environment. This week’s family had accumulated hundreds of CDs, which Stacey encouraged them to offload in favour of streaming. But does it make sense to rent music? ...
Yesterday morning, I was filled with joy. My calendar was gloriously empty, which meant I could finally tackle one of those projects that demand a lot of focus. I would quickly pay a bill, then I’d get started. Two hours later, I was resolving to throw all my devices in a passing refuse truck. That two-minute job had involved installing apps, repeatedly entering the same information, and “talking” to a chatbot that kept timing out. ...
On day two of my Tiny Experiment, I struggled to access my feelings about money. My beloved cat had just died and I felt overwhelmed. Humphry had been my furry sidekick for almost eighteen years and had seen me through some bumpy times. Although he didn’t have a lot to say about money, he did enjoy two passive income streams. Perhaps he should have written a book instead? Anyway, losing Humph reminded that traditional financial advice usually assumes we’re in the best possible position to make an important decision. But often that decision is prompted by an unpleasant life event, such as a bereavement, divorce, or redundancy. To make matters worse, those decisions can involve long-term commitments, such as a fixing a mortgage rate or buying an annuity for retirement. The security we crave in that moment becomes a trap later on. ...