Category: General

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In advance of Google shuttering their third(?) attempt at a social network, Google+, I’ve retrieved a full archive, and I’ve trawled through it looking for anything that I want to keep online after the shutdown. Most of them were cross-posts of one sort or another, or (early on, especially) the kind of random social media status that maybe has value in the moment, but not down the line. I found around 30-40 posts worth keeping. Some had their own merits, some fit in with other posts here on the blog.

Rather than just import them verbatim, I’ve decided to do some minimal cleanup. No major rewriting or anything, just the kind of things that I’d be willing to silently change on an old blog post that was already here:

  • Fix up the formatting
  • Fix typos
  • Link to related posts
  • Add a quote to linkblogging posts if they need more context

Yeah, it’s slower than copy-paste or direct import (I never did get around to writing the converter I wanted to), but there’s no rush for old news, and I’ve got copies to work from even if I’m not done by April 2.

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A couple of weeks ago, the almost-8YO found my old manual SLR camera – the 1967 model my grandfather gave me. I bought some film, and picked up a light meter app while waiting for the battery to arrive (the light meter is the only powered part of the camera), and I showed him how to load the camera, focus, choose the shutter speed and aperture, etc., and the two of us shot a roll of film, trading off between us.

As I showed him how to unload the camera, I managed to knock it off the table, where the open camera crashed to the floor.

I couldn’t believe it! This camera is older than I am, and I was fairly certain it still worked…until we shot one roll of film!

Amazingly the lens didn’t break, and nothing seems to have damaged the shutter mechanism either. The only thing that I’ve noticed is that the door in the back of the case is bent slightly. I can still close it, but I have to shift it about 1/8″ to do it. I hope it’s still light-proof…

We shot another roll of film, again taking turns, and tomorrow I’m taking it into a photography store to get them developed. I really thought the slow turnaround would be frustrating to him, but he’s finding it fascinating.

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The kiddo managed to get another Halloween out of last year’s homemade Minecraft Spider Jockey costume. But it’s not easy to run around and play in, so we offered to buy him an alternate for parties, and he chose Ant-Man. Curiously, the costume didn’t come with gloves, so Katie took a pair of plain black gloves and attached controls to them.

It’s a good thing we had it, though, because the straps on the spider started digging into his shoulders a couple of blocks into trick-or-treating and he wanted to come home early. (But not before running into a Steve? in diamond armor!)

Cue the alternate costume!

Oh, and check out this year’s pumpkin carving as well! Hardly anyone saw it, because all the trick-or-treating action seemed to be a block away, and no one walked up to our door until 9:00.

Ant-Man’s helmet is carved on a real pumpkin. The goofy face on the right is a plastic one from a few years back.

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But I got the new printer set up on just about everything, and I bought and downloaded the latest Humble Bundle full of Java reference books, and I fixed the .htaccess on this site to force access over HTTPS.

Regarding the printer: When CUPS works, it’s more or less automatic, and stays out of the way. Perfect! When it doesn’t, it’s a freaking pain to get working.

I’m really not liking this new editor, by the way. I mean, yeah, it’s cool than you can do stuff like setting the colors for a paragraph, and setting drop caps, and all that, but for what I actually want to do, it’s overkill. And it takes forever to load the editor page if something else is downloading at the same time (like all those Java books and supplements).

Anyway, time for bed.

zzzzZzzzzzZZZZZZzzzZZZzzzzzZzzzzzz….

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Most social networks don’t give you the ability to backdate your posts. That’s good, because it provides a trail that you can point to, saying “Yes, I did in fact post this before it became common knowledge/was plagiarized/etc.” But other publishing platforms do. It’s helpful for things like transferring an archive from another site — though it seems a little weird (and vaguely dishonest) to backdate a new post.

That said, I do backdate posts on this blog from time to time, generally when:

  • The post is imported from another site (Instagram, LiveJournal, a comment somewhere, a Twitter thread, etc.), and I keep the original posting date. Basically it’s a smaller scale version of transferring an archive. Sometimes I’ll make a note, sometimes I won’t. But the post was already online somewhere on that date, even if it wasn’t here.
  • I’m splitting an old post into two or more smaller posts, in which case I’ll usually keep the date but adjust one of the times.
  • I’ve got an old draft that I never got around to posting, it’s no longer relevant today, but I’d like to make it available in its original context. In that case I’ll add a note that it was backdated.

There’s also the accidental backdating that sometimes happens when I create a draft in the mobile app and it decides to keep the upload date as the posting date. I try to fix these as soon as I notice. But that’s not really the same thing!